3 Review(s)

If ever a life was meant to be a book, few could stake a stronger claim. Like a shooting star doomedto darkness after a glorious run, Rajesh Khanna spent the better half of his career in the shadow ofhis own stardom. Yet, five decades after his last monstrous hit, Khanna continues to be the yardstickby which every single Bollywood star is measured.At a time when film stars were truly larger than life, Khanna towered above them all. He was thereason the word ‘superstar’ entered the Indian film lexicon.With seventeen blockbuster hits in succession, starting with Aradhana (1969), and mass adulationrarely seen before or since, the world was at Khanna's feet. Everything he touched turned to gold. Thehysteria he generated—women writing him letters in blood, marrying his photograph and donning white when he married Dimple Kapadia, people bringing sick children for his 'healing' touch afterHaathi Mere Saathi (1971)—was unparalleled. Then, in a matter of months, it all changed. Khanna'scareer hit a downward spiral as spectacular as his meteoric rise, just three years after Aradhana, andfrom this he never really recovered.Dark Star looks at the phenomenon of an actor who redefined the term 'film star'. GautamChintamani's engaging narrative tries to make sense of what it was that made Rajesh Khanna andwhat accounted for his extraordinary fall. A singular account of a glorious life that hasn't dimmedeven years after the icon's demise.