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| Monday, August 10, 2009 |
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Its Bimal Roy centenary year and a book is being launched about him, I had the privilege to speak on his birthday. I'm reproducing that speech here as a blog and as my thoughts on the legendary filmmaker.
A man is known not just by the body of his work, but by the people he creates or help create;
Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Basu Bhattacharya, Gulzar, Ritwick Ghatak, Asit Sen, Tapan Sinha, Sudhendhu Roy, were all assistants to or started their careers with Bimal Roy !
I can’t even begin to imagine the discussions on the sets or the amount of genius and creativity flowing on the sets when all these names were there together ! Each one of them a genius in his own right, but each of them had one catalyst, one person they learn’t their art from, Bimal Roy !
And That is not even the beginning of the genius of Bimal Roy
Not a single director in the history of Indian Cinema has won 7 filmfare awards, except for Bimal Roy, twice he got 3 awards in 3 consecutive years - 53,54, and 55 for do bigha Zameen, Parineeta and Biraj Bahu, and then 58,59,and 60 for Madhumati, Sujata and Parakh, and then his seventh one in 63 for Bandini ! For Do Bigha Zameen Bimalda won awards at Cannes too and the story goes when Raj Kapoor saw the film he said ‘ how I wish I’d made this film’ !
The reason I mentioned the filmfare awards was to start that never ending debate of art cinema v/s popular cinema ! Whenever that debate comes up I wait for everyone to make their point of the parallel cinema movement v/s popular cinema and then all I have to do is ask so where do you put Bimal Roy ! That’s the end of the discussion because Bimal Roy is the only filmmaker I can think of who is till today an inspiration to every kind of filmmaker. Before or after him there hasn’t been a single filmmaker who has ridden both boats with such mastery. In and within the realm of popular cinema Bimal Roy picked up subjects that people would term as ‘parallel’ or ‘art’ or whatever other name you wanna call it, but with those subjects be it caste prejudice or the plight of a farmer, he made popular cinema. With those so called off beat subjects he received commercial success, super hit music, rave reviews, all kinds of awards, every kind of recognition in India and the world over ! Filmmakers for generations have been inspired by and will continue to be inspired by Bimal roy
Testimony to that is the fact that Parineeta and Devdas have already been remade, god knows how many times in how many ways.
I recently watched a few of his films again after Rinki aunty (his daughter) called me and asked me to speak at his birth centenary, not that I needed to see his films to speak about him, but the one thing I realized after seeing his films again, every time you watch a Bimal Roy it means something else to you. Every time you take away something different, something new, there will always be something happening in your life which you’ll be able to relate with his characters or their situations. It might be the words of a song, a dialogue, anything, something in a Bimal roy film will always go straight to your heart, and every time it’ll be something different, there’s so much to explore in a Bimal Roy film.
Sujata was the first Bimal Roy film I ever saw and as a child I remember the character of Nutan being so strong that as a young boy I felt a protective love for her ! Before I finished watching the film I was so mesmerized by it, that I knew at that age, watching that film on a Sunday evening on Doordarshan on a black white TV that I want to be a filmmaker one day. The emotions that Bimalda could stir up in a small boy of 6 or 7 with a subject like caste prejudice, is something I realized much later, is what the impact or hallmark of a great filmmaker is !
When I watched his films again as I grew up, the intensity of his characters is something I’ll never forget. Balraj sahani was not Balraj Sahani in Do Bigha Zameen, he was Shambu, the farmer trying to earn a living in a city to get back his land, that famous scene where he keeps running faster and faster while pulling the rickshaw still gives me goose-bumps just thinking about it ! Do Bigha Zameen was truly one of Balraj Sahani’s best performances and ofcourse Bimalda was the director behind that inspired performance. I would give anything to be on the set watching one genius direct another !
Another film which had me spellbound was Bandini. Nutan’s performance was beyond words. The use of sound in Bandini is something that all students of cinema need to be taught. The film is told in flashback, and the technique used to go into the flashbacks is to make Nutan hear the sounds of the past, like when she’s sitting in the corner of the cell and she hears the hoofs of the horse pulling away the carriage with her lover. The entire sound design of Bandini is chilling, even the scene where she decides to poison her lovers wife, the welding of the torch and the thumping of the iron go to show her state of mind. Bandini like all Bimalda films was brilliantly photographed as well, I just chose to speak about the sound as that’s something I feel is not spoken about too much about Bimaldas films, but his detail to sound is the stuff text books should be made of. Coming back to Bandini, again this was definitely Nutans best work, again under Bimal Roy !
Today anyone who wants to become an actor heads straight for the gym. That’s so sad and so wrong, if you want to be an actor, go watch a few Bimal Roy films, see what it takes to be an actor, see the performances he brought out from Nutan or Balraj Sahani, if you can even do 25% of that it’ll be great, instead of wasting time in a gym if young aspiring actors watched Bimal Roy films there chances of making it as actors would be so high. Bimal Roy’s films are like instruction manuals or guidelines for anyone who has anything to do with films, actors, music directors, cinematographers, sound, editing, lyrics, there’s not one department of filmmaking which didn’t excel under Bimal Roy, you can watch a Bimal Roy film and learn about every single nuance of filmmaking.
One of the most brilliant things of Bimal Roy was, he did not have a fixed genre, or style. You can’t put his films in any one genre. He attempted all different genres with as much brilliance, whether it’s the plight of a farmer in do bigha Zameen, the story of a lower caste woman in Sujata, a woman imprisoned for murder in Bandini, reincarnation in Madhumati, Parineeta, Devdas, every film totally different from the other, every film requiring a different palette, a different background, a different setting, be it in writing, music, cinematography. By picking up such diverse subjects and films Bimal Roy showed not just his versatility but also the ease with which he moved from genre to genre. The only common thread in all his films was that every actor, every technician gave his best to a Bimal Roy film ! This more than any other is such an inspiration to all us filmmakers, we need to learn from Bimal Roy not to get typecast, not to repeat ourselves, to keep attempting different genres, to keep pushing the envelope, to keep taking chances without thinking of box office or awards
The music of Bimal Roys films, what can one say, lemme just quote the lyrics of some of his songs which were composed by Salil Chodhry or SD Burman, his two favourite music directors, while we’ve all grown up hearing these songs, I’d like you to just spend a little time reading some of his memorable lyrics written by Majrooh Sultanpuri, Shailendra, Gulzar.
do nainan ke milan ko do naina bulaayen
jab naina hon saamane to naina jhuk jaayen
mat khel jal jayegi
kehti hai agg mere mann ki
mein bandini piya ki
mein sangini hoon sajaan ki
(mera khinchati hai aanchal
mann meet teri har pukaar
mere sajaan hai us paar
o re maajhi o re maajhi
mere maajhi)
kuchh kho diyaa hain paayake, kuchh paa liyaa gawaayake
kahan le chalaa hain manawaa, mohe baawaree banaayake
moraa goraa ang lai le, mohe shaam rang dai de
chhoop jaaoongee raat hee me, mohe pee kaa sang de de
bachapan ke tere meet tere sang ke sahaare
dhoondhenge tuze galee galee, sab ye gam ke maare
poochhegee har nigaah kal teraa thhikaanaa
o jaanewaale, ho sake to laut ke aanaa
ye ghaat, too ye baant kahee bhool naa jaanaa
Jalte hain jiske liye teri aakhon ke diye,
dhoond laya hoon wahi geet main tere liye
Muskuraate pyaar ka asar hai har kahin
Hum kahan hain dil kidhar hai kuch khabar nahin
Muskuraate pyaar ka asar hai har kahin
Hum kahan hain dil kidhar hai kuch khabar nahin
Kidhar hai kuch khabar nahin
Kidhar hai kuch khabar nahin
Dil tadap tadap ke keh raha hai aa bhi ja
Tu humse aankh na chura, tujhe kasam hai aa bhi ja
Dil dhadak dhadak ke de raha hai yeh sadaa
Tumhari ho chuki hoon main, tumhare paas hoon sadaa
The brilliance of a Bimal Roy comes from the fact that he could pick any subject, however intense, deep, arty, parallel, call it by whatever ‘non commercial’ name or label or tag you can think of, and he made that subject, that film not just commercially successful but a work of art as well. There have been many successful directors in the commercial and parallel genre, but there’s only one Bimal Roy who has the respect, the awards, the box office, everything from every form of cinema, truly Bimal Roy is one of the worlds most ….. I am just a student of cinema, I am out of words to praise him, let me just end this by saying, for me, he’s one of the gods of cinema. |
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| Posted by Kunal Kohli at 08:44 IST |
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Last Post: 07/08/2009 |
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Kunal Kohli, the name is not just associated with good and hit cinema (Mujhse Dosti Karoge, Hum Tum, Fanaa and Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic) but is known as a film-maker with an opinion. A film-maker who was a film critic, one of the first and best judges on reality shows, a writer, thinker and of course a path breaking film-maker. Making a different film in each outing of his, Kunal is one of the leading film-makers in Bollywood today, his actors and he have won national awards and so many other awards. The music of his films is always a super hit and recently Kunal turned producer too and started his own production house Kunal Kohli productions. Bollywood Hungama brings you chance to interact with the charismatic filmmaker through his blog on BollywoodHungama.com. So don't miss this chance to read about Kunal's views on cinema and everything else under the sky, only on your favorite Bollywood website BollywoodHungama.com
You can visit Kunal's official website at http://www.kkp.co.in/ |
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