If, at times, the ensemble coming-of-age (starring Aamir Khan, Dimple Kapadia, Akshaye Khanna, Preity Zinta and Saif Ali Khan), with its high production values, plays like an expensive ad-film blame it on director Farhan Akhtar (mining personal experience of privilege and rejection to pour into the script) who had cut his teeth in advertising before his film days. Quips from the film continue to grace GIFs and memes.įuelled by trendy haircuts (that’s what happens when your wife owns a salon), Goa road trips and elite boys’ day-outing, DCH has, since its release in 2001, gathered a huge fan following. On the other hand, Dil Chahta Hai’s on-point urban bon mots were probably the first time you heard the millennial-speak on a Hindi screen. Satya’s uncouth gangsters talk a lot like uncouth gangsters might, unless you personally happen to know a slick mobster who, as lyricist Gulzar once remarked, would invoke Ghalib instead of ‘Goli maar bheje mein’. DCH wowed us with a fresh depiction of urban realism. In other words, what Satya did to ‘realism’ what Farhan Akhtar’s Dil Chahta Hai did to urbanism, a game-changing debut that laid the groundwork for every urbane comedy that came after it. According to the maverick RGV, today reduced to being a ghost from the past, Satya’s grittiness, starting with the title, was influenced by Govind Nihalani’s haunting Ardh Satya. Set in Bombay’s gangster-land, it was, on one level, perhaps more fantasy than reality. Satya practically invented modern Bollywood realism. Scratch the surface and they do have a few things in common. But give yourselves a moment to let the comparison sink in. Don’t be surprised if the first person to take offence at that declaration is Ram Gopal Varma himself, Satya’s ‘lost genius.’ And the man who had redefined the grammar of romance way back in the 1990s with Rangeela. Both so outrageously different from each other in their subject matter and visual styles that their very utterance in the same breath may sound like an outrage to cinephiles. Think of ‘modern’ Bollywood and two films stand out.
Take a look at our pick of Bollywood and indie films from the 21st century.
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