MAFIA MAHABHARATA
The critics love it. The public loves it. So why bother that ‘Raajneeti’ is such an epic misfire, right?
JUN 20, 2010 – PRAKASH JHA’S RAAJNEETI IS ABOUT as real and rooted as one of Karan Johar’s NRI-land fantasias, except that the overdone romantic melodrama is replaced by overcooked political drama. And yet, while seething contempt is heaped on the latter, the unexpected success of Raajneeti is being hailed as a sign that our audiences have “evolved” – as if our cinema halls were Calvin’s transmogrifier, sucking in freshwater amoeba and spitting out Hrithik Roshan. A dusty veneer of “Indianness” is clearly all it takes to conceal the leaks in the basement and the peeling plaster in Jha’s monumental tribute to the Mahabharata by way of the Mafia (courtesy the endlessly malleable The Godfather).
At least Johar doesn’t pretend he wants to rattle the foundations of our democratic complacency, and if he had made Raajneeti, it would have been swept off the screen by gales of laughter. The pivotal casting mishaps (Katrina Kaif, Arjun Rampal, even Ranbir Kapoor, fatally conflicted between embodying a stony archetype and essaying a flesh-and-blood character) would have been mocked mercilessly. The wild fluctuations in tone and tongue would have been hauled over glowing coals. The mystifying motivations driving the story would have been excoriated until the screen was stippled with scraps of skin.
But Jha is a respectable filmmaker, a responsible filmmaker, and his aims are beyond mere entertainment, beyond merely wanting to make us laugh and cry. He’s the monocled academic, as opposed to Johar’s ostrich-feathered floor-show dancer – and so we give him credit for simply trying. Bouquets and brickbats are apparently predicated on subject matter. Attempt a romance about spouses who renege on promises to loved ones and only the failures are remembered, but attempt a drama about public figures who renege on promises to the nation and the failures are forgotten, swept under a bulging carpet.
Why do some filmmakers get away with the very things others don’t? Is it because politics is worthier than passions, because addressing the breakup of a home isn’t as important as pinpointing the breakdown of a state, a nation? Or are designer dresses the deterrent, with dhotis and Nehru caps and spotless kurtas somehow conferring legitimacy on an endeavor? This isn’t to compare two filmmakers with widely divergent sensibilities, but rather to ponder, a minute, about the baffling inconsistency in the reception that greets certain kinds of films.
Raajneeti could be called Corporate or Fashion and the film wouldn’t play out all that differently. Jha borrows a dog-eared page from Madhur Bhandarkar’s thesis (as elaborated in Satta, that other poison-pen love letter to democracy) that characters and contrivances are interchangeable; the setting is the only thing that matters. This is a film only nominally about politics. Who are these warring clans? What do they represent beyond fratricidal bloodlust? What have they achieved thus far in their appallingly generic constituencies?
For a story about politics, Raajneeti isn’t overly concerned about defining its politicians. They’re the same bunch of oleaginous cads we’ve been witnessing on screen from times immemorial. The eighties are often derided as a dystopian wasteland of cinema, but take a minute to recall Kalyug – how precisely, how powerfully Shyam Benegal situated the Mahabharata in the arena of corporate skullduggery, with characters that recalled as well as reshaped their mythological forebears. All that remains in Jha’s unsurprising retelling are the parallelisms – how so-and-so character from the epic maps to such-and-such person.
Even with the film’s secondary provenance, Ram Gopal Varma struck a path to the heart of the Corleone saga with far greater clarity and conviction. In Sarkar and Sarkar Raj too, the political scenarios were abstractions, all cheering crowds and scheming power brokers, but with his leads, Varma located the perfect median between character and archetype. Abhishek Bachchan was Michael Corleone, and his transformation from prodigal son to perpetrator of his father’s legacy was palpably wrought.
Varma ensconced the political in the personal, and it was the human being we came to care about, over his ideological underpinnings. What he stood for wasn’t as important as who he was. But with Samar, the Michael equivalent that Ranbir Kapoor portrays in Raajneeti, we sense neither who he is nor what he stands for, except that he is unswervingly loyal to his kin. He’s a student who’s just wrapped up a thesis on sub-textual violence in Victorian poetry, which is the director’s way of letting us know that underneath Samar’s civility lurks a savage breast.
And what a savage breast it is. Samar kills with impunity, gunning down, among many others, the unarmed Dalit played listlessly by Ajay Devgan (once again, the privileged conquering the persecuted) – and his Zen-koan demeanour, with nary a sign of indecision or conflict, suggests that he could be a baker’s son returning to the family business and discovering an innate flair for kneading dough. Even Lord Voldemort’s soul was splintered after his first kill – and we are to accept that Samar escaped a winter of discontent, that he did not spend a single night in febrile contemplation of his descent to hell? Isn’t there a moral aspect to the Mahabharata and The Godfather?
But these considerations are clearly moot in front of Rajneeti’s performance at the box office, which is the film’s only unqualified success. Befitting a story about politics, the masses have voted with their wallets. But does this mean they have grown up or evolved or have spoken for a change in the way our films are made? Or does it just mean that even severely compromised “Hindi cinema” is preferable to something with Spanish dialogues subtitled in English?
Copyright ©2010 The New Sunday Express. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Sridhar Ramanathan
June 19, 2010
Baddy, I had gone for Rajneeti. First day, like an idiot, believing the next serious movie on Indian Politics. News Papers giving it 3 stars and TV reviewers saying with very serious faces that this was good! What a load of crap! I hated the movie. They had taken the story from Mahabharata (note the extra ‘a’) and God Father, cut paste and showed it to be Rajneeti. Such a disappointment!
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Manu
June 19, 2010
Can you remove, the “Possibly related posts” . I click on them thinking that it is your site and goes to some random site. I think it is distracting. If you agree, I think you can disable it on “Appearance -> Extras” or “Design -> Extras”. Don’t know which
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Manu
June 19, 2010
The links to previous and next articles, come below the comments section. It would be great if it can come before.
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Raj Balakrishnan
June 19, 2010
Baradwaj, I am not sure if Raajneeti has been uniformly hailed by the critics. It was trashed by Rediff, Outlook and Khalid Mohammed. I loved it though. I never knew that it was this easy to bump off powerful politicians. The last shoot out on the streets was ridiculous. But I thought Nana Patekar was great.
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Pradyumna M
June 19, 2010
Raajneeti was a BIG bore. And screw them Trade Analysts.Arjun Rampal winning the National Award is the biggest joke of the Decade! Hate his smugness. Ranbir Kapoor is the most over-rated star these days. Much like Konkona Sen Sharma. And the less said about the ‘No.1 Actress’ in the Hindi Film industry the better.
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bran1gan
June 20, 2010
Dharu: Sorry about not picking up the SMS y’day. Kept the phone in the bedroom to avoid Raavan reveals. And yes, agree completely on this film.
Pradyumna M: Yeah, he is a decent actor, but as of now, he cannot do everything. My favorite perf. of his is from Rocket Singh. Lovely, lovely performance, perfectly in tune with the rhythms of the film (though how much of this is Ranbir’s contribution and how much the director’s we’ll never know).
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Hariharan
June 20, 2010
Well said Bharadwaj! Instead of copying scene by scene from another movie and inviting the wrath of the critics and the common man alert enough to spot the copy, Jha plays it safe by admitting to having ripped it off from THE epic. While some credit maybe given to establishing the characters, the rest of the scenes seem to be a handiwork of a 2nd year college student who copies his assignment from his friend but changes the language around a bit in order to not get caught.
This movie was perhaps the most consistently wooden acting by the lead characters. The ‘press conference’ in the hospital just before the interval perhaps defines what is wrong with the whole movie. A caricature for an actor, a possible attempt at hitting back at the invasive media turning out to be an over-exaggerated set up much like the rest of movie.
An utter disappointment for a movie and one which would have Ved Vyas writhing in his grave. (forgive me for being politically incorrect here).
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Rahul
June 20, 2010
” But with Samar, the Michael equivalent that Ranbir Kapoor portrays in Raajneeti, we sense neither who he is nor what he stands for, except that he is unswervingly loyal to his kin.”
I did not read his character thusly. I thought his primary motivation was personal – he wanted to avenge the slap by the Police inspector, and so he went to such great lengths to down the whole machinery which was responsible for the slap. Actually the completely amoral and highly personal nature of his vendetta appealed to me. If he was really worried about his family he would have at least tried convinced them to go to America , as he lied in a scene.Anyway, i thought there was some greyness in the characterization to make it interesting.
To your larger point, K Jo is reviled partly because people are SICK of his story line, and not necessarily his directorial style. Political movies are not that common.
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kanna
June 20, 2010
Rangan – Ever since ive become an over avid consumer of your writings, ive also come to appreciate and foretell the captions that you use as a preface. On this one, the first thing that came to mind was MafiaBharata!
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Pradyumna M
June 20, 2010
BR : Yea! His choices are interesting! Better than all his peers like Neil Nitin Mukesh/Imran/Harman etc. He is definitely better than all of them.Maybe it my fault that I read/listen/watch all the hype about this boy before watching his movies.I am watching Wake up Sid! on tv and frankly I am not bored like I was while watching it in the theatre!
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Gagu
June 21, 2010
For me, the most revealing came from my father (an average, middle of the road cinema goer) – “The film is pretty much like Singh Is King, isn’t it? Both are equally random where events unfold just because the narrative demands it and not logic. We are merely expected to come along for the ride.”
What was equally frustrating was that we never see what is happening inside the mind of a character (as you pointed out with Samar)? Why does the younger brother’s clan get chosen in the first place? Why do the characters played by Katrina Kaif and Arjun Rampal fall in love? Why does the Katrina Kaif character decide to join politics? What was the bloody need for that last bomb blast? And a Dalit leader who is not really a Dalit! I am surprised there haven’t been loud protests by Dalit intellectuals. (But perhaps they are smarter than the makers of the movie and know when to let sleeping dogs be?) And what is it with the guilt attached to sex (when it comes to Naseeruddin Shah) and the awful sex scenes between the other leads? Have to say, this was an unduly potent clan – the women get pregnant after a mere one night of love making. The movie is exceedingly frustrating in its depction of politics and inter-personal relationships. But I have never expected much of Prakash Jha after his much over-wrought and morally suspect Gangajal.
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maru
June 22, 2010
wow, brangan…. tell us how you really feel about this movie!!! not sure i’ve read a more damning review from you ;). that the movie didn’t work for you is not at issue — i’ve often disagreed with your reviews (raavan/raavanan, but that’s for another thread :P), but i can usually track and appreciate your thought process and contrast it with mine. not so here! can i just register a huge wtf moment at your comparisons – KJo ( and I can even stretch or rather lunge to understand that) and but madhur bhandarkar?????? this isn’t an expose with an redemption story and a preachy message on what society ought to be like. its a straightforward amalgamation of two kick ass stories – the godfather and the mahabharata – in the context of MP politics (given Jha’s roots). does it have flaws? absolutely and i agree with some that you’ve pointed out too – could’ve used crisper editing, a rather limited cast in terms of acting chops, a rigid and misguided adherence to markers from the epic (the kunti-karna scene which frankly the actors were not the equal of). are there better adaptations? again, absolutely. kalyug and dalapathi were superior. yet, this was an absorbing movie, even if it didn’t transform the source material or delve deeper into psychological motivations. i for one have no problem with that – i return to the mahabharata often, lose no opportunity to rewatch the godfather, so a simple retelling doesn’t bother me. if others see it as a limitation that i can understand, but at the risk of repeating myself – madhur bhandaresque? puhleeze!!!
as for KJo not being the critics darling — well, for his love and family flicks, typically the critics have dismissed them as candyfloss. but most i think have acknowledged them as addictive candyfloss. i love candyfloss so my biggest beef is that KJo has abandoned it. i’m all set to suspend disbelief and live in a happy dream world for a couple of hours when i watch “i hate luv stories”. high art it may not be, but i don’t think it aspires to be. however, i’m still recovering from the scars of ‘my name is khan’. now if any movie is madhur bhandarkaresque, surely this is it – complete with redemption arc (the Yanks with Prez Obama leading the fray are the redeemed!). I live in the US and frankly the stereotypical portrayals of Americans in the movie were cringeworthy.
I’m sorry to drag this off topic from Raajneeti, but hey you did open the door with the KJO, Bhandarkar references 😉
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thedailytamasha
June 22, 2010
“And what a savage “breast” it is.” You meant “beast”, right?
And I agree so much with this piece that my head is hurting now because of all the nodding I was doing while reading.
I think part of the reason for (relative) success of Bhandarkar and Jha, in spite of making as bad if not worse cinema than Johars and Jugal Hansrajs, lies in the exposure of the masses to the better cinema from around the world, as well as arrival and solid critical acclaim Dibakar/Anurag and group have got. A kind of snob-value, watching better, sensible, non-Gucci cinema, gives you. But of course, most of this new breed is still not able to appreciate, in totality, the radicalisms of Anurag Kashyap/ Dibakar Banerjee and like. (And it has to be said, even these directors have not announced their territories with conviction yet…kind of still dabbling with ideas, boundaries.)
So that leaves them with this pseudo-realist cinema of Jha and Bhandarkar, that at least (and at max too) ‘looks’ different. Vada-paav is too downmarket now, Risotto needs a taste, but McAloo Tikki solves the problem.
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Faking News
June 22, 2010
Superb, simply brilliant and nailed it to the core. Couldn’t agree more with your observations and the comment above.
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bran1gan
June 22, 2010
Gagu: LOL at the Dalit intellectuals dig. I think you’re right.
maru: I meant the pre-MNIK Johar. And as I said I wasn’t comparing two widely different filmmakers.
thedailytamasha: Brilliant comment. But I did mean “breast,” picking up where the previous sentence trails off.
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thedailytamasha
June 22, 2010
@BR: Ohh ok. Managed to miss that previous sentence’s ending. And an appreciation by you means a lot. Really. 🙂
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FuckBardwajTheSoutieFaggot
June 22, 2010
What do expect, this retard gave Raavan four stars
Idiotic pillock is a biased Bachchan-ista.
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B.H.Harsh
June 23, 2010
Rangan : I know you don’t mind making room out here even for those who strongly criticise your style of reviewing (and YOU, indirectly!)
But I really think you should draw a line somewhere and avoid passing comments like “no. 17”
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bran1gan
June 23, 2010
BH Harsh: This is always a problem dude — where to draw the line when it comes to comments. The F-word? An insulting tone? An opinion by a badly brought-up child is still an opinion, right? 🙂
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anindya
June 24, 2010
Hey BR: Have mixed feelings about your new wordpress template. On the whole its a LOT better than your previous one, but don’t you think the blog’s header font is umm … a little TOO big, so much so that I can barely read the post title (and that’s on a 19” monitor).
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bran1gan
June 24, 2010
anindya: Guess a Freudian would presume that I’m overcompensating, huh? 🙂 Anyway, this is the template and I’ll see what I can do once I get some time to tinker around.
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Arthi
June 27, 2010
Haven’t watched the film , no inclination either but seriously it beats me how such a pretence is lapped up by the viewers. Not just this film, but such. Its like a gut feeling, something primordial that this is so off….How come ppl don’t get it…have we become that dead in the head…
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Anu
June 28, 2010
Rangan, thanks for the review – but I still wish you had come out with it earlier – you see, I watched Rajneeti 😦 And with every one telling me how well K.Kaif had acted … you owe me a movie 😀
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radhika
June 30, 2010
What struck me the most (and I noticed you didn’t remark on it) was the utter clumsiness of the way in which big chunks of the movie was crafted. If nothing else, a movie maker of Jha’s experience could be expected to display more finesse. The entire beginning with the rapid flash back and the voice over telling us of Bharati’s past – was soooo awfully hackneyed! Yes, a complex clan is not easy to introduce, but so much use was made of the media, he could well have achieved the same result by showing us “clips” from various news channels introducing the situation. I agree with you about the lack of the moral core. The essence of Mahabharata is supposed to be the moral dilemmas faced by various parties and to show how all of them have shades of grey. Also the leap into violence was so quick – I think Kalyug showed the gradual escalation into the inevitable internecine warfare. And oh, what a waste of Naseeruddin – why would he even do a silly role like this?
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bran1gan
July 1, 2010
radhika: For me, the nadir was Kunti meeting Karna. What a bad scene! They tried to infuse a level of myth with Sanskritised lines and stuff, and that only added to the badness. Despite problems, I still thought Gangaajal and Apaharan were decent films. This, though, was something else/
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radhika
July 4, 2010
Re the Kunti-Karan bit – I thought the only interesting bit, which was sadly not explored properly was the sense of identiy related to caste. In the original, there is this sense that Karan is a Kshatriya trapped in a low-caste family and so theoretically, his personal fealties apart, the knowledge that he is a Kshatriya is supposed to be welcome to him (oh of course, all that Parashuram thing makes sense now, he should have thought with a sense of coming home. In this case, I was wondering how welcome it could be for Suraj to be told that the one identity he took pride in, his Dalitness, was no longer his – unlike Karna who had built his reputation as a fearsome warrior, what was Suraj if he was not a Dalit? The kabaddi champion was hardly anologous. Even in Kalyug, Shashi Kapoor is a master strategist – really a consigliari to Victor Bannerjee – here Suraj is more of a Luca Brasi to Veerendra, performing murders at will and actually giving very poor advice. Knowledge of his birth really robbed Suraj of his identity while in Karan’s case it only offered a dilemma of which side to take, not of his role in the drama.
Gangajal and Apaharan – were both essentially idealistic films screaming out loud about how society should be – here, there is no such belief – it is a highly self-absorbed worldview. Jai Arjun Singh has a nice piece on this in his blog.
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pr3m
July 14, 2010
surprised u thought it was that bad. is it cos of the promotions that u rip it apart, or cos it really was rubbish, as a movie?
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