Eklavya: Shakespeare in Rajastan
I am behind on my flist and replies but will get to it ASAP.
OK, I am tired and about to take a nap, so all I'll say for now is...
DAMN.
Eklavya.
Saif, stop spoiling me with such awesome movies.
It would take a hell of a year to knock this out of my Top 5 for 2007.
The Plot: In a crumbling old town in Rajastan (?) sits a Raja in name only, a puppet in the present day, trapped in a mental time warp. He is played by Boman Irani (in an amazing performance). When his wife (played by the awesome Sharmila Tagore) dies, their only son, Harsh (Saif Ali Khan) who escaped to London years ago comes back for the funeral, only to discover a family twisted: his uncle and cousin, played with envious malice by Jackie Shroff and Jimmy Shergill are circling around the creepy, unstable Raja, his twin sister Nandini (Rimi Sen, awesome in her small role) is mentally handicapped. There are murder attempts, screwed-up family dynamics, a debate about the definition of one's dharma, and potential for love and hope with the luminous Rajjo (Vidya Balan), a chauffeur's daughter who has loved Harsh for a long time. But everything is tied around the secrets swirling around Eklavya (Amitabh Bachchan, in his best role in years), the Raja's fanatically devoted bodyguard.
And you know what? I lied after all. I really want to talk about Eklavya. Which is just...Shakespeare goes Rajastan.
fivil, there isn't as much Saif/Vidya as there was in e.g. Parineeta, but it's integral to the story, and you know what? The movie was so awesome, I didn't mind.
Wow.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra.
Wow.
First off, this has to be one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. That is saying a lot, but the rich (but not garish) colors, the amazing art design (everythig is perfect to a little detail. Notice how consistently Harsh is the only one wearing all black), the way the flames light the fort: at once a beautiful palace and a harsh solipcistic prison, locking away any modernity, freshness outside. Notice the bright, spring colors of Rajjo's clothes: spring, hope, breath of fresh air. Everything is perfect, to the last thin string of peals on Raja's neck.
And the movie has unforgettable images: Amitabh, blindfolded, walking in the pond, hand outstretched. The scene of Amitabh coming in to kill Jimmy, when there are only pigeons on screen from the movie Jimmy watching. Harsh, merely outline in the dark skyline, clothes ghostly white, sitting in front of the pyre of his mother. Or my favorite, Harsh leading Nandini to the room where their mother died, because Nandini says if the 'secret' escaped, their father will kill her. This is when Harsh finds out that Raja killed their mother, but you don't see this scene. All you see, is Harsh closing the room's door because Nandini insists the door is still open, and you just see the imprints of his hands.
This is paralleled to the scene where he confesses to Rajjo that he is the one who ordered the hit on the Raja, as a result of which, as an accident, Raja's driver, Rajjo's father, was killed. Once again, you don't see the scene of Harsh's confession (and how much do I love that he tells it to her, even though he loves Rajjo and she is his only line to sanity in that cursed place. I actually really loved Harsh, but about that more below), because this story is about so much repression: you see flashes of outbreak of emotion (Harsh and Rajjo's scene before that, where he basically confesses that if it wasn't for her and Nandini, he would kill himself, Eklavya's grief over his 'failure' in his duty of saving the Raja: he overturns furniture, and he burns the scarf that the Rani dropped years ago and he's kept. I wonder if it's some sort of penance for himself, as a punishment for his failure, as this scarf is the one memento he's allowed himself, the climactic scene with Harsh and Eklavya) but the emotion is repressed, forced into rigid lines of tradition and duty (Amitabh would win my heart all over again, if he didn't have it already for the amazing scene when he finds out Rani is dead and he still moves to fulfill his duty, though his heart breaks).
So yes, you don't see the scene of Harsh's confession, you just see the aftermath: Rajjo quietly and conclusively leaving: her love of so many years, killed forever (or so Harsh thinks at that moment).
What a movie, period! I adored Parineeta from the previous team (and with largely the same cast) but this is so much (to use a poseur word) deeper, in so many words. And hey, much as I adored Saif's character in Parineeta, Shekhar was a boy. A boy who grows up, but still...Harsh is far from a boy. He is a grown-up. I think in a way, he is this story's version of Hamlet. My hat (if I wore one) would be off to Saif. Amitabh tears through that movie in a wonderful performance. It takes a strong, strong actor to be able to not disappear into wallpaper in his presence, but Saif more than keeps his own. I ended up loving Harsh, someone who is a good person trapped in some messed up circumstances.
By the scene of the final confrontation between him and Eklavya, I was literally shaking in my seat, and hyperventilating, clutching my pendant, I was so emotionally overwhelmed by the story (this moves at a great pace, very driving, probably because it doesn't even stop for songs. The lullaby Rajjo sings to the troubled Royal siblings is about the only song, and it fits into the story perfectly: a moment of peace before the further storm). I loved that he didn't back down from Eklavya. I loved that he admitted that he did order the hit on the Raja, no hesitation or excuses. That is the thing about Harsh: he is, to an extent, an outsider to the confused closed world (because he managed to escape to London for a time) and just like another outsider, the police inspector (played by Sanjay Dutt, in an awesome supporting role), he can see the falsity of the traditional structure, but he is trapped in it. Of course, I think at that point, part of his unflinching acceptance of the fact that Eklavya was going to fulfill his duty and kill him is probably because he is suicidal anyway. He told Rajjo earlier that if it wasn't for her and Nandini, he'd kill himself (and thus he shows himself an outsider yet again. Not only for his horrible Uncle and Nephew, but even for upright Eklavya, murder comes as a way of life, in that town. He, OTOH, cannot deal well with participating in murder). And then, he tells Rajjo the truth, and she leaves, as he assumes forever. When he sits in the evening, stroking the hair of his sleeping sister (who he knew would be cared for anyway, as she is no threat to anyone, even in that family of wolves), and then walking into his bedroom, I thought he was going to shoot himself anyway.
So there is a certain nihilistic bleakness in the way he faces Eklavya. But there is love and anger too. Because he loves Eklavya, his birth father, the way he never cared for the Raja, who he thought was his father (I find it interesting, that when he arrives for the funeral, he gets the letter from his mother, telling him the truth about his and Nandini's parentage, and he is so immediately accepting of it. His relationship with Raja must have been horrid, if you think about it, if he is even relieved to learn this. I mean, how distant was Raja, when child Harsh assumed that Eklavya was his father and had to be corrected? I bet he was relieved to learn the truth. You get the sense he loved his mother and he loves his sister, but the rest of the horrible family? No way). And he paid his Uncle and his Cousin to commit the hit because he found out that not only did the Raja murder his mother (how Hamletian), but that he was about to murder Eklavya. But I love how even then he doesn't expect Eklavya to move from his duty. And he tells him he'll make it easier for him, and pulls a gun out, and puts it to his forehead and is about to shoot himself, and then Eklavya throws his dagger...and it's to knock the gun out of Harsh's hand. (And the amazing thing is, none of this comes across as melodramatic in the least. The emotion has been genuinely bought). I will talk about the ending below.
But first I want to talk about the performances (other than Saif's becase I already rambled about his).
Amitabh is amazing as this noble person who has somehow repressed his humanity in the rigid adherence to artificial duty (his name takes a great symbolic importance in the story). I was so sure he was going to kill Harsh (the intercut between him throwing his deadly dagger and child Harsh running into his arms, would have been a perfect, if bleak way to end the movie). He has sacrificed so much, including his love for the Rani, in this outmoded service to an unworthy subject. And he just keeps repressing, his only outlet his letters to his son, who he knows will never read them (until his does, of course). I am thinking of the scene where Saif is sitting with his mother's funeral pyre and asks Amitabh to sit with him, almost begs him. And he confesses he wants to cry and cannot and he so much wants a hug, it's clear, but Amitabh, no matter how much he yearns to (and you can see he yearns) cannot do so. At the end, when he finally forsakes the artificial duty, and saves his son, and holds him...on one hand, it's a great break-through, but I wonder if it will make him think all the previous decades of his life have been a waste?
I am so impressed with Amitabh's range. During the intermission, we got a trailer for some awesome funny modern looking comedy, where he plays a chef who falls for a much younger woman, and I couldn't believe it was the same actor. (A sidenote. The same is true for Saif. A lot of Bolly actors are very good at one thing, and only one thing. I remain incredibly impressed that Saif can play Harsh, and Langda Tyagi, and Shekhar, and Karan from Hum Tum, all equally well. He can be loathsome, and funny, and charming, and everything. But the one thing I noticed is he always plays intelligent characters, doesn't he? I love that. OK, enough sidenotes).
Boman Irani is another actor with range. His Raja was both loathsome and pitiable. Half a man, really, always inferior to his bodyguard, obsessively in love with his wife (her pictures are everywhere), unable to cope with reality. Jackie Shroff and Jimmy Shergill were also excellent in both their amorality, and small-time greed.
I can't say enough awesome things about Sanjay Dutt. I really must watch more movies with him, as in every movie I've seen him in, I loved him. He was funny, but full of anger as a former untouchable, and just...I loved him. Interesting that he is the final contributor to 'justice' which is not legal in any sense of the word, but is 'just' and the best possible outcome.
Rimi Sen and Vidya Balan didn't have huge roles (no one did, except Amitabh and Saif) but they were exellent. I loved them both. Especially (but I am biased) Vidya. Here where the casting in the movie was so important. It was excellent throughout, but it was especially excellent in casting Vidya as Harsh's love. This movie was much more about the relationship between Harsh and Eklavya (how much do I love the scene where Harsh admits to Eklavya that he knows the truth? I have no words), than about Harsh and Rajjo, but I never doubted their love and connection with each other. Saif and Vidya's incredible chemistry was crucial to this, as their love was already in existence when the movie started (you got the sense they loved each other for years, before this, and you really bought it). I loved how she really was the one who brought peace and sanity to him. I love when he confesses to her that he cannot express his feelings to her (the same time he says that Nandini is the only sane person in the fort): the horrible place has warped even him somewhat into repression, though not s much as the rest of the 'insiders.' I love the scene in his room, before he tells her the truth about the hit, when she kisses his eyes. And when they remember when he kissed her when they were children, and she was crying not because she was going to get a beating from her father, but because 'I didn't get a chance to kiss him back.' Heeee. She is really Harsh's hope for the future (significantly, she is not from the Family, but outside the walls). I also adore the scene when Harsh comes to the hospital, where her mortally wounded father is, face set and grim, sort of falling apart (and later you realize it's because it's his fault, because the hit happened, and the man was collateral damage. Significantly, he doesn't care about the Raja: conscience-wise or to visit him) and tells him he wants to marry Rajjo, straight out, and asks for the man's blessings.
Anyway, the ending. I can see how it would have been a perfect Shakesperean ending, to have Harsh die by the hand of his father, Eklavya, who could ultimately not let go of the duty bred into him, could not let go. That would be Eklavya's tragedy. Killing his own son in the name of meaningless tradition.
But you know what? You know how they say an ending is 'crowd-pleasing?' I am the crowd they talk about. I don't care if this ending isn't as artistically apt (I admit it isn't). Because by that point, I was whimpering and shaking, and I loved Eklavya and I loved Harsh, and I don't care how unrealistic it is, I am still glad they both got to live, to start afresh, Harsh to win Rajjo's forgiveness and to marry her (that really makes sense. Not only was he, as she said in her voiceover, ready to pay for it with his life, death seems matter of fact in that place and she has loved him almost as long as she's breathed), and the peasants got their land back.
Yes, it's an artistic compromise, but here my attachment to the characters overwhelms any artistic integrity complaints I might have.
Btw, did I mention the gorgeous pidgeon motif throughout in the story? Or the scene where Harsh 'banishes' Eklavya temporarily (to put his house in order)? I better stop because I could go on forever.
Oh yeah, since it's my review, I cannot close without a fanigirl observation: SAIF. How come he just gets hotter with age? At the point of the movie where he is shirtless, I sort of temporarily lost my ability to follow the movie. And then the scenes of him in the black shirt, near the end, with the stubble and that intense voice, and the tortured eyes? I am dead.
GUHHHH.
This is a good year.
OK, I am tired and about to take a nap, so all I'll say for now is...
DAMN.
Eklavya.
Saif, stop spoiling me with such awesome movies.
It would take a hell of a year to knock this out of my Top 5 for 2007.
The Plot: In a crumbling old town in Rajastan (?) sits a Raja in name only, a puppet in the present day, trapped in a mental time warp. He is played by Boman Irani (in an amazing performance). When his wife (played by the awesome Sharmila Tagore) dies, their only son, Harsh (Saif Ali Khan) who escaped to London years ago comes back for the funeral, only to discover a family twisted: his uncle and cousin, played with envious malice by Jackie Shroff and Jimmy Shergill are circling around the creepy, unstable Raja, his twin sister Nandini (Rimi Sen, awesome in her small role) is mentally handicapped. There are murder attempts, screwed-up family dynamics, a debate about the definition of one's dharma, and potential for love and hope with the luminous Rajjo (Vidya Balan), a chauffeur's daughter who has loved Harsh for a long time. But everything is tied around the secrets swirling around Eklavya (Amitabh Bachchan, in his best role in years), the Raja's fanatically devoted bodyguard.
And you know what? I lied after all. I really want to talk about Eklavya. Which is just...Shakespeare goes Rajastan.
fivil, there isn't as much Saif/Vidya as there was in e.g. Parineeta, but it's integral to the story, and you know what? The movie was so awesome, I didn't mind.
Wow.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra.
Wow.
First off, this has to be one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. That is saying a lot, but the rich (but not garish) colors, the amazing art design (everythig is perfect to a little detail. Notice how consistently Harsh is the only one wearing all black), the way the flames light the fort: at once a beautiful palace and a harsh solipcistic prison, locking away any modernity, freshness outside. Notice the bright, spring colors of Rajjo's clothes: spring, hope, breath of fresh air. Everything is perfect, to the last thin string of peals on Raja's neck.
And the movie has unforgettable images: Amitabh, blindfolded, walking in the pond, hand outstretched. The scene of Amitabh coming in to kill Jimmy, when there are only pigeons on screen from the movie Jimmy watching. Harsh, merely outline in the dark skyline, clothes ghostly white, sitting in front of the pyre of his mother. Or my favorite, Harsh leading Nandini to the room where their mother died, because Nandini says if the 'secret' escaped, their father will kill her. This is when Harsh finds out that Raja killed their mother, but you don't see this scene. All you see, is Harsh closing the room's door because Nandini insists the door is still open, and you just see the imprints of his hands.
This is paralleled to the scene where he confesses to Rajjo that he is the one who ordered the hit on the Raja, as a result of which, as an accident, Raja's driver, Rajjo's father, was killed. Once again, you don't see the scene of Harsh's confession (and how much do I love that he tells it to her, even though he loves Rajjo and she is his only line to sanity in that cursed place. I actually really loved Harsh, but about that more below), because this story is about so much repression: you see flashes of outbreak of emotion (Harsh and Rajjo's scene before that, where he basically confesses that if it wasn't for her and Nandini, he would kill himself, Eklavya's grief over his 'failure' in his duty of saving the Raja: he overturns furniture, and he burns the scarf that the Rani dropped years ago and he's kept. I wonder if it's some sort of penance for himself, as a punishment for his failure, as this scarf is the one memento he's allowed himself, the climactic scene with Harsh and Eklavya) but the emotion is repressed, forced into rigid lines of tradition and duty (Amitabh would win my heart all over again, if he didn't have it already for the amazing scene when he finds out Rani is dead and he still moves to fulfill his duty, though his heart breaks).
So yes, you don't see the scene of Harsh's confession, you just see the aftermath: Rajjo quietly and conclusively leaving: her love of so many years, killed forever (or so Harsh thinks at that moment).
What a movie, period! I adored Parineeta from the previous team (and with largely the same cast) but this is so much (to use a poseur word) deeper, in so many words. And hey, much as I adored Saif's character in Parineeta, Shekhar was a boy. A boy who grows up, but still...Harsh is far from a boy. He is a grown-up. I think in a way, he is this story's version of Hamlet. My hat (if I wore one) would be off to Saif. Amitabh tears through that movie in a wonderful performance. It takes a strong, strong actor to be able to not disappear into wallpaper in his presence, but Saif more than keeps his own. I ended up loving Harsh, someone who is a good person trapped in some messed up circumstances.
By the scene of the final confrontation between him and Eklavya, I was literally shaking in my seat, and hyperventilating, clutching my pendant, I was so emotionally overwhelmed by the story (this moves at a great pace, very driving, probably because it doesn't even stop for songs. The lullaby Rajjo sings to the troubled Royal siblings is about the only song, and it fits into the story perfectly: a moment of peace before the further storm). I loved that he didn't back down from Eklavya. I loved that he admitted that he did order the hit on the Raja, no hesitation or excuses. That is the thing about Harsh: he is, to an extent, an outsider to the confused closed world (because he managed to escape to London for a time) and just like another outsider, the police inspector (played by Sanjay Dutt, in an awesome supporting role), he can see the falsity of the traditional structure, but he is trapped in it. Of course, I think at that point, part of his unflinching acceptance of the fact that Eklavya was going to fulfill his duty and kill him is probably because he is suicidal anyway. He told Rajjo earlier that if it wasn't for her and Nandini, he'd kill himself (and thus he shows himself an outsider yet again. Not only for his horrible Uncle and Nephew, but even for upright Eklavya, murder comes as a way of life, in that town. He, OTOH, cannot deal well with participating in murder). And then, he tells Rajjo the truth, and she leaves, as he assumes forever. When he sits in the evening, stroking the hair of his sleeping sister (who he knew would be cared for anyway, as she is no threat to anyone, even in that family of wolves), and then walking into his bedroom, I thought he was going to shoot himself anyway.
So there is a certain nihilistic bleakness in the way he faces Eklavya. But there is love and anger too. Because he loves Eklavya, his birth father, the way he never cared for the Raja, who he thought was his father (I find it interesting, that when he arrives for the funeral, he gets the letter from his mother, telling him the truth about his and Nandini's parentage, and he is so immediately accepting of it. His relationship with Raja must have been horrid, if you think about it, if he is even relieved to learn this. I mean, how distant was Raja, when child Harsh assumed that Eklavya was his father and had to be corrected? I bet he was relieved to learn the truth. You get the sense he loved his mother and he loves his sister, but the rest of the horrible family? No way). And he paid his Uncle and his Cousin to commit the hit because he found out that not only did the Raja murder his mother (how Hamletian), but that he was about to murder Eklavya. But I love how even then he doesn't expect Eklavya to move from his duty. And he tells him he'll make it easier for him, and pulls a gun out, and puts it to his forehead and is about to shoot himself, and then Eklavya throws his dagger...and it's to knock the gun out of Harsh's hand. (And the amazing thing is, none of this comes across as melodramatic in the least. The emotion has been genuinely bought). I will talk about the ending below.
But first I want to talk about the performances (other than Saif's becase I already rambled about his).
Amitabh is amazing as this noble person who has somehow repressed his humanity in the rigid adherence to artificial duty (his name takes a great symbolic importance in the story). I was so sure he was going to kill Harsh (the intercut between him throwing his deadly dagger and child Harsh running into his arms, would have been a perfect, if bleak way to end the movie). He has sacrificed so much, including his love for the Rani, in this outmoded service to an unworthy subject. And he just keeps repressing, his only outlet his letters to his son, who he knows will never read them (until his does, of course). I am thinking of the scene where Saif is sitting with his mother's funeral pyre and asks Amitabh to sit with him, almost begs him. And he confesses he wants to cry and cannot and he so much wants a hug, it's clear, but Amitabh, no matter how much he yearns to (and you can see he yearns) cannot do so. At the end, when he finally forsakes the artificial duty, and saves his son, and holds him...on one hand, it's a great break-through, but I wonder if it will make him think all the previous decades of his life have been a waste?
I am so impressed with Amitabh's range. During the intermission, we got a trailer for some awesome funny modern looking comedy, where he plays a chef who falls for a much younger woman, and I couldn't believe it was the same actor. (A sidenote. The same is true for Saif. A lot of Bolly actors are very good at one thing, and only one thing. I remain incredibly impressed that Saif can play Harsh, and Langda Tyagi, and Shekhar, and Karan from Hum Tum, all equally well. He can be loathsome, and funny, and charming, and everything. But the one thing I noticed is he always plays intelligent characters, doesn't he? I love that. OK, enough sidenotes).
Boman Irani is another actor with range. His Raja was both loathsome and pitiable. Half a man, really, always inferior to his bodyguard, obsessively in love with his wife (her pictures are everywhere), unable to cope with reality. Jackie Shroff and Jimmy Shergill were also excellent in both their amorality, and small-time greed.
I can't say enough awesome things about Sanjay Dutt. I really must watch more movies with him, as in every movie I've seen him in, I loved him. He was funny, but full of anger as a former untouchable, and just...I loved him. Interesting that he is the final contributor to 'justice' which is not legal in any sense of the word, but is 'just' and the best possible outcome.
Rimi Sen and Vidya Balan didn't have huge roles (no one did, except Amitabh and Saif) but they were exellent. I loved them both. Especially (but I am biased) Vidya. Here where the casting in the movie was so important. It was excellent throughout, but it was especially excellent in casting Vidya as Harsh's love. This movie was much more about the relationship between Harsh and Eklavya (how much do I love the scene where Harsh admits to Eklavya that he knows the truth? I have no words), than about Harsh and Rajjo, but I never doubted their love and connection with each other. Saif and Vidya's incredible chemistry was crucial to this, as their love was already in existence when the movie started (you got the sense they loved each other for years, before this, and you really bought it). I loved how she really was the one who brought peace and sanity to him. I love when he confesses to her that he cannot express his feelings to her (the same time he says that Nandini is the only sane person in the fort): the horrible place has warped even him somewhat into repression, though not s much as the rest of the 'insiders.' I love the scene in his room, before he tells her the truth about the hit, when she kisses his eyes. And when they remember when he kissed her when they were children, and she was crying not because she was going to get a beating from her father, but because 'I didn't get a chance to kiss him back.' Heeee. She is really Harsh's hope for the future (significantly, she is not from the Family, but outside the walls). I also adore the scene when Harsh comes to the hospital, where her mortally wounded father is, face set and grim, sort of falling apart (and later you realize it's because it's his fault, because the hit happened, and the man was collateral damage. Significantly, he doesn't care about the Raja: conscience-wise or to visit him) and tells him he wants to marry Rajjo, straight out, and asks for the man's blessings.
Anyway, the ending. I can see how it would have been a perfect Shakesperean ending, to have Harsh die by the hand of his father, Eklavya, who could ultimately not let go of the duty bred into him, could not let go. That would be Eklavya's tragedy. Killing his own son in the name of meaningless tradition.
But you know what? You know how they say an ending is 'crowd-pleasing?' I am the crowd they talk about. I don't care if this ending isn't as artistically apt (I admit it isn't). Because by that point, I was whimpering and shaking, and I loved Eklavya and I loved Harsh, and I don't care how unrealistic it is, I am still glad they both got to live, to start afresh, Harsh to win Rajjo's forgiveness and to marry her (that really makes sense. Not only was he, as she said in her voiceover, ready to pay for it with his life, death seems matter of fact in that place and she has loved him almost as long as she's breathed), and the peasants got their land back.
Yes, it's an artistic compromise, but here my attachment to the characters overwhelms any artistic integrity complaints I might have.
Btw, did I mention the gorgeous pidgeon motif throughout in the story? Or the scene where Harsh 'banishes' Eklavya temporarily (to put his house in order)? I better stop because I could go on forever.
Oh yeah, since it's my review, I cannot close without a fanigirl observation: SAIF. How come he just gets hotter with age? At the point of the movie where he is shirtless, I sort of temporarily lost my ability to follow the movie. And then the scenes of him in the black shirt, near the end, with the stubble and that intense voice, and the tortured eyes? I am dead.
GUHHHH.
This is a good year.