Confessions of an Epic Indian

Saw Sarkar this weekend.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m an inveterate Ram Gopal Varma fan.

I’ve been following the man’s career for a while now, and make it a habit to watch any film by him on the first weekend of its release.

Not only because I like his work so damn much - I do - but also because he makes films that are films, not song-and-dance variety entertainment extravaganzas that can’t decide what kind of story they’re telling.

His films rarely disappoint.

Even the ones in which he (unfortunately) bowed to the inevitable pressure from distributors and slipped in a few songs, like Gayab and Naach, are worth watching if only because he makes them so unpretentiously and without hewing to the same old cliches of Bollywood.

Okay, so he often falls back on his own brand of cliches - like the coterie of supporting actors who reappear so often in his films that you often feel like you’re watching a drama troupe performing its latest production: so many familiar faces, even their roles are similar.

But I still support his brand of film making over the typical Bollywood trash anyday.

As a producer, I think he’s brilliant.

He provides his directors with the scope to make films that would otherwise never get made - like Ek Hasina Thi - or get watered down into glitzy Sajid Nadiadwala-Jhamu Sughand over-productions where there’s more money spent on the sets and costumes and locations than on the talent making the film.

He also specializes in a particular style of gritty, intense, realistic film making that we’ve needed sorely.

Films like Ek Hasina Thi (yes, again, it’s one of my favourites, I admit), Bhoot, Company, D, even the lesser successes (qualitatively speaking, not box office-wise) like Vaastu Shastra, Gayab, and Naach, are all stamped with his unmistakable ‘chaap’.

It’s a ‘chaap’ of serious, intense story telling that doesn’t shy away from showing what happens next, doesn’t try to sugar coat reality, uses real locations and atmosphere rather than the studio-manufactured fakery of most Bollywood bunkus, and focusses on telling a story about real, believable, interesting people, rather than just providing a vehicle for stars to pose and pout for the entertainment of feeble minds.

I liked Sarkar.

I loved the way it was shot: tight, naturally lit close-ups with blown-out backgrounds, capturing every nuance of emotion on the person’s face, every flitter of thought, every tiny change of mood.

In a sense, it was the very opposite of the cinematographic style employed on The Godfather (Varma’s self-attested source of inspiration) where every frame was carefully composed, designed and lit like a Rembrandt painting.

Sarkar was lit by God himself, designed by God’s own foster-son, Varma, and doing justice to those extraordinarily intrusive close ups was God’s younger brother, Amitabh Bachchan in person.

And, in the second half of the film, God’s nephew, Abhishek Bachchan.

I don’t know about you, but I have had my eye on Abhishek since he began his career.

I’ve always felt that he’s the most interesting actor around, apart from Ajay Devgan, and only needed the right vehicle to launch his career.

In Sarkar, he’s so damn brilliant, without actually trying to be brilliant.

The whole film is brilliant, of course.

Brilliantly directed, scripted, produced, performed, shot, designed, recorded…you name it.

The only reason it falls short of expectations is because we’ve seen this all before.

The material itself is old wine in a new Ram Gopal Varma bottle.

The same shootouts, character actors, wily politicos, snide associates, slimy godmen, brutal assassins, ravishingly beautiful supporting actresses, the same chases, gunfights, face-offs, even the same kind of locations you’ve come to expect from Varma & Co.

Make no mistake about it, Sarkar is a fantastic film.

But the story is one that we’ve all known and read or seen a thousand times before.

It’s done brilliantly here.

In a very unique, original vision.

But it’s still SSDD.

(And to know what that means, you need to check out Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher…)

And you end up walking out of the theatre wishing that now, if only Ram Gopal Varma could find a story, a script, a plot that hasn’t been done to death by countless film makers, good, bad and ugly, before now.

That, now that he’s got his Godfather fixation out of his system, he’ll do something that’s *his* Godfather. A film so original, so dauntingly unique and innovative, that generations of film makers afterwards will hail it and refer to it the way today’s film makers refer to Coppola’s Godfather trilogy.

I know that Varma has it in him to achieve something that historic.

The only question is, will he find the script to make such a film?

And when he does, will he have the balls to do it?

I’m betting he will.

Until then, I’m more than happy to support him and his brand of non-Bollywood film making, one multiplex ticket at a time.

(Actually, four multiplex tickets at a time, because we’re all RGV fans in this family.)