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…
*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
Tags: angaar, ankush, arjun, dhaar, mashaal, mere apne, shiva, tezaab
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
Shiva poster looks uber cool.:)
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.
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….
shiva is the best of the lot
I will say it’s RGV’s best movie
what abt Gardish :-?
Y did satya not feature in the list :-?
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.
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?
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.
Which movie is Dhaar,never heard of it
Shailesh,
In my opinion, the cycle stand scene from Shiva is a landmark one. And what about Pratighaat?
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.
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.
PS : “Satya” refered above is the Tamil Original of Arjun staring Kamal Hassan and Amla
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….
inca, definitely u can remember the song.
good memory.
:d/:d/:d/:d/
Karthik: You are mistaken. Satya was a remake of Arjun and not vice versa.
Ghulam was OK OK .. not so great …
nice post and what a coincidence, I was watching ‘Mere Apne’ just now
Agree with Anand, Gardish deserves a mention.
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
add all Vishal Bhardwaj’s movies to that! Polished yet RAW… none of the plasticity that gets passed off as refinement, “gloss”, or “polished”
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.
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
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
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.
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?
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 :(
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
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..
Ishrat Ali – Lambu Atta :d
alone, u spot on. from ur list i have seen Game, naamcheen (aditya pancholi), hafta bandh and pratighaat.
thanks for adding the list
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.
Well I was reminiscing a song from Angaar when I stumbled upon this blog. The song was called
“mushkil mein hai kon kissi ka samjho is raaz ko
lekar apna naam kabhi tum khud ko awaaz do”
it had a brilliant flute music interspersed throughout the song.
Shiva was one of the best mentioned so far, remember the sequence when Amla is kidnapped and there is a car chase this guy makes a call and the phone dial changes into wheel of the car
BTW that song goes like this:
botany chodenge matinee dekhege
hai kya khayal boliye
history lecture hai mystery picture hai
dono mein vote dijiye
botany lesson hai bore jaani
history murdon ki hai kahani
geeton ki fighton ki film dekho
break dance disco dance mil ke naacho
jagde jade jagde jagde jaam
I can state the entire song here, it is one of my fav sons
Mashal and Arjun were good too. The other’s movie’s like Satya, Omkara are a league apart. Techinally well done with brill performances.
I remember Gardish, and also the song “shaam ko milna hai hotel me ladki se, yaaron mujhe bas aaj bachalo paiso ki kadki se”.
Pooja, the flute is more prominent in another Angaar song: “Idhar dekho, udhar dekho, humi hum hai, jidhar dekho”, which is not a bad song. But not better than “Mushkil mein hai” (whatever happened to SPB?)
Check out the songs here: http://www.musicindiaonline.com/music/hindi_bollywood/s/movie_name.8694/