LIST: Best Films Of The Decade

At the outset I admit I haven’t watched all the films released in this decade. But since I don’t think I’ve missed any of the significant ones, will dare to continue. This is not a chronological list -– either in terms of release dates or of ranking. It certainly isn’t based on box-office performance or on any other generalised parameters. These are just the handful of films made between 2000 and 2010 that I have enjoyed watching for various reasons. I may even have missed a few important ones. But the logic is, if they didn’t pop up at the top of the head, they may not have had a lasting impact.

1. Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (2005): Three friends graduate from college in the early ‘70s. The wealthiest, Siddharth, is guided by his idealism to join the Naxalite movement, Geeta marries an upwardly mobile civil servant while carrying on her old affair with Siddharth, and Vikram smooth-talks and bribes his way to riches, determined to leave behind the disadvantages of his lower-middle class, small-town upbringing and the principles of his Gandhian father. Siddharth’s romanticism is crushed by the heavy blows of the state machinery; Vikram’s ill-gotten wealth can’t save him from being reduced to a vegetable. It’s Geeta who stays true to herself and refuses to follow Siddharth to London, choosing to live in a village and nurse Vikram instead. Sudhir Mishra’s elegy on a lost generation is likely to remain close to my heart for a long time to come.