The answer to what happens probably lies only in the mind of the film-maker. So, ad guys are equally guilty of losing creative control over their products. Jaideep Sahni wrote Company, Chak De India and Khosla Ka Ghosla but he also wrote Rocket Singh, which again starts off very well and then becomes increasingly self-indulgent and one-sided. But Mehra, the guy who gave us Rang De Basanti also gave us the floundering Delhi 6 and the unfathomable Aks, both great ideas that just never took off. Because if that was so, the ad guys would be delivering some great films one after another.
Many of the talented guys from advertising are now finding creative satisfaction and fame on a larger scale with films - Prasoon Joshi (lyricist), Balki ( Cheeni Kum, Paa), Rakeysh Mehra ( Aks, Rang De Basanti, Delhi 6), Jaideep Sahni (scriptwriter) and Rensil D’Silva ( Kurbaan) among others.īut looking only at advertising is obviously not the answer to creative control.
When was the last time you heard a jingle? All of them have a story to tell with songs, dances, music or anecdotes. Think of the ad films for Del Monte sauces, Idea Cellular and Tanishq Jewellery among dozens of others. Watching an ad these days is as good as watching a film. It forces the discipline of crispness in storytelling. My instinctive answer would be to point to ad film-making. Why it happens is anybody’s guess - compromises, budget constraints, release pressure or plain self-indulgence. For each of them, there are an equal number of good films that simply lost direction - Rocket Singh-Salesman of the Year, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, Ghajni and (at the risk of getting hate mail) Aamir as some of the recent examples. This is about those rare treats, a good film in your own language and milieu that you are proud to say you watched - films such as Omkara, Kaminey, Apharan, A Wednesday to name a few. This is about losing creative control just when the audience trusts you to have it fully. According to people in the trade, Rajneeti, in spite of its mammoth Rs 64 crore budget, will manage to make money for both producers and for the distributor, UTV Movies. This is not about the success or failure of a film. This is very disappointing coming from the man, Prakash Jha, who has given Hindi cinema some really good films such as, Mrityudand, Gangaajal and Apharan, the last being a personal favourite. The hurry to wrap up the film is evident.
For a film that spends so much effort establishing each character, the last half hour has a large number of twists, including the deaths of key characters none of which is explained. Some of the scenes and situations are embarrassingly contrived - like the one where the mother tells her illegitimate son, played by Ajay Devgan, to come home.
By half-time you are into this story of two brothers, and their siblings, and their squabble for the chief minister’s chair in an unnamed North Indian state.Īfter the interval, the whole thing falls apart. The casting is a bit off and the make up is bad in patches, but these are minor flaws. As events unfold, you marvel at how well the real and contrived complexities of politics have been meshed with the Mahabharata. The film, a political family saga, pulls you into a vortex of greed and power from the word go.