From Satya To Khatra
By Subhash K Jha
I stopped watching Ramu’s films after struggling through Killing Veerappan and and Sarkar 3 in 2016-2017. These were among the last remnants of a dying talents.
Actually the decline started long back.Right after the implosive and clenched game-changers Shiva ,Satya ,the ravishing Rangeela and the career-defining Company , Ramu went into Daud, Phoonk, Agyaat, Not A Love Story, Department ….the downward spiral was unstoppable. By the time Ramu came to Laxshmi’s NTR, D Company and 2 O’Clock,I didn’t know where to look.
It was like Dev Anand travelling from Hare Rama Hare Krishna to Love At Times Square . No one had the heart to tell the supremely loveable Dev Saab that he had lost the post. Ramu is neither that charming nor do his sensitivities have to be kept under consideration .
So I would openly ask him why he was committing a professional hara-kiri.
“I make the films that I want to. I didn’t plan Satya or Rangeela as the hits that they turned out to be. Likewise I don’t tell myself, ‘Let’s make a flop now.’ Or , ‘Let’s make a bad film.’ Many people believe that the reasons for my flops are that I do too many films and too quickly, but that’s not the truth. I took the maximum number of days to shoot and spent the maximum money on Department and Aag and they are my biggest flops. On the other hand, Satya was shot on a shoe-string budget; Sarkar I finished in 30 days. So it’s not the money or time, but it’s the wrong content which determines a film’s failure.”
What Ramu did to Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay qualifies as a criminal act.When everyone connected or unconnected with Sholay advised Ramu against re-making Sholay he chuckled, “People don’t know what I’m making , so they’re just reacting nostalgically. Everyone from Jayaji and Dharamji to my other well-wishers have advised me to stay away from Sholay. Dharamji has apparently said he’d jump off that water tank if I messed up Sholay. Why should he jump off? He should push me off that tank if I mess up with Sholay. I’ve made massive preparations. Nothing in my Sholay would be the same as the earlier Sholay. For example there’s no Basanti in my Sholay. If you remove the tonga and ghagra-choli from Basanti she’s just another girl in the plot. A lot of characters in Gabbar’s gang will be fleshed out. Sambha is very different. Likewise the first cop who comes to meet Thakur is far more important in my film. My film has a strong police presence because it’s set in the city. Of course Gabbar has to be a terror. So Mr Bachchan will have elaborate get-up. This is such a larger-than-life story, everyone has to be many sizes larger than life. You’ll feel his viciousness. All these years Mr Bachchan has hidden his evil side so well. I want to bring it out on screen. How can anyone be so correct? No one can be so morally perfect. People say I’m not capable of re-making Sholay. I’ve one consolation for them. Since the critics have already exhausted all their expletives for Shiva, they’d have nothing left to say about Sholay. I think they’ll pool their money and hire a gangster to get rid of me. If Allah, Jesus Christ and Vaishno Devi come together to plead against my doing Sholay I’m still making it. Aage jo hoga dekha jayega.”
We all know what happened.
What makes him push through the slush of waste? “I think it’s mainly my arrogance, which was the main reason for my flops. I was always a kind of a wild horse, very impulsive and fast. Both my path-breaking films and my crazy out-of-control films also were a result of that. If I try to control my wildness, I am sure I will lose my uniqueness and so I just worked towards steering my thoughts instead of stopping them.”
My cutoff point for Ramu’s cinema was something called Climax .Words would fail to describe my disgust and outrage .Climax is a rumination on sexual retardation. It’s as though Varma found desert location and a po*n star willing to prance around in it, and decided to plonk a camera on both . If the Satya be told , Climax is as attractive as pre-molar energy .Climax will easily qualify as one of the worst examples of infantile filmmaking. In times to come Ram Gopal Varma will become a metaphor for tortuous film-viewing. Something like, “Don’t watch that film. ‘Varma’ pachtaoge.”
Please Ramu, no more.Aage Khatra hai.
