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.