The recently released documentary, Angry Young Men, on the screenwriting duo of Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, who became a powerhouse of dramatic scripts spawning an unprecedented 20 commercially successful movies in the Seventies, has quickly gathered fans while attracting some criticism too.
It showcases nostalgia by tracing each one’s early personal history, relationship with their parents, turbulent emotional equation with their fathers, economic hardship, professional frustration, and finally the serendipitous combination that forged a creative and personal bond which produced all the compelling stories that have given them a permanent place in the history of popular Hindi cinema.
There are two aspects that the series brings out movingly. One is their aggressive emotionality in the early years. Even as their struggle was riddled with crippling frustration, they never ceased being ambitious. Instead of despairing, they were angry. Angry at being denied what they believed they deserved. They nurtured that rage, promising themselves that they would get it. This is, doubtless, reflected in their male protagonists. And this could have had a lot to do with how they handled success when it came to them.
The other is the deeply genuine warmth in their bond when they were together. The series encourages us to imagine their closeness, mutual trust, Akhtar’s adoration of his 10-year-older alter ego, their accelerating self-confidence, their exultation at the seemingly unstoppable success, their audacity, the Midas complex, and finally the sense of omnipotence. And then, the sobering pain in the aftermath of their separation. The nostalgia works.
However, what is seriously disappointing is the striking refusal to examine their work. After all, it was their writing that brought them lasting fame and is the reason for our interest in them. From the two-hour series, you come away with no understanding, no insight about them as writers, something that history should remember them for.
At least one episode could have been devoted to their work. We would love to know what inspired their iconic films, how they always constructed dramatically strong plots, why their character always had a deep, unresolved inner conflict that infused the narrative with dramatic energy, whether the dialogue needed much rewriting to get that surfeit of crackling loaded lines, if their writing was intuitive, what was their process of sourcing promising material. And, how much of their personalities fertilised their characters. Peppered with examples.
While much of their early work is worthy of study, Deewaar and Sholay, of course, stand in a class by themselves. For different reasons.
Sholay has an incomparably larger fanbase and that stands to reason. While its screenplay is problematically uneven, it offers every kind of entertainment element that an Indian audience seeks from a mainstream film. There is no way the writers consciously did this, but Sholay has each of the nine rasas (navrasas), which perhaps no other film has. Apart from being superbly directed with excellent support from every technical department, it has background music that enhances every sequence, viscerally riveting action, a deliciously unrepentant evil dacoit, a charismatic star cast and of course, absolutely terrific comedy with crackling lines. It had to become India’s most loved film.
Deewaar’s script occupies a near-mythical status for screenwriters. While it owes its inspiration to Mother India (the Oedipal obsession, the absent weak father) and Ganga Jamuna (the cop-brother having to kill the dacoit-brother who brought him up), it offers you the experience of a completely fresh story set in the urban industrial milieu of crime and unemployment.
Through the sheer consistency of Vijay’s characterisation with its unwavering focus on the trauma of the cowardly father’s betrayal, the writing never loses empathy for the torment that starts driving his self-destructive choices. In his relentless bid to over-compensate for his emotional pain and his mother’s suffering, Vijay’s impossible quest for inner peace finally impels him towards his own death. The character’s partial resonance with the Karna archetype is unconscious but unmistakable. (Equally unmistakable is the resonance with its two writers and their angst!)
While several excellent films earlier had had strong dramatic plots with mythical underpinnings, none had the tightly structured screenplay, the sharpness of scene construction, and the wit and economy of dramatic dialogue of this one. And of course, there was the huge Bachchan factor that just exploded on screen. Compelling! But even the lay audience knew that the script was the thing. Without it, there wasn’t much that even the great Bachchan could have done.
What Salim-Javed deserve credit for is inspiring dozens of young people to become film writers. All of us took up screenwriting because we wished to write like them. We wanted to write a Deewaar! While not flawless, its script continues to be one of the most important examples for aspiring Indian screenwriters to learn from.
Their example offers other important learnings too. One is that, ironically, the one thing that they yearned for with resoluteness during their struggling days itself became the reason for their decline as writers when they achieved it. Success, the double-edged sword! While in the heavily commercialised world of popular cinema, the desire for success can be a valuable motivation, a blinkered pursuit of it can thwart one’s originality and rapidly dilute creative authenticity.
It nudges one towards safe choices, pushing one into a formula groove. Intensely needy for success, the duo couldn’t escape that. Unfortunately, in creative work, there cannot be a pre-set successful model. One must reinvent the wheel for every new idea.
Hence, a serious concern is that none of their films challenged the existing status quo — be it in terms of class, caste, communalism or gender. Their stories were about hurt heroes who, mostly by vigilante action, fought to avenge personal injustice inflicted by a bad individual. Or, of course, about intra-family conflict. Never was a comment on the system or the ideology that engendered that injustice or on the social inequality that makes exploitation inevitable allowed into the story. In other words, it never offered you a socio-political perspective, even in its sub-text.
Given the enormous clout that they commanded, they could well have woven social issues into their plots. Instead, their stories pointedly steered clear of raising deeper questions that may leave the audience disturbed or thoughtful, thereby perhaps affecting the chances of commercial success. The only purpose of cinema, then, was to entertain, where entertainment was defined as an enjoyable experience. Unlike those whose work they admired, like Mehboob Khan, K Asif, Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt, who also worked with the mainstream form, Salim-Javed’s films depoliticised cinema.
The lasting impact that their work has left on Hindi cinema is still to be studied seriously, analysed and understood. And yet, what is clear is that Indian screenwriters will be grateful to them for bringing the script centre-stage. It’s a position that writers of today are once again seeking to give it.
And yes, a personal thank you for Deewaar, of course!
Rajabali is a screenwriter, teacher and activist of the Screenwriters Association
