Myriad emotions and the mind’s mystique
By Abhilaksh Likhi

FEW Indian filmmakers have been fascinated by the dark, undeciphered interiors of the human psyche. Issues of illegitimacy, neurosis, hysteria and their social moorings have seldom been depicted with a difference even while conforming to the quintessential ingredients of a musical melodrama. Consequently,the entire gamut of emotions — love, anger, pain, helplessness and desperation (considered the bloodline of Indian cinema) have rarely brought a lump to the throat by striking a deep responsive chord within the audience’s self.

Mahesh Bhatt’s penchant for the sensitive blend of the personal and the socio-political is a credo that he has doggedly pursued over the years. But what is remarkable is his passion and skill to innovatively treat various kinds of bondings, that could flourish outside the traditional fold of the man-woman relationship. In varying degrees, filmmakers like Basu Bhattacharya, Vinod Pande and Govind Nihalani have explored such bondings and their psychic facets but only with a subdued audience response.

When the canvas of mainstream cinema was engulfed with the oversized phenomenon of Amitabh Bachchan as the larger-than-life angry young man, Mahesh Bhatt emerged with his compelling portrayal of the angry old man in Saaransh (1984). As an old school teacher (played by Anupam Kher) who is exposed to the ogre of urban violence and corruption when he steps out to collect the ashes of his NRI son, Kher grows from a bundle of physical debility to a power-house of spiritual strength. On one hand, he fights a moral crusade against the city’s mafia overlord, played by Nilu Phule, and, on the other, he lifts the lid of red tape in a crumbling and inefficient system of governance.

Anupam Kher’s vulnerable, depressed, tormented and heartbroken anguish is emotionally hardhitting. Saaransh was a landmark film simply because its appeal lay in characterisation and plot rather than hype and gloss. Here was a film that was successful despite featuring a hectagenarian as a hero.

Before Saaransh however, it was Arth (1982), a personalised look at the Indian marriage, that brought Mahesh Bhatt’s innovative creativity to the fore. Arth traced the metamorphosis of the prototypal wife into a self-dependent, and dissenting individual. Pooja, played by Shabana Azmi, not only walks out from a soured marriage after she discovers that her husband is involved with an actress (Smita Patil), but also learns to live on her own. Arth, then presented the first complete and contemporary picture of the independent, urban Indian woman who was able to hold self-esteem above all else.

Juxtaposed against Pooja was Kavita, the neurotic actress who needed to depend on a man to form a sense of her own self. Kavita’s nervous hysteria and her manic depression was recreated by Bhatt in Phir Teri Kahani Yad Aayi (1993) in a character who despite having found and won over the love of her life is unable to transcend her insecurities and suicidal tendencies. In a similar vein, in Sir (1993) as a daughter of an underworld don, the heroine scurries through home and college nurturing a speech problem that isolates her still further from her peer group.

Interestingly, in Sadak (1991) Mahesh Bhatt’s passion bares itself in the psyche of both the hero and the villain. The hero, played by Sanjay Dutt is violent, unduly aggressive and is plagued by nightmares of a traumatic past. On the other hand is ‘Maharani", played by Sadashiv Amrapurkar, the eunuch who holds the brothels in his maniacal grip. Mahesh Bhatt’s interest in the psyche thus is not on the usual lines. For him, the deviant is normal too. For him, the hero need not always be undeniably good and absolutely clean, nor the villain totally bad. For instance, Paresh Rawal in Sir is ostensibly the criminal who kills mercilessly but beneath his blackened soul is a noble heart that is amenable to love, reason and sacrifice.

Stylistically speaking, Mahesh Bhatt has excelled in creating either a different character type or by delving deep into an unusual story-line in a cinema otherwise dominated by conveyor-belt creativity. His melodramatic narrative, usually punched with celluloid neurosis, always heightens the impact of a chilling oeuvre. And this is not to discount Bhatt’s creative skill of weaving situational songs like Hoothon se jo chu lo tum (Arth), Rehne ko ghar nahin (Sadak), Aaj humne zindagi ka (Sir) that are melodious and have been extremely popular with the audience.

Nevertheless, non-conformism infused with a personal element remains the hallmark of Mahesh Bhatt’s cinema. In Naam (1986) Bhatt tackles the issue of illegitimacy through the unusual relationship between two brothers played by Kumar Gaurav and Sanjay Dutt. They bond closely, despite the innate frictions that would traditionally exist between a pair of half brothers. A search for identity drives Dutt angry, aggressive and not always honest and upright, across the close confines of his middle class home to the gold of the oil kingdoms.

Only to realise that happiness lies at home alone.

In the same style and with considerable consistency Mahesh Bhatt directed Najayaz (1994), a story of an underworld don who is guilty of fathering an illegitimate child. The film opens with the son (Ajay Devgun) hating his father but as the melodrama progresses, Devgun learns to love, respect and admire a man who was on the wrong side of law and ethics.

In both Naam and Najayaz, illegitimacy forms the core of the drama. The latter’s curse and its psychological facets convey an agonising scream of despair as if straight from Mahesh Bhatt’s heart. And of course, daringly different from his successful meanderings in the area of romantic themes in films like Ashiqui (1988), Dil hai ke maanta nahin (1989) and Hum hain rahi pyar ke (1991).

His latest venture Zakhm (1989) explores the mother-son relationship, set against the seething cauldron of the Bombay riots. At another level it is also a diatribe against communalism. Bhatt uses autobiography to cry out against separatist violence through the tender bond between a ten-year-old boy and his mother.

At Bhatt’s hand, sensitive performances and mature character delineation strongly brings forth the trauma of illegitimacy and the identity-crisis that follows.

Mahesh Bhatt’s penchant for deciphering the interiors of human psyche might have, over the years, got diluted by concerns of commerce. His films like Naraaz, Awargi, Chahat, Duplicate, Dastak and Angaarey have not fared well at the box office.

Bhatt remains a filmmaker whose cinema aims at portraying an intimately valued, moment-by-moment command in the transmission of social insecurities and emotional tendencies. This style that is visible and lives on in the works of contemporary filmmakers such as Shekhar Kapoor, Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta.