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A typical Ram Gopal Varma interview is always banal. Even as the media taxes its imagination trying to serve it up with choice tabloid bits, it is at best a politically correct, uneventful even lazy drawl lit up only when a glimmer of arrogance slips in or an apology or when he mentions a forthcoming project (another remake of Sholay!). However as opposed to Mahesh Bhatt banality or Karan Johar banality, RGV’s tired comments present an enigma. Here’s a guy, smarter than the average director, with trademark auteur style- an absolute original, creator of more than a few influential films that ventured into largely untrodden territory to break new ground and a host of interesting flawed works, dream merchant for so many unorthodox faces and talents, still in his middle ages, ballsy beyond doubt and till a while ago, THE name to reckon with as Bollywood enters into a transitory phase- and he comes of mouthing near-predictables with a hardly changing hangdog expression. Even in his filmography one can find the blandness crop up noticeably twice- one with ‘Jungle’ which followed the box office disaster of ‘Mast’ and later with ‘Sarkar’ on the heels of the Diwali day bombing of ‘Naach’- surefire bread and butter movies and so that the rest of the time he can continue….

… taking a giant piss-take on every pretension and foible of the movie industry he works in and the mechanism that surrounds it. Behind the bland replies, feeble apologies and hangdog face sits a master trickster, troublemaker and subversive. He’s no paper tiger dissident but rather a perverse defiler. He has the most perverse vision in Bollywood and not even all the critical barbs directed at him these days can equal even one tenth of perversion that he inflicted on them by ruining with his filthy paws the nation’s collectively cherished celluloid moment ‘Sholay’ by adapting it into the vulgar spectacle of the arrogantly titled ‘Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag’. It didn’t work as a movie but it was never meant to. It was a dirty provocative romp not unlike Bob Dylan’s electric phase and the backlash was severe and still continues to be without any sign of abating. Can’t blame the critics! What does one do when nothing is holy? But the sheer balls of one of the most defiant piss-takes in an industry where a ‘Sirji’ hierarchy still looms prominent must be lauded. In fact, if 2007 will go down in history as an year in which Bollywood shed several of its conventions and caught the first flight of a new wave, ‘Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag’ would be its poster moment.

At around an hour and forty minutes into RGV’s latest ‘Sarkar Raj’ sequel to his 2005 super-hit ‘Sarkar’…

Till that point however it is regular even blander-than-the-usual-bland RGV. Skewed angles. Moody frames. Jarring chants on the soundtrack. Claustrophobic close-ups. Rhythmic pulpy dialogues. Tough guy extras. Unsavory looking character actors. Heavy Silences. A blurring interplay of shadow and light almost sublimating characters into silhouettes and smudges. Rituals- both public and private. Blacks. Grays. Whites. RGVs. The works.

‘Sarkar Raj’ picks up sometime after ‘Sarkar’ ended. A single ruthless execution sequence in the beginning deftly establishes not just the tone and pace of the movie but also all that has happened and the time passed since the original ended with Shankar (Abhishek Bachchan) taking over the reigns of his father Subhash Nagre’s (Amitabh Bachchan) de-facto fiefdom of Maharashtra. Shankar has noticeably matured- he’s mostly solemn with a permanent grimace on his face, he has a confident strut and the most interesting part of the development of the character is that he has turned stubborn and cocky with the loss of his innocence coinciding with his inheritance of almost absolute power. Subash, whom we first see celebrating his 60th birthday at his fortress-like bungalow, is noticeably feeling his age and also now that he is no more ‘Sarkar’ has grouchy moments when he senses the times pass him by. It is the birthday sequence that first made me uncomfortable. And the discomfort is the tabloid and till the aforementioned hour and forty minutes moment, I couldn’t help but debate with myself whether RGV is infact indulging the tabloid or it is all so much excess baggage. So while we have Subash Nagre tell his supporters the extent of pride that he feels for his son we also have another unashamed Amitabh Bachchan rave about Abhishek Bachchan. One can only imagine the squirm as to what happens to this equation when Aishwarya Bachchan-Rai steps into the picture as Anita, daughter of a NRI industrial magnate played by Victor Banerjee, who has plans of setting up a power plant in the Nagre fiefdom. We have Nagre Sr’s initial rejection of the proposal even as Abhishek Bachchan decides to go ahead if only with an eye on the future and over his tours of the countryside with Mademoiselle Anita they bond over the fact that they had so little choice when it came to choosing lives for themselves because of their overbearing fathers. Playing the assembly of evil this time are Govind Namdeo as Hasan Qazi, the facilitator of the power plant project, Sayaji Shinde as Karunesh Kaanga, a dunderheaded mercenary chief minister hopeful and Upendra Limaye as Kantilal Vohra who would like the power plant to be located in Gujarat. Adding another hue and further tabloid subtext is Raj Thackeray double Somji (Rajesh Shringarpore) who leads the locals in a violent civil unrest against the Nagres/Bachans and quickly ascends the political ladder. We are even introduced to Somji’s maternal grandfather Raosaheb, a Gandhian and also Nagre Sr’s political guru played by Lage Raho Munnabhai’s Gandhi, Dileep Prabhawalkar.

Not that till the hour and forty minute moment the movie is without any merits. There are occasional moments where emotional subtleties among the characters overpower the tabloid like when father and son connect awkwardly and one can almost sense Shankar’s lost innocence and his unspoken discontent. There are a couple of tempestuous montages- one of high winds, Somji’s wild sloganeering and jarring music and the other of the civil strife in which RGV commits to celluloid what a very high Jimi Hendrix did to guitar solos at Woodstock 69. They are cackling moments and smack of self-indulgence that only auteurs can give in to and carry off with verve. Also similar is the almost surreal shootout sequence in which Shankar and his two trusted henchmen take on a pack of anonymous gunmen amongst eerie white smoke and burning trees. It’s the character actors who provide the best moments with Sayaji Shinde enjoying the comic brand of evil that he personalized in Shool and Upendra Limaye normally seen ranting and raving in Bhandarkar travesties exuding a cool and unsavory menace. It’s Govind Namdeo however who is the bonafide scene stealer. He’s a serpentine presence. Watch him how he mixes flamboyance with a rotten core as he slides towards Shankar hissing in that accented Namdeo drawl,” I’m your friend.” For anybody who savored Namdeo’s ‘intreshting pushy cat’ in ‘Johnny Gaddar’ this is the next best thing. It is his character that first acknowledges the tabloid subtext when he raves that what the public desires is entertainment and that they shall have that, following which a sudden major twist shellshocks the narrative and this pulpy, sentimental moment heralds the ‘Interval’.

And then at forty minutes past an hour, the moment arrives. Tabloidisation is absolute. The greatest embarrassment of all is about to unfold on screen. Point your fingers and laugh. Deride. Giggle. Ridicule. RGV’s lost it. It’s the dumps for him. Beyond any redemption. Not even a million…

This is about as far as you get.

You won’t have the time to change that goofy expression on your face. I didn’t.

It’s like the trickster conned you into opening your mouth, closing your eyes and stuck a magnum down your throat.

What just… what the… did you….

Magnificent perversion. The hangdog breaks into an evil grin as he brings out his filthy paws and dirty vision and delivers one potshot of much magnitude and repercussion that all pretensions and illusions implode in on itself and what emerges is pure and powerful cinema. Like the proverbial carpet under your feet, the tabloid is swept off and the Bachchan family saga gives away. This is high mischief, the most sophisticated con and what magnificent perversion… what balls… what sheer balls! Masterstrokes are rarely so sick, twisted and vulgar and RGV makes a poetic slow motion spectacle of it.

A brief ritualistic moment of redemption plays out after this defining moment and a figure stretches like an imposing mortal against the dull and infinite sky. What follows is the darkest pulp on steroids and like RGV himself would put it- ‘Sab Kuch Niji Hain’. Nothing is sacred. All facades will collapse. Characters don’t just die, they are violated sacrilegiously. Not even long standing relationships are spared. Nothing stands against the fury. The Godfather goes for a toss. As does the Thackeray. The original ‘Sarkar’ seems nothing more than a flimsy pack of lies. Loyalty is a pretense. The Gandhian is yet another and impotent to boot. A nihilistic fury damns it all. What you are watching is nothing short of an apocalypse in progress. Nothing will survive.

The tempest subsides and the trickster has a last one up his sleeve. After some needlessly prolonged sentimentality RGV moves in for the final shot.

In a film that deliberately took an extremely ambivalent and uncomfortable stand on the corporate, the last shot comes as a debilitating critique and while this in itself could be sufficient conclusion, the masterstroke which is played out at the very same moment will take time to sink in. But once it sinks in, you can cut straight through to the brilliance at the core. It an ouroboros (a snake swallowing its own tail) of a critique, a double edged sword. After all, when everything is defiled why should the central character be spared? The final illusion falls.

‘Sab Kuch Niji Hain’

‘Sarkar Raj’ is by far and till date, the ‘film of the year’. The flaws go deep, there are parts which drip tedium, there are parts that make you squirm but it possesses, and I repeat, the balls to stand with legs wide apart and take one giant piss-take. No wonder the critics are up in arms, picketing sometimes with single minded purpose- this is a movie out to offend with a vengeance. All the while, I’m sure, RGV smiles that trickster smile. I would like to believe ‘Sarkar Raj’ as him washing his hands off the Bachchan family and with ‘Phoonk’ and ‘Contract’ (most probably the regular bland) onwards, he develops an obsession with another muse. But you never know. That’s always part of the deal with this perverse bastard. He is three things, that these days, are one rarer than the other- an original, a subversive and an enigma.