Big disappointments
It was not the best of years financially with biggies like Raees , Tubelight and Jab Harry Met Sejal coming a cropper. Moneymaking suffered till Golmaal Again came in to give a little breather. The indefinite postponement of Padmavati came as a big financial setback but then thankfully the best got saved for the last. The unstoppable Tiger Zinda Hai has assured that film industry is still alive and kicking.
Size doesn’t matter
The most stimulating cinema in 2017 happened in small, independent zone — in the realm of debuts and sophomore films with women filmmakers like Konkona Sen Sharma ( A Death In The Gunj ), Rakhee Sandilya ( Ribbon ), Alankrita Shrivastava ( Lipstick Under My Burkha ) coming on their own. Hindi Medium , Newton and Lipstick … proved to be surprise sleeper hits.
Big performances
Rajkummar Rao, Pankaj Tripathi, Vikrant Massey, Ratna Pathak Shah, Kalki Koechlin, Swara Bhaskar, Vidya Balan, Zaira Wasim, Sumeet Vyas, Arjun Radhakrishnan, Vijay Varma… There were many who put their best foot forward. In other words, an embarrassment of riches.
Group show
From A Death In The Gunj and Lipstick Under My Burkha to Tu Hai Mera Sunday , the ensemble rocked in solidarity.
Showstoppers on the side
The supporting cast stole the show; unknown faces made the audience wake up and take notice. Seema Pahwa came up with a brilliant maternal double whammy in Bareilly Ki Barfi (BKB) and Shubh Mangal Saavdhan . Saurabh Shukla and Annu Kapoor brought the house down in Jolly LLB 2. There were more: Puja Sarup and Atul Kumar as the Hitler-bashing troupe artistes in Rangoon ; Meher Vij, the friendly mom and Raj Arjun, the despotic dad in Secret Superstar ; Sahil Vaid and Shweta Prasad Basu, as best friend and bhabhi respectively in Badrinath Ki Dulhania ; Rohit Chaudhary and Sapna Sand as best friend and mom in BKB ; Bhagwan Tiwari as the cop with a romantic heart in Babumoshai Bandookbaaz ; Ishtiyaq Khan in the small role of Hiraman, the heart-tugger with the mock-ironic call to do things ‘Desh ke liye’ , in Anaarkali of Aarah and Aishwarya Rajesh as Asha Gawli in Daddy … The list goes on, and on…
Out of town
From Varanasi and Bareilly to Chhattisgarh and Haryana… Hindi films ventured beyond Delhi-Mumbai. Poorna even took us to towns like Pakala and Bhongir.
BMKJ cinema
Patriotism hit full force with the national anthem, ‘ Sare jahan se achcha’ and Bharat Mata Ki Jai chants within The Ghazi Attack . The PM’s ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ became the theme for Toilet: Ek Prem Katha.
Women on top… and a few good men
M.A. in Sanskrit, Gucci-obsessed Pushpa (Huma Qureshi) drinks secretly within the walls of home and dresses daringly in the husband's company, away from the neighbourhood in the anonymity of Hazratganj in Jolly LLB2 . Meanwhile, he makes rotis for her and fixes her drinks.
The husband presses his wife’s tired feet in Tumhari Sulu . It was also heartening to see the “caring” hero washing clothes and the heroine’s hair; the “irreverent” girl rides the scooter while he rides pillion in Running Shaadi.
But patriarchy stays
It reflected in the patronising hand-holding in Naam Shabana … In lines like “Desh ki auraton ko khud apni izzat karni na aave (The nation’s women don’t know how to respect themselves)” and slogans like “biwi paas chahiye, to ghar mein sandaas chahiye (have a toilet at home if you want your wife next to you)”, in Toilet: Ek Prem Katha . Begum Jaan , ostensibly dealing with gender, came with a discomfiting and coarse male gaze
Rape-revenge dramas
With Kaabil , Maatr , Mom , Bhumi , Ajji … all perpetrating the vigilante justice formula, treading a thin line between being empathetic and getting exploitative.
Making a song-n-dance about it
The opening credits sequence in Rangoon , shot on a film set, may well be one of the most breathtakingly visualised ever. As were the musical set-pieces in Jagga Jasoos , especially the bewitching “ Khaana khaake” song.
Priceless details and moments
The judge editing his daughter’s wedding card in the court in Jolly LLB2 . The wife talking of her husband being as simple as a gaai (cow) in Tumhari Sulu, for a change it’s not the woman who was being called bovine.
The most memorable moments and scenes came in the whimsical Jagga Jasoos . The cop with a posse of phones around him and his confusion about which one of them is ringing, the Stebe (not Steve mind you) Jobs Cyber Café in Kolkata. And the jeep that gets stuck in the narrow streets during a chase early on in the film; in the climax though, it was still stuck at the same spot.
Shubh Mangal Savdhan gave Jagga a tough fight with some wonderfully written scenes. The mom talking about the birds and the bees — Aladdin and gufa (cave) — to her daughter; that first awkward attempt at a roll in the hay in the DDA flat with Neelesh Mishra on the radio as the soundtrack; the family brawl in the theatre or the encounter with a veterinarian who believes that man is also an animal — a social animal.
Best dialogue
It was a line which took me back to a communist-cartoonist dialogue that Guru Dutt used in his 1955 film, Mr. and Mrs. ’55 . When local tribal officer Malko (Anjali Patil) is asked if she is a pessimist, she says, “Nirashawadi nahin, main adivasi hoon (I am not a pessimist, I am a tribal)”. Doffing the hat to the doggedness of the tribals in the face of hardships and struggles!
Courting controversy
Kangana Ranaut and Karan Johar had a spat over nepotism in Bollywood. Ranaut had yet another public quarrel with Hrithik Roshan. Stalled due to Rajput protests, Padmavati is still waiting to see the light of the day and the I&B ministry went out of their way to ensure that S Durga doesn’t get screened in the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa. Meanwhile, dirt got thrown on India’s Oscar entry, Newton , for being allegedly inspired by an Iranian film — Babak Payami’s Secret Ballot (2001).
Looking northeast
Away from Bollywood, there were some compelling films one saw like Angamaly Diaries , Kaasav and S Durga, but the young voices from northeast India proved to be big revelations — Rima Das’s ode to childhood, rural idylls and music in Village Rockstars; the hilarious mix of Shakespeare and martial arts in Kenny Basumatary’s Local Kung Fu 2 ; and Haobam Paban Kumar’s Loktak Lairembee ( Lady of the Lake ) about the ecological issues of the floating biomass Phumdis, the precarious life of the fishing community on the Loktak lake and the flip side of the government’s developmental activities.
Afterthoughts
Star struck at Cannes
Uma Thurman, rustling past my second row aisle seat to take the stage at a screening. Will Smith talking colour, Jessica Chastain talking gender and Pedro Almodóvar talking about LGBTQ issues at a jury conference. The last, and lasting, image of Cannes 2017 was an emotionally charged one: jury president Almodóvar trying hard to fight back tears at a press conference. He was responding to a question about how he felt, as an LGBTQ icon, with the festival favourite 120 Battements Par Minute ( 120 Beats Per Minute ) not winning the Palme d’Or. It won the second big prize, the Grand Prix.
Food on the side
Travelling for films this year made me discover some great food. Fantastic homemade soups kept the veggie in me happy at Le Troquet a Soupes, a small family cafe in Cannes. World’s best egg tarts, ginger and almond cookies were tasted at Lord Stow’s Bakery in Coloane Island, Macao. Nearer home, the worst of films were salvaged with the help of the best coffee, mini samosas and cream doughnuts at Le Reve in Bandra.
