Magician who weaves comedies

By Abhilaksh Likhi

THE magic of cinema enthralls Indian audiences like nothing else does. It has the glitziest of entertainment, lavish spectacle and social realism, armed with songs, dance, a dash of comedy, a bit of suspense and melodrama, in varying proportions, the film director’s craft is to narrate a story on screen. While he does so he uses a wide variety of techniques —be they lighting, camerawork or editing — to enhance the film’s appeal. The audience craves not just entertainment but also emotional satisfaction as well as intellectual elevation.

Most successful Indian film-makers have treated the film’s form and content in their own style. With them has grown and evolved the format of popular story-telling in Indian cinema. Directors like Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor and Mahesh Bhatt have moulded a cinema that is socially relevant as well as entertaining. Manmohan Desai, Prakash Mehra and Subhash Ghai have evolved a narrative style to highlight attitudes and lifestyles that focus on the cult of the ‘hero’.

More contemporary directors like Sooraj Barjatya, Aditya Chopra and Raj K. Santoshi have fashioned a treatment that makes the family, filial ties and associated values pivotal to the romantic plot.

Whatever the thematic concerns — love, romance, comic situations, philosophy of life, riots, patriotism, rural exploitation, police atrocity, status of women — all these directors have narrated them in the form of a good story. They have skilfully deployed technical finesse to enhance the emotional impact.

The 1990s saw popular cinema being discarded as a dead duck. With the debilitating video piracy and "creativity with difference" at a low ebb, Indian cinema was said to have lost its sparkle, until Ankhen (1993) happened.

David Dhawan, a product of FTII Pune, directed Ankhen, a film that catapulted him to the forefront for having stormed the box office with a record that almost challenged the earlier blockbuster, Sooraj Barjatya’s Maine Pyar Kiya (1989). Ankhen, a watershed mark, witnessed the revival of popular cinema in the 1990s.

More important, however, it witnessed the emergence of a cinematic style different from straight narration. David’s world was a colourful kaleidoscope, peopled by events rather than characters. No super heroes, no gigantic do-gooders. Just small time ordinary men who happened to fall in line of fire and incidentally ended up doing great deeds. Left to themselves, they would have been happiest playing eternal pranksters with a gag-bag of practical jokes. It is only while playing this joyous game of life itself that the protagonists are called upon to play a different role. One that, involves a service to the nation and the family — the two sacrosanct pillars of Indian cinema.

In Shola Aur Shabnam (1992), one of David’s earlier films to succeed at the box-office, a gang of NCC cadets look upon their training as a chance to ridicule their supervisor and romance with the neighbouring cadet girls. Within no time, these small men end up as saviours of the nation and foil the bid of crooks to wipe out clean administrators.

In Ankhen, with a similar plot, the story hurtles from one escapade to another as the pair of good-for-nothing accidentally end up as true soldiers of the nation.

In Coolie No 1 (1994), it is once again the small guy who stands centre — stage in a story that draws its dramatic twist from the joys, sorrows and ambitions of a porter.In the same vein, it is the good-for-nothing and joke-cracking village lad, who emerges as the hero in Raja Babu (1994) too. Raja Babu is a true family man willing to sacrifice the love of his life for bringing his broken clan together.

For David Dhawan then — fun, family and nation is the trinity that propels his creativity. Stylistically speaking, David follows the tradition of the grand magician of popular cinema: Manmohan Desai. The tomfoolery, the slapstick, the preponderance of catchy songs, dance, bonhomie and the oneline story, all defining characteristics of Desai’s oeuvre seem to slip into David’s cinema.

Like Desai, David doesn’t believe in a grand narrative in Shola aur Shabnam a bunch of worthless collegiates do it, while in Raja Babu a yokel saves a family from falling apart. Coolie No 1, shows a commoner crossing class barriers, while Hero No 1 (1997) depicts a rich hero’s escapades as a cook to win over his girlfriend’s family. In Bade Mian Chhote Mian (1998) two small-time tricksters from a village pre-empt two look-alike cops who are protecting a key witness. In all these films a conscious effort keeps out the tears and treats the melodrama breezily. The romantic plot, family feuds and mistaken identities have a touch of comedy. Interestingly the films proceed through a progression of events built around singular motives of protagonists.

However, unlike Manmohan Desai, David’s cinema does not have finesse and a coherence that made Amar Akbar Anthony, Naseeb, Coolie milestones of mainstream cinema. Unlike AllahRakha in Coolie, who has the concern of all the porters on his mind, David’s porter is bothered more about personal gratification. David’s contours of characterisation are thus dwarfed.

Even the insistence on comedy —again a part of Desai’s legacy — translates itself into a less pristine form in David’s film. Be it in Banarsi Babu (1996) or Loafer (1997), the characters speak and act in a language that reeks of the street. Many times this language becomes suggestive and borders on vulgarity. What follows in David’s scheme of narration is humour that largely spills from coarse dialogue, incidental goof-ups and mistaken identities.

This is, however, not to belittle David’s efforts. He does successfully weave an entertaining film with all mandatory twists and turns in a one-line plot, the medley of catchy, foot-tapping songs, well-executed dances and a gag-bag of belly tickling tricks. The audience excitedly throng the theatre-perhaps, identifying themselves, with his characters, star images, situations, events and happenings.

David Dhawan’s cinema carries forward the mode of popular story-telling. He weaves escapist yarns but his cinema is a breezy alternative to the cult of blood and gore. On the other hand, failure of many films like Banarasi Babu, Andaz, Gharwali Baharwali also proves another point. The intrinsic credo of David’s cinema is not without pitfalls.

The quintessential "formula" of an Indian musical melodrama, all said and done gains ‘credibility’ only at the hand of its audiences. Cinema cannot be absolutely self-contained. It has to draw on the values and knowledge which we bring to it..