Shakti & Deewar

I watched movie “Shakti” yesterday and could not stop wondering about the similarities between this and one of amitabh’s biggest blockbuster “Deewar”. Deewar has been written extensively about, by people close to me as well as people far away but somehow not much has been mentioned about this movie, apart from some references here and there (for example, johny lever praising yusuf bhai’s acting in movie “love ke liye kuch bhi karega”).

To start with, there are numerous similarities between the two – a scrupulously honest cop who would go to extreme to fulfill his work duties, worker turned criminal pissed off by the law & justice, amitabh having a distinct childhood allegiance with the don and his stoic smile-ridden face in the whole movie and a mother torn between the constrained relation between his two beloved. Shakti does not lack at all in intense scene sequences, for example, the scene where amitabh walks home just before getting arrested on false murder charges is one of the most powerful scenes in the movie, and is suitably kept quiet. There are so many similarities in plot setting that it is difficult to believe that these have come from different directors and have a seven years gap between their releases.

I think the place where movie falls behind Deewar is the lack of a powerful script and punch quotient. It has no magical billa no 786 , nothing had been imprinted physically on amitabh ( Dilip kumar saying “kar do uska khoon” is emotionally imprinted on amitabh but it lacks that strength) and no one is standing outside the temple but refuses to go in. Although, the script still has some deep meaning dialogues lying here and there but fail to become the highlight to the movie. For example, amitabh saying that “main kuch nahi bhoolta” and smita patil replying to amitabh’s sarcastic remark about possible righteousness rhetoric saying that “main aisa kuch nahi kahoongi jo tum nahi jaante”, could have been the punch dialogues but somehow they come no near the famous ones from Deewar. The place, where amitabh drinks and laments that he is a poisonous snake, could have been one of the defining scene of the movie but it has been somewhat wasted by the director.

Both the films capture similar sentiments though, underlying the importance of work ethic and people being proud of honesty, exemplified by rakhee refusing to get treatment by amitabh’s money. I was reading a few days back that Rakhee was offered smita patil’s role as amitabh’s love interest in the movie, but she rather chose to be his mother as she found this to be a more demanding role, which I definitely agree. Well, if you are amitabh’s fan and want to appreaciate one of his best but underrated performance in hindi film industry, then this movie is definitely worth a watch!

Happy Endings

If someone from outside India, who has no previous exposure to Hindi movies, is handed over a task of finding some common themes among the movies across the ages - then "happy endings" is surely going to be one of the top result. This thought has been on my mind since long time but I was motivated to put it in words today when I watched "Rock On". With some unusual screenplay and scene sequence, as the movie progressed towards the climax I got a feeling that the director might choose not
to put all the things in place. I thought the movie was going to end during the final stage performance by the rockband and it would be left upon the viewers to speculate the ending -- whether everyone is going to be again well set or things are going to remain the same for some. But the director seemed to be skeptic about the success of such open ending movie and chose to follow the suit.

From the likes of Shammi kapoor movies to recent movies like Delhi6, movie makers seem to have agreed to introduce some unrealistic sequence to give a complete ending to the movie. In Dil Chahta Hai, where Akshay Khanna meets and become friend with this girl suddenly in the end does not seem to fit with the scheme of things.

I feel Open-endings are somewhat difficult to digest. There was a chapter in our English curriculum in class xth named "The Lady and the tiger". A guy, who is on a trial for loving the princess, is signaled towards a door by his lover ( the princess who is sitting in spectator's rows) and it is left to viewers to imagine the what lies behind the door -- death by a tiger or a happy married life ( with some other lady). I still remember how dissatisfied I felt after reading the story. I mean how can a story have no ending!!

Lately, I have realized happy endings phenomenon in non-Hindi movies also. I have not seen many of Chinese movies but the few I have seen (like forbidden kingdom) totally seem to follow the pattern that each character in the movie should be satisfied and the audience go back happy, not needing to think about any character. There might be various reasons to happy endings: like the movies are watched more as source of entertainment and not as a source of intellectual stimulation. All of us want to go to theater, have fun and come back happily.

I remember a discussion I had with one of my friend long time back about this. One main thing which came out was that emotional and sad situations actually create a more lasting impact on people's minds. For example, if you ask someone about their favorite song then more often than not its some emotional song with a deep
meaning and not a simple happy number. In some sense, this kind of compulsion of giving a happy ending to the movie might have limited the complete emotional effect of movie on people.

It would have been really interesting to know box office response to Rock-On if it would not have shown the last two minute sequence and actually ended the movie at last stage show.

War: A Perennial Theme

With so much discussion going on about wars, I always keep thinking of what the wars mean for human civilization. At first, it seems such a beautiful dream to imagine this world without war. The traditional argument against war, each country has so many internal problems to solve: poverty, hunger, lack of nutrition, education, infrastructure and in-spite of all these problems, a country with limited resources spends most of the available budget in obtaining and developing sophisticated weapons and warfare machinery, theoretically seems to be the winning against all.

But, let us spare a thought of what wars mean for human civilization and indirectly, what has been their contribution? I think, war and war heroes have given true meaning to much celebrated human traits like valor, courage and sacrifice. Apart from the establishment of these feelings, wars have resulted into various tangible gains. Things like internet, email were results of advancements carried out to strengthen the military capabilities of the nation.

The problem lies in excessive glorification of wars. Various movies have resulted into sensationalization of wars and they have failed to establish the gory and horrifying image of wars. For example, at the start of American movie Top Gun, such a great image is portrayed of the airplane pilots that anyone in teens would just want to be one of them. I remember one of my friends telling me that after this movie was released, the enrollment in military services in USA increased by a considerable amount.

Such portrayals of wars and military have succeeded in creating a feeling of nationalism and patriotism, respect towards the sacrifice made by war heroes but also some tacit excitement about wars deep inside all of us. It can’t be denied that these portrayals don’t present the complete picture. I just watched the movie “All quite on western front” and it does not entail any romantic heroism about wars. According to me, it does the complete justice in bringing forward the brutal reality of wars

With so much unrest in the world today, restraining from arms is certainly not a practical solution and I said before, wars have always co-existed with human civilization so it might be too naïve to imagine the perfect world without wars. But nonetheless, war movies and war memorials need to have a common aim of establishing wars as the most avoidable human act. The peace establishing music usually shown at the end of movie should be the main theme even though it might curb our excitement towards wars.