GABBAR SINKS
The only thing good about this wretched retread of ‘Sholay’ is that it makes you remember the glorious original all over again.
SEPT 2, 2007 – THE LITIGIOUS TENDENCIES of the Sippy family apart, Ram Gopal Varma claims he chose to name his Sholay-remake Aag because that could be the title of your average, disreputable, vendetta-themed potboiler from the seventies or the eighties. And as you sit through Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag, it becomes increasingly – and disturbingly – clear that that’s all he thought Sholay was: a generic, dacoit-land revenge saga, possibly the kind that would have made it into one of those Indrajal Comics featuring the homegrown hero Bahadur. Because the basic one-liner sketch of Sholay is simply this: Bad Guy polishes off Good Guy’s family. Good Guy hires a couple of Bahadur-equivalents to bring down Bad Guy. Period.
But you know and I know and everyone (except, apparently, Ram Gopal Varma) knows that when it comes to Sholay, its story is so not the point. What Ramesh Sippy crafted, along with Salim-Javed, wasn’t a great movie so much as an unstoppable train of great characters and great moments that retroactively added up to a great movie. There’s very little organic greatness in Sholay. It’s a cheerfully unapologetic pastiche of bits from – among others – Once Upon a Time in the West, Mera Gaon Mera Desh and that genius Kishore Kumar vehicle Half Ticket, and even the staunchest of its defenders would be hard-pressed today to conceal an embarrassed smile at some of its more dated conceits, like the climactic image of Sanjeev Kumar single-handedly (rather, single-leggedly) bringing down Amjad Khan’s dreaded dacoit with a lethal combination of flying kicks and a fixed expression that suggests not rage so much as acute constipation.
And yet, each time Sholay shows up on TV, we can’t tear our eyes away – and that’s because of scenes such as the one where AK Hangal’s Imam sahib discovers that his son (played by Sachin, who contributes a cameo in Aag as well) has been killed. The way this sequence spools out is a master class in masala-movie screenwriting. Just a little earlier, we’ve seen Sachin reluctantly take leave of his aged, blind father, and now, as his horse returns to the village of Ramgarh with its lifeless rider (who’s been murdered by Gabbar Singh), we already feel for Imam sahib. After all, the son didn’t want to go; it’s the father who forced him to take up a lucrative job in a beedi factory in another town, and it’s during the travel to that other town that the boy met his untimely end.
And the scene keeps building. A crowd gathers. Jai and Veeru haul the body off the horse, just as Imam sahib joins them and breaks down. Kashiram reads out a note from Gabbar, which says that unless Jai and Veeru surrender, there will be many more such deaths. The terrified villagers urge Thakur to see reason. And then, Thakur lifts what has so far been standard-issue melodrama into the realm of myth. He issues a rallying cry, pointing out that down the ages – “Yug yug se…” – people have fought back against tyrants, and such efforts have always involved an element of sacrifice.
But the villagers are still unconvinced. They protest, “Hum is musibat ka bojh nahin utha sakte,” that they can’t bear this burden anymore. And then comes the stunning closure to the scene, the big bang that releases the slow-fuse tension that’s been building all along. Without raising his voice, Imam sahib rebukes the cowering villagers by reminding them of what he’s just lost, saying that if he is willing to support Thakur, the others had no business opposing him. And look how beautifully he puts this thought across, by picking up on the word bojh that was tossed around barely a moment ago: “Jaante ho duniya ka sabse bada bojh kya hota hai? Baap ke kandhon par bete ka janaaza.”
That, among other things, is what Sholay is about – not just the plot, but magnificently sculpted dialogue like this one, and the one that Jai utters when Veeru considers giving up a life of petty thievery by buying a plot of land in Ramgarh and taking up farming. (But how will they farm, Veeru wonders, considering that they don’t know the first thing about wielding a plough. And Jai responds, with a casual dash of existential philosophy, “Buraai ne bandook chalaana sikha di thi… neki hal chalaana sikha degi,” that if their opting for a life of crime had taught them how to handle a gun, their choosing the good path would automatically guide them in their new career.)
We often laugh at masala movies, and if we can appreciate them anymore, it appears to be purely from a retro-kitsch angle. But consider how, in that Imam sahib scene, a simple moment of conflict and tragedy has been elevated to deeply affecting popular art. And when Ram Gopal Varma expressed his admiration for Sholay – he’s apparently seen it dozens of times – these were the things you thought he’d pick up on, the things he wanted to repackage for a new generation. You thought he’d show us what we’re missing in our mainstream cinema, by going back to – among other things – the way songs were used in Sholay, which was a virtual textbook on the various genres of the Hindi film song. (The happy and sad versions of the friendship song, the festival song, the item number, the keep-the-clock-ticking-till rescue-arrives dance in the villain’s den, and the roothna-manaana song, with the hero pacifying the cross heroine.)
And you thought he’d take a fresh look at the relationships. You thought, perhaps, that he’d refashion the friendship between Veeru and Jai (now Heero and Raj, played by a tired Ajay Devgan and stony-faced newcomer Prashant Raj) into the sort of male-bonding better suited to our more cynical times, where not even soul mates burst into the kind of lyrics in Yeh dosti. (I mean, Tera gham mera gham, meri jaan teri jaan, aisa apna pyaar?) These revisionist touches, we thought, would compensate for the fact that Aag could never hope to reach, say, the rhetorical heights of its predecessor. (Because for one, no one writes dialogue like that anymore. And even if they did, no one apparently wants to listen to them anymore. Film is a visual medium, we’re constantly reminded these days, as if it weren’t an integrated audio-visual experience.)
But Varma isn’t interested in any of this. His characters are a joke. His screenplay is not much more than an exercise in spot-the-corresponding-scene-in-Sholay. (That’s why this review of Aag is filled with recollections from Sholay. When the filmmaker can’t stop invoking the earlier film, how can the viewer?) His dialogues are drowned out by the unbearably loud background score (which incorporates reworked versions of RD Burman’s evocative themes from the original). And save for a Holi-revelry number – staged like the one in Nayakan, with rain and bleached colours and surging, free-spirited multitudes (surrounding the hapless, fish-out-of-water Mohanlal, who plays the Thakur equivalent) – his song picturisations are a horrific blur of tacky skin show and terrible choreography.
And you want to ask Varma: This is your idea of a masala movie, simply because it’s a mix of various seemingly-incompatible elements? There’s a reason films like Sholay are labelled masala, and that’s because the best of them are a perfect blend of these elements. When you saw Sholay, you got not just the dialogues and the songs, you also got a revenge drama with equal doses of comedy, friendship and romance, along with a more-than-cursory nod to the textures of the society around. (What is Jaya Bhaduri’s widow-in-white if not a symbol of the complications of losing a husband in a feudal setup? And what is it if not a celebration of pluralism that Imam sahib is included in the celebration of the Hindu festival of colours?)
It’s telling in Aag that its heroes move from Nasik to the generic gangster-land of Mumbai, thus reversing the anonymous-big-city-to-comforting-Ramgarh trajectory of the heroes in Sholay – for at least in the movies, save for a Lagaan here or a Swades there, India doesn’t live in the villages anymore. So okay, we’ve made our peace with that. But why, then, remake Sholay so faithfully that even the constructs that depended on the rural setting to fully work are retained? Sushmita Sen plays the widow in Aag, but in today’s Mumbai, all things considered, how could this character carry the emotional wallop that Jaya Bhaduri’s did in Sholay?
And that’s why the hysterically over-stylised Aag becomes just another guns-and-gangsters saga. It is brave of Varma, in this current cinematic culture not exactly conducive to the masala movie, to update one of the best examples of the genre (which isn’t quite the right word in this context, for the masala movie wouldn’t be a masala movie if it weren’t a conflation of a number of genres). And if his acknowledgement of the heyday of the masala movie – in the form of nods to Amar Akbar Anthony and Kabhi Kabhie – is any indication, he does seem genuinely fond of that kind of cinema.
But he’s too ambitious to do what Subhash Ghai did with Karma, which was to simply retell the Sholay story in a solidly comforting mainstream format. (And, for a minute, let’s try and forget Dharmesh Darshan’s awful woman-centric spin with Mela.) Varma appears to be mining for subtext in Aag. In Sholay, when Veeru teaches Basanti how to handle a gun, it’s because she’s trying to pick raw mangoes from branches her extended arms cannot reach. It’s to shoot down the mangoes. But in Aag, this shooting practice occurs due to Ghungroo’s (the Basanti character, played intolerably by Nisha Kothari) fascination with guns. It’s as if Varma is choosing this film – of all times – to wink at the gun culture we live in.
But this is nothing compared to how he conceives Babban Singh (the Gabbar Singh update, played by Amitabh Bachchan with a huge appetite for chewing up all the scenery in sight). Varma makes Babban an extremely modern (and therefore non-mythical, and non-masala-movie) embodiment of evil, someone who muses that the innocents that die at his hands are no different from those that die at the hands of America or the Al-Qaeda. This villain isn’t a simple bogeyman who’s stepped out of our darkest imagination; he’s very much a part of the complex reality around us, for when Babban escapes from jail, it’s thanks to the complicity of the all-too-corrupt police.
These updated touches may be Varma’s nods to the textures of the society around us today, but they cannot save a film that fails at the most basic level – by not giving us a story to get involved in, with characters to care about. It’s occasionally fun to watch certain scenes, like the one where Amitabh Bachchan plays the harmonica, and get all meta about the fact that he played the instrument in the earlier film too, but as a different character. But when it comes to something really important, when one of the heroes dies at the end, you barely register the loss. You’re supposed to be shedding big, fat masala-movie tears about the premature death of a beautiful friendship – yeh dosti and all that – and instead you heave a sigh of relief that this interminable travesty of a remake is finally coming to a close. Aag isn’t masala; it’s a mess.
Copyright ©2007 The New Sunday Express
brangan
September 2, 2007
Some problems with the site, hence the delay…
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Dharu
September 2, 2007
Often what you expect to be a bad movie turns out to be a bad movie! Rarely does this happen to good movies for me. Thanks Baddy for the Rs 180 I saved on the multiplex ticket. I will wait for Sony Max (or should it be Sahara One) announce this movie. This certainly is one of the times I am happy I don’t have the burden of reviewing a movie as a professional, award winning reviewer :). Keep it coming and may be good movies will come out as well.
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anon
September 2, 2007
Mr Rangan. Your review was, as always, great. But I found a spelling mistake here, which never happens in any of your reviews. The “chorography” in the 9th paragraph should read “choreography”. I believe, you were typing in a hurry. No offence meant.
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brangan
September 2, 2007
Dharu: You know, in a weird way, this may yet become something of a cult – as in, let’s check out *how* bad this can really be, especially for those who know Sholay…
anon: Thanks for the catch. Though I’m surprised MS-Word didn’t catch it first…
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bala
September 2, 2007
strong words eh Baradwaj :)..Verma’s characters are a joke 🙂 . (btw Did you always used to refer RGV as Verma ? Looks like the movie really pissed you off ) .Time was when Verma used to make stylish,competent gangster movies (if nothing much else )…nowadays he and his factory chelas are working at parodying his own style with frankly horrific consequences…
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sachita
September 3, 2007
The movie has received duds from most of the reviews I have read.
I agree you have clearly given reasons why it is a dud.
But in all fairness, I didn’t expect you to like the movie even it has been otherwise. Aren’t you too much of nostlagia-specialist, to enjoy a old classic remade by today’s radical director?
I mean I see you pensively look back at the Leela chitnis mother types of the old movies:) I did not even know her name till I read your reviews.
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Padawan
September 3, 2007
Thanks for the review, and BTW, who is interested in 2 ok-ok Hollywood flicks?
Thanks for warning us before hand, I thought I would watch this for AB and Ajay, but now I may not even watch it on TV!
You write, “That’s why this review of Aag is filled with recollections from Sholay. When the filmmaker can’t stop invoking the earlier film, how can the viewer?”, what is it that you want?
And did you hear Bheema? And I remember that somewhere, you had mentioned that you were asked by your Ed on something about Mozhi, not a review as such but something that you are not too sure of and you promised that it would be up in the blog even if it does not make it to the paper….where is it?
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Lakshmi
September 3, 2007
It is so obvious that you did not find anything worthwhile to mention about the movie. Therefore, you went down the memory lane. Thanks for the post.
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Oops
September 3, 2007
Didn’t see Aag so i won’t comment the movie, but the reviews.
If the movie is that bad, so all of them are quite fair… but i read somewhere that a critic though that it was so bad that he threw eggs before leaving the theatre.
Never seen such a stupid behavior ! Not professional at all ! Nobody need that kind of humiliation.
Ok the movie is bad. But let’s not start some “RGV ki bashing” to punish him because he made a bad remake of one the best hindi film ever (which after all is an adaptation of a japanese movie… we should ask them what they think of sholay Lol. French would say “Kurusawa à la sauce curry” with irony, a good entertainment thanks to those Leone film’s reference and one of the coolest bad guy ever Lol).
Not a critic towards you Baradwaj, but i somewhat feel that critics are loosing their objectivity when they review “RGV KI AAG” and i don’t think it’s cool. It’s tough to make a movie. U have the right not to like it, not the right to be mean.
Sorry for bad english…
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Oops
September 3, 2007
Oh and i want to add… let Gods be Gods and humans be humans.
Too much respect for those good old days… old is gold etc… I’m not saying that we should lower the standards but let the young generation to at least dare something. I’m sure if Aag was a good film, it wouldn’t be good enough to detrone the myth. But what stop directors to even try ?
Long live “the Politicaly incorrect” !
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raag
September 3, 2007
Great review, as usual. Actually, most people expected RGV to mess it up the moment he declared his intentions to remake Sholay. It would take helluva effort for anyone to remake Sholay. Remakes have a better chance of succeeding when the original had a great story but weak presentation/treatment. However, Sholay already had a good story and an excellent presentation. An aside, it has always been my opinion that a huge chunk of credit for the making of the legend of Amitabh Bachchan (and Sholay) should go to the likes of Salim-Jaaved, Prakash Mehra (remember the dialogues and lyrics of Sharaabi), RDB and Kishore Kumar.
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Ravi K
September 3, 2007
Why remake an old film if it is so iconic? It will never live up to the original in people’s minds.
Frankly I’m more than a little disturbed by such remakes of iconic films. Not out of reverence for the originals, but out of a worry that filmmakers would rather relive past glories than try to create new iconic films that strike a chord with the audience. Its one thing if you make a film like the (original) Sholay which is a stew of film references re-contextualized and taken to a different level. But you had better make a damn good film if you are doing a remake of a classic.
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Rahul Raichand
September 4, 2007
Atleast now you’d realize how well Don was remade.
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thamizhan
September 4, 2007
Who is this we who often laughs at masala movies and sees them as retro-kitsch — and is it the same we who doesn’t know what ratatouille is? Why do you insist on imputing opinions to your readers?
Not to mention how does being a mix of genres make “masala” not a genre? It has generic conventions, which you yourself list in the review, surely that’s enough.
And masala movies were full of modern villains — Shaan being an example. Isn’t the villanousness of modern types a masala movie cliche.
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N
September 4, 2007
Just realised the original sholey was made years before I was born; and am a bit surprised because on the bus trips Sholey was still the most popular movie.
In fact, I remember I once started crying that they were going to play the movie again. At that age I did not watch any movie, my problem with Sholey was that the volume would be higher than usual and nobody would let me speak a word.
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nishant
September 4, 2007
beautiful
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munimma
September 4, 2007
Good review, esp. because it made me want to see Sholay again. That is similarly what RGV has achieved (though not on the same level)- put Sholay on a higher pedestal ;-P
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filter kaapi
September 5, 2007
brangan..m plannin 2 ctch d movie 2day bt i hv dis feelin dat its nt as bad as d critics r puttin it..all critics seem 2 hv unanimously declared war on d movie…mayb he dint wanna make it classy for u n me.. mayb he has dun sm market skimmin n tragetted it at Ramgarh type places.
neway i’ll kno dat in d evnin.
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MumbaiRamki
September 5, 2007
At the risk of getting rotten tomatoes- I don’t think the Old SHolay was great – probably it was the best in 1970s , but i don’t think it can withstand the time –
However from ur review, i guess RGV has made a mess , by deleting the ‘timeless’ scenes of sholay and adding more oomph!
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brangan
September 7, 2007
bala: It’s “Varma” right? Aprt from the gangster films, I quite liked Naach when it came out. Though if I saw it now, I don’t know how I’d feel.
sachita: Well, I did have a decent time with Partner, which was Hitch by way of Chhoti si Baat. But yes, proposed projects such as a remake of Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam with John Abraham as Bhootnath do scare the shit out of me.
Padawan: Heard Bheema once. The tunes kinda slipped by. Should listen to them again.
Lakshmi: That’s quite right. I really didn’t find much worthwhile (or worth talking about) with the new one.
Oops: Don’t know about the eggs, but I don’t think it’s RGV-bashing so much as people being outraged at such a descration of a beloved movie memory. Ask yourself this: Are there any teens — i.e. from a generation that did not grow up with Sholay — who liked Aag?
raag: Yup, Desai and Mehra were a big part of the AB legend. And of course Salim-Javed. Even their commercial dud like Imaan Dharam are worth watching simply for how they stitched together a certain kind of masala movie with big stars.
Ravi K: The remakes don’t bother me. The bad remakes, though, are a problem 🙂
Rahul Raichand: Ah, you’ve been waiting for a year to point that out, haven’t you? 🙂
thamizhan: I though Shaan had a pretty mythic vilain too, a go-for-broke megalomaniac on the lines of the Bond films.
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brangan
September 7, 2007
N: That was some nice nostalgia. Thanks 🙂
nishant: Thanks
munimma: Yes, in a weird way, you feel this film is going to resuurect Sholay all over again.
filter kaapi: So did you like it or not?
MumbaiRamki: No rotten tomatoes there. Quite a few people share that opinion.
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Gaipajama
September 7, 2007
Congrats on the award! I have been away for a couple of months and you have managed to win a national award and write a terrific rahman piece in the meantime. Btw, Is there an Oscar or Cannes equivalent? 🙂
I haven’t watched Aag, but after watching sarkar I don’t ever want to watch another “tribute” film by RGV.
“… male-bonding better suited to our more cynical times …”
I think thats where Rajkumar Hirani scored with Munnabhai. In a hilarious reference to Sholay, munnabhai and circuit ride on a motorcycle with a sidecar delivering “hal chalayenge” dialogs. He was able to tap into our collective movie-subconscious while not spoiling the memory of the original.
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oops
September 9, 2007
Brangan : My point is not “do you love or hate” the movie. See we all know what people think about Aag. And i’m not asking critics to love it (didn’t say that), but to stay professional… because it’s your job to make constructive reviews. Everybody can find a funny or a cruel way to say “ur movie is shit”… just to look cool and brilliant.
I’m asking something else from a professional reviewer, even if it’s to like a movie that everybody hates (u did it with JBJ). But i repeat i’m not asking u to like Aag.
“people being outraged at such a descration of a beloved movie memory”
See ! Too much passion, emotion ! This is just cinema… even when u speak about a movie like Sholay. U have to forget that Sholay is a myth because if u don’t, then there is no debate anymore, and u kill completely “RGV Ki Aag” chances.
U have to judge a remake on his own terms despite the effort of RGV to recall the old one. That’s ur job.
And i repeat, not a critic toward you but i’m disappoint by the tone reviews. Full of sarcasm that is not needed.
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oops
September 9, 2007
Brangan, i’m not asking u to like the movie (didn’t say that).
But there is a difference between doing a review and writing a piece full of sarcasm because RGV dared to touch a myth. That i can expect that from anybody… not from a professional reviewer. It’s ur job to judge a movie on his own term despite RGV efforts to recall Sholay, ur job to forget that Sholay is a myth when u write, openning the debate with those who don’t think like you (i think Sholay is a very good movie by the way), ur job to be more objective.
Not a critic toward u but in general, some of the reviewers lack objectivity when they review Aag.
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Jaiganesh
September 9, 2007
I haven’t seen the movie, so can’t comment if the reviewer was right or wrong. However one thing that comes to my mind is this. Sholay – was a dacoit drama like the westerns. The setting was all too crucial – the vast barren stretches and rocky Ramanagaram was visually the right setting and with horses and trains, the action scenes of Sholay wore a grand look and that is what got the viewers sucked in the very first time itself, for all other dialogue elements were there to be found in earlier movies itself. So I find the glorification of the scene build up by you a tad too naive and simply a fans enchantment blurring out objectivity. If you take the setting out of Sholay, then you are left with only one thing and thats Gabbar – the eery menacing villain whose gun and his mouth were synonymous. The low slow tones he speaks to start with, set the train of expectation starting in your mind, waiting for the station or point when the gun is going to explode. Offcourse his mouth can speak loud too. A Villain who requires three protagonists to bring him down. I guess it is this villain piece that Ramu was enchanted with. It is not just Ramu, even film makers down south drew from Gabbar – what RKSelvamani made with Mansoor Ali Khan in Captain Prabhakaran – another movie closely following Sholay from the settings and action perspective. The moment Ramu decided to take the setting out from the rocky ramanagaram to building clad mumbai, the only hope that is left alive was how Gabbar scales up now. The rest of the characters are pretty formulaic and I am damn sure that the sippys and javeds wouldnt have even broken a sweat in coming up with those. The heart of sholay is Gabbar and the setting and not the formulaic hindu muslim camraderie that you try to bring out or Jai-veeru friendship or the widowhood in feudal setup. These are things that as fans of a movie we try to unearth and relate to so that we can enjoy the main course much better. Just simple tools of fan endearment to an affliction. In simple words Sholay isn’t a master piece that people make it out to be. Just that Amjad Khan breathed fire and the wonderful Ramanagaram rocks that saved the movie. If Ramu had these two today, I guess Aag would have burned more brightly. Again these are just my musings.
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oops
September 10, 2007
Sorry, i thought it didn’t work the first time. That’s why i’ve written a second shorter message.
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brangan
September 10, 2007
Gaipajama: Thanks. That’s why you should keep visiting 🙂 And your Munnabhai reference is spot on.
oops/Jaiganesh: “Too much passion, emotion ! This is just cinema…” But what is cinema viewing if passion and emotion were taken out of the equation? And it’s not about forgetting that Sholay is a myth. What I wanted to do is show how Sholay is a wonderful example of a masala movie — and Jaiganesh, I didn’t mean to say that Sholay was a pioneer in this respect; just that it used all those older elements very effectively — and that what RGV has done is an ineffective remake that neither stands on its own nor stands out as tribute. And Jaiganesh, that point about Gabbar was great. But for me, all the characters worked, and I did not find them “pretty formulaic” at all. In conception maybe, but not in the execution.
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Jaiganesh
September 11, 2007
I am not supporting Aaag by any means here when I posted the previous message. I haven’t seen that movie. I just jotted down what I thought of Sholay and after many viewings which I had to because of friends , I still feel that Sholay sells because of ground breaking technical work that went into it(for a movie of its time). Offcourse even in that aspect is derives its inspiration generously from the western movies. Offcourse acting in Sholay is good. I did not mean that actors did a formulaic job. However except Gabbar, the rest were all regulars. Gabbar was unique and special in conception and execution. The key to gabbar in my opinion is – He is mean, thats a given. He is captivating and because of that, there is a mesmerizing effect he has on audience. He has to be toned down to start with, get menacing by leaps and bounds and off course when he has to say “Yeh haath mujhe dhe dhe thaakur”, he has to reach a crescendo that has to grab the audience’s collective jugular like a cobra’s bite. This was not “hotch potched” like a holi song or an innocent villager killed by Villain. This was “conceived” and the evidence is all there for us to see.
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Oops
September 11, 2007
Ok brangan.
To conclude, i’ve read this article where it’s said that Sarkar Raj will release in December. Very bad move. Why so early after Aag ? Just like he killed Darling chances (Brangan did u see this movie ?), he will kill Sarkar Raj. He should wait till January 2008. There’s already too many biggies for the end of this year.
http://hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=11cbd37c-7d5a-4e89-9410-c2d5e97dbca7&&Headline=I+take+full+responsibility+for+my+film%3a+Ram+Gopal+Varma
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FLIX
October 17, 2007
Jaiganesh : YES ! U MADE A VERY CLEAR POINT. GABBAR WAS THE HEART OF SHOLAY . THE FILM WAS BOX OFFICE AND REMEMBERED TODAY BECAUSE OF GABBAR . I LIKE TO SUGGEST THAT THE TITLE SHOLAY TO BE AMENDED AS GABBAR AS TO PAY TRIBUTE TO AMJAD KHAN. HE WAS BORNED FOR THE SAKE OF SHOLAY. MAY GOD BLESS HIM WITH HEAVEN. INSYA ALLAH.
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movielvrgrl
November 27, 2007
i don’t know if you’re reading this but I have just read 8 of reviews… and plan on reading more. you are one of the few people who seem to understand the genre of film from both a connoseiur’s point of view as well as the everyday moviegoer.
you and i definitely don’t have the same favorites but i can still understand and usually agree with what you say. moreover past agreeing, it is when i disagree with you that tells the most– even when our opinions differ, i find your knowledge and love of the cinema a wonderful justification for the way you feel.
keep up the great work, because i can’t wait to keep reading it.
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AYOOSH K.P
April 21, 2013
Indian films are still lagging behind because the bench mark set by the viewers and critics are the” so called” classic films like sholay. Grow
up guys sholay was just as good as a child magazine cartoon story.
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Tivep
October 22, 2014
Hilarious, not the movie, but this post making fun of Aag:
http://digestivepyrotechnics.blogspot.com/2012/04/interview-with-cast-of-ram-gopal-varmas.html
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