Bombay Talkies (2013)

Cast: Rani Mukherjee, Randeep Hooda, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Saqib Saleem, Sadashiv Amrapurkar, Ranvir Shorey, Naman Jain, Vineet Kumar Singh, Sudhir Pandey

Director: Karan Johar, Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar, Anurag Kashyap

The movie is a collection of four short films, respectively directed by relatively young but established directors. Karan Johar is the most experienced of the lot. The movie is an attempt to commemorate completion of 100 years of Indian Cinema and it has been wisely named ‘Bombay Talkies’ as the sensibility throughout the movie is that of a Mumbaikar aka Bombayite. The ratio of class vs. mass responsible in ringing the theatres/talkies cash boxes in the aforesaid 100 years is 1:3. Similarly, in the movie, the ratio of short films intended for class vs. mass is also 1:3. All the four short films are sans any caption. They just start with the display of their director’s name.

Noteworthy things about each of the director’s short film are as follows –

Karan’s story takes a fresh call on gay culture. It’s the first Indian depiction, wherein a gay character is shown in his natural being without making him comical or distinctively feminine or unnaturally physical. Hats off to Karan for taking this first forward step. Also, this must be the boldest movie of Randeep Hooda’s career.

Dibakar’s story is totally a one man show i.e. Nawazuddin from first frame to the last. He is simply amazing as an actor. Don’t miss the facial twitching that he emotes to convey nervousness.

Zoya has managed to extract very good acting as well as dancing from child actor Naman Jain. The storyline is also very new i.e. of a male child aspiring to become an item girl upon growing up!

Anurag has tried to depict the God like status that some Bollywood superstars enjoy in the heart and families of so many Indians, especially amongst the non-urban population. He has also highlighted how fans like to brag about simple chance meetings with their idols.

In short the directors have tried to establish certain facts via their stories, that is, all said and done, the movies do form an integral part of an average Indian’s life – our fantasies are associated with them, we aspire from them, we connect through them, there is a filmy song for each and every mood that we undergo, and last but not the least our movies do play an important part in creating the much required social awareness on various taboo topics and with time the filmmakers are actually experimenting with an assorted platter of new and revolutionary subjects.

In this movie, all the directors and actors have done a good job. Critics quotient of the movie is fine but the entertainment quotient could have been better.