Satyagraha

It was only a matter of time before someone had to take inspiration from Anna Hazare for a movie.  If someone had told me that Prakash Jha would be that somebody, I would not have been the least bit surprised.  I have been a keen follower of Jha’s work and more importantly, I have been eagerly waiting for him to show the intensity and straight forwardness that he did with “Gangajal”.

Chakravyuh

Naxalite - a member of an extreme Maoist group in India that originated in 1967 in West Bengal and which employs tactics of agrarian terrorism and direct action. Named after Naxalbari, a town in West Bengal where the movement started.

That’s how the world knows them. But every coin has 2 sides is what they say. And Prakash Jha’s Chakravyuh tries to paint a picture that gives us a perspective of both sides of the story. At no point of time in the movie does Jha take a side. He leaves it to the intelligence of the audience to figure out right or wrong by themselves.

Adil Khan (Arjun Rampal) is married to Rhea Menon (Esha Gupta). They are both cops and with a great amount of difficulty ensure that they get posted at the same location – Bhopal. Adil’s best friend is Kabir (Abhay Deol). They completed their graduation together and then join the police force. Kabir is a hot head and stands for what is right. He gets into a fight with a cop and is forced to leave the forces.

Seven years later, after several failed business attempts, Kabir re-surfaces and makes up with Adil. At the same time, Adil decides to take up a challenging posting deep in Naxal territory. Stupid decision but one that prompts Kabir to step in to help him. They plan to seed Kabir into the Naxal group led by Govind Suryavanshi (Om Puri) and Rajan (Manoj Bajpai). The group is ably supported by Naga (Murli Sharma) and Juhi (Anjali Patil).

As Kabir goes about building his credibility and playing the role of an informer, he slowly but surely starts seeing merit in what the Naxals are upto. How the poor get more and more marginalized and how the rich (read politicians) squeeze the maximum out of the land. But he is also well aware of the fact that the way the Naxals are going about their job is not the best possible way. That’s where Jha strikes a fine balance.

Which side is right in the war where truck loads of blood is being spilt through ages of in-fighting? At the end of the day, if there are 2 parties losing they are the police force and the naxals. The people who are in power, running the country are sitting pretty and laughing their way to the bank. Only a matter of time before this entire movement reaches a boiling point and both cops and naxals start targeting who need to be targeted.

Prakash Jha’s attempt, however, falls flat. Mainly in the aspects of finishing. The cheapest of all green screens gives an effect that’s over 30 years old. The sound mixing and quality was poor. The stunts were even worse. Adil Khan charging into a band of naxals like Bajirao Singham was comical to say the least. Why would Jha stoop to such levels is beyond understanding.

The screenplay and dialogues were not too great either. Abhay Deol is fast losing his edge as an actor who takes his role seriously. Esha Gupta has about 6 minutes and 32.83 seconds of screen time where she manages to hold her own. And Arjun Rampal is as always only eye candy for the women. The music is not too inspiring either. Overall a very disappointing effort from Jha. Without the good story line it would have been a disaster. 5 on 10. Watch it on TV.

Watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnamEA8iLGY

Aarakshan

The power of marketing or should I be more specific and say “Jab PR kiya toh darna kya”??? (Corny as hell ain’t it :P). But that is exactly what you could describe the events over the past 2 days as. First there were reports from Uttar Pradesh and then Punjab if I am not mistaken. And then finally Andhra Pradesh joined the bandwagon. One can be quite certain that this bandwagon is not going to grown exponentially. The reason – Because there is nothing objectionable at all in Aarakshan. Its nothing but a brilliant piece of PR and I tip my hat to the agency behind it. A superb way to generate more excitement around a movie that was anyways expected to be good and fare quite well at the BO. The news of the ban and the intense promotion around the news has only helped it more – or has it? I would have thought that people would have anyways gone to see the Big B in his 2nd movie for the year and his first truly respectable role since Paa. I thought BBuddah was OK but nothing immensely respectable by a country mile for the biggest star in Indian cinema. As such the entire PR stunt was generally much ado about actually nothing. In fact I thought I may have missed a thing or two since I was so eagerly looking out for what was it that people of UP or AP and most surprisingly Punjab found in the movie to ban it. Weird I say.

Aarakshan (Reservation) tries to deal with the ever controversial topic of reservation on the basis of caste and creed. Is it justifiable to use reservation as a means of getting back at another caste or group of people from a specific caste purely because hundreds of years back, you were a victim of the same? Doesn’t it make sense to reserve seats for the truly economically backward and that too if and only if they really show some spark? Why is it that teaching as a profession is not given as much importance as say the Police or Civil Services. So where you have options to become an IAS Officer or an IPS Officer, why is it that you don’t have the option of becoming an ITS Officer (Indian Teaching Services)? And then again should the government not be doing its bit to really work on quality primary education and providing facilities to those who are economically backward or for that matter from the so called backward communities which give them a level playing field with anyone else and encourage fair competition? Are these coaching classes just converting education into a full fledged money making business and nothing else? Just some of the questions that Aarakshan throws up. What was so controversial about it, I would never know. Just leads me to believe that we are still just a literate nation and far from being an educated one.

I have always loved Prakash Jha’s direction especially since Gangajal where he really got his levels of intensity into direction really high. A trait which kind of seems missing in the first few minutes of Aarakshan but if you are a bit patient, it slowly creeps up and comes to the Prakash Jha that we are familiar with. The tempo also keeps fluctuating but Jha keeps the overall interest alive all through. What I did find a tad tacky was that some scenes were not seamlessly stitched together. From a perspective of performances, I could only find fault with Pratiek Babbar who still seems like a struggling child artiste. The screen presence of the Big B and Manoj Bajpayee are superb to say the least. And Saif continues to do reasonably well with the exceptions of some robotic moments. The same case with Deepika (who is totally stunning especially for 10 seconds when she wears the blue saree and pink blouse). Music was average. A couple of consistency errors which I found too surprising just added to the feeling that not only was this clearly not Jha’s best effort to date but also one where not much attention has been put in either. A tad disappointed but still a good movie to catch up with. 6.5 on 10 is the verdict.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi792042521/