Happy birthday to Shekhar Kapoor.
The viewers of bollywood films wish Shekhar Kapoor happy birthday on 6th December, 2008. The films he had directed over 20 years had not been forgotten by most of Indian and International audience and that is the reason they still have expectation from Shekhar Kapoor to make better films in future.
In the early part of his career he directed the film Masoom which was critically acclaimed and also got commercial success. The viewers appreciated the expression of helplessness of Jugal Hansraj, whose father played by Nasiruddin Shah married Shabana Azmi and in the early part of the film Shabana Azmi did not accept Jugal Hansraj as her daughter. She already had her own daughters which included Urmila Matondkar who acted as a child artist.
The film was related to the struggle of Nasirrudin Shah to convince Shabana Azmi about the acceptance of Jugal Hansraj. When he decided to admit Jugal Hansraj in a boarding at the end of the film Shabana Azmi got attached with the son and stopped him from going to boarding. The songs in the film were very catchy, including “huzur is kadar bhi na itrake chaliye” sung by Bhupinder Singh and Suresh Watkar and “tujhse naraz nahi zindagi hairan hun mai” sung by Anup Ghoshal.
The film of Shekhar Kapoor which had biggest commercial success included Mr. India. He dealt with fantasy where with a use of a formula human beings became invisible and Anil Kapoor used it to become invisible and came to be known as Mr. India in the film. Amrish Puri played the role of international don named Mogambo which created his brand image.
Amrish Puri tried to access the formula. Initially he sent his men all across the world for searching that formula and made a number of plans and ultimately lost his life in the process. Sri Devi was very impressive in her role as a journalist and showed her comedy conception in te film. The music of Laxmikant Pyarellal was super hit. The hit songs included “hawa hawai”, “karte hai hum pyar Mr. India se”, etc. Besides LP used a number of his own songs in parody style for the numerous number of children who were brought up by Anil Kapoor and the song was titled “bacche tere bacche”.
In the later part of his career Shekhar Kapoor experimented with challenging subjects like Bandit Queen. Already Phoolan Devi won the elections and became Member of the Parliament and she died later, so there was big controversy in respect of the actual story and the subject that was depicted by Shekhar Kapoor.
Secondly the film had the challenge of getting certification from the Censor Board. Cruelty at its highest level was shown in the film. Besides caste rivalry between thakurs and malwas in the states of UP and Bihar were shown. Even critics argued the fact that if cruelty is shown in details in films the aesthetic value of films can be prevented from getting turnished and that is the challenge of quality film directors like Shyam Benegal who had been masters of story telling, had shown challenging subject-matters in films yet edited the unnecessary details. In that respect Shekhar Kapoor’s Bandit Queen, just revealed cruelty and did not try to maintain the filmic value on the subject matter.
Besides direction, Shekhar Kapoor was also a promising actor and he acted in some successful TV Serials of DD India like Khandan in the late 80s. He is considered to be a thoughtful director and the viewers expect him to come up with better films in future again.
