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3rd Nov 2012
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Yash Chopra (1932-2012)
ash Chopra has been hailed as India's undisputed king of romance.
Filmmakers such as Karan Johar, Sooraj Barjatya and Aditya Chopra have
always regarded him as their film making guru. On the contrary, these
film makers, whose films replaced the politically charged cinema of the
seventies with their candy floss, nouveau- rich, elitist films that do
not lurk anywhere close to socio- economic conflicts of our times,
represent a move away from what Chopra stood for. It is therefore worth
acknowledging that before he became associated with films characterised
by the soft glow of romance, and the stunning landscapes of
Switzerland, Chopra had unleashed upon the screens films that didn't shy
away from exposing the harsh realities of life. While he did make over
the top, larger than life romantic films, he also pioneered the genre of
cinema defined by underdog violence.
His first two films, Dhool Ka Phool (1959) and Dharmputra (1961) tackled the increasingly important problem of rising communal tensions in post-independent India. In Dhool Ka Phool, Chopra speaks about a Muslim family raising an 'illegitimate' Hindu child and the social ire that came with the twin problems of illegitimacy and religion. In his next film Dharmputra, he reversed the adoption paradigm and based the film on a Hindu family that adopts an illegitimate Muslim child during the partition. He pre-empted the rise of Hindu nationalism in India and created the film in the backdrop of vicious religious bigotry and fanaticism. He encapsulated ideas of secularism brilliantly in his picturisation of the song "tu Hindu banega na Musalman banega, insaan ki aulaad hai, insaan banega". Full text at: http://www.sunday-guardian.com/masala-art/not-just-the-king-of-romance |
