2023 will go down as the year that saw the return of the Big Bollywood Blockbuster with a Bang. While the first four months did have a roster of ‘smaller’ films like Faraaz, Bheed, Afwaah and Zwigato that resonated with the audiences, it was Pathaan that set the pace in January, providing a taste of what was to follow. By the time Animal roared in the theatres, these intimate portrayals were gasping for breath as evident in the fate that Joram met. The rest of the year is a blur of loud extravaganzas like Jawan, Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, Gadar 2 and, of course, Animal.
However, these huge commercial successes had little to contribute to the aesthetic of cinema in any way, though it can be argued that in Jawan we had the most memorable dialogue in Hindi cinema of 2023. And though Pathaan and Jawan were most welcome for the way Shah Rukh Khan made his way back to the top (if at all he had gone anywhere else), not surprisingly, these were not among the best films of the year. That privilege is reserved for a slew of smaller films that had so much to say when all the noise and chaos of the Animal-s and Gadar-s had settled.
The Best of 2023
12th Fail: This sleeper hit is in my view the best film we have had in 2023. Unpretentious, heartfelt and utterly captivating. Headlined by a wonderful performance by Vikrant Massey and a host of new and unheralded names, this triumph-of-the-underdog tale came out of nowhere and wowed and wooed the audience. Vidhu Vinod Chopra jettisoned the big scale of all his previous films both as producer and director to craft a heart-warming narrative whose box-office success offers a light at the end of the tunnel chock-a-block with Animal, Gadar 2 and Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani.
Three of Us: Avinash Arun, who gave us the winning coming-of-age film Killa, does one better with this poignant take on love and memory. Like 12th Fail, it does away with stars and starry trappings, though unfortunately maybe because of the downbeat nature of the narrative it failed to replicate the success of 12 Fail, finding few shows in multiplexes. Showcasing three superlative performances by Shefali Shah, Jaideep Ahlawat and Swanand Kirkire, There of Us showed that there was still hope for the nuances of softer emotions in Hindi cinema. The film creeps into your senses like the soft melody of Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia’s flute heralding dusk.
Goldfish: Like Three of Us, Goldfish also deals with memory, forgetfulness and mental health, and in a cinematic landscape marked by little understanding of mental health issues, it is a breath of fresh air for the verisimilitude with which it addresses these. Moreover, it is a rare Hindi film that questions the age-old notions of motherhood prevalent in Hindi cinema. To the credit of filmmaker Pushan Kripalani, Goldfish, led by two terrific acts by Deepti Naval and Kalki Koechlin, does not settle for easy answers.
Joram: Devashish Makhija’s Joram is that increasingly rare Hindi cinema, one that talks about the ‘other’ India, one that we have forgotten in the India of malls and multiplexes, swanky condos and swankier cars. And the director frames what is essentially a social critique as a thriller, a cat-and-mouse game whose moral epicentre is never clear, given that the perpetrator of the horrors that visit the Adivasi protagonist is none other than a fellow Adivasi, one who is at once a victim and a sick manifestation of the system that once traumatised her and is now out to get someone who should have been her comrade in arms.
Honourable Mentions
The Scavenger of Dreams: A number of smaller and truly different films echoed with me as much as these above. Suman Ghosh’s The Scavenger of Dreams stands heads and shoulders above the rest — and the only reason I have this in the ‘honourable mentions’ category instead of the main section is that the film has not yet had a theatrical release or is not out on an OTT platform either. But in a year of excesses, Ghosh’s film was a welcome respite.
Bheed: Anubhav Sinha’s Bheed stood out for its very real projection of the miseries inflicted on a huge majority of our population, in particular the unorganised working force, with the nationwide lockdown in the wake of the pandemic. What made this work is its unflinching commentary on our casteist mindset that rears its ugly head even in the midst of national tragedies.
Faraaz: This was a trademark Hansal Mehta vehicle that asked uncomfortable questions plaguing our socio-political landscape: tolerance, religion, bigotry, radicalism. The essence of Faraaz lies in the fact that though it tells the story of Islamist radicals in a Muslim-majority nation, Bangladesh, the narrative could well have played out in India. The slogan that Islamist radicals use to justify their actions is merely the flip side to what drives extremists this side of the border. It is in the way that Mehta uses a specific tragedy to talk about a universal malaise that the importance of Faraaz lies.
Afwaah: Sudhir Mishra’s Afwaah, almost a companion piece to Bheed in the way it mirrors contemporary Indian society, released at the same time as Sudipto Sen’s The Kerala Story. Right from the get-go, Afwaah goes for the jugular. It is the over-the-top black comedy tone that makes Afwaah work, making it one for the era. After all, where is the nuance in anything around us? How do you address something as ludicrous as love jihad and lynching related to cow slaughter any other way? How else do you communicate the surreal irony and ultimate tragedy of a caste Hindu being lynched by a mob that mistakenly believes he is a Muslim trafficking cows?
The Best Performances of 2023
In a year when Shah Rukh Khan had the nation eating out of his hands, Vikrant Massey leads my list of best performances. If the awards for best actor are not rigged, expect Massey’s portrayal in 12th Fail to walk away with a majority of them in 2024. His take on the tenacious young man from the back of beyond had me floored.
The only performances that appealed to me as much belonged to a film that never made it to the theatres – Suman Ghosh’s The Scavengers of Dreams. Shardul Bhardwaj and Sudipta Chakaraborty gave us a jugalbandi masterclass in Ghosh’s unflinching look at the world of ragpickers and waste collectors.
After two performances which had Manoj Bajpayee playing Manoj Bajpayee – namely, in Gulmohar and Sirf Ek Banda Hi Kaafi Hai, both rather disappointing outings – the actor delivered a winner in Joram. Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub also made his presence film as the moral centre of a morally ambiguous world in Devashish Makhija’s film Joram.
Jackie Shroff was delightful in the year-ender Mast Mein Rehne Ka. Among the women, Deepti Naval in Goldfish and Shefali Chhaya in The Three of Us moved me beyond words with their take on characters dealing with mental health issues. The understated nuances they brought to these characters need to be celebrated in a year that gave all nuance and understatement the go-by. Kalki Koechlin matched Deepti Naval step for step in Goldfish, while Neena Gupta was the perfect foil to Jackie Shroff in Mast Mein Rehne Ka.
Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri is a film and music buff, editor, publisher, film critic and writer
