Ram Gopal Varma’s Department Turns 13: ‘Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely’

Welcome to RGV’s world of muck and mayhem. The one definite thing that must be said about RGV is that his exploration of the nexus between the law and the underworld is ceaselessly seeking new modes of storytelling. The department is one breathless surge of aggression and violence. Shot with cameras that capture the actors at their quirkiest and most candid, the film is not for those who think cinema is all about style. RGV left his stylish days behind in Rangeela and Company.

Repeatedly and mercilessly, RGV dismantles all conventions of pretty storytelling and aims for the jugular. The camera angles are often much too casual to be considered ‘cinematic’. But breaking rules is a given in RGV’s cinema. He breaks them into departments in a noisy rush of agitated images that go well with the edgy, fidgety characters.

Not all the characters work. Vijay Raaz as a whiny dhoti-clad gangster and debutant Madhu Malini as a tartish sharp-shooter are a scream. The talented Abhimanyu Singh has a tough time trying to maintain equilibrium between the two unintentionally comical evildoers. The dialogues these gangsters exchange try so hard to be real, they end up being howlers. It’s like eavesdropping on a conversation between two pathologists.

The camera, manned by no official Director Of Photography (and it shows), goes through the characters’ legs, into their nostrils, over their armpits, under their thighs… Every possible orifice is officially declared public property in this film about cops who do their own thing. And a director who doesn’t mind banging the bullets in places where feelings don’t enter.

Department is a brutal film. There’s no room here for emotions. Even when Sanjay Dutt, playing a senior cop, goes home, his wife (played by Laxmi Manchu, speaking in a strangely loud tone), he talks to her in unsentimental tones. There’s more feeling in the two cops Dutt and Rana’s buddy-buddy baatein in the line of duty.

There’s a long history in cinema of cops striking up a rapport on the beat. Dutt and Rana are no Danny Glover and Mel Gibson. But then this is no Lethal Weapon. The action here is a strange mix of street aggression and stylised stunts. While scenes of Daggubati chasing goons through claustrophobic, crowded areas of Mumbai are vintage Varma, the climactic fist-to-fist between Rana and Dutt proves a battle of unequal titans. One of the two actors is just too agile for the other.

What grabs your attention in this oft-told tale of the cops resorting to extra-constitutional means to ‘cleanse’ the city is the frenetic pacing. The characters are constantly on the move. Even Mr. Bachchan, while taking sardonic jibes at a ‘system’ that is corroded, is seen restlessly circling Dutt or Rana, depending on which of the two the wily, wizened politician is provoked into action.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Bachchan’s neta-giri provides the liveliest interludes in the proceedings. He seems to have the most fun, even when saddled with dialogues that must have sounded far funnier on paper than they do in their delivery. Among the rest of the cast, Rana Daggubatti, with his restrained ruggedness, stands tall.

What the Department delivers is yet another RGV product that takes Hindi cinema’s crime genre away from conventional storytelling. There are no punctuations except exclamation marks, no speed breakers except songs (terribly screechy and grating, with Nathalia Kaur’s item number hitting rock-bottom), and no way out for these restless law-enforcers but to take the law into their own hands. The world of the Department is anarchic, destructive, and apocalyptic. The narrative format imposed on the world of gangsterism is freewheeling, almost chaotic. Violence and death are written into the DNA of the characters. You can’t separate RGV’s people from their chaotic karma.

Department tells a virile story with no patience for sappy humbug. It’s not meant for those who think lovers laughing their way into death, as they did in Ishaqzaade, are the last words in ruinous relationships. In the Department, the characters share a far more intimate bond with their guns than with their friends.

Shoot at sight. Pointblank. In different ways, that’s exactly what Ram Gopal Varma (RGV) and his characters do in Department. While his cop heroes Sanjay Dutt, Rana Daggubati, and their hazily sketched compatriots (one of whom looks like Deepak Tijori) go on a cleansing rampage against sociopaths, RGV goes on his trip, shooting characters at angles you’ve never seen them being shot. They don’t always look fetching with their stained teeth and dirty nails showing up in embarrassing close-ups. So who said life in cinema is about postcard pictures?

Life can certainly be stranger than cinema. On May 14, 2002, the Mumbai papers reported that police commissioner Arup Patnaik had ordered the dissolution of six special squads created to combat crime in Mumbai. Reasons for the termination of the squads were said to be connected to the squads’ moral conduct becoming questionable to the point of suggesting a nexus between the law enforcers and lawbreakers.

Uncannily, Ram Gopal Varma’s Department, which was released on May 18, 2002, filmed exactly the same situation where a special police squad comprising Sanjay Dutt, Rana Daggubati, Deepak Tijori, and others, which was formed to crack down on crime, is accused of crime activities and thereafter dismantled.

Ramu says he was shocked to read about Arup Patnaik’s dismantled squads. “The situation completely echoes my film. I wrote my script a year ago. The thing is, when law enforcers are given unlimited power, there is bound to be corruption. There is an old political saying, ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely.’”

This was not the reason why one remembers the Department. The film has a Raveena Tandon connection. Raveena counts Sanjay Dutt among her pals in Bollywood. They did several films together in the 1990s, none memorable. Then, after several years, when Ram Gopal Varma wanted to bring them together again in Department, Dutt said he wanted someone “younger”. Raveena was replaced by Laxmi Manchu.