Bollywood And The Art Of Complex Emotions
Great
film-makers are also great intellectuals. But the challenge for them
to is to represent complexity in a manner which is simple to
understand, yet profound in its impact and meaning.
Bollywood,
over the years, has captured various real life themes and conflicts
on celluloid with panache They have ranged from love triangles to
social conflicts to relationship complexities. While good film-makers
over the years have handled love triangles and socially relevant
movies with great deft and subtlety, for the Hindi film connoisseur,
fascination lies in the drama that unfolds when two people are entangled in
a complex set of emotions, where there is a tussle between what the
heart says, the dictate of circumstances, and the unpredictability of
personal nature.
While
many films over the years have tried to build plots around emotional
complexities, only few writers, directors, lyricists, musicians,
actors have combined to produce a classic which leaves an indelible
impression on the viewer, and stands out as a paradigm of sorts even
years later.
One
such film is the Gulzar-directed 1975 release Aandhi, with the amazing Sanjeev Kumar
and Suchitra Sen in the lead roles. Aarti, played by Suchitra Sen,
harbours political ambitions, whereas her husband JK, played by
Sanjeev Kumar wants to remain a commoner and lead a normal family
life. Aarti gets caught between her love for her family, her father
who is upset with her decision to choose marriage over career and her
own ambition to lead a public life. As a viewer, you wonder how love
overruns ambition, leading to marriage, subsequently waging a battle
with the inner personality which just a while back had consciously
chosen to subjugate `larger desires` for a life of love and family
bonding. While you feel JK is right that he had set the context well
enough before marriage, and Aarti knew while she could have the joy
of marrying her love, the price would be a life away from the public
glare, yet you can't help but take notice of Aarti's side of the
story too.
If
this be a real life situation and you view it as an outsider, you
will probably empathise with both the husband and the wife. The wife
may seem apparently wrong at having gone back at her commitment so to
say, but life as a process often does not stop just at the altar of
love or statements of intent; it forcibly extricates the suppressed
desire for expression of social identity, creating a conflict
between personalities, thereby shunning love to a corner of life from
where it becomes a mute observer of people involved in a crisis of
pain, elusive pleasure and betrayal. The beauty of the climax of
Aandhi lies in the way love stages a fightback of sorts, and how two
people give away some part of their long held identities so that both
love and the individuals can co-exist harmoniously without
endangering either love as a common binding factor or their
identities/beliefs as an anchor for self actualisation.
Great
film-makers are also great intellectuals. But the challenge for them
to is to represent complexity in a manner which is simple to
understand, yet profound in its impact and meaning.
The
other film which has fascinated me with its handling of emotional
complexity is Yash Chopra's 1981 release Silsila, starring Amitabh,
Rekha, Jaya Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor and Sanjeev Kumar. Yash Chopra is the master of
love contexts and has made films which capture complexity of emotions
cutting across age groups. While Silsila is a mature love story where
adults grapple with intense head-heart conflicts, his 1997 Dil To
Pagal Hai, starring Shah Rukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit, Akshay Kumar and
Karisma Kapoor is a more racy film involving the emotional
pyrotechnics that go with such a plot.
Of
course, while love triangles have an inbuilt emotional complexity,
irrespective of the quality of the script and film as a whole, it is
films like Aandhi, with just two central characters involved in a
complex process of life, which fascinate with their inherent class,
timeless contextual relevance and artistic brilliance. Such films not
just entertain us, but also provide us with incredible food for
thought from time to time.
So
keep watching Hindi films and also this space for more insights and
commentaries on Bollywood.
