These films ought to have much more appreciation from the Indian audience than they got during the time of their release. Here’s the list of the 10 most underrated, must-watch Hindi movies of the 2000s decade. Not in chronological order, but it’s fun to keep the guessing game alive. So let’s go backward.
10. PINJAR (2003)
Amrita Pritam’s contribution to Indian literature is illimitable. She had extremely individualistic and candid stances on fatigued social expectations and traditions. Many tried to puncture her will but she never wavered from her chosen path. Amrita Pritam was not just a poet or an author; she was the quintessence of feminism.
Pinjar (The Skeleton) is one of her most celebrated novels, which penetrated the mass platform by Dr. Chandraprakash Dwivedi with a film of the same name. Dwivedi is widely recognized with his TV show Chanakya, back in the 90s. He entered the big screen with the adaptation of Pinjar. Set in the backdrop of the holocaust of 1947, the film revolves around Puro, a Hindu Punjabi woman, who is abducted by a Muslim man, Rashid. The abduction was rooted in an old vengeance, which survived a generation.
The film abbreviates the silent anguish of women. In the conformist milieu, these women remained perpetually wrecked and displaced. But make no mistake by labeling the film irrelevant in the contemporary world. The atrocious verity of a woman’s virginity is coupled with a man’s honor, still lingers on. We still blame the rape survivors and exile them. Puro was rejected and disowned by her own family after her profane abduction. She concedes with her reality and wastes away. She is becoming a pinjar (skeleton), tangible but air-headed.
Pinjar delineates Hindus and Muslims in the same token. Or at least attempts to. Neither is vilified or valorized. So Rashid is a person, not a character. In short, he is the antidote of Khilji from Padmaavat (2018).
Urmila Matondkar struggles with Puro. She could never find her spirit and strays to obscurity on-screen. Urmila needed a better director, or perhaps Dwivedi deserved a finer actress. Manoj Bajpai, on the other hand, owns Rashid. He injects so much compassion in Rashid that you end up rooting for him.
Pinjar, is an ambitious film, with scale and sweep. The true chevalier of the film is the art director, Muneesh Sappel. His painstaking, intricate research silently exalts the authenticity of the film. But all the sweat and effort is undersized by the lack of a cohesive screenplay. What could have been a great film gets reduced to a worthy watch.
Even with all its vices, the film pierces, largely because of its source material. This is definitely one of the most underrated Hindi movies of the 2000s.
9. 15 PARK AVENUE (2005)
Aparna Sen is everything you’d expect from a Bengali director. Conceited, eccentric, sharp, and highly urbane in their approach towards cinema. So it’s no surprise that 15 Park Avenue is her creation. The film orbits around Meethi, whose husband and five children are waiting for her at their house, 15 Park Avenue, while she fervently tries to find that address. The only snag here is that Meethi is schizophrenic. There’s a world within a world here, though her family and friends are also as supportive as they can be. As you get more and more sucked into her world, the thread between the accepted concept and the scientific explanation of Schizophrenia gradually melts into a smudge. A cruel, horrific gang rape triggers Meethi’s hitherto dormant schizophrenia and the film explodes en masse.
Aparna Sen is more in command here than the preceding Mr. & Mrs. Iyer (2002). She has sprinkled dry, black humor through the film. If you dare to laugh, there’s adequate wit in the darkest corners of the film. She submerges the audience with such compelling manipulation that Meethi comes across as the only unified character in the film. All her decisions are reasoned. Sen has managed to capture the human dynamics in all its abstinence and vulnerability. The sincerity of the screenplay is unmistakable. Performances penetrate.
But, 15 Park Avenue, is not without its lacunae. It’s a very verbose script, dialogues are bookish and repetitive, almost annoying. Also, the film struggles with a leisurely pace. The latter half of the film largely spends its time with Freudian scrutiny, which frustratingly tests your patience. However, even with the trifling offering of the plot, the film makes bleeding cuts in your sensibility.
The film is the reverse of A Beautiful Mind (2001) in an odd way. Both deal with all-consuming schizophrenia. But while A Beautiful Mind travels through a schizophrenic mind, 15 Park Avenue is the liberation of that mind. In an interview, Sen said that she has seen and dealt with the disease at a very close quarter, and it’s palpable. The staunch realism and loyalty to the disease in the film are unnerving.
The uncomfortable ending of the film doesn’t lead to a conclusion. It leaves the film at low ebb.
8. FROZEN (2007)
Frozen is a story told in an unusual language. The film is shot in black and white, and surprisingly you don’t miss the multi-hued reality. The film was shot in Leh, Ladakh, at a height of 15,000 feet, in minus degree temperatures. Such unsparing terrain can confound reality and the film depicts that beautifully. The uncertainty of simultaneously existing, and emotionally exhausted characters is the core of the film.
Debutant director Shivajee Chandrabhushan was a still-photographer, and Frozen is a testament of that. The film effortlessly achieves a visual opulence with scintillating frames. Cinematographer Shanker Raman is a revelation. The magnanimity of the mountains, snow chaperoned curvaceous roads, and brutal void of nothingness has been magnificently captured by his lens. Raman deservingly won the National Award for his work in the film.
Frozen, revolves around a family of three. The father is poor, caring, protective, and optimistic while carrying past grief. The daughter is an annoying rebel without a cause. Though there’s a cause, it reaches out to the audience a bit too late. There’s also a younger brother who’s either bullied by the sister or ignored by the father. Their harmless, oddly comfortable lives are disrupted when the army settles a hundred yards across their doorstep. There’s also a subplot that seems right out of the 80s Hindi cinema, where an evil moneylender is lusting after the young daughter of the insolvent father.
Danny Denzogpa excels as the father with his intensity. Debutant Gauri Kulkarni plays the daughter and is frustratingly mediocre. And Skalzang Angchuk as the little brother deliciously exudes a restrained charm. The rest of the cast remains first-rate.
The wayward progression of Frozen gives it the twilight feel. And its ambiguous ending might be appealing too. The film brags an efficient execution of lyricism. Though hopeful, it remains a saga of the damned.
Frozen, is stunted by its lumpish script and pretentious screenplay. Astonishing frames and jaw-dropping aesthetics eventually feel gimmicky and calculated. The two-hour film registers doubly long. The monochrome tool is far more dexterously used in Rituparno Ghosh’s Bengali film Dosar (2006). The abstruse emotional conflict of the script beautifully complimented the black and white hue. But in Frozen, after a point, it feels ostentatious. However, it still manages to hypnotize the audience with its beauty.
The film deserves to be seen and appreciated for the efforts, and for a singular cinematic fabric.
7. GAJA GAMINI (2000)
Before I even launch into my conversation about it, let me clarify, Gaja Gamini is not a film. It’s an experience. It’s an extremely divisive piece of art that you’ll either fall in love or detest (the latter for most). There’s no story to trace here. No hero, no heroine, no plot, no start, middle, or end. But, in an eccentric way, you’ll find each aforementioned aspect, and form of a film.
Gaja Gamini (One With A Walk Like An Elephant) is an homage to a magnificent muse from a genius artist. And wherefore, he narrates the story of a woman who has been an inspiration, a tease, a mother, a lover, a rebel, and an intelligent, commanding entity. The film is amaranthine in its structure. Timelines coalesce to pull the audience into this thick haze of perplexity. The theatrical narrative adds to the abstract virtue of the film. It is a moving painting with each frame, open to exposition. The film is an alternative reality.
Director Maqbool Fida Husain was trying to write a new language for cinema through Gaja Gamini. He was doing it for his muse, his inspiration – Madhuri Dixit. If there’s any actor in Indian cinema, who can turn the most bizarre experience discernible with a stunning smile, it is Madhuri Dixit. She is challenging sunshine here with her radiance. But I highly doubt, even she deciphered the language Husain was trying to carve with the film.
The inherent symbolisms the film has can be really overwhelming for an average cinemagoer. You keep wondering what on earth is going on. In one of most elaborate dance pieces on screen, dressed in pristine white, Madhuri’s Sangeeta is consecutively making love to a white Cello and a white dholak! Yeah, you can read it again.
There’s no reference to this film. It’s frustratingly unique and unprecedented.
The film boasts an assemblage of some of the most talented actors of Indian cinema. Madhuri Dixit is joined by Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah, Ashish Vidyarthi, Mohan Agashe, Farida Jalal, and Shah Rukh Khan among others. And it’s axiomatic that they all joined Husain Saab’s passion project out of respect more than a compelling script. Because the latter is missing in totality.
You might not know what exactly is happening but instinctively and intuitively, you know everything. If not for the experience, watch it for Madhuri, and for the most gracious dance moves on the screen, ever. But with the right expectations. It’s brilliantly bizarre.
Gaja Gamini is one of the most under-seen and underrated movies of Indian Cinema and the 2000s decade.
6. FIRAAQ (2008)
Firaaq (Separation) is set in the aftermath of the sectarian carnage that traumatized India in the state of Gujarat in 2002. Over two thousand Muslim and Hindu lives were lost. The film commences by stating it is based on “a thousand true stories” and follows the group narrative structure, intertwining multiple stories. These stories come from speckled genders, religions, social strata, and ages. Into all this, meanders a small boy who has witnessed the killing of the rest of his family, and now is in search of his father.
Firaaq, means both, separation & quest in Arabic, and there couldn’t be a better title for the film. Directed by the gorgeous Nandita Das, her commitment to secularism is evident in each frame. Firaaq, takes place over a period of 24-hours and we get to meet various characters, coping with the repercussion of this heinous violence.
A young Muslim couple (played by the marvelous Shahana Goswami & Nawazuddin Siddiqui) with a baby come back to their home, gutted by fire. A Hindu housewife (in one of the career best performances by Deepti Naval) is hauling her guilt because she failed to open her door to a frantic Muslim woman during the riots. A couple (played by Sanjay Suri & Tisca Chopra) in a mixed marriage is questioning their identities & consequently, the dynamics of their relationship. And an aged musician (always reliable Naseeruddin Shah) who is unable to subscribe to and comprehend the unrest happening around him.
Firaaq is about humanity, and how it was ripped apart by communal violence. The film pursues people whose inner and outer lives are irretrievably altered after the unspeakable bloodshed. As Issac Asimov once said, “violence is the last refuge of the incompetent”. The film gives voice to the silent. It tries to sing hope for better times. There’s light beyond darkness in this film.
Even though the film is about personal conflicts it also shows that we cannot live is isolation. Hence, the context becomes imperative. Automatically, Firaaq is soaked in politics. The more you scratch the surface, you see so much of resentment, prejudice, apprehension, and divide.
Though bumpy, Das manages to remain evenhanded in most parts. Firaaq opens with one of the most powerful opening sequences of cinema. It’s a shame that characters stay underdeveloped, and sporadically, film overcomplicates the subject matter. But, Das, illustrates sanguinity from diverse narrative settings. Firaaq is one of the most underrated Hindi films of the 2000s decade.