Bollywood Blitzkrieg: Every filmmaker of substance is influenced by Hrishida 
By Subhash K. Jha, April 23, 2007 - 06:29 IST
The man who left behind the largest oeuvre of quality cinema by any one single filmmaker has triggered off a subconscious Hrishikesh Mukherjee festival in our cinema.
Every filmmaker who's worth something is suddenly doing a Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Sanjay Bhansali openly acknowledges his debt to Hrishida. "I'm heavily and indelibly influenced by Hrishida. Black was a tribute to Hrishida. And now my next Saawariya is also in many ways indebted to Hrishida. What I liked about his cinema is the bigness of emotions and feelings that he achieved within a small routine middleclass household."
Other filmmakers too seem to be taking Hrishida's path. If you've seen Shirish Kunder's debut film Jaan-e-Mann, you'd recognize Hrishida's imprint in the footage. And what was Vikram Bhatt's pursuit of happiness in Life Mein Kabhie Kabhie if not Hrishida's Sabse Bada Sukh?
The same gentle approach to human relationships, the same touch of nostalgia and humanism in the romance, and the same softness of quality in the storytelling.
And to carry the cult of creative continuity further there's Gulzar who links Hrishida to Shirish by writing lyrics for both. Such luminous links are becoming so rare in our cinema! We hardly have a sense of history left in our films.
Today's average craftsman or artiste feels the history of Hindi cinema begins with Ramesh Sippy's Sholay. Most of the younger lot of actors can barely speak in Hindi let alone write the Hindustani /Urdu script. Their Hindi dialogues are written for them in the English script.
Laughs Sharmila Tagore, "When I came in I was the only actor in Bollywood who spoke in English on the sets. Today every actor does just that. And it's fine. We've to move ahead with the times. A pride in our native tongue is fine. But it's not like a French actor taking pride in speaking his French dialogues. India has a multitude of languages. Hindi is just one of them. And English is certainly another one of them."
No, I've no problem with today's dude and dolls doing their dialogues in English. But they should know their history of Indian cinema beyond Sholay. I remember Jaya Bachchan recommending Mili to a bright young actress. She had never heard of the film.
Ouch! They should know that a filmmaker named Hrishikesh Mukherjee made his debut in 1958 with a film called Musafir. It was Hindi cinema's first episodic feature film.
Cut to Nikhil Advani's Salaam-e-Ishq which is a segmented love story featuring a cross of romantic liaisons. Influenced by Hrishikesh Mukjerjee? You bet! Who isn't enamoured of Hrishikesh Mukherjee's life-like style of movie-making?
Check out Raj Kumar Hirani's Munnabhai series. What do you think it is, if not an updated cleverly subverted and re-packaged version of Hrishida's Anand? Anand Sehgal (Rajesh Khanna) didn't only crack the sullen Babumoshai (Amitabh Bachchan's) walls of defense. He also won strangers over by greeting them like long-lost friends. Jadoo ki jhappi anyone?
It's no coincidence that Shirish is a film-editor turned director like Hrishida. We don't have too many of them around, unless we count David Dhawan.
Sooraj Barjatya's Vivah also pays homage to Hrishida's cinema of precious. In Barjatya's latest film the young man (Shahid Kapoor) stands by his marriage vows even when his wife is defaced by tragedy. Cut to Hrishida's Mili where Amitabh Bachchan marries the terminally ill Jaya Bhaduri regardless of how much time she has to live.
Didn't Dev Anand say something similar in Hrishida's Asli Naqli? Devdas's bullock-cart journey to die at Paro's doorstep became Hrishikesh Mukherjee's dying protagonist (Ashok Kumar) who journeys to his daughter's wedding and breathes his last in Hrishida's Ashirwaad.
That poignant death of the patriarch magically became the climax of Om Prakash's Aap Ki Kasam. No twist and turn in cinema can be complete without a reference to Hrishida. No filmmaker of substance can occupy Bollywood without being at least remotely influenced by Hrishida.
Ram Gopal Varma's Rangeela was homage to Hrishida's Guddi. And his recent Nishabd took Hrishida' angry young man from Namak Haraam and turned him into a tragic anguished soul.
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