First things first: to all the Doubting Thomases out there, Reema Kagti’s does give due credit to , Faiza Khan’s much-loved documentary on the spoof film industry of and the making of its homegrown Having got that out of the way, one also can’t ignore the fact that the 2008 film is an inescapable cross for Kagti to bear. Correlations, comparisons, associations, say what you may, are bound to be made between the two works. Nonetheless, Kagti’s film is significant for being an affectionate eulogy from Hindi cinema to the quirky film fanatics in the power loom town of Maharashtra, devotees of Salman Khan as well as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Bruce Lee.
It is also a warm-hearted celebration of their signature Bollywood spin-offs as distinctive filmmaking of its own. One of world’s largest film industries doffing its hat to the chutzpah of a precariously small subaltern one and according to it a rightful place in Indian film history. In a rousing moment and one of the most moving lines (written by Varun Grover, dialogues by Grover and Shoaib Zulfi Nazeer), Vineet Kumar Singh as Farogh Jafri, the writer of films, tells its creator Nasir Shaikh, played by Adarsh Gourav, “Tu kamaal hai.
Tune deewano ko tareekh mein naam diya (You are incredible. You etched the names of a bunch of oddballs in history.)” It’s an exploration of these fellowships and solidarities, the reciprocity and admiration that went into the making of cinema, that give the film its emotional .
