Cinemaah

Shit Happens


If anyone was mystified about why characters in Bollywood films, who probably grew up in cities went to English medium schools and worked at jobs where Hindi would not normally be spoken, never spoke in English,  the best part of Abhinay Deo’s Aamir Khan-produced film Delhi Belly, is that people speak English or Hindi as required by the scenes.

The three leading men cuss and swear as young people do, and awful as it sounds, in a film for adults, maybe beeping out words that pop in normal conversations is strange.  The raunchy stuff should not be reaching kids, but the DK Bose song is and all over, so it’s not as if the filmmakers are particularly sensitive.

Quentin Tarantino would be pleased to know that somewhere in the world filmmakers are still following the style book he abandoned a while ago,  Deo just adds some spicy Delhi tadka to make the violence go down better (in one scene, a hapless Russian has a stick of dynamite… well, never mind, no way to put this politely).

The trigger of the wild ride the three guys Tashi (Imran Khan), Arup (Vir Das) and Nitin (Kunal Roy Kapoor) go through is literally because of Delhi Belly--  a stool sample and a pack of diamonds are interchanged by a careless, hungover or sleep-deprived guy, and the next thing they know, a gangster (Vijay Raaz) is on their backs, and the roof of their decrepit tenement, is threatening to collapse any minute.  The female side includes a snobbish stewardess (Shenaz Treasury) and a brassy journalist (Poorna Jagannathan). Guess who gets the guy!

Delhi Belly is funny, fast-paced and well-shot, also derivative and vulgar (does anyone remember a hard-on scene in Indian cinema?).  It is aimed at the urban teenager, struggling to define ‘cool’ and from all accounts has hit the spot.  On the one hand Aamir Khan lectures the country on compassion for dyslexic kids and starving farmers, on the other he unleashes a loutish Delhi Belly on the country and turns up to shake his pelvis in the end.  Well, if money is made at the end of the day, social responsibility can be chucked into the bin.

Naam Hai Viju


At the end of his film Bbuddah Hoga Terra Baap, Puri Jagannadh states that it is a tribute to Amitabh Bachchan, whose films he grew up watching.  If he had made the declaration earlier, then maybe the film could be seen in a different light-- as one man’s version of what he saw of Bachchan films and retained.

Because what many of us saw and remember, is some of the best of mainstream cinema in which Amitabh Bachchan starred. He had powerful scenes and impressive dialogue—some of Salim-Javed’s finest work. And more importantly in many of  his early films—that helped create the Angry Young Man persona—had him play a man on the right side of the law, the scourge of criminals and wrongdoers, a devoted family man.

In Bbuddah Hoga Terra Baap—the title of which somehow reduces his great stardom, Bachchan plays a gangster—his bright wardrobe is somebody’s idea of flamboyant.  He, or rather Viju, the character he plays,  says he was the “founder-member” of Mumbai’s mafia.  And he dances to a medley of Bachchan hits.  The films themselves were tribute to his talent and stardom; he didn’t need to pay tribute to himself.

Having said that, the film works only because he is able to bring his special magic to it.  He can do flirtatious, sarcastic, playful, romantic, angry, without making us squirm—the ‘fan’ of a director does no justice to him, but Bachchan does not let his fans down.

The film has South-style action, Sonu Sood as the cop hero in the best Bachchan tradition, and Prakash Raj as an ineffectual villain. It is entertaining in a way, but Bachchan has done much, much better.

However, what he carries off at nearly 70, many younger stars would not be able to do; that’s why a tribute to him and his films needed to be a superior film. Not some silly piece of fluff in which he has to share screen time with two idiotic girls (Sonal Chauhan, Charmee Kaur) and have Raveena Tandon playing an old lover, drooling all over him. When Hema Malini strides in, we can see how much dignity she brings to the scene—if she started doing a ‘Basanti’, it would hurt. Precisely why a homage film needed more of the Zanjeer Bachchan and less of the Boom one. Not because ‘Bbuddah’ is a derogatory term or aging gracefully a great quality, but because we want to admire a whole genre of films that Bachchan represented, and a generation of filmmakers who made them.  There may be those who haven’t seen the best of Bachchan, they ought not to think this is what he did all through his stupendously successful and influential career.