On a road trip: Movies that have explored the best of Indian landscapes
In the cinematic universe, out of all the genres that we n enjoy, j the ‘road movie’ one wh hich takes the ewe rs on a virtual ur rney, savouring e very spirit of dventure that xists in the minds and souls f all human ings. i In the de d spectrum of ia an movies, re ar re innumerable movie s encompassingompassing various languages and time. Listed below are some of these movies and how they capturedaptured the vevery soul of the dian lan ndscape.
HEOr E GOOD OAD
rowing up in oolkata, in the icinity of atyajit Ray’s ouse, some of yy’s aura surely stt have rubbedthe on trubbedthe young Gyan rea whho went on to t this gemm of a movie in Gujarati called The Good Road (2013). The film, which wasas selected as India’s official try to thhe Oscars later , cauused a huge rorre in the entire lmm fraternity, as ome of them onsidered itesh Batra’s he Lunchbox 013) to have een an automatic oicce. he movie was tly shoot on the roads ujarat nearr Kutch and its cinematography captures the lyrical soul of a desert-like setting where roads are covered with wild countryside of endless void, devoid of much greenery or vegetation.
ROAD, MOVIE
This film, released in 2009, is about the journey of a young man called Vishnu, who was brilliantly portrayed on screen by Abhay Deol. Vishnu wanted to escape the humdrum of boredom in his daily life, where he has no interest whatsoever in his father’s traditional business. So, when he got the chance, he set out with an old truck across the desert landscape of India to his destination of a port. This movie was again shot in the desert areas of Jaisalmer in Rajasthan and Kutch in Gujarat. Along the way, Vishnu meets a young boy, an old man and an attractive gipsy woman. In the backdrop of harsh Indian terrain, Vishnu also found joy and laughter in his many trials and tribulations. This movie again captures the lyrical proportions of an Indian desert which in its rugged sense has a beauty of its own. Road, Movie has been directed by Dev Benegal.
PIKU
Although this 2015 film by Shoojit Sircar is not a road movie in the traditional sense of the word, but one of its most important plot twists happens on the road. The movie is about the protagonist Piku and her eccentric father Bhashkor who is obsessed with his bowel movements. Because of this problem, when the father and daughter had to go to Kolkata from Delhi, they took the road rather than the aeroplane as the father was not confident about his bowel conditions on air. They were driven by Rana, played by the ever indulgent Irrfan Khan.
Piku was very aptly portrayed by Deepika Padukone and Amitabh Bachchan played the role of her cantankerous father. Their journey to Kolkata shows a beautiful Indian landscape, though this portion of the film was shot on the Gujarat Ahmedabad highway rather than an UPKolkata highway. Nonetheless, the journey captures the Indian landscape through the colourful characters who were driving on it in the movie. The entire film somehow took the road to process the chemistry between its main characters (like Piku and Rana developing a certain rhythm).
HIGHWAY
Highway (2014) is the movie which saw the emergence of Alia Bhatt as a great and nuanced actress of Indian cinema. She not only played her character to its perfect fruition in this movie, her easy charm and innocence probably reflected the metaphorical concept of a road being an empty verse where characters can add to their own songs. The film Highway is about a city girl who was abducted by a much older man and about whom she develops some kind of a Stockholm syndrome later on probably due to her oppressed childhood, but which also saw her experience the true meaning of freedom and liberty while traversing on varied Indian roads. The film was shot on many highways, covering the states of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Kashmir and even Delhi. It was directed by Imtiaz Ali.