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Yes, there were a few good films this year too, but 2019 will be known as the year when desi web series came of age, with a clutch of terrific shows whose instant popularity ensured new seasons: shows on OTT began as an experiment, and when Sacred Games in 2018 became the phenomenon it did, the flood gates opened.
Sacred Games part 2 wasn’t half as smart or entertaining as the first one, but it cemented the success of Netflix as the originator of ‘desi originals’ — shows that were funded and created with Netflix backing, as opposed to the ones that were ‘bought’ or ‘acquired’. Richie Mehta’s dark, disturbing ‘Delhi Crime’, based on a bunch of committed cops in the Capital solving the Nirbhaya case, made up for the Sacred Games dip.
Other terrific shows — Raj & DK’s spy saga The Family Man and Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti’s wedding-planner splash-out Made In Heaven on Amazon Prime Video, TVF’s middle-class-Mishras-ki-katha Gullak on Sony Liv and coaching-life-special Kota Factory on Netflix, legal drama ‘Criminal Justice’ – kept us busy.
I’d go so far as to say that between Kaleen Bhaiyaa from Mirzapur and Jeetu Bhaiyya from Kota Factory, the case for the desi web series was won. From this year on, there would always be a fight for eyeballs between theatres and streaming platforms.
The most important thing that happened with this OTT wave was not just that we, the viewers, were now always going to be spoiled for choice, but also that there was now going to be a space for new stars to be born.
These could well be established actors who never really got their due in the movies, which are driven by big stars and plots created to assuage their egos and massage their image, but also new faces that became the ones we lived with along with the popularity of their shows.
One of the blockbusters in 2019 was Aditya Dhar’s Uri, starring Vicky Kaushal and Yami Gautam, which kickstarted the muscular nationalist movies that have defined this era, with its ghar mein ghus ke maarna turning into a flag-waving mantra.
So was Hrithik Roshan’s War, which dialled down the jingoism comparatively, but stayed determinedly on top of the India vs its enemies narrative.
Shahid Kapoor’s Kabir Singh, a remake of the Telugu blockbuster Arjun Reddy starring Vijay Deverakonda, got everyone stirred up, and rightly so, with Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s all-out depiction of the domineering bad boy hero and submissive heroine: the conversation is still swirling around us, and rightly so.
Zoya Akhtar’s rap-ready Gully Boy was a swing for the director from her usual eat-the-rich problems to characters who live in Mumbai’s slums, and with credible acts from Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt, gave us a film that nestles high on her CV.
Anubhav Sinha’s Article 15, starring Ayushmann Khurrana as the naive outsider who learns hard life lessons with his posting in a UP small town– the fissures of caste and class– was slammed for turning its hero into a saavarna saviour. But it is a film whose truths cannot be denied, and for a mainstream film to go down this path was brave.
Ek Ladki Ko Dekha, directed by Shelly Chopra Dhar, starring Sonam Kapoor as a girl who likes girls doesn’t proceed half as bravely as its title suggests, but it remains one of the few films that took on the subject of same-sex love. Because LGBTQi hai na. Boy girl bahut ho gaya, thoda girl girl ho jaaye?
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