30 years of Aamir Khan,Juhi Chawla and QSQT - Page 4

In his foreword, Mansoor Khan himself called Chintamani's account of the film's journey a "thriller-like narrative. For fans of the film and for film buffs, there is a lot to discover. Did you know, for instance, that singer Alisha Chinoy had auditioned for the female lead? Or that it was one of the first Hindi films to have computerized scripts printed and walkie-talkies on the set?

Chapter by chapter, Chintamani has brought alive how all the pieces of the QSQT puzzle fell into place. Speaking to Aamir, Mansoor and cinematographer Kiran Deohans on how the film came together was fascinating for him.

"These three guys were such a closely knit unit," he noted. "It's amazing that very rarely do you come across films where the lead actor, the director and the cameraman are so much in sync." According to Chintamani, some previous examples of this were Guide (1965), Deewaar (1975) and Lamhe (1991).

"I think films are a reflection of society at that time and also filmmaking of that time," he said. "The best legacy is how they remain relevant, even after decades; how they continue to inspire generations of filmmakers and actors with their simplicity. QSQT's legacy for me would be that great change happens very subtly. You don't see it happening and those are the truly great changes.

"When I was writing my book on Rajesh Khanna, a lot of people in the film business were taken aback that you could write about a film like Red Rose (1980) or a film like Aap Ki Kasam (1974) and explore it in the same way as a Mother India (1957) or a Mughal-e-Azam (1960). That trepidation somewhere has gone now. People are now open to the idea of looking at their films as art forms.

He thinks 20 to 25 years is the right time to go back and revisit certain films and filmmakers, especially since classics like Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1942) also never got their due when they were released.

"I don't think there should be any hesitation looking at a film which is totally commercial and totally escapist and trying to look at the impact it has had in filmmaking in India," Chintamani said. "That hesitation, or embarrassment, needs to be let go of. If you don't look at Manmohan Desai's films, then it would be very difficult for us to understand the films of Farah Khan or Rohit Shetty. A lot of people would not hold Rohit Shetty in the same league as a Manmohan Desai, but 20 years from now, we would be talking about him the same way we talked about Manmohan Desai 10 years ago.

Returning to QSQT's legacy, Chintamani wrote in his book that the film's "freshness lay in the unique manner in which it dealt with the quintessential components of commercial Hindi cinema and, in fact, it is the film's steadfastness to the genre's classicality songs, dance, drama and even the archetypal 1980s theatricality of the prologue that makes the treatment stand apart.

Three decades later, he noted, one can still see how it "laid the foundation of a mindset that you could do something honest without compromising too much.