There’s discontent in the air. A revolution’s smouldering. Man’s faith in the establishment has hit an all-time low.
You sense a volcano about to explode as you watch Deewaar.
It’s Yash Chopra, the much maligned ‘bad’shah of the feel good romance, who’s responsible for Deewaar, one of the most intense anti-establishment stories ever made in Bollywood.
Vijay and Ravi are the two sons of an honest [TUL] Trade Union Leader (he’s so honest that Karl Marx would have been proud of him). He is fighting for the cause of the impoverished mill workers but the mill owners have other plans for him. His wife (Nirupa Roy) and sons are held to ransom: ‘the workers dance to our tunes or else you’ll be singing an elegy for loved ones’. TUL crumbles under pressure and virtually sells off the workers to the mill owners. He is then stripped bare of his laurels and humiliated publicly by the betrayed workers. They even tattoo his son Vijay’s arm (right or left I do not remember), with: “Mera Baap Chor Hai (My father is a swindler)”. This is Vijay’s character defining moment in Deewaar.
No longer able to bear society’s barbs, TUL goes absconding, leaving his wife and children in the lurch. Mother India anyone?
His wife now takes up the onus of bringing up her two children. She comes to Bombay and starts working as a construction worker. Ravi is the more studious of the two brothers. Vijay decides to contribute to the family hearth and begins earning since an early age. Time passes and the two brothers grow up into personalities as different from each other as chalk and cheese. Ravi is a happy-go-lucky graduate who goes to the temple with his mother while Vijay is a veritable brooder, having no faith in God almighty. This is the first palpable glimpse of Vijay’s anti-establishment attitude.
Vijay is working at the docks as a coolie and takes up cudgels with the powerbrokers that be. He is picked up by a ganglord (Iftekhar). Soon, Vijay rises in eminence in the netherworld. On his way up he earns the enmity of Madan Puri, Iftekhar’s archrival and the love of a call girl (Parveen Babi).
On the other hand, Ravi becomes a police officer. A series of brilliantly scripted scenes show his transformation from a simple, happy-go-lucky boy-man into an upright cop. This obviously creates a chasm (Deewaar) between the two brothers. The mother is partial towards Ravi’s honest scheme of affairs. Finally, in a gripping climax, Ravi shoots his elder brother who dies in the arms of his mother, ironically in a temple.
What makes Deewaar different from the other upright cop vs. underworld ganglord is its psycho-social realism. Salim-Javed, the scriptwriter duo of this movie have brilliantly captured the mood of that era in their story.
The period of emergency is one of the darkest periods in post-independent Indian history. All the virtues that the nation stood for came to a grinding halt. Corruption and mayhem ruled supreme. Democracy came under threat. Powerbrokers dictated terms. It was in this situation that the voice of the common man came to be stifled. Change was the call of the hour. Films like Deewaar exemplified the growing unrest within the society of the 1970s. The audience who till then had grown up on a diet of soft-musicals empathized with the tale of a man who did not respect the law of the land as it gave him no confidence.
In fact, much before Deewaar, Salim-Javed had created a character by the name of Vijay in a film called Zanjeer. Incidentally, this one too starred Amitabh Bachchan and made a star of the then struggling actor. By the time Deewaar came along, Amitabh was well on his way to mega-stardom. Vijay (meaning victory) was a name that was given to Amitabh in as many as 17 movies. In most of these films, Vijay is an angry rebel, fighting furiously to establish his identity in a corrupt and degenerate world.
In Deewaar, Vijay takes cudgels not against a particular individual but against a system that has tarnished his father’s image, battered his psyche, and alienated him from his own family without as much batting an eyelid. Vijay rebels against all established institutions: Religion, Law and Order, and Civilized Society. However, one part within him yearns to be back within the family fold. And this according to me is the film’s biggest drawback. At one level, the scriptwriters create a character who is seemingly unwilling to compromise on his ethics and then we have the same man wanting to make amends very badly.
Yet, despite this, Deewaar is a classic. The direction and narration are top class. As an aside, let me mention that Salim-Javed had clearly stated that Deewaar, considered to be having a perfect screenplay, is a mixture of Mother India and Gunga Jamuna.
The music (composed by R.D. Burman to lyrics written by Sahir Ludhianavi) is refreshing as it provides a breather from the dramatic tension.
Coming down to the performances:
Amitabh Bachchan is FANTASTIC in this role. According to Shashi Kapoor, this film is easily Bachchan’s best. I do not agree with him, but yes, his performance as the silent and strong Vijay is one of his best. Shashi Kapoor is as endearing as ever while Nirupa Roy provides just the right motherly touch to the movie. The rest (Iftekhar, Madan Puri, Neetu Singh, and Parveen Babi) are adequate.
I never fail to watch this movie whenever it is aired on television as it gives me chance to rediscover both Amitabh Bachchan and Yash Chopra.