Halla Bol Review: Conscience, Goregaon-Style!
[This is a re-posting of a review originally posted elsewhere, on PFC, on January 14, 2008 at 8:04 pm]
Street Theatre practitioner, & Cinema-Hero-aspirant, Ashfaque (AjayDevgan) has just managed to get the go-ahead from his father, to chase his heroic dream in Bombay. He meets the ladylove of his life, Sneha (VidyaBalan), in a farewell-walk in the environs of a Goregaoned small-town India (a Cinecitta-like abode of Bollywood filmmaking called FilmCity). While Sneha has been fully supportive of Ashfaque’s dreams, she still doesn’t resist herself from asking the unfair question of what he would choose if he were to, between her and his acting career. Ashfaque relents honesty, with the fair reply of choosing his acting career. The Ashfaques have become even more endearing to the Snehas, & Shalinis, of the world. Sneha has just elected herself an Amoural Martyr, an equivalent of the much-celebrated male of the species – the Unrequited Lover!
Ashfaque makes it in Bombay, as soon as he’s over & done-with the much-abused struggle-period. He’s now taken-on his christened name of Sameer Khan – reversing the trend of his predecessors having to mute their Khan surnames. Rightly so as there is wisdom in adopting one, if you aren’t already a Khan! Sameer Khan is forcefully led by his Sneha, into a cinema-hall that’s playing his debut film as a Hero, to gauge audience reaction first-hand. During the film-in-the-film’s climax the hall explodes into celebrating their Hero. Sameer Khan the Star has arrived, & he acknowledges the same with a squeeze of his hand that’s held by Sneha. Director Rajkumar Santoshi has triumphed over his debacles of the recent forgettable past, with this superlative moment! After this said moment in the film, Sneha (as played by VidyaBalan) evokes tears and lumped throats – in a reminder of her intense feeling of affection – everytime she makes even as much as her sheer appearance, in any corner of the frame. Such is the persuasive (AKA manipulative) power of our beloved medium! Rajkumar Santoshi has, by now, garnered an able ally that would appeal-to/represent the protagonist’s, & our own, conscience.
Halla Bol opens a few years after the afore-mentioned flashed-back sequences. Sameer Khan is a successful star now – a bonafide who’s had Hits & the Misses, who’s insecure to the extent of worrying about non-entities (if anybody, it’s today’s non-entity that can retire a reigning star!), who’s maintained a respectable mien of Wife (Sneha) & Kid while accepting sexual favors which are due him irrespective, & who’s a confirmed master at juggling his dates for projects that he deems worthy of his time.
It’s one of those juggle nights at a private-party-in-a-public-place, that’s pregnant with seeds that could sprout a prick up his conscience. A theatre-enthusiast-girl who could, very well, have turned up on his casting couch if she were not to be brutally murdered (by rich-kids that are going-through their corrupt-world swearing-in), awakens the Ashfaque of yore in Sameer Khan, best-captured by Sameer Khan/Ashfaque himself later in the film when articulating (in exclamations) his Yeh Main Nahin Best Actor Award Acceptance Speech, looking perplexed at a huge cut-out of his mirror-self –
I am NOT this person! It is our faces that bear resemblance! I don’t HAVE what he does! Unlike him, I can do nothing! The Award’s his, but handed-over to me! Yeh Main Nahin! Then who am I? I really have to think about it!
The rest of the film chronicles the protagonist’s attempt, & success, in redeeming himself, & in the process awakening many more beings that could turnout to be reasonable & responsible-enough, only if they were to confront their own conscience. He goes back on his earlier pretense of not being present at the atrocity-scene, turns approver against the perpetrators’ crime, gets maligned for the daring, gets to literally piss on the villain’s Persian Carpet, gets applauded by incumbent-wife Sneha for displaying ‘Balls’, gets hurt physically & meta-physically for his crusades, procures generous help from Mentor Sidhu, & ultimately, in an hurried fashion, as Karma wills, triumphs over Evil.
Amongst other inside asides, Halla Bol has AjayDevgan portraying, chronologically, Shahrukh Khan (through theatre dalliance, Superstar crowning, endorsements for weddings/products), Aamir Khan (a stray cry for the Narmada Valley) & Safdar Hashmi (Theatre Activist, & unfortunate martyrdom) while engaging with a Jessica Lall re-enactment of an awakener. While AjayDevgan pulls off the Quadra-partite biographical inflection in his performance with surprising élan, it is the film’s second conscience of Pankaj Kapur as Sidhu that helps the convergence between the identities the protagonist wills to juggle right. In a rare & for-long-elusive charismatic role, Pankaj Kapur plays the twice-outlawed Sidhu – An Outlaw Dacoit in the Chambal region &, in his reformation, an Outlaw Theatre Activist-Exponent who provides conducive attraction for Actors & Activists alike, through his street-theatre group that Ashfaque spent his formative years at, & earns redemption through; A Dickensian secret benefactor who fills-in wherever the prodigal son (Ashfaque/Sameer Khan) falls short in his crusade.
One in every five Tamil films, & a few Chiranjeevi-Telugus, is a righteous crusade that sides itself with the average-Joe who ends up belling the feline-system. Halla Bol clues us in understanding the comparative failure of similarly-themed Yuva over an AamirKhan-powered Rang De Basanti; the South & the North of India are, probably, two very different Indias, as apart from each other in their cinema-reception as, say, they are in their food habits.
Rajkumar Santoshi employs confident control over the medium, that’s best evoked in the filming of the songs – an item number constructed almost entirely with the item girl’s sober close-ups, a couple of plural-religious transcendent evocations that frame the chanteurs-messengers alternatively cut with the protagonists’ intent-makings in slo-mo.
As far as meetingorial classification of movies goes, this is a Salim-Javed meets Shankar that has already met a certain Rajkumar Santoshi! Bravo Raju (Santoshi), for kicking-off the year with an auspiciously conscientious entertainer, & for being vociferous in your deriding the ‘DVD filmmakers’ that’s been choking Bollywood!
Tags: PFCRonin
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Onir
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Pankaj Advani
Revathy
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i wonder if i saw the same film you have reviewed here.
the kaadar khan style melodramatic dialogs seem at least twenty years old. i certainly wish i had taken ear plugs along because they were delivered by the satellite characters as if there were no microphones at all (look again at the scene when ashfaq has stolen all the money from his dad’s wallet, and you will know exactly what i am saying. the audience winced at the pitch!)
maybe you did not hear the audience laugh outright at the ‘balls’ dialog. but it has ruined cricket commentary for me for ever!
and it seems completely daft for a huge established star to spout those ‘is that really me’ type dialog. for his first award maybe, but then have you seen the newcomers lately? one film wonders have more confidence than that speech.
enough has been written about the incongruity of the villains and their incongruous clothes, but did no one notice the clothes a big star wife was wearing? she wore clothes a gauri khan would not allow her maid to wear.
i wanted halla bol to be a good film, as we all saw merit in linking street theater in real life to the film, but like i said, everything about the script seems dated. there’s no mention of the net, rehabilitated dacoits is news that’s more than twenty year old. also when a film tries to tackle everything about everyone (stars are unfaithful, they turn into momentary activists, they dance at shaadis, they endorse products… yada yada), it ends up being a caricature and it was pathetic to see even villains who were not really villainous. every issue is tackled on a very simplistic, superficial level.
did you see the poor girl making a dramatic plea before being shot…the chaps who ask her out on a date looked too stupid to create any kind of terror. the ambassador car in parinda has more presence than the two boys. prem chopra tearing at a blouse would bring out a reaction. those two boys look like they would win paan spitting contest than rape anyone. more like the roadside romeos rather than bad ass sons of a politician and a liquor baron.
since i am nitpicking, the very progressive muslim friend sitting next to me was surprised at the lack of servants in the mega star’s house and an inclusion of a life size buddha in the living room.
i know films are about suspending disbelief, i drowned mine in many cups of coffee at the multiplex. thank god for the samosas.
Good ones all, Manisha.
And the scene where a two-penny nurse is reading a magazine nonchalantly in a hospital room, giving two hoots to a reigning superstar sitting in front of her.
Just what kind of writing is this?
when i watch no smoking first time i think its ok.but in second time its good but now its gr8..wht you think guys…:)>-
…….i think it is greatest. i am scared to watch it again it may become ‘all time classic’