The year was 2018. My film was in post-production when Abhijit Majumdar, Head of the Direction Department at Whistling Woods International called me one evening and rather circumspectly asked, if I was open to taking a class on Amitabh Bachchan’s 1975 blockbuster Deewar, directed by Yash Chopra, written by Salim-Javed? I jumped in excitement much to Abhijit’s relief, he until then had thought I may be having a strong anti-mainstream position, well I only have anti-bad film position!
“Of course I will, Amitabh Bachchan is the reason I am in the movies!” And it all had started with Deewar thanks to my father. It was him who made me realize the richness of the film, its dialogue and Amitabh’s persona of “Angry Young Man” that was cemented with Deewar after the success of Zanjeer.
Today it has been seven years that I take a class on Deewar and every time I watch the film fully with the students. I have lost count of the number of times I have seen Deewar that was first released on January 24, 1975. In fact, I saw Deewar in the theatres when Film Heritage Foundation organized a Bachchan festival to mark his 80th birthday. Never to miss an opportunity to see the film.
Salim-Javed had felt the pulse of public discontentment with the Indira Gandhi regime and had articulated it in personifying it on screen in the form of the Angry Young Man. Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency exactly six months after the release of Deewar on June 25, 1975. Vijay Verma of Deewar was clearly anti-establishment and harnessed the anger of his times within, that spilled over in those eyes, simmering with intense anger. There are not many examples in mainstream cinema where the star is so inextricably tied to the larger social environment and despite the fact there is nothing common between the journey of Vijay Verma in the film and that of the youth outside there was a sub-liminal connection between their anger. The film not only represents the condition of the working class and social injustice but builds on the myth of Karn-Arjun as well thereby connecting it to the larger collective consciousness of the audience brought up on the epics Ramayan and Mahabharat; the classic "billa no 786" betraying Vijay when he needs it the most a la the curse of Parshuram on Karn, that his knowledge of the arms will ditch him when he would need it the most.
It was perhaps the first time that the hero was an aetheist and Salim javed could do it for it was an anti-hero character or that he lived in with his girl friend who gets pregnant prior to marriage, such adventures were hitherto not seen in Hindi films but then the character of Vijay Verma is genuinly anti-establishment.
Deewar made anti-hero cool. The tragic Vijay of Guru Dutt's Pyaasa(1957) who was hopeless in Nehru's India had become angry and rebellious in 1975. Deewar hints at crony capitalism, in the day and age when these terms were not very fashionable. How parallel economy enters the lives of the dispossessed in the absence of adequate socio-economic infrastructure. Deewar in my view is one of the most scathing criticisms of Capitalism and I often imagine if the same subject was given to Jean-Luc Godard, he would have made a masterpiece of a very different kind on the story of two brothers and privilege versus lack of it in a decaying social order of global Capitalism. I would someday like to reinterpret Deewar if the present-day obscene OTT driven world allows me to.
All the concepts and sociology apart it was the dialogue of the film that made the film a sensational, entertaining hit in the seventies. My father who was a hardly a film buff except for a Guru Dutt here and a Dilip Kumar there remembered the dialogue by heart and we would be delivering Deewar dialogue at home as a regular pastime.
“Rahim chacha, agle haftey ek aur coolies hafta dene se inkaar karega.” (Rahim uncle, next week another coolie will refuse to pay the goons).
“Peter, yeh chaabi ab mein tumhari jeb se nikalunga.” (Peter, I shall now take this key out from your pocket).
“Mein aaj bhi pheinkey hue pasie nahi uthata.” (Even today I do not pick money thrown at me).
“Dhanda toh apko karna nahi aata Agarwal saab, kyunki agar aap iss building ke mujhse do-char lakh jyada bhi mangtey toh mein de deta.” “Achcha, aisi kya khaas baat hai iss building mein?” “Aaj se bees saal pehla jab yeh building bann rahi thi toh meri maa ne yahan eitein uthayi thein, aur aaj mein ussey yeh building tohfe mein dunga”( Mr. Agarwal you do not know how to do business, for if you had asked me for more money also I would have paid. What is so special about this building? Twenty years ago when this building was under contruction my mother used to work here, today I will gift this building to her).
And my personal favorite: “Vijay, bahut bada saudagar bann gaya hai na tu, magar ek baat bolun apni maa ko khareedney ki koshish mat karna, abhi tu itna ameer nahi hua.”( Yijay, you have become a big businessman but do not try to buy off your mother for you have not become so rich)
And there are endless dialogues that can be quotable quotes even today. We used to watch a Hindi film every Saturday when we were small in Lucknow. Whenever there was no new release to watch we would go and see Deewar! We continued to watch Deewar every time it was released at what was then called, “at Reduced Rates.” Several time as children we saw Deewar at Krishna Cinema close to our Railway colony house in Alambagh. It had become a part of our daily life and today 50 years later it is still a very important film that is dear to us and deserves all the accolades it has got.
Sharad Raj is a Mumbai based independent filmmaker, Senior Faculty at Whistling Woods International and the Editor of Just Cinema.
Superbly put!!