NEW DEHLI: Farah Khan’s films are quintessential Bollywood. With dances, melodrama, romance and star power, her filmmaking trajectory comprises commercial movies, such as Om Shanti Om (2007) and Tees Maar Khan (2010). Although mass audiences have developed a taste for her films, critics have often panned them for their frivolous content and questioned her depth as a director.
With her fourth directorial venture Happy New Year on its way, she refutes criticism that the films she makes are marked by mediocrity. Referring to Happy New Year as “genre-bending,” she maintains that she makes quality films. “I don’t make tacky films,” she said.
“I make aesthetic movies, which are grand and feature some of the biggest stars. It’s not fair to run them down.” Farah, who managed to earn her spurs as a choreographer before turning to the art of filmmaking, prefers the setting of her films to be just as grand as her dance sequences that she has choreographed.
Happy New Year is a musical heist drama with a star-studded cast, which includes Farah’s long-time associate Shahrukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Abhishek Bachchan and Boman Irani, among others. Veteran actor Jackie Shroff will also be seen in the film as the primary anti-hero. “It’s one of the most awaited films of the year. It reunites Shahrukh and me, seven years after we did Om Shanti Om,” she shared.
Farah added that the film is varied in what it offers to the audience just like her preceding films. “Several films on reincarnation have been done in the past, but I added a retro twist to Om Shanti Om, so there will always be a twist [in my films],” she said. “A dance film has been done to death, but in Happy New Year, the twist lies in how a group of bad dancers come together to participate in a dance competition. We have combined that with a heist in the plot,” added the 49-year-old.
Commenting on the heist genre, Farah said, “It is a formula, just like ‘romance’ is a formula [in Bollywood]. The obstacle lies in how you make a film of this nature and how you add your own twist to it.”
Happy New Year, which is slated to release on October 23, will be distributed by Yash Raj Films.
The shooting of Happy New Year began in October 2013 and wrapped up after a gruelling schedule spanning 170 days. Farah admitted that making the film has been the “most exhausting and exhilarating” experience of her life and that she plans on taking a six-month-long break once the film hits the cinema screens.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 20th, 2014.
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