By Amitava Nag • Dec 28th, 2008 •
Dasvidaniya (2008)Year 2008 had been an insipid year as far as cinema is concerned. There were no international movies which took everyone and anyone in their stride and the film festivals were lukewarm. Back home in India, things were not much different. Bollywood also remained more or less un-inspirational. Apart from Jodhaa Akbar and Dostana to a little bit, big budget films didn’t do that well either.
Interestingly, Golmaal Returns became quite a hit in the later part of the year notwithstanding the poor script and indifferent acting. SRK’s Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi and Aamir Khan’s Ghajini deserve mention but it is difficult to rate them since both got released only in December, and that too the latter during Christmas. On the critical path, Nandita Das’ Firaaq is worthy for her sincere attempts to analyze the evils of Indian political sphere, not to mention Rituparno Ghosh’s much hyped The Last Lear , a film which tried to project Amitabh Bachchan as a powerful theatre actor of past, but the film fell miserably short of expectations. So it’s a difficult task at hand - to cut out my 5 best Bollywood films of the year. The chances are that some reasonably good films which I saw early on may miss my radar now.
Looking back, I tried to classify the films in five broad genres and find my best pick in each category:
Comedy: Comedy seems to rule the roost to not only medium budget Bollywood films recently but also amongst relatively bigger budget ones. However, unlike Bheja Fry last year there is no single comic film that I have seen which is taut and smart till the end. Dil Kabaddi probably is one which in-spite of its uncanny resemblance with Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives, sails through quite successfully as a film where marital and sexual tensions are seen by the director from a comic angle. This is supported by an excellent crew of actors.
Romance and youth: Romance probably has been the bread-butter theme of commercial Bollywood films since ages and no wonder this is the broad theme on which majority of Bollywood films are made even today. However, the noticeable paradigm shift has been the emphasis on youth and friendship. Rock On and Dostana are in a sense buddy films of the Hollywood golden era and in showcasing the fact that man-woman love is not the only relished relationship, these films try to be unconventional. However, the one which mingled both of them with reasonable success by bringing a sweet and lovable lead couple is Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. We can complain about its placid story telling form as well as the run-of-the-mill end. But, surely it evoked quite a bit of youthful energy on the screen which makes you wish you were young.
Contemporary reality: There has been this sudden urge amongst Bollywood film makers lately to make films on terrorist activities, bomb blasts, secret missions and so on. These are slightly different form their predecessor patriotic films like Border for example. This year as well we have quite a handful of such movies. Mumbai Meri Jaan on the series of seven bomb blasts on the Suburban Railway in Mumbai in 2006 and A Wednesday on the stylish narration of a Police Commissioner about a particular Wednesday deserve mention. To me Aamir stands out above the two in its rendering of gasped fear of an individual where belonging to a specific religion makes him a prey to all adverse interests. The film’s gripping finale adds to the taut storyline and questions the audience’s position in the socio-political Indian milieu.
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Gangster: If you have seen Sarkar, then you will be tempted to see Sarkar Raj and believe me you won’t be disappointed. But like many trilogy predecessors, the second film also suffers from the problem of being repetitive - the former one stands out as a more solid one. However, there is a different take on this whole mythical posturing of the concept of the Don in Mithya. A brilliant Ranvir Shorey notwithstanding, this film attempts to break a number of clichéd concepts and once viewed in conjunction with Shahrukh Khan’s Don or Amitabh Bachchan’s Sarkar Raj, you can make out the difference - the screen is big, whether you will put the characters bigger than the screen is the question.
Philosophical: The best Bollywood film of 2008 to me is Dasvidaniya. This is a story that deals with the life of a common man who has only 3 months left in his life and he suddenly realized he never ‘lived’ for the past thirty-seven years. So begins a journey through thick and thin and it takes the audience with it for the ride. Heart-wrenching and deeply philosophical at times this film probably lacks somewhat in the director’s vision about the ultimate end, and also probably because Vinay Pathak in the lead at times became very stereotyped and predictable in his histrionics. In this age of growing unrest a film like this surely makes us slow up a bit and ponder about our own ambitions and wish-lists. Bravo!
As I conclude there are two things which need special mention. Almost every Bollywood film that I saw in 2008 is an ‘influence’ (read copy) of some foreign film (be it Hollywood or European or even Korean). Most of the young film-school influenced film-makers using their access to world cinema are trying to put up something ‘desi’. No harm in it as long as the adaptations are good and we don’t get bored or we start seeing the originals far too often (sic)!
Most of the films that I watch in theatres these days happen to be in the Fame Multiplex in South Kolkata which is at walking distance from my home. I cannot comment on the other halls, but here, before every film all the viewers have to rise to their feet as the national anthem starts on the screen, courtesy BharatBala Productions. Probably for most of us, it is an emotional moment. As the year comes to an end and we ruminate on the repeated attacks on this great country we are proud to be born in, I look back - ‘Mera Bharat Mahan’.
