Nayak - The Real Hero
Director: Shankar
Music: A.R. Rahman; Lyrics: Anand Bakshi
Duration: 3 hours, 4 minutes
Year: 2001
Nayak is a crazy attack on the marshmallow
part of your brain that warehouses the “I can’t believe how insane this is”
pleasure zone. It is like being dragged through the fun house for 3 hours
and loving every bump and bruise along the way. It feels as if the director
was living on a film binge of Frank Capra, Rambo and The Wizard of Oz for
months and then leaned back and smoked a big doobie and went into a dream
like fantasy. This is Mr. Smith Goes to Bombay and beats the crap out of
everyone to bring peace, justice and the Indian way to the people. It has
everything anyone could want out of a movie – romance, action, politics,
corruption, bad guys with scary scowls, giant sun flowers that dance, assassins
dressed as big clay pots and a hero so much bigger than life that he has
to be played by the hairiest actor on earth - Anil Kapoor.
Anil has so much body hair that I don’t even know why he has to beat people
up – if he just unbuttoned his shirt the bad guys would run away screaming
in terror. When his leading lady begins kissing his chest at one point I
was worried that she would get a fur ball and start choking to death. Fortunately
for us viewers, Anil keeps his shirt on for nearly the entire film and gives
a fabulous performance as an idealist who reluctantly gets pulled into the
dirty world of politics and decides to clean it up using his brains and even
more importantly his fists. This is the kind of guy we need in the USA to
run our country – special interest groups corrupting our political system
– Anil would have them in jail or in bandages in no time – evil dictators
with moustaches giving us no respect – Anil would out moustache and outmaneuver
him with a swift kick in his pants. Anil in 2008. Get that wimp out of the
White House. How can we elect a man without enough body hair to even make
a shag rug?
The film begins with some very goofy comedy from Johnny Lever and you wonder
if you should deep six this film right then before your skin breaks out,
but before you can take action it breaks into the deliriously addictive “Shakalaka
Baby”. This first musical number is so sparkling and so visually enticing
with guest star Sushmita Sen (Ms. Universe 1994) looking bedazzling and as
shiny as a silver dollar that you happily get on this magical ride and never
look back. As a note of interest – the playback singer for this song is Vasundhara
Das who plays the bride in Monsoon Wedding but is best known for her singing
skills. This one is a pop tour de force that will have you singing the refrain
on the subway.
Anil Kapoor is a cameraman for a TV station in India – Johnny Lever his assistant
– and life is simple. He is an ordinary man with no great ambitions other
than meeting a nice girl, settling down and making his parents happy. Destiny
has other plans for him. While covering the Chief Minister (Amrish Puri doing
his bad guy depiction to the max) on one of his political outings he spots
an innocent village girl (Rani Mukerjee) having the audacity to criticize
him – and he is instantly socked in the stomach with love. He tracks her
down to her small rural home where he sees her dancing solo in the fields
(it gets guys every time) and cavorting with assorted cute animals – love
squared - but her father rejects him because he doesn’t have a safe government
job with a nice pension waiting for him in thirty years. On the way back
to town Anil witnesses a horrible riot break out because of the lack of government
intervention due to cynical political reasons – and he saves a bleeding man
from death by picking him up – and carrying him to a hospital by jumping
from bus to bus in the traffic jammed streets! Later Anil performs some more
bus theatrics.
He gets a promotion for this and the opportunity to interview the Chief Minister
on live TV. Amrish shows up with his sleazy palms out entourage expecting
the usual softball questions from powder puff journalists, but instead gets
nailed to the stake by Anil’s charges of corruption and calculated cruelty.
In a fury he challenges Anil to be Chief Minister for a day and see just
how tough the job is. Hesitating, Anil finally accepts and the drama begins.
He sweeps into his one-day job like a hurricane with the music from Carmina
Burana following his every action and he takes the city by storm. By the
end of his 24 hours in office he has housed the homeless, forced businesses
to pay sales tax, rooted out market corruption, arrested nearly everyone
in the current administration and taken on a gang leader mano y mano.
This fight is enough to make your head explode it’s so wonderfully over the
top and absurd. Anil goes into his lair and the fight begins there and ends
up going across rooftops to an incredible finale on the top of two buses
speeding through the traffic. But this film is only getting started. Amrish
sends a squad of assassins to kill him and in a Matrix like sequence Anil
destroys them but is also symbolically purified as he is first set on fire,
then covered with mud and finally cleansed with milk. He becomes – as his
namesake Chatrapati Shivaji who was a warrior and King in the 1700’s – a
near god like figure to the masses as they exhort him to continue to fight
for them. He does with the love of his Rani to sustain him. But of course
Amrish isn't about to take this lying down.
This has to be one of Rahman’s best overall musical scores - every
one of the six songs is a pop gem. The picturizations are just as astonishing.
They are often like narcotically warped children’s dreams full of giant walking
pots, marching scarecrows, twirling dolls with frightening faces and colors
so bright it seems unreal. The director Shankar also utilizes some excellent
time-lapse photography to give everything a sense of energy and speed.
I love this film. Plain and simple. It is so over the top in its color schemes,
its musical picturizations, its action and its plot that I just ate it up.
It has big ambitions and a big scale with at times literally hundreds of
extras marching and rioting on the streets. Not to mention that Rani is lush
and velvety and absolutely perfect – a visual cavalcade of stunning images.
Sadly, not everyone loves this film and I often see posts that do not share
my enthusiasm and don’t really understand why. It also did not fare well
at the box office, but it seems so many of my favorite Bollywood films shared
the same fate. It is not subtle admittedly, the love story is secondary to
the political message and it is about as believable as the statements from
Bush and Rumsfield about the situation in Iraq. This is really a childhood
male fantasy of what it is to grow up, fall in love, do good and become a
hero - but for me it is just a major shot of happy gas every time I put it
on and hear the first chorus of Shakalaka Baby. Adios Amigos.
My rating for this film: 8.5
Note: This film is
a Hindi remake of the Tamil film, Mudhalvan, from the same director.
DVD Note - the DVD from Video Sound has had a
lot of problems for people. Often the English subs do not show and the TV
has to be adjusted for them to appear on your TV screen - though they show
up fine on your computer. My DVD also died while I was capturing these screen
images.
In fact I would like to take this opportunity
to rant a bit about the general quality of Indian DVDs - they suck. I would
have to guess that 10% or more of the Indian DVDs I buy are defective - don't
play, die after a few playings, get stuck somewhere in the film or don't
have subs as they promise. Anil Kapoor needs to go after these manufacturers
next!