AGNEEPATH: MOVIE REVIEW

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Cast:Hrithik Roshan, Sanjay Dutt, Rishi Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, OmPuri, Sachin Khedekar
Director:Karan MalhotraRuntime:178 min. Verdict:Awesome. And Mr. Rishi Kapoor simply knocks it out of the park. Genre:Drama, Action, Crime
                Unlike Mr. Mukul Anand’s film, whatmoves us here is its utter purity that distills through its frames into itscharacters, into its narrative, right down to its themes. I wouldn’t want to beso sure of that order though, and it could easily be the other way around. Behind his suits, his shoes,his sunglasses, Vijay Dinanath Chavan harbored a desire to not merely beaccepted but worshipped. A 36-yeard old Vijay Chavan outgrew hischildhood just as much as Mr. Bachchan outgrew the character, and theaccomplishment was the manner in which Mr. Mukul S. Anand built a film around this individual phenomenon wherecharacters found themselves quickly pushed to the peripheries once it entered(a lot of Agneepath has to do withentering and leaving) those frames. We covet what we see, said a real wise manonce, and amidst the banality of the rural the glamour of the urban (KanchaCheena), and by that definition the western, was probably what installed itselfwithin Vijay Chavan, whose amalgamation is mirrored in the way Jean Michel Jarre was at clash with thattraditional melodramatic score, and which also mirrors in Mr. Anand’s aestheticand oeuvre (he remade Cape Fearbefore Martin Scorsese).                 Mr. Malhotra, whose filmprobably appreciates the undercurrents and understands the limitations of Mr.Anand’s film better than anybody else, completely strips away all these layersof deception, these facades behind which its characters hid, and pulls thenarrative back to its primal self in an almost declarative manner. The paranoiaof the urbanization of the rural owing to foreign investment and the ensuing culturaldilution is not the talking point anymore, and it should not be now that wehave a whole range of foreign brands endorsing the film, and what we have here isa rather straightforward tale dynastical/feudal oppression and the ensuingrevenge. Mr. Malhotra, as the trailer announces, is concerned only withrevenge, and that ways this film is as much a remake of the older Agneepath as it is of M/s Abbas-Mustan’sSoldier. Only that it is asignificantly better realized film, with a far greater narrative clarity (theplot might still trouble you but it makes for perfect dramatic sense, in theprocess alleviating a lot of the problems I had with the original) and somereally unsettling compositions, invoking just as much extra-textual stuff as Mr.Anand’s film, and which leads me to suggest ‘correction’ instead of ‘remake’. Hereis that age-old story of an ordinary man thrust in an extraordinary situation,a little boy robbed of his forming years, and there’s probably nobody who canconvey that combination of sincerity and brainwashed resolve (Fiza, Mission Kashmir) better than Mr. Roshan. He is not the guy who walksinto a room and owns everybody around, and Mr. Malhotra rightly stackslarger-than-life figures against him.The film’s narrative, then, assumes its title and the parent poem in afigurative sense, into its very core, unlike Mr. Anand’s where a mostly kitschy(but stylish) literal justification to it is merely appended at the end.                  It is a rather strange Mumbai thatAgneepath creates, with little to notraces of modernization (despite the guns and telephones), with back alleys andstone roads, and what we get is the feel of a medieval world controlled bywarlords and where the regime is merely another faction living within its owncocoon. There’s not merely a distinct lack of sophistication but civilizationaltogether, the only places accumulating any sense of decency being the chawl,and wherever it is his mother and sister live. Rauf Lala (Mr. Kapoor), whocontrols the city, is probably the closest approximation of Mr. DannyDenzongpa’s materialistic Kancha Cheena, and yet he might be miles away in thathe’s out in plain-view. He sells little girls and he is despicable, and there’sa great conviction in there, and although I wouldn’t describe here for you howincredible Mr. Kapoor is, I would leave you with the tease that the resolutionof his angle, which quite brilliantly stages the film’s central idea, isintensely awesome. And here I intend to imply the awesomeness of the fist-pumpingkind. Mandwa, that little isle cut away from themotherland, is something of a synecdoche for all the terrorist hotbeds, closeenough to cause havoc but far enough to resist quarantine. You almost wonderwhat the Indian Coast Guard (already born by the film’s timeline) is doing, andI wonder if that was intentional. The strangest weirdest bit though is thearchetypical Kancha Cheena (Mr. Dutt), a completely homegrown entity, and who,over and above Vijay Chauhan (Mr. Roshan), returnsto his Mandwa. We see the massive figure walking down to the village in a longshot, and just as memories of High PlainsDrifter start condensing, Mr. Malhotra provides for a heavily disconcertingover the shoulder shot of the village. The raw scalp in the foreground, andsomewhere deep within the subconscious a memory started itching, which turnedinto a full-blown realization the moment Kancha walks into the village and picksup the salt in his fist (a close-up here). Maybe it is because Jan 30^thhappened to be just a couple of days before, or probably because MasterDinanath (Mr. Chetan Pandit) invokes Mahatma Gandhi for only the 11,347^thtime in Hindi cinema history only a little while before Kancha’s homecoming. We’vehad our fair share of Gita-quoting villains (Aks comes to mind), some of them just for the heck of it, but tobecome the very embodiment of anti-Gandhi, what with Mr. Dutt’s bulkyphysicality almost spelling out violence. And this was the guy who made Gandhitrend recently. He walks around with a stick and opens the doors for creatingcocaine (salt), and I was completely blown away. We don’t get images as macabreas this every now and then.  

And if the Mumbai in Agneepath is medieval, Mandwa is straight out of the dark ages, asort of externalization of Kancha’s barren ugliness, quite literally theunderworld. And again, despite the machine guns, or maybe because of it,there’s the memory of Col. Kurtz floating around, and so yeah, Vijay Chauhan’swalk down Mandwa’s memory lane becomes a tour through the heart of darkness.                 The thing is, Vijay Chauhan isour everyman, innocent more than anything else, pitted against all theseheavyweights, all of whom are quite central to the frame. And although my kindof tonal austerity might even suggest downplaying his introduction, itacknowledges the absolute dramatic/thematic idiocy of the mother’s arc in Mr.Anand’s film and justly brands her as the misguided one. And still, despiteVijay knocking off all the bad guys, and their sons, the film doesn’t justifyvigilantism of any kind. Any other movie (M/s Abbas-Mustan’s Soldier) and the dude could’ve been anundercover cop, but because he’s not, and because he still has to will himselfthrough all this ugliness is an accumulation of the film’s moral weight (I’mreminded of WilliamCostigan, and even Joseph Pistone without the accompanying righteousness). The physicality here in his film is palpable, and whoever it wasthat did the sound design (Vijay being banged against the wall had me wincingand hiding for cover) deserves my hat tip.   
**SPOILERSABOUND, KINDLY SKIP FOR LATER. YOU MIGHT CONSIDER THE NOTE THOUGH**                A small bother here. Killing offKaali (Ms. Chopra) is an ill-advised move. I understand where the film iscoming from, but it’s a decision that’s a bit of a cop-out. The moment we layour eyes on the adult Vijay Chavan, we know he’s on a death wish. And themoment he declares his name, and such is the clarity of narration here, weimmediately realize all hell is going to break loose. Still Vijay acknowledgesher love and reveals his own for her, and they decide to marry despite knowinghis eventual fate, and the film here achieves a moment of pure grace. Whatwould simply have been a throwaway character, as is the case with the original,here turns into one of the film’s thematic manifestations (innocence et al.),and by conveniently dumping her off, the film both dissolves and resolves thebeauty of it all. I think she should’ve lived on, you know, and a parting shotof her, or the little sister, in the vein of Billie Frechettemight have been dramatically devastating. But then, what the heck, you want to drawan estimate of Mr. Malhotra’s filmmaking chops all you need is the openingburst where Kancha distributes money. Agneepathis the sort of blockbuster we’ve absolutely forgotten to make, like Ghatak, and if you were to ask me, Mr.Johar can safely say he’s done his father proud. So yeah, there you go.
Note: No, Mr. Mukul S.Anand’s film is not a classic; it is in fact not even close to being a classic.It is a most interesting film, a film that has influenced me a great deal, andI would be the first to admit that to hail it as something close to holy writis taking our reverence for a decade that churned mostly nonsense a bit toofar. Going by that rule, most of our films in a decade’s time ought to beeligible for the “classic” tag. I mean, we’re so forgiving for the past, we mightwant to extend that generosity to the present as well.