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Magazine
MOVING IMAGES
The Comeback Kid
ANUJ KUMAR
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With “Sarkar Raaj”, Ram Gopal Varma seems back in form.
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If I deliver what they want, they won’t remember what I did in the past.
On the right track: A still from “Sarkar Raj”.
Love him, hate him but you can’t ignore Ram Gopal Varma. After delivering the biggest flop of recent times with “Aag”, the maverick director returned this past week with “Sarkar Raaj”. Tell him he seems to be back in for
m and Ramu, as he is affectionately called, doesn’t like ‘seems’ as the operative word.
A sequel to “Sarkar”, “Sarkar Raj” deals with development politics, a theme hardly tackled in Bollywood. There are distinct similarities with the Enron issue, with Aishwarya Rai playing the chief of a multinational power company. “The similarities are incidental. I have not heard of Enron,” Ramu feigns ignorance. “I only read crime and entertainment news in newspapers, so I have no idea what politicians are up to.”
A little persistence and he opens up. “See, we know there is a culture of power brokers and agents in our country; some work for underworld, some for multinationals. The film uses the situation as a backdrop. My films are more about characters; the ambience is incidental.”
Similarities
And what about the character of Sanjay Somji whose similarity with Raj Thackerey has been commented on? “Yes, there is slight resemblance but it is as much as was between “Sarkar” and Bal Thackeray. I have maintained if a person like Bala Saheb can exist in our society so can “Sarkar”. It doesn’t mean that the character propagates a political ideology. Similarly Raj is just a reference point. It has nothing to do with his party or ideology.”
The film appears a family package for the Bachchans but Ramu doesn’t feel the family is overshadowing the film as the two are interlinked. “As it is a sequel, Amitabh and Abhishek had to be there. I opted for Aishwarya because she fits the role.” Quashing all rumours of a romantic link between Abhishek and Aishwarya in the film, Ramu says Aishwarya plays the villain in the film. “People forget that Shankar (Abhishek’s character) got married in the first part.” He insists that calling Aishwarya plastic as an actress is ‘farthest from the truth’. “I used to think on similar lines but she surprised me with the kind of effort she has put in to get into the character of Anita Rajan. I feel most filmmakers have exploited only her glamorous side. I found an intelligent actress in her.”
Ramu has been held responsible for playing with the most popular face of Hindi cinema when he made Amitabh dig his nose in “Aag” and before in “Nishabdh”. Both failed miserably and the former even put a blot on his image, which has more or less become a cult. “I agree I faltered. Actors like Amitabh don’t fail. It’s the director who fails to present him in the right fashion.”
But, in the past, he has carried off even absolute hollow roles effortlessly. “True, but in this case the expectations were so high, and the film could not match them. But I don’t agree with the image thing. I believe every film is a brand in itself. People don’t come to watch films just because of names. Different people have different reasons to watch a film. If I deliver what they want, they won’t remember what I did in the past. But nobody exactly knows what they want. ”
Refuting charges
He is right, for T-Series, which was at loggerheads with Varma after “Aag”, suddenly made up with him before the release of “Sarkar Raaj” because the trade buzz was favourable. Was it difficult to convince Amitabh for the sequel? “Either he trusts me or has lost his mind,” he quips.
Another charge against him is that he has become complacent. He introduced talent like A.R. Rahman, Anurag Kashyap, Jaideep Sahni and Manoj Bajpai and then let them go away. “I didn’t create any talent. I just used them at a point of time. I never had a team and will never have,” at times his quotes have as much precision as his editing patterns.
Recently Anurag said Ramu has got into a time warp and has stopped watching current trends. “Somebody who has made ‘No Smoking’ should not make such comments. I am in sync. I watched ‘Jab We Met’ and liked it.” So let’s take ‘seems’ out of equation, will he stay on course? “Just when you thought, I have changed for better; I am back to my old ways.” Let him!
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