Dil Chahta Hai

 

Dil chahta hai is a Bollywood youth romance film directed by Farhan Akhtar and produced by Ritesh Sidhwani under the Excel Entertainment which was founded by Farhan and Ritesh. It was their cinematic début film. it was starred with Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Akshaye Khanna, Preity Zinta, Sonali Kulkarni and Dimple Kapadia. All actors performance received critically positive review.     

Dil chahta hai was released on 10 August, 2001. It was critically successful and well received by audiences. Some film critics called it a realistic portrait of Indian youth which was slightly different from other Bollywood trend and some called it a ‘revolution’.

The music was composed by Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy and the lyrics were written by Javed Akhtar. Ravi K. Chandran was the principal photographer of Dil Chahta Hai. The filming took several places in Mumbai, Goa, and Sydney. In Bollywood history, it was the 1^st movie where the sync sound technique was used. That means, those sounds were recorded when the film was originally shoot.  

Dil Chahta Hai is a story of three blossom friends Akash (Aamir Khan), Sameer (Saif Ali Khan), and Siddharth (Akshaye Khanna) who graduated from college and went to Goa trip for celebration. Although their character was incompatible, but their friendship is genuine. Nothing comes between them until they fall in love.

However, their personal thought and values about love and relationship create a rift in their friendship because, Akash is a person who never believed in love. He is a care free soul and wants to enjoy life fully. Sameer is a romantic person who always wants to be in love though he yet not understands it.

On the other hand, Siddharth is an artist and the most mature, understanding person among them. He knows life’s real meaning as well as love.

Coming back from Goa, Siddharrth told Akash and Sammer that he gets attract to a much older woman, Tara Jaiswal (Dimple Kapadia), who is also a divorced mother as well as an alcoholic. Tara and Siddharth share the same artistic values. After hearing this news Akash cannot realize the depth of it and make some comment about her age. For this reason, Siddharth slaps him.  

After this incident they get separate. Akash goes to Sidney for managing family business. In Sidney, Akash meet a college friend Shalini (Preity Zinta) who was a free spirit girl. They spend many times together and within two weeks they fall in love with each other. But Shalini was previously engaged with Rohit who is a family friend of her.

After two weeks, she back to India for her marriage and realized that it is hard for her to marry Rohit. The heartbroken Akash also comes back to India and proposed her. End of the moment she agrees to marry Akash. On the other hand, Sammer also falls in love with Pooja (Sonali Kulkarni) who was his parent’s friend’s daughter.

At that time, Siddharth finds that Tara was suffered with advanced stage of cirrhosis and she died in a hospital continually taking with Siddharth. He broke down but that night he finds his two friends to share his grief. They were reunited once again.

In the last moment of the story, three friends went to Goa after six months with their love. At their picnic spot Siddharth meet with his love and those three happy couple enjoying the trip.    

Farhan Akhtar wrotethe story in his Dairy during a holiday trips in goa and his one and half month stayed in New York City in 1996. This story was influenced by a real eventof Farhan’s friend. Initially, the plot of the story based on Akash and Shalini, a fresh love relationship. Then Farhan showed the story to his parents Javed Akhtar and Honey Irani. They loved the story line and appreciated Farhan’s effort. After Farhan started to write-up other sub plots of the story.  

He was also quoted that:

"I always wondered what happens to the best friends of the hero after reel number three. Where do they go? When he needs them the most, they are never there. And so at some time the weight of the story shifted from Aamir [Khan]'s love story with Preity [Zinta] to becoming a story about the friendships and how individual love stories affect the friendships."

In 1998, the first title was selected Hum Teen. After writing the screenplay, the film was retitled Dil Chahta Hai. The original story of the film was writing in English. Then it was translated in Hindi. Some moments of the film’s story were inspired by the English playwright William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

Dil Chahta Hai total production cost was around 80 million rupees and its gross collection was 397.2 million rupees. The film was nominated for several Film Award and won two National Film Awards and seven Filmfare Awards. Later the film was shown in several film festivals including The 33rd International Film Festival of India, The 14th Palm Springs International Film Festival and The 11th Austin Film Festival. 

Many film critics published their views about ‘Dil Chahta Hai’.

Here are some

In a review carried by Filmfare, Arati Koppar hailed Dil Chahta Hai as a "fabulous ... attempt" for a directorial début, claiming that Aamir Khan was the best among the other lead actors.”

The Wall Street Journal, Beth Watkins wrote about the film, "The mix of humor, emotion, sincerity and wisdom makes Dil Chahta Hai a truly enduring film.”

Jasdeep Singh Pannu from NDTV labelled Dil Chahta Hai as a "wonderfully-crafted film" with "a melodramatic act, an element better kept to the conventional Bollywood movie".

Komal Nahta praised Zinta for "[looking] glamorous and sexy and acts beautifully. The new look of all the four aforementioned actors only adds to the freshness." He also saw Kapadia suited her role despite her old look but panned Kulkarni's "wasted" role. Apart from reviewing the performances, Nahta also expressed admiration for the direction from Farhan Akhtar and took note of his ability to handle the narration "with aplomb and belies the fact that this is his maiden attempt".