Dementia, which is emerging as the new ‘villain’ in Bollywood scripts these days, sheds tears and makes films a hit, but is far from the truth.
Diseases have always attracted cinema people. Once upon a time, heroines used to die while coughing due to TB in an artistic manner. Later, cancer came into the cinema script like a trump card. The hair loss, the chemotherapy scenes, the final farewell. Then its freshness also ended. Then the filmmakers discovered another devastating disease, dementia and Alzheimer’s. Every need of cinema is present in this disease. Memory, identity, love and heartbreak.
Everything is not romantic: Shafali with Ahlawat in 3 of Us
Bollywood often reduces Alzheimer’s to mere storytelling convenience. While the disease may deliver a powerful climax, it doesn’t do justice to the lived reality of dementia. The recent film Syara (2025), directed by Mohit Suri, is a tragic love story based on Alzheimer’s. The heroine is barely twenty years old, who develops Alzheimer’s. From a medical point of view, if Alzheimer’s starts early, it can be cured in patients below 65 years of age. Early onset also means between 40 and 50 years. Certainly not twenty.
Saiyara is not the first film. In 2008, Kajol also played the role of a girl in I You Me Aur Hum for whom early stage Alzheimer’s poses a threat to her marriage. Movies no longer need conservative parents, the caste system or the scheming in-laws of old Bollywood melodramas as villains. The disease itself is enough for this. The struggles of the urban, liberal, economically affluent multiplex audience are no longer the same. Therefore, Alzheimer’s is now emerging as a new obstacle.
The real life of the patient is hardly shown in these films. Instead, the audience sees more of the caregiver’s suffering. The audience sees the lover’s anguish over ‘losing’ his partner. The camera is rarely able to fix on that feeling of the beloved, in which there is confusion and ambiguity. The story is not told with the patient, but around him.
In this sense, Black (2005) follows a different path. Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali turned dementia into an operatic scene of disability and darkness. For teacher-turned-Amitabh Bachchan, Alzheimer’s becomes a second darkness, a metaphor for self-destruction. Aestheticist Bhansali uses this disease as a symbol. It looks grand, touching and impressive. But not accurate! Because the reality of Alzheimer’s treatment is different. In this disease there is wandering, there is a misconception that others will cause harm, self-control is lost, the pace of work slows down. But all this remains missing in films.
This does not mean that allegory has no place in cinema. But when metaphor replaces detail, the result is different. Like pain becomes a little glamorous. The drama is fascinating to watch, but it is miles removed from the everyday challenges of the disease.
In Sudheesh Shankar’s Tamil film Marisan (2025), Alzheimer’s is trivialized to further the story. In this, Vadivelu played the character of Velan. He contracts this disease when he meets a thief (Fahadh Faasil) for the first time. But the story takes a ‘twist’ and it is revealed that Velan was lying about the illness. In this film, Alzheimer’s has been used not as a reality but as a cheap gimmick. It’s like a hoax to shock people. Worse, Velan turns out to be a fraud and a murderer, further reinforcing the dangerous notion that people with dementia are dangerous. But by the time the film reveals that Waylon’s wife actually has Alzheimer’s, the damage has been done. A serious neurodegenerative disorder has been reduced to just a tool to further the story, with no sensitivity or insight.
Deepti Naval in Goldfish
Still Alice (2014) gave a different kind of heroine to films around the world. Julianne Moore’s linguistics professor describes her own dilemmas. The film shows the heroine’s confusion, her fears and her efforts to control them. The focus of the film is not the family’s grief, but their personal experiences. As a result, this is a film that generates sympathy not through manipulation, but through intimacy.
Avinash Arun’s Three of Us (2023) is one such film. It doesn’t descend into melodrama or simplify Alzheimer’s as a sad handicap. It presents the experience of Shailaja (Shefali Shah) as a chaotic experience. She struggles at times, forgetting her old memories, feeling guilt and longing, and realizing her fading memory.
Unlike Saiyara or You Me Aur Hum, Three of Us does not turn dementia into a ‘villain’ that can be defeated with love. Instead, the illness becomes part of a contemplative journey that includes loss but also confession, nostalgia, and tenderly endured grief.
Pushan Kripalani’s Goldfish (2023) is another honest Indian film based on dementia. Deepti Naval plays a mother suffering from this disease and Kalki Koechlin plays her daughter. What makes Goldfish remarkable is not just Nawal’s sensitive portrayal, but also the community around him. The film presents dementia not as a personal tragedy limited to one family, but as a collective reality. Immigrants living in the South Asian area of London come forward to help with kindness. It feels chaotic, sometimes ridiculous and often frustrating. But in other words, it feels real.
still alice
Dr Harish Shetty, a Mumbai-based psychiatrist who treats dementia and Alzheimer’s patients, emphasizes that community is vital in dementia care. Patients feel better when they have multiple people to support them, not just an overburdened spouse. In films like You Me Aur Hum or Saiyaara, the patient gets only one “very loving” partner. This is an ideal but isolating scenario. Goldfish breaks this pattern. The film shows that illness does not always have to be suffered by the individual, but can also be treated through a network of care.
Dementia in real life is rarely the lonely, romantic journey depicted in movies. In fact, families disintegrate under its burden. The children’s conflict over inheritance and caregiving responsibilities becomes bitter. Resentment between husband and wife increases due to the mother’s or father’s constant demand for care. Dr. Shetty faces these realities of daily life through the patients who come to him. In Sayara, the patient’s parents leave their daughter with a stranger and take her to an isolated house that she does not know. This is completely contrary to the advice of doctors. Dr Shetty emphasizes that dementia care is facilitated by familiar settings and networks of support, rather than the fantasy of an isolated, self-sacrificing individual.
In Saiyara itself, clinically only one thing seems to be true. Padda’s character remembers her previous lover more clearly than her current partner. Neurologists confirm that this is common, with the most recent memories being the first to fade away in dementia, while older memories often persist longer. This accuracy is a rare moment in the film, otherwise the entire film is tainted by fiction.
Bollywood may still be learning to deal with dementia, but theaters are sometimes doing better. In Florian Zeller’s play The Father, staged in India, the audience along with Naseeruddin Shah are able to experience the disorientation of dementia from within. Its changed sets and blurred timeline better reflect the protagonist’s broken mind. Dr. Shetty says that compared to the film, Shah’s acting was one of deep study and attention to detail.
One side of this is that cinema has played an important role in increasing awareness. Just as TB in older films or, later, cancer, introduced audiences to diseases they probably never talked about before, dementia on screen has become a topic of public discussion. This is no small achievement. But there is a difference between increasing awareness and increasing understanding.
marison movie scene
The danger is simply that Alzheimer’s becomes a shorthand for the tragedy and its complications disappear. This situation is presented only as a fall. Less attention is paid to how many years patients can live with dignity, humor and independence. What the films don’t show is how families adapt, how communities come together to help, how care structures develop. Only crying farewells are seen in films.
Mainstream cinema likes glamour. Even in pain she wants glamour. But dementia isn’t glamorous. It’s messy, unpredictable and challenging. If filmmakers really want to tell such stories, they need to move beyond theatrics and seek advice from neurologists, psychiatrists, caregivers who know what the disease is. They must give patients back their subjectivity, instead of turning them into satellites revolving around the pain of their caregivers.
Alzheimer’s is not just a way to show some new protest by changing old patterns like anti-racism or parental rejection. This is a disease which affects millions of families.
If filmmakers choose empathy over narrative crutches, they might be able to explain not only what it means to forget, but also what it means to care. After all, as Elizabeth Bishop reminds us, the art of losing isn’t hard to master.
(She has been a screenwriter and advertising film producer. Lives in Mumbai.)
