Raj
Kumar Hirani and Anurag Kashyap are two leading contemporary directors. Hirani
had three cult movies to his credit before PK – 3 idiots, Munnabhai 1 and 2.
Kashyap was the script writer of three top quality movies of the nineties -
Satya, Shool and Kaun. He has directed movies like Gangs of Wasseypur 1 and 2;
Dev D; Black Friday, Gulal before his latest offering Ugly.
Kashyap
and Hirani deal in opposite poles of human existence. Hirani’s lovable gangster
heroes in the Munnabhai series have hearts of gold. His Rancho in 3 idiots is
almost a prophet. Even the gangster is
no less with his Gandhigiri. The villains,
played by Boman Irani in all these three movies, are also driven by most
laudable objectives and are quite likeable. The heroines were adorable in
Munnabhai. Quite a few hearts swell listening to Gooood Mooorning Mumbai from
Vidya Balan. We fall in love with the supporting cast also. Who can forget Munnabhai’s
sidekick, Circuit or even a small Milimeter “MM” in 3 idiots.
Thus
the result is a heart-warming, energizing time in the theatre. Hirani’s
characters are too good to be true. But we can’t help but love them and suspend
our disbelief. Thus, even a hard-nosed movie buff winks at scenes such as the
delivery of a baby aided by a vacuum cleaner in 3 idiots.
Kashyap’s
movies are as engaging as Hirani’s. However you come back from the theatre with
different emotions. Disturbed and depressed. Kasyhap is always searching for
evil in his characters. It is difficult
to find a hero in most of the movies directed by Kashyap. His men are mean and destructive. His women
do not have much to give. Petite and elegant beauty Urmila Matondkar is a
serial killer in his Kaun. Love is supposed to be uplifting and life giving.
Kashyap’s love in Dev D is decadent and sucks the life out of the characters.
Kashyap makes decadent love more believable than life-giving love and we find
that scary. He goes into the dark, inner recesses of human beings,
unflinchingly and relentlessly.
Hirani
enjoys seeing and showing good in us. Hirani, in his three previous movies has
been like the three monkeys of Gandhi, see no evil, hear no evil and speak no
evil. On the other hand, Kashyap is a purveyor of evil. But their respective
single-minded pursuits of good and evil only have limited them as movie
makers. They have made decent movies.
Not classics.
Human
life is an interplay, a duality of good and evil, all the time. We keep
creating heaven and hell for ourselves and others. Not upstairs. Here on the
ground floor. Every moment. Good art emerges from the attempt to understand and
share that dualism. Hirani trying to find God in us and Kashyap trying to find
the Devil have got them stuck at a certain level of mediocrity in the art of
movie making.
In
his latest movie PK, Hirani tries to break free of that mould. He tries to deal
with the devil in a Godman. Speak no evil is given up for double entendre to
some extent. However, he is quite out of his depth in handling the grey areas.
The first half of the movie is regular Hirani vanilla ice cream laced with
trademark Hirani humour. An alien being, pure as snow, lands up in India.
Hirani is on home turf in the first half dealing with goodness and purity
spoken with witty and crisp dialogues. Thus the going is good for the viewer.
In the second half Hirani has to deal with something which he has never handled
before. A devious Godman.
The
director flounders. Hirani’s earlier movies generally had simple plots, except
for a few twists in 3 idiots. What Hirani has excelled at is making strikingly
moving frames. Each of those frames touch you as tiny beautiful flowers with
their radiance, fragrance and vulnerable beauty. Aided by the simplicity of the
plot, Hirani had produced beautiful rangolis from those gorgeous frames.
In
the second half of PK, Hirani loses control of his frames. In this half Hirani
has to deal with the conflict of the scheming Godman with an alien who is
simplicity personified. A classic plot device. But Hirani is not upto it. His
frames become stilted. A love story on the side is overly melodramatic, Karan
Johar style. The movie becomes preachy. Hirani asks very fundamental questions
about religion. However, he is unable to handle the answers. May be he should
have just asked the questions and left it there. He takes almost three hours to
tell a story which was not good for more than ninety minutes.
On
the other hand, Kashyap’s near simultaneous release Ugly takes his love for
evil one step further. A little girl goes missing. Her parents, step father,
the friends of her parents, other relatives and the police – everybody, tries
to do something. Less to search for the girl. More to gratify their own twisted
emotions and motives. Lust for flesh, greed for money and revenge against one
another dominate the search attempts. The end result of such enterprise is a
forgone conclusion sealing the fate of the young girl.
However
along the way we encounter human emotions and depravity which leave us gasping.
Kashyap’s characters in this movie hardly have any humanity. Almost all of them
are devil incarnates. It is an engaging, gripping and disturbing narrative.
However, Kashyap overplays his devil hand. It comes across as affected and
artificial. The movie had the potential of a classic. If only Kashyap could see
some humanity in his characters.