The Angry Young Man and Yash Chopra

    Yash Chopra explaining scene to Amitabh Bachchan 

 Image Courtesy: The Indian Express 

There are many such director-actor pairs across the globe whose almost every film has been appreciated by the audience, be it Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro in the Hollywood or Satyajit Ray and Soumitra Chatterjee in Bengali cinema. Another such director-actor pair in Hindi cinema is Yash Chopra and Amitabh Bachchan. The duo has done 6 films together namely 'Deewar' (1975),  'Kabhi Kabhie' (1976), 'Trishul' (1978), 'Kaala Patthar' (1979), 'Silsila' (1981) and 'Veer-Zara' (2004). All of them are classics today. But in this bIog I will tell you about my three favourite films of this duo which eventually helped both the members of this duo vice-versa. It helped Amitabh Bachchan to cement his position as the 'Angry Young Man' and Yash Chopra as a commercially successful filmmaker of mainstream Hindi cinema.

 Deewar (1975) – This film is considered one of the greatest Indian films ever made. 'Deewar'  was one of the films that prevented the recurrence of the romantic drama genre in mainstream Indian cinema. Family and human emotions play an important role in Indian films and these two features along with the main story of a common man's rise to underworld and then his tussle with his police officer younger sibling (which is basically inspired from Dilip Kumar's 'Gunga Jumna'-1961) make this movie a classic. A mother's (played beautifully by Nirupa Roy as Sumitra Devi) pull and conflict in love towards her son, the son's fight against poverty and deprivation by choosing the path of injustice, an honest cop-brother's (played with grace by Shashi Kapoor as Ravi Verma) earnest attempt to bring his wayward elder brother back to the mainstream of the society are clearly reflected in the mirror of the society as its bitter truth even for today's times as pure and clear drops of water. And Amitabh Bachchan has made the character of Vijay Verma a true living being on screen and also on every movie lover's heart. Whenever he has embraced the celluloid in this Yash Chopra directorial he has made that scene alive and fiery (i.e. that iconic temple confrontation sequence still gives me goosebumps and brings tears to my eyes). Every dialogue, every gesture of him still stand today as a style statement. So in the same year of 'Sholay' (1975) but few months before that 'Deewar' made people realize the actual potential of the would-be 'Star of the Millennium'.

Trishul (1978) - Revenge-Drama has been well-used genre in Hindi cinema for a very long period of time. But 'Trishul' is a film where this genre is tweaked quite differently and innovatively, where the hero uses more intelligence than his physical strength to carry out his revenge against his step father by destroying his business empire for abandoning him and his mother. This is where 'Trishul' differs from other revenge dramas of its time. This movie has one of the best performances of Amitabh Bachchan as Vijay Kumar and Sanjeev Kumar as Raj Kumar Gupta of their respective careers. I would like to mention two scenes : one is the scene where the two shake hands with each other and the character of Sanjeev Kumar says that "Tumse haath milake jab maine apna haath dekha toh ek second ke liye mujhe laga ki mera apna hi khoon hai" (can anything be more ironic ?) and another is the scene where the two get into an heated argument with each other in the conference room. In both the scenes these two acting giants have outdone themselves and gifted us two very precious performances. The subplots of this movie are very well connected with the climax of the it, which is not usually seen in movies then. Also, Yash Chopra is involved in arranging and telling the story about illegitimacy, tumultuous family relationships and many other human emotions like greed, infatuation etc. with very well craftsmanship. If you ask me, I would say that my favourite Yash Chopra and Amitabh Bachchan collaboration is 'Trishul', because this movie has absolute no intention of utilizing Bachchan's rising fame at that time of his 'Angry Young Man' image and it is probably the most unique addition to Bachchan and Chopra's respective filmographies and also to the revenge action dramas made at that time.

Kaala Patthar (1979) - I like this film for two reasons. Firstly, the way this film openly portrays the problems of the Indian working class and secondly, at a time when Hindi cinema was not at that per in terms of technical level, still the credibility and the conviction with which Yash Chopra had made the scenes of sea and coal mine disaster are incredible even for today's high standards of technicality, for which I am very much interested to know about the making of this film. The message given in this film is that to kill the fear within oneself and achieve a higher position in one's own eyes through self-identification (that dialogue from Bachchan: "Pain is my destiny and I can't avoid it"), is undoubtedly an idea ahead of that time. The film's opening shot deserves a lot of credit for showing the loneliness and defeatism that the character of Amitabh Bachchan (Vijay Pal Singh) has become through his daily mundane life of being lonely and exploited. This kind of visual storytelling was barely seen in films of that time. The tone of the film was matched by the performances of Amitabh Bachchan, Shatrughan Sinha and Shashi Kapoor. And special mention to Amitabh Bachchan and Shatrughan Sinha's iconic face-offs. The action sequences and stunts performed by Bachchan and Sinha were also quite creative in terms of that time. Though 'Kaala Patthar' is the least commercially successful and critically appreciated venture among the three but it will always hold a special position in my heart because of the splendid and mesmerizing experience of watching it for the first time.

   Finally, this blog would be incomplete without mentioning the writers duo's name behind these three films along with many other Amitabh Bachchan movies and above all many successful Hindi movies and hands down they are Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, the most prolific and prosperous writer duo of Hindi cinema, together known as Salim-Javed. If their writing was not there, then maybe not only these three films, but such a beautiful application of Hindi cinema with other genres beyond the romantic drama would not have been seen since the 70's. It would be interesting to write a separate blog about 'Movies Written by Salim-Javed' or Bachchan's forays with other directors such as Ramesh Sippy and Prakash Mehra in the movies written by this electrifying duo and I would definitely like to do that one day.

     Yash Chopra in 'Paa' (2009) movie premiere 

     The STALWARTS Together 

Image Courtesy: Amitabh Bachchan-The Legend-Bhavana Somaaya and National Film Archive of India