2006 The best year of our movie lives

Rarely in living memory has Bollywood inundated audiences worldwide with such a legion of smash-hits, many of them on subjects that would have been taboo or unpopular scant years ago

By Subhash K Jha

Piracy be damned: 2006 will be remembered as one of the most prosperous years for the Indian film industry. There were more successes this year than in any recent years. Rakeysh Mehra, who kickstarted 2006 with one of the most momentous hits of the year, can’t help but look back with great affection. “This was the year of Lage Raho Munnabhai, Fanaa, Phir Hera Pheri, Omkara and my Rang De Basanti (RDB). So much variety and style packed into one year. It’s a year that gave us much to be pleased. All sorts of doors and windows are being opened for filmmakers.”

Following closely on the heels of RDB was Anant Mahadevan, who had never seen a success as a director. His small Dino Morea-Emran Hashmi-Udita Goswami thriller Aksar, power-driven by Himesh Reshammiya’s track “Jhalak dikhla jaa”, blew the lid off the box office.

The third hit of the year occurred soon after. Even before one could say “cheesy”, Priyadarshan was back with another comedy. Who says bucolic themes don’t work? Malaamal Weekly, set in a village with Paresh Rawal in hideous dentures and Om Puri at his boorish best, became the third success of 2006 in a row.

And the best was yet to come. Anurag Basu, bravely triumphing over the Big C, emerged with a cool, compelling, dark and romantic thriller, Gangster. It was easily one of the dark horses
of the year. And soon after, Abbas-Mustan’s silly 36 China Town, too, did reasonably well, thank you. The pundits then predicted that Bollywood had run out of its quota of hits for the year. Little did they know!

Not even a quarter into the year, and the hits just flowed. Kunal Kohli’s powerfully plotted Fanaa told a good, old-fashioned, melodramatic story of love between a blind girl and a terrorist. Suddenly, Bollywood had a new scriptwriter, Shibani Bathija, roaring and revving into blunderland.
Shibani also wrote the unorthodox Karan Johar’s Kabhi Alvidaa Na Kehna (KANK). But that was later during this super-prosperous year.

First, there was the triumph of sequels. So far, the experts had predicted doom for sequels in Bollywood. Midyear, Phir Hera Pheri, followed by Krissh, changed that mindset. So stupendously successful were these two sequels that Bollywood suddenly got busy devising as many of them as possible.

The remakes—or “remix”, as Ashutosh Gowariker calls them—also got a boost with Farhan Akhtar’s stylishly crafted Don. But where were the originals? Ah! Madhur Bhandarkar, who ripped the screen apart a year ago with Page 3, did a look-see on the enigma of entrepreneurship in Corporate, with Bipasha Basu smouldering on the screen with her seductive presence. Though lacking the impact of Page 3, Corporate was still big enough to keep the producers happy. As for comedies, with groups of boys insulting everyone from the blind to the dumb, Rohit Shetty’s Gol Maal brought enough chuckles to the table to keep the all-boys’ comedy alive and quipping.

But the grin quickly gave way to the grim when Vishal Bhardwaj hit the screen with a bludgeoning adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello. Omkara, set in the heart of the mafia hinterland in Uttar Pradesh, was big enough to keep the producers hooked to Shakespearean sagas. Says Vishal Bhardwaj, “I know I made a brilliant film. But because of the harsh language, I thought the film would suffer among family audiences. No such thing happened. In fact, the ladies loved the film as much as the men.”

How do we explain this open-armed welcome of all things bright and bewildering in Bollywood this year?
Karan Johar’s KANK pushed the envelope so far that it seemed to be endorsing infidelity. The moralists got into a violent argument. Karan grinned all the way to the bank. In spite of being declared a disappointment in some centres, KANK is spinning out fortunes on foreign shores. But for its claim to being the biggest hit overseas, KANK will have to slug it out with Ravi Chopra’s Baabul.

Everything in the movies this year was spoken of as “bigger than ever”. If, in the earlier part of the year, Krissh seemed to be the biggest hit of the year, in the latter part of the year it was another Hrithik Roshan-starrer, Dhoom 2, making taller claims. Says Hrithik, “The way Dhoom 2 is going, it won’t just be much bigger than my Krissh, but probably the biggest hit ever!”

Superlatives presided over the box office. If with RDB critics ran out of praise, with Raj Kumar Hirani’s Lage Raho Munnabhai they invented new rhythms of rave. As though one reformist drama during the year wasn’t enough, Lage Raho… came along after RDB. Both films changed the way we look at cinema and society. This alchemy through the visual medium hasn’t happened in a long time.

If the last lap of 2006 gave us whopping hits like Dhoom 2, Don and Sooraj Barjatya’s unexpected bonanza Vivah, it also brought stunning succour to small cinema. Two neo-realistic comedies, Dibakar Banerjee’s Khosla Ka Ghosla and Saket Chowdhary’s Pyar Ke Side Effects, became the surprise successes of the year.

“I don’t think we’ve had a year like this in years,” exults Madhur Bhandarkar, who is busy completing another unconventional drama. “Give the audience soothing different, and they’re all for it. Don’t feed them the predictable, because they’ve no appetite for it anymore.” Adds Nagesh Kukunoor, “I think the audience is far more mature than we sometimes grant them.”

Kukunoor should know. His Iqbal in 2005 and Dor in 2006 were hugely successful clutter-breakers. In 2006, it looked like they—the clutter-breakers—were ready to form their own
compelling clutter.

And things can only get better in the coming year.