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Rom coms, three hanky weepies, relationship dramas dotted 2003.
But the film that catapulted real difference into our midst was Tigmanshu Dhulia’s debut feature Haasil, in which he presented NSD mate and good friend Irrfan Khan as an Illahabad-ka-sakht-launda: the film had been long in the making, and when it finally came out, both Irrfan and Dhulia — finally and jubilantly — found their footing in Hindi cinema. Unka time aa gaya.
Nikhil Advani helmed Kal Ho Na Ho, with Shah Rukh Khan-Saif Ali Khan-Preity Zinta circling around each other in NY, singing soulful songs, giving SRK a guaranteed three-hanky deathbed scene, and that infamous Kanta Ben gag in which the character’s homophobia is played as a joke, something producer Karan Johar went on to try and fix in the 2008 Dostana.
After KNPH, Rakesh Roshan lucked out again with Koi Mil Gaya, in which glam maa’m Rekha is mom to Hrithik’s developmentally challenged young boy/man, Preity Zinta is the simpatico girl friend, and there’s a jealous fellow played by Rajat Bedi, yes, the very one who has resurfaced in The Ba***ds Of Bollywood. In all of this, the cute alien Jadoo, our own ET, steals the show.
25 Years of Indian Cinema | 2002 was the year of Devdas and Company: Bhansali baroque vs RGV’s grit
Aziz Mirza’s Chalte Chalte has commonplace truck-company-owner SRK and poor little rich girl Rani romancing in sun-dappled Greece. And then, in an unusual stroke for a mainstream Hindi movie, their screen marriage is severely tested, generating heat and tension: a major turnaround from most Hindi films which end at the mandap and mangalsutra, because after that, as most marrieds know, lies danger.
Ravi Chopra’s Baghbaan had Amitabh Bachchan and Hema Malini playing parents to a bunch of ungrateful adult children, dispossessed from their own home, forced to find love with others. The melodrama was high, but the veteran lead pair carried the film, with Salman in a surprisingly heartfelt cameo, proving once again that when the latter enters a film late, just like he did in KKHH, he often leaves more of an impact than when he is doing full-fledged hero-giri.
Rajkumar Hirani’s debut Munna Bhai MBBS, with Sanjay Dutt as Munna and Arshad Warsi as Circuit, gave us one of the most feel-good films of the year. The good-hearted goon, propped by his faithful sidekick, confronting the cold and cruel representative of the medical community, played by Boman Irani, made us laugh and cry, and proved that Hirani was the rightful legatee of the middle of the road cinema which had vanished from our screens.
But 2003 belonged to Haasil, Tigmanshu Dhulia’s long-in-the-works debut, in which the once-prestigious Allahabad University’s faded charms become the prime location for the action, bringing back Hindi cinema’s engagement with youthful unrest sparked by local political chutbhaiyyas and goons, which was more successful than the parallel love story between Jimmy Shergill and Hrishita Bhatt.
25 Years of Indian Cinema | 2001 was the year when Lagaan, Gadar, Dil Chahta Hai became speedily iconic
This was the film which gave Dhulia a foothold in Bollywood, and Irfan Khan (at the time, he still spelt his name with a single R) the role of a life-time. The latter’s Rannvijay Singh is a ‘negative’ character, but his positive traits are the ones that make us fall in love with him — Irrfan had almost given up on Hindi cinema, and if it hadn’t been for his being able to finally break out with Haasil, we would have been deprived of watching one of the most dazzling actors that Hindi cinema has ever produced. His untimely passing is still a wrench.
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