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Earlier tonight, after a number of years, possibly since it's release in 2001, I saw Dil Chahta Hai once again from start-to-finish on a no giltch, improved Elite DVD. I just love this film more in it's second viewing. There are just soo many perfectly captured, astoundingly beautiful moments throughout. The scene when Akash unconsciously dials Sid's house number(with the wonderfully expressionistic use of light and shadow in his room) and asking for Sameer. The scene when after their roller-coaster ride, Akash and Shalini race down the stairs of the subway station, only Akash races ahead to reach inside the sub-train, while the doors close just before Shalini could catch up to Akash, separating the two apart at the peak of their togetherness(temporarily of course). But still, both Preity and Aamir were competely heartbreaking. Oh, and, of course, of course, the final moments between Siddharth & Tara at the hospital is beyond sublime: I am at a loss to think of a character in a fiction film more fully fleshed-out and seemingly real than Siddharth. This is one of the most heartbreakingly honest scenes I've ever seen in a movie. It's not at all histrionic or overacted--it feels so painfully genuine. It's one of the most difficult things, I think, for people to speak frankly about the disappointments of their lives; they'd rather not think about them, and just make do with how things are, for better or worse. Akshay Khanna perfectly-delivered a devastated Siddharth.
I am now convinced that Dil Chahta Hai constitutes a high-water mark of the past quarter-century of Bollywood moviemaking. It's a masterpiece in it's own right.
DVD Collector, may I ask where you got your copy from. Did you get it from Indiaweekly?