Corruption in our system has
been in practice for so long now that you can easily find its traces in our
day-to-day life. It is so rehearsed-so exercised that we might not even
consider it now a threat to our society but when the same strikes in art like cinema,
it still hurts, badly. Prakash Jha’s so-called social drama SATYAGRAHA is a
victim of corruption in cinema. Formulaic approach of Jha’s own league contaminates
the power of story-telling. Forced Star-value pollutes the intensity and
effort.
Taking a prominent lead from
Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement and a few other sensational news headlines
in the past, SATYAGRAHA roams around an idealistic retired principal [played
passionately by Amitabh Bachchan] who is so much confined into his ideas that
he can be very blatant with anyone against his concept of morality. Trust me,
in few scenes you would be thanking God that your father in real is not like
him. After losing his extremely talented engineer son in a road-accident [referring
to the Satyendra Dubey murder case, if you remember], in frustration to not
know how to deal with corruption in the system, Daduji slaps the district
magistrate and is now behind the bars.
To set him free, joins hands an
ambitious businessman of promising future [Ajay Devgn in his usual], a local
crowd-pulling youth leader [Arjun Rampal wasted in his ‘Rajneeti’ look] and a
dedicated journalist [Kareena Kapoor Khan-the most irritating of all] who
merely believes in just one rule of journalism that you should look presentable. So,
you never find her without heavily done make-up in any of the frames she’s in. Manoj
Bajpai slips into a caricature-ish comical politician who’s naively uncomfortable
with the concept of lawmakers taking instructions & suggestions to improve from
public as a part of democratic system. So, the conflict to bring inevitable change
in the system turns into a final showdown between the government and team Satyagraha.
Problem with the film lies in
its too idealistic characters to make connect and events happenings in the most
suitable manner. Film struggles to speak loud and clear on the issue and ends
up in an exploited version of the ‘freedom of speech’ that can also be referred
as the ‘freedom to preach’. In its 2 hour 32 min of excruciating duration, it
goes on and on and on till an equally infertile dramatic climax.
All I can request/warn/suggest Mr.
Jha that please rediscover his own self beyond this fixed parameters of
star-driven half-cooked hopeless social dramas just for the sake of making it or
the day is not very far when we would have another ‘Ram Gopal Verma’ in
Bollywood. If not in the right manner, some statements should not be made at
all as you are killing the opportunity for someone else. [2/5]
No comments:
Post a Comment