Sarkar and the Not Happening Raj!
Sarkar Raj
Everyone has a mouth, so mutterings will materialize. Just don’t want my mouth to do the job of my lower orifice. So cautiously, but with full belief, I write. Sarkar Raj is a good film. Its however, nowhere near greatness that it could have achieved. The justifying and obvious ending is one reason. The ‘Coen brothers’ inspired killer, but in this case the almost industrious ease with which he materialises is another. The entire dissipation and disappearance of society is another. The obvious ‘Nagre’s families’ deaths and the mindlessness of it just to enhance the audience’s sense of shock is yet another. To cut to the chase.
2 years have passed. From Sarkar sr. we hear on his birthday that Sarkar jr. has beaten him and his career graph with sheer audacity, industriousness and resilience. We see Abhishek having become harder, meaner and more Sun Tzu/ Vijay Dina Nath Chavan in his approach to life and death. The obvious decline of morality and the downward slope. The obviousness of this is what starts to gall one. Abhishek has become Subhash Nagre II. With a kernel of his own thoughts wound tight in his fathers claustrophobic teachings. And so we have nothing new to learn from Abhishek other than the re rendering of his fathers thoughts. No character growth here.
Then we have such a ridiculously silly antagonist, a master charlatan thrown in which is revealed at the end that it’s like ‘Man! the Nagre’s were the stupidest people’. Why this master tactician didn’t do the needful many years before….? Its not that he was on a junket. He is obviously raised to be hurled down but with such an anticlimactic obviousness? From the time that Sarkar mentions that everyone was but a ‘mohra’, the surprise was over. I mean who else is left in the damn film. The reveal could have happened face to face with the antagonist, thereby creating the shock the audience wanted. Ditto with the reveal of the antagonist’s sponsored king-to-be who lies dead.
What a convoluted plot was planned and penned by RGV to create Sarkar Raj and to go into a spate of unhindered violence and callous uncensored darkness. And what a spiel on ‘the curse of the fathers visits the sons’ from Nagre’s mouth. What happened to his steadfastness to doing what he considered right? The paradoxes can’t be covered and in the end Aishwarya’s obvious role and the call for ‘cheeku’ when his grandfather has just finished ruing his role in his own sons death is just so unjustified. Where is the strength and the core of the story. Yeah it leaves you saying AH! A Sequel… and? Figure telling a story like this, tough as it is in the making, is about justification of life. It should follow its grammar. In this case there is a delivery of the thrills and shocks but no continuing threads and closure. So you’re wound taut in the story telling and the ghastly protracted and elongated end just doesn’t take the film to that elusive higher slope. Yeah its still a goodish film, but man…… it could have been great!! But maybe the story teller never wanted to traverse that higher slope!!
The Happening
Can a film maker, nay, a story teller figure that he’s losing the plot? Does he ever figure that he is now telling tales with no head or tail? Who keeps him rooted? How in God’s name should he realize, given that the world of 6 billion people is subjective, and that the film maker stands alone, and that his belief in himself and his story is all he’s got to vouch for?? Here’s a thought, just a throw in the dark. When he works so hard to deliver the same chills and tries doubly hard to justify his uniqueness!!
And that is The Happening! With thrills and horror its unfortunately ALWAYS the end that joins the dots and makes the audience climax in wonderment. So, M. Night Shyamalan through Mark Wahlberg sets up the story of the damn bees disappearing from some damn place and the fact that most things in the world are in hindsight justified by science. But truthfully science and the rest of us have no answers to some questions!! Set up complete… film dead!!
When did he ever over justify that dead people walk around. And don’t know it. 6th sense was as far fetched as plants talking to each other. But the plot moved and the end just elevated it to greatness!! When did he over justify that for a superhero, or an unbreakable person is the villain/ broken person(metaphorically and realistically) in the case of Unbreakable. Cut to The Happening!! And its large scale justification again and again and again! Yes, the opening is awesome, the deaths are wonderfully orchestrated by a master story teller even in its spine chilling grotesqueness. And then the justification to the audience to buy into this film is the undoing of it.
Look, if the story’s subject is so bloody far fetched, either let us buy into it through a more subtle puppeteer-ing or DON’T tread the territory. Because the brilliance in bits is the undoing in the whole!! Even more so when its MNS!! If there was no uniformity, of style and PLOT other than of chills being delivered, in story telling in the first 2 MNS films, why is he so hell bent in cloistering the damn protagonists and then purging the story out of us since the last 4 films?? Further, the bloody end is completely D-uh!! Join the first dot to the last and believe the story has found a resolution. Or believe that the justifications have helped us buy the films basic plot. Or what in God’s name was Happening?? And why?? And how did the deaths and the happening end?? Why? Argggghhh! It just ain’t happening. Like this article!!
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
its not happening at all!!! it was what the fuck is happening??? n how?? its only bcz of utv that it happend kya ? mr wahlberg joined the dots too easily. bcz he is a science teacher. guess i need to go back to my science textbooks to figure out the easy connection. but the funniest is the love conquers all funda in the end!!! MNS -i m done. looks like he is just one film wonder.
Sarkar Raj is already a big hit.
RGV has sent collections of 1 week to Big B…he writes on his blog…
Gross All India above 32cr.
Adding overseas which was sold for 8cr and the satellite for 14cr, the total shall be around 52cr. That is in 1 week.
Mumbai first week approx 9cr … Sarkar 1, was 3cr../ Delhi 4cr
@krishn
D-uh??
y RGV ll send false figure 2 big b? nd y big b ll publish false collection?
they ve big names nd ll not play with their images…
there is no reason 2 doubt the collection…
there was no big film nd it was big release after 1 month peaceful month…
box office is king nd rgv is a smiling person 2day
Well SOMEBODY liked Sarkar Raj, I guess… from what RGV reports of the collections… but it wasn’t me. Or my husband. Or any of my friends. Or anyone I know!
=5
collections dont tell liking or disliking of audience…
collections r made by ppl entering cinema hall 1st time… once they paid 4 ticket…they may like or idslike the film but they ve already contributed to collection of the film…
nd if v assume av ticket price in mumbai Rs 100 then 9 cror collection tells that 9 Lac… people saw sarkar raj in mumbai in its 1st week…
reduce the av. price nd number of ppl ll b increased…
if 1 went 2 c the film then he was already undr the influence of the film… if one was smart enough not to fall under the attraction 4 film only then it can b said as smart disliking 4 film…
all those who went 2 film they all already liked something abt film else y they went?
its a good film .. i liked it
To be honest, I enjoyed Sarkar Raj more than Sarkar, becoz of the gripping first half….And the portrayal of raw power that is evident in the interaction between Sarkar Sr. and Sarkar Jr. and the powerplay of politics….
I wud say that this has been a comeback for RGV….Not the best of his works but individually as a film it is an amazing movie that reeks of pure RGV in every frame of the movie….
Now i am awaiting CONTRACT and PHOOK with bated breath….
A dark depressing film, but I loved Satya which was also dark and depressing! So what about Sarkar Raj? Hated the lack of story covered up by overly repetitive and loud soundtrack, the needless dark tone of the film, the poor acting all around, the “disclosure” at the end by Nagre senior, the caricature villains. This film tells me RGV’s Satya days are long gone and it is time to write an epitaph on his director tombstone.
SARKAR HAS A COEN BROTHERS INSPIRED KILLER??
I HAVENT SEEN THE FILM , BUT CAN SOME ONE TELL ME IF THERE IS A CHIGURGH LIKE KILLER FROM NO COUNTRY IN SARKAR RAAJ?????
PLZZZ SOME QUICK REPLIES CAUSE AM GONNA WATCH THE FILM 2MRW MORNING
No Coen brothers inspired killer in this one, only the deluded will try to find any Coen brothers’ inspiration here!
Sarkar’s Next Part – Sarkar ‘Na’raaj, it revolves around a politics of “Tea”, anita dies, cheeku becomes CM, tussle between Cheeku and Tea loving people… another Part Sarkar ki ‘Da’raaj (drawyer) and saga continues…………
@Krishn
Please read the piece on Sarkar again bro! I started saying it’s a good film. This box office ticket thingy is great and by that standard Welcome, Race and Krish are better films than Sarkar Raj!
@rextreme
Bro, I believe that RGV is making a serious comeback. He played a different set of bad men in this film vis a vis Satya. Obviously his belief is that the goons are cooler than the politicians and less melodramatic :-)
@Mudassir
Even I am looking forward to Phoonk. Though in Sarkar Raj i do wish he hadn’t been so single mindedly lazy to get AB to explain it all!!