Satyagraha hits the theatres today! Prakash Jha has said that film is a dialogue with the youth of today. The director picked a rather new (as compared to last week's critically acclaimed political thriller Madras Cafe) subject for Satyagraha. Prakash Jha's latest take on What Ails The Nation.
The movie shows the real time scenarios of the failing present system as a whole. Thus if it is happening in the real life, we not require a cinema version of it. Especially a version which doesn't add anything of significance to the narrative: it's all been-here-seen-this-and-that before.
Saibal Chatterjee writes for NDTV, "Prakash Jha's Satyagraha is a political film that, for all its well-meaning bluster, neither stings nor scalds. It fails to hit the core of the truth that it seeks," and further elaborates, "Unfortunately, Satyagraha barely skims the surface of a complex theme, leaving many a crucial question unanswered. As a result, it can hardly be expected to shake a vast nation and its somnolent rulers out of their torpor."
Mahatma Gandhi may have been the original satyagrahi, but two years ago, there was Anna Hazare, the man who threatened an indefinite fast unless the government agreed to his demands to enact a law against corruption. The image of Anna is still so strongly etched that even when Amitabh Bachchan channels the Mahatma (a classic scene has Bachchan drape his arms around two young girls and walk, in almost the same pose as the Mahatma did, all those decades ago), we instantly think of the man who colonised Jantar Mantar. And when we see Ajay Devgn, who plays Amitabh Bachchan's trusty lieutenant, we think of Arvind Kejriwal, the man who has broken away and formed his party against corruption, and which is readying to fight the elections in 2014.
The various other scenes like boy setting himself afire and few more are taken from real life incidents.
When it comes to cinema, its truth is equally divided amongst the three monkeys - story, acting and direction. What the movie lost out in story and direction, it made up for with acting.
The characters in the film are well defined and justified with an exception of TV journalist Yasmin (Kareena Kapoor Khan), is most puzzling: is she an objective recorder of events for her TV channel, or a part of the crusade against corruption? She keeps criss-crossing the lines, depending on what the scene wants her to do. Devgn's part could have gone somewhere. As the guy of today who wants to use technology-driven social media — Facebook updates and Twitter posts fly thick and fast — to bring about change, but who is a pragmatist, even befriending the bad guys as a means to an end, Manav could have been a well-rounded character. But, after a few sketchy flourishes, he also reverts to type. And the end is chaos, very far from the non-violent satyagrah that the film propounds: gun-toting hooligans and cops run around the town, ending predictably in noble deaths and lectures on morality and goodness.
"A problem that has beset Jha's recent films is back to haunt Satyagraha as well. The principal characters do not converse like you and me. They make speeches from a rostrum. When they are not letting out hot air from a pedestal, they deliver grand statements of intent to each other and everyone within earshot. It is an approach that is better suited to street theatre than to the big screen."
The film would have become interesting if the story had allowed for some nuance. A few more ups and downs in the characters as well as in the plot which went plain and sober most of the time, but this would may have made the movie bit complicated and who wants complications in a movie!
In turn it left lot of questions unanswered. No doubt that the movie upbrings the issues which seek importance on a common man's grund, there had to be more into it than a abrupt and a calm ending.
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