BigB Yahoo Group: Re: [bigb] great post by Satyam on AB jr. comment on bringing back BOSS of 70s and 80s

Thanks Joel,

I love "DEV" and truly this is by far one of the most under-rated films in the last 20 years in my book.

BOSS was great in the film. Love Khakee too and Satyam is right on about how we all have become decadent and therefore could not relate to Vijay anymore. I just saw Deewar again the other night with my wife and this was movie was saw RAW and the temple and his death give you a lump in your throat. Where is that Yash Chopra. Instead he and the Johars have made us all Diabetic with their syrupy crap year after year. Time to bring the Caffeinated "Vijay" back in Bbuddha !!!

Amit

From: joel_dude99 <joel_dude99@yahoo.com>
To: bigb@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Mon, April 4, 2011 8:57:04 PM
Subject: [bigb] great post by Satyam on AB jr. comment on bringing back BOSS of 70s and 80s

44.Satyam says:
April 5, 2011 at 2:54 am

Abhishek said somewhere that in Bbuddah we would see the "Amitabh Bachchan of the 70s and 80s." I have of course welcomed the film for this very reason but I think that formulation is somewhat incorrect. I mention this here not as a criticism of any sort but simply as a means to further interrogate the whole notion of a signature and history (in this case that of the `angry young man' or `Vijay').

It took me some time to realize what the problem with Khakee really was. This is otherwise a superb film, to my mind one of the best over the last thirty years or so, and for more reasons than one. I have in short no problem with the actual `text' of the film. However what was surprising here was that even though the will did well enough it wasn't the outright blockbuster it ought to have been. In this regard I have often critiqued and criticized contemporary audiences and so on but there was also another problem here. This was the degree to which the otherwise potent politics of the film was not part of larger project connected with your signature. In other words `Vijay' was of course part of a certain screen history or more precisely began a history. But he was also in dialogue with his environment. And audiences saw the actor committed to a certain kind of cinema. You could never ever have done for example the K3G part in the 70s. It would have even seemed absurd.

With Khakee the whole protest in a sense seemed strangely `de-fanged'. Partly because your character did not quite have the world-changing potential that `Vijay' did (Vijay could go against the state and its laws, the bourgeois order and its mores, etc all at one and the same time… meanwhile the character in Khakee is far more constrained at all these levels) but also because it seemed to be simply a part for you and not really connected to any deeper screen history. Just before this released you had Baghban, on the very same day that Khakee released you also had Aitbaar. Again I don't mean to short-change Khakee at all, it's a film I adore, but in many ways it does not really advance beyond the concerns raised in your older films. It's politics is bold in one sense but not as radical as it might have been and certainly not compared to your older visionary stuff. Lawaaris for example is prophetic (this among its many strengths) in terms of how it looks ahead to the emerging caste politics of the North. There is very deep conflict at the heart of this film to which caste is central even if it is not completely spelled out. But consider the character played by Dr Shreeram Lagoo. Similarly it has an extremely dark view of blood and kinship. There is nothing equivalent in Khakee and in the absence of this it becomes basically a very bold `liberal' plea for tolerance and justice.

In short the larger Bachchan/Vijay project was lacking here. In the absence of such what you have is simple referencing of a signature. Which is what Bbuddah will be more of. But it might do much better than Khakee. Because today's audience's are quite happy with this absence of any radical message. They will be quite happy to get Vijay's body without the spirit if I might crudely put it this way. In other words Vijay without the cost. One of my favorite thinkers would call this `de-caffeinated Vijay'!

Don't mistake this for a criticism as I've been saying all along. I am just trying to suggest why this will and will not be the "Amitabh Bachchan of the 70s and 80s." One will get the gesture, the signature but one will only get this. It won't be embedded in a larger project. Incidentally this explains the great success of Dabanng in the multiplexes. You get a certain empty masala with little or not cost. All the gesturality, the self-reflexive humor et al but no real stakes.

No one wants revolution today. The audiences that run the Bollywood economy have been well fed and fattened on complacency and conformism.They have profited from this. They love you as a brandname but show them Dev and they start quaking (incidentally this was the boldest political film out of Bombay in at least a generation). As long as you are friendly and non-threatening they'll embrace you. Otherwise they react badly. we live in such impoverished times unfortunately. But this isn't the only reality out there even if this class insists on wishing away everything else. There is the India of caste wars, of religious extremism, of a whole Naxalite corridor from Nepal to Andhra where the state's writ does not hold at all, etc etc. But Bollywood remains deaf and blind about all of this. What would Vijay's project today be? This requires a re-orientation. Rathnam has supplied some of the answers, most recently in Raavan. And again there have been Dev and Khakee (despite what I just said it should be placed in this archive). There are some others. It is important to preserve the sign of Vijay. This doesn't mean however that one can simply repeat the past.