Debutant directors serve fresh fare at box office

Mumbai, July 29 (IANS) Small should be big this week... or so we hope.

With three promising, sharp and hopefully effectual directors making their debut with works that appear fresh in theme and mood, this week at the movies promises to be a time of reckoning.

A love story with Kashmir as its backdrop, a political thriller with a gritty theme and an urban marital comedy. They are what debutant directors Shoojit Sircar, Kabeer Kaushik and Ishan Tridevi have packaged in "Yahaan", "Sehar" and "7 1/2 Phere".

"Mine is not a run-of-the-mill film," insists Kaushik who has managed to make his film "Sehar" in record time. "Yet I would not like to isolate it from the mainstream by claiming it is an offbeat film. It is a very absorbing thriller where I have used mainstream stars to spotlight the theme."

Interestingly, the film has an off-the-mainstream cast.

Arshad Warsi, who plays the lead opposite Mahima Chowdhary (the two featured together in the fiasco "Kuch Meetha Ho Jaye"), has tasted box office success. He is now in demand as a sturdy supporting actor after "Munnabhai M.B.B.S." and "Hulchal".

But Warsi isn't quite in the leading man's league. Hence Kaushik provides the pair with a strong supporting cast of Pankaj Kapoor (who has incidentally acquired a bit of celebrity consciousness after his crowd-pulling performance in "Dus") and Sushant Singh.

Not quite mainstream, though hovering in its vicinity - that is how we would describe this week's other release "Yahaan".

It is not the first Hindi film that has moved away from the idyllic picture-postcard of Kashmir from films like "Kashmir ki Kali", "Junglee" and "Ek Phool Do Mali" to use post-militancy Kashmir as a backdrop. Earlier, Vidhu Vinod Chopra did it in "Mission Kashmir" and Ashok Pandit in "Sheen".

Debutant Shoojit Sircar is a veteran of ad filmmaking. He would therefore qualify as the latest in the long line of directors from Priyadarshan to Arjun Sablok who have made the transition from ads to feature filmmaking.

Sircar is quite confident of his feature film debut because, according to him, it shows Kashmir the way it is.

But are enough people interested in watching Jimmy Shergil and a new discovery Minissha Lamba as they recreate the magic of "Jab Jab Phool Khile" -- where Shashi Kapoor wooed Nanda in Kashmir Valley -- or Ramanand Sagar's super-blockbuster "Aarzoo" where Rajendra Kumar serenaded Sadhana?

In spite of being a competent actor, Shergil isn't quite in the league of saleable heroes.

Another debutant director desperately seeking success this week is Ishaan Trivedi. His marital comedy "7 1/2 Phere" features the unlikely pair of Juhi Chawla and Irrfan Khan.

Unlike other fellow Khans, Irrfan Khan has not been able to discover his box office appeal despite a spirited performance recently in "Maqbool". His efforts to emerge as an erotic hero in Pooja Bhatt's "Rog" came to naught.

Trivedi's marital comedy is Khan's first stab at satire. He has for company one of India's finest female comic artistes. Juhi Chawla has earlier shown a flair for the funny stuff in "Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke" and "Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani".

How the chalk and cheese combination of Irrfan and Juhi works at the box office remains to be seen. What emerges from debutant director Trivedi's try-and-try again optimism is his sincerity of purpose.

Trivedi has been making tele-films long enough to understand the need for economy of expression and resources. "My film is a small-budget one. But it isn't a small film in terms of the emotional landscape it covers."

Besides being the first feature films of all three directors, the one factor common to them this week is their determination to break the mainstream mould while remaining within its parameters, albeit not stubbornly but sensibly.

"Yahaan" has songs, but they aren't item numbers. "Sehar" has suspense, but not of a titillating quality. And "7 1/2 Phere" has comedy, but not of the slapstick variety.

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7 1/2 Phere