Saturday, August 31, 2013
Satyagraha
Truth
Or Dare
Remember
what happened in real life—the anti-corruption movement initiated by Anna
Hazare first lost steam with all the infighting and political ambitions coming
to the fore, then fizzled out altogether. The public that came out in support
of the movement with all the tokens in place—Gandhi caps, T-shirts, Facebook
pages and Twitter handles— gave up and returned to apathy.
Instead
of capturing and shaking up this mood of cynicism and hopelessness, Prakash Jha
makes another tub-thumper of a film, that takes up issues, over dramatizes them
and then drops the flaming ball into cold water. Not that anyone expects
a film to provide solutions, but the solution it comes up with, should not be
one that has so clearly failed in real life.
Retired
school teacher Dwarka ‘Daduji’ Anand (Amitabh Bachchan) believes capitalism is
bad; an argument early on in the film, with his son’s friend and rising telecom
entrepreneur Manav (Ajay Devgn) establishes their points of view. One
does wonder, however, at the rather lavish home of Daduji, also, the film
doesn’t seem to worry about how people who give up jobs to join a cause make a
living, but they are all dressed in street chic.
Daduji’s
idealistic engineer son is killed in a road accident, the home minister Balram
Singh (Manoj Bajpayee), who is also the MP from the district of Ambikapur where
the story takes place, announces a Rs 25 lakh compensation. The money never
reaches the widow Sumitra (Amrita Rao), who wants to start a school for the
poor with it, and she is given a humiliating runaround.
Daduji
strides up to the sneering collector and slaps him, for which he is arrested.
Manav uses his IT skills and palm-greasing savvy to start a Free Daduji
campaign. Local student (?) leader Arjun (Rampal) joins up with his supporters,
and TV journalist Yasmin (Kareena Kapoor), gives up a junket to Japan with the
PM, to cover ‘Ambikapur is burning’ stories. The evil Balram Singh uses charm,
threats, skulduggery to derail the growing ‘revolution’ against corruption at
the collector’s office.
All
of this is relevant and topical in many ways, but it occurs in a fictional town
with fictional political parties exchanging insults and cutting deals. The
so-called revolution covered by one TV channel does not seem to have any
repercussions outside the district, leave aside the state or country.
Prakash
Jha’s last few films have dealt with reality in mofussil India, and he has to
be commended for that, but they have seldom gone into in-depth exploration of
the issue he picks up. Satyagraha too is more noise and bluster—starting
well and then deteriorating into embarrassing melodrama.
If it
weren’t for seasoned actors like Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgn and Manoj
Bajpayee (convincingly slimy), the film would have sunk into its own quicksand
of good intentions and confused treatment. That said, if people were
really angry, they would not need a film to fire up their outrage, and if they
did need a catalyst, then Satyagraha would fall far short.
Labels: Cinemaah
