Review: 'Satyagraha'

Prakash Jha's 'Satyagraha' bears no thematic relation
to any of his earlier political dramas. It is certainly not
a sequel to his 'Raajneeti', as has been reported in
some sections of the media. And yes, it is most
certainly based on the movement that Anna Hazare
started against corruption. To say that Mr. Bachchan's
character Dwarka Anand in 'Satyagraha', lovingly
called Dadujee by one and all, and Dadujee's turbulent
relationship with the go-getting NRI-turned-Gandhian-
nationalist Maanav Raghvendra(Devgn) does not bear
a resemblance to the Anna Hazare-Arvind Kejriwal
equation, would be plain blindness.
What Jha and his very able astute and politically
informed co-writer and long-time collaborator Anjum
Rajabali have done, is to collect together the thematic
threads of Anna Hazare's mass anti-corruption
movement and weave it into a gripping, thoughtful,
hard-hitting and inspirational drama which contains
all the resonances of a newspaper headline, and wrap
it up in the semantics of cinema with as little creative
violence as possible even while addressing an
inherently violent issue.
From the time Jha made his intensely political drama
'Damul', there has been a constant strife between the
director's personal political ideology and its rendition
into cinematically interpreted language. Drama and
emotions have always been Jha's bete noire. In his
predominantly brutal domain of interpersonal politics,
the human drama is played out austerely, often at the
cost of squandering away the chance to draw the
characters' innerscape in an elaborately-charted
schem .
In Jha's 'Aarakshan', we had seen that trademark
emotional austerity in the way he portrayed Mr.
Bachchan's relationship with his screen-daughter
Deepika Padukone. In 'Satyagraha', one feels the
relationship between Mr. Bachchan's character and his
widowed daughter-in-law (Amrita Rao) could have
gone a little further. But then Mr. Bachchan is the kind
of extraordinary actor who can say so much about his
character's emotional environment in the most meagre
playing-time. Here, he has that one moment with
Amrita Rao when hearing her sob in the dead of the
night, he goes into her room to console her... And we
know the kind of deep bonding this powerful patriarch
shares with his cruelly widowed Bahu.
There is little time for emotions in Jha's world of
politics and national awakening. Dwarka Anand gets
just one sequence to show how much he misses his
son. It's the moment when he returns to the scene of
his son's death... The father's anguish here is
palpable, throbbing with unexpressed grief. And then
before we can wallow in the moment, Jha's editor
Santosh Mandal mercilessly tears us away from this
poignant scene of a father's loss.
In my favourite sequence, Mr. Bachchan shares a son-
like camaraderie with Devgn's character telling him
how he would miss Devgn when he leaves the next day.
It is a deeply contemplative moment where Devgn
reacts to Mr. Bachchan's supple emotions with rare
care and attention.
Hold on to these infrequent episodes of emotional
expression in this turbulent tale of awakening the
nation's conscience where there is no room for
individual's self-indulgence. In fact, Devgn's growing
fondness for the TV journalist Yasmin Ahmed(Kareena
Kapoor, lighting up every frame) and the sudden burst
of a acutely romantic song seems to belong to some
other time-zone.
You see, there's the business of the country's future to
be attended to. And who better at creating a cinema of
socio-political reform than Prakash Jha? The director
constantly wrenches away from his individuals'
personal feelings to focus on the broader picture.
Jha's narration gets busy with the business of
swooping down on huge crowds of anxious restless
people looking for a way out of the country's scam-
frozen destiny. It's a world built on the premise of
socio-political reform that Mahatma Gandhi and
Jayaprakash Narain dreamt of and Anna Hazare
attempted to bring to fruition.
There's an abundance of references to mobilisation of
youth power through the Internet and mobile.
'Satyagraha' probes and questions the validity and
motivation of any mass movement that is born out of
an inividual's genuine passion for reform. The pitfalls
of such a mass movement are brought into play with a
vingery mixture of broad drama and subtle humour.
It is no coincidence that the film's arch-villain is a
politiciam portrayed as a kind of evil clown. Manoj
Bajpayee plays the scummy 'scammy' brazely corrupt
politician with lipsmacking relish. His smirky villainous
neta act works as a perfect foil to Mr. Bachchan's
controlled never overdone messianic act.
Devgn, in the all important role of the ambitious
entrepreneur who becomes a catalyst for social
change, could have taken his character much further
down the road of self-articulation. On the other hand,
Arjun Rampal has limited scope as a goonda-turned-
self-appointed youth leader. He has great fun sinking
his teeth into the rustic accent and boorish body
language.
While the three main actors play off with each other
with supple grandeur, some other supporting actors
and characters are played at much too broad a pitch
to be effective. When a corrupt policeman takes off his
uniform to join the mass movement, you feel the script
is teetering dangerously towards over-idealism.
But the message must be, and is, loud and clear. It is
time for the nation to chase away damnation before
it's too late. Jha's film is a timely wakeup warning, a
massive clarion call for the conscience, brilliantly
manifested in Prasoon Joshi's title song which tells us
enough is enough, and listen... getting Gandhian on
the cancerous community of corrupt politicians is a
symptom of cowardice.
'Satygraha' conveys the uncontrollable anger and
energy of a nation on the brink. For telling it like it is
and for creating a compelling film out of the raw
material of present-day corruption, the film deserves a
standing ovation.