The Bollywood Curry Western

The magic of Sholay

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It is often said that other than war, only three other things unify this vast and diverse nation of ours. They are Elections, Cricket and Movies. Of the movies, the one that must have been watched by the largest number of Indians to date would be “Sholay”. The movie is a cult classic, a trendsetter and an evergreen entertainer. Its impact in the popular culture of the country can be felt even today. One can find ads spoofing it or it being referenced in one way or the other in every Indian’s daily life. The excitement about the movie is expected to reach a crescendo with the imminent release of its remake by a prominent Bollywood director.

Released in 1975 and directed by Ramesh Sippy, Sholay is the story of a village where people live in perpetual fear of a bandit gang led by the infamous Gababr Singh. A retired police officer of the village named Thakur Baldev Singh, himself a victim of Gababr’s atrocities, enlists the services of two convicts to capture Gabbar. The two convicts Jaidev and Veeru learn during the course of their stay at the village that Thakur’s entire family was murdered by Gabbar (with the exception of his daughter-in-law, who was not at home at the moment). Thakur however is unable to take revenge upon Gabbar as the latter had cut off Thakur’s hands.

In the village, Veeru falls in love with the chatterbox Basanti who makes a living by riding a horse-cart. While the more serious Jaidev feels drawn to Radha, the reclusive widowed daughter-in-law. The duo of Veeru and Jai constantly thwarts the plans of the bandits when they try to raid the village. However matters come to a head when Viru is captured by the bandits when he tries to rescue a kidnapped Basanti from their clutches. How they overcome Gabbar and how Thakur extracts his revenge forms the rest of the story.

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Sholay is considered a masterpiece mainly because it got all the ingredients of a blockbuster right as far as Indian movie audiences go. It had a high power star cast with some of the big names of the time in the industry collaborating in the movie. It even propelled the careers of future big names like Amitabh Bachan and Gabbar Singh. Often multi-starrers take away the focus of the director from telling the story to making the stars look good. However in this case though all the actors give powerhouse performances that enriches the movie to no end.

Sanjeev Kumar as the Thakur desperate for revenge is riveting and lends credibility to the character and his emotions. Dharmendra as the extrovert Viru is colourful and essays the role with ease. Amitabh Bachan as the serious Jaidev essays a role that would become a template for his future career defining roles. He would later go on to become a superstar on the back of those roles. Unusually for a movie of this kind the women are not degenerated to mere show pieces but have characters with substance to essay. Hema Malini essays the role of Basanti with such conviction that nobody hence has been able to essay the role of the chatterbox village belle with such aplomb. Jaya Bachan as the ill-fated widow gives a performance where her silence is as memorable as any of the great dialogues in the movie.

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But the tour de force performance of the movie definitely comes from Amjed Khan as the evil Gabbar Singh. It is ironic to think that he was not even the first choice for the role. He gives the character, which not just enjoys evil but actually revels in it, a larger than life attribute that makes both the character as well as his performance truly memorable. He gave such a great performance that all his subsequent performance never seemed to achieve the same heights.

The movie as said earlier had all the ingredients of a Bollywood blockbuster: good music, a comedy track and drama. The background music by R.D. Burman enhances the underlying tension in the movie manifolds. But the real stars of the movie are the script-writer duo of Salim and Javed. Sholay was one of those movies which had its dialogues released in audio cassettes. It went on to become bestseller on its own. Every kid in India even today knows at least one memorable dialogue from the movie.

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The technicalities of the movie too were brilliant for the time it was released. Ramesh Sippy captured the mood of the movie to a T by shooting it in the rocky taverns of Ramanagaram. The place is so much identified with the movie that a part of it was later renamed ‘Sippynagar’. His techniques were innovative. As part of the story he would have been required to show some brutally violent scenes. His use of symbolism not only helped him get past the strict censors of the time but also gave the movie that masterly feel of leaving the more brutal scenes to the imagination of the audience. This in fact made those scenes even more terrifying without actually showing any gory details. It also helped that the great action sequences in the movie were conceived by someone from Hollywood. It was also the first 70mm stereophonic Indian movie that enhanced the theatre experience of the film.

When the movie got released it was not met with favorable reviews or response. Many felt it was a flawed attempt at making a Spaghetti Western with Indian values. Theatre owners wanted the length of the movie to be shortened. Many trade insiders and columnists even started declaring it as an expensive flop. Then slowly the cinema halls started to fill up with people who came to watch the movie because their friends liked it. All of a sudden the movie became a cult craze and queues that stretched more than a kilometer began to be formed outside the theatres. People began to watch the movie multiple times and it became usual to meet people who have watched the movie 30-40 times. So much so that later on the shows became a karaoke experience with the entire audience mouthing dialogs in unison with the actors on screen!

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The movie was later declared a superhit and went on to become the highest grossing film in Indian movie history. Some claim that it still is when you consider inflation and other factors. It created history when it ran in Bombay’s Minerva theatre continuously for 5 years. In its wake several films were released that tried to cash in on the trend of multi-starrers and male bonding. But none of them were able to recapture the magic of Sholay. When it was shown on Indian televisions for the first time in 1994 it is said that streets became empty during its screening. Sholay epitomizes the magic of the Bollywood even today.

Nishabd – Movie Review

Bollywood moves one step forward

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Ram Gopal Verma always tells a story in a very realistic way. He is able to bring strong and controversial themes on to the screen and has to catch the audience unawares. From Rangeela to Satya to now Nishabd. He has shown both versatility and courage in trudging the path not much traveled in bollywood.

Nishabd is the story of an elderly man’s love towards a young girl who is still in her teens. More disturbing (by Indian values) is that she is his daughter’s friend. Jia (Jiah Khan), the girl in question comes to Vijay’s (Amitabh Bachan) house on vacation from Australia. Vijay, a photographer by profession, is attracted to the spirit of this brash, in your face, carefree girl, as well as her legs. As he makes it abundantly clear, this is not a ‘love at first sight’ affair that we usually find in regular bollywood movies.

As for Jia, the movie doesn’t make it clear what her true feelings are for the older man. Maybe she is attracted to his intelligence, as any younger person in a relationship would feel towards an older partner. Maybe it’s just an infatuation born out of a lack of father figure in her own life or maybe it could be just that she truly loves him. We are none the wiser at the end of the movie.

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The reason we do not find this out is because the movie is entirely told from Vijay’s viewpoint. We therefore know more about his feelings for the girl than her feelings towards him even though she is seen as encouraging his feelings and certainly as making the first advances towards him. We understand his inner turmoil and almost feels sorry for him.

RGV’s direction is very efficient. He tells the story at a pace that suits the overall pace of the movie. He has picturised the whole movie in a tinge of grey perhaps symbolizing the theme of the movie itself. He plays around with the camera angles giving us a topsy turvy view of the doomed relationship, not to mention the legs. Yes, legs play a huge part of this movie to the point of being obsessive.

The star of the movie undoubtedly is Amitabh Bachan. For someone like me who has grown up watching his successful onscreen image of an angry young man, it was unnerving to watch him being so utterly vulnerable. And I am saying that in a good way. The Big B is now able to break free of the constraints and compulsions which used to bog him down his earlier career. He is now able to play roles which he could not have dreamed of earlier.

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His vulnerability just pours out of the screen. He conveys most of the emotions very clearly without the use of his biggest asset, his voice. He does much of his emoting through his eyes. You can sense his pain, his lust and his love for Jia solely through his eyes. RGV makes much use of this with his trademark close-up shots. If in Sarkar he used that to convey power, here he uses it for a totally different effect. Big B even uses his formidable gait to convey the shame he feels while confronting his family with his feelings.

The rest of the cast does their job with aplomb. The newcomer Jia plays her role with sensuality and exudes rebellion in her every look. But strangely I did not find her as sexy as some of Verma's other heroines. Most notably Urmila. Revathy and Nazer too gives a creditable performance.

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My only grouse with the movie is that the ending seemed a bit too sudden and forced. We are not given enough time to digest Vijay’s disintegration into nothingness. But still this is a brave step forward for bollywood. Eventhough we still have a long way to go in handling tough and uneasy themes, every step taken towards it should still be applauded.

Rating: 3.5/5

Aishwarya Rai

Aishwarya Rai – The Porcelain Beauty of India

From the time she became the Miss World in 1994 Aishwarya Rai has been constantly in the limelight for some reason or the other. Inevitably controversy too has dogged her incessantly. There is so much media attention on her that even her most personal affairs are front page news. The amount of frenzy the entire media went into after her engagement to Abhishek Bachan recently is just a case in point. Most of the controversies that she has been embroiled in were not entirely her fault.

Aishwarya shot into the limelight in 1994 with the Femina Miss India contest of 1994. She came in second to Sushmita Sen, who herself went on to win the Miss Universe contest as well becoming an actress. It was a sign of things to come that the Aishwarya’s experience in the Miss India contest was not entirely without controversy. Her fellow participants accused the organizers of showing partiality to Aishwarya. The organizers it seems were trying to promote her more because she was the most beautiful among the participants. Aishwarya unwittingly came to be at the centre of a controversy through no fault of hers.

However once Aishwarya and Sushmita won the international beauty pageant the fashion industry in India changed dramatically. Indians went on to win beauty pageants more consistently. Young girls all over the country were aspiring to be like them. There was virtual flooding of international cosmetics into the market. They were in that sense a pioneer of their time, with Aishwarya being the most visible face of this change. There were criticisms from all that she is not keeping the virtuous promises she had made after winning the title. But who were we kidding? Did we really expect a beauty pageant to wave away our troubles like some fairy godmother?

She made her entry into the movie world with a dream debut in the brilliant Mani Ratnam’s Iruvar opposite a superb Mohanlal. Although a Tamil movie, she chose to make a quality debut rather than going for any of the safer commercial movies she were offered. Her bollywood debut though was anything but impressive, giving a listless performance in a very disappointing Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya. This was followed by a spate of flops and one wondered if she would ever make it in bollywood.

All that changed with Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. Playing the role of a married woman trying to find the whereabouts of her former lover Aishwarya gave a superb performance that left the audience applauding. However there were a few criticisms for her over the top, hamming performance at times. Her on screen chemistry with Salman Khan even blossomed into an off-screen real life romance albeit with disappointing end. The controversy of their split and the manner in which Salman lost control of himself thereafter were all covered extensively by the media. Adding fuel to it was the surfacing of an alleged taped conversation between the troubled lovers in which Salman tries to frighten her by revealing his connections with the underworld. Again Aishwarya found herself in the middle of a controversy not entirely her fault. She battled through those tough times with quiet dignity. She then rebounded into a short lived relationship with another actor Vivek Oberoi.

While she was having a troubled personal life her professional one was beginning to be successful. She even tried a hand at conquering the western audience with disastrous results. Her projects were all with small studios and barring Provoked the other movies did not even have a decent story line. Even her jury membership at Cannes did not help to enhance her standing in the West. Her fake accent during an interview with David Letterman was ridiculed. She eventually had to come back to the very medium that made her the most sought after female star in India.

After her return Aishwarya has been involved in a lot of projects none of which helped her capture the limelight as before. However ‘Dhoom-2’ and ‘Guru’ went a long way in changing all that. If ‘Dhoom-2’ was the big hit she was so desperately seeking for, ‘Guru’ brought out the acting talent like no other role she has portrayed before. Again it was Mani Ratnam who gave her the opportunity to showcase her acting skills proving that she was not just another ornamental piece in a movie. It also was her first successful film with fiancé Abhishek Bachan after several flops earlier.

Aishwarya is about to enter a new phase in her life after her engagement with Abhishek Bachan, son of the biggest super star the country has ever seen – Amitabh Bachan. If Aishwarya was in the limelight before she is virtually being shadowed by the media now. With a number of promising international and national projects in the pipeline her professional life too seems to be on the upswing. Here’s to wishing that she will be able to put her past disappointment behind her and have a successful second innings.