Comparing the song situations in the old and new ‘Zanjeer’, we see how much has changed – in society as well as cinema.
You could argue that the new Zanjeer needed to be made for a few reasons – for instance, to serve as the definitive example of how not to remake a movie. Set the older film against this one and tick off everything that went wrong, and you have a cinema appreciation course right there. But there’s another reason I think remakes prove useful, and that’s to show how much has changed over the years: what the considerations (mainly, the musical situations) while making a movie were then versus what these considerations are now; what society was like then versus what society is like now; what passed for entertainment then versus what people (supposedly) want to see now. Of course, no one sets out to remake a film to illustrate these “sociological” aspects of an evolving nation and its most aggressively consumed cultural product, but once these new films arrive (and after we’re done sniggering at them), they do end up telling us things.
Sometimes, these are obvious things. The older Zanjeer needed the song that Bindu, the gangster’s moll, swayed sexily to because that was a time when the heroines wouldn’t do such things – they were virgins and we needed the vamp to add some sizzle. (The Westernised heroine typified by Zeenat Aman and Parveen Babi was just beginning to be seen.) The new Zanjeer has the heroine moving into the hero’s home and sleeping with him after what looks like an afternoon’s conversation. Besides, she seems to have no problems with performing sexually provocative numbers. The first time we see her, she’s dancing at a wedding, implying naughtily that she’ll go home with whoever offers her money. In other words, the heroine is introduced through a Bindu-type item number. So when the gangster’s moll in this film shakes her booty, she serves no real narrative purpose, and the song is staged in such a clichéd fashion that she doesn’t even serve the purpose of eye candy.
Speaking of heroine-introduction songs, the number in the older film had the heroine going about her job, earning a living by sharpening knives. This is a song situation that we no longer have much use for, because we hardly see people involved with their jobs anymore (unless they are cops in a procedural). Where’s the scope for a song around a blue-collar wage-earner like Jaya Bhaduri here or Mumtaz in Dushman (making a living with her bioscope) in this age of the multiplex? We barely seem to be aware of what today’s on-screen characters do in order to live such lush lives. Look at the hero’s mansion-like apartment in the new Zanjeer, interior decorated with a lavish art director’s allowance. In the older Zanjeer, too, the hero lived in a biggish house – the bathroom had a bathtub; the living room was carpeted; there was a large refrigerator where water was cooled in whiskey bottles – but the tiles in the kitchen were chipped and his police uniform was left to hang on his bedroom door.
That’s the door the heroine opened when she came to serve him tea, and we came, slowly, to the love song. In the new film, we have cutesy (or at least, meant to be cutesy) montages of hero and heroine enjoying each other’s company – at one point, she mock-threatens him with a loaded gun and it goes off mere inches from his skull; ah love! – and finally falling into bed. The problem isn’t the falling-into-bed part. Had the filmmakers treated this relationship as what it appears to be – the friends-with-benefits kind of situation that’s likely to crop up between an unattached man and woman – then we would have sensed some honesty. But they don’t. They want to treat this like the traditional romance, and without additional scenes between the lovers (which are not possible, given that this is not the kind of story that can accommodate those kinds of detours), we just don’t take this development seriously. We just don’t care.
But in the older film we do care. We care because they’re both alone, both orphans (in a sense), and they need each other, but they’re not going to do anything about it on their own. They barely even sense the other person as a possible life partner – so we have a deus ex machina (again, a device that no one uses anymore) in the form of a traveling song-and-dance troupe (again, blue-collar wage-earners) whose singers put into words these dormant feelings, and the leads fall in love. What a lovely device this is, as if the universe were conspiring to make them lovers, gently nudging them towards each other. By the end of the song, she turns towards the mirror and behind her reflection we see his. They’re united… as much as an unattached man and woman from a certain social background could be in those times.
Even better is the song that the heroine sings when the hero is framed and sent to jail. She asks God – fittingly, given the deus ex machina earlier – why He gave her those moments of happiness and gave her a glimpse of a future with someone, only to snatch it all away. Here too, there isn’t much scope for additional scenes between the lovers, but the song takes care of the dynamic between them, while also giving us a glimpse into the heroine’s character – her loyalty, her despair, her sense of being stranded between the life she’s left behind and the life that doesn’t seem to have worked out the way she thought it would. The new film doesn’t even bother sending the hero to jail, in the first place – it looks away from this juicy emotional hook, which adds much more meaning to his actions thereon. Do they stop and think about these things when deciding to remake a movie or do they just say, “Cool, let’s do Zanjeer!”?
Lights, Camera, Conversation… is a weekly dose of cud-chewing over what Satyajit Ray called Our Films Their Films. An edited version of this piece can be found here.
Copyright ©2013 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
venkatesh
September 13, 2013
BR wake up , what sort of a self-respecting “hip” director says – “Cool ” its more likely to be “F**k man, no one has done zanjeer, lets like totally like do it man”
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Sev
September 13, 2013
I agree with you when you say, “They barely even sense the other person as a possible life partner – so we have a deus ex machina (again, a device that no one uses anymore) in the form of a traveling song-and-dance troupe (again, blue-collar wage-earners) whose singers put into words these dormant feelings, and the leads fall in love. What a lovely device this is, as if the universe were conspiring to make them lovers, gently nudging them towards each other”.
I see this in one of the TV series I’m watching at the moment, and boy, do I love this idea of the powers that be working on over-drive to unite two lovers. The older I get, the more my weary, vulnerable heart glows at this…unlike my sturdier, younger self which didn’t care about fate or such fate-driver romance.
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Anita
September 13, 2013
Can’t help but think of the heels the knife sharpener Jaya must be wearing in the shot pictured in this article, to reach within striking distance of the B’s head 🙂
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Vanya
September 14, 2013
Beautifully written essay. That is all.
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Sev
September 14, 2013
I should point out that I like this idea in film/TV when it’s executed well-enough to engage me without inviting my ridicule 🙂
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Amrita
September 14, 2013
BR lovely piece; couldn’t help but think that you’ve put more thought into the piece than the makers of the remake did during the making of the entire film!
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vikram
September 14, 2013
BR, though I am going to stay away from the ‘Zanjeer’ remake, from your post it does look like ‘you can take a guy out of a multiplex showing the new Zanjeer but you can’t take the new Zanjeer out of the guy’….surely, Apoorva Lakhia & co didn’t know the extent of impact they would have 🙂
Btw, when are you scheduled to be on the bangalore literature fest…
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brangan
September 14, 2013
Anita: Haha, especially if you remember the scene from K3G where stands on a stool to knot his tie 🙂
Sev: Not just this device. Pretty much *anything* — songs, fights, comedy scenes — is good only when “it’s executed well-enough to engage me without inviting my ridicule” 🙂
Which TV show is that, BTW?
vikram: I think it’s Saturday morning. Will you be there? BTW, to my utter horror, I discovered I’ve become a “veteran” 🙂
http://tinyurl.com/mwycft9
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venkatesh
September 14, 2013
A thought experiment – what if someone remade “Mouna Raagam” now ?
What would the patient hero be doing ? “Apart from the roof we don’t have to share anything” – will that central conceit of the film still stand ? Will people accept it ? Will it be laughed off ?
BR: I loved that scene in K3G , especially because he pulls the stool to get her up there, that film had some really lovely moments.
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Sev
September 14, 2013
Don’t judge me or my weary, aging, lonely heart by my choice of TV show (Iss Pyar Ko Kya Naam Doon (the original series, not the newer season)).. 🙂
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vikram
September 16, 2013
Wouldn’t want to miss ‘veterans’ 🙂
but then the venue is a downer…its like in another city….
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brangan
September 19, 2013
venkatesh: Very frankly, that film that film is too genteel to work today. He spoke about it in the book when we discussed the Balachander films, and the same thing applies to “Mouna Raagam.” it would have to be set in a different milieu and have to be made more “edgy.” Because that audience isn’t going to the theatres anymore.
Sev: I am a fan of Sanjay Leela Bhansali. According to some people, that doesn’t give me the right to pass judgment on others’ tastes 😉
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