Old but not stale

In the absence of quality releases in 2007, it’s better to spend an evening at home with last year’s critically acclaimed Dor, Khosla ka Ghosla and Kabul Express

Nishi Malhotra Delhi

Many consider the year 2006 to be a turning point in Hindi cinema. Never before was the silver screen in India lit up so brightly with well-made films of different genres and styles in one single year. Never before was there so much original, home-grown cinema, sparkling with innovative writing. Once and for all, the year 2006 put paid to the standard Bollywood excuse for flops: “The public cannot appreciate/is not mature enough for movies other than formula.” The public showed that it will throng the box office even to watch a quirky story about a small-time hood and the Mahatma, provided it is well-made and well-told.

By now, virtually every movie buff in India has seen, if not several times then at least once, these outstanding films of 2006: Rang de Basanti, Lage Raho Munnabhai and Omkara.  Films that were excellent but could not find a large audience: Khosla ka Ghosla, Dor and Kabul Express. And then there were the fairly watchable masala films as well: Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, Krrish, Dhoom 2, and Vivah.

The film awards functions (their tribe seems to grow every year) being shown on television these days (IIFA in Yorkshire being the latest) are testimony to the nightmares the 2006 films are causing the film juries of Bollywood — most of the films in the Best Film category are deserving of the prize and would, in a normal year, win hands down; performances in these films are class acts that do not fit the usual Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor categories (Saif Ali Khan in Omkara, Boman Irani and Arshad Warsi in Lage Raho) so the awards people have to come up with innovations like Best Actor in a Comic Role/Negative Role and even, sometimes, special awards to recognise critically acclaimed performances (Deepak Dobriyal in Omkara); and directors contending for the Best Director prize against seasoned film-family folk like Karan Johar (Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna) and the Barjatyas (Vivah) are first-timers like Dibakar Bannerjee (Khosla ka Ghosla) and non-formulaic experimenters like Rakeysh Mehra (Rang de Basanti).

In the face of a relatively dismal 2007 which has, until the mid-year mark at least, yielded only some so-so attempts like Guru, Cheeni Kum, Life in a Metro, etc., cinegoers may enjoy watching some acclaimed films from 2006 that had a limited run at the box office, primarily due to scant resources in the publicity and marketing departments. These films are now available on DVD and will likely provide a more entertaining evening at home compared with the wishy-washy fare currently running in theatres (with the exception of the monsoon dhamaka, Sivaji: the Boss, of course!) 

A personal favourite from 2006 is Khosla ka Ghosla. This low-budget movie, filmed on location in Delhi, is perhaps the first Hindi film that can truly be called a 'black comedy' since  Jaane Bhi Do Yarron which was made in the 80s. The film revolves around a middle-class man Kamal Kumar Khosla (Anupam Kher), who acquires a plot of land to build a house for his family. Khosla gets his plot but a shark named Khurana (Boman Irani) occupies it illegally.

All of Khosla's legal wrangles — going to the police and lawyers, as well as illegal ones — getting goons to break down the boundary wall, to free his land, fail. The frustrated man finally agrees to let his younger son and his friends help him. But can he trust them? Will their plan succeed?  This intricate story that never loses pace has class comedy, understated emotion, and highlights a problem that is immediately recognizable to anyone even thinking of purchasing property in North India. Sterling performances by an ensemble cast (Kiran Juneja, Pravin Dabbas, Ranvir Sheorey, Tara Sharma, Vinay Pathak) are indeed memorable. Also, since the film is technically no great shakes, it doesn't matter if you missed it on the big screen - watch it at home with the family for a truly enjoyable experience.

The one thing all of Nagesh Kukunoor's films have in common is that each is very unlike the others. This is a director who does not aim for mass appeal; he just enjoys the process of making films. And so, his stories are unusual, his vision far-reaching, and his style hard to pin down. Dor is a woman-centric film, which makes the sensitivity with which Kukunoor handles it even more surprising. Zeenat (Gul Panag) and Meera (Ayesha Takia) are two women whose lives intersect because of a piece of news that changes their destinies altogether. It causes Zeenat to leave her home in Himachal to go looking for Meera in the desert heat of Rajasthan, because the fate of her husband now lies in the hands of this widow. En route, she meets a Behroopiya (Shreyas Talpade) who helps make the journey lighter with his humour and philosophy.

Ultimately, the two women strike a friendship — but Zeenat remains uneasy under the burden of the secret she is hiding. Kukunoor has extracted remarkable performances from all three actors and although Ayesha Takia has walked away with the most critical acclaim, Panag's Zeenat too stays with the viewer long after the movie is over. Some powerful scenes between the two leading ladies and Rajasthan filmed like it never was by any other filmmaker — these are the other hallmarks of Dor.

A film about journalists in a war-torn country is as far removed from Hindi formula as Afghanistan is from Switzerland. And Kabul Express, directed by another first-timer Kabir Khan, is worth watching for the possible flavour of Indian cinema to come in the era of globalisation. Two Indian television reporters (John Abraham and Arshad Warsi) show up in post 9/11 Afghanistan to get first-hand interviews with the Taliban. The US has occupied the country and an American journalist (Linda Arsenio) joins them, hoping that she too will find a story alongside. Their Afghan guide (Hanif Hum Ghum) has promised to take them to the Taliban but cannot deliver. Not surprisingly, the hunter soon becomes the hunted as the whole bunch is kidnapped by a Pakistani, a former Taliban soldier (Salman Shahid), who is racing towards the Afghan-Pak border to avoid capture by the natives. 

The film loses pace now and then even as it heads towards an unexpected climax but never really gets boring. Salman Shahid, Hanif Hum Ghum and Arshad Warsi shine in the acting department. But the real star of this movie is the beautiful cinematography of the rugged landscape of Afghanistan. It's hard to imagine that popular Hindi cinema prefers the meadows and snowy peaks of Switzerland rather than this stunning territory. Watch Kabul Express on the big screen to get the full impact; if this is not possible, try a large home-theatre plasma TV!