Movie: Filmistaan
Director: Nitin Kakkar
Cast: Sharib Hashmi, Inaamulhaq, Kumud Mishra and Gopal Dutt
Rating: ***1/2
Amitabh Bachchan once said that he loves cinema so much because only it has the power to unify people across race, colour, caste and creed. When you’re seated in a cinema hall, as the white screen is brightened by the picture in a darkened room, you don’t care if the person seated next to you is from a certain community or not. You laugh at the same jokes, get emotional at the same scenes and enjoy a film the same way everybody does. Nitin Kakkar’s “Filmistaan”, which has the heart of an indie and the spirit of commercial Bollywood, is a tribute to the feeling derived from the pleasure of watching cinema around the globe.
A wannabe actor, Sunny (Sharib), who has given hundreds of auditions, lands the opportunity to work as an assistant director on a documentary being shot by foreign crew in India. At first, he’s not convinced to take up the job as he only wants to be an actor, but his friend convinces him by reminding him that all modern-day superstars such as Hrithik Roshan and Ranbir Kapoor started their careers as ADs. Sunny takes up the job and is off to Rajasthan to shoot the documentary. There, he gets abducted by Jihadis and is taken to Pakistan. Sunny’s love for cinema and his childlike innocence helps him win over the hearts of the villagers and also his captors, at least one among the two who have been handed over the responsibility to look after him. The rest of the film is about his efforts to return back to his homeland.
Nitin’s film in particular focuses on how Bollywood has blurred the lines between Pakistan and India. However, I don’t think the film is about the celebration of our love affair with Hindi cinema, it’s about cinema’s power to unite people irrespective of who we are. The film goes beyond our love for cinema and explores the shared humanity between Indian and Pakistan. This is beautifully captured in the relationship between Sunny and Aftaab, who decides to help the former to cross over not only because they share equal passion for Bollywood but more importantly because he considers him to be good and kindhearted.
Alternating between smiles and tears, “Filmistaan” has moments that will inspire as well as shock you. Kakkar, who uses Bollywood to douse the flames between India and Pakistan, uses this unique to the best of his potential but you still feel a lot more could have been achieved. Nevertheless, this, I think is a clever film about the films we make and its impact on people in foreign soil, who are divided by land but are united by cinema.
Scenes from popular Bollywood films, memorable dialogues mouthed by superstars, are used at the right juncture in the film to keep us entertained. Kakkar’s ability to infuse humor in the most serious scenes with the help of Hindi cinema’s dialogues needs to be appreciated because he’s not only entertaining audiences here but at the same time taking a dig at some of our own films. Of course, there’s absolutely no need to take this in the wrong sense because everything is attempted for the purpose of entertainment.
Without Sharib Hashmi, I doubt if “Filmistaan” would’ve worked at all in the first place. He lives in his role of a film fanatic, who can mimic any Indian actor with aplomb. Scenes between him and Inaamulhaq are the liveliest in the entire film, which otherwise is serious when lead by two gun-toting terrorists.
“Filmistaan” awakens the cinema lover in you when you leave the cinema hall.