Sanjay Leela Bhansali is a filmmaker who arouses strong reactions in cinegoers. Either they find his films garish, way overblown and larger than life and him full of delusional grandeur or they regard him as an artiste and filmmaker par excellence. There is no denying however that Bhansali is an extremely important filmmaker in the scheme of the current Bollywood scenario and hate him or love him, you cannot ignore him.

Bhansali got his grounding in cinema by enroling for the Film Editing Course from the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune and he should have graduated from there in 1987 but a disagreement over the film he was to edit as his final dipoma exercise saw him leave the FTII without completing the course. Showing a strong ingrained musical sense, he expertly supervised the song picturizations of Vidhu Vinod Chopra's 1942: A Love Story (1993). The songs were easily the most memorable part of an otherwise disappointing film, one that aimed to be a Gone With The Wind (1939) of sorts set against the Quit India movement.

Bhansali made his directorial debut with Khamoshi: The Musical in 1996. The film remains his most sensitive film to date and looks at the efforts of a young girl Annie (Manisha Koirala) to balance her life between her deaf and mute parents (Nana Patekar and Seema Biswas) and her boyfriend (Salman Khan) who encourages her to live her life the way she wants while pursuing her career as a singer. The film is full of small, memorable moments and sees career best performances from Salman Khan and Manisha Koirala. The film, critically acclaimed and winner of the Critic's Best Picture Award at both the Screen Awards and the Filmfare Awards, however did not succeed as it should have at the box-office. There was no denying, however, that Bhansali was a director to watch out for.

Bhansali tasted big box-office success with his second film, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999). The film was also the first of Bhansali's to start dividing cinegoers in their opinions of his films. There's no denying, however, that Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam is a fine look at relationships and is aided tremendously by the performances of Ajay Devgan and Aishwarya Rai and Anil Mehta's evocative camerawork. Among other awards, the film won Filmfare Awards, Zee Cine Awards, Star Screen Awards as well as the IIFA Awards for Best Film and Best Director. Bhansali had well and truly arrived.

His next film, Devdas (2002) was a disappointment. A Rs 50 crore  'spectacle' starring Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit as Devdas, Paro and Chandramukhi, the film is contrived, loud, garish and melodramatic with serious illusions about grandeur and the epic. The film ends up as a dreary, long winding retelling of the Sarat Chandra classic of the man who drank himself to death for love. In spite of mixed reviews from the critics, Devdas, however, did have its share of admirers like Karan Johar and did prove to be a success at the box office and won more awards for Bhansali and was even screened at the Cannes Film Festival besides being India's official entry to the Oscars.

Bhansali followed Devdas with his most ambitious and challenging film to date, Black (2005). Inspired from Helen Keller's life and the Arthur Penn film The Miracle Worker (1962), Black traces the efforts of Michelle McNally (Rani Mukherji, terrific) - deaf, blind and mute to live her life independently with the help of her teacher (Amitabh Bachchan, way over the top). Again there were those who thought the film to be a masterpiece unlike anything seen on the Indian screen and well up to International standards while others labelled the film as an overstyled, unbearable, pretentious melodrama. But Bhansali had the last laugh as the accolades and awards continued unabated for him and his cast and crew with Bachhcan even picking up the National Award for his admittedly hammy and theatrical performance.

There was talk of Bhansali working on the love story of Baji Rao and Mastani with Salman Khan and Kareena Kapoor but he pushed back the film to concentrate on Saawariya (2007), an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's White Nights. The film, a launchpad for star children Ranbir Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor, unfortunately has proved to be Bhansali's nadir with over the top sets, stilted theatrics and generating no emotions whatsoever, leaving one plain bored as it plods along. The film has been uniformly panned by critics and has performed disappointedly at the box office. For a filmmaker who began with capturing beautiful small moments between his characters, Saawariya is full of absurd theatrics. Bhansali has shouted himself hoarse about  the critics deliberately panning Saawariya but there is no doubt that it is Bhansali's weakest film.

It would be extremely interesting to see what Bhansali does next, being a filmmaker who has experimented with various genres and styles. He is too good a filmmaker not to bounce back and prove his critics wrong. Rumours are his next film might look at life in the lanes of Hira Mandi in Lahore.