Laugh riot for the right reasons, across all seasons

Kundan Shah’s Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron (Never mind, mates!) 1983

Calling this NFDC-sponsored, anti-establishment satirical masterpiece a laugh riot is rather unfair given its sterling quality of dark humour, a rarity for Indian cinema, mainstream or offbeat. All the same, it is an approximately apt description for an out-and-out entertainer in a league of its own which instinctively charms every audience type.

Talking in terms of two extremes, there’s a big load of over-the-top slapstick for those who love belly laughs while popping corn, and for those who crave for meaning in cinema, the umpteen parallels between the reel and the real are a treasure trove for the keeps.

Among other feats, this flick beautifully hints at the poignant truth of the nation’s unofficial social anthem “Hum Honge Kamyab” (We shall overcome!)?as also the distant dreams that professed priorities like clean water, good roads, sturdy bridges, affordable housing, and corruption-free governance remain to this day.

Way back in 1966, Italian maestro Michelangelo Antonioni made his first English feature ‘Blow-Up’, a psychological thriller about a hedonistic fashion photographer who unintentionally records murder on camera in the course of clicking snaps of a girl in a recreation park.

The idea of this milestone movie was loosely borrowed by the makers of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron for one of their defining scenes where the protagonists accidentally click a murder and invite trouble that eventually spells their doom.

As heroes, they have little to write home about: two starry-eyed shutterbugs keen to make their mark in a marked world run by a well-oiled leviathan mafia we know very well, one that binds criminals across spheres with underhanded goals and aspirations sanctified by the system. Not surprisingly, their bravado makes them marked men in the wrong sense, as the sacrificial lambs to cover for the sacred cows of a two-faced society.

The screenplay is a conscious potpourri – almost a commedia erudita of Italian descent - of black and white caricatures in the name of characters - with their motives underlined and madness overdone but methods sidelined - certainly not just for laughs, but with little objection if the audience thinks otherwise.

The rustic cadences of the film’s dark humour help its cause, unfolding the incongruity and bigotry pervading our lives but steering clear of highlighting them, which is what makes it a great film made with a shoe string budget under INR 10 lacs and the greatest star cast ever assembled, you could call it the Sholay of offbeat cinema…

Naseeruddin Shah and Ravi Baswani as the protagonist photographer duo, Pankaj Kapoor as the shady builder Tarneja, Satish Shah as the city’s corrupt municipal commissioner D’Mello, Om Puri as Ahuja, the perpetually inebriated, well meaning rival of Tarneja, and Bhakti Barve as Shobha, the vulturous editor of the tabloid Khabardar (which literally means ‘watch out’ and implicitly ‘don’t you dare’).?

The support cast and crew were equally epic: Satish Kaushik, Neena Gupta, Deepak Qazir, and Ashok Banthia in bit roles of big import, engaging plot, courtesy of Kundan Shah and Sudhir Mishra, Vidhu Vinod Chopra as the production controller, dialogues by Ranjit Kapoor and Satish Kaushik, music by Vanraj Bhatia, Binod Pradhan’s cinematography, Renu Saluja’s editing, sound by K.S.Ravi, and art-direction by Robin Das.

The nearly 15-minute auditorium scene - a hilariously improvised version of the Draupadi Cheer-Haran episode from the great epic Mahabharata - is a fitting climax for a film of this genre. It subtly ensures poetic justice by downplaying the stature of several characters from the reprehensible episode and smartly reverses the inherently wrong that was made to look right…

…for instance, the morally superior, mace-holding Bhima takes matters into his own hands to the point of insubordination to his more revered brothers Yudhishthira and Arjuna,

the dramatically transformed kuru brothers Duryodhana and Dushasana shed their villainy and stand by Draupadi as her trusted lieutenants,

and the ‘yeh kya ho raha hai’ rant of the original Dhritrashtra is pushed into oblivion as the new avatar ?passes a work-around verdict: that Draupadi is neither a property of Kauravas nor of Pandavas – she belongs to her father Drupad! ?????

Kundan Shah was one of those few filmmakers who are aware of their products’ shortcomings even while the world raves about them. Rather than reel in the effect of the film’s popularity despite the commercial failure, he lamented the fact that his film set a rather low benchmark given the sheer lack of contenders in the said space. For him, his film’s success was a matter for deliberation on the antediluvian state of Indian cinema, not a cause for raucous celebration of his solo effort. ?

Last but not the least, one must applaud the liberal, dissent-friendly socio-political environment of the 80s which allowed a film like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro to be made and released in theatres.

Precisely why this film is vintage stuff, a laugh riot for the right reasons, across all seasons. Do watch it at a device near you…