Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Yash Chopra: A Socio-Political Reading - By Amaresh Misra


            Yash Chopra:  A Socio-Political Reading
                                         
                                                 By Amaresh Misra

The Contemporary Background
           
          During the re-making of the Hrithik Roshan starrer `Agneepath’, filmmaker Karan Johar made a startling revelation: that the movie, originally produced by his father and directed by Mukul Anand with Amitabh Bachchan in 1989, was too violent for him to direct.   Known for making candy floss, Mills and Boons marka `romantic’ films (`Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’, `Kabhi Kushi Kabhee Gum’, `Student of the Year’), Karan Johar is part of the breed of directors who emerged in post-liberalisation India in the 1990s with the uncannily aggressive—but softer than tissue—feel—that ended the era of underdog violence—reflected by the angry young man icon—in Hindi-Urdu cinema.

Why is the afore-mentioned instance relevant to a Yash Chopra obituary? Because Karan Johra regards the Yashraj genre of filmmaking his primary inspiration—by this, it is obvious that Johar restricts Yash Chopra’s legacy to so-called romantic and social films. But Yash Chopra was larger than life. He made huge romantic spectacles—and he also directed `Deewar’ and `Trishul’, the two films that provided a new dimension to the subterranean confrontational spirit, apparent in the angry young man.

It is not easy to assess Yash Chopra. If BR Chopra, his equally prolific and good filmmaker elder brother, symbolized the pro-Urdu, secular spirit of the Nehruvian era, Yash Chopra represented truly, the nuances of the Indira Gandhi period. Yash Chopra was a centrist. But like the works of Balzac—the classic French novelist—a political reactionary—who revealed more about capitalist decadence than any official Marxist—Yash Chopra’s films—more than movies made by art filmmakers—echo his times. 
  
 Yash Chopra was a master at combining opposites. Even his romantic films carry social and class contradictions that never get resolved. They are simply, great social documents.

Right Wing Shift in Indian Cinema 

  For many of us who belong to the pro-underdog, belligerent, `Sholay’ generation, the rise of Suraj Barjatya, Aditya Chopra, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Karan Johar, and several others in their vein, still signify a hidden political agenda. This was a cinema that made the overseas market look more important than the home one; in its stories of rich NRIs, plush houses and  plastic, semi-westernized `beautiful people’, there was no place for dirt, grime, hardboiled action, the working class hero, the earthy, curvaceous Indian beauty, or even the sophisticated glamour of yore.

Especially in the films of Sooraj Barjatya and Karan Johar,  the landscape did not reflect even the average Indian cinema reality—family replaced the individuality, displays of jewellery replaced human stories of flesh and blood, mush replaced romance, conservatism replaced liberalism,  masochism replaced machismo, surrender to status quo replaced rebellion, homogeneity of culture replaced celebration of plurality, garishly decorated bungalows—with a vapid, neo-rich, quasi-feudal, quasi-colonial reactionary atmosphere—replaced the smells and sounds of slums, middle class homes, sons of the soil, patriotic villages and the Indo-Muslim—or Anglo-Indian—havelis and bungalows—of the traditional elite. Furthermore, soft, infantile sentiments and tears replaced intense, adult emotions; ritualistic wedding music replaced classical and post-classical, original, Indian harmonies of pain, love and longing; soft Hindutva replaced secularism; locales in US and Europe replaced indigenous, regional/local contexts. More importantly, the Muslim social—a genre in its own right till the 1980s—disappeared without a trace. Worse, even the sympathetic Muslim character—an essential ingredient of the average nationalist/patriotic or ordinary Hindi-Urdu film—simply vanished—or was replaced—by the Muslim terrorist villain.

Needless to add, in this unreal cinema of the 1990s, phirangs and phirang assessments ruled the roost. Weak, pliable and squeamish values replaced Pan-Indian—Hindi-Urdu belt and South Indian—notions of masculinity—that formerly—constituted the mainstream.        

The Underdog Centric Upsurge of the 1970s

 After going through the elite/middle class fury against old generation values and the corrupt, unfeeling, criminal elite in the 1970s—the note of anger and mutiny—evident in Hindi-Urdu films from the late 1960s onwards—went on to assume—by the 1980s—the form of an anti-system upheaval. In 1983, Amitabh Bachchan played a working class hero—raised in a Muslim household—celebrating composite Hindu-Muslim-Sufi symbols—in  Manmohan Desai’s `Coolie’—a  super hit film. In society and politics, this was the militant trade union/communist/Dutta Samanta era. It was also around this time that the anti-Muslim, anti-working class lobby in Mumbai woke up. Meetings of cinema personalities—boycotted by secular artistes/stars like Devanand—were arranged with Bal Thackarey—the ultimate strike breaker, anti-working class, and anti-Muslim, figure, of Mumbai. If you watch `Cradle will Rock’, a 1999, Hollywood film based on a true story (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0150216/), you can see how Rockfeller and other US industrialists and giants of finance capitalism literally sat around a table and decided to sponsor the abstract art movement in the west in order to counter the subversive, working class tendencies of Cubism and other trends of modernist art. 
                
In India, the 1990s thus represented a classic U turn—a betrayal entrenched in class, caste, ideology and notions of taste—made by pro-urban, pro-bania, pro-NRI sections—unleashed by the liberalisation drive—that dominated society—and Hindi-Urdu cinema—by default. These forces did not just overhaul the working or the lower middle class ethos in films. They came down hard on the pre-liberalisation elite—represented by Jawahar Lal Nehru and the communist/Left team of Indira Gandhi—that used revenge, Urdu poetry, and anti-rich anger, as tools, to set a mainstream, secular/composite, pro-poor, Left-of-centre socio-political schedule into motion.

The `Bollywood’ Conspiracy

  On hindsight, the term Bollywood—criticized heavily by Amitabh Bachchan—the hero of the pre-mush era—clearly seems part of this anti-underdog, anti-Urdu politics. Before 1991, no one had even heard of Bollywood. A cinema which always prided itself on its different/eastern style of narrative, aesthetics and mood, was now being marketed in the west as some sort of an extended VHS footage with twists and turns of a Bania-Gujarati-Marwari wedding.

It is another matter—that even as squishy songs celebrating re-invented (for the neo-rich) Gujarati melodies—played out in a Sanjay Leela Bansali or a Karan Johar film—Muslim houses were being burned—men killed and women raped—and Indian working and middle class soldiers of all faiths were dying in hundreds in the remote, hilly, frigid battlefields of Kargil. No one ever thought of making a film on these hardboiled issues. Far away from the cushy, comfortable world of these films, Adivasis and Left activists of all faiths were being killed in fake Police encounters. The fact remains that behind the turn towards the `sab kuch achcha hai, sub kuch meetha hai, sub kuch theek hai’ idiom in Hindi-Urdu cinema, lies the story of a whole, ugly, Nazi style/fascist, right-wing shift of Indian society.

Yash Chopra’s Trajectory

It is here that Yash Chopra struck a different note.  Even in the late 1950s—Chopra—in early films like `Dhool Ka Phool’ (1959) and `Dharmaputra’ (1961)—celebrated Hindu-Muslim unity and composite culture. In `Dharmaputra’ Chopra went as far as presenting the only critique of what we know now as Hindutva fundamentalism; with a RSS style hero—actually the illegitimate son of a Muslim couple raised by a compassionate Hindu family during the pre-Independence days of composite culture—played by Shashi Kapoor—gunning for Muslim blood in a puritan frenzy during the partition days—as its centre-piece—`Dharmaputra’ is simply, too radical a subject. Today, it cannot be said with certainty that even ideologically committed filmmakers would touch say, a subject involving RSS type terrorism unearthed by Hemant Karkare (something which can be seen as a contemporary corollary to the kind of hate and intolerance depicted during the days when Chopra made `Dharmaputra’).

  `Dharmaputra’ generated controversy and violent protests from the far-right. In the mid-1960s—at a time when the post-Independence consensus of an alliance between classes was giving way to violent class conflicts that would change Indian polity for all times to come—Chopra re-introduced the concept of class in the making and unmaking of love and destinies. Earlier, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Shammi Kapoor’s apolitical, pro-rich romances had obliterated all traces of class. Besides inaugurating the trend of multi starrers, Chopra’s `Waqt’ (1965), redefined romance as a stylish emotion carrying the vicissitudes of fate, class to class relations—in this,  a poor boy’s shy missives to his rich girlfriend gets strangled from within. `Waqt’ also brought into focus the behavioural aspect of class; the pain a man—raised in a rich household—undergoes after learning of his original orphan status in which his foster parents found him—as he prepares himself—to give up his rich fiancée—voluntarily.
        
 After `Waqt’, Yash Chopra made `Aadmi aur Insaan’ and `Ittefaq’—the latter, a nerve racking, song-less thriller; earlier, in the 1960s, BR Chopra, Yash Chopra’s elder brother, made the highly successful `Kanoon’, another suspense drama without songs.

Deewar and After 

By the 1970s, Yash Chopra set up his own banner. `Daag’, his first film as a producer, tackles issues of bigamy and compromises a man has to make in order to shed the burden of past—and to come to grips with the often numbing, varied faces of love; seen today, `Daag’—termed a romantic film—overturns the very idea of a Mills and Boons romance. 
  
 Soon, Yash Chopra—in Deewar (1975), Kabhie Kabhie (1976), Trishul (1978), Kala Patthar (1980), Silsila (1981)—the films he made one after the other in a tumultuous era of Indian politics—took head on the challenge of exploring the various/multiple/darker shades of the angry young man. `Deewar’ can be seen more, as a Salim-Javed script than a Yash Chopra film. Here, Amitabh Bachchan’s anger transcends the status-quo—it becomes a weapon for the underdog to enter the big game, make money and live a good life before tragedy—and the strange, idealistic values of a society bound by dated duty, law and rigid morals (a semi-feudal society were notions of good and bad, right and wrong stand twisted in cinematic subtext)—strikes him down. Played by Parveen Babi, Amitabh Bachchan’s lover too originates from the lower depths of society. The 1970s were perhaps the only time when the woman from the wrong sides of the track—the prostitute—or the call girl—a word that could have appeared only in those morally ambiguous times—was shown without pity—as an individual in her own right—capable of making or breaking decisions. The absence of maudlin drama was a product of Salim-Javed’s astoundingly encrusted and well-heeled writing. But Yash Chopra’s filming of Parveen Babi’s first encounter with Amitabh—at a time when Amitabh’s character—originally a Bombay dockyard coolie—has literally put his life on the line  to rise as a cool, handsome, well-dressed gangster—and Parveen Babi’s character—with the famous `I am falling in love with a stranger’ song—playing tenderly and tantalisingly—in the background—a minute ago—saves him accidentally—through the 786 number—considered auspicious by Muslims—badge—which Amitabh’s Hindu character carries—from his coolie days—is the stuff of legends. Danger, glamour, the threat of betrayal, inherent everyday secularism of Hindus and Muslims of India, sexual undercurrents, baritone of the base guitar, the elusively posh words from female lips, come together to create perhaps, the most modern of all scenes in Indian cinema as a whole.
                       
Chopra followed `Deewar’, with `Trishul’—in which an `illegitimate’ son seeks revenge—in another unforgettable piece of writing from Salim-Javed—the script writers of this film as well—on his `illegitimate’ father. To achieve his goal, Amitabh Bachchan’s character is willing to go to any length, even trying to woo with cold but intense, brooding detachment his stepbrother’s fiancée. In this moment of cinema, Amitabh’s character crosses the line reserved for heroes playing negative characters in Hindi-Urdu cinema. `Trishul’ harks back to an earlier era—the films of Mehboob Khan—who showed in `Amar’ (1955)—a perfectly respectable Dilip Kumar character—engaged to a beautiful Madhubala—suddenly raping Nimmi—a village lass—without motive—in an abrupt moment of passion, heat and desire. It is at this point that you finally realize that Chopra knew men. And he knew that like any passion, revenge too carries a darker side.
   
After `Trishul’, Chopra explored Amitabh’s dark side even in `Kabhie Kabhie’, perhaps one of the best romantic films of the 1970s. Starting as a poet, Amitabh’s character turns his passion into a brooding, self inflicted drive of pain and outburst, with vengeance always lurking around in the corner.   In `Kala Patthar’, Amitabh plays an ex-naval officer turned coal mine worker; a man—much like the characters of Joseph Conrad—haunted by the burden of a past guilt—where—in a moment of weakness—he betrayed his comrades. Then in `Silsila’, Chopra extended the line of romance to bring in extra-marital issues—a forbidden topic then—with the dream cast of Amitabh playing the husband, Jaya Bhaduri the wife, and Rekha, the other woman.  

The Lamhe Moment

Chopra flirted with unconventional issues even in `Lamhe’ (1991), a film about a young girl’s obsession with an older man who once nurtured unrequited love for her late mother; unlike films today, `Lamhe’ was not a copy of a Hollywood movie—previously, Chopra made `Chandini’ (1989), that ended his post-`Kala Patthar’ dry run at the box office during the 1980s. This was a time when Chopra made films like `Mashaal’ (a critical success but a commercial failure) and `Vijay’.
   
But, and this is important, Chopra did not fall prey to the philistine mayhem of the 1990s. He made the unconventional `Darr’—that launched Shahrukh Khan—as a phenomenon in his own right—a hero with negative shades and positive potential. From DDLJ to `DON’, Shahrukh just seems to walk around the territory by Yash Chopa for him.
     
Despite containing candy floss elements, ‘Dil To Paagal Hai (DTPH)’ still retained a whiff of Chopra’s strong grounding. DTPH also introduced new age jazz dance style in Hindi-Urdu cinema.

With `Veer Zaara’ (2004)—actually a passionate cry at the lost strands of Hindu-Muslim unity dressed as a cross border romantic story of an Indian Hindu man and a Pakistani Muslim woman—Chopra appears to have come full circle. He wanted to retire. Then he thought about making one last time—`Jab Tak Hai Jaan’; this film—is ready for release. But Chopra is no more. Maybe he would have liked it this way—maybe not; not time—but his last film—which his fans and audiences have yet to see—will provide the answer.  

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