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Satyam

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Bachchan — Day 24

May 10th, 2008Related|Filed Under

Bachchan — Day 24

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  1. Comment by jayshah on 10 May 2008:

    Lol at the last couple of paragraphs.

  2. Comment by Arun on 10 May 2008:

    who as director made three of the most colossal bombs in the history of Indian Cinema and who now tries to educate others in the craft

    who allegedly as Editor of Filmfare, coerced the talent of his directed films to work for him in lieu of the alleged consideration of an Award

    Haha! I love it! You Rock, Mr. B! :)

  3. Comment by ILG on 10 May 2008:

    LOL. AB is not the emporer for nothing.

  4. Comment by satyam on 10 May 2008:

    Satyam says:
    May 10th, 2008 at 7:14 pm

    You have offered a wonderful summary of the film. I look forward to watching it over the weekend. My standard in this sense usually is that no film is completely irredeemable if you have a major role in it (I exaggerate just a touch here!). This is why I found some of your shorter parts so disappointing over the years because there seemed to be neither ‘footage’ here nor the justification for doing such in terms of ‘quality’. I understand you did many of these roles for personal considerations and I value your sincerity in this sense but I would also suggest that one should take very seriously the ‘act’ of attaching one’s name to anything. Specially when one also has the ‘responsibility’ of ‘guarding’ a history as rich as yours in cinema. Of course it is another matter that those who cast you in short, inconsequential roles did not help themselves in almost all of those instances since no member of the audience could be satisfied seeing you in that fashion.

    I have been referring to ‘history’ and I think it would be a very useful gesture on your part to discuss certain less known films in your oeuvre. These are films that have either become obscure over the years or have always suffered this fate for one reason or another. Undeservedly so in my view. Your focus on these films would really go a long way in terms of putting them once again in the public eye. I am thinking of stellar works like Jurmana and Mili, Saudagar and Manzil, but also some others that are interesting without necessarily being flawless. In the latter group fall movies like Alaap, Pukar, Ek Nazar, Do Anjaane. But also some of your more ‘masala’ efforts like Adaalat or Kasme Vaade. Perhaps you should begin with the very first — Saat Hindustani, a rather thought-provoking work though not easily available in any format. And lastly I continue to champion Ganga ki Saugandh, a film which was perhaps even at the time but certainly is today, completely removed from the sensibilities of most urban viewers but one that I think of as the very essence of what good ‘masala’ was about — entertainment, resistance, catharsis. Audiences today have lost the capacity to watch anything they cannot ‘consume’.

    In the context of all the points I’ve just made I would like to offer here an older piece on Kasme Vaade:

    Kasme Vaade

    Kasme Vaade is at the present moment one of the more neglected films of Amitabh Bachchan´s remarkably illustrious career. This is unfortunate as the movie is considerably superior to some better-known films of the actor´s repertoire. Even though it is not of the eminence of a Trishul or a Kaala Pathar or a Don it yet has a lot going for it in terms of an engaging narrative, a good soundtrack, and another splendid performance by Bachchan. This was the period in the latter´s career when everything that he touched turned to gold and this movie is no exception.

    Amit (Amitabh Bachchan), a college professor in the most idyllic of settings, falls in love with Suman (Raakhee) and then indulges in a very long courtship of five years. The somewhat remarkable reason is his promise to his father that he will only get married after his brother is settled in life. The brother, Raju (Randhir Kapoor), leads a rather dissolute lifestyle engaging in everything from drinking bouts to street brawls and moreover refuses to gain his baccalaureate degree. Amit repeatedly chastises him but his advice falls on deaf ears. Raju also shares a very close relationship with his sister-in-law-to-be and in fact the three are often together in celebratory fashion. The villain of the piece in the early part of the story is the very wealthy Kundan (Vijyendra Ghatge) who crosses paths with both brothers and in a fight with the younger brother accidentally kills the older one when the latter suddenly arrives on the scene to stop the proceedings. The world of Raju and Suman is turned upside down by this incident and a funeral scene is witnessed with Kundan looking on repentantly. After this event Randhir and Raakhee move to Bombay where the former starts working in a garage run by the saucy Neeta (Neetu Singh). Here he meets a small time crook Shankar (Amitabh Bachchan) who is the spitting image of his brother. Randhir is now constantly drawn towards this ´second coming´ of his brother even as Raakhee is repelled with what she sees as the very anti-thesis of her lover. After initially rejecting Randhir´s advances Amitabh warms towards him and moreover also gives up his life of crime. Simultaneously he is drawn toward Raakhee. But a gangster (Amjad Khan) from his past refuses to let him go. The film then plays itself out in traditional masala fashion and as often happens in the Hindi formula film ´all´s well that ends well´!

    The acting honors belong not surprisingly to Bachchan. In this film he plays two very different personalities and whether it is the mild demeanor of the professor or the ´rude´ exterior of the crook, Bachchan brings off both with the most remarkable ease totally altering his intonations, his body language, his expressions and expressiveness from one character to the other. It is hard to believe that the same actor is playing both characters. This film is another example of why Amitabh Bachchan is the ultimate textbook of acting in Hindi cinematic history. Randhir Kapoor is passable in his role as is Raakhee. Amjad Khan plays a rather remarkable hunchback and the writers were surely having some fun in calling him ‘Sir Judah’! The actor in a somewhat short role makes his presence felt. Vijyendra Ghatge and Neetu Singh are again adequate in their respective roles. Rekha notably makes a guest appearance in a typical ´mujra´ number.

    The soundtrack of the film by R D Burman deserves a special mention, which features numbers like “Kasme Vaade”, “Aati rahengi bahaaren”, and “Mile jo kadi kadi”. Also the film has a number of moving moments that rise above the otherwise more commercial nature of the subject. And yet again there is a drunken scene of Bachchan´s, this time done with a cockroach! Years later this sequence was repeated in Hum. It is fair to say that both moments are equally intolerable. With partly the script and partly Bachchan sustaining the proceedings the director, Ramesh Behl, is more functional than anything else.

    Kasme Vaade in most interesting fashion employs a series of triangles. In the first half Amit, Suman and Raju form one triangle. In the second half Raju, Shankar and Suman form a triangle, which then overlaps with the Raju, Neeta, and Suman triangle. Whether it is the trope of the double or that of the reformed criminal, the laws of kinship or those of memory, the further exploration of the lumpen masses in the best traditions of 70s Hindi cinema or the crises engendered with the ´mixing´ of the classes, all are amply explored through the hetero/homo-sexual dynamics of the film. Kasme Vaade is illustrative of a bygone era of Hindi cinema when not just great films were being made but also less eminent films were engaging for a variety of reasons. As such the film deserves a revival in its fortunes.

  5. Comment by akshay shah on 10 May 2008:

    Khalid Mohamed is one of the biggest losers in India today! LOL..Whatta fantastic remark by Bachchan…Hahahaha…..

  6. Comment by Qalandar on 10 May 2008:

    All this and a wine drinker too…

    …the esteem in which I hold this man just went up (I didn’t even think that was possible).

    Satyam: On Ganga ki Saugandh, I would add the film’s political prescience: a number of years before the whole Mandal, rise-of-caste-politics phenomenon, this film seems to anticipate the same, by its representation of a Dalit-Muslim (and possibly other “lower” caste alliance) against the thakur played by Amjad Khan (the film is still “Congress” enough to have the leader of the resistance be a Brahmin, but then again this character is played by Amitabh, who is one of the very few Indians who is everyone’s “own.” Not suggesting that we take this literally, but this film’s political cues (a certain “subaltern” mobilization and the necessity and desirability of inter-”group” linkages) are rather obvious and cannot be ignored (perhaps one reason why determinedly apolitical and upwardly mobile audiences have collectively “forgotten” this film; this isn’t universally true, as I was reminded during a recent (brief) stay in Jhansi) — certainly these cues have not historically been ignored by the Samajwadi Party (while the Congress, which might have been the intended/literal beneficiary of Sultan Ahmed’s schema, has forgotten the lesson, except via stale rhetoric), and ironically (given Mayawati’s great antipathy for Mr. Bachchan) the BSP too is sensitive to this possibility.

    I might also add that Ganga ki Saugandh features one of the few Dalit characters in Bollywood history (Pran and his daughter, played by Rekha), and one of the very few love stories involving a Dalit (Amitabh’s and Rekha’s characters). All this and a rollicking number too! “Roop jo aisa mila, aisi ada kaise na ho / Bharee botal hai jawaani ki, nashaa kaise na ho” :-)

  7. Comment by Qalandar on 10 May 2008:

    Satyam: when you post these pieces please post the URL too, thanks.

  8. Comment by satyam on 10 May 2008:

    Satyam says:
    May 10th, 2008 at 7:44 pm

    On the Khalid Mohammed piece I could do no better than your polemical response. I would only add here that he is among those directors who ought not to be making films. This is not because he’s made ‘bombs’ (many important filmmakers have also suffered this fate) but because on the evidence of his films he does not seem to be a ‘director’ in the most elementary sense of this word. Most amusingly he also tried to ‘remake’ Bergman’s Autumn Sonata with his Tehzeeb. Such ambition is excusable but surely not at the service of such ‘humble’ talent!

    I am not sure therefore how he is able to summon up the gumption to deliver from his own very limited vantage point a piece that even rises to the level of ‘character assassination’. He is not critiquing you in the film, he is ridiculing you in the most merciless ways. I wonder how he would have reviewed his own films following these standards!

    But I find this kind of piece most inexcusable because Khalid Mohammed has never written anything half as harsh about any other star. Why not? Do those other stars ’satisfy’ him as a viewer all the time? Are their films perfect examples of cutting edge cinema? And if he expects more from you as all of us indeed do, if he holds you to loftier standards, he could express all of this personally to you. Why go public in the guise of a ‘review’ with a ‘letter’ that is little more than a personal attack publicly delivered?! One is allowed to write harsh reviews but this is something else. Again I am most offended by the fact that such standards are not applied to other stars. Even when he’s written satirical pieces on certain films he’s been kinder to the lead stars (the recent Tashan review is an example though I did not like this one either since the ‘critic’ in question suddenly decides to adopt a different format for certain films and this one featured a kind of skit!).

    To be clear I am not objecting to the idea of a very critical piece on Amitabh Bachchan. But Khalid Mohammed’s is assuredly not that piece for all the reasons cited.

  9. Comment by don123 on 10 May 2008:

    Khalid is a disgrace. I appreciate the fighting spirit that AB shows.

    Keep it up AB!!!!!!

  10. Comment by satyam on 10 May 2008:

    Just did so Qalandar..

  11. Comment by satyam on 10 May 2008:

    Great set of thoughts on Ganga ki Saugandh!

  12. Comment by henry on 10 May 2008:

    Maybe Khalid is just one of those many folks still annoyed at not being invited to Abhishek’s wedding.

    IMO Khalid should not only never make another film but also not write another review again. His reviews are childish and plain stupid.

  13. Comment by Kanwal on 10 May 2008:

    Khalida deserved it. Go Big B. Even taran adarsh is 1000 times better and taran is not even a critic, he just reviews. So this sounds like death call for khalid. Please stop your senility.

  14. Comment by ILG on 10 May 2008:

    th hte Karan who is falling apart on SB the same one who was a member here? Whats it with being a fan of certain star and always losing the plot?

  15. Comment by ILG on 10 May 2008:

    th hte Karan who is falling apart on SB the same one who was a member here? Whats it with being a fan of certain star and always losing the plot?

  16. Comment by ILG on 10 May 2008:

    People who write open letters are usually losers.KM isno exception.

  17. Comment by Tango on 10 May 2008:

    Khalida definately deserves it. He is a woman trapped in a mans body. Deserves it fully.

  18. Comment by satyam on 10 May 2008:

    TheSkeptic: Pondering on “dignified silences” in relation to Amitabh I am struck by this irony: If you respond or retaliate, you lose dignity, but if you *don’t* respond, all charges against you are taken to be true, and you still lose dignity!

    TheSkeptic: So, when Amitabh, out of impatience and disbelief, did not bother to counter the manglik rumors, I remember all of Bachchan’s “ill-weather foes” show up at NG, deeply, deeply offended by this shameful regressiveness and superstition! I remember Street even wrote a profound post on how this deconstructed Bachchan or something to that effect, and of course there was no end to all the Abhi-tree jokes. Yet, now that it’s clearly a media-fabricated mischief, not one of those offended souls has apologized or retracted their “progressive” condemnations, let alone the jokes.

  19. Comment by satyam on 10 May 2008:

    Theskeptic: There has always been a move by the ‘other side’ (whichever way you define it) to ‘defang’ Bachchan and in every sense. So he cannot retaliate or he’s not ‘Bachchan’! But of course the ‘other side’ feels no compunction in attacking him in all sorts of sly and sometimes more direct ways all the time. So he’s a God who should not stoop but we will keep trying to deconstructing him! Well Bachchan reserves the right to be Jahweh! And he should have done this earlier!

    Parallel to this is the degree to which his films and box office performances are celebrated. Notice how when it’s a question of a Bhootnath or an Ek Ajnabee the ‘partisans’ of other stars are often on the same side as the truest Bachchan fans. As I indicated in this thread before the Bachchan fans themselves leave a vulnerability which is then exploited by the ‘other side. So you celebrate a film like Cheeni Kum which is a Bachchan solo and pretend to be the truest Bachchan fan knowing full that a film in that genre cannot be explosive at the box office. Nor can a Bhootnath. And it’s just too late for Bachchan to pull off an Ek Ajnabee successfully at the box office. One therefore is the ‘truest’ Bachchan fan because one likes his solo films and one knows that these films have little chance of re-igniting the Bachchan event even when they’re successful!

    Of course the name of the repression here is always Abhishek (RGV today, and I credit him for this, does more than anyone else to unmask this repression!). Because Abhishek with a Yuva or a Guru or a Sarkar is always more likely to trigger a certain Bachchan archive! Being anti-Abhishek is usually a way of being anti-Bachchan (absurdly one of my critics here has advanced the charge that I am not really pro-Bachchan but pro-Abhishek! I doubt there is such a being on the planet!). It is therefore not surprising that a site like BOI that goes to extraordinary lengths to depress Abhishek’s box office has also already done the same, and very systematically, with all of Bachchan’s past hits! It is also not surprising that they keep calling Bachchan the top star all those years! Isn’t this the re-writing of Bachchan as SRK? The top star who really doesn’t have the hits proportionate to the reputation?

    But what happens when both father and son appear in a blockbuster or event film like BnB or Sarkar? Well when Abhishek informs the context you call it a multistarrer, when Bachchan is the discussion point you don’t mention those films at all! So none of the partisans ever says that Bachchan delivered a blockbuster like BnB. He is always ‘in’ it but the film doesn’t belong to him. Meanwhile the film belongs to Abhishek but he leans ‘on’ Bachchan!

    These are all the very same moves. The Bachchan fans also celebrate the solo Bachchan success or just its possibility. This reveals their complete dependence on the very paradigms the ‘partisans’ set up. Why have these fans been blackmailed by such a paradigm? Specially at the hands of SRK partisans?! When SRK hardly has solo hits in his career beyond a point (even OSO needed to be an industry circus!).

    Ultimately it is only the effort to keep the Bachchan event in check. This is the supreme objection to Abhishek. Everyone knows his success automatically extends Bachchan’s legacy. And the extension of Bachchan’s legacy is undesirable for many reasons!

  20. Comment by satyam on 10 May 2008:

    “He is a woman trapped in a mans body.”

    I object to this crude and regressive characterization..

  21. Comment by Qalandar on 10 May 2008:

    TheSkeptic: Satyam, having just seen your further comments on Varma’s grappling with the Bachchans, I think I may have led you - and even myself - with the concept of surprise. To rethink and rephrase this, what I see him to be attempting is not to excavate the actor out of Amitabh, but to re-animate or recover the effect that the early Bachchan once had on all of us, including Varma. I don’t think it’s the surprise of the actor that he’s after but rather the surprise of the star - understanding that the star cannot have been as significant without the below-the-water-line presence of vast actorly resources, resources which have kept replenishing the star at telling junctures. I think it’s a new replenishment that Varma is seeking, and to this end he’s throwing bait at the actor in order to inveigle another replenishment. Having mulled some more, I do think that your “defacement” theory is not without merit, as it happens. He did say around Nishabd time that it struck him as impossible that there could be a person as unblemished as Amitabh is, in the public perception. And it was this settled notion of almost-divinity that he wanted to upset with Nishabd, and also Aag. Where I differ from you is that I do not think that this desire to upset settled notions stems from “resentment”, but instead from the same oppositional instincts that have animated his filmmaking strategies from the beginning. As someone who has some personal contact with him, I know for a fact that industry storytelling cliches are a constant target of ridicule for him, and it’s these that he’s either sending up in his movies, or trying to avoid and so on. However, as Q insists in the case of Sarkar, he has not escaped all cliche - it’s a question of degree. He staggers from the very outrageous to the wholly generic in his filmmaking, though even in the latter case he tries to mitigate his embarrassment with cliche by understatement and ellipsis.

    TheSkeptic: From this aesthetic instinct then emerges the unexpected casting of Abhi as Veeru to Amitabh’s Gabbar. This is quite simply a matter of upsetting the expected - Abhi as Jai would be to repeat the effects of Sholay, and quite simply as a storyteller there is no point doling out the expected. *Even if* that is what people say they want! So one can see that most viewers who were earnestly offering their own casting choices for the Sholay remake were struggling to duplicate the tones and effects of Sholay as they perceived them - hence Esha for Hema and so on. Whereas Varma knows, as a more seasoned storyteller that he needs surprise as an essential ingredient in a remake.

    TheSkeptic: Maybe I’m betraying my own “aesthetic” bias, but Varma’s instincts I believe are always aesthetic. Like a painter at an easel, he’s always thinking what happens if I mix this color with that and so on - he starts with a tactile feel for materials, tones and and the possibilities that they suggest than from any a priori concepts (for instance, placing someone as poshly pretty as Katrina in the gangster settings of Shankar’s family and underlings). Interestingly, I know from a friend to whom Mani said something similar about *his* intentions with Thiruda Thiruda - that what excited him about that film was the image of cars tearing through a village, which then leads to the idea of slick urban criminals rampaging through a rustic landscape and so on.

    TheSkeptic: I’ll admit that my theory of “replenishment” founders a bit with Nishabd - how is a role this scandalous supposed to replenish the star? Yet, it may not have felt as scandalous to him as it does now, retrosectively. The germ of the film came to him from the Ayn Rand-Branden affair, when the former was already in her 50’s and the latter was in his 20’s, and considering that Rand and Amitabh are both almost deities for Varma, I don’t think it was a defacement exercise for him at all. On the contrary, in the figure of Vijay, he was attempting to bring together two key influences in his life. In other words, a defacement reading only works if we accept without question that this is a humiliating role and situation to play, but what if entertain for a moment that this is not how the situation may have played in Varma’s mind?

  22. Comment by Qalandar on 10 May 2008:

    Re: “However, as Q insists in the case of Sarkar, he has not escaped all cliche - it’s a question of degree.”

    Q is my favorite NG member, I freely confess. And I think he is the most perceptive when it comes to Sarkar.

  23. Comment by Qalandar on 10 May 2008:

    Re: “The germ of the film came to him from the Ayn Rand-Branden affair, when the former was already in her 50’s and the latter was in his 20’s…”

    Nishabd then illustrates RGV’s implication in cliche — given he turns the Rand/Branden relationship into the far more conventional older MAN/younger WOMAN involvement. Probably understandable to an extent (RGV was vilified so much for making a film unworthy of Bachchan’s “dignity”, that I would have feared for his life had he made something more radical), but worth noting…

  24. Comment by satyam on 10 May 2008:

    Theskeptic: You offer much to chew on. The problem is that (and as you’ve pointed out) if RGV is after retrieving Bachchan the ’star’ Nishabd fails the test. Not because it is a ’scandalous’ subject but because it’s the sort of role where Bachchan’s star genealogy even has to be effaced. Bachchan is not the Kamal kind of star where the legend is built on ‘performance’ alone. Bachchan in fact combines Kamal and Rajni in some ways so that there is always as much ’star’ as ‘actor’. To then give him a Nishabd is to imagine him as Kamal which misses the point. Now it could be, following your ‘idea, that RGV treats Bachchan simply as ‘aesthetic object’. In other words he is simply trying to rewrite Bachchan’s ‘charisma’. As such the genealogy is not important for him. Aag would therefore seem to be the perfect role in that he here combines Hindi cinema’s most charismatic ‘hero’ and most charismatic ‘villain’. However, another problem emerges here. When RGV directs Abhishek he is quite ‘respectful’ of not just the Bachchan signature as an ‘aesthetic field’ but also in terms of the genealogy. With Sarkar Raj RGV is in fact attempting easily his most explicitly political film. Is it coincidental that Abhishek really takes over in this work?

    On Aag I have always had another idea. Your idea about Abhishek playing Jai is definitely predictable. But what if Abhishek makes a good Veeru because he then gets a chance as the ’survivor’ in the pair to take on Gabbar at the end?! How could RGV resist this opportunity?!

    I keep getting back to Abhishek because I think both father and son are critical for RGV’s venture. The father following the earlier idea serves as a sort of ‘empty set’ for the director. He possibly recognizes that the mass consumption superstar is really about charisma as such and not charisma coded in specific political ways the way it was when Bachchan was younger. Hence what is being ‘defaced’ is this latter day Bachchan not the younger self. Nishabd does not harm the ‘Vijay’ character, just the current transcendent star. Had the genealogy of the older star survived RGV would in fact have not needed to experiment with him because on his best days that star was already an anti-hero.

    With Abhishek on the other hand he gets this earlier promise and hence he activates the genealogy on this side of the equation. In Sarkar therefore Bachchan does enough to remind you of the genealogy and Abhishek shows you how one works with that signature.

    Getting back to the ‘defacement’ idea I do not think that someone truly immersed in say mid-late 70s Bachchan could simply embrace the star in this decade. There are exceptions, there is some outstanding work but all of this is still a far cry from the likes of a Trishul or a Kaala Pathar or what have you, films that offer you a ‘new’ Bachchan even after you have seen the films a hundred times. This is how I experience Bachchan and it’s hard to believe that RGV does not see this. If one accepts the radical break with the past everything RGV does can perhaps be ‘explained’. In any case I have never got the sense from RGV’s handling that somehow a Bachchan ‘restoration’ was being effected. I get that with his treatment of Abhishek though.

    This is where I even get frustrated with Bachchan fans at times. Because it seems to me that no one is willing to posit or accept such a gap between Bachchan the ultimate figure of resistance and Bachchan the ultimate model of multiplex consumption. No one is willing to entertain the idea that it’s not just about films and star image but the gap in acting reserves that the star is able to rely on in each instance. I agree that this is the fate of all stars who are ‘evergreen’. But this does not mean that one should rate the De Niro of the present alongside that who did all those Scorsese films in the 70s.

    I just got back from Bhootnath incidentally and I found it a terribly sad experience in every sense.

  25. Comment by satyam on 11 May 2008:

    TheSkeptic: Satyam: “When Ram Gopal Varma discussed the film’s end with Amitabh and Abhishek, they realised it would be very difficult to show the real-life father and son duo fight each other for shooting the climax. This led to Abhishek bowing out of the film.” From http://www.bollywoodpremiere.com/movies/preview/07/Ram_Gopal_Varma_Ke_Sholay.php

    TheSkeptic: And “Abhishek as the extroverted, talkative comic Veeru strikes me as perfect. We’ve already seen Abhishek do the brooding intense silent act in Sarkar. I think a role where he needs to expand on his real-life personality is just what’s required. I’ve seen how good Abhishek played the comic gregarious soul in Bunty Aur Babli . As Veeru I’d get him to move ahead in the same devilishly mischievous direction.” From http://www.apunkachoice.com/scoop/bollywood/20050807-0.html

    TheSkeptic: So, Satyam, I hope you will allow that Varma’s actual decisions do not so neatly fall into the scheme as you see it, though I’ll say that yours is a persuasive theory. My skepticism arises from the fact that I do not regard Varma as the astute, and specifically *political* assesser of the Bachchan “signature” that you take him to be. This is what he says on Amitabh-as-Gabbar: “We all know how humble and modest Amitabh Bachchan has been all his life. But somewhere I feel there is a lot of repressed negativity behind his humility. I will try my best to use this negativity in favour of my Gabbar Singh.”

    TheSkeptic: I think that these words from the director himself put a question-mark over your deface-Amitabh-and-replace-with-Abhi theory. I do think that with both Nishabd and Aag, Varma is following his aesthetic instincts of driving Amitabh, and himself, into fresh territory. His may not be the “truest” instincts in cinema, but if they have nevertheless led him to the implicit defacement agenda that you spell out, I must say I’m impressed at how well said instincts are serving him.

  26. Comment by satyam on 11 May 2008:

    Theskeptic: I have seen all of those statements on Abhishek and Aag before. But it was also reported in the media and I’ve also been led to believe this otherwise that for whatever reason Abhishek had second thoughts about this film and Guru was the perfect ‘excuse’ for him. He couldn’t shoot for this one because he was doing Guru. Of course he could have done both since RGV released Aag months after Guru and I think would have accomodated Abhishek. But of course all sorts of statements do appear in the media in these matters.

    Incidentally on my reading it is not that Abhishek is a ‘replacement’ for bachchan. As I pointed out both are crucial to the enterprise. But RGV uses Bachchan perhaps purely ‘aesthetically’ (which is to say a little ‘objectified’) whereas Abhishek just seems to be a more living, breathing actor in his films.

    Now RGV doesn’t have to be particularly astute on political grounds to understand the charge of a Deewar and everything else that followed. But even if he didn’t remember that the politics is a part of that Bachchan persona. There’s no way to look at Deewar and treat Bachchan solely as aesthetic object. But one can do this with current Bachchan in many ways.

    As for calling him the “greatest” or what have you one could believe this as many people do but also realise he has not ‘been’ the “greatest” for a while.

    But again the crucial point here is that I have not seen a single RGV statement, not one, at least in recent times where in a direct comparison Abhishek is not privileged. Why? So he’s better in the closeup, he’s a more accomplished actor and so on. Why isn’t there something where RGV could say that the father is greater on some specific point. He talks about Bachchan in generalities. Incidentally this too establishes my point. That Bachchan can constantly be asserted as the “greatest” and then Abhishek can be called ‘better’ in one department or another.

    I disagree that I have offered a ‘neat’ schema. I think that it’s a somewhat messy one in fact but hopefully true to this entire equation of the Bachchans. For my money both Rathnam and RGV have done the ‘Abhishek as Amitabh’ deal but Rathnam has been less burdened by the Bachchan tradition in many ways. In any case he hasn’t worked with Bachchan. So for him the only access to this signature is by way of Abhishek. RGV however makes things more complicated by always staging the succession. As I might have said before the latter day Bachchan and Abhishek are for him two sides of the same coin which is a younger Bachchan or at least the Bachchan signature at its most potent. At any rate I recognize the ‘truth’ of the Bachchan signature far more in RGV’s Abhishek than I do in RGV’s Bachchan. Also in terms of the ‘defacement’ idea I’m offering I think that this is in many ways RGV’s most useful gesture because here is one director who’s not willing to ‘consume’ Bachchan. So yes I too prefer Nishabd to many other Bachchan films in terms of the operation that is performed on or with Bachchan. Because RGV will not simply go along with the flow on this. What however should be recognized here is that even RGV has little hope of retrieving ‘Vijay’ (that the character is called such in Nishabd is even a little humorous!) and if he did one would see a ‘character’ in Sarkar as opposed to Bachchan on auto-drive (in many ways he doesn’t seem such in the film because Abhishek mediates the ‘Bachchanism’ on display). So in terms of his instincts he does get it. I think he knows that Khakee (though a fantastic film) and that character (again marvelously enacted) is a little too late for Bachchan. But it isn’t so for Abhishek as Yuva, Guru, Sarkar establish. In other words you can’t simply ‘return’ to Vijay but you also cannot go along with the ‘consumption icon’. Hence what you’re left with is ‘defacement’ as I see but one that deconstructs the consumer Bachchan not his authentic legacy, which in fact RGV is also perhaps adding to by way of Abhishek.

    And again why is Sarkar Raj his most explicitly political film? You cannot call him a man of minimal interest in the political if he’s making Sarkar Raj!

  27. Comment by satyam on 11 May 2008:

    TheSkeptic: Satyam, I call your scheme “too neat” because it attempts to account for a very diverse set of films and decisions by Varma. For instance, how does Abhi in Bhoot revive the early and authentic Bachchan? How does Abhi do this in Naach? By the same token the early Bachchan was not just Deewar, but also Don (of which Varma has spoken admiringly in the past), The Great Gambler, etc., which are, if not apolitical (since one can find some politics in anything, if one strains hard enough), are certainly far less so than Deewar. Varma’s decision to make Nishabd was an abrupt one, and as I said earlier was an ode to Ayn Rand, among other things. The film and role certainly do violence to the reverential perception that the public has of Amitabh (itself rather puzzling, since Amitabh had already ventured down “negative” paths as recently as Aks and Aankhen, not to mention his unyielding-patriarch roles in Mohabbatein and K3G). I just disagree that this is Varma’s resentment at Amitabh

    TheSkeptic: not honoring the Deewar pact into the multiplex era

    TheSkeptic: SR is more explicitly about politics than any previous Varma film, but here’s a director who claims ignorance on the Dhabol project and Rebecca Mark, so SR’s politics are likely to be no more than skin-deep. In the end, I wouldn’t be too surprised if it ended up *less* political than Deewar for all that the latter film is not explicitly about politics.

    TheSkeptic: We’re not that far apart on this matter actually, now that I think about it. What you call “defacement-due-to-political-resentment”, I’d call an aesthetic instinct to tear apart the stultified and the petrified, and introduce provocative new moves into the game.

  28. Comment by satyam on 11 May 2008:

    Skeptic: I think that RGV shouldn’t be taken seriously on many of his claims of ‘ignorance’. On Sarkar Raj particularly I just find him totally implausible. He’s under some pressure these days because of tensions that have developed between various Sena factions and Bachchan (he was quite happy to invoke the biographical for Sarkar) but many of these interviews are decidedly tongue-in-cheek.

    On the Naach/Bhoot thing remember Bachchan also did some very ‘normal’ films with the likes of Mukerjee and so on that could not be assimilated to the ‘angry young man’ paradigm. However there’s a difference between going against the grain and ‘defacement’ as I read it. Bachchan went against the grain at his peak, even relatively late in the game he did a Bemisaal, more recently we’ve seen Aks and Aankhen and Black and Boom (and some others). I wouldn’t call these films ‘defacements’ in the sense I’m using this word for Varma. Also Abhishek was offered Company and Bhoot relatively early. I think the former would have offered him a Bachchanesque mode. With Naach (and presumably with Bhoot) we see RGV exploring a certain brooding persona that Abhishek’s inherited from his father even if the films would not have been ’signature’ ones. In many ways the first half of Naach offers an ‘essay’ on this persona not just ‘narratively’ but by way of various visual cues. So I think we ought not to confuse the ‘different’ (which Bachchan has done many times in earlier or recent years, in ‘Bachchanesque’ or ‘un-Bachchanesque’ modes). RGV’s ‘different’ with Bachchan comes around in very specific ways. For example why does Aag have him looking like a ‘pirate’?! This is another example of where he’s made literally ‘grotesque’. The latter, as I suggested earlier, is RGV’s principle mode when he approaches Bachchan outside Sarkar. Not just literally but ‘theoretically’ as a ‘defacement’. You’re right that Bachchan did an Aankhen. But that’s my point. he always indulged in a lot of the negative from his chief films to something like Pukar in the 80s and right down to current day manifestations. As you rightly point out Mohabbatein/K3G are also ‘negative’ roles. But RGV seeks to ‘de-auraticize’ which these other films don’t. I don’t quarrel with RGV’s choices, just think that he runs into a contradiction. You cannot ‘recover’ anything from the Bachchan signature once you try to empty out the ‘auratic’.

    By the way I wouldn’t say that its ‘defacement’ (unconscious clearly) borne out of ‘political resentment’. I wouldn’t quite phrase it in this way. RGV to my mind sees the hollowing out of Bachchan in this transcendent icon and it is this that he perhaps resents.

    Getting to a larger point here I am a bit troubled by your reliance on the ‘aesthetic’ even as I’ve provisionally accepted this word in our discussions. I think you’re really opposing ‘form’ to ‘content’ in so many ways in the context of RGV (and elsewhere). I will note a certain ‘musical’ orientation here (where ‘content’ might be most ‘reducible’ to ‘form’). But I find this problematic when applied to cinema. I have often referred to ‘narrative’ but what I usually mean by this is ‘narrativity’ which encompasses ‘form’ and the ‘content’ that goes with ‘form’. I do not believe (and I don’t think you do) that we start with ‘form’ and then we fill it in with ‘content’. At least such a work would not be very interesting. Because the choice of ‘form’ must be immanent to the work. We wouldn’t argue that Joyce’s form in Ulysses is somehow separate from what his ‘narrative’ otherwise says. I’ve said before that Sarkar might be RGV’s greatest achievement to the extent that his themes here supplement his ‘aesthetic choices’ better than anywhere else. Imagine if K3G had been shot like Sarkar with everything else being exactly the same. I think we’d see a film where the ideological impact would be exactly the opposite of what it is now. In other words there would be an inversion where rather than Johar’s conservatism being masked as something else the film would become a commentary on the repressive nature of the Indian family and so forth. Just a change in ‘aesthetic choices’ would do this. In a parallel way Sarkar shot like K3G would be a delightful absurdity for sure but would more or less become like K3G! The representation of power would not at all seem claustrophobic or disturbing but rather natural and comforting! So I’m not sure if it’s tenable to ‘deny’ the sum total of what happens in a film by privileging the ‘aesthetic’ or ‘form’. I used to argue against those who idealized Deewar being shot like Satya that such a decision would completely reduce the force of the original film. Now where I don’t disagree with you is that with a director who’s always adept at providing an interesting ‘form’ to his films something might yet be retrieved from a poor film. The reverse is also true. Films that have been shot very functionally can be interesting in other ways.

  29. Comment by satyam on 11 May 2008:

    In other words RGV’s ‘aesthetic instincts’ in the absence of everything else cannot be ‘provocative’ in themselves much as someone writing like Joyce wouldn’t be interesting just on that basis. And wasn’t this exactly what happened? Various studies trace the stream of consciousness technique to ‘lesser’ author(s) in late 19th century France. The difference is precisely that no one was writing Ulysses!

  30. Comment by Simply Som on 11 May 2008:

    TheSkeptic: Satyam, I have always differed on what you call the grotesqueness of Amitabh in Aag and Nishabd. To me Varma has always done this with his actors, to lesser or greater degree. The deglamorized look is part of his vision and strategies as a filmmaker, operating in the otherwise cosmetic environment of Bollywood cinema. JD was bearded and scruffy in Satya, so was Bajpai in the same film. Similarly Anil Kapoor in My Wife’s Murder, Vivek in Company. Yes, a deglamorized Amitabh, due to the ravages of age, rather breaches the minimal sort of pact that even “realistic” filmmakers have to adhere to, namely that the truly repulsive is not placed at the center of the frame and narrative. Having said that, I do not find Amitabh grotesque at all in Nishabd, and only occasionally so in Aag. Do revisit this song from Nishabd: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l4HhrlgOYI I think he looks excellent here, and mostly througout the film, in luxurious sweaters and “rugged” jackets. Yes, Varma withdraws soft

  31. Comment by Simply Som on 11 May 2008:

    TheSkeptic: I think Varma goes further in embellishing Aag’s villain than he ever has with his villains in his earlier films because he’s flailing about for a way to “exceed” Gabbar - a usual problem with remakes: how to excite, how to offer more to audiences who have already thoroughly internalized the original?

    TheSkeptic: lighting and flattering lenses in the more emotional scenes to underscore haggardness. (Tangentially, I would draw attention to how often Varma shoots Amitabh from *above* eye-level.). In Aag, on the other hand, Varma both deglamorizes Amitabh *and* gives him several grotesque qualities - the limp, the mismatched eyes, the mascara -, yet Amitabh manages to look fine in several scenes! For example, one scene where he’s in a shawl, somewhat resembling Eastwood’s Dollars poncho, or in the scene where Amitabh slices off Mohanlal’s fingers and so on.

  32. Comment by satyam on 12 May 2008:

    Some fair points skeptic. I do agree that Nishabd has this tension where an attractive Bachchan is juxtaposed with a somewhat ‘grotesque’ one throughout the film.

    I am less persuaded on Aag. Bachchan is either a little grotesque here or cartoonish or both.. he doesn’t exude the charisma of Eastwood’s leads and looks more like the Emperor Palatine than anything else! But I should revisit this one. Don’t disagree with your characterisation of Bachchan in Aag. I just don’t believe it works.

    Incidentally the Abhishek moment here in the song is once again one which I see as being a little deconstructive for Bachchan.

  33. Comment by satyam on 12 May 2008:

    Also ‘exceeding’ Gabbar is surely not just about the transparently physical in terms of makeup and so on? Gabbar seems to be doing Halloween here! The difference between this and RGV’s past use of actors is that the director has always emphasized the ‘real’ in so many ways. Again he continues this genealogy with Abhishek (Sarkar and even moreso Sarkar Raj, even Naach had a very ‘normal’ guy in terms of physicality). With Bachchan he just does not present us with Bachchan ‘normally’. He’s trying to be deconstructive but what’s happening is that he’s doing so by deconstructing not just the ‘image’ but equally the star himself (barring Sarkar). Incidentally if RGV had had his way with Sarkar Bachchan’s look would have been rather different from what it is. At the time RGV was looking for much more of a Thackeray correspondence. And if that had happened Bachchan would again have appeared phsyically far less attractive in Sarkar than he does now.

  34. Comment by satyam on 13 May 2008:

    And in this sense Sarkar Raj will complete the Abhishek project as I see it. But it will be interesting to see what RGV does with both bachchans beyond this film. I think he might as well just do films with these to. Anything else would be like going back to the pre-Sarkaar phase and would only be uninteresting repetition.

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