Don se Don tak…
Things have changed significantly since first Don was made. Not only in terms of story telling or craft of filmmaking but also what cinema stands for in relation to prevalent sense of “right” and “wrong” in the society.
New Don relies on almost the same old plot of a duplicate Don, a police informer, who ends up losing his real identity. His struggle to prove his innocence gradually takes shape of a larger battle between the good and the evil.
Though the plot remains mostly unchanged in the new Don, the few alterations mark a significant departure in terms of moral essence of the narrative. Instead of drawing a parallel to the epical clash between ‘moral’ and ‘immoral’, new Don humanizes the police force as well as the underworld. Not that Don is emblazoned with moral ‘values’, on the contrary police force is shown being equally bereft of it.
The new Don, concentrates on creating a mythology of invincibility. It opens and closes with Don’s proclamation of impossibility of him being caught. Film almost makes this proclamation its theme and reinterprets the old narrative within the boundaries of it.
In the new scheme of things, where Don repeatedly claims his invincibility, it would have been dilution of entire narrative framework to accept his death in the hands of police officer. This is why I believe the final twist becomes necessary that leaves us surprised as we know that what we took for protagonist’s fight to prove his innocence was in fact a trick played by the Don, in order to escape law.
What emerges as the theme of the new Don, is making of a super hero (or anti hero), a grand character, for whom no barrier is insurmountable. Farhan Akhtar is more bothered about the portrayal than it‘s ‘moral’ implications.
If invincibility of Don, is the theme of new version, justice and victory of good seems to be that of the older one. I would say first Don, apart from telling an engaging story also does its best to reemphasize the great epical message of “truth prevails”, however, new Don, puts it’s entire energy in telling a thrilling and engaging story without getting into any moral discourse. By doing so, it makes a statement that Bollywood has matured to get over of epical tradition of storytelling. Second, cinema of our times are situated in a social environment where classical morality drawn from religions virtues has been rendered irrelevant.
All this is achieved through a climactic twist, where we come to know that the innocent Vijay, is actually the real Don. Truth doesn’t prevail in the new Don, rather it’s the theme that rules.
The old Don is also full of religious symbolism. It chooses a cemetery for climax. Our attention is continuously drawn to graves as characters keep falling into them. Religious notion of justice is closely attached to death because justice is meted out to mortals only after death. Graves are transitory abodes so is this world. The day of judgment in a graveyard, isn’t it what the “books” proclaim?
Not only this, the diary that holds the truth is a red one, a red book. And climactic conflict is all about possessing this red diary. This red diary could easily be taken for one of the sacred scriptures, holding “the truth”.
The new Don cares little about moral virtues. The forces of good and evil are equally morally bankrupt. The police office is in fact the mastermind of underworld. Unlike the original Don, where the culprit impersonates the Interpol officer, here the police officer is underworld operative. Hence his chase of Don is driven entirely out of his personal motive. Whereas the old DSP seems charged up with moral courage and a sense of duty.
There are other remarkable differences in terms of storytelling. The old ones puts its stake in the climax. The film strongly builds a climax where all the important characters come together in order to resolve the dramatic crisis. Film is over as soon as the it achieves this climax. Its noteworthy that the new version moves past this climax and ends with an anti climactic twist reemphasizing the mythology of Don, the invincible. However what’s significant is the way the fight takes place in the older version. Despite being a bloody fight, it’s far from being pugnacious; on the contrary the fight is often comical. The gathering of the forces of good and evil is carnivalesque. Though the truth prevails through violence but here violence is not cruel but celebratory, committed out of a sense of moral duty of ‘Karma’, a sense of duty comparable to that of Arjuna in Mahabharata.
If cinema is mirror of the society, we have come of age of our religious traditions of storytelling and symbolism. The new Don is a window to the changing moral environs or at least pretensions of it. Old notions that Cinema should stand for what society ought to be like and films should make a moral statements and inspire people, have had their day and era of unpretentious storytelling has arrived. Without passing any moral judgment on this departure from the earlier position I would say cinema has today become more ‘secular’.
This sacrifice of pretension in favor of storytelling is a welcome trend, however would admit that I still find the old Don more appealing. Not because of its moral posturing but only because I find the old plot more convincing and reflective of social reality. Yes, Farhan has succeeded in doing one scene better than the original, Abitabh’s bland gunshots are certainly no match to Shahrukh’s stylized golf shot. Both of them are equally deadly but if you believe in life post death, the two take different trajectories hence after. And there lies the key difference between the two Dons.
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
- Interesting take Bikas. Didn’t think of the climax of the old Don in the way you have… now that I think of it… yeah… To some extent the old Don too glorifies the anti-hero and the evident couldn’t-care-less attitude of the old Don points to this fact, though I agree that the issue of moral stance and the belief factor in the seventies takes the story to where it eventually went… ditto for the new Don… but it isn’t just about Don, for many other movies reflect the age and attitudes of the times we live in, as has always been the case.
Bikas,
Personally I haven’t been a fan of SRK doing a AB but I wanted to see what Farhan Akhtar comes up after DCH (never actually got around to it). Now, after your take on both the DONs, I think I might just go ahead and have a look.
i finally bit the bullet and added this to my queue after much nagging from sis and mom, as they wanted to watch it.. i admit my curiosity lies in farhan’s treatment as well, as i firmly believe in his talent.. i’m still gonna cringe at khaike paan however.. i just know it %-(
Whoa!!! This is amazing. I was quite lazy in composing my thoughts for public consumption – the intention was there but I could have used some motivation though – and I have to say, guys, I felt exactly the same as Bikas.
Confession: Thanks to Sumeet’s review, I haven’t dared watching the new Don until after Christmas. Biwi, bahen, saale saab aur bhanja… sab ne bola dekhenge, tho dekhna hi padaa – needless to say that a rerun of the original Don followed – and I must admit that I liked the new ending, which in principle, justifies the legend. Nabbing Don is not only difficult; it’s just impossible.
WTF is my problem #1: The movie is titled Don – in both the cases. However, the original is not a movie about Don – it is a movie about a simpleton, one Vijay, who miraculously makebelieves everyone that he is Don. But since Don is dead in the first half hour, doesn’t it make the original title a misnomer? This bug’s been fixed the second time – good for you, Farhan.
WTF is my problem #2: The scenes put together by Farhan are flashy, however they feel kind of disjointed. May be it’s the drive to do things differently – to digitally goldplate everything – that had him going crazy with unreal effects. Whatever were his motives be, they curdled the concoction. The overall effect is as clever as an embalmer’s masterpiece – cosmetic and pleasant yet unwholesome and lifeless.
WTF is everyones’ problem: Heaven knows what made Akthar Jr. shoot THE song the way it was shot. That is to have SRK – who we later realize is not Vijay – sing “chhora Ganga kinare wala…“. It is an unpardonable mistake. “Sacrilege” as my friend Baldi would furiously say.
Postmortem aka “the routine pseudo intellectual crap which is usually camouflaged under the innocuous tag line: my 2 cents”: Changing times demand change in characterization. In the multicolored world of Gen Y movies, monochromatic Grey is the macho color of the day; goody two shoes do not always win – and vice versa – bye bye black and white. I will watch a Don-2 if it ever gets made.
My 2 cents ;)