2001 was an eventful year. It marked the first year of the new millennium, the year of my birth and my parents’s first anniversary, the shocking 9/11 which still remains a nerve, VS Naipaul in his trademark laconic yet grumpy way of answering interviews must have felt privately vindicated at winning the Nobel, much like his illustrious ancestors and so many other events, too long to chronicle.
In india, it sparked off a tough competition between Gadar and Lagaan, with Gadar earning 17 crores more than Lagaan’s 66 crores but both of them managed to replicate themselves permanently as the images of what good cinema looks like and till date, they serve as high points on the resumes of the machismo personified Sunny Deol and the clean cut intellectual Aamir Khan.
Sunny is back in the news again after the much awaited sequel has once again stormed the box office, outsripping it’s predecessor and alleviating the jinx that sequels rarely perform better than the original, a debate which persists to this day, although as a cinephile I can say, films and art are much better when viewed with an emotional lens for the sentimental common man who does not bother himself with the choice of the mandarin.
Gadar 2 may well be on earning the 200 crore mark, for it has already earned 135 crores in the first 3 days, a landmark by all means and most importantly, the original cast of Sunny Deol and Ameesha Patel as Tara Singh and Sakeena retain the star studded charisma in both oeuvres, a rare quality in the ephemeral movie world. The handpump scene was a wise move, it captivated then, it captivates now.
Here’s to love, as John Cassavetes would have said too.