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Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak'

1988 162’ col/scope Urdu d Mansoor Khan p/s Nasir Hussain lyr Majrooh Sultanpuri c Kiran Deohans m Anand-Milind lp Aamir Khan, Juhi Chawla, Ravinder Kapoor, Goga Kapoor, Dalip Tahil, Aloknath, Asha Sharma, Reema Lagoo, Beena, Ajit Vachhani, Raj Zutshi

The biggest box-office hit of 1988 relaunched its producer/writer (and some sources claim also director), and gave new life to glossy teen romances shot in advertising styles (cf. Maine Pyar Kiya, 1989). It also established the 90s star Aamir Khan. The film combines a Romeo and Juliet theme with the standard Nasir Hussain pop musical. Raj (Khan) and Rashmi (Chawla) fall in love, defying a major ancestral conflict between their families. They elope and create a kind of utopia in an abandoned temple on an isolated mountain, living on love, fresh air and burnt food. Having to buy provisions in a nearby town (the ‘real’ world), they are betrayed and die. The film presents the act of falling in love as an illusory individuation, but perhaps the only form of culturally acceptable rebellion available. Its strongly neo-traditional thrust is underlined by Khan’s nostalgic evocation of classic Nasir Hussain heroes (e.g. Shammi Kapoor, Dev Anand), in the teenage hero’s dilemma: whether to follow the idolised father, incarnated in the film’s hit song Papa kehte hain, or to follow a different heroic vocation and fall in love. The film rapidly became a cult, fondly referred to by teenagers as ‘QSQT’. Khan starred again in the follow-up, Dil (1990).

Film