Art & Entertainment

Satyagraha

One of those films that you watch imp­assiv­ely and forget soon after. It just leaves you cold and aloof.

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Satyagraha
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Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgan, Kareena Kapoor, Manoj Bajpai, Arjun Rampal
Directed by Prakash Jha
Rating: **

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There are some films that take you by surprise with their sheer elegance or their auda­city, force you to go into raptures over the brillia­nce of craft and cont­ent. There are others that leave you tras­hing and mourning the lack of cinematic artis­try. Then there are those that elicit no passionate respo­nse. You watch them imp­assiv­ely and forget them soon after. Prak­ash Jha’s Satyagr­aha is one such film. It just leaves you cold and aloof.

The resemblance, or not, to the Anna Haz­are-led Jan Lokpal bill andolan is not the real issue. What matters is how compellingly it fictionalises and presents a contemporary mass movement on screen. It was a movement incessantly brought home to us by 24-hour news channels. That real-life drama and fire goes totally amiss on screen. For the most part, Satyagraha makes for tedious, wearying vie­wing. The reason is that Jha’s cinema is getting fixed in a mon­o­tonous blueprint. Be it a Rajneeti, Aarakshan or a Satyagraha, the outline is similar, the characters seem as tho­ugh they have just shi­fted from the frames of one film on to anot­her. What adds to the deja vu is that some actors have also been the same. Film after film. So an actor as consummate as Manoj Bajpai ends up playing the pol­itician villain here with an identical amount of hamming and flaring of nostrils as he did in the role of the avaricious coaching-class businessman in Aarakshan. Very little separates the two characters.

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Bachchan plays the on-screen equivalent of Anna Hazare. He who takes on the system when he loses his own young son to it. The world joins him through Twitter (the most screen time that the social networking site has got till now) and hashtag revolutions unspooling on fancy tablets. Coming to his aid is his dead son’s best, and much misunderstood, friend Ajay. The underlying theme is quite clear: how commitment and responsibility to nation, community and society has to triumph over disproportionate moneymaking and pro­fi­tee­ring. We know which side the film is on. Yet what irks is that despite such an ostensibly noble intent it sho­­uld end up plugging India Gate flour and Ult­ratek cement in the most tacky and ridiculously insensate manner.

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Kareena seems to sleepwalk through the role of the fiery journalist Yasmin and has a perpetual smile pasted on her face, whether she is covering a significant movement or romancing the hero. Arjun does precious little other than disappear in the background. He is nothing more than a glamorous prop. It’s Big B and Ajay, crossing swords with each other and eventually helping each other out, who bring the film marginally alive. But can’t entirely rescue it.

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