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The majority of the Hindi films made this year were of appalling quality, but the industry did release a few standouts in 2022, giving viewers hope that all is not lost.
It was challenging to produce a list of the Top 10 Hindi Films of 2020 and 2021 because so few had been released. At the time, the COVID19 pandemic was raging over India. However, the Mumbai-based industry had no similar justification in the previous 12 months.
Best Film 2022
1: Titu Ambani
- Director: Rohit Raj Goyal
- Primary cast: Deepika Singh, Tushar Pandey, Sapna Sand, Raghubir Yadav, Samta Sagar, Virendra Saxena
Deepika and Tushar hit it out of the park in their respective roles, with the backing of one of the year’s most brilliant supporting casts.
Rarely has a man-woman equation been explored in Hindi cinema with such a fine balance between what is and what ought to be. Titu Ambani critiques conventions without turning Mousumi into an unrealistic, unconvincing heroic idol. Too many such films in the past have departed from their purportedly progressive goals by marginalising the woman midway through the narrative or unwittingly revealing their own conservative true colours at some point. Titu Ambani does not – despite drawing its name from the male lead – thus placing writer-director Rohit Raj Goyal in the company of a tiny group of men filmmakers who have created women characters with a depth of understanding that rises above a mere desire to appear politically correct.
Titu Ambani is a thoughtful, believable, sweet and funny film that did not get the attention it deserved when it was released in theatres this summer.
2: Badhaai Do
- Director: Harshavardhan Kulkarni
- Primary cast: Bhumi Pednekar, Rajkummar Rao
A few years back, I interviewed the late scholar Saleem Kidwai for an article on the portrayal of the LGBT+ community in Hindi cinema down the decades. When I asked him if he thought misrepresentation and stereotyping are better than erasure, he said: “Negative characters at least prompt a discussion. Caricatures are not good, but if we wait for that perfect gay character to emerge, we’ll be waiting a long time. There’s a whole journey where lots of rubbish will be produced before a full-fledged gay character grows.” I wish Saleem saab was around to see Harshavardhan Kulkarni’s Badhaai Do, the point at which the Hindi film industry has finally – finally! – arrived after years of “lots of rubbish” interspersed with occasional splashes of sensitivity.
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Written by Akshat Ghildial, Suman Adhikary and Harshavardhan himself, Badhaai Do is the story of a lavender couple who are as different in their view of their own sexual orientation as white chalk is from blue cheese. The chemistry that Bhumi Pednekar and Rajkummar Rao conjure up with their respective romantic partners in the film is as much a factor of impeccable writing as their impeccable performances.
Like Titu Ambani, Badhaai Do has a point to make but it does so – just like that film – with a feather light touch and a sense of humour that never once makes light of the homophobia in the social milieu in which it is set. Badhaai Do is a case study for students of cinema on the difference between laughing at members of a marginalised community and laughing with.
3: Jalsa
- Director: Suresh Triveni
- Primary cast: Vidya Balan, Shefali Shah, Rohini Hattangady, Surya Kasibhatla
“Jalsa is not about social disparities and human relationships alone… It is thematically an unslottable film that is not specifically about anything yet is about everything, ranging from class differences to happenstance and the call of the human conscience – in short, it is about life itself… Half the battle for Jalsa was won when Vidya Balan and Shefali Shah were roped in to share screen space. Balan has the ability to transport a viewer into the universe of her emotions, but rarely has she done so as thoroughly as in Jalsa, playing off Shah’s completely unself-conscious rendition of the distraught, progressively bitter Ruksana.”
4: Qala
- Director: Anvitaa Dutt
- Primary cast: Tripti Dimri, Swastika Mukherjee, Babil Khan
Mental and emotional fragility have rarely been portrayed as exquisitely in cinema as it is in Qala. Writer-director Anvitaa Dutt’s period drama is about a daughter whose mother blames her for the death of her baby brother and whose worst nightmare comes to life in her adulthood in the form of a fellow singer epitomising everything that the mother and she, young Qala Manjushree, imagined a son in the family would be. The goings-on on screen are imbued with other-worldly atmospherics and an eeriness that reflects the ghosts of Qala’s present and past.
In addition to top-notch production design (Meenal Agarwal) and cinematography (Siddharth Diwan), Qala features one of the best soundtracks to come from the Hindi film industry in years (Amit Trivedi).
Qala marks the acting debut of Babil Khan, the late Irrfan Khan’s son. While Babil is no doubt a talent to watch out for, the film belongs to the formidable Tripti Dimri and Swastika Mukherjee who play off each other with incredible restraint. Tripti’s rendition of the hurt and insecurity caused by rejection could melt a heart of stone.
5: Gehraiyaan
- Director: Shakun Batra
- Primary cast: Deepika Padukone, Siddhanth Chaturvedi, Ananya Pandey, Dhairya Karwa
"Gehraiyaan isn't set up like a typical thriller, but the plot's events move forward with such a sense of urgency that it's impossible to turn away. The plot has been given a pace and tenor by the authors (Devitre Dhillon, Batra, Sumit Roy, and Yash Sahai) and editor Nitesh Bhatia that make it the movie version of a page-turning novel.
6: Matto Ki Saikil
- Director: M. Gani
- Primary cast: Prakash Jha, Anita Choudhary, Aarohi Sharma, Idhika Roy
While Hindi cinema by and large insists on keeping caste at arm’s length, M.Gani places it at the front and centre of the action in the poignant and consistently gripping rural drama, Matto Ki Saikil. The titular protagonist is a daily-wage labourer who works on construction sites and does other odd jobs. The back-breaking burdens he bears are made worse by the terrible condition of the cycle that is his only means of transport.
Matto Ki Saikil is in fine form in its examination of the male lead’s inner and outer journey, village politics and his daughter’s fledgling ties with a local boy. It slips up in its portrayal of Matto’s marriage though, occasionally straying towards suggesting that the man in an impoverished household bears a greater burden than his spouse.
The cast looks and feels like real people rather than performers, with Prakash Jha – who viewers know better as a director – leading the charge with a conviction that begs the question why we don’t see him acting more often.
Matto Ki Saikil rolls out at a sedate pace that, without any formulaic attempts at being entertaining, still manages to be engaging right till its very end.
