I watched Sharaabi!  I’ve been meaning to for a while, just because that one song is so super catchy, and also because I was curious about an Amitabh starring remake of Arthur.  What I didn’t realize was that this was one of those movies from the 80s where the entire point is to put Amitabh onscreen for as many minutes as possible, and all the other actors are just stage decoration.

Am I the only person in the world who has seen Dudley Moore’s Arthur, Emraan Hashmi’s Tumse Nahin Dekha, and now Amitabh’s Sharaabi?  I hope not, because they are all worthy versions of the same story!

There are two big ideas at the center of the story.  No, wait, 3!  1. A rich boy with a big heart receives so little love and kindness from his family, that he turns to drink to hide his pain. 2. He falls in love with an inappropriate young woman who loves him for himself, and this inspires him to finally rebel against his family. 3. Through out, he is supported by the dignified old servant who helped raise him.

Each of the 3 versions does one or the other of the 3 big ideas best.  Emraan Hashmi’s version, Tumse Nahin Dekha, of course emphasises the romance.  He falls in love with Dia Mirza right at the start, and then it is very romantic with all the finding her, and winning her over, and so on.  And they add in this heart-breaking touch to her character, where she is only working as a dancer because she needs to support her mentally retarded brother.  And we can see Emraan’s essential goodness through the way he treats her brother.  Even with Emraan’s terrible one-film-old acting, there is one scene that kills me, when he asks he very respectfully begs her brother’s permission to marry her, since he is the man of her family.

(What kind of production budget does this club have?)

Strangely, it is the American movie that does the best job with the servant/father storyline, not the Indian film where parent-child relationships are usually paramount.  Maybe because that’s what it was written for?  It stared Dudley Moore, young British comic, opposite Sir John Gielgud, great Shakespearean actor.  The whole hook of the film was seeing this young loose crazy British actor, opposite the great old man of the theater, the very proper and trained John Gielgud.  So their relationship and back and forth was the main content of the film.  Everything else that happened was just to incite more drama and interactions between them.

(Well, the interactions between Gielgud and Moore, and also the awesome theme song)

And then this version, Sharaabi, was all about the idea of what would drive a rich young man to be so miserable, he needed the anesthetic of alcohol.  Which also makes sense, since it was such an Amitabh movie, so of course we spend a lot of time with Amitabh’s character.  And since it is an early 80s movie, a lot of what Amitabh is dealing with is the pain of social injustice.  So, really, the biggest difference between the 3 films is who their 3 stars are.  A romantic hero, a comic/trained actor, and an Amitabh Bachchan.

I think this is the first real AMITABH movie I have seen.  I’ve seen his multistarrers, and I’ve seen the classics, the ones where the script was as much the star as any onscreen, but I hadn’t seen one of his real One-Man Industry movies.  I mean, I thought I had!  I’ve seen Silsila and Khuda Gawah and other late era films, not just stuff like Deewar and Zanjeer where he hadn’t yet become AMITABH.  But I know realize I hadn’t seen a movie yet where it was made just for him.  And people would come see it only for him.

In the original, the idea of the Arthur character is that he isn’t actually that great of a guy.  He is sweet, with a good heart, but he isn’t very smart, or brave, or very aware of the needs of others.  Everything that happens onscreen is, first, to make the audience see him through the eyes of those who love him (Liza Minnelli and Gielgud) and then to drive him to the point where he is actually willing to take a stand for himself.  It’s an anti-hero movie, but not the usual kind, where he is brave but evil or something cinematic like that.  He’s just a sweet young man, with no strong moral code or ethics or ability to stand up for himself.

All of that gets thrown out with Sharaabi!  The main character is basically perfect, except for being drunk.  He’s brave in fights, he gives noble speeches about equality, he is generous to all who need anything, and he even stands up to his father plenty of times.  He just isn’t quite brave enough to leave his father’s house.  Otherwise, perfect!

Beyond the perfection of his character, there is the way Amitabh’s character over-shadows everyone else onscreen.  Which is something I read about in books and articles on why the industry stagnated so much in the 80s, but I hadn’t really seen until now.  While Arthur was about the relationship between Dudley Moore and John Gielgud, the rest of the cast and the characters they played were similarly strong.  Arthur’s dominating grandmother, his bland fiancee, his terrifying future father-in-law, are all played by excellent character actors, and all given great scenes and lines opposite him.  And his true love is played by Liza Minelli, at the height of her charm and sparkle.  Not just Arthur, but the whole audience falls in love with her at first sight.  In Tumse Nahin Dekha, Dia Mirza gets almost as much screentime as Emraan, and has her own storyline with her retarded brother.  But in this, it’s just Amitabh talking to the camera half the time!  Everyone else exists to revolve around him.

I mean, look at the most famous song from the film!  It’s almost ten minutes of Amitabh singing by himself, not even really dancing, just walking back and forth on screen.  But the thing is, it’s mesmerizing!  I will absolutely watch Amitabh walk back and forth onscreen and pretend to be drunk for 3 hours.

And the filmmakers knew that, knew that the audience was just here to see Amitabh be Amitabh for 3 hours, so they didn’t even really bother with anyone else.  I couldn’t help comparing Amitabh’s big confrontation’s with his father in this with the similar scene in Trishul.  In Trishul, it was a real back and forth.  His dad gave as good as he got.  And more importantly, his dad was Sanjeev Kumar!  One of the few actors who had the gravitas to be a believable authoritative father figure to Amitabh.  Now, I love Pran as much as the next person, but he is Amitabh’s brother, or friend, or occasionally frenemie, he’s not his father!  There’s no way Pran can pull off a whole scary father speech to Amitabh and make us believe it is really true.

Om Prakash, of course, is the best person ever.  But again, not really the gravitas to make us believe he could control Amitabh.  And their relationship wasn’t built the way it could have been.  We saw little Amitabh beg him to stay in their home, we saw little Amitabh direct him to give charity to needy people, even when it wasn’t actually Amitabh playing the role, and the character was just a child, it was still him in control, not Om.  This is strikingly different from the original, or even Tumse Nahin Dekha.  In the original, as I mentioned, it is all about John Gielgud and Dudley Moore, while in Tumse it is all about Anupum Kehr lending some of his star charisma and acting experience to new actor Emraan.  Amitabh didn’t need charisma lent him from anyone.

Of course, no heroine is ever going to be as wonderful as Liza Minelli, unless it is her mother, but they didn’t even really try with Jaya Prada!  Yes, she is a wonderful dancer, and I understand she is a big deal in the south, but she wasn’t a big deal in Hindi film.  And her character barely has a personality, falling in love with Amitabh almost immediately, and then proceeding to be a by the numbers good-girl-who-looks-bad.

But I think I miss the Gielgud-Anupum character even more than the Liza-Dia character.  Especially because of how they butchered it with the changes to the script.  Oh, SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

In Arthur, my absolute favorite scene is after Gielgud’s character (Arthur’s butler/servant who has been with him since childhood) has died.  Gielgud’s health issues have been driving the movie, we only realize then.  He knew he was dying, so he encouraged Liza to give Arthur a chance, seeing that she could be the person who could love and care for Arthur when Gielgud was no longer around to do it.  And he was trying to get Arthur to be a little more grown up and ready before his death.  After Gielgud’s death, Arthur goes to a bar, where a stranger asks him why he is so upset, and he says “My father died today.”  Dudley Moore delivers the line in such a lovely way, not like he is making a big pronouncement, or like he just realized that he thought of Gielgud that way, but like it is the most natural thing in the world to say.

But that whole thing is thrown out in Sharaabi!  Because they wanted Pran to be all important and confrontational.  In Arthur, there was no “real” father around, just his grandmother.  Gielgud really was his father in every way.  But in Sharaabi, they had to put in an actual father to be his big confrontational enemy.  So the happy ending is Amitabh reuniting with Pran, and poor Om Prakash is just forgotten.  Boo to that!

But it’s still a good movie, because Amitabh is in it.  He is vibrant and fascinating onscreen, he delivers every line perfectly, he does his awesome Amitabh drunk act stumbling around, it’s amazing!  Almost makes me willing to watching another one of these All Amitabh-All the Time movies.  Maybe in a few months when I have recovered from this one.