Desi Train

Mr. Sticky Eyes comes on screen in the 3rd minute after the opening reels and stares at us. Mr. Sticky eyes comes up in every 30 seconds thereafter until the movie ends and stares at us. Ms. Chum Chum Chamiya, comes on screen in the 20th minute and looks at us with googly, gooly, gooyi gooyi eyes. This happens consistently whenever she appears in the 30th, 50th, 80th minute of the movie. Mr. Professor comes in the 15th minute and announces that he is an Urdu Professor. How can you be so sure? Because he said so. In the the 15th, 16, 19th, 25th, 36th, 55th, 66th, 76th, 85th and some other minutes of the movie. So if a person repeats this over and over again, you do take his word for it. Mrs. Big Eyes Mouth Fire is the new age secularist socialist worker and appears in the 35th minute of the movie. And we take her word for it (about her being a secularist socialist worker) in the very first scene - 35th minute - in which she appears. You really don’t have the balls to question her, for fear of she opening her mouth and shooting hot lava on you, thereby reducing your newly bought Gap jeans and shirt to two pieces of thread hanging over your body… make that ash-black body.

In between, there’s this old man who recites poems, a bearded guy with tresses longer than the Kutab who keeps playing some stupid song on his guitar ALL the time, a few idiots who are labelled by the production staff of the movie, as Jehadis, a few idiots here, a few morons there, and you get to the end of the movie called…

Black & White was watched in roughly about 7 days. That’s how long it took me to “jhelofy” and drag myself from reel one to reel end of this 90 minute egg beater served with fungus coated bread.

Subash Ghai, 30 years ago, held the record of delivering the highest number of “CONSECUTIVE” hits. It all started with “Kalicharan” (where he spent the whole night, waiting outside veteran Premnath’s house to get him to do a role, which was the condition of the producer N.N. Sippy), followed by “Vishwanath” (the dialogues got even my dad whistling in the seats on a Sunday noon and me a kid simply followed suit), followed by two duds “Gautam Govinda” (a case of lost brothers Shashi Kapoor & his the then favorite Shatrughan Sinha) and “Krodhi” (just bad)…

He then had “Karz” (his best, and shocked to see that he called it a “flop” in one of his recent interviews - Karz made money for him), Vidhaata (O boy - Dilip Kumar v/s Sanjeev Kumar), Hero (big craze then, can’t stand it now), Karma (I was totally taken in and saw it 5 times forgetting there was a much better product released the same Friday - Pankaj Parasher’s “Jalwa”. Today, seeing “Karma” shows Ghai’s amateurishness), Ram Lakhan (He had to prove himself, having dumped the movie he started with Amitabh Bachchan within 10 days of beginning the shoot), Saudagar (commercial wizadry is now transparent - Dilip Kumar v/s Raj Kumar), Khalnayak… and I was gone.

Originality has rarely been Ghai’s forte. But a pulse of the current market trends - that’s Ghai’s strongest point. No one in the last 50 years of cinema, has been able to sense the current movie market trends and has been able to change one self and one’s filmmaking process to adapt to the latest trends - as much as Subhash Ghai.

And Ghai’s films over the last 35 odd years prove this fact. The 70s typical strong punch lines, the hero v/s villain win lose lose win in the end situations, the “it is my basti (or village or gutter corner)” emotions - check out Kaalicharan, Vishwanath, Gautam Govinda, Krodhi (Karz to some extent fits the bill, but it being Ghai’s most superior product inspite of it being a copy, I’m gonna leave it out of this list).

Then the eighties - songs and their picturizations have gathered moment. And Ghai does just that with Meenakshi and Madhuri. The multi hero trends and he uses his commercial acumen to bring together powerpacked casts - Sanjeev Kumar, Dilip Kumar, Shammi Kapoor in “Vidhaata”, Dilip Kumar and Raaj Kumar in “Saudagar”, Jackie Shroff and Anil Kapoor in “Ram Lakhan”, Dilip Kumar, Jackie Shroff, Anil Kapoor in “Karma”.

Villains were getting bigger and spicier towards the late eighties and beginning nineties. What does Ghai do? He immediately picks that trend up and produces Dr. Dang (Karma) and ofcourse Sanjay Dutt (Khalnayak)

Cinematography moves in to a better phase. Ghai picks up Ashok Mehta and then Manmohan Singh. Song dances gain momentum and become the frontline marketing tool. So Ghai brings in Saroj Khan and what does he do? - Remember “Choli ke peche” which he combined with the other the then market favorite - traditional Rajasthani songs that were being dished out at Jhankaar beats in the early nineties. The NRI trends - religiously copied by Ghai in Yaadein, Pardes. Gori loves Desi brought by Aamir Khan in Lagaan, religiously copied by Ghai in Kisna and so on…

Yes, Ghai has been sensitive, swift and smooth to change his styles, his teams, the film-makeover to quickly adapt to changing market tastes. But what he has not been able to do is - change his story style, narration and content.

Which are still stuck in the seventies. His story sensibilities have never been able to change and adapt to every new decade and every new incoming batch of movie lovers with newer tastes. Ghai has never been able to do that. Never.

Which is why his films right from the nineties - Khalnayak, Yadeein, Kisna, Taal, Pardes - even if they had a good BROAD STORY IDEA turned out to be badly written stories and screenplays. And which continues in “Black & White”

Ghai still wants to tell things over the top, define and redefine again and again the characters and keep repeating things utmost times as they were done in the seventies commercial cinema. So Anil Kapoor is a “great” Urdu Professor has to be clearly stated out by him, by dialogues, by the supporting cast - a 100 times. WHY THE FUCK DO I NEED TO BE TOLD THAT?

Amateurishness. How scenes unfolded (begin, flow and end) or were captured on camera in the seventies may have been good, but it is just bad now. Plain crass. And Ghai uses the same scene-telling style that he used to use in Vishwanath or Kalicharan - in Black & White. He used that to the infinite degree in Yadeein (I still cry thinking of those utter crap scenes) and Pardes (which in my eyes is far worse than Shahrukh’s English Babu Desi Mem)

This is utterly stupid.

Ghai undoubtedly has a better business sense than tons of others in the movie business (though his productions directed by others has yet to prove this point)… It’s high time Ghai takes a long break (perhaps 10 or 20 years) to imbibe the next generation of stories and story telling. In the mean time he can get serious of encouraging new writers who show promise and not wave them off his office with starry eyed teen girls sitting in his lap. It’s RIDICULOUS that you put on a goody face in the media and lament about lack of writers when the best of writers visit your office and begin narrating their stories to you while you play with the boobs of a 20 year old who wants to become an actress, then you stop the narration and ask the writer to write a script based on your story idea which in the first place is utter crap.

STOP THIS NONSENSE!

And do thank Anurag Kashyap, Anurag Basu and Imtiaz Ali for making films that you tried to imbibe in your “Black & White”. As usual, Ghai tried to adapt to the new trends… unfortunately he could not move beyond changing the gift wrap and ribbons.

F Minus. Amateurish Film-making has a new name. Black & White… plain and simple

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 11:34 am and is filed under Bollywood, Movie Reactions.
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