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RAWNESS IN HINDI MOVIES

RAWNESS IN HINDI MOVIES

There were movies in 80s and early 90s which can be defined as rough movies. These films had rawness in their treatment. Those movies were not sophisticated, not stylish. Here director does not want to impress you by stylish action, weared camera angles, soft music…but had only story, action & dialogues.

Story is situated mainly Mumbai or small town- …. The hero and his team of unemployed youth, neglected by society….one gang leader/politician… gang war…something happens…hero and his team/family is in trouble…they fight against system… and at the end they go to jail or return back to social life.

There were some particular qualities/symptoms of these movies like…

Here protagonists mainly fight with hockey sticks, talwar, rampuri chakoos and cycle chains…and in rare case revolver…

They live in the world of majdoors, workers, bekaars, scooters, union leaders, goons, maruti omnis, fiats, jeeps, chai ki dukan, canteens…

Love between hero and heroine happens in local garden/terraces or local festivals… Here hero does not jump to Switzerland for singing a song. Heroine should be club dancer/journalist/victim.

Hero has just two pairs of jeans, chappals, and 4 shirts to wear. He does not shave regularly. Most of his friends and enemies have beard on regular basis.

His home should be in chawl or basti. No big havelis, homes, designer clothes, hotels, exotic locations…just real locations…

Hero’s father should be teacher, clerk or mill worker. Sister should be in college and mother should be average indian housewife.

Main protagonists are mainly unemployed and doing maardhaad type of activities but having golden hearts. They can die for friends also.

Hero and his friends mostly play caroms or cards. They pass their whole day on chai ki dukaan or canteen.

Following scenes are regularly seen in these type of movies…
People running on streets with talwaars in hands…
Mostly Eastman colour/dark look…
Action scenes in godwon or bar of villain
Song of hero’ s team on their status and nation.

For long time we have not seen these types of movies. Mansoor Khan tried to bring back that old magic of street fights and gangs in Josh (Eagle and Bichchoo)…but more style and less rawness/roughness and honesty in characters spoiled the whole idea.

Right now I can remember some movies/ characters and scenes…

ankush1.jpg

arjun.jpg

shiva3.jpg

*Mere Apne- Chhenu and Shyam…superb song ”haal chaal theek thaak hai”… dialogue ”shyam se kehna chhenu aaya tha”
*Arjun- Remember chowgle saab…the famous umbrella action scene.
*Tezaab- Munna, Babban and Lautiya pathaan. The dandiya action sequence where munna beats gang of Mukut Bihari “tum logo me se Mukut bihari kaun hai ?”
*Ankush –Remember that chikuvadi ke ladke and their gangs. The action in Ganpati festival
* Shiva- Bhavani and his goons….whole cycle chain action sequence in college and the scene when one of the friend of Shiva is chased by goons of Bhavani.
* Angaar- the volleyball game in chawl
* Mashaal- some part. before anil kapoor goes for study. the song” footpathon ke hum rehne vaalen”
* Dhaar- goons running on streets with Swords in their hands.

-Shailesh Limbachiya

32 Responses to “RAWNESS IN HINDI MOVIES”

  1. Abhijit on March 26th, 2008 11:20 pm

    Shiva poster looks uber cool.:)

  2. Ratnakar on March 27th, 2008 1:20 am

    I think E.Nivas tried to bring that raw look back with Dum, but the movie was a failure at BO. Sunny Deol’s Ziddi was a big hit in that genre, but Salakhen was a dud. And Sunny later became more busy fighting terrorists and Pakistan. But honestly i miss that hard hitting intensity and rawness of an Arjun, Ghatak or Tezaab.
    Mashaal seriously was one of Yash Chopra’s best movies, but it failure meant he stuck to the Swiss-chiffon genre.

  3. gaurang on March 27th, 2008 1:47 am

    oh man!! angaar was awesome …. it had powerhouse performances from kader khan nana patekar and jackie shroff…. The scene when jackie kills one of kader khans son is raw ai its best….. jackie se yaad aya….gardish…whoa priyadarshan’s one the better hindi movies….

  4. Sudeep on March 27th, 2008 1:56 am

    shiva is the best of the lot
    I will say it’s RGV’s best movie

  5. Anand Kadam on March 27th, 2008 2:16 am

    what abt Gardish :-?

  6. mindtentative on March 27th, 2008 2:20 am

    Y did satya not feature in the list :-?

  7. Shailesh Limbachiya. on March 27th, 2008 2:25 am

    as per my opinion, Satya should not be added because it was technically brilliant and was concentrated on underworld. while movies i am mentioning are not concentrated on technical brilliance.
    i don’t recall much about Gardish.

  8. mindtentative on March 27th, 2008 3:18 am

    But then Siva is also technically great. I mentioned Satya for the range of raw emotions the charecters protrayed on screen. Manoj Bajpai, Saurabh Shukla’s charecters for exapmle are your kind of ruffians. wot say? But in a lighter vien, we conveniently forgot ‘D’ from the RGV stable. The hero, a constable’s son and the heroine a heroine on reel :)
    Wots your opinion on Ghulam?

  9. Shailesh Limbachiya. on March 27th, 2008 3:25 am

    Ghulam was stylised version of parinda. also hero is stylish, wearing good clothes, roaming on bike.

    The films i m talking about have not great packaging. they had raw contents. mix of good and bad. like they had bad songs and bad technicalities but overall they had appeal which attracts us. Satya is above these movies. it was almost perfect.

  10. Vikram on March 27th, 2008 3:44 am

    Which movie is Dhaar,never heard of it

  11. Inca on March 27th, 2008 3:45 am

    Shailesh,

    In my opinion, the cycle stand scene from Shiva is a landmark one. And what about Pratighaat?

  12. Shailesh Limbachiya. on March 27th, 2008 4:56 am

    Even i could not find any link about Dhaar.
    but i have seen it in 1992. starring jeet upendra and dipak shirkey. it was about unemployed youth and gangs. it had a song which i used to like “shaam ko milna hai hotel me ladki se, yaaron mujhe bas aaj bachalo paiso ki kadki se”.

    Pratighaat can be added in this list.
    so N. Chandra was master in these kind of movies like Ankush, Tezaab and Pratighaat.

  13. Karthik Krishnan on March 27th, 2008 5:00 am

    I think of the lot the movie that best describes the content of the post is Mere Apne. Not a strand out of place. Mashaal had an explosive first half and a cinematic second half. Arjun had “Satya” to thank for most of the content and delivery. Shiva would be my choice for te second best fit on the post. Mind you I am merely listing the correlation with the post.

  14. Karthik Krishnan on March 27th, 2008 5:01 am

    PS : “Satya” refered above is the Tamil Original of Arjun staring Kamal Hassan and Amla

  15. Inca on March 27th, 2008 5:06 am

    Shailesh @ 12,

    Oh I remeber that song, and the picturisation vaguely.

    It was based on “Tarzan Boy” with that famous refrain - Ohooooo oh ohooo ohoooooo….

  16. Shailesh Limbachiya. on March 27th, 2008 5:24 am

    inca, definitely u can remember the song.
    good memory.
    :d/:d/:d/:d/

  17. Aditya Pant on March 27th, 2008 5:49 am

    Karthik: You are mistaken. Satya was a remake of Arjun and not vice versa.

  18. Avi on March 27th, 2008 6:03 am

    Ghulam was OK OK .. not so great …

  19. Neeraja on March 27th, 2008 8:03 am

    nice post and what a coincidence, I was watching ‘Mere Apne’ just now :)
    Agree with Anand, Gardish deserves a mention.

  20. Santosh Kumar T K on March 27th, 2008 8:45 am

    As oxymoronic as it sounds,my take is that Satya (1998 RGV), Dil Se, Shiva (1990 RGV Telugu) Omkara (2006 VB) are some of the rawest movies you could get inspite of all the technical brilliance.some raw in their emotion, some in their execution. Polished yet RAW… quite different from the 80s raw which were raw raw. In fact all Maniratnam’s movies are Polished Raw :d

  21. Santosh Kumar T K on March 27th, 2008 8:48 am

    add all Vishal Bhardwaj’s movies to that! Polished yet RAW… none of the plasticity that gets passed off as refinement, “gloss”, or “polished”

  22. Pratik on March 27th, 2008 8:52 am

    I remember Angaar had a fight sequence in the chawl between Jackie and Mazhar Khan (I think he kills Mazhar by the end of it) which had no background music. It was just dhishum, dhaam, groans and sound effects. Pretty neat.

  23. Santosh Kumar T K on March 27th, 2008 8:54 am

    and Dude!

    the chase scenes (the goons chasing Shiva and his niece) through the lanes of Hyderabad(Begumpet?) and the one you mentioned; Shiva’s friend being chased by the goons in open deserted area deserve a special post…

    Steadicam in Indian cinema has never rocked better.
    PERIOD

  24. Vinayak on March 27th, 2008 10:18 am

    Does anyone remember the brilliant dream sequence from Shiva?
    Shiva gets sweet talked, by his girlfriend and unshaven friend, to go to the movies. And them a routine song n dance inside the dream sequence is given a new meaning by Ramu ( I am not talking about the new Ramu, anyone seen Oh Darling Yeh Hai India

  25. Nitin Gupta on March 27th, 2008 11:19 pm

    Although lifted from Van Dammer’s cyborg, I love the chase sequences in Sanjay Dutt’s Sadak. It was a rawish movie, but bigger budget and themed than would fit the spirit of this post.

  26. Inca on March 27th, 2008 11:27 pm

    Vinayak @ 24,

    Sundaram - father of Prabhu Deva and Raju was the choreographer for Shiva. He was the real baap of all choreographers.

    Talking of Shiva, remember

    Jaagidi Jaagidi

    Jaagidi Jaagidi Jum?

  27. ravi on March 28th, 2008 6:16 am

    some other movies come to mind

    mazhar khan’s gang - had a lot of raw scenes. but had a lot of raw melodrama too between nana patekar and his mother which kind of got onto my nerves.

    krantiveer - crap movie but well it was raw

    my mind is failing me right now :(

  28. Vinayak on March 28th, 2008 7:32 am

    Inca,
    Thanks for the info.

    Here is the song I was talking about

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3pET9WOgfQ

    http://www.earthmusic.net/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/nuts/search.cgi?song=aala+re+aala+govinda+aala

    Unbelievable it say’s here that the hindi lyrics were by Majrooh Sultanpuri

  29. Alone on March 28th, 2008 9:28 am

    Shailesh,

    I know exactly what kind of movies you talking about… These were called the BHAIGIRI movies of the 80’s and 90’s..

    Some of them missed by you and i dont know if anyone has seen these movies.. sab B & C grade hai..movie list strictly of 80’s and 90’s..Some of them are inspired by real life character’s..

    1. HAFTA BAND
    2. NAMCHEEN
    3. GAME
    4. BOMBAY WAR ( this was E grade i guess)
    5. PRATIGHAT
    6. KAAL CHAKRA ( This one had some Khatarnak Bol Bacchan between Ishrat Ali and Sadashiv Amrapurkar)

    Gardish and Angaar were dramatic and filmy.. Nice movies i agree..

  30. axw11 on March 28th, 2008 11:58 am

    Ishrat Ali - Lambu Atta :d

  31. Shailesh Limbachiya. on March 28th, 2008 8:52 pm

    alone, u spot on. from ur list i have seen Game, naamcheen (aditya pancholi), hafta bandh and pratighaat.
    thanks for adding the list

  32. Tushar on April 3rd, 2008 2:53 am

    that kind of rawness is bygone stuff now, as most films have production houses stalking every ‘raw’ instinct of the film maker. and whatever does make it, is passed off as ’shoddy’. last thing i can remember was vaastav. nothing to the measure of an angaar or gardish though.
    an important article.

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