Thank You for No Smoking, Mr Kashyap

I saw Jab We Met and No Smoking back to back before leaving for Bhubaneshwar. Liked both of them.

Jab We Met has Kareena Kapoor in a role that I cannot imagine anyone among the present crop of actresses doing justice to. Sridevi or Juhi Chawla would have done well though. Preity Zinta would come the closest, but she would just pout and mispronounce her way through the role. Right from her first scene, in which she climbs on to the train to the interval, Kareena Kapoor is just so delightful in her whackiness! Post interval the movie seems like a drag and pointless to most extent. One of the best things about Imtiaz Ali's movies (Socha Na Tha and now this) is that the dialogues and situations are very un-filmy. Characters don't spout Urdu poetry at the drop of a hat, but speak in normal Hinglish as most ordinary people are wont to.

And then there was No Smoking. Most critics have panned the movie badly, but I still had high expectations from it going in. Which were met mostly. This is so unlike anything made before in Hindi (and maybe to be made in the near future, considering the bad reception it's got) that I can only compare it with a Lynchian drama or some other Western film-maker's creation. It is flawed definitely, but the originality and the absolute disregard for conventions of Hindi cinema made me overlook them. David Lynch is among my favorite film makers and I try not to describe his movies because they sound trite on paper. His movies are meant to be experienced visually and aurally. I could say pretty much the same thing about Anurag Kashyap's latest offering. The 'story' is really not that important. The whole package is.

While watching both these movies, I was feeling really happy for the fact that there are filmmakers like these in Hindi cinema today, whose films I eagerly await. Irrespective of whether they experiment completely or remain within the regular plot-lines, they do end up leaving an imprint on whatever they touch. And the ilk is growing. The future's not all that dark for Hindi movies then.