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Director :Prakash
Jha
Music :Adesh Shriwastav
Starring : Ajay Devgan, Nana Patekar, Mohan
Agashe, Bipasha Basu, Mukesh Tiwari and
Yashpal Sharma
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| Apaharan
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 Nobility
combined with mobility. Interesting gripping combination.
"Apaharan", Prakash Jha's harsh and brutal
political commentary on the state of anarchy a.k.a Bihar,
makes for riveting viewing.You know it's true.
But you cannot, but shudder at the sheer disintegration
of moral values in Jha's brooding and damned world of
moral anarchy where characters discuss kidnap victims
as "damaged goods" and "intact piece".I
remember, my favourite Jha film "Mrityudand"
opened with an image of a mother and a daughter being
chased down and brutally slayed by a mob of frenzied
villagers. To think of the harsh reality that sequence
reflected makes me shudder even today.
Witch-hunting in one
form or another continues to haunt Jha's cinema.In comparison
with Jha's earlier cinema, the violence in "Apaharan"
is far more filmy, more harnessed though no less honest.
The hinterland is harsh - but the director's vision
has softened considerably.
More than a film explaining
the intricacies of the kidnapping industry in Bihar,
the film whisks you away into a familiar family realm
of father-son confrontations patented by those gripping
parent-son Bachchan (Actor Amitabh Bachchan) dramas
like Ramesh Sippy's "Shakti", Yash Chopra's
"Deewaar" and Mukul Anand's "Agneepath".Unemployed,
wayward and finally criminalised, Devgan's multi-faceted
character Ajay and his troubled relationship with his
father (Mohan Agashe) harks back to the great Bachchan
era but with a difference.
Jha is always reluctant
to let the emotions spill out. Barring two sequences
(one towards the first-quarter and the other at the
end) Devgan and Agashe, playing the emotionally and
morally disconnected son and father, seldom come out
in the open.You often wish we would be given a better
view of the protagonist's innerscape of how Devgan drifts
away from his father's rigid ideology to join hands
with the freewheeling communally clenched morality of
Patekar's character and finally redeems himself by becoming
a police informer.
The leaps in Devgan's astonishing graph are achieved
without punctuations. On this occasion, Jha is determined
not to lose his audience for even a minute. Though he
sacrifices the introspective interludes, he succeeds
in making this his most gripping tale to date.The principal
and peripheral characters (Yashpal Sharma, Murli at
al, all excellently in-sync) often look like Ram Gopal
Varma's gallery of goons transposed to the Bihari bad-land.
In fact the Patekar-Devgan
"guru-shishiya" (teacher-pupil) relationship
of criminal camaraderie appears a carryover of Devgan-Vivek
Oberoi conflict in Varma's "Company".Yes,
this time Jha is as interested in the politics of the
country as the politics of commercial cinema. He blends
both in a compelling mix of thrills and politics. Often
the rough edges and that trademark savagery, which characterises
Jha's cinema make you wince (for example that sequence
where goon Yashpal Sharma makes Devgan lick his spit
- ugh!).
Still, there's a remarkable
balance of the brutal and the brittle qualities of life,
achieved through mildly touching and savagely humorous
demonstrations of human violence.Some of the sequences
delineating the kidnapping are fluently funny. If you
look hard at Devgan's clumsy first-attempt at kidnapping
you cannot but chuckle at its amateurishness. By the
time the character arrives at the elaborated climax,
you want to get into this muddled Bihari youth's dangerously
awry head.
But the director draws
a curtain on the cinematic life that he nurtures with
deliberate dispassion, like a stern father looking after
a son who knows the child must go out in the world to
seek his fortune as soon as possible."Apaharan"
is a film in a hurry about society gone over the brink
into the abyss of chaos.
Welcome to the dark,
dangerous and dreadful world of kidnapping. Jha knows
the frightening fundas well. Fortunately, for his film
he doesn't flaunt hisresearch.Doing away with that dryness
that debilitated a share of Jha's last film "GangaaJal",
"Apaharan" sweeps you into the anarchic arch.
The effect is like a punch in your solar plexus.
The dusty,
crusty and sinister bylanes of a small-town in Bihar
where the Muslim politician Tabrez (Nana Patekar) rules
beyond the khaki regime, the nefarious activities of
various politically backed factions.These are the director's
familiar gullies. He takes us into them with a surety
of purpose that angers the audiences, provokes you into
questioning your lopsided socio-political system without
losing the thread of the cinematic experience.
In the film, Jha has
achieved a balance-not always neat but constantly riveting
- between drama and documentation, irony and tension,
without letting go of his beliefs. He has his dependable
cast to support his cause.
Nana Patekar,
Yashpal Sharma and Mukesh Tiwari (as an honest cop trying
hard not to buckle under corruption) are outstanding.
Devgan knows what he is doing. He does it effectively.
Bipasha Basu has little to do, and she does it well.
courtesy:glamsham
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