Movie Review – Satya

A coveted started to the world of raw gangster films

Somehow I completed watching the Gangster trilogy of Ram Gopal Varma with enough time between films, so that I could appreciate each by its own without the influence of other films. Guess, even though all the films treaded on the same universe, one would be able to watch each film separately and still appreciate it. May be it’s because he didn’t want to create a film making style unique but it’s just the way he knew to make, which became unique. Having watched Company and D, too, I couldn’t call Satya as overwhelming favorite but may be a wee bit better made than the two. But for me, it’s still D, which was the best, the rawness was truly invigorating.

Satya starts in a typical fashion, like any of his previous films. Satya (J. D. Chakravarthy) is a youngster new to Mumbai to get a job. May be J. D. Chakravarthy wasn’t as famous back then. Ram Gopal Varma could shoot him in public view and he does a great job. It’s not a surprise that bad things would happen to the protagonist and he’d raise to power. It’s just an eventual in a RGV’s gangster flick. May be because I watched the other two films, the rawness didn’t impact me.

When compared to the other two films of the trilogy, this was direct. May be a bit more impactful because it was focused on the storyline without any self-righteousness. But what’s an RGV film without self-righteousness. Even though there is a sense of feeling that RGV breaks morality issues through his characters. Isn’t he also trying to showcase morality in the hardest possible way. Generally in a movie where the hero dies, we at least root for him till the end but in his films, we tend to maintain distance from the hero right from the start because we know it’s always going to be a problem if we get into the world of protagonist.

Just like Mysskin, to an extent Selvaraghavan, Ram Gopal Varma too doesn’t let actors a complete freedom to act or at least doesn’t showcase them in a filmy way but J. D. Chakravarthy suited his role to Tee. With his sunken tired eyes, he looks like a perfect protagonist of Ram Gopal Varma film. When I watched D, I thought none could better Randeep Honda as a RGV protagonist but J. D. Chakravarthy looked like he was born for it. All these alpha directors have problem with actors who carry a certain bit of aura around them. Like how Mohanlal, who even though was in RGV’s world, still had certain isms of Mohanlal. They don’t understand how much they contribute to the movie by making viewers enjoy that. May be their ego is too big for it or they just don’t want to spoil the environment they’re creating by actors who’re bigger than that. This is where the Manoj Bajpayee’s and Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s play the perfect foil for any such films.

In spite of the fact that the actor has to be in a certain state, look how charming Urmila Matondkar is in this film. She plays the perfect ‘good person’ in this evil film. You can’t help but fall in love with Vidya, in fact you love her so much that you don’t want her to love Satya. To be honest, throughout I couldn’t root for Satya. For some reason, I felt distanced from him. I could even root for Bhiku (Manoj Bajpayee) for he was a simple guy. But Satya without even knowing him or even after knowing him always felt distant to me.

The Urmila I know is the Urmila I had seen from the songs of ‘Rangeela’. Seeing her acting in ‘Satya’ I thought ‘Satya’ had released first and wanted to see how she rose to prominence from ‘Satya’ to ‘Rangeela’. But to know that ‘Rangeela’ in fact came prior to ‘Satya’ and she was already prominent, only grew my respect towards her more. That’s one more reason to watch ‘Rangeela’. Still, the main reason would be how he got work out of Rahman. It’s a curious combination, given that RGV strives for rawness and Rahman’s sounds are mostly polished.

Say what may, RGV would always remain an interesting guy to watch out for.

Movie Review – Company

Prim and Proper, boon or bane?

It was part of my reverse Gangster trilogy of RGV. ‘D’ happened by chance and ‘Company’ was by choice. Even though I did the mistake of watching the last film of trilogy first, I didn’t want to spoil the best film by watching second. Let me save the best for the last. Anyways both ‘D’ and ‘Company’ would work as a standalone film. ‘Company’ felt lot more proper than ‘D’ but it’s not a compliment. Anyways how can you hate a film when you have Mohanlal with such eclectic charm?

The film has typical RGV moments but as much as I wanted to forget ‘D’ and watch ‘Company’ as a fresh film by watching a number of films in between, it didn’t help because I was immediately transported to RGV’s world. Every time I see his film and know about his off screen persona, I can’t help but think about how wonderful it would be to make a film of him.

Coming back to the comparison, even though ‘Company’ feels like a far more proper film than ‘D’, the rawness was slightly missing. Unfortunately as I have seen in the reverse, it was more appalling. But look at the beauty and the genius of RGV. To have made the movies in the chronological order would have been a far more achievable dream but to make a prequel and make it look raw was a tougher job. Even with a film as great as a Godfather 2, the Don Corleone flashback scenes look fancy at places but here, ‘D’ was total raw. I could appreciate it better after watching ‘Company’

Company starts with ‘Chandu’ (Vivek Oberoi) joining the Mumbai underworld and developing a camaraderie with Malik (Ajay Devgan), the leader of the gang. The actors as usual are RGV’s caricatures, which takes some time to settle but if you really want to a make a film in this style, after some years, as a period flick, it might be a lovely setting. Something which Mani Ratnam couldn’t achieve in ‘Aayutha Ezhutu’/ ‘Yuva’, where the characters would feel fabricated and glossy in spite of trying to look as local as possible. Here, it happens quite nonchalantly. Still the actors need to understand the world of RGV, otherwise, they don’t set in properly. Even in this movie Ajay Devgan wasn’t convincing, Vivek Oberoi in his non don, vulnerable parts was lovely but couldn’t emulate the same when he raises to the power. The ladies Saroja (Manisha Koirala), Kannu (Antara Mali) and Ranibai (Seema Biswas) to a great job, in the same ascending order.

It’s a film which could have faltered in the second half but RGV’s careful injection of double cross along with human emotions were superbly done, which raises doubts in us regarding what’s what. In fact it’d be curious to know whether the director himself could differentiate between the double cross and chance happenings. That’s how complicated the plot was.

It’d be a wholesome experience to edit a RGV film I guess, to get into the mind of director and know what he really wants. Even the songs would be cut differently and mostly overpowering. It would be impossible to really like songs from RGV’s film. That makes me want to watch ‘Rangeela’ which was like a breath of fresh air, even now. That’s due to the terrific chemistry between two opposite poles, Rahman and RGV.

Having said everything, if you want one sole reason to watch ‘Company’, it’s Mohanlal. Of course there are far greater films of Mohanlal but if there is an actor in this film who owns a scene it’s Mohanlal. How well can this man adapt to a film which comes from different sensibilities, in a different language. In fact his carefully uttered Hindi gives a feel of how it’d be if Dumbledore had been a villain. There are scenes were we feel more threatened by him rather than the gangsters. In ‘Unnaipol Oruvan’ he introduces himself as I.G.R Maraar, it makes us grin just by hearing his name, it’s something unexplainable, yet lovely. It’s the same vibe which he gives here too when he gets introduced as Veerappalli Srinivasan, an unfathomable Malayali.

Movie Review – D

Raw and rocking

Ram Gopal Varma’s films are a charm isn’t it. Even though, this was not directed by him. Vishram Sawant only looked like he mirrored RGV’s thoughts because it looked very much an RGV film with raw, unruffled emotions. Produced under his banner and considered the last of his movies among Indian Gangster Trilogy the movie was to the point. As much as the emotions looked stripped, ‘D’ was all about emotion. Lethargic, third person type of emotion. With Randeep Hooda at the fore, he brings in a natural flavor to the type of movie which Ram Gopal Varma had wanted.

Just like any out of the box movie, it takes a while for the audience to settle. The initial few minutes are clumsy and intentionally made in that way. May be that’s an attribute to RGVs style of film making. We get to see a young man, Deshu (Randeep Hooda) coming back to his hometown for his mother’s death. Deshu is not really an emotive person. He feels that it’s just his duty that he had to be there for his mother’s death. It’s more of a compulsion for him than the love towards his mother. He sees a live death within few days and then again witnesses a murder which makes him understand that it’s not a fair world outside.

The acting for these sequences were pretty much Godard like. The emotions were not spoon fed for us to understand. We don’t feel curious to see what’s his life was going to become but we get driven by his life, as if like a passerby. As he gets humiliated by Mangli’s (Raju Mavani) gang, instead of confessing or joining the gang, he joins the opposite gang and takes his revenge.

Then all we see is his rise, which was in a way interesting. There were few interesting scenes where the dialogues can’t be heard, even though they continue to talk. Generally these would be implemented at some of the suspenseful points in the film and is one of the most irritating techniques but here it feels like fast forwarding an unwanted song. It was a relief because we don’t really want to get to the details of an uninteresting man. We just want to see the highlights. The music in those junctions too were appealing and elevates the mood of the movie, giving a retro punk feel.

The only point of the film which looks forced in the conclusion. Hashim Bhai (Goga Kapoor) becoming folly of the plans of two of his sons, Mukarram (Sushant Singh) and Shabbir (Yashpal Sharma) felt too convenient. A man of his stature believing age old tricks like this was not convincing. It’d have rather been interesting if he had acted as if he was supporting his sons because if he had not he’d have been killed by his sons. If he had, he would’ve known that his sons would be eventually killed because Deshu is no normal person. That conflict would have been interesting than having a plain old ending.

The film more than anything was ambitious and that was so nice to watch. Any budding filmmaker who wants to make a gangster film would be inspired and would think that they don’t have to always have a huge budget for such movies. In fact even the gun sound coming of silencer was done so soft that there was no big fuzz over anything. It’s a world which RGV has created and would remain forever like this, no matter what he does post that.

Movie Review – Kshana Kshanam

A masala film with the right spice

It’s funny to know what all RGV has done in cinema. So many languages, jumping genres, style etc. Truly a maverick director, whose one movie could be called pinnacle of cinema and other, a gross incompetence. I guess Kshana Kshanam falls somewhere in the middle or just above the middle where things have gone right to him, where his way of filmmaking had worked for most part.

The movie starts with an extended heist scene done reasonably well. Throughout it, there wasn’t any dialogue, yet it was still interesting. It gets a lot of twist within those dialogues less scenes where a group first robs the bank, police finds it out (by looking at the fallen chair in front of the bank), robbers escaping by hurting few policemen and then one man taking it all. It’s very much a film climax but that’s how the film starts.

Post that the film starts and we see a beautiful Sridevi where the camera pans from her childhood photo to her, she gets going about her job and goes to a photographer to collect photos in which the address of the loot is kept. It’s at a time where villains would be there. Before the guy who loots gets killed, he tells the secret to his brother. So, they are all now in search of Satya (Sridevi), who gets trapped between them and gets out on a run.

Parallelly the hero introduction scene too feels like a heroic scene to start with but we get to know that too is a fun scene. That was a great use of the name Venkat, making us believe that we’d see Venkatesh as Venkat in the film. Finally, they get together by chance in a restaurant and run for life when police chase them. So, till that point the screenplay was terrific, how the events connect to one another. And that’s when the first song comes…

After the first song, don’t know what got to him, a string of songs happens. Especially the second song where Chandu (Venkatesh) mentions it would be better to have beat in it. Was it even serious or is it just a dig of commercial cinema? It is hard to understand because in the next segment we get to see almost all sort of songs popular in Telugu cinema. The brilliance with which the movie started gets tampered slowly and steadily.

In spite of that, still the thrill gets maintained throughout the film. But without songs, or some carefully placed songs, the movie would have looked a lot better. The tempo gets tampered a lot because of it. For an early 90s film, the stunts and stunt choreography were terrific. I guess most of it was done by actors themselves. Once both the leads get comfortable the tone of the movie changes to comic one but thanks to an actress like Sridevi, it doesn’t go overboard. In fact, that’s the best thing about Sridevi, she could effortlessly do the commercial heroine, like no other.

It would have been a great film to watch back then in the midst of highly glamourized masala films but if you can’t watch the film in that angle now, it doesn’t work as much as it should have.