Amitabh Bachchan On 8 Years Of Sarkar 3: ‘Where There Is Continuity…’

Ram Gopal Varma’s Sarkaar 3 rises far above the wasteland of a stagnant crime-drama to give us an insight into a life of outlawry that is richly layered with blood and drama. Bal Thackeray is dead. Long live Bal Thackeray. In Amitabh Bachchan’s persona — steely, gritty, imperturbable, granite-hard and yet malleable and vulnerable — the Thackeray doppelganger is uncanny. The walk, the talk and the ability to walk that talk to places where the dialogue writer would never have imagined… Take a bow, Mr. B. They don’t make ‘em like you anymore.

It takes courage to build one more plot around that formidable and imposing figure from Maharashtra’s politics, who rewrote the rules of politics and who gave political arrogance a sexy edge. The last Sarkar film came out 9 years ago. And the figure of Subhash Nagre is now threatened with obsolescence, if not complete irrelevance.

And yet — here lies Varma’s triumph — he manufactures a compelling, if somewhat cramped and at times campy yarn of a wizened but still-spirited political outlaw who has no appetite for betrayal and disloyalty.

“In order to understand politics, you first need to get a handle on the politics in the family. It’s called Palace politics,” says Subhash Nagre, slurping the tea out of the plate while, please note, the grandson Shivaji (Amit Sadh in engaging form) also slurps over his cuppa.

Lineage, continuity and perpetuity are big in Sarkaar 3. Outsiders are seen as traitors and marauders. In fact, the film makes a pitch for nepotism in crime and politics, arguing that absolute loyalty can only be traced in the bloodline. In blueprinting this genealogical fact of clannish life, the narrative stretches the tendons of its muscular drama into scenes that are constructed robustly and at times with enrapturing vividness.

There are some terrific shootouts in this film reminiscent of episodes from Ram Gopal Varma’s best gangster films in the past. Parking lots are a favourite haunt for violence in this film. Ram Gopal Varma seems to tell us there’s more to cars than Rohit Shetty. Indeed, Sarkaar 3 marks the return to form for the long-disoriented filmmaker. He cuts and shoots the scenes in long shots and breathless, pause-less frames that cover the dramatic tension without toppling over into overstatements.

Manoj Bajpai joins the gang war somewhere in the preamble and opts out too soon. He has some of the best lines on the criminalisation of politics. Sadly, the script doesn’t listen to Bajpai’s harangue, busy as it is, hero-worshipping the outlawed ageing hero. Bajpai’s one sequence with Mr. Bachchan where Bajpai’s character Govind Deshpande mocks Mr. Bachchan’s Nagre from a public podium for subverting Gandhian ideals is worth its weight in gold.

The women — Gautami, Supriya Pathak and Rohini Hattangadi — get little space in this predominantly masculine war of supremacy. And that one scene where Hattangadi blows a kiss at her screen son would have you whistling in excitement.

The background score didn’t have to be so persuasive, though. We get the point without the over-punctuation.

Strangely, very few people get killed in the course of the storytelling, although the body count seems a lot higher. And when archvillain Jackie Shroff, swimming and sexing in Dubai, dies at the end — that’s not a spoiler, it’s nemesis — we feel a surge of empathy for the Nagre family that has lost a lot of blood, but never in vain.

Watch Sarkaar 3 for the way Varma frames the familial feud in flames of fury. The performances are largely effective, especially those by Ronit Roy and Amit Sadh. The latter comes into his own as Mr. Bachchan’s uncontrollable grandson. But above all, this is one more triumphant celluloid outing for Amitabh Bachchan, who invests his role of the aging tiger-neta with a kind of cosmic resonance that goes way beyond that famous baritone.

Yup, they don’t make star-actors like Amitabh Bachchan any more. Ram Gopal Varma reminds us of the Bachchan charisma in ways that are deeply nostalgic and exceedingly provocative.

Speaking of Sarkar 3, Mr. Bachchan said, “Where there is continuity, there shall be a desire to revert. You succeed in one vocation, you continue with it. You create a team, it wins a series, a game, and you continue with it. You build a happy association, and you nurture and harvest it again. SARKAR 1 was a success, but I doubt very much whether SARKAR 2 was prompted by keeping the success factor in mind. It was done more for the continuation of the story, from where it was left off in Sarkar 1. The character, the circumstance and the environ of the story of SARKAR has been alluring. It has begged desire to revert and to continue.

It’s like those bedtime stories that your mother narrated when putting you to bed to sleep. They all started with ‘ek tha Raja, ek thi Rani…’, and then invariably they would doze off and we the young were wide-eyed and anxiously questioning… ‘Phir… phir kya hua…?’ SARKAR’s narration has invoked similar questioning at the end of each sequel. SARKAR 3, therefore, is a natural revert to that childlike question at the end of the previous film.

In my very limited opinion, SARKAR is not just another name… ‘SARKAR ek soch hai,’ it is a condition, a reality, a state, an order. A condition, state and order that exists in every home. SARKAR is authority, governance, politics — not just in its much-renowned truest self, but one that reflects its meaning in everyday life, more so in a domestic application.

Each individual is a human. He or she may have the benefit of power through political process in a country, but these individuals have a domestic life as well. And this is what has intrigued me.

Does individual domestic circumstance influence in any manner decisions that are taken by such individuals for the State, Country and Governance? Decisions that could affect a billion people and their lives?!

There is a SARKAR in every home, one that guides, takes decisions, masters and commands either servility or compassion. Who rides favour with the Master, who questions, who poisons their countenance to what end, are some of the several obligations that these heads face each moment. What goes on within the closed walls and drawn curtains, and for what reason, is complex and many a time unknown to the outside world.

It’s a politics of a different kind, often referred to as ‘Palace Politics’. Derived presumably from the era of Kings and courts and Emperors with their inner coteries and subsequent intrigues, today, every home is a ‘palace’ and every home has its ‘politics’, the nature of which is guided and abetted by the ‘politics’ it conducts!

There is a Subhash Nagre in every home, and that is why he becomes such a versatile, vulnerable yet respected and an acceptable character. Subhash Nagre is powerful not just by the presence of his conduct, to behave in a manner that he believes is right… ‘Mujhe jo sahi lagta hai main karta hoon’. But because he commands a system that has existed from time immemorial. The power of that depiction is dynamic and most attractive, and loved. Negativity sells, but when you make it credible and right, it endears even more.

It’s tough to pull something such as this in film and story. But RGV and his conviction of the character has succeeded in doing so. Which is why it attracts continuity… and my unquestioned association!

Politics compels you to take a stand, a stand that attracts disagreement and debate. Not all are expected to toe your thought or vision, but those that do become your ‘party’ or part of your ‘gang’. In normal terms, ‘gangster’ invites crime, terror and all that is violent and against social and moral norms. But would you address all such ‘gang’ partners, or what you notify as a ‘gangster’, to only be defying moral and social norms?

The British Raj identified freedom fighters as ‘violent gangsters’ and hanged them. Daku Man Singh and Veerappan were revered by the locals they served and looked after. Their means may have been wrong, but to them their act was right and for their own reasons — legal constitutionality notwithstanding. Once that is understood, the act of performing is eased out by the concept devised by the director and the writer.

My professional conviction is guided and operated by the Director and, in turn, the Writer. They have already ‘recaptured’ it in their initial discussions. I merely attempt to enumerate their final discussion and design it on film.”

When I spoke of Ram Gopal Varma’s inconsistency, Mr. Bachchan jumped to his defence. “You are so right — inconsistency is indeed ‘strange’. It is ‘strange’ because consistency is downright boring and static, for some. Not all, but for some.

If one were to ‘consistently’ wear black, how would they ever discover the presence or the beauty of an alternative colour? Whether they like that range of difference is another matter, but deprived of it would be, to them, discomforting.

RGV is inconsistent because he is a restless, creative mind, willing and deliberating continuously, to search for valuable seeds through his ‘outputs’. To have made me a part of that desire is a privilege for me. It challenged me, provoked me — a condition, I am absolutely convinced, every creative artist pleads for.

RGV’s ‘inconsistency’ may not have given him the desired results he expected, but which artist, maker, producer, director has been able to achieve consistent box office success? Has that stopped us from admiring and applauding their efforts?

Every ‘inconsistent’ offer that RGV included me in found me striving to live up to his vision. They have all been exercises of great learning. Positive learning.

Stanley Kubrick, cited as one of the most influential Directors in cinematic history, has had the most diverse and ‘inconsistent’ temperament in his choice of films. From the iconic and revolutionary 2001: Space Odyssey made in the 60s, to a period film, to The Shining, Clockwork Orange, Dr. Strangelove — is the genius of an inconsistent Director.

Inconsistency has ridden with the more recent creators, too. Spielberg shifted from an extra-terrestrial experience to the Holocaust. Would you call that inconsistency questionable??!

Yes… ‘inconsistency’ is ‘strange’!!”