Dil Chahta Hai (दिल चाहता है)

“Life is all memory except for the one present moment that goes by so quick you can hardly catch it going” said Tennesse Williams. Dil Chahta Hai (दिल चाहता है) was released 10 years ago in 2001 when me and my friends were (finally!) at the end of our college days and our futures looked bright and happy. Colored by that lens, Dil Chahta Hai, or DCH as we came to call it, became the definitive movie for a lot of us. I watched DCH again recently and it was quite a different experience, though I could clearly see why DCH had felt like our movie in the past.

Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Akshaye Khanna play three rich kids caught in that carerfree twilight zone between college and real life. Aaamir is a prankster who is aloof of love. Saif is innocent and confused about love. Akshaye is the serious type and has fallen in love with an older woman. After a memorable Goa trip, the trio have a spat and Aamir moves away to Australia. Real life catches up with him and he discovers love in Preity Zinta, but is not able to express it. Predictably, his friends return to help him in the act.

Dil Chahta Hai was the debut for director (and now actor) Farhan Akhtar. Though dealing with a standard story, it is told remarkably well with flashbacks. Acting and cinematography are good, but the best memories from this movie are its music. Songs by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, spun around the poignant poetry of Javed Akhtar. Though Koi Kahe Kehta Rahe gets all the airplay, I personally love the depth of the lyrics in Dil Chahta Hai and Tanhayee. I only need to listen to the title track to open the dam of memories of carefree college days. Chamkeele Din indeed! In the 10 years since DCH, what has not really aged well is the length of the movie. At 3 hours, it now seems tortuously slow and unnecessarily long drawn out. Farhan should probably create a shorter director’s cut edition sometime. In the year of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, a quarter-life-crisis-movie by Farhan’s sister, Dil Chahta Hai still remains a good movie to recollect those times!

Dhobi Ghat

Dhobi Ghat (Mumbai Diaries) is the much-hyped movie by Kiran Rao that released earlier this year. The movie portrays a few days in the lives of 4 people in Mumbai, whose experiences turn out to be interconnected. Arun (Aamir Khan) is a painter, living alone, his divorced wife and child now in Australia. He draws energy from the buzz of the city for his work. Shai (Monica Dogra) is on a sabbatical in Mumbai, on a photography project to capture the life and professions of the city. Munna (Pratiek Babbar) is a dhobi by day and a rat-killer by night. He has dreams of being a Bollywood star one day. And finally Yasmin (Kriti Malhotra), a newly-wed small-town girl from Uttar Pradesh experiencing the big city and recording her moments on a video camera. Something seems amiss in her life.

Like the title suggests, there is no real plot in Dhobi Ghat, it is just what happens in the lives of these characters. All the characters feel real and complex, portrayed well by the actors. The cinematography is excellent, capturing the nuances of the people and the city. People die, things happen, moments pass by slowly, and the city feels like a throbbing living organism. There is a creative vision and some good writing here. Dhobi Ghat is a snapshot of Indian city life, nothing more, nothing less.

3 Idiots (थ्री इडीयट्स)

Rating: 3/4 (An entertaining movie on the education rat race in India)

3 Idiots (थ्री इडीयट्स) is the 2009 Bollywood movie that went on to become the highest grossing movie of all time. The story, revealed through flashbacks, revolves around 3 students who meet at ICE (an IIT clone), one of the top universities in India. Rancho (Aamir Khan) is a free spirit, who is at ICE because he loves science and engineering, while his friends Farhan and Raju represent the plight of most Indian students. That is, Farhan (Madhavan) loves wildlife photography but is at ICE due to his parent’s wishes that he become an engineer. Raju (Sharman Joshi) is God-fearing and is at ICE so that a job can lead his family out of poverty. In their midst is Chatur (sic), a student whose only aim in life is to ace the exams, by hook or crook. Teaching them at ICE are the typical Indian lecturers and professors, mechanical uninspiring robots, who spout lines from textbooks and kill any sign of creativity from students. They are led by the head of ICE, nicknamed Virus (Boman Irani), who always reminds the students of the rat race in India and how one must succeed at any cost to ace it. Tempers flare and egos clash between Rancho and Virus, students commit suicides due to academic pressure, campus capers happen, the 3 idiots face family pressures and debarment, Rancho falls in love with Virus’s daughter (Kareena Kapoor), and they all finally end up following their dreams.

The enormous success of 3 Idiots might not be only due to the cast and script, but also because it is an apposite movie. The rat race of blindly chasing careers with enormous salaries is truly on right now in India and China. Based on the novel Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat, the script excellently mixes its important values with comedy, intrigue and romance. The production of the movie looks great and the acting is excellent too. Aamir looks too old to be a student, but Madhavan and Boman Irani are memorable. 3 Idiots is a movie of the times that should not be missed.