Further conversations on Hindi film, and a list
Today, after class, my Indian friend found me and gave me a list she'd written up for me of "A less Bollywood take on Hindi films." I was incredibly amused and touched and pleased.
I told her I'd seen Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. She said, "Did you like it? Isn't it beautiful?"
I said, "Well, everything Sanjay Leela Bhansali does is so gorgeous."
She said, "Well, Sanjay Leela Bhansal--I can't believe this, I can talk to you like my Indian friends!"
I assume I probably went scarlet at that point, but she went on to tell me that his latest film was terrible and I said, Oh, no, really? How awful. She said, it just doesn't work, and I said I'd thought that Black failed, but it failed really well, and she said she hadn't seen Black yet, but her parents really liked it, and I said, well, Rani Mukherjee was fantastic, but Amitabh Bachchan hadn't been at his best, and she said, Well, Amitabh Bachchan--
So then we looked at her list, and at least I'd heard of and wanted to see a few of the things on it, so that was a little less embarrassing than it might have been, and she pointed out a few different titles and described them a little.
I told her that I had written about talking with her in my online journal, and that I'd said, 'I don't know if she's more impressed my my knowledge or appalled by my taste,' and she said, "Oh, impressed. Your knowledge totally overshadows your taste," at which point I was laughing so hard I started coughing all over again.
I'm going to copy out her list here, mostly for my own reference, because she went to all the work of writing it up for me and I have a horrible fear of losing it. But if anyone's interested in one person's recommendations of good non-Bollywood Hindi films, feel free to adopt it - and if anyone out there actually does watch them, do tell me about it so we can gossip about them together.
I'm glad she wasn't sitting next to me in class; I spent most of the class time copying out the devanagari script and practicing writing the only Hindi words I know, which are, of course, mostly the titles of Bollywood flicks. That would have been a wee bit embarrassing, and I probably would have felt compelled to doodle senselessly instead.
Rang de basanti
Page 6
Dostana
Bacchna-e-haseeno
Dilli 6
Don (Amitabh Bacchan version)
Kaho na pyaar hai
Gangster
Halla Bol
Apaharan
Mrityudand
Fire
Water
Earth
Sholay