Farhan Akhtar agrees Dil Chahta Hai women had less screen time: ‘The film is about the three boys’

Twenty-five years after Dil Chahta Hai changed the way friendship and young urban Indians were portrayed on screen, Farhan Akhtar has acknowledged one of the film’s long-standing criticisms, that its women characters did not get as much screen time as the three male protagonists. Looking back at his 2001 directorial debut, Akhtar agreed with the observation, while maintaining that the women in the film were never written as weak or passive characters.

“I agree. The film is about the three boys and they predominantly are on screen. But none of the female characters was written as weak woman,” Akhtar told The Indian Express.

He pointed to Dimple Kapadia’s Tara as a character who, despite having considerably less screen time than the three friends, has a significant bearing on their relationship. “Dimple’s Tara, to me, had probably the strongest in terms of her effect on the relationship of the three boys. She, in a way, drives Sid and Akash away from each other,” he said.

Akhtar also highlighted the agency given to Sonali Kulkarni’s Pooja, who is in a relationship with Sameer (Saif Ali Khan). “Pooja, played by Sonali Kulkarni, is an independent woman, who instills the confidence in Sameer that one should marry the person one loves,” he said.

For him, even Shalini, played by Deepannita Sharma, has her own way of asserting herself within a relationship where her fiancé objects to her choices. “Shalini has her own way of fighting back by doing the things that her fiancé is kind of upset about. It’s almost like a silent protest,” Akhtar said.

The filmmaker’s assessment also underlines what he considers the emotional core of Dil Chahta Hai: the journey of its three male protagonists as they grow out of their youthful immaturity. “At the heart of it all, it is a celebration of friendship. It’s also about growing up together. What Dil Chahta Hai really does is it takes the friends from a place of immaturity to a place of maturity,” he told The Indian Express.

While the film predominantly follows Akash (Aamir Khan), Sid (Akshaye Khanna) and Sameer (Saif Ali Khan), Akhtar’s comments suggest that the women were conceived as important forces within that journey, even if the plot remained firmly centred on the three friends.