The last few weeks have seen
Bollywood at its bloodiest. This cinema factory has always cherished violence
as a favourite product. Down the years we have seen violence as art and have
given it the pride of place. Check with critics of the Mahatma and you would
find many who believed that non-violence was an act of national cowardice or
simply one of lacking the necessary brawl. To this collective, it is only
simple and easy to have violence as the mainstay of our cinema. Even a romantic
teen age love story would have the allotted number of reels dedicated to chase,
run beat and shoot.
Department, Rowdy Rathore, Tezz, Shanghai, GOW, Shanghai …. Even in the very
recent past we have had on the shelf film after film dealing with gory violence
and giving it the pride of place.
No surprise therefore that Kabeer Kaushik gives you his latest take on
violence. He walks into the past and in to the early years of the decade that
was. Shoot outs and encounters , numbered against each police officer made news
headlines. Today out of the box and the archives, kabeer revisits the scenario.
Interestingly it tells the tale of top police officers gunning at one another
and this comes at a time when we in Hyderabad are witness to a no holds bar
fight between top police officers wanting to occupy the cushioned seat at the
top.
Back to Mumbai for now: the two police officers Inamdar ( portrayed inn
constricted screen space ) and Sanjay Sood ( in the latest avatar as the angry
young brooding police officer ) at the throats of each other and for inch space
in the media. Their no holds bar fight is encouraged by vested interest groups
in the Department ( not to be confused with the one that RGV floundered with
recently. Except the weird tea cups and camera angles, the two films have a lot
in common and without intending to hurt the promising Director , it is
discouraging to notice such semblance with the RGV school of cinema. Here too,
there is style, the camera work is absorbing, the performances are nuanced (
may be lacking in sincerity) but the end product is one long drool on violence
and gun shots. It is tiring to the ear to have 762 gun shots in every few
minutes of the script. This is noise pollution too. Socio politically it is
perhaps a true reflection of the times we live in and also an echo of the moral
timbre of our society. Cinematically it gets tiring . Two police officers who
keep shooting all and sundry in broad day light and encounters galore
encouraged without so much of a whisper on who the victims are is pure
cinematic license.
Things come to a pass only when the unknown hand of the far away smuggler and
the local politician join hands and further corrupt the goings on in the police
department. We have a finale where the two warring officers have a free for all
shoot out in a railway station – (images of things to come!!). Soon we have
this little child tying up her shoe laces and going on ….. Is this a symbolic
presentation that life goes on, or that nothing really effects the average
Mumabaiite? Is it true only about Mumbai. The mandatory aie dil hai mushkil hai
jeena yahan is in the back ground but why single out Mumbai when the story is
true about any place in Mera Bharat Mahan.
Time to truly go back and ask the question Jinhe naaz hai Hind par who kahan
hai? Watch an old re run of some film or even better get your self some butter
less popcorn and watch an old DVD at home.
L. Ravichander