Walking around Park Ex one day, I found this poster for Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham — the first Bollywood movie I ever saw — in an alley behind Jean-Talon. September 28, 2006
Photo du jour: Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham
Read more articles by Christopher DeWolf
3 comments
It’s also the only Bollywood movie I saw, during the Festival du Nouveau CinĂ©ma, a few years ago. Reminded me of the japanese anime I used to watch as a kid: very melodramatic, with lightning and thunder when the father rejects his older son because he’s in love with a “poor” girl. The most surprising thing for me was the mix of the traditional and the contemporary worlds: you’d think Bollywood movies would show you a very folksy India but this movie is (or seems so) very actual in the way it describes the rich family: the kids wear Gap clothing, and later the story moves to London UK where they dance in the streets, with Big Ben in the backdrop (well, maybe not but it’s surrealistic anyways!).
Great picture, but please, pretty please, don’t use the B word. “Hindi movie” is a much better alternative.
Thanks, but “Hindi movie” isn’t very specific. Wouldn’t that refer to any Hindi-language film, even, say, a documentary or an indie flick? Bollywood refers very distinctly to the kind of four-hour genre-blending epics made in Mumbai, of which Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. Besides, aren’t many Bollywood films in Urdu and English as well as Hindi?