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Entertainment WITH the tremendous boxoffice success of Chennai Express, a good look at the role trains have played in films in terms of plot, theme, story, song situations, and even the titles of films, would be in order. Some of them could find a place in the film archive because of the imaginative ways in which these have been scripted and positioned. In early Indian films, travelling characters mostly used the train as a vehicle of transport. Today, in an ambience of flashy cars, cross-country luxury buses and racing two-wheelers, the train in a film is relatively rare and has significant cinematic
value. Song sequences shot in trains are another aesthetic value-add-on in many films. In Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se, the train-top song became a hit while the film was more or less a commercial disappointment. Gulzar’s lyrics “Chal chaiyyan chaiyyan” on the magic music of A.R. Rahman beautiful performance by Malaika Arora Khan atop the speeding train is a picture of grace. Choreographed by Farah Khan, it was arrogant, self-indulgent and sensuous. The song is still a rage with listeners of FM channels and couch potatoes of music channels on the small
screen. In Parineeta (2005), there is a beautiful song sequence that Saif Ali Khan lip syncs to Shaan’s mellifluous voice that opens with a bunch of children who sing “Kasto mazaa hai” followed by Shekhar (Saif Ali Khan) belting out “Yeh hawaayen, gungunaaye, poochhe tu hai kahaan” shot along a train chugging its way through the tea plantations. It closes when the train reaches its destination and the lyrics slowly melt away to make place for the slow sound of the spinning wheels as these come to a stop. Shekhar’s voice-over saying ‘life is a rollercoaster ride’ overlaps the song. The visuals are dotted with his point-of-view fantasies around Lolita (Vidya Balan) — writing on another table in the train’s dining car, or, standing at the door singing away, or out in the tea plantations plucking tea leaves. The intercutting of this song with the voices of the little Nepali children gives the entire scene a universal
feel. In Jab We Met (2007), there is a dramatic scene shot inside a train where the leading pair Geet (Kareena Kapoor) and Aditya (Shahid Kapoor) meet for the first time. Aditya, in depression, is running away to commit suicide while Geet is going to her hometown Bathinda from where she plans to run away to get married to her boyfriend up in Manali. The girl falls asleep and wakes up to find that the boy has got off at a station. She chases him to see that he does not miss the train but the train chugs away, leaving the two behind, much to the disgust of the boy who does not like the talkative and over-friendly young girl. This is just the beginning of a roller coaster ride for the two young people who fall in love during the journey without being aware of
it. In Chennai Express, Shah Rukh Khan does an encore of his performance in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge in which the train functions as a framing device. The beginning shows the young girl suddenly encountering the hero Rahul as she jumps onto a moving train at the last minute. In the final frame, she joins him again as the train has begun its run outside the station, this time, too, by stretching her hand to Rahul’s extended one, and thus ends their journey into happiness with the consent of her dictatorial, homesick, NRI father.
Another movie which saw train in a major role was the climax scene of Ra.One wherein a malfunctioning local train crashes into the Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus. The train, which was being driven by a hypnotised Sonia (Kareena Kapoor), is finally stopped by G.One (Shah Rukh
Khan). The flashbacks into Thakur’s past and also the past of the two good-hearted goons in Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay (1975) are stranded together with journeys across time and space with the train and the railway tracks as a repetitive motif. There is a beautifully shot and edited scene of men on horseback running parallel to the running train when the dacoits and the police are pitted against each other. Cinema is, at once, a slice of life, a reflection of life, a window to life, a way of looking inwards into oneself and all these put together. Therefore, cinema also is a journey in itself.
Within its genres of comedy, family drama, suspense, thriller, tragic love story, romance, there are road films and journey films that overlap these genres and at the same time, define a genre unto themselves in different ways.
Quirky perfectionist ON screen, he is dark and menacing. In person, he confesses to be almost timid, a man who prefers to be invisible, an outsider, who delights in observing from the sidelights. Chandan Roy Sanyal lapping up praise post D Day in which he played the vengeful bhaanja with just the right degree of venom and spite says, “I am not what I am on screen where I tend to be expressive and flamboyant.”
But then, acting for Sanyal is not a knee jerk reaction to director’s directive — lights, camera, action. Rather, he spends months to get under the skin of his character. And it’s not just a simple case of putting on and losing weight which, of course, he has done for D Day and Prague strictly in that order. For instance, to get the look of the bhaanja right in D Day he saw Devil’s Double based on Saddam Hussain’s despotic son Uday several times. For his forthcoming film Prague, he wouldn’t sleep for nights to have bloodshot eyes to lend credibility to his character of a schizophrenic architect. Interestingly, he doesn’t think there is anything unusual in what he is doing. In fact, this theatre actor who has worked with thespians like Habib Tanveer and Alyque Padamsee is not only used to living with the character for months at a stretch but also to constantly raise the bar. He recalls his days with Tim Supple in the UK who would tell him each time, “Good, but not good enough.” So does a stint in theatre automatically qualify you for films? He replies, “Theatre makes you an actor but cinema is an altogether different discipline where you have to know how to face the camera, lights and many more technicalities.” Undeniably, he considers himself immensely fortunate to be part of Hindi cinema at a point where it is poised to take a leap ahead. Indeed, it’s an overwhelming experience to be working with directors as diverse as Vishal Bhardwaj, Nikhil Advani, Abbas Tyrewala, and now Subhash Ghai. He says, “Imagine I got to work with Advani when he himself made a switchover from pulp romance like Kal Ho Na Ho to thrillers like D Day.” The ultimate showman Subhash Ghai in whose film Kaanchi he will be playing a bumbling cop, he describes as, “vastly different from his image, exceptionally well read and having done it all makes everyone so relaxed on the sets.” Abbas Tyrewala, in whose film Mango, Sanyal is one of the romantic leads, he shares, is constantly talking about Shakespeare. But he wouldn’t pick favourites, only observes, “They are all great directors who have their own tools and ways of working.” Cinema, too, he believes, has its particular way of sieving and only the best pass through its filter. His idea of best is actors like Kamalahassan, Sanjeev Kumar and Soumitra Chatterjee, who he qualifies are “no demigods but ordinary people with extraordinary abilities.” Sanyal has also acted in several Bengali films. The key difference between Bollywood and Tollywood, he opines, is, “Bengali film industry is more organised and systematic for they don’t have the luxury of overspending.” Sanyal, however, allows himself the luxury of time and is in no hurry to get to the top. Confident that he is no flash-in-the-pan actor, he intends to last a long time. With a handful of projects lined up, right now the volcanic talent is dying to erupt. Yet surprisingly, what most actors die for i.e. a screen kiss left him almost cold. On his kissing act with co-star Elena Kazan, he quips, “With 60 pairs of eyes prying on you, who can enjoy a kiss?” But when Prague releases in September, the chances are bright you wouldn’t know his reel act is no reflection of his real feelings or self. Acting, he knows, is not the art of impossible, but of make-believe.
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It is there in the titles of films — Railway Platform, Toofan Mail, Train, Burning Train, Calcutta Mail, and now Chennai Express. These names are more than titles because the trains play intrinsic roles in the narrative and enrich the film with an added dimension of an ongoing movement, speed and dramatic
action.
