Sarkar Raj

It is a box office bomb. Seats are empty in multiplexes and single screen theaters alike. The few who take the trouble of watching it, come out long- faced at the end of it. The entire Bachhan Parivaar has lent its strength to this dense Ramu flick and it does not even get a decent opening.

I have a feeling that our cinema audiences, especially the single screen theatre types, are far more intelligent than most of our film fakers and film reviewers. They don’t watch films by reading phony reviews in equally phony English newspapers. Their instincts rule their choice.

We read reports of Aishwarya Rai  hugging  and kissing her hubby Abhishek Bachhan enthusiastically after having watched the preview of the film. If the Bachhan Parivaar is convinced about the greatness of Sarkar Raj, they obviously have a dismal appreciation of cinema art and craft, which is surprising since veterans like Big B and Jaya Bachhan head the family. Or is it the same old destructive megalomaniacal streak that is at work here?  

And that maverick filmmaker, the Spielberg of India, the God of film-fakers of   youngistan, master of remixes, the great RGV, is a sight to watch in TV interviews. He comes up with his cryptic replies, delivering secret    sutras of great film faking, with the assurance of a con artist. It has taken him years to copy the basics of western shot composition, a film’s tone, low-key lighting, and dramatic close-ups -- commonplace elements of cinematography. It is a huge achievement for him. ‘I have it right finally. I have succeeded in recreating a Coppola frame.’ That is what is his passion. Recreating and rehashing shots, background scores, lighting design, and scripts.

 

RGV says he was very clear about the plot of the film this time.   That sounds like a big deal, a kind of a rare confession like ‘I have finally succeeded in dealing with my incompetence’. So, what is this epiphanic plot of Sarkar Raj that led to RGV’s self-confessed redemption as a filmmaker? It is a plot lifted directly from Godfather Part 2 or 3 or whatever, so badly mutilated and remixed that it has lost its vitality.

The trusted lackeys and an old mentor of Subhash Nagre, a.k.a. Sarkar a.k.a. Big B in Black Kurta and Lungi, join hands with his enemies to destroy his family and power base.  They hatch a convoluted, and more than two hour-long juvenile conspiracy to eliminate Shankar (Junior B), the reigning prince of the Nagre family. And they succeed. Shankar Nagre is killed with very little effort by employing an unknown sharp shooter with gloved hands who charges five ‘khokhas’ (crores) for the job. The old patriarch, Sarkar, discovers it in a jiffy and gets all the conspirators picked up and killed by his ubiquitous Sten gun-wielding goons, all in the last eight minutes of the film. What is Aishwarya Rai Bachhan doing here? Nothing. She represents an overseas power company that needs the help of Sarkar to set up a power plant in rural Maharashtra. But that is peripheral to the plot. She is more of an implant to incubate ‘Sarkar 3’ to carry forward RGV’s parasitical association with the family.

I have been reading reviews extolling Junior B’s work in the film. What does he actually do? He plays a moron and delivers world famous dhansu dialogues like ‘Main sab sambhal loonga’, ‘Soch ki baat hai’, and ‘Is main Maharashtra ka faayada hai’.  He is always on a cell phone talking in monosyllables, sporting maha-serious expressions.





Then he is shot dead in an idiotically funny scene doing those maha-serious expressions.    He is in the midst of  a maha-serious conversation on the terrace of some building with Aishwarya who is telling him that her father and others were talking of getting him out of the way… and …the first bullet hits him. Aishwarya is maha-shocked and gets maha-hysterical. What follows is a maha-comic act. Aish and Jr. B struggle and it looks like Aish is trying to keep him in the line of the sharpshooter’s fire and camera’s vision so that the rest of the bullets get their mark conveniently, and the cameraman gets the shot right. For a while, one felt that Aish was part of the plot to eliminate Jr. B, a shocking twist to the tale, which, as it turned out, was not the case. It was a maha-serious scene with a maha-comic fallout.

This is Sarkar Raj, a fatuous creation of a bunch of demented and deranged idiots. And they rule the world of Indian cinema.

So, is there deliverance for humanity from this constant barrage of Hollywood, Bollywood, and Telivood stupidity? God Himself may show the way very soon. I wish and pray that the Mayan predictions come true and our universe evaporates into nothingness by the end of the year 2012. That will happily resolve all issues in an instant. So, we have about four and a half years to go before reaching that state of Nirvana, our absolute freedom. What do we do till then?

Go on a rampage and do all the shit you longed to do but could not since survival issues kept staring in your face. Burn effigies of those whom you hate, fuck anyone who tries to fuck with you, fight the establishment and do your best to undermine it, find out a cause and do some rebellious stuff. In short, create hell and be happy and learn to spit khullamkhulla at all and sundry and be ready to face the consequences thereof. Do whatever you are asked not to do.

Aur Reliance, ICICI, aur CITIBANK ki to aisi ki taisi. Hone do hungama, uthao mashaal, lagao aag, jala dalo, tod dalo, phod dalo, dhadhakane do duniya, machne do prlay, maaro, maro, train ki patariyan ukhado, karo, kuch karo. Chingari ko jwala banane do, hone do ek aur Lanka dehan. Doodh ban gaya hai zehar, tootane wala hai kehar. Aakash paataal hone wala hai. Kuch nahin bachega. Nikalo bhadas. Mubaraq ho. Mubaraq ho.


RKS