दिल चाहता है
Dir. Farhan Akhtar
I first saw Dil chahta hai ("The heart desires") very early in my exploration of Hindi film, and I didn't fully appreciate it. I watched again about fifty Hindi movies later, and with that perspective I could see that it is a truly excellent film - I loved it equally for the ways it hews to popular Hindi film conventions and for the ways it diverges from them.
At the core of Dil chahta hai is a buddy story, a look at the nature of friendship among slick, wealthy, urban young men making the transition from college life to real life. Akash (GOAT favorite Aamir Khan) is an arrogant goofball with a heart of gold. Siddharth (Akshaye Khanna) is sensitive and earnest, a brooding artist. Sameer (Saif Ali Khan) is sweet but confused, giving his heart away foolishly and frequently. When Siddharth falls in love with a divorced alcoholic fifteen years his senior (the fascinating Dimple Kapadia), he and Akash have a falling out that threatens to tear the three devoted friends apart; they separate for the first time since they were children, and each of them finds his heart, and himself, on his own.
The film's take on romance is one of the aspects that is both typical and unusual. Akash is a confirmed bachelor and a skeptic, and in tried-and-true Bollywood fashion, he falls in love and nearly lets his pride cost him the girl (Preity Zinta) before coming to his senses just as she is preparing to marry another guy. Sameer's romance is pure Bollywood as well: love at first sight - with a girl his parents have selected for him! But Dil chahta hai takes on that cliche with self-consciousness - the love song capturing Sameer's romance, "Woh ladki hai kahaan," is a delightful send-up of Bollywood numbers from the 50s, 60s, and 90s. Siddharth's love for his downtrodden divorcee, though, is practically unprecedented in movies of this sort, and provides a satisfying counterweight to the broad levity of the other two storylines.
The film is more tightly scripted, better acted, and of better technical quality than many contemporary Bollywood films, and helped set the higher standard that has made the 2000s arguably a new golden age of Hindi cinema. Still, because of my early experience with it, I slightly hesitantly recommend it to viewers new to Bollywood. The soundtrack is unremarkable on first hearing, though some of the songs grow on one with time. The first song, "Koi kahe kehta rahe," is an entertaining club number, and "Woh ladki hai kahaan" is excellent, but the first time I saw it I just thought it was cheesy, since I didn't know anything about the traditions it was parodying. The second time I watched the film, coming back with a year's accumulated knowledge of Bollywood, I laughed uncontrollably through the entire song!