2007: The Year in Film
TWENTY-TWENTY
Looking back at a few standout moments from the year’s Hindi cinema …
DEC 30, 2007 - 1. LIFE IS BUSINESS, BUSINESS IS LIFE: When Sujata (Aishwarya Rai), in Guru, haggles with the vegetable vendor, or when she strikes a post-pooja deal with the father-like newspaper publisher (Mithun Chakraborty) that she’ll give him a piece of the sweet prasad only if he brushes aside his atheism and allows her to apply a teeka on his forehead, we laugh with the recognition that it’s not just the Tatas and the Birlas, each one of us is a born businessmen in daily life.
2. THE WALL COMES DOWN: The dull boom on the soundtrack sounds as if cannons are going off in the distance, and when a fanatic mob uses a battering ram to force open the gates of the chawl that Cyrus (Naseeruddin Shah) lives in, you can’t miss the analogy to actual warfare – from the times when cannons and battering rams were used to bring down forts. The superbly realised riot sequence in Parzania reminds you that little has changed down the years.
3. GOVINDA RETURNS: Salaam-e-Ishq was filled with big names from the current generation, but the one who walked away with the film was a one-time superstar. As a cabbie named Raju – a simpleton, a fool for love in the Raj Kapoor mould – Govinda filled the screen with equal parts charm and corn, and he made a comeback we didn’t know we’d been waiting for.
4. THE DEADLY CALM… THEN THE STORM: In the best sequence in Black Friday, a suspect is being interrogated by the police. There’s just a casual conversation being carried on. You keep waiting for one of the cops to lose his patience and start slapping this suspect around, but they ask him instead if he wants a cup of tea. And then, suddenly, a cop kicks the stool out from under the suspect, the situation begins to explode, and the anticipatory knot in your stomach resolves itself. Ah, finally – there’s the violence.
5. A MYTH MAKES IT TO THE MODERN DAY: Argue all you want about the merits of Eklavya, but no one can point a finger at the beautifully designed prologue – a sombre mix of illustration and animation that flickers over Amitabh Bachchan’s baritone – which narrates the story of the great guru Dronacharya and his not-quite disciple. As Eklavya cheerfully slices off his thumb, the blood spatters across the screen and the redness reshapes itself into a nighttime view of the palace in this story, bringing alive the grisly continuity between past and present.
6. HONEYMOONING COUPLES SHAKE BOOTY: After experiencing various levels of married angst, the husbands and wives in Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. get onto a boat and unleash the most exhilarating moment of the year by boogying to the infectious Sajnaji vari vari. Watching the uptight Kay Kay Menon do the snake dance is a sight guaranteed to chase the blues away.
7. MONTY AND SHRUTI BOND OVER BEER: By now, it goes without saying that Konkona Sen Sharma and Irrfan Khan are terrific in whatever they do, but when they sit down and talk in Life in a Metro – after a shopping spree, bottles of beer behind them – they aren’t characters in a film anymore. They are us – and they take audience empathy to an entirely new level.
8. NILESH LAUNCHES INTO PURPLE PROSE: The noir stylings of Ek Chalis Ki Last Local are complemented beautifully by the film’s endlessly quotable dialogue. Walking on a desolate stretch of road, beside his heroine, Abhay Deol muses, “Halka sa nasha, bheegi si raat, khubsoorat saath… aur kya chahiye aadmi ko!” And my favourite: The sarcastic rejoinder by an irritated customer in a bar who’s asked by the bartender what he wants. “Ek VIP ki chhattees number ki chaddi de.”
9. NINA SENDS BACK BUDDHADEV’S ZAFRANI PULAO: What would make a finicky 64-year-old chef fall for a 34-year-old? Going by Cheeni Kum, could it be because she not only has the gumption to send back his zafrani pulao (she thinks it’s too sweet), she makes the dish the right way and has it delivered to him? Do you still doubt that the route to a man’s heart is through his stomach?
10. RICKY AND ALVIRA GO THROUGH THE FULL CYCLE FROM LOVE TO DEATH: A lot of Jhoom Barabar Jhoom takes place in exotic foreign locations, but when Abhishek Bachchan and Preity Zinta fall in love, they return to India – to the Taj, to Humayun’s tomb – and proceed to get married and have children and grandchildren and hold hands and die. And all during the course of the lovely Dhaage tod laao song sequence.
11. THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH COLLIDE OVER SEMANTICS: When a Telugu-speaking hockey player goes to register for training camp, she’s referred to as a Tamil. “Tamil aur Telugu mein kitna faraq hai?” the man at the desk mumbles. The girl doesn’t take affront; she merely replies, with the not-again weariness probably identifiable only by people from below the Vindhyas, “Utna hi, jitna Punjabi aur Bihari mein hai.” Forget the last-minute-goal business, its rah-rah Indianness is the real victory of Chak De India.
12. THE SUPREME BEING BECOMES CEO: In Hari Om, autorickshaw driver Vijay Raaz asks his firang passenger if she’s a Christian. She nods, and he wonders how her One God could do so much work all by Himself. When he adds that we have thousands of gods in India, it’s impossible not to smile at the image of the Supreme Being as CEO, delegating the task of sustaining the world to His numerous employees.
13. GIRL SERENADES BOY WITH A K3G SONG: In Loins of Punjab Presents, the year’s most unexpected delight, Seema Rahmani comes on stage after encouragement from this man she may be into, and the number she begins to belt out is Bole choodiyan. When she gets to the line, Tere bin jiya naiyyo lagda, you realise with a smile that she’s not just singing, she’s serenading. It’s a joyous Bollywood moment, all the more joyous for being in a movie this un-Bollywood.
14. A STUNT SEQUENCE GETS HUMANISED: Aboard a train, you see dentures rattling around in a cup of water, an air pillow being inflated, the bathroom latch being jiggled from the outside by a man who can no longer hold it in – and amidst these unremarkable sights of everyday life, there’s death, as the titular traitor of Johnny Gaddaar finishes off a colleague. Who says an action sequence has to be just hyper-edited dishoom-dishoom?
15. GEET AND ADITYA TALK AND TALK AND TALK: Kareena Kapoor meets Shahid Kapur on a train – she’s running away from her hostel; he’s escaping a painful past – and when her confessional chattering becomes really annoying, he yells that he doesn’t care if she’s fleeing from a hostel or a brothel, so could she please clam up. A moment of silence later, she rebukes him softly: “Brothel wali baat theek nahin thi.” With nuggets like this, Jab We Met was a slap in the face of those who insist no one listens to dialogue anymore.
16. K DESCENDS INTO THE UNDERWORLD: No Smoking was crammed with dazzling moments, and the pick among them was when the hero first makes his way into Baba Bengali’s lair. Filled with stairs and passages that appear to loop upon themselves, K’s physical journey proved as labyrinthine as his metaphorical one in the year’s most hallucinatory film.
17. SOORAJ BARJATYA TAKES NOTES: As junior artist Shah Rukh Khan impresses upon top star Deepika Padukone that there’s no “sorry” in friendship, the future maker of Maine Pyar Kiya stands outside and jots down the dialogue. Om Shanti Om was a bit of a mishmash, but how nice to see that Bollywood can take a hearty laugh at itself!
18. SAKINA BECOMES CINDERELLA: As Sonam Kapoor responds to Ranbir Kapoor’s serenading her with the Saawariya title track, you feel she’s finally shaking off memories of the man she’s pining for. But when the clock tower rings out, she realises that it’s time for her to go to the bridge on which she waits all night for her Prince Charming. She bolts, without even leaving behind the comfort of a glass slipper – and you know then that there can be no happy ending for this love story.
19. DIYA PUTS THE ‘NR’ IN NRI: Madhuri Dixit in Aaja Nachle may be “Indian” but she’s also “Non Resident” (or even “Non Returning,” as the joke goes). There’s a Western coolness and reserve in her – especially when she bids goodbye to the townspeople who’ve supported her cause. There are no hugs, no teary farewell speeches. A pat on the shoulder, a caricature-face to lighten the moment – and she’s off. Perhaps it’s all those years of wooing NRI audiences, but Yash Raj Films finally convinced us that they do have insight into the Non-Resident Indian.
20. ISHAAN TAKES OFF INTO OUTER SPACE: Faced with a math problem, the wonderful Darsheel Safary channels the spirit of Calvin (from the comic strip) and transforms himself into a character like (Calvin’s alter ego) Spaceman Spiff, clearly convinced that the only way to tackle multiplication is by hopping into a spaceship. For all its problems, Taare Zameen Par gets utterly right what it’s like inside a child’s head.
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