Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Amjad Khan, Sanjeev Kumar, Hema Malini, Jaya Bachchan
Director: Ramesh Sippy
Rating: 2 stars
Four hours of my life I will never get back, and this is my takeaway from it all:
Sholay is worse when you understand the dialogue than when you don’t
Sanjeev Kumar did ham his way through at least one of his roles
A crap movie remains a crap movie forty years after its first release
A tacky film is made worse by tacky 3D
The only good thing about Sholay is the fact that the songs have been ingrained into our collective memory well enough for us to wait for them. And, they were composed by R D Burman and sung by Kishore Kumar and Manna Dey, which makes them awesome even to those young enough to have never heard them before.
The first time I watched the film, I was six years old, and one of my cousins who claimed he knew Hindi had borrowed the video cassette from the neighbourhood library. We watched the film six times before we had to return the cassette, and took to screaming, “Areyo Sambha!” every time someone put sambar on the table. My brothers used their glow-in-the-dark toy swords to cut off each other’s arms, moaning and writhing on the floor after they had been de-limbed, and promptly exchanging places seconds later. I would dance like I was possessed in the courtyard, even throwing bits of cellophane paper to pass for glass, till the maidservant dragged me inside to a premature lecture on the male gaze. That was Sholay for me, and I wish it had stayed that way.
Fact is, the film is a smorgasbord of commercial excess. There’s the bromance, the romance, the socio-political message about widow remarriage (okay, almost), the violence, the song and dance, the underdog story and the ensemble cast. But let’s be honest – its most iconic lines, from “Kitne aadmi thhe”to “Inn kutton ke saamne mat naachna”to “Chal, Dhanno, aaj teri Basanti ki izzat ka sawaal hai”, sound bizarre when spoken seriously.
[quote]If the guy you were in love with were leching at you along with everyone else when you were naach-ing for Gabbar you'd have resented his display of Candaulism[/quote]
Also, the film makes no sense. I mean, put yourself in any of the characters’ places. At some point, you’d have seen through Jai’s coin trick, no? If the guy you were in love with were leching at you along with everyone else when you were naach-ing for Gabbar, you’d have resented his display of Candaulism. If you were Gabbar, and had Miss Mehbooba Mehbooba at your disposal, you likely wouldn’t care for Miss Aaaaaaa Jab Tak Hai Jaan. If you’re human, you wouldn’t make orgasmic noises while dancing under a blazing sun. If you’re single, you’d probably not choose to grow old with your armless father-in-law when you could be out scoring Jais.
Sanjeev Kumar hams it up in Sholay
And if this all comes down to a good-versus-evil thingamajig, you could wrap it up in less than three and a half hours. Which brings me to this theory – men who spend so much time talking at each other are never going to get around to throwing decent punches. If Sholay were set in our time, they would have settled it all with a Twitter war, in which everyone but the main participants would have lost interest, and of which the most popular tweet would have been “Bakwaas bandh kar”.
You could marvel at the technical aspects of the film, which we tend to take for granted in this era of CGI and enormous budgets. But then, I can think of tens of films in English, Hindi, Bengali and Tamil which had expertly shot action sequences before animators stepped in.
A lot of the action is undermined rather than enhanced by the attempt to force 3D on a film that wasn’t made for it. Ducking bursts of fire and bullets can get annoying. Also, the claustrophobic effect of 3D gets in the way of the grandness of the Cinemascope.
At a time when most cinema strikes me as crap, I was sort of hoping for some reprieve. But, in re-watching Sholay, I realised that this was the film that set the template for the leave-your-brains-behind big-budget entertainers that have since flooded theatres.
At some point, my brain switched off, except for neurons darting across, throwing nagging questions at each other, like: Why didn’t anyone change their clothes throughout the damn movie? Whoa, the kid from Mughal-e-Azam grew up to shimmy with Helen? Why would someone who can produce such a wonderful soundtrack throw in rubbish sound effects every time someone gets surprised, angry or killed (which happens a lot in this film)?
As I walked out of the cinema, I prayed that I should not live to see the day when Mr India, Hum Aapke Hain Kaun and Dabangg are re-released in 3D.
