It was the year of Devdas, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s shiny reworking of the Devdas saga, with Shah Rukh Khan playing the titular role, accompanied by Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit. At the opposite end of of the spectrum, layered with grime and grit, was Ram Gopal Varma’s Company, a spiritual successor of RGV’s Satya, which upturned the way Bollywood told the gangster story.
Devdas isn’t my favourite SRK film, not by a mile, but I have to admit that he looked good in that clean-cut good-boy Bengali bhadralok attire of kurta and dhoti, accessorised with that booze bottle, mooning over his Paro and Chandramukhi, while making everyone, not just himself, thoroughly miserable.
The buzz around Bhansali’s iteration of Devdas, funded by one of Bollywood’s then fave jeweller-financier Bharat Shah, told us to expect everything the filmmaker was known for, and more: big stars, opulent sets, even more opulent costumes — the weight of Aishwarya and Madhuri’s lehengas in their ‘Dola Re’ dance-off became a talking point — and, of course, SRK in full-male-lover-victimhood mode.
Madhuri Dixit, Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai in Devdas. (Express archive photo)
The film had a premiere at that year’s edition of the Cannes Film Festival, with SLB, SRK and Aishwarya walking its famed red carpet. But none of the flash and glitter could hide the fact that the film itself was overlong, over-wrought, and nothing the ethereal Aishwarya did would make us forget that faux–eesh: it was not just Bengalis who cringed.
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Bhansali has carried right on since, with his insistence on mega sets, and songs that carry swing: his latest web show Heeramandi is testament to the fact that Bhansali baroque is still very much alive and kicking.
Saathiya gave us Shaad Ali’s only other film (apart from Bunty aur Babli), that has worked. An adaptation of Mani Rathnam’s Alai Payuthey, it has Vivek Oberoi and Rani Mukerji playing a couple struggling to find their romantic compass post marriage: with lovely songs and performances, this film is almost as good as the original starring R Madhavan and Shalini.
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But the stand-out of the year, also starring Vivek Oberoi along with Mohanlal, Ajay Devgn, and Manisha Koirala, was Ram Gopal Varma’s Company. A spiritual sequel to Satya, this follow-up is a far more polished film, loosely based on the relationship of real-life mobsters Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Rajan, and it gave Oberoi a role he has rarely bettered.
Vivek Oberoi and Ajay Devgn in Company. (Express archive photo)
Company, getting us up close and personal with the mobsters-in-chief just the way we had got to know Satya and its foot-soldiers, was a top-grosser of 2002, and it cemented RGV’s reputation of making movies with grit, picking up characters from the real underworld’s famed dons. Currently, RGV is better known for his provocative posts on X, but knowing his propensity to bounce back, it is never wise to write him off: last heard, his ‘Shiva’ is poised for a comeback.
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It was also the year which finally got Vishal Bharadwaj into Bollywood with Makdee: that film would have been rightfully dubbed Y/A today, with Shabana Azmi as a gnarly-fingered witch and Shweta Basu Prasad in a double role as the twin sisters who bravely confront the scary ‘chudail’. The film, an atmospheric Grimms fairy tale — the special effects were super effective for its time — was a precursor to Maqbool, the film that cemented Bhardwaj’s reputation as one of the most exciting filmmakers of the time.
