Dil Chahta Hai

Dil Chahta Hai
Directed by	Farhan Akhtar
Produced by	Ritesh Sidhwani Pravin Talreja (co-producer)
Screenplay by	Farhan Akhtar Kassim Jagmagia
Starring	Aamir Khan Saif Ali Khan Akshaye Khanna Preity Zinta Sonali Kulkarni Dimple Kapadia
Music by	Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy
Cinematography	Ravi K. Chandran
Editing by	A. Sreekar Prasad
Distributed by	Excel Entertainment
Release date(s)	10 August 2001
Running time	184 minutes
Country	India
Language	Hindi
Budget	14 crore (US$2.84 million)[1]
Box office	25 crore (US$5.07 million)[2]

Dil Chahta Hai (Hindī: दिल चाहता है, English: The Heart Desires, but billed as Do Your Thing) is a 2001 Indian film starring Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Akshaye Khanna, Preity Zinta, Sonali Kulkarni, and Dimple Kapadia. The first film written and directed by Farhan Akhtar, it is set in modern-day urban Mumbai and focuses on a major period of transition in the lives of three young friends.

The film was critically acclaimed, winning that year's National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi. It was also a moderate commercial success doing average business,^[2] though it performed better in the urban areas of the country compared to the rural areas, which was attributed by critics to the city-oriented lifestyle depicted in the movie in which all the characters are, without exception, from rich or upper-middle-class families.^[3]

Plot

The movie is based on writer-director Farhan Akhtar's diaries on his trips to Goa, his 1996 month-and-a-half long stay at New York, and a storyline narrated to him by a friend.^[4] It tells the story of three friends graduating from college and transitioning into life as adults. Each individual has a different perspective of life and love in particular.

Akash (Aamir Khan) does not believe in love, so he does not keep girlfriends for more than two weeks. Sameer (Saif Ali Khan) is a genial, well-meaning, desperately romantic but confused guy who is prone to romantic infatuations and believes to have found true love whenever he gets attracted to a girl. Siddharth (Akshaye Khanna), or Sid, an artist by profession and the most mature of the three, is not interested in trivial romances and is dedicated to his work.

Friends Sid (Akshaye Khanna), Sameer (Saif Ali Khan) and Akash (Aamir Khan) at their graduation party

Akash, who is not only a cad in his personal life (breaking hearts, proposing to a girl named Shalini (Preity Zinta) in jest) but also a mischief-maker in his friends' lives, craftily engineers a breakup between Sameer and his girlfriend. He then plans a vacation trip to the beaches of Goa.

Sameer predictably "falls in love" in Goa with a pretty Swiss girl, a story that ends in disaster. He returns home to find that his parents have arranged a meeting with a potential marriage prospect. He resists at first as he does not want an arranged marriage, but the moment he sees the girl, Pooja (Sonali Kulkarni), he realises that she is 'the one'. Unfortunately, she is already in a relationship with someone else and Sameer has to be content with just being her friend.

Sid, in the meantime, befriends and eventually falls in love with Tara (Dimple Kapadia), an older divorcee and alcoholic, who had moved into a nearby house and shares his love for art. He decides to keep it from her, suppressing all hopes of a relationship as he knows that she, like most other people in society, would consider this scandalous. When his family and friends start finding out, everything goes wrong. Sid's mother is horrified and wrongly accuses Tara of having led Sid on. Akash makes fun of Sid's true intentions and his offensive remarks create a rift in their friendship. Tara hears that Sid has quarrelled with friends and family because of her and feeling that she has ruined his life, refuses to see him.

Akash, on the other hand, is also experiencing romantic upheaval. His parents send him to Sydney, Australia to work for the family business. On the flight, he meets Shalini again. He apologises for his earlier prank and asks her to show him around the new city. Even though Shalini is engaged to marry someone else, she finds herself agreeing and they both, eventually, start to feel a certain "something". She tries to find out how he feels, but he holds back. She then leaves for India to marry Rohit, her fiancé. Akash lets her go, then realizes that he can't live without her and returns to India to win her back. He proposes to her a day before her wedding and she accepts with the blessing of Rohit's parents. Rohit tries to resist but is helpless with his parents' decision and Shalini's true love for Akash.

Meanwhile, Sameer and Pooja start going out after she breaks up with her boyfriend, and Sameer plans on proposing marriage soon.

Tara is hospitalized with liver cirrhosis and dies with Sid at her bedside. Sid and Akash reconcile (with a little help from Sameer) and two years after their first Goa trip, the three friends regroup in Goa where Sid meets Priya (the girl that loved Akash). They share a smile and Sid realises that life goes on.

Cast

• Aamir Khan as Akash Malhotra
• Saif Ali Khan as Sameer
• Akshaye Khanna as Siddharth "Sid" Sinha
• Preity Zinta as Shalini
• Sonali Kulkarni as Pooja
• Dimple Kapadia as Tara Jaiswal
• Ayub Khan as Rohit
• Suhasini Mulay as Sid's Mother
• Rajat Kapoor as Mahesh
• Samantha Tremayne as Deepa
• Suchitra Pillai as Priya
• Azad Dadarkar as Subodh aka Time Table
• Rakesh Pandey as Rohit's Father
• Ahmed Khan as A K Malhotra, Akash's father
• Mandala Tayde as the girl at the fort

Soundtrack

Main article: Dil Chahta Hai (soundtrack)

Production

Farhan Akhtar began work on the film's script in 1998; the relationship of the characters Akash and Shalini was based on a similar experience of one of Akhtar's friends.^[5] Other parts of the film were adapted from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.^[6] Aamir Khan was initially offered the role of Sid, but he elected to play the role of Akash, for which he grew a soul patch. Abhishek Bachchan was also offered the role of Sid in the film. After he turned it down, Akshaye Khanna accepted the part. Akhtar convinced actress Dimple Kapadia to come out of retirement to play the role of divorcée Tara Jaiswal. After 15 months of extensive pre-production, the film was shot over a four month period in Mumbai and Sydney, Australia.^[5]

The film's style extended to the music and its picturisation in the movie. One song sequence recapitulates, and to some extent, parodies Bollywood song-and-dance history. Other songs drop the usual dance accompaniment — one song depicts an argument between two protagonists through the song's lyrics, another establishes the character's state of mind through a moody photo collage, while yet another imagines the beautiful and idealised world of an artist in love through a song inside a painting. There is also an extended opera sequence at the Sydney Opera House, which was exclusively commissioned for the film.^[5]

Reception

Critical response

The film received praise from critics for portraying contemporary Indian youth as cosmopolitan and urban. The characters are depicted as upper-class with lavish houses and designer clothes. They attend art exhibitions and performances of Western opera, and travel overseas as a matter of course. Some critics opined that the film did not perform well in the non-urban areas because the lifestyle depicted in the movie was too city-oriented.^[3]

The film was screened at the International Film Festival of India, the Palm Springs International Film Festival and the Austin Film Festival.^[7][8][9]

Box office

The film had a below average start at the box office but picked up slightly due to word of the mouth and was rated an average grosser by Boxoffice India. It became the eighth-highest grossing Bollywood film of the year 2001.^[2]

Awards

The awards won are highlighted in bold.

National Film Awards

• 2002: National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi

2002 Filmfare Awards

The film was nominated for thirteen Filmfare Awards. The awards it won and nominated for are listed below-

• Best Supporting Actor - (Akshaye Khanna)
• Best Comedian - (Saif Ali Khan)
• Critics Award Best Movie - (Farhan Akhtar)
• Best Screenplay - (Farhan Akhtar)
• Best Choreography - (Farah Khan)
• Best Editing - (A. Sreekar Prasad)
• RD Burman Award for New Music Talent - (Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy)
• Best Actor - Aamir Khan
• Best Movie - Farhan Akhtar
• Best Director - Farhan Akhtar
• Best Music Director - Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy
• Best Male Playback - Shaan, "Koi Kahe Kehta Rahe"
• Best Female Playback - Alka Yagnik, "Jaane Kyon"

IIFA

• Best Choreographer - Farah Khan
• Best Sound Recording - Vijay Benegal
• Best Supporting Actor - Saif Ali Khan
• Best Actor (Male) - Aamir Khan
• Best Supporting Actor - Akshaye Khanna
• Best Actor (Female) - Preity Zinta
• Best Picture
• Best Story - Farhan Akhtar
• Best Direction - Farhan Akhtar
• Best Female Playback Singer - Alka Yagnik for Jaane Kyun
• Best Lyrics - Javed Akhtar for Jaane Kyon
• Best Male Playback Singer - Srinivas for Kaisa Hai Ye Ruth
• Best Music Director - Shankar Ehsaan Loy

Screen Awards

• Best Choreographer - Farah Khan
• Best Dialogue - Farhan Akhtar
• Best Lyrics - Javed Akhtar
• Best Music Director - Shankar Ehsaan Loy
• Best Playback Singer Male - Sonu Nigam for Tanhayee
• Best Special Effect - Beeps
• Best Supporting Actor - Saif Ali Khan
• Best Actor - Aamir Khan
• Best Art Direction - Suzanne Caplan Merwanji
• Best Background Score - Shankar Ehsaan Loy
• Best Cinematography - Ravi K Chandran
• Best Director - Farhan Akhtar
• Best Editing - A Srikar Prasad
• Best Film
• Best Male Playback Singer - Srinivas for Kaisa Hai Ye Ruth
• Best Screenplay - Farhan Akhtar
• Best Supporting Actor - Akshaye Khanna

Zee Cine Awards

• Best Debut Director - Farhan Akhtar
• Best Supporting Actor - Akshaye Khanna
• Best Actor - Aamir Khan
• Best Director - Farhan Akhtar
• Best Film
• Best Lyricist - Javed Akhtar
• Best Music Director - Shankar Ehsaan Loy
• Best Male Playback Singer - Shankar Mahadevan for Dil Chahta Hai
• Best Male Playback Singer - Sonu Nigam for Tanhayee
• Best Story - Farhan Akhtar
• Best Supporting Actor (Male) - Akshaye Khanna
• Best Supporting Actor (Female) - Dimple Kapadia

Others

• Best Actor Critic's Award at Bollywood Movie Awards - Aamir Khan
• Best Actor in a Comic Role at Bollywood Movie Awards - Saif Ali Khan
• Best Male Playback Singer at Bollywood Music Awards - Sonu Nigam for Tanhayee

References

1. ^ "Dil Chahta Hai". IBOS. http://ibosnetwork.com/asp/filmbodetails.asp?id=Dil+Chahta+Hai. Retrieved September 07, 2011. 
2. ^ ^{a b c} "Box Office 2001". Box office India. http://www.boxofficeindia.com/showProd.php?itemCat=207&catName=MjAwMQ==. Retrieved August 2011. 
3. ^ ^{a b} Gulzar; Nihalani, Govind; Chatterjee, Saibal (2003). Encyclopaedia of Hindi Cinema. Encyclopaedia Britannica (India) Pvt Ltd.. p. 128. ISBN 81-7991-066-0. 
4. ^ The storyline was used for Akash's character, played by Aamir Khan. Farhan Akhtar tells it like it is Rediff.com , Movies, 23 September 2002.
5. ^ ^{a b c} Bhattacharya, Roshmila (23 August 2002). "Heart Copy". Screen. http://www.screenindia.com/old/20020823/fspe1.html. Retrieved 3 July 2009. 
6. ^ Ramesh, Randeep (29 July 2006). "A matter of caste as Bollywood embraces the Bard". Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jul/29/books.filmnews. Retrieved 5 April 2011. 
7. ^ "2003 Palm Springs Film Fest Line-Up". Notes from Hollywood. 2002. http://notesfromhollywood.com/templates/storydetailprintable.cfm?ID=354&Sectionid=8&storyset=yes&typeofsite=storydetail. Retrieved 2008-08-14. ^{[dead link]}
8. ^ "Dil Chahta Hai to be screened at IFFI". The Times of India. 2002-07-30. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/17589284.cms. Retrieved 2008-08-14. 
9. ^ "Cinematic Convergence". The Austin Chronicle. 2004-10-15. http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:233369. Retrieved 2008-08-14. 

External links

• Dil Chahta Hai at the Internet Movie Database

Awards
Preceded by Zubeidaa	National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi 2002	Succeeded by The Legend of Bhagat Singh