New Delhi: Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma's brutal crime biopic Not A Love Story is a pale shadow of the director's strong narrative of systematic crime and his fascination with the underworld that goes back to his days of 'Shiva'. When he returns as producer with Shabri this week, one can only hope that Varma finds his niche back as the master-teller of the crime story.
There is Stanley Kubrick's horror flick 'The Shining', Ayn Rand's immortal novel 'The Fountainhead', and then there is Varma who tries to place Rand’s legendary hero Howard Roark in a Kubrick-like situation set in his underworld masterpiece Satya.
But the story of the idealistic youth is now beginning to sound familiar as Varma, in film after film, tries to reconstruct the crime scene.
Which is why Not A Love Story is reminiscent of all the Varma films that once packed a mean gut punch. Agaayt, Phoonk, Sarkar Raj, Contract, Sarkar, Nishabd, Bhoot, Aag...Varma life's works in a nut shell.
So, has Varma started to repeat himself?
In many of his blogs and interviews, he recalls his days at Siddhartha Engineering College and Vijaywada, where he speaks at length about his inspirations from common people and their escapades. He draws a lot from them in his earlier films, where one can easily figure out the crystal clear characterization. For example, take a glance at the characters of Shiva, Munna, Chandu, Malik Bhai, Mili and Pandit Jee.
However, the major problem started from Shiva-2. Till this time, he had become a path-breaking director and he started to take his audiences for granted. Phoonk and Agyaat became hits and this fact gave him over confidence to use the scare-crow and funny looking dolls, and of course weird posters of heroines in the backdrop, time and again.
Little did he realise that these films were not acceptable to a larger number of his niche audience and were successful only due to their small budgets and sleazy moments.
Satya's first half is undoubtedly one of the finest in Indiana cinema and it started a new genre of anti-Switzerland films, which some coin as anti-Bollywood also. Varma had become eight years and ten films older till then.
The immense success of Satya found him the much awaited core area, which was the underworld from a pervert's point of view. Company stamped his authority on underworld-based cinema.
Meanwhile, Kaun, Mast and Jungle provided him the freedom to experiment with distorted mindset of a criminal by choice. His understanding of the gangsters took a concrete shape during the making and success of Company.
RGV largely perceived them as manipulators, who were physically not very strong unlike typical Hindi film villains, and who could organise rebellious youth in front of him but would not let them organise behind his back.
They meant business through the barrel of sophisticated foreign made guns. The impact of this sadistic representation of criminal fraternity began to work on a structural level. In due course of time, his version of 'Mumbaiya' gangsters took the center spot and the usual Bollywood villain became an alternative. This situation gave Varma a chance to take his style forward, to another level.
But, then the worst thing happened. Varma became a confident director, above all the materialistic needs a film can fulfill; basically the rebel youth was forgotten. His reading of the society told him that the once angry and hungry youth has transformed into a frustrated and well-fed community, which takes pleasure in peeping into others' pants, and in his case, into short skirts.
The result was Naach, Darling, Aag, Rann and Nishabd. Devoid of any grammatically correct narrative structure, leave aside a proper storyline, his films simply banked upon shaky camera and extraordinary camera angles, leaving the audiences wondering who could have been looking from those really claustrophobic spaces, in the name of his great style.
Slowly and gradually, the content lost all its space to the grandeur of realistic sets and so called powerful performances. Actually, the only thing a viewer could understand was the acting and if it was done even a bit according to his perception, he loved it.
Needless to say that the most of the audiences remain faithful to Varma films only due to his brilliant past. RGV has touched a new height with Not A Love story, where all one can make out is that somebody else is making out.
It's fine if his cinema looks less revolutionary and more star oriented now, but unfortunately it has become an exercise in deathly boring repetition of passionless crime.
For a director who has made a 'Satya', Varma needs to get his mojo back by focusing on what he does best - tell that compelling story.
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