What were Sridevi, Karisma thinking of?
Offensive, violent scenes in Shakti and its anti-women stance could prove its undoing
Subhash K Jha
Suman Sinha, the Patna exhibitor of director Krishna Vamsi's Shakti -- The Power has decided to play the role of an unofficial censorboard. "I am going to delete some of the offensive violence in Shakti before screening this film in my theatre any longer. I feel the Censor Board has not done its job well. I am going to delete the sequence where actor Vijay Raaz's head is chopped in a sugarcane crusher by Nana Patekar's men. This is not cinema. This is sheer barbarism. And the worst thing is, it is a Karisma Kapoor starrer."
Sinha intends to chop off other scenes of violence, "especially the ones where Nana Patekar is shown beating Karisma Kapoor and Deepti Naval.
"What sort of signal is the film sending out to the audience? Patekar who has a sizeable fan following is shown abusing and beating up women throughout the film. The justification for all the violence is, "I have to kill others before they kill me."
"Do these filmmakers have any sense of social responsibility? Do producer Boney Kapoor and director Krishna Vamsi know what sort of a monster they have unleashed in the public? I am ready to take Shakti off from my theatre today if I can get another film. I shudder to think what a 16-year old college student would do when he leaves the theatre after watching men and women being brutalised for three hours. Shakti isn’t fit for human consumption."
The boundless brutality of Shakti has taken viewers all over the country by surprise. Despite being passed with an Adults Only certificate, children are making a beeline for the film because of Karisma Kapoor's presence. Shakti which opened to housefull boards nationwide has slumped on the fourth day. The obscene volume of violence against women is the obvious reason.
Shakti is said to be set in rural Bihar. According to a top-rung filmmaker in Mumbai, "The makers of the film believe that the film will be a hit in Bihar, if nowhere else." However, producers Sridevi and Boney Kapoor are in for a big shock. The film's collections have dropped drastically all over Bihar since Monday.
Another filmmaker says, "Children and women are abstaining completely. That leaves the men who would rather watch Shashilal Nair's Ek Chhotisi Love Story."
Shakti raises many questions: how did it get past the Censors? Why is there such a surfeit of violence when its Telugu original Anthapuram was considerably mellow and less gruesome?
In the Telugu original, Karisma's role was played by Soundarya (she starred opposite Amitabh Bachchan in Sooryavansham). Nana Patekar's role of the obnoxious and aggresive father-in-law was portrayed by Prakash Raj, who plays a bit part of a hired assassin in Shakti. He won the National Award for Best Supporting Actor in Anthapuram.
Director Krishna Vamsi is a former assistant of Ram Gopal Varma. He came into the limelight as an independent director with the Telugu film Gulabi co-produced by Varma and AB Corp Ltd. Gulabi starred Sridevi's cousin Maheshwari.
Sridevi is now the producer of Vamsi's first Hindi film. One wonders why she produced a gory product like Shakti.
Vamsi and Boney Kapoor are said to have had a fall-out regarding padding the film with Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai's item song, Ishq kameena. Vamsi was not present on the sets when the song was shot. Apparently, the film was taken over from its director and re-edited by its producers.
Evidently, they and the Censors did not do their job well.
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http://www.rediff.com/entertai/2002/sep/26shakti.htm
Edited By arsh on 1033139471
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