Winners of 53rd Annual Filmfare Awards
Best Film
Taare Zameen Par

Best Director
Aamir Khan - Taare Zameen Par (more…)

Jivraj Burman: Actor-turned-director Amir Khan’s directorial debut “Taare Zameen Par” - a moving tale of a boy with learning disability - has set the box office tills ringing. It has netted Rs.770 million in its fourth week.The movie, running neck-on-neck with last year’s superhit “Om Shanti Om” in terms of business, may even surpass the blockbuster featuring Shah Rukh Khan if it continues to sweep the box-office for a few more weeks.

Though the collections had slightly dropped in the third week of its release to hover around 60 percent, it picked up again this week. More than the media hype, it is the favourable word-of-mouth publicity that actually boosted its box-office performance.

In Mumbai, collections registered 58 percent last week. But after the Maharashtra government exempted the movie from entertainment tax (60 percent of the total ticket price), collections have climbed to 62 percent this week.

No Bollywood movie in recent memory pulled at the heartstrings of the audience - masses and celebrities alike - as “Taare Zameen Par”.

Aamir Khan has scored over his colleague Shah Rukh Khan in content. While Shah Rukh Khan’s OSO was charismatic and boasted of fresh-faced Deepika Padukone to capture the audience’s imagination, Aamir touched hearts with the simplicity of the plot and sincere presentation.

Though a number of movies had been made earlier in Bollywood about physically or mentally challenged children, none came close to “Taare…” in terms of acceptance, coupled with box-office success.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s “Black” (2005), based on the life of Helen Keller, was the story of a blind and deaf girl, Michelle MacNally, which was critically acclaimed at the box-office. But it failed to sparkle.

Earlier, Sunil Dutt’s 1983 film “Dard Ka Rishta”, which narrated the story of a girl-child suffering from cancer, had also met the same fate though the movie launched Khushboo, the child actress who later became a successful leading lady in Tamil movies.

But comedian Mehmood’s “Kunwara Baap” (1974), about a poor rickshaw-puller adopting an abandoned illegitimate polio-afflicted child, was a box-office success.

So was the Marathi movie “Shwaas”, which was India’s official Oscar entry in 2004. The story was about a boy affected by retinoblastoma, a rare retinal cancer.

The poignant tale of “Taare Zameen Par” has left most moviegoers in tears. Watching it during a special screening in New Delhi, Bharatiya Janata Party leader L.K. Advani wept, and so did veteran director Lekh Tandon.

Tandon told IANS that he could not resist tears as he watched the movie at a suburban multiplex recently.

“Aamir has proved in ‘Taare Zameen Par’ that a movie sans commercial trappings, ‘masala’ ingredients and no heroine can also be a box-office success provided the content mix is correct. Plus, the maker must remain faithful to the script. It is Aamir’s courage of conviction that runs through the movie - unobtrusively,” Tandon told IANS Tuesday.

“Taare Zameen Par” is likely to be accorded ‘tax-free’ status in other states as well. In view of this, PVR, the movie’s world distributor, has circulated an additional 200 prints, hoping that it would continue to scale the popularity charts in the coming weeks.

Rajkumar Santoshi’s political commentary “Halla Bol” has received a mixed response in its opening week. While the audiences in the western circuit have rejected the movie, it is doing reasonably well in some pockets in north India.

Box office collections in Mumbai started dropping from the second show of its opening day last Friday (Jan 11). The movie notched a lacklustre Mumbai territory opening with 70 percent collections, considered unusual for an Ajay Devgan starrer.

Bollywood trade circles were taken by surprise when the collections in cinemas in Mumbai dropped to as low as 42 percent after the opening day.

The box office graph tilted downwards in all major suburban circuits.

The verdict is now clear. Though appreciated critically, “Halla Bol” is the first debacle of 2008.

But the movie has been doing reasonably well in some pockets in north India. A leading Mumbai distributor attributes this moderate success to the political culture of the north.

“It was expected. The political undertone explicit in the movie is akin to the political culture of the North. Cine-goers in the north generally like movies that have a fair amount of action. ‘Haala Bol’ has it in ample measure. The action scenes in the movie, as in all Raj Kumar Santoshi movies, are nicely executed to boost the narration. Maybe, audience in other centres squirmed at the movie’s political content,” a leading Mumbai distributor, not wishing to be named, told IANS Monday.

A group of young girls who watched the movie at the Fame-Andheri in Mumbai summed up the mood of the audience when they told IANS that in “Halla Bol”, director Rajkumar Santoshi assumed the role of a teacher, telling them what they should do and what they should not.

“Come on, we do not like to be talked to in such a silly manner,” said Sangita Sajlani, the most vociferous among them.

The debacle of “Halla Bol” is also a major setback to Pyramid Symira. It was the theatre chain’s first foray into the Hindi belt. It is too shell-shocked to comment on the film’s poor show all over.

Though reports from overseas market are yet to be made public, trade circles believe that the movie may not fare well there either.

The verdict that the movie has received in the domestic market has set the overseas distributors wondering whether the NRI audience will be able to identify themselves with the Indian social milieu into which the issue has been woven.

“I am keeping my fingers crossed,” Nittin Keni, one of the overseas distributors, told IANS Monday.