DIL SE (India, 1998)
Directed by: Mani Ratnam
Starring: Shahrukh Khan, Manisha Koirala, Preity Zinta

"...an eruption of action, music, romance and politics, the first Hindi feature from Mani Ratnam - India's answer to John Woo, Oliver Stone and Douglas Sirk rolled into one - is...an unrelentingly frenzied thriller."

- Eddie Cockrell, Variety

Bollywood is an alternate universe where musicals rule supreme, and in that universe, DIL SE is king. The first Indian movie to break into the UK's box office top ten, Mani Ratnam's tale of love in a time of terrorism jerks your tears with an iron fist. Its story hardly sounds like promising musical material, however: a journalist doing a puff piece on India's 50 Years of Independence falls in love with a suicide bomber on the eve of her final mission. Try dancing to that. But DIL SE does. While wearing a suicide vest.

Brilliant music by A. R. Rahman (probably one of the most prolific and celebrated film composers in the world), unearthly cinematography by Santosh Sivan (who would direct an arthouse remake of DIL SE called The Terrorist), and haunting performances make this a movie that can stand shoulder to shoulder with Singin’ in the Rain, or West Side Story. After decades of practice, India has honed the musical to a precision craft, and while DIL SE would be a compelling movie no matter what, add in the fact that it's a musical, and buying a ticket becomes like buying your first tab of acid: a doorway into a far out world you'd read about, but never been to.

DIL SE bleeds for all India. It's one of the oldest and most sophisticated countries in the world, but recently wracked by religious and ethnic violence. In 1991, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a female suicide bomber, and DIL SE looks history in the eye and asks uncomfortable questions about terrorism, violence, and whether love even matters in a world where we routinely kill each other in the name of god and country. DIL SE doesn't answer any of these questions, instead it hangs suspended in a universe of loss and ambiguity, a universe where even the best of us can go tragically wrong.

Ghost World, Monsoon Wedding, and Moulin Rouge (that Top 40 robot with a cash register for a heart) all referenced Bollywood, but most folks who fancy themselves cinema lovers find what's on offer from the world's largest film industry too tacky. Musicals? Ugh! With images of chubby maidens prancing through mountain meadows while belting out disco numbers, Americans take a patronizing attitude towards Bollywood. We snicker and smile and make fun of their movies as conventional, clichéd, silly, and primitive, when we really don't know what we're talking about. There are 20 theaters in New York and New Jersey that regularly show Indian movies, but you'll almost never find a white person in them. It's a parallel entertainment industry that doesn't want, or need, American validation.

If you thought Indian musicals were all about hairy-chested men with their shirts open, lip synching in fields, come on down to DIL SE and prepare to have your expectations shattered and your heart torched until it's a burnt-out shell.