Saturday, February 23, 2008

Yeh tujhe kya ho gaya?

I ended up listening to Baadalon Se from Satya last week after a long while. That song somehow brought back a flood of memories - second year of engineering, watching Satya second time lucky after it was "housefull" the first time at Rahul, Ramanand's evocative post on the theatre, and so on.

What happened to RGV? Satya was in some ways a dream team - Vishal Bharadwaj on music, Gulzar on lyrics, Anurag Kashyap co-helming the script. A bravura performance by Manoj Bajpai, Saurabh Shukla and Shefali Chhaya as a strong supporting cast. And of course, Sandeep Chowta with that haunting background score.

I was and remain a big RGV fan. However, his quality of work since then never quite matched up. IMO, the peak of his work was Satya. Though Company, Jungle and Sarkar were satisfying movies to an extent, none of his later films as director matched up to the promise he showed in Rangeela and Satya. (though Kaun was definitely an interesting experiment) Other films he helmed as producer or had creative input in ( as part of his Factory), including Love Ke Liye Kucch Bhi Karega, Ek Hasina Thi were worthwhile efforts but again, there's this feeling of promise not quite fulfilled.

*I didn't dare watch RGV Ki Aag, and haven't seen Ab Tak Chhappan so I won't comment on those.

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