My misgivings about Raajneeti started with the cringeworthy “Roop tera mastana” scene right at the start. One fine evening a leftist politician sets aside the daal he is cooking to get sufficiently wet in the rain along with rival politician’s nubile daughter--also his committed follower. Hormones go on a sudden rampage, the unmentionable three-letter act is coyly performed and before you can say “phew” some strange guilt comes to haunt our man and he just walks away from the lady. And from politics. Forever. Seriously serious fellow who takes himself bit too seriously!
Jha uses this abiding wet scene cliché of Hindi cinema very deliberately to sneak in the Mahabharata connect in Raajneeti. Afterall what would Mahabharata be without Karna conception! Point number one why the film fails. The link up with the epic is terribly calculated and stupidly convenient. Instead of a nuanced, layered association as in Shyam Benegal’s Kalyug here it becomes desperate, showy, in-your-face. As though telling the audience: Ok, now count how many times we go the Mahabharata way.
Moreover the power tussle between two political families portrayed in Raajneeti has more Godfather (complete with Don and Michael) to it than pure politics. On top of that, Jha’s approach is sledgehammer rather than subtle. All sound and fury but dig deeper and you get nothing, absolutely nothing that you haven’t seen and known already; in reality and in Bambaiyya films as well. That politics = deceit, ambition, sex, machinations, convenient alliances, tainted funds, murders, sectarianism… Haven’t we been there and seen that in so many, and far finer films? Instead of revealing to us the canny political minds Jha’s focus is on the several shoot-outs, blood and gore. Which could well have happened in a corporate, mafia, or for that matter, any devious family set up. For a film which claims to be “political”, politics is technically just a backdrop.