It is that time yet again for me to look back at the year that has gone and rank the films that made the most impact in terms of brilliance, storytelling and, even, by handing us performances to rave about.
And while 2016 was studded with instances of brilliant writing, blistering, no-holds-barred filmmaking and truly terrific performances, 2017 has been a humdrum time at the movies, with big-budget no-brainers dominating regretfully the multiplex screens, depriving us of more intelligent cinema.
Thus, the smallest, or even the most conveniently written-off, films fared the best, pushing the envelope and daring to go beyond boundaries. Even then, some of the better films made this year sputtered in places and simply could not deliver the punch expected from them.
But I would still be generous to them since this is a strictly average year for Bollywood and while I am still short of a movie in the tenth place, the other nine, a mix of the truly sensational and the merely smart and safe-playing, deserve nonetheless to be championed in every sense.
10-
The tenth place on my list is reserved as a consolation prize for the films that had tons of potential but could use only an ounce of it. So, there is 'OK Jaanu', a breezy Bombay millennial romance that boasted of talent in all departments except for its awkward, inconsequential storytelling; there is 'Badrinath Ki Dulhania', a rom-com armed with the most endearing young onscreen couple in recent years but one that wastes away the sparkling chemistry on predictability; and there is 'Daddy', which promised, with its gritty, unsparing tenor and Arjun Rampal's towering central performance as Arun Gawli, to redefine the gangster movie genre but sputtered in its cold place and misplaced ambition.
9- Raees
Dir- Rahul Dholakia
Could one of the year's most hard-boiled pulp entertainers be one of the best films too? Sure, it could come close to it. Rahul Dholakia's 'Raees' is refreshingly lacking in hammy melodrama or even shallow self-worship, even as it stars a superstar most lambasted for the latter. Instead, by blending just the right amount of authentic flavour and nuance and enough simmering masala, it also gives its titular kingpin hero both rippling charisma and rough edges to nail him real. It goes on far too long and the plotting is, at times, both convenient and contrived but there is enough rollicking style and crackling repartee between Raees (Shah Rukh Khan, in pitch-perfect form) and Majmudar, the enforcer determined to bring him to justice (played by a smarmy and slick Nawazuddin Siddiqui) to enjoy as a pure, thrilling crowdpleaser notches above the usual Salman Khan-starrer.
8- Hindi Medium
Dir- Saket Choudhary
In today's era of bombastic propaganda disguised as cinema, it is rare to find a message movie that makes it point without feeling too preachy. Saket Choudhary's charming, if a tad too basic, comedy is about an archetype nouveau riche Delhi couple whose dream is to get their daughter enrolled in a typical upper-class English medium school. Irrfan Khan and Saba Qamar are irresistibly charming as the said couple, increasingly beleaguered and befuddled about the city's distinctive class foibles to which they should adhere for the sake of acceptance. Zeenat Lakhani's well-intentioned script turns from witty to didactic and the supporting cast is mostly sidelined. But the film is rescued frequently from tedium, thanks to Chaudhary's clever infusion of nuance and Deepak Dobriyal's infectious ghetto dweller who teaches this couple a thing or two.
7- Ittefaq
Dir- Abhay Chopra
Best leave out Yash Chopra's seminal 1969 film from your mind when sitting back and enjoying this unexpectedly sleek and self-assured update on the same. Debut director Abhay Chopra resurrects the much-abused Bollywood whodunnit genre with style, simmering suspense and even an unexpected dimension of emotional pathos. What 'Ittefaq' lacks in clean-cut plotting, it makes up amply with its flab-free efficiency and its Rashomon-style approach which transforms it, from a textbook thriller formula to an intriguing debate on the fundamental fallacy of perspective. Even as the director and co-writers Nikhil Mehrotra and Shreyas Jain bend logic and rationale for their own purpose, the film remains mostly compelling and convincing, aided in no small measure by a top-form Akshay Khanna as the wily yet warm CBI officer Dev.
6- Lipstick Under My Burkha
Dir- Alankrita Srivastava
The most proudly feminist film of the year is also one of its most hilarious and saddest in equal measure. Alankrita Srivastava's raunchy and rambunctious film shuttles between four anguished women in stifling, steamy Bhopal and how they try their desperate to break barriers, both sexual and social, in vain. Punctuated by a burlesque comic timing and yet tinged with biting satire, 'Lipstick Under My Burkha' also compensates for its ungainly narrative with superlative performances from its leading cast of ladies, particularly Ratna Pathak Shah's disillusioned dowager and Konkana Sen Sharma's sexually dominated wife. It is patchy in places and the slapstick jars sometimes but when it has to knock out our hypocrisies and foibles, it delivers punch after sucker punch with real force.
5- Bareily Ki Barfi
Dir- Ashwini Iyer Tiwari
In a year when romantic comedies either played too safe or tried too hard (just think of 'Jab Harry Met Sejal'), it is truly special to be served a romance as flavourful and appetising as its name. Ashwini Iyer Tiwari's rollicking semi-urban love triangle fleshes out a simple, even unassuming premise with layers of delicious detail and spontaneous writing. A smart and contemporary riff on 'Saajan' and without a shred of its melodrama, 'Bareily Ki Barfi' coasts confidently and delightfully on the warmth of its characters textured with authentic rustic hues and the crackling interplay that they trade. The charming Kriti Sanon is irresistible as the plucky tomboy Bitti and Ayushmann Khurrana's Chirag is a cocky Libran leading man with easy charm. But it is Rajkummar Rao's cuckolded yet almost chameleonic Pritam Vidrohi who frequently eats up this endlessly enjoyable feast.
4- Rangoon
Dir- Vishal Bhardwaj
Yes, you can bring out all those brickbats about its unwieldy plot, about the slow, almost elegiac pace, about the excess of ideas crammed in the canvas. And even then, you cannot deny 'Rangoon' is nothing less than auteur Vishal Bhardwaj's signature storytelling served on a truly epic scale: an ambitious, even overarching period romance rendered with an unmistakably poetic and nuanced touch. Stitching together a yarn of love, jealousy and stirred-up passions against the backdrop of both war and revolution, the master storyteller serves up an indulgent yet sumptuous feast that lingers in the mind and then haunts us with its profound depth. The acting is uniformly splendid, especially Kangana Ranaut's fiery and frivolous Julia and Saif Ali Khan's sleek yet simmering Russi Billimoria. And while it deserved a more well-executed end, there are stunning images, musical daredevilry and acidic humour to keep you thrilled.
3- Newton
Dir- Amit V. Masurkar
This is not a political film.
It is not even about the political situation in India even as it has the most timely and astute observations on how our elections are run without much thought and shallow pragmatism against the odds of a fickle and befuddled population refusing to give their opinion. Rather, Amit V. Masurkar's brilliant, thought-provoking satire is about a naive young man, an insufferable snob wielding a rulebook and caught in the midst of the dance of democracy.
Rajkummar Rao plays this titular conformist, with smooth and self-assured persuasiveness and 'Newton' is all about the day of his acid test, trying to run a successful election in a remote Naxal-operated district and trying to fathom, in the process, just how democracy works in our land. The razor-sharp and economical narrative bristles with dry, deadpan comic punch, as Masurkar lets this tightly wound and upright protagonist bicker and banter with fellow officers, the swaggering Major Atma Singh (a terrific Pankaj Tripathi) and others as he discovers whimsical and harsh truths he never could imagine.
This is an intelligent and incisive character study, a coolly sarcastic jab at the futility of rhetoric in the face of reality; yet, in the end, Newton, living up to the namesake's significance, as propounded unforgettably in the beginning by Sanjay Mishra's wise veteran, proves with his determination that we do need a balancing force for the chaos.
2- Jagga Jasoos
Dir- Anurag Basu
Has there been any other film that has been an exotic and eccentric fest for the senses as Anurag Basu's breathless comic adventure? 'Jagga Jasoos' serves up sights and sounds that refuse to be dislodged from your mind. S. Ravi Varman's visuals stir up a zesty cocktail of panels drawn by Herge and stunts staged by Steven Spielberg. Leave alone those lovely melodies; the improvised musical numbers, punctuating the narrative, have all the magic and mischief of Disney and Monty Python with lyrics and rhymes that could have penned by both John Lennon and Thomas Pynchon.
And yet, none of that would have mattered if the film had not been so infectiously, deliriously thrilling. Basu's film is propelled relentlessly by a rippling thirst for adventure and peril, matching the unabashed pluck of its fiendishly smart and lovably boyish hero in every step. Ranbir Kapoor's Jagga is literally a bushy-tailed boy wizard for ages, conjuring up zingy heroism by always grabbing more than he can grasp, driven by a childlike curiosity that feels too good to resist.
Yes, it is a bit too wild and berserk for the typical Bollywood audiences, accustomed to easy exposition instead of telling it all in song. And regardless of that, 'Jagga Jasoos' is a gloriously nutty experience, one that Bollywood needs to celebrate to realize its penchant for cinematic kitsch. A movie in which dogged detectives lounge in African baths, ostriches sprint in pursuit and murder mysteries are deciphered in song. A movie in which 'Tutti Futti' does not mean the sweet sugary bits but rather broken legs and bad luck. Genius.
1- Trapped
Dir- Vikramaditya Motwane
A man. An apartment. A lonely, desolate skyscraper. And a city that refuses to pay heed to his cries for help. It takes a truly brilliant filmmaker and a brilliant central performance to flesh these bare bones with not just the throbbing pulse of a ripped electric circuit but, most crucially, the blood of real pain and flesh of beautiful, almost allegorical subtext. Trust then Vikramaditya Motwane, one of our most meticulous storytellers and Rajkummar Rao, possibly the finest young actor of our generation, to deliver all that and more.
At heart, 'Trapped' is a thundering thriller, doing justice to both the existential cinema of Werner Herzog and Danny Boyle's visceral '127 Hours'. Yet, while all those films were primarily concerned with exploring the personal demons of their hapless protagonists, Motwane, armed with a ruthless narrative by Hardik Mehta and Amit Joshi, sets out to do more, nailing the relentless urban sprawl of Bombay not as the backdrop but rather the main antagonist of the story. The city looms up frequently in Siddharth Diwan's sweaty visuals, silently staring and even mocking the plight of our protagonist as the film laments implicitly the sense of alienation and cold indifference that this buzzing, hearty metropolis is capable of.
That is not to say that it is without soul. Rao's Shaurya, a mild-mannered, even mediocre office worker plunged into heady romance and plucky impulse, is a character worth rooting for and the actor and Motwane portray his predicament, fears, bravado and silent, seething determination with true gusto. Forget Herzog and Boyle. By padding this lean and mean thriller with ironic metaphors on both urban life and the tribulations of love, Motwane has achieved the heights of Alfred Hitchcock. And that is something.
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