The man who made common man the hero
The middle-class man movie maker is no more with us. Growing up on his brand of movies, I try to find the everyday middle class man in movies of today but I can’t.
It was the 1970s, the golden age of Indian Cinema that made movies for the society. Amol Palekar, wearing a tailor made full sleeve shirt with similar trousers, taking a walk on marine drive of Bombay and having peanuts was the hero of yesterday. But he looked more like me, for I don’t look like the Khans wearing Tommy Hilfiger shirts and driving imported cars. Thats what the hero of today does.
That is why, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, the man who gave us the seedha-saadha Amol Palekar in Golmaal, the funny Dharmendra in Chupke Chupke, the confused, egoist Amitabh in Abhimaan and the funny, yet simply philosophical Rajesh Khanna in Bawarchi, will be missed.
Amol Palekar as Ram Prasad Sharma in Golmaal (image courtesy Wikipedia)
…And who says KANK is a hit? None of the people I know have liked it so far. People are coming out of the cinema hall halfway through the movie. You call that a hit?
3 Responses to 'The man who made common man the hero'
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who says kank is not a hit. and who says its a hit. well lets c this in two perspectives. this movie due to its startup business here and oversees has grossed a a figure over 100 crores in two weeks, beat some angrezi british films and reached in top ten position. hard to imagine in hrishida’s time. however in the emotional class if u put this movie, the thing which i saw was,everyone in the movie was wrong.every error was forced. every acton was stupid. still it plays with ur heart. because for whatever the forced errors u still want to c how this ends up. Karan ohar has a knackof playing with emotions and creats a nice drama soas to get the right feelings at the right time.. adi boy kabhi emotion main beh kar movie bhi dekhna…
rahul gaur
3 Sep 06 at 1:53 am
Fully agree with you. He proved that a socially relevant theme too has its place and can still be a hit.
Pradeep
3 Sep 06 at 12:58 pm
The Amol Palekar and Hrishikesh Mukherjee combo was awesome
btw I havent seen KANK, but none of the regular ShahRukh fans liked it. It was liked by lot of career women liked it especially those in the mid-thirties, I think its a matter of perspective.I can say that coz many of my colleagues fall in that category and everybody liked it, whereas the guys didnt like it.May be people are not ready to accept the fact that marriages can go bad at least in Hindi movies. KANK did a paradigm shift thats why I think it didnt go well with the masses. Like a colleague of mine told me its for the classes not for masses, dunno if its true !!
Sajiv
3 Sep 06 at 9:24 pm