All about 'Zinda' &
Sanjay Gupta, the master film-fakerOne hopes Zinda is the last of his graduation films
Now that Sanjay Gupta has mastered the art and craft of making a world class copy of a cult film, it is time he graduates from the ‘Tarantino School of Picturesquely Gory Film Making’ and establishes his unique Indian identity. He will have to dump his DVD player and the library of DVDs into the big drain outside his office though. Can he take that risk? What will he be without them?
If Zinda is a copy of the original Korean film ‘Old Boy’ made by Chan-wook Park, it is more or less a technically perfect copy. It has world class looks and feel. It matches Black, a designer film, in production design and visual treatment. There is very little that is out of place here. The film excels in every technical area of film making, from editing to background score. Performances could have been better though. You can copy expressions and scream your dialogues, but you cannot copy the attitudes and the nuances of a well defined and finely etched out psychotic character. Moreover, no smart ass film-faker can fake and replicate the beauty of the inspired screenplay and dialogues of an original classic.
If Sanjay Gupta does not find Indian stories to get inspired and create stylized cinematic gore and bloody mayhem, he should read Haldi Ghati of Shyamnarayan Pandey and the poet's description of the famous battle between Maharana Pratap and the Mughal army. He can also find contemporary references in the deeds of the 'D' or 'R' company and its torture methods to create a whole new genre of breathtakingly bloody, and sensuously violent films.
If he wants to take this to still greater sensual and spiritual heights, Aghori and Kapalik practices will provide him with tonnes of reference material. What about Sanjay Dutt humping a dead Lara Dutta on a funeral pyre, holding her dismembered head in his hands and sucking her lifeless lips, reaching a divine orgasm in the process, and finally bringing a headless Dutta back to life, as a sensuous, long legged, and headless ghost, always in need of a hard fuck to keep going.If you think I am joking, you are wrong folks. Sanjay Gupta does not have to rely on Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and American films of violent and psychotic genres for inspiration. There is enough in our traditions that is more bizarre and bloody and better than what these outsiders have to offer. We just need to have an intercourse with our native imagination and see how crimson creativity gushes forth and transforms itself into original Indian screenplays for carnage films that will make Tarantino rush to Indian shores for inspiration and creative revitalization.
If our Indian filmmakers and artistes had not suffered from an acute sense of inferiority complex, they would have earned by now great respect and recognition, worth billions of dollars, from the global community of filmmakers and film executives. Why do they have to borrow and steal film ideas, themes, scenes, shot divisions, characterizations, background scores, and entire films from the Americans and the Koreans and the rest of the globe? There is so much more that has happened and is still happening in India that should fire the imagination of our artistes and help them create stuff that is original and truly world class. Where has their self-respect gone?
And not only cinema, all our arts and literature suffer from this endemic and severe crisis of identity, from fashion to films, plays to paintings, and architecture and everything else. Surely we should learn alien crafts, but we must use this expertise to create our own things instead of imitating others. We must act confidently and wisely, and get out of the boring, uncreative rut of copying and stealing. We must start exploring our environs for our own unique ideas and inspirations.
The other day, at a party, one heard an intelligent, and well informed Irish girl wondering about why the Indians looked up to the British and the Americans even now in spite of their unparalleled legacy of spiritual, intellectual, scientific, and artistic achievements?It is not a question but a hard resounding slap that should open our eyes. The branding of our cinema, as ‘Bollywood Films’ is not a matter of honour as some of the loudmouths and the marketing wizards of the industry would make us believe. It is a debasement and defilement of our inheritance, an insult to our native genius, and a denial and derecognition of our true potential. We have become the butt of a joke. It is like the ‘Made in USA’ labels Ullhasnagar Sindhi Association puts on its fake products. When you trade honour for money, nobody respects you. You get devalued. It is always a bad bargain in the final reckoning.
A film like Zinda could have been a matter of pride for Indian cinema in any other circumstance. It is not, since as we know, and the whole world knows, this film is a brazen theft and copy of a Korean masterpiece. Only assholes like Sanjay Gupta, Mahesh Bhatt, and a whole lot of other film-fakers can pat their backs for such lowly artistic achievements. Zinda ek jwalant misaal hai mari, sadi, aur thahari hui rachnatmakta ki. Yeh baat alag hai ki chutbhaiye chor bhi seenazori karate hain aajkal aur kahate hain, ' garv se kaho hum chor hain, uthaigeer hain: aur to aur hum hi to kaabil, aur kaamyaab hain'.
RKS
Note: If you wish to read the transcript of 'The Old Boy' for comparison, please visit the following link : -
