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SPOLILER ALERT!! lols!!
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Are tragic endings back in vogue after Devdas?
SUBHASH K JHA
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms. ... d=23158856
MUMBAI: Everyone loves a good cry at the end of a movie -- or so it seemed in the golden era of Hindi films when actress Nargis shot actors Dilip Kumar and Sunil Dutt in Mehboob Khan's Andaz and Mother India respectively.
Nearly 40 years later they seem to be making a comeback after the stupendous success of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's tragic period drama Devdas that starred Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit.
As social pressures on filmgoers multiplied and happy endings became increasingly scarce in real life, audiences began to look at cinema as a form of escape from their tedious lives.
The 1960s and beyond were dotted with family dramas, love stories, action flicks even the odd suspense thriller but always with finishes that tidily wrapped up a story in a "all's well that ends well" package.
Sad sagas of love were the worst hit in this race for happy endings.
So much so that distributors bit their nails in suspense before the release of the tragic romances Ek Duuje Ke Liye in the 1980s and Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak in the 1990s.
It is another matter that both films were runaway hits. But the fact is that Mansoor Khan had shot a tentative happy ending for Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak in case the original denouement failed to click with the crowds.
In the new millennium, tragic finales seem to have been progressively shunned by audiences, except Madhur Bahndarkar's pessimistic Chandni Bar last year.
But this year, the good reception to the tragic grandeur in Devdas seems to have given Bollywood directors the courage to make sad films.
Tragic endings seem to be back with a bang in Bollywood.
At the end of Shashilal Nair's controversial Ek Chhoti Si Love Story, actress Manisha Koirala is shown utterly bereft of optimism. In Tanuja Chandra's poignant Sur, actor Lucky Ali lets go of debutante Gauri Karnik.
"It was the only ending I could think of," says Chandra. "I'd have killed myself, if I had to show my protagonists in a romantic embrace at the end."
But Lucky Ali, who played the bereaved music teacher in Sur, has a lot to be thankful for in his next release Kaante.
In filmmaker Sanjay Gupta's Kaante, Lucky Ali is the only protagonist who survives the shower of bullets -- all the other leading men from Amitabh Bachchan to Mahesh Manjrekar are dead and gone at the end.
In the forthcoming crime thriller Paanch, almost all the five protagonists die brutal deaths. In Manjrekar's Hatiyar Sanjay Dutt lives and dies by the gun.
Crime doesn't pay, but it seems post-Devdas tragic endings do.
In both of last week's releases -- Shakti - The Power and Gunaah, the leading man dies a violent death.
In Shakti, Sanjay Kapoor is brutally slaughtered by an assassin whereas in Gunaah, Bipasha Basu personally guns down her co-star Dino Morea.
But the most tragic tale of the millennium yet to come is being told by filmmaker J.P. Dutta.
Chronicling the life of the soldiers who perished in the 1999 Kargil conflict, the heroes of Dutta's war epic LoC die as they're destined to.
In Vikram Bhatt's forthcoming Aitbaar, Amitabh guns down his screen-daughter Bipasha's beau -- played by debutant John Abraham.
What's it about the Bhatts that enamours them to sad sagas?
Protagonists have been brutally slain in their productions Dushman, Sangharsh, Kasoor, Zakhm and Gunaah.
Perhaps the Bhatts, like the rest of the industry, feel death brings luck to the movies.
That's why after Shah Rukh's awesome death sequence in Devdas, he does another tragically end in his new release Shakti.
Is the logic that if a protagonist dies and the audience cries, the producer laughs all the way to the bank?
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Edited By arsh on 1032903356
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Everyone dies..except the one who sings the song MAUT :d