Production: Emotional Picture Company and Second Image Enterprise
Direction: Aditya Bhattacharya
Music: Ranjit Barot
Camera: Santosh Sivan
Cast: Aamir Khan, Supriya Pathak, Pankaj Mullick, Jagdeep.
If a film can be totally a young man's film without being overtly adolescent, it is
Raakh. Its maker Aditya Bhaatacharya -- avid filmgoer and self-taught filmmaker -- is the first to admit that were he making the film now, a year later, it might be different. "It might sound conceited but I knew that I could make a film," he confesses...and adds disarmingly," there was nothing else I could do anyway." Raakh confirms that this debutant director has an instinctive understanding of the cinematic language.
There is much that is palpably derivative about the film but a lot that is original and assured as well. Bhattacharya readily admits to being a child of Hollywood, with Martin Scorcese as a major infulence. But there is also the admiration for Satyajit Ray's sensitive handling of children--a total empathy with the child's world as it were. As well as unexpected nostalgic references to his grandfather Bimal Roy. And a strong anger that the present-day atmosphere of Hindi films wouldn't have any place for the gentle humanism of Bimal Roy.
Rape and revenge are the two 'Rs' that currently make up the formula. Raakh too falls into the pattern if a bare outline of the 'plot' were given. A sensitive, confused young man of 21 is Aamir (Aamir Khan). When the film opens to a futuristic, lawless setting, Aamir is charged with multiple murder...And then begins a chaotic journey into the past which seemed so normal just three months earlier. The narrative is a staccato monologue, borrowing quite heavily from
Taxi Driver. Only Aamir is much less articulate and can't understand what in-built code of machismo drives him to avenge the gang-rape of his ex-girl friend. Neeta (Supriya Pathak) seems immeasurably older and grown beyond the still desperately-in-love Aamir. The rapists are all part of the Karmali family, the mafia clan that rules the city. Neeta wants no revenge for she would spare her parents the knowledge that would break them. An inchoate impulse drives Aamir to the police who are callously indefferent. Bhattacharya is alive to the possibility of women reacting against Neeta's inaction. But he wants to portray her as a surivivor since punishing the rapists--if at all--would change nothing for her. What the director wants' to show is how strong male conditioning is, which makes man play the protector and--pushed to extremes--the avenger.
Aamir leaves his upper-class home, his confusion further exacerbated by his father's angery tirade and fear...that his son too might be taking drugs and that he has been lost to the family. Lost because of his infatuation for Neeta, of whom the conservative Muslim parents strongly disapprove. Bhattacharya tries to make a naive political commment through making his mafia villains and the protagonist Muslim while the entire police force is Hindu. Bhattacharya recounts how he met many underworld dons and their henchmen, roamed their hideouts and studied 'types' to get the casting and atmosphere right. He succeeds very well in this with many vivid vignettes -- the Don's wife, for instance -- as well as creating the orthodox Muslim ambience in which the Karmalis live and operate. The tragedy, as Bhattacharya sees it, is that Aamir, at the other extreme of decent, law-abiding Muslim society, gets sucked into the criminal world, and has to adopt their ways--in essence, if not detail.
"I don't want anyone to feel trigger-happy after seeing my film," declares the director. So he balances the appeal of the gentle Aamir training to toughen up himself -- physically and mentally--with the deliberate puncturing of a youthful high by battle-scarred veteran. There is an elaborately-staged scene where 'P.K.' (Punkaj Kapur) literally goes berserk, drunk on liquor and self-pity, after he has been suspended from the police force. He smashes up things in his spartan and shabby room and rushes out to beat imaginary enemies at his front door with his baton..which a few minutes later, sticks out from his body like an exaggerated phallic symbol. The mix of brooding, corrosive despair and comic subversion doesn't wholly work but Bhattacharya gets his point across.
In this sequence we are given intimation of a lost love in P.K.'s life. The picture of a young women stuck in the mirror frame speaks of a romance gone sour with expressive economy. But Bhattacharya feels compelled to elaborate on this and P.K. finds an older letter from the women, mourning the loss of the man he was and the one he has turned into. The passage comes close to sentimentalism in a film that seeks and achieves a rare--for an Indian film--tough lyricism. Bhattacharya concedes that this may be a reflection of what he feels: the place a women has in the emotional make-up of a man and how central it is even when he may be denying it at a conscious level. That is also why he brings another women into Aamir's life--fleetingly. It is this older women who instinctively recognises the he is hurt too and betweeen them there is an unspoken bond of mutual sympathy. This is the weakest part of the film that is explained only by Aamir's diary-like narration. It is implied that many of Aamir's recollections may not be exactly fantasy but a sort of reading meanings and nuances into a relationship which may not exist at all. What happens in Raakh is that visually, the fluid dissolves and expressionistic lighting, the alternating of slow rhythm with bursts of action, sustain the narrative but at the expense of psychological conviction at a deep level. Bhattacharya can get gut reaction but also leaves you with an impression of pretentiousness. But, overall, the effect is disturbing and you recognise patterns of behaviour and situations in a Bombay that does not seem so futuristic. Bending the thriller mode to directorial intentions and trying to undercut the revenge formula is not something that has been tried often in Indian cinema. Vidhu Vinod tried it in
Sazaaye Maut and K.G. George gives his variations of murder as metaphor in a series of Malayalam films. Raakh is visceral and sensusous at the same time-- Bhattacharya belives that a filmmaker must communicate emotion and not get caught in a purely cerebral trap--giving notice of a talented filmmaker.
-- Maithili Rao
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