Why Dil Chahta Hai Is This Week's Pics For Flashback Friday



    With the recent 'Kho Gaye Hum Kahan' release starring Ananya Panday, Siddhant Chaturvedi and Adarsh Gourav, many have drawn comparisons and similarities with another Excel release almost two decades ago: 'Dil Chahta Hai'. So, on this week's Flashback Friday edition, we decided to revisit the cult classic directed by Farhan Akhtar.


 


New Delhi: 'Dil Chahta Hai' is a cult-movie. Starring Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Akhsaye Khanna, this coming-of-age film is a comedy-drama that spoke to the urban-middle intelligentia, particularly the city-growing millenialls in India during the ealy 2000s.


In that regard, 'Dil Chahta Hai' created quite some noise amid the educated, urban upper-middle class quite similar to how the recently released 'Kho Gaye Hum Kahan' on Netflix has done.


Written and directed by Farhan Akhtar, 'Dil Chahta Hai' was the flagbearer in giving the Hindi film industry the sensitive-kind of hero who purposely refrains from action-movie machosim, a friendship film about regular things and not heroes fighting goons on top of trains and a relationship arch not seen alot in a mainstream Hindi film.


Interestingly, 'Dil Chahta Hai' seems to have aged well in comparison to several films of the time.


'Dil Chahta Hai' is a story about three 20-something friends, just out of college, not exactly trying to make a name for themselves yet, but figuring out love, relationships and friendships.


Aamir Khan ( Akash), Akshaye Khanna( Sid) and Saif Ali Khan( Sameer) play the three friends who navigate love and frienships as they settle in their careers and lives. 


A fairly choronological film with a dedicated three-act structure told in the simplest manner possible but complemented with shots and frames that have become iconic over the years.


Priety Zinta( Shalini) plays Akash's ( Aamir Khan) love interest in the film and proves to him that love exists and that it is one of the most natural processes in life.


That brings the writer to the love-angle in the film. Despite being called a friendship film with sub-plots about bro-mance and a trip to Goa etc, 'Dil Chahta Hai' is a deeply-romantic movie.


'Dil Chahta Hai' falls in the template of love-sick, love-obsessive films of Bollywood that have reinstated that the prupose of life is to find the perfect love and to marry it.


Perhaps, as audiences, we are now in the 'familiarity breeds contempt' stage and in that regard 'Dil Chahta Hai' feels monotonous.


Yet, despite the love-search angle, the music of the film, the screenplay with its mindless jokes, the idealism about feeling the power to do anything when you are young, and the possibility of a Hindi movie hero not fighting off a drunkard on a metro station in Sydney.


Aamir Khan plays this A-lister not interested in fighting goons or proving his 'she is mine' theory by physical fighting of an alleged suitor in a love traingle. A kind of practice becoming rampant with some of the recent releases.


There is also a completely different arc involving Akshaye Khanna and Dimple Kapadia (Tara Jaiswal) as the younger man falling in love with the older independent divorced woman, labelled an alchoholic. 


And, even if Dimple Kapadia's character had to die because it was 2001 and a possible relationship would have bombed the film, at least the mention of her and her presence in the film was a different beat for a Hindi mainstream film of the time.


Dil Chahta Hai & Kho Gaye Hum Kahan Connection


With Excel Entertainment's recent production 'Kho Gaye Hum Kahan', many are reminded of the Aamir Khan, Akshaye Khanna and Saif Ali Khan-starrer 'Dil Chahta Hai'.


Not just because both films are produced by the same company but also because they explore a similar template that Excel has become a champion of- exploring frienships and its changing dynamics every decade.


If there was a 'Dil Chahta Hai' for 2000s, there was a 'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara' post 2010 and now a 'Kho Gaye Hum Kahan' after 2020.


Perhaps, a 'Jee Le Zaraa' next would change the template completely with a female frienship film with A-listers.