Dhoop Versus Heroes: When the war is over
iView Author: Dr.Mandar V. Bichu (Sharjah/UAE)
Email: drmandarvb [at] yahoo.com
Dhoop Versus Heroes: When the war is over
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What happens when the guns finally fall silent on the war-front? What happens when the widely televised ceremony of ‘national leaders’(!) laying wreaths on tricolor-draped coffins is over? What happens to the grieving families of the soldiers who laid their lives for the nation?
Dhoop and Heroes are two movies worth watching for the Bollywood’s take on these prickly issues, which most of us conveniently sweep under the carpet once the urgency and emergency of the wars and terror-dramas is over! Of course, these two takes are as different as chalk and cheese in their portrayals and they also suffer from the typical Bollywoodian hangover!
Synopsis:
Dhoop
Year: 2003
Director: Ashwni Chaudhari
Cast: Sanjay Suri, Gul Panang, Om Puri, Revathi
Dhoop is based on a real-life-story of a Kargil-hero Captain Anuj Nair. The film of course, changes the names and what we see first is a happy family- a full-of-life armyman (Sanjay Suri), his lovely fianc'©e (Gul Panang), his elderly professor father (Om Puri) and his librarian mother (Revathi). Then comes the martyrdom with its ‘perks’ like the media-intrusion, state funeral and a Mahaveer Chakra-decoration! The devastated family members try to come to terms with their lives while the world moves on. As a Govt. ‘appreciation’ of the martyrdom, the father is offered a petrol pump! After the initial hesitation, he accepts that offer, just to make it into his son’s lasting memory. But with countless permissions, licenses and NOCs to be taken from various Govt. departments, the project soon turns into a battlefield as the determined father has to encounter corrupt officials at every step!
Heroes
Year: 2008
Director: Samir Karnik
Cast: Salman Khan, Sunny Deol, Dino Morea, Bobby Deol, Sahil Khan
To get their film-institute graduation degree, these two vagabonds (Sohail Khan, Vatsal Seth ) decide to make a film- ‘Why not to join Indian army’! To help them out in this project, a senior war-journalist (an emaciated looking Mohnish Behl) then gives them three letters which are to be delivered to three martyred soldiers’ (played by Salman Khan, Bobby Deol and Dino Morea) homes. This mission then takes these youngsters on a nation-wide journey, which offers them a glimpse into the lives and philosophies of Indian soldiers and their families and in the process, invokes in them a strong sense of duty and nationalistic pride!
Review:
The two films practically represent the two ends of the spectrum. Ashwani Chaudhari’s Dhoop takes a dark, stark and reality-based stance that in the real world, nobody gives a damn to martyrdom once the war is over and even to get what is rightfully theirs, the soldiers’ family members have to fight the corrupt system. Whereas Samir Karnik’s Heroes in the typically Bollywood way tries to gloss over the soldier’s ‘Pride’, rather than ‘Prejudice’ against them, once the war is over!
Cinematically both the films fall way short of expectations. Dhoop tries to pose as a serious, intellectual, ‘parallel’ film but still cannot resist the temptation of placing needless romantic scenes for commercial reasons. Labored pace, slack editing and unnecessary (even though they are melodious!) songs hinder this film from rising above average. But heartfelt performances from Om Puri and Revathi make this film worthwhile. Revathi’s nervous breakdown after losing her only son and Om Puri’s determined fight against corruption and his struggle to keep his martyred son’s legacy alive provide some of the poignant moments on screen.
Let’s come to Heroes. A tale of rich spoilt youngsters learning about patriotism through their film-project. Isn’t director Samir Karnik clearly taking a leaf out of Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra’s sensational Rang De Basanti here? But RDB could balance its mainstream and serious elements in effective, expressive and intelligent way. Heroes in contrast fails miserably in that context thanks to its copious melodrama and ‘masala’. The initial bawdy college/bedroom/bathroom comedy, a wheel-chair-bound Sunny Deol’s totally over-the-top club- fight scene and most of the songs from the film simply suck! The director had impressed earlier in Nanhe Jaisalmer but the subtle sensitivity he showed in that likeable film surfaces only in flashes in this film. The screenplay is loose and the character development is unconvincing.
Soldier’s young widow (Preity Zinta) runs a tractor in the fields and talks of pending loan installments. That is supposed to tell us of her hardships. Nowhere in the film her inner pain ever comes through! The physically handicapped ex-air-force pilot (Sunny Deol), who despite losing both legs and his brother in war still keeps pining for the battlefield glory and the elderly civilian father (Mithun Chakravarty) resentful of his martyred soldier-son for leaving him behind to face a lonely miserable life are somewhat better written characters. But needless frivolity surfaces every now and then to ruin the effect. For example, as his hot girl-friend walks into the night-club, a wheel-chair-bound Sunny Deol tells the youngsters with a wink: ‘Don’t worry! Everything above my legs works fine’! C’mon guys, in films like Masti or Dostana, this kind of humor can work, here it seems like plain junk! Still there are a few moving, lump-in-throat screen moments in Heroes that partially realize the film’s potential.
But I feel that despite all its glaring flaws, a film like Heroes in its entertainer-garb is perhaps a better bet than a serious but boringly slow semi-commercial Dhoop to draw the masses’ attention towards the none-too-happy plight of Indian soldiers and their near and dear ones! When it comes to Indian audiences, ‘Pride’ always seems to work better than ‘Prejudice’!
Tags: dhoop, Heros, Mithun Chakraborty, Preity Zinta, sunny deol
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
“But I feel that despite all its glaring flaws, a film like Heroes in its entertainer-garb is perhaps a better bet than a serious but boringly slow semi-commercial Dhoop to draw the masses’ ”
You really sure? I have seen both and can see Dhoop many more times than heroes.. One thing that you have not compared is the budget and resources available to both the films… one was made on a shoestring budget, while other one despite have heart at the right place was a waste of money.
Even after so many years I do go back to Dhoop’s fantastic music, while heroes was nothing worth keeping for long. Dhoop was a brave attempt and any day a better film than heroes.