Movie Review: Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag

Ram Gopal Varma had never seen the Sholay that I had seen. At best RGV had seen the body of Sholay and missed out 'feeling' the soul of the film. Sholay is not about 2 people hired by an ex-cop to avenge the murder of his loved ones. That is the body of the film. What I call soul of the film was the special relationship that each character had among themselves and with the audience. The special identification of audience with them and their relationships made them eternally lovable characters and sholay a timeless classic. Alas, good camerawork and enhanced technology cannot compensate for something that is beyond matter.

Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag (RGVKA) gives me one more reason to dislike remakes. After the murder of Devdas and Don, I think RGVKA just proves to be what is best termed as the 'last nail in the coffin' of remakes. In an age when mediocrity is being confused for ingenuity, films like – Mother India, Mughal-e-Azam, Ganga Jamuna, Guide, Pyasa, Deewar, Amar Akbar Anthony et al should be left to themselves. At best re-release them but don't remake them.

I know Sholay is worth its name because it cannot be remade. Also it was always a blasphemy to even think of such dastardly act. But it is not the alleged blasphemy that invites scorn but the treatment of the remake which stands out as a masterly misadventure. So what did RGV miss? There was Veeru and there was Jai but the friendship never seemed to be there. There was a Thakur but the reasons of why he thought Veeru and Jai could be trusted were not there. There was a Ramgarh but the terror was not there. There was a Basanti but she could not build the love with Dhanno (laila in this case). There was a Radha too but the transition of a youthful girl into a traumatized widow and her subtle development of love with Jai was just not there. Yes, jai did go to talk to mausi about veeru's marriage but the serious-hilarious presentation of his case was absent. RGV made the body and that too shabbily but forgot the essence, the spirit. It seemed for most part of the film that he thought Sholay as a disparate mixture of events and took special care not too miss any. I concede, he did exceedingly well with the checklist and that is what the picture was reduced to.

What about the helping hand that dialogues and music provide? Music has been the bane of bollywood in recent past. No one expected an RD Burman but wasn't a good dosti song and a good holi song important for the film? Of the horrible two, Holi one was still better. Mehbooba song was anyway a tweaked one from the original so it doesn't really qualify as a novel work. No wonder then that RGV had to fall back on the music of 'yeh dosti' from original film to somehow drive home some effect when Jai died.

If there was any confusion then the dialogues made it absolutely clear that RGVKA is far from being a serious cinematic exercise. The constant Bush-Osama, US war on Iraq and US-Al Qaeda invocation turned out to be boring rhetoric of intellectually bankrupt dialogue writers. The dialogues of none of the characters were written with a motive of bringing out the character. It was assumed that people have already seen Sholay.

Although the film erred in all aspects but the field where RGV's monumental ignorance of understanding characters of Sholay became most conspicuous was its cast selection. Viru-Jai were pathetic if they ever meant to be a replacement for Dharmendra and Amitabh. While Ajay Devgan has no business doing comedy, new-comer Prashant Raj's height would have been the only criteria for his selection as Jai. Rajpal Yadav is wasted with an ugly script, which somehow tries to relate his 'dushmani' with Veeru & Jai and Soorma Bhopali of the original. Sushmita Sen, for limited fault of hers, fails to build the transition that I had mentioned above. But nothing has been as disgraced as the character of Basanti. The problem with Nisha Kothari is more fundamental. She cannot act (period).

There were only three characters which are the saving grace of the film. I am prepared to admit that this was purely coincidental!! Bachchan excels as Babban. In a mediocre film with below average script he makes the character of Babban ferocious, unpredictable and idiosyncratic. He bolsters the saying that there can be a bad Amitabh Bachchan movie but there cannot be a bad Amitabh Bachchan performance. He is at his menacing best. Mohanlal faulters with his Hindi but not with his acting. The Gabbar-Thakur equation is the only success that RGV can boast of. The scene were Babban cuts his fingers is the best scene of the film. Tambhe (played by Sushant Singh) has been an improvement over the character of Sambha. But too little an effort for too insignificant a character.

Overall kudos to RGV for trying to do something that others could not even dream of but a big kick on his butt for making such a hoax. It should be used to educate other directors of the futility of remakes and in giving them guidelines - on how films should not be made.

Rating - 1 out of 5 stars!