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Bollywood's Delhi connection
Mumbai is so passe.
Or that's what a lot of current filmmakers will have you believe. Last year's coolest films were set in Delhi, and now we're bracing ourselves to see Lara Dutta in Chalo Dilli.
But how well do these films manage to actually capture Delhi? And which of them use it as just another backdrop?
Here's a quick filmi-Dilli recap:
Band Baaja Baaraat
Dealing with a Janakpuri girl and a boy from Saharanpur in UP, Maneesh Sharma's directorial debut held a wonderfully dhinchak Delhi flavour, aided in no small measure by Habib Faisal's crisp and evocative writing.
Both Sharma and Faisal are Delhi University men, and their comfort with the backdrop was more than evident.
How right did they get Delhi? 4/5
Do Dooni Chaar
Faisal's own directorial debut last year was also a Delhi film, set in the crowded bylanes of the capital city.
Colleges, tution centres and marketplaces, not to mention the tiny lower-middle-class home and Rishi Kapoor's monkey-cap, were all in place and looking very authentic indeed.
How right did they get Delhi? 5/5
No One Killed Jessica
Rajkumar Gupta's film about the Jessica Lall murder trials was sensationalist and slick, but it captured Delhi pretty attractively indeed. Especially during the wonderfully sexy opening credits set to the rat-a-tat awesomeness of Amit Trivedi's D-d-d-dilli Dilli.
How right did they get Delhi? 3.5/5
Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!
Dibakar Banerjee has stayed well within the NCR region for all his films thus far, and the finely textured Oye Lucky Lucky Oye proved an absolute highlight as it wandered into Delhi's lesser portrayed sides.
The film is a confident Dilli film without feeling the silly need to show off the city, and the characters and accents work perfectly.
How right did they get Delhi? 5/5
Dev D
Anurag Kashyap's Delhi was exhilarating without question, but his version of drug-addled Daryaganj was too psychedelic to be real.
Dispensing with reality, Kashyap probably set his film in some cinematic drug limbo instead of an actual city, and that's what made it work.
How right did they get Delhi? 3/5
Delhi 6
Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's strange take on Chandni Chowk was wonderfully textured and brilliantly acted (by everyone except the leading man) and the sights and sounds of Delhi, pin code 10006 looked realistic even if most of the film was shot in Jaipur.
How right did they get Delhi? 4/5
Chandni Chowk To China
Nikhil Advani's film starts out just where Mehra's film does, but with none of the subtlety or nuance. It's a random version of Delhi, set in Chandni Chowk simply because of the alliteration it provides the title.
How right did they get Delhi? 2/5
Aisha
Rajshree Ojha's recent chick-flick showed a different side of Delhi. Gone was the grit and in came the couture as we saw the swish set play polo and party in farmhouses. It's as real a side of Delhi as any, though, and the film captured it neatly.
How right did they get Delhi? 4/5
Khosla Ka Ghosla
Dibakar Banerjee's directorial debut centered around a middle-class man trying to realise his lifelong dream of building his own house. The film is chock-full of Dilliness, right from the lingo to the players, from the evil builder to the sycophants. Alarmingly accurate.
How right did they get Delhi? 5/5
Rang De Basanti
Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's second film one that skillfully took a bunch of modern-day collegekids and turned them into symbols for our freedom-fighters is set in Delhi but save for the shots of the India Gate and Lutyen's Delhi, could have been just about anywhere else. Nice texture, but this is more packaging than reality.
How right did they get Delhi? 3.5/5