Well, this is a rather big title and discussion is also expected to be long and distributed to several blog posts over the time. It is first necessary to explain what I mean by this title.
Our Hindi movies are often accused of having same story lines. A hero, a heroine, their love, opposition to it and their conquest over this opposition! The one who is able to present the same set of sequences with attractive twists and climax along with big names becomes the successful movie maker. Its the own style of Hindi cinema and I really appreciate it, we are unique in that matter. Still, it is not so, that different movies are not at all made. There are many movies with different plots right from historic to thrillers and even up to science fictions.
Whatsoever be the plot of movie, movie is a story of humans and humans are largely driven by emotions. Actually, almost every event in the human world is driven by emotions. Even the most practical person is not emotionless, in fact, his practical nature is a sort of emotional trait only.
So the movies are also all about emotions. Love stories are directly inherited from emotions but even science fiction movies are quite less meant to increase knowledge but in fact they present story of emotions in particular circumstances which arise due to some scientific event. If something is presented just as factual scientific knowledge or historic knowledge, we identify it as 'documentary'!
Hindi movies have achieved unbeatable expertise in presenting "anti-parent boy-girl (shall I use the word hetero?) love" along with family dramas, patriotism, underworld emotions, terrorists emotions and are slowly learning to present human-machine emotions, machine-machine emotions (what a contradiction!!) and human-alien emotions etc. Human-animal emotions are quite rare in Bollywood but not absent.
Our discussion is about such films which presented a different angle of emotion which is not so usual in all this set. Any emotion, including as I said hetero-love qualifies for our discussion provided, it should be presented in different way. Presentation of altogether different emotion (like machine-machine love) will make movie eligible for our discussion, de facto . This discussion will continue for several blog posts, whenever I will remember such movies or such movies will be made or you will suggest me inclusion of such movies.
Such movies are being made in Hindi since long. Many of them have even got superstar touch like Anand (1971) with Rajesh Khanna or Manzil (1979) with Amitabh Bachchan. Anand narrated story of a person who conveys message of "living great life, not long" and Manzil is a story of man with huge dreams, his failures and his success. However, being afraid of never ending discussion in that case, I decided to discuss only about new films, released in or after 1990.
Again, whole new plot of the movie is not an essential condition, we can even discuss movies where small but significant part has rendered different angles of emotions. It makes enough clear that we are very much liberal in our classification and sole purpose of such articles is to attract attention of viewers to such movies which can give them different experience or which can touch their hearts like never before. Only different plot or social-political natures of plot are by no means our criteria.
Our Hindi movies are often accused of having same story lines. A hero, a heroine, their love, opposition to it and their conquest over this opposition! The one who is able to present the same set of sequences with attractive twists and climax along with big names becomes the successful movie maker. Its the own style of Hindi cinema and I really appreciate it, we are unique in that matter. Still, it is not so, that different movies are not at all made. There are many movies with different plots right from historic to thrillers and even up to science fictions.
Whatsoever be the plot of movie, movie is a story of humans and humans are largely driven by emotions. Actually, almost every event in the human world is driven by emotions. Even the most practical person is not emotionless, in fact, his practical nature is a sort of emotional trait only.
So the movies are also all about emotions. Love stories are directly inherited from emotions but even science fiction movies are quite less meant to increase knowledge but in fact they present story of emotions in particular circumstances which arise due to some scientific event. If something is presented just as factual scientific knowledge or historic knowledge, we identify it as 'documentary'!
Hindi movies have achieved unbeatable expertise in presenting "anti-parent boy-girl (shall I use the word hetero?) love" along with family dramas, patriotism, underworld emotions, terrorists emotions and are slowly learning to present human-machine emotions, machine-machine emotions (what a contradiction!!) and human-alien emotions etc. Human-animal emotions are quite rare in Bollywood but not absent.
Our discussion is about such films which presented a different angle of emotion which is not so usual in all this set. Any emotion, including as I said hetero-love qualifies for our discussion provided, it should be presented in different way. Presentation of altogether different emotion (like machine-machine love) will make movie eligible for our discussion, de facto . This discussion will continue for several blog posts, whenever I will remember such movies or such movies will be made or you will suggest me inclusion of such movies.
Such movies are being made in Hindi since long. Many of them have even got superstar touch like Anand (1971) with Rajesh Khanna or Manzil (1979) with Amitabh Bachchan. Anand narrated story of a person who conveys message of "living great life, not long" and Manzil is a story of man with huge dreams, his failures and his success. However, being afraid of never ending discussion in that case, I decided to discuss only about new films, released in or after 1990.
Again, whole new plot of the movie is not an essential condition, we can even discuss movies where small but significant part has rendered different angles of emotions. It makes enough clear that we are very much liberal in our classification and sole purpose of such articles is to attract attention of viewers to such movies which can give them different experience or which can touch their hearts like never before. Only different plot or social-political natures of plot are by no means our criteria.
A typical nature of such movies is
they are set in particular small world. Like, Anand had the small world of
protagonist Anand, his doctor-cum-friend, Anand’s quickly approaching death and
his philosophy of life! There was nothing beyond that, all emotions were part
of this set, this small world only. Manzil had world of a day-dreamer and
nothing else. Largely influenced by Anand, Kal ho naa ho (2003)
too had a similar small world of young man having short life and his friends. A
common person is largely involved in his or her world only. Hence, its very
likely that one finds such movies, their plot or characters close to oneself.
Let’s start our first article with
mostly mainstream and famous movies. This will help us to boost our memory to
find out other such movies.
Jo jeeta wohi Sikander (1992)
was quite different attempt as it tried to collect maximum teen-age emotions.
Rendering infatuation, jealousy, competition, first love, true love and sense
of achievement this movie is still able to attract 13-30 age group.
Kabhi haan Kabhi naa (1994) is one of the most unique movies
ever made. Unlike other Hindi movies, here, hero (?) is a loser! From academics
to love, he is failure everywhere. Yet, he has 2 qualities, one being an extra
ordinary musician and other having a good heart. He is portrayed to be very
realistic in behavior like telling lies to get his lady-love or hiding his
actual exam results from parents but still, at the end, he helps his lady-love
to get her lover who is in fact, hero’s best friend. This movie is also set in
small world of protagonist and his town in Goa .
Interestingly, protagonist is Hindu and his love is Christian but religion is
not made an issue anywhere. Its all about a life of person who faces frequent
failures. To the much extent, Ajab prem ki gazab kahani (2009) has some
similar things like hero is loser, his relations with his father (which any
frequently failing person will have) and even further, hero being Hindu and his
love is Christian. However, protagonist of APKGK finally tastes success by
getting his love and treatment of movie makes it to be identified it as comic
movie separating it from Kabhi haan Kabhi naa. Personally, KHNH is my
favorite movie and I will dedicate a blog post specifically to it one day.
As it is about different angles of
emotions, Aamir Khan’s movies will certainly find maximum space here. Apart
from Jo jeeta wohi Sikander, his several other movies have different
presentation of emotions. His Dil Chahata hai (2001) had the most
attractive rendering of friendship and Taare zamin par (2007) is
undoubtedly among the best movies ever made. This revolves around a small kid
suffering from dyslexia and his relationships with parents, friends, teachers
and one teacher-cum-friend. I won’t include his other great movies like 3
Idiots (2009) or Lagaan (2001)
as I consider these movies are a bit social in nature and do not represent any
‘specific’ emotion. Remember, good movie or bad movie is not our criteria.
Owing to the rules of our
discussion, Koi mil gayaa(2003) finds its place here having story of
human-alien friendship, relation of (intellectually) immature boy with his
mother and a girl of his same (physical) age. However, somewhere all these
emotions were not properly represented and movie highly focused on glamour of
its artists, an alien and being a rare kind of hindi science fiction movie.
Similarly, there is another movie, Paheli (2005) which lacks
entertainment value but has different sort of emotions rendered. It portrayed
love of a ghost for a lady and what the ghost is ready to do for her. A movie Ra.one
(2011) tried to describe relationship in between a kid and a robot(?) looking
like his deceased father. But again, movie was made to focus on many other
things and these emotions were shadowed. All these films had great chance to
represent different angles of emotions but somehow, these films didn't succeed
in it much.
Tum Bin (2001) is among the surprise creations in such
sort of movies. A person dies in car accident! It makes large impact on his close
ones. The person who is responsible for this accident approaches these close ones
with guilt and his guilt in fact maximizes when he notices condition there. He
tries to fill up the place of deceased by doing every possible thing, right
from keeping family members happy to contributing the collapsed business of the
deceased. Film succeeds very much in representing impact of death of one person
on his close ones and the guilt one person carries when unintentionally he is
responsible for such loss.
Lootera (2013) is roughly based on O.
Henry’s short story “The last leaf”. A woman suffering from tuberculosis
believes that she will die the day when a tree visible from window of her room becomes
leafless. A man (hero - who was responsible for some loss of the lady in past) takes
care of her health. One day, lady notices that tree has only one leaf left and
thinks that her death is close. But, when she wakes up another day, she finds
leaf at its place. That leaf never falls and the lady is cured. Later, after
the death of hero in some events, lady discovers that he used to paint a fake
leaf and tie it to the tree just to keep her hopes alive! His emotions behind
doing this are not clear, whether its out of love or guilt or humanity. This
makes the story different from others.
Let's stop here for now. Let’s keep
other movies for next parts of the same article! Till then, keep enjoying the emotions.
(To be contd. -)
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