Swades, Shahrukh aur Hum

- Soumil

It’s common news now that Shahrukh Khan is getting a national award for Jawaan while The Kerala Story was awarded an award for best cinematography. Sane humans are disgusted by the news—the latter part obviously since there exists a beautifully shot film called Aadujeevitham or The Goat Life and I am not the first one to say this since Instagram is flooded with reels showing clips of the film’s visual poetry. But I would like to talk about Shahrukh’s national award and something I saw in Instagram only: What about Swades? Where is the national award for that?

Swades was directed by the same man who made Lagaan and Mohenjo Daro. His filmography also includes Jodha Akbar and Panipat which along with Mohenjo Daro are any historian’s nightmare. But Swades stands different—for once the masala optimism actually works in that film. The writing is strong and the cinematography is miles, miles better than The Kerala Story (just comparing). There’s one particular scene where the reflection of a temple on the nearby pond is shown and it looks just like a drawing made with crayons. Even the famous shot which got turned into the official poster—a changed Mohan, sitting amidst his people and in the motion, you can’t even recognise that it’s Shahrukh Khan except for his modern clothes.

Now to bring in Jawaan in this context: the characters are divided into good and bad with the government shown as the obvious bad guys and Shahrukh Khan’s double roles painting two trending anti-hero characters who are doing things for the greater good. The heroine is a single mother who’s a badass cop also—perfect for the male fantasy as she jumps into action wearing tight clothing and minimal armour. And this film breaks the box office to get the national award for its main lead actor.

Where’s the difference?

Well, for once the characters of Swades are humble and change as the story flows forward. They are not ready to accept in the beginning perhaps—but they change, they see, they are changed. That’s how character arcs work, that’s how stories flow. In the film, until a good chunk of the time is passed, Mohan keeps drinking from packaged drinking water bottles. Only after the journey which Kaaveri Amma puts him to, does he buy water from a child on his way back home, taste the actual water of his homeland and let it flow through his body. Throughout this whole journey back, Mohan is stunned…Mohan revels and ponders on the image of poverty he just saw—something changes in him. But the characters in Jawaan are already fleshed out as good or bad—they don’t change. The film is said to be “bold” to speak against the government and the atrocities but it almost throws all those complaints one after the other straight into our eyes—it spoon-feeds the message down your throat and offers some dashing blockbuster action scenes for you to drink beside all the spoon-fed storylines. And everyone likes that, everyone screams “OH CINEMA IS BACK!”

But Swades is more subtle. It is perfectly embodied in Shahrukh Khan’s character who doesn’t talk much after his realization. It leaves the silent parts for the audience to ponder and realise—it lets the audience drink the story and feel it spread across the body.

Swades also criticises the government and India as a country and the state that it is in, but it begins as an argument between Mohan and Gita—the former pointing out all the faults in the country and its people while the latter tries her best to defend her homeland. Swades lets the audience in Mohan’s shoes and lets them get accustomed to how the world works and why the faults exist. The message isn’t bombarded by action sequences or villainizing a part of society—the police for example. Nowadays, you will see patriarchal male heroes (Pushpa) defeat and brutally kill police officers since it’s easy to refer to them as the bad guys now but quite hard to see them as nothing but government workers doing the filthy work for the government. Such empathy can’t be produced by films like Jawaan because they bombard the minds with the “message” and are able to squeeze out sympathy by depicting brutally wounded dead bodies, bodies of farmers hanging from the tree and such graphic depiction of the violence accompanying poverty because it can’t give birth to empathy. A particular harrowing scene from the film Jojo Rabbit must be mentioned here— Jojo sees her mother’s shoes and the audience sees that along with him. His mother is often tap-dancing, dancing with the flow of the world. But the last scene with his mother, is that of him following a butterfly, then standing up and seeing those very shoes hanging in mid air, still and lifeless. The camera doesn’t go up to show proof of what has occurred—that image is for no one but Jojo to experience, the director trusts the audience and hence, empathy is generated due to the repeated showing of the image of the shoes.

 I won’t talk on and on about the visuals of Jawaan but one thing must be mentioned— Shahrukh’s production company Red Chillies Entertainment is basically a vfx company so it needs vfx-heavy storylines which began from films like Zero where his character even goes to the moon.  A recent example includes Dunki which is Rajkumar Hirani’s worst film till date and Shahrukh’s character is the worst amidst all others. Dunki too forces out sympathy by the plotline which must involve vfx-heavy maps, graphics—all done in poor taste. In comparison, the film Shiddat speaks on the same immigration-emigration problem with the main plotline being a love story yet doesn’t take any sides or paint the characters as good or bad. It easily generates empathy even though the masala dialogues won’t work unless you’re watching that film with someone special.

Dunki wasn’t a blockbuster hit like Hirani’s previous films—and rightly so, as the audience can’t gulp down everything that’s thrown to them with multiplexes charging heavy prices for shows. On the other hand, if we go back a bit, Swades was a flop. Yet,  Jawaan is both a box office hit and a national award winner. Tells you everything you need to know about our desh and us and that too much, much better than Swades ever could. This isn’t a negative point—films capture time and are themselves stuck in time. Classics might speak to you even now, be relatable even now but they depict a different time and era—yes, maybe the problems persist. Two characters like Mohan and Gita—romantically involved or not doesn’t matter—might be talking right now about the condition of the country and arguing for their own sides. One might also remember films like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro and the ending where the two main leads come out of prison with Hum Honge Kamiyab  playing in the background, they look to the screen and put their forefingers across their necks and the sound of the wood sliding beneath the gallows is heard—what Varun Grover rightly points out as the sad reality even though the whole film was a satire with one comedic scene after the other designed by suspending reality and laughing over the mechanics of reality.

But don’t worry, people will flock to Shahrukh’s next film nonetheless and the next war film on the Pahelgaon attacks will be given an award for best cinematography or perhaps even best screenplay or all the god damn categories if possible and I will be screaming on that decision again while mentioning other films which were deprived of the actual honour.

- Aahel