2023 has been spectacular for Hindi films. After a three-year slump induced by the coronavirus pandemic, cinema halls finally sprung to life and how.
It all started with Shah Rukh Khan’s long-awaited comeback to the theatres after a four-year hiatus. The King returned with all guns blazing, giving Hindi cinema one of its biggest blockbusters of all time in Siddharth Anand’s spy thriller Pathaan. Once SRK got the box office rolling, there was no stopping it.
Image: YouTube A spate of superhits followed. While most of us saw coming from a mile away the rampage caused by some films such as Atlee’s Jawaan, Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal, and Karan Johar’s Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani. Certain others, such as Gadar 2, stormed the nation by surprise.
Image: YouTubeHowever, along with these glorious, mammoth successes, 2023 was also the year of solid cinema that transcended beyond the box office. Here, I discuss four such films that did not destroy the ticket window or cause a stampede outside the theatres but most definitely pushed the envelope, challenged the status quo, asked questions, got the audience thinking, made them feel seen, and less alone. Two of these were theatrical releases. The other two premiered on streaming, one of which was a short anthology film sandwiched between forgettable mediocrity.
12th Fail
After his haunting, heart-breaking performance as Shutu in Konkona Sen Sharma’s A Death in the Gunj, Vikrant Massey hit it out of the stadium again this year with his raw, earnest portrayal of an underdog wanting to achieve the impossible in this Vidhu Vinod Chopra survival drama.
(Image: Vidhu Vinod Chopra/Instagram)Inspired by the incredible life of IPS officer Manoj Kumar Sharma, 12th Fail is based on Anurag Pathak’s 2021 bestseller. It is as relentless and restless as the man whose story it tells. Within 147 minutes, Chopra deftly creates a fragile bridge between the wildly disparate worlds of those with privilege and the ones without it.
12th Fail is one of those rare Hindi films that’s unafraid to dive headfirst into several topical and timeless issues—the English vs Hindi medium debate, the all-pervasive presence of elitism, inter-class romance, and the idea of education as the great leveler. It dares to ask difficult questions despite being fully aware that there are no easy answers.
The Mirror
Konkona Sen Sharma’s short film in Lust Stories 2, it is a tragic portrait of urban loneliness, desire, voyeurism, and the crude, clashing class divide. Tillotama Shome and Amruta Shubhash are achingly brilliant as the lead pair—one is a middle-aged, single, working professional, the other is her house help. Each stands for a world that’s divorced and yet married to the other. Disgusted and yet dependent.
Image: InstagramSen Sharma’s singular gaze on the shape-shifting nature of privilege and want will make you think like you probably never have. Through her protagonists, she explores female desire in a way only a woman can. At 35 minutes, The Mirror is twisted, philosophical, subversive, vulnerable, and an absolute must-watch.
Goldfish
Starring Kalki Koechlin and Deepti Naval, Goldfish is about a mother struggling to remember and a daughter desperately trying to forget. Full of pensive silences and abrasive truths revealing a fraught past, it revolves around identity, memory, community, and the human need to belong.
Image: YouTubePowered by director Pushan Kripalani and Arghya Lahiri’s taught and thorough screenplay, Koechlin and Naval give impressive, restrained performances as the mother and daughter who have a history of scalding each other, some wounds still festering, but who also show surprising kindness in unexpected moments.
Goldfish takes a considered and honest look at what parents and children can do to each other and the hundred big and small ways in which we inflict trauma on those closest to us, not always unintentionally.
Jaane Jaan
Kareena Kapoor Khan’s much-awaited streaming debut, Jaane Jaan is based on the popular 2005 Japanese novel The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino. Set in the misty, mysterious Kalimpong and also starring a terrific Jaideep Ahlawat and Vijay Varma, Jaane Jaan isn’t a whodunnit. The crime isn’t the story here. The trying to get away with it is. It’s a clever ploy for it turns the classic tropes of a standard whodunnit on its head and, therefore, keeps you on your toes, bringing you a reimagining fresh and sinister.
Image: InstagramDirected by Sujoy Ghosh, it is a sharp allegory, a poignant critique of our idea of beauty and the beast, a peek into the heads of those who are respected because they can’t be loved, and the drastic lengths they go to be accepted, included, wanted.
(Edited by : Anand Singha)
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