AMITABH BACHCHAN AND THE LEGEND OF DEEWAAR

On the eve of iconic Indian superstar Amitabh Bachchan’s appearance at the opening night of the 2014 Indian Film Festival Melbourne (IFFM), SCREEN-SPACE takes a retrospective glance at the late Yash Chopra’s epic 1975 crime-drama, Deewaar, the film that made Bachchan a star and crafted the creative template for the Bollywood industry to this day.

Often spoken of as ‘India’s The Godfather’, Chopra’s seamless vision of the script by the legendary writing team of Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar (pictured, below right) proves utterly timeless, as relevant and captivating to both eastern and western audiences today as it was nearly 40 years ago. The legacy of the film courses through the very lifeblood of modern Indian cinema; in addition to the global status of leading men Shashi Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan (pictured above; from left, with co-star Nirupa Roy), the archetypal portrayal of strong matriarch figureheads in modern Indian cinema and the box-office goldmine that is the Bollywood crime melodrama can also be attributed to the long shadow cast by this intimate yet sweeping multi-generational epic.

Chopra establishes his film’s thematic elements of family, honour, social standing and revenge in a deftly handled extended prologue. Anand (Satyen Kappu) is a working class husband to Sumitra (Nirupa Roy) and father of two sons, Ravi and Vijay. As the leader of a strike against his corrupt boss, he is forced to sign an agreement against his will that ends the strikes and betrays his co-workers, none of which know the truth – the boss had threatened to kill Anand’s family had he refused the agreement. Shamed before his people, Anand leaves and his family is forced to flee to a life of destitution on the streets of Mumbai.

As the boys grow into manhood, their lives take divergent paths. Vijay (an impossibly charismatic Bachchan, in one of Indian film’s great performances; pictured, left) is swept up into the world of crime, amassing an enormous though immoral wealth and falling for bad-girl Anita (Parveen Babi); Ravi (a wonderfully animated Kapoor) ascends to the upper echelons of the police force with his integrity and reputation beyond reproach, his life enriched by the beautiful Veera (Neetu Singh). Inevitably, the brother’s personal and professional lives collide, the impact and conflict felt no more profoundly than in the heart of their ageing mother.

Yash Chopra’s control over the more melodramatic elements of his sweeping narratives became less important to the director over time, but here he displays a sublime technical prowess and storytelling fluency that ensures the heart and soul of his film is never compromised by the genre machinations. There are certainly some florid leaps made in the film’s chronology and logic (not uncommon at all in even the greatest of Bollywood films), but Chopra (pictured, right; in 2007) and his cast skim by them with never a backwards glance. Even after a weighty 176 minutes, the denouement is a richly emotional, deeply satisfying one.

Watching the film retrospectively, one is struck by how polished it looks and vibrantly plays out. Deewaar set several new standards for Indian cinema, not least of which being Babi’s ‘bad girl’ archetype, whose indulgent immorality shattered decades of meek female non-roles and pushed her into the international spotlight (pictured, left; the actress on the cover of TIME magazine, July 1976). The film emerges after 40 years as a work of global standing, while its impersonators within the Bollywood sector are too numerous to mention (including remakes in both Telugu and Tamil dialects). Despite originating from a film culture that at the time went largely unseen in western society, Deewaar exhibited the auteuristic flair that was redefining the film language of the day. Decades later, modern directors adopt its narrative beats and filmic energy; it exhibits a clear influence over such works as Brian De Palma’s Scarface and Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire.

Despite Chopra’s masterpiece sweeping seven categories at the 1976 Filmfare Indian Film Awards, Amitabh Bachchan did not score a Best Actor trophy for his landmark portrayal (it went to Sanjeev Kumar for the political drama, Aandhi); organisers have remedied this, with Bachchan now the most nominated actor of all time with 39 nods. It is a body of screen work and level of stardom that goes unmatched to this day and would not exist without his portrayal of Vijay Verma in Deewaar, unarguably a major work of cultural and artistic importance.

Amitabh Bachchan will attend the Opening Night ceremony and the Awards function this week at the IFFM. Further details are available at the event website here.