What I like about 'Yuva'

I saw this movie long back. Most of my friends weren't impressed. But me and my roommate were pretty excited that India still had directors who made movies with real, identifiable conflicts. That night, the both of us forcibly argued that technique, plot, characters apart - Indian cinema had to primarily deal with good, original conflicts that reflected our collective aspirations. Reading Satish's post on OG, I was reminded of this movie and article that I wrote on the same night.

The true purpose of art, I read (of all places, in a comprehensive and delightfully discursive glossary of literary terms!), is to free ourselves from the deadening effects of habit. I’ve known (and been saying) this for some time, but not in those very words. I remember having watched a dull and pretentious sitcom, solely because, one of the characters had intoned at the beginning, “A good book is like an axe for the frozen sea in each of us”. That, I smugly pointed to a friend, is a Kafka quote that I’d taken time to internalize, the moment I’d read it. Long story short, this is what I consider good art. Any book, movie, music, painting or even a conversation, should make you suddenly aware of things you’ve mentally pushed to the periphery over time and shock you into action by focusing on their patent centrality.

It’s been a while since I’ve watched a good movie. I haven’t watched them but their very, too-perfect-to-be-perfect spiel has made me Bored of the Rings. And I also think that precocious kids, magic wands and airborne brooms are the worst thing to happen to movies since the advent of automatic conflict creation software for script writing! Consequently, I’ve been on a self-imposed exile from theatres and frankly, I don’t miss this movieland. It is in this detached state of comfortable numbness, that I watched the new Bollywood flick - Yuva. A movie that successfully impelled me to act and spout this piece of effluvia, at two in the night, thanks to a grande sized container-ful of caffeine coursing through my veins.

Let me play the director here and use a wide angle lens to pan around and show you the big picture. India is on the verge of a monumental transformation. The reasons be what they are, there is a perceptible reformation underway - of our identities and attitudes. Our movies, culture, economy, apparel, politics, religion, cricket, sex lives, loves, cities, villages, lifestyles, dreams and aspirations, are all being redefined by this process. It’s a makeover of gigantic proportions and predictably, we are anxious. For instance, what kind of an idea will our movies be, in years to come?

Ram Gopal Varma (with his Factory of film makers), is undoubtedly, the self-ordained Surgeon General of this movie makeover. And given his threat of releasing a new film every Friday, we have reasons to be concerned. He and his devoted are hell bent on aping the west. He himself said so in as many (and some more unprintable) words in a recent interview to the Time magazine. His preoccupation with sound scripts and technique, I fear, has deprived his movies of their very soul. The conflicts driving his movies are uninspired and are weak adaptations of Hollywood blockbusters. At the core of these concerns is the question of originality. What inspires him to make his movies? When asked the same question, Manoj Night Shyamalan pointed out that the conflicts in his movies are something a ten year old and even a ninety year old can relate to. ‘Signs’ was about faith. Do you believe in miracles or is everything just a co-incidence? ‘Unbreakable’ was about finding one’s true vocation. Ram Gopal Varma’s pipeline of uninspired movies suggests that, very unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to be realizing the enormity of the Faustian deal he’s making.

The others assisting him in this operation are the Rahul Bose – Pritish Nandy combo, clones. These neophytes, who compound their misplaced aspirations with an utter lack of abilities, are being mistakenly hailed as the new face of Indian cinema. This makeover couldn’t have gotten uglier. A forty year old man trying to lose his virginity and a garage band trying to make it big are their pathetic and superficial attempts at identifying conflicts worth making a movie about.

And at the lowest rung are the veterans of Hindi movie making, whose feeble attempts at coming to terms with the changing times are patch-work movies like ‘Hero’ (A Spy’s Love Story). India too has a James Bond, they tell us; sadly, they still think that he’s a wimpy virgin.

Our very identities are being gradually hijacked by western sensibilities and it is important to realize the consequences. For, it is we, who are making the choice. Recently, I watched a short segment called, “Let’s watch Tele Mundo”, on the David Letterman show. I was horrified to see a bunch of Mexicans indulging in unrestrained mudslinging and muckraking in a court room show a la their popular proto- Judge Judy (or Amy or Sue-Me or Whatever) in US. I was appalled to see this cheap imitation of quintessential, American TV trash getting primetime airspace on a Mexican channel and found myself, silently but ardently, praying and hoping, that there would never be a Judge Shukla or a Judge Gupta show in India!

It is in such times, that we answer a question that Rushdie has repeatedly asked, “What kind of an idea are you”? Are we irreverent enough to stubbornly believe in ourselves? What are the real issues that stir us to action? What are our true dreams, hopes and visions? Do we have the courage to articulate them? And are we obstinate enough to pursue them? It is only when we honestly succeed in answering these questions that our movies will reflect our collective identities and aspirations.

The new Mani Ratnam movie Yuva, gives all the right answers to the above questions. And that is what I like about Yuva.