Hits, misses, deaths, brave, independent films and formulaic successes..the usual ingredients of an year at the movies.  And some memories linger like Jab Tak Hai Jaan (http://unboxedwriters.com/2012/11/jab-tak-hai-jaan-fearless-sentimentality/), a bravely naive last offering by Yash Chopra in an unsentimental time. Yash Chopra believed in love. In humanism. Yes, he was a dream merchant, but at the core of his being was a simple man who thought life was beautiful and as long as he lived, he brought our hearts and our jaded senses to life, with his unerring sense of music and poetry. From him, we learnt that love was a thing of inexplicable magic.

 **
And then there was the grit and bare-boned minimalism of Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Paan Singh Tomar (http://unboxedwriters.com/2012/03/paan-singh-tomar-guts-and-glory/), and the brilliance of Irrfan Khan. Irrfan’s Tomar was not about shirt ripping and visible muscle. The muscle was much deeper. Somewhere lodged in the soul. His Tomar was not strut and swagger and tried and tested mass triggers. Irrfan allowed Tomar to inhabit his limbs, his eyes, his voice. He may not win any awards for this role but as an actor, he is peerless.
**

And so while Paan Singh Tomar, remained unsung, Anurag Basu’s heavily derivative Barfi! (ttp://unboxedwriters.com/2012/09/barfi-completion-not-perfection/) made its way to the Oscars on borrowed wings. Vidya Balan (http://unboxedwriters.com/2012/03/kahaani-a-redolent-pickle/) continued to  reinvent herself this year too and to distill the Indian film heroine beyond  her size, skin colour, weight, objectification in item songs and  tiny roles in big budget films to performance. And presence. The kind that makes you look at a woman beyond her physicality and what is covering or uncovering it, into her soul where storms rage, a drop of  joy spreads as if it were a water-colour tint on a sheet of hand-made paper, a smile is a dialogue, a frown is a question and a gaze is sometimes an embrace or a blow in the gut.
**

After Satyamev Jayate on TV, Aamir Khan was seen in a self-effacing role in Reema Kagti’s Talaash (http://unboxedwriters.com/2012/11/talaash-layered-moments/).  A film packed with an atmospheric texture  (both emotional and visual). Every space that the film is shot in by the brilliant K U Mohanan, has imprints of a narrative.  The unpainted forbidding walls of  interrogation rooms and police stations where files spill out of shelves, phones ring and the search for answers goes on amid chaos and dead ends. And then occasionally we see pent-houses of never-ending high rise buildings  where white-draped rooms open to infinity and even mourning is conducted with designer decorum and yet murder is just a dial away.
**
Ang Lee’s Life of Pi (http://unboxedwriters.com/2012/11/lessons-from-the-life-of-pi/) came with the message, ““And above all..don’t lose hope.”
We paid tribute to Pandit Ravi Shankar (http://unboxedwriters.com/2012/12/beyond-life-and-death/).
We mourned an enigma called Rajesh Khanna and celebrated his memories (http://unboxedwriters.com/2012/07/rajesh-khanna-20-musical-memories/) remembered the genial warmth of AK Hangal (http://unboxedwriters.com/2012/08/ak-hangal-the-genial-memory-maker/), said goodbye to Dara Singh (http://unboxedwriters.com/2012/07/dara-singh-the-last-action-hero/), Jaspal Bhatti (http://unboxedwriters.com/2012/10/jaspal-bhatti-a-tribute/), Ashok Mehta (http://unboxedwriters.com/2012/08/tribute-masters-of-light/) and Joy Mukherjee (http://unboxedwriters.com/2012/03/joy-mukherjee-a-suitable-boy/). Rajinikanth turned 62. Dilip Kumar turned 90. Sri Devi made a come back.
**
Bond, James Bond was back (http://unboxedwriters.com/2012/11/skyfall-the-review/). From an implacable killing machine, he became a man who talks about things coming full circle, about resurrection, about wavering between pulling the trigger and holding fire and the tough moment of indecision when you don’t know what to do. About accepting mortality, limitations and defeat, even death when it is inevitable and then gritting your teeth and rising again from the dead.
So things do shift and alter. Here is hoping that we will see more change and less inertia in the new year.

**
This story was earlier carried in The New Indian Express.. 
**
Reema Moudgil has been writing on art, theatre, cinema, music, gender issues, architecture and more in leading newspapers and magazines since 1994.  Her first novel Perfect Eight ((http://www.flipkart.com/perfect-eight-9380032870/p/itmdf87fpkhszfkb?pid=9789380032870&_l=A0vO9n9FWsBsMJKAKw47rw–&_r=dyRavyz2qKxOF7Yuc )won her an award from the Public Relations Council of India in association with Bangalore University. She also edited Chicken Soup for Indian Woman’s Soul and runs  unboxedwriters.com.  She  writes art catalogues and has scripted a commissioned documentary or two. She has exhibited her paintings in Bangalore and New York,  taught media studies to post graduates and hosts a daily ghazal show Andaz-e-Bayan on Radio Falak.