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The magic of movies works two ways, they can make you happy or they can make you sad. The feeling brought out can be intentional, or unintentional. Like Devdas, being a tragic love story, can depress you with its ending. But a film like Race 3 can send you into depression for wasting nearly three hours of yours plus two hundred bucks. Speaking of happy endings, movies like Gully Boy and Article 15 may not comic films but the way they end, they do leave you with a sense of genuine happiness of watching a good film. But we can't say the same about the supposedly funny films like Pagalpanti. But that's a critical analysis for another time. Filmfare Awards 2020 Nominees List: Gully Boy, Uri, Chhichhore Bag Nominations; Akshay Kumar, Ayushmann Khurrana, Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, Kangana Ranaut, Shahid Kapoor Also Nominated.
Speaking of endings, there are times when you are watching a film which has a different tone, and then all of a sudden, it drops in a downbeat twist ending that you least expect, leaving you in the gloom. Maybe even for days.
In this feature, we will look at 10 Bollywood films that left us shocked with their unexpected downer of endings.
Sholay
The Downer Ending: Sholay is the greatest, most ambitious Hindi movie of all time, and one of the ultimate bromance movies too. It is a classic tale of good vs bad, where the good ultimately wins over the bad. But the victory has a huge cost and that's the death of Jai, played by Amitabh Bachchan. Gabbar Singh might be defeated by both Veeru and Thakur, and the former even gets to marry Basanti. However, there will always be a hollow feeling caused by Jai's death that both Veeru and the audience is left over with, that even the defeat of the villain can never remedy. What's more, Jai may no longer be in this world, but Gabbar is alive and kicking in a jail, where he can escape from any time. Just like he has done in the past. Now, who said Sholay had a happy ending?
Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron
The Downer Ending: Kundan Shah's satire is one of the best comedies Bollywood has ever produced, and it also has the funniest climax, like ever. And then comes that ending. Just when we thought that our two upright heroes have managed to get the crooks guilty as charged, the movie (and the corrupt system) lets the bad guys go and instead punishes the heroes. Sure, like the rest of the movie, even this is played in a light-hearted tone. But the scene makes its point even then - the corrupt will keep on prevailing and the innocent will pay for it as a result. That closer-to-reality bit did hurt us the most.
Sadma
The Downer Ending: Okay, you might be wondering why I am even putting this film here. For one, that title itself is a spoiler. Secondly, of course, everyone knows that tragic ending where a man acting like a monkey made us cry bucketful of tears, for once. Pray, tell me though, when you watched this Kamal Haasan, Sridevi-starrer for the first time without any spoilers, did you expect it to have such a traumatic ending? We have had tragic love stories, but having a beloved who has no memory that you existed despite spending months taking care of her - that's heartbreaking!
Peepli Live
The Downer Ending: This Aamir Khan production, directed by Anusha Rizvi, is a social satire on farmer suicides and media frenzy. Both the themes are not bound to get happier endings in real life, which is exactly what reflects in the film too. The movie is about an impoverished farmer (Omkar Das Manikpuri) who plans to commit suicide so that his family can get compensation, but his threat of suicide turns into a political and media circus. While Peepli Live! plays around with the ideas in a comical tone, the climax becomes hurtful when things take turns for the worse. The media and the politicians clash with each other, a benevolent reporter (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) gets burned to death, the farmer runs away and becomes a labourer and his family loses his land. Well, reality stinks!
Kai Po Che
The Downer Ending: The readers of Chetan Bhagat's book Three Mistakes of My Life, on which Abhishek Kapoor's Kai Po Che is based, know that one of the three friends gets killed during the violent climax set during the 2002 Gujarat riots. And yet even they were not prepared for the twist the movie offered them. In the book, it was Omi (played in the movie by Amit Sadh) who gets killed trying to save a Muslim kid from his bigoted Hindu uncle. In the movie, though, it is the kind-hearted Ishaan (Sushant Singh Rajput) who dies, shot by his vengeful best friend Omi. To make things worse before his death, Ishaan also learns that his other friend Govi (Rajkummar Rao) was having an affair with his sister. Not only did this gave a double blow to the doomed Ishaan, but even the viewers were taken off-guard by his death.
Stanley Ka Dabba
The Downer Ending: Amole Gupte's lovely film was mostly about an adorable kid Stanley (Partho Gupte) and his teacher (Amole Gupte) over the delicious dishes the former brought from his home. Towards the end, it felt like we are having a happy ending with the selfish teacher leaving the school for good and Stanley impressing at a school event. And then comes the shocker that left us with a thud in our hearts. It turns out that Stanley is actually an orphan and his 'home' is a restaurant where he works as a child labourer and is daily abused by the owner, who is also his uncle. Try smiling after watching that scene, will ya?
The Lunchbox
The Downer Ending: The Lunchbox is an unusual love story about two strangers, with their own set of problems in life, who have never met each other, but keep in touch through the letters sent through lunch-boxes. In the end, Saajan Fernandes (Irrfan Khan) decides to take a chance and travel to meet up Ila (Nimrat Kaur), while she is leaving her home to Bhutan, after learning her husband is a cheat. Director Ritesh Batra keeps the ending ambiguous, by not showing the leads meet. Now you can assume that they might have, but if you really observed the going-ons that happened before, The Lunchbox isn't exactly going for a happy ending and spared us from seeing an actual sad one. That open ending is actually devastating because we were yearning for two to meet each other, and that never happens!
Ugly
The Downer Ending: Ugly is a dark movie that falls right under Anurag Kashyap's brand of cinema. A girl's kidnapping brings out the selfish sides of her own relatives, as each tries to take advantage of the situation, including her own biological parents. Even with the gloomy happenings, we were curious about the central mystery and hoped they find that little girl safe and sound. Strangely, it is the step-father (Ronit Roy) who is more serious about searching for her. But he and his team had been quite callous about the task, as when they finally find her, she is already dead, merely a few metres away from where she was kidnapped. That final scene of her decomposing face will haunt you for days.
FAN
The Downer Ending: FAN had a great premise - of an obsessive fan who becomes his idol's biggest enemy. Shah Rukh Khan is also brilliant in both roles. But the performance and the premise are let down by some very illogical writing and the movie's strange decisions to suspend belief for some action scenes. However, the ending is something that you really never wished would happen that way (especially since the movie was sold over the lively "Jabra Fan" song). After Aryan chases Gaurav over roof-tops, both of them are exhausted and talk to each other. Aryan asks him to stop troubling him and surrender himself to the law. Gaurav, instead, smiles wryly and tells Aryan that he hasn't yet apologised for breaking his heart, and flings himself off the roof to his death. That's all that was needed by Gaurav - a mere apology by the man he idolised for years, for telling him earlier that Gaurav was not his fan. Aryan may have gotten back his old life, but the final scene of him imagining seeing Gaurav among the sea of his fans, confirms that the latter's death will haunt him for eternity.
October
The Downer Ending: Okay, October wasn't exactly a happy movie. Featuring Varun Dhawan's career-best performance, October was about Dan who finds himself taking care of his fellow student Shiuli (Banita Sandhu), after the latter accidentally falls off the terrace and is left comatose. Usually, this turn of events doesn't exactly spell happy, but Shoojit Sircar keeps giving us hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that Shiuli might get out of her coma. Alas! Our hopes are dashed when Shiuli doesn't come out of her coma and passes away. A devasted Dan didn't even find out what she wanted to tell him before the fall, the very reason why he started taking care of this girl, even though they weren't even good friends.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 11, 2020 10:44 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
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