Explore Bollywood’s fascination with wild, untamed settings, from the comedic antics of Welcome To The Jungle to the intense dramas and romances set amidst lush forests, showcasing how these natural backdrops shape diverse cinematic narratives.
Key Points
- Akshay Kumar’s Welcome To The Jungle is the latest addition to Bollywood’s tradition of films set in wild, adventurous backdrops.
- Filmmakers like Ram Gopal Varma have explored the dangers and romance of jungles in movies such as Jungle and Daud.
- Modern films like Sherni and Bhediya use jungle settings to address themes of wildlife conservation and man-nature conflict.
In Bollywood’s wild, wild world, there’s always room for adventures and antics.
In Akshay Kumar’s latest multi starrer comedy, the third in the Welcome comic series, Welcome To The Jungle, the title says it all. As do its crowd of characters engaged in a con. Sukanya Verma looks at when the jungle formed a backdrop of many Hindi movies and scenes.
Jungle
Ram Gopal Varma captures the dangers lurking deep in the forest, both the beastly and human kind, when a family is held captive by a sandalwood smuggler-turned-terrorist — modelled over Veerapan — on whom he’d make a separate eponymous movie.
Daud
Much before these films, Ram Gopal Varma’s fascination for the jungle showed in Daud where his leads on the run. Sanjay Dutt and Urmila Matondkar spend considerable time in the wild to unleash their inner zehreela, zehreela pyaar.
Sherni
At the heart of Sherni‘s man versus nature crux is Vidya Balan’s no-nonsense forest officer assigned the task of reining in a man-eating tiger while grappling with a faulty system and bureaucratic constraints.
Kaal
Kaal‘s slick, star-studded imagery chronicles a pair of wildlife enthusiasts encountering a spooky, serial-killer presence inside a cursed forest that has its terror-dispensing origins in actions of man and man-eating forces.
Bhediya
Horror comedies steeped in wilderness and their eerie legends are a subgenre in itself, especially in the Maddock Horror Comedy Universe. For starters, there’s Varun Dhawan and Kriti Sanon transforming into werewolves against the backdrop of North East India’s glorious greens in Bhediya, which among many things, has wildlife conservation on its mind.
Thamma
Next, there’s Ayushmann Khuranna bumping into Rashmika Mandanna and her ancient vampire cult while out and about camping deep inside the woods in Thamma.
Munjya
And there’s the part-mischievous, part-malevolent forest spirit of Munjya, inspired by Marathi folklore, breaking off from the tree he’s bound to and haunting the hero for his fun and ferocity.
Padmaavat
Trust Sanjay Leela Bhansali to turn Sri Lankan forests into a perfect spot for meet cute when Deepika Padukone shoots an arrow in Shahid Kapoor’s chest and rest is all cupid, er, history.
Maa
Creepy, faraway jungles form the site of evil deeds in Maa as well wherein a possessed demonic tree and its demand for human sacrifices compel leading lady Kajol to turn Kali incarnate.
Raavan
In Mani Ratnam’s modern-day Ramayana, tables are turned when Aishwarya Rai’s character begins to see her Naxalite kidnaper in a new light as they spend time inside a remote jungle awaiting her policeman husband to come to her rescue.
Haathi Mere Saathi
Forest land encroachment and ‘save our elephants’ becomes the point of discussion in Rana Daggubati’s multilingual wildlife drama.
Junglee
Vidyut Jammwal flexes his muscle power to play a vet determined to save the wild from poachers in American director Chuck Russell’s Bollywood debut.
Safari
Sanjay Dutt and Juhi Chawla channel their inner Tarzan and Jane as their jungle shenanigans lead to love during the adventure packed course of Safari.
Adventures of Tarzan
But, of course, brawny Hemant Birje and buxom Kimi Katkar, remain the real deal whose campy interactions with animals and all things wild are the driving force of Tarzan’s B-humour and surprise success.
8X10 Tasveer
In Nagesh Kukunoor’s supernatural thriller, Akshay Kumar is a forest ranger in Canada using his gift to enter photographs and recount the events before the click to uncover a murder mystery.
Asoka
A great deal of Shah Rukh Khan and Kareena Kapoor’s epic love story blossoms against the majestic forests in Santosh Sivan’s gorgeously shot Asoka.
Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak
To think Aamir Khan’s Raj and Juhi Chawla’s Rashmi star-crossed romance would never have happened if they hadn’t got lost in the jungles and fallen hook, line and sinker for each other in the blockbuster that turned them into overnight heart-throbs.
Photographs curated by Satish Bodas/Rediff
