Films based
on living celebrities invariably got controversial and ended in court cases,
resolved after many rounds of negotiations be it Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen on the life of Phoolan Devi
or Vinay Shukla’s Godmother on the life ofSantokben Jadeja, don of Jamnagar both released in the 90s. For some peculiar reason,filmmakers have always
been attracted to stories of how business, sometimes real and sometimes
fictional.
In the olden
days, Nutan made her debut in Sone Ki
Chidiya where the earning member is exploited by her immediate family and Guru
Dutt’s Kaagaz ke Phool delved on a
married filmmaker obsessed with his muse. Both these films did not work at the
box-office, probably because they ended in tragedies. Hrishikesh Mukherjee
presented a positive, refreshing take of the film world through the eyes of a
small-town girl Guddi in the
seventies that broke the myth of the glamour world.
Smita
Patil’s unforgettable Bhumika was
adapted from Shanta Aapte’s Sangte Aaika
and explored the journey of an actress through her various relationships. Patil
transforms from the gawky teenager to a woman of the world, who though
empowered, is oppressed by her husband/ Amol Palekar and doomed to a life of
gloom! In the same decade, Vinod Pandey’s Ek
Baar Phir presented a self-obsessed
superstar/ Suresh Oberoi and his sensitive, neglected wife Deepti Naval who depicts
courage to opt out of a loveless marriage while Dulal Guha’s Do Anjaane
was a mainstream thriller where a husband/ Amitabh Bachchan follows the rise of
his actress wife/Rekha and unravels the truth.
To be
continued
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