The Genius of Imtiaz Ali
Imtiaz Ali has been a revelation for the Indian cinema and his movies are a benchmark for everyone trying to make it big in direction.
All of us wonder as to why Imtiaz Ali makes the movies he does — be it the bubbly Jab We Met where two people with starkly opposite temperament get involved with each other, or the passionate Rockstar, where a common man wanted to experience heartbreak to become a famous artist. Among his other films are Highway, about a city girl bonding with a country thug or Tamasha, where Ved tries to chase his passion while being involved with Tara.
Imtiaz Ali and his movies make us think about a lot of things that we usually do not want to think about. Although film making as a whole is not a one-man job, it’s the director who is often attributed with the success and also takes the blame for a flop. Starting on the silver screen with Socha Na Tha in 2005, Ali received a lot of critical acclaim for the movie. He was later catapulted into the galaxy of top directors with the success of Jab We Met, Love Aaj Kal and Rockstar.
He has created a separate style for himself wherein he is responsible for the technical part and also for the aesthetic delivery of the film. His movies track the life of contemporary youth through the various protagonists in Geet, Janardhan, Ved, or Veer. All his works have a romantic undertone but the portrayal is very different from what the other creators show. He does not show these protagonists belonging to any affluent family with huge sets and extended song sequences. His protagonists undergo a lot of internal conflict like most of us and majorly live a middle-class life as well. What sets him apart from most of the Bollywood directors is his quality to force his audience to experiment and think about the various situations in their mind rather than spoon-feeding them the story.
Almost all the songs for his movies are penned by Irshad Kamil who is a genius in his own might and has written some of the gems such as Saada Haq, Nadaan Parinde, Ajj Din Chadheya, and Tum Se Hi. With music composers such as AR Rahman and Pritam, Ali works hard to make the albums of his movie a soothing and soulful affair. Imtiaz Ali is a director with cult following and movies such as Tamasha and Rockstar exemplify this fact. The imperfect characters in his movie make them a realistic affair and his nonlinear storytelling technique give his work a whole new dimension.
There is no doubt that his works are critically acclaimed and also has a lot of faithful following and has also helped Bollywood create a separate and distinct genre of romantic movies that is relevant, realistic, and deglamorized.
