Deewaar (1975)

दीवार

There is a reason that the classics are the classics, that seminal films are seminal, that genre-defining films define genres.  When I sat down to watch the classic, seminal, genre-defining Deewaar ("wall"), I expected to enjoy it, but I didn't think I'd be blown away.  I should have known better.

Anand Verma (Satyendra Kapoor) is a labor organizer who is viewed as a hero by the workers in his area - until he backs down in the face of threats against his family. Then the workers' admiration quickly sours to revilement and Anand flees, leaving his family to bear the burden of his disgrace.  His wife (Nirupa Roy) takes their two boys to Bombay in hopes of rebuilding their lives.  The boys grow up together, but on very different trajectories.  Ravi (Shashi Kapoor), ever pious, joins the police force at the encouragement of his warm and perky girlfriend Leena (Neetu Singh).  Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan), more deeply scarred by their early struggles, renounces God as well as the straight and narrow path; he takes a more thuggish (he might say practical) approach to problems.  When he single-handedly beats up a cadre of gangsters who were extorting wages from his fellow dockworkers, he becomes a hero among his colleagues - and attracts the notice of an underworld don (Iftekhar), who hires Vijay to protect his shipments of smuggled gold.  Vijay proves a natural talent, and the don soon decides to retire, leaving Vijay in charge of operations.  It's not long before Ravi and Vijay find themselves in direct opposition on either side of the law, with their mother caught in the middle.

The plot summary might sound like a recipe for masala; brothers on opposite sides of the law, saintly mothers, gangsters, thugs, and pretty girls call to mind masala classics like Amar Akbar Anthony and Parvarish, for example.  But Deewaar is not a masala film.  It is hard and gritty and at the same time deeply symbolic and emblematic.  And there is very little to distract from the core narrative, no subplots or comic diversions, just the unflinching, driving force of a story that is bigger than the sum of its parts. 

Vijay is an anti-hero par excellence, a resourceful and principled fighter who loves his mother and enters the underworld not out of greed or lust but only because he sees it as the most efficient means to provide for his family. His disillusionment and frustration are fully motivated; early in the film, after his father's disgrace, the little boy Vijay suffers a trauma that stays with him for life when angry villagers waylay him on his way home from school and tattoo his arm with the legend "mera baap chor hai" - my father is a thief.   That tattoo is both Vijay's humiliation and his motivation, and he returns to it again and again as he chooses his destructive path. This is what makes Vijay the seminal, quintessential "angry young man" of Hindi film.  He is not a mindless thug or a rebel without a cause.  He is sensitive, tortured, and scarred.  Vijay is at his most heartbreakingly compelling in his quiet interactions with his girlfriend Anita (Parveen Babi).  She probes his suffering, and he pours out his heart to her.  It is difficult to imagine a Hollywood tough-guy hero baring his soul to a woman as Vijay does; the corresponding western archetype is a calloused, hardened loner, the kind of man who would yell at his girl if she tried to get at his emotional core.  And so Vijay is a revelation, a marvel of compelling cinema, brought vividly and ruggedly to life by Salim-Javed's expertly crafted dialogues and a dense, earthy performance by Amitabh Bachchan, whose superstardom was just then coming into its full force. 

Ravi is a complete contrast.  While he isn't overly cheerful - the burden of his family's suffering and their sacrifices for his education have shaped him as a serious and determined man - he is always bright-eyed, straight-spined, and clean, in palpable opposition to Vijay's heavy-lidded eyes and smudged, sweaty face.  In confrontation with his brother he seems almost idealist as he clings to his commitment to honest, hard work within the system.  But while Vijay's unlawful pragmatism may put a luxurious roof over his head and a fancy set of wheels in the garage, Ravi's constancy earns for him the one thing that really matters, which he asserts with the film's most famous line:  Mere paas maa hai - "I've got mom."

All told Deewaar is as taut, tense, and lean as Amitabh Bachchan himself.  There is very little fat in this film; I understand that even Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, those quintessentially populist poet-entertainers, originally intended that the film be songless, and only relented upon the director's insistence that songs be accommodated.  And the songs - there are only three of them - are the only points where the intensity lets up for even a moment.  They're good songs - especially the charming Kishore-Asha duet "Keh doon tumhe", and the sexy uncredited item number by the fiery Aruna Irani.  (Check out Sanket's concurrent post on Bollywood Music Club for more about Deewaar's music and lots more about the movie as well.)  Even with the songs, Deewaar is as tight and relentless and compelling and emotional a mainstream Hindi film as I've ever seen.  Though the outcome holds no surprises - it's easy to guess where it has to end - so perfectly wrought is Vijay's trajectory toward redemption and resolution that tears sneaked into my eyes several times as the film's climax approached.

Comments

[Sanket]

I searched & searched for the Ila Arun number 'Im falling in love with a stranger' (sung completely in English by the way) online but could not find it. It is on the original soundtrack LP that my parents have and I will someday convert it and post it on my site! It is such classic RD Burman at his grooviest and used without a bit of cheesiness when Amitabh first meets up with Parveen at a bar. It segues into a very funky bit of music complete with bongos & trumpets galore while Amitabh is getting chased by the cops. Sorry to go on like a giddy fanboy but it just killed me not being able to find that song ;) Great review by the way & I heartily agree with your first few words on this movie - I too was simply blown away. Cheers!

[Amit]

And Iftekhar playing a don, in complete contrast to the upright, honest police inspector that he made his own in BW movies.

[Daddy's Girl]

I recently saw this one too - and was totally blown away as well. Your review captures the power and intensity of the film really well.

[carla]

Thanks all.

Sanket, it's too bad you can't find that song - it was pretty cool. I didn't realize during the movie that it was Ila Arun singing it. She's great!

Amit: I hadn't thought about how different this role was from Iftekhar's usual roles - interesting.

[G]

That's a super review on a super film. I have read through about a dozen of your reviews on this blog already.

I am quite surprised to see that you haven't yet come across my favourite movie - "Anand". Its a Hrishikesh Mukherjee film starring Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachhan. This was released when Rajesh Khanna was the superstar of Indian cinema and Amitabh the heir apparent.

-G

[carla]

Thanks, G. I've got *Anand*, but I haven't gotten around to watching it yet. I have to admit that I'm not crazy about Rajesh Khanna and so *Anand*, *Aradhana*, and other films that have been aggressively recommended to me sometimes lose out when it's time for me to sit down and watch something. I'll get to it eventually but I'm still trying to catch up on the vast range of Hindi films!

[Anuj Srivastava]

Amitabh Bachcan se bada actor aaj tak na aaya tha aur na hi aayega . Wo duniya mein sabse bada actor hai . Nobody can touch,beat him. He is invincible,

[maxqnz]

I really liked how restrained and underplayed this film was by BW standards. Amitabh was so very, very good in this that I can ALMOST forgive him his recent abysmal roles in utterly awful movies like KANK and Jhoom Barabar Jhoom. The singular focus and absence of masala you comment on is unquestionably the strength of this film, for me. The leads all get the chance to really invest in their characters. The resulting strength of perfomances make it easy to see why this film is held in such high esteem. On a related aside, this film's "branding" recently got news coverage here in NZ, although Ms. Jaitley's apparent nod to this film went over the heads of the media reporting it:

" Bollywood actress Celina Jaitley says a highlight of filming in her first "foreign" film in New Zealand was playing a practical joke on her unsuspecting director, Ken Khan.

At a party during the recent filming of Love Has No Languages in New Zealand, Jaitley urged Khan to greet Indian guests by saying: "Namaste, tera baap chor hain," or "Greetings, your father is a thief." "

Finally, the other reason I like this film is that I saw it AFTER seeing "Deewaar: Let's Bring Our Heroes Home". That is a modern piece of jingoistic bakvaas that has only an excellent villain in Kay Kay Menon to recommend it. Appropriating the titles of great films for really dire modern ones seems to be common practice in Hindi cinema ("Waqt" was another victim of this trend), but I'm glad that the "Deewaar" I saw first was so bad that it made me see the original. It's sad that we see so little today of the great actor Amitabh was, but at least films like this remind us of the heights he achieved. Thanks for reminding me of this film, carla. I think I shall have to see if I can find it again and watch it once more.

[Maajhi]

Amitabh was the SRK of the 70s.

PS. I'm not a fan of SRK, to put it mildly.

[Maajhi]

Amitabh was the SRK of the 70s.

PS. I'm not a fan of SRK, to put it mildly.

Overhyped, undertalented, and staying on the scene way too long. That describes them both.

"mitabh was the SRK of the 70s.

...
Overhyped, undertalented, and staying on the scene way too long."

I haven't seen that many of ihis films, but I have heard this from several people and can see how that might be true. It certainly fits his later "oeuvre". :)

That said, I really do like this film, AAA, and Muqaddar ka Sikandar. In this film particularly, I think Amitabh dials it back and acts rather than "stars".

[carla]

I happen to love Amitabh, superstar persona and all. Maajhi, you might be right that he compares to SRK in that the superstar came to overwhelm and swallow the actor. The big difference for me is that Amitabh the superstar is appealing and fun to watch, while SRK the superstar is, well, not.

Having said that, I do think Amitabh is/was a fine, fine actor, and while I do like many of his superstar vehicles I am particularly fond of his early films, before he was a superstar. *Deewaar* is one, I think, that is right on the cusp, along with *Sholay*, another one of my all-time favorites. *Saudagar*, from 1973, might be the best acting performance I've seen of his.

[Maajhi]

Agree with you both in that in his early films, he was an actor and a very good actor at that. Movies like Sholay, Anand, Muqaddar ka Sikandar, Zanjeer were very fun to watch. But the superstar so completely overwhelmed the good actor, that I'm just sick of his face today. And his moves from the new millenium have reinforced this image majorly - he's just puke-worthy for me today, sorry.

[maxqnz]

Thanks to you both for this thread, carla and maajhi. I feel parasitic here, since I read carla's reviews for pointers to films that I might like to watch, and now you've added two more to my list, maajhi. I shall look out for Zanjeer and Saudagar, to see more of the actor Amitabh. I also must put in a plug for his bahu's performance in "Provoked". That, and Amitabh's performance in Cheeni Kum gives me some hope for the Bachchan production line.

[Maajhi]

maxqnz, I must warn you that Zanjeer is unlikely to have passed the test of time :). It's a typical masala revenge plot with lots of violence. I watched it when it first came out and loved it as a kid (I used to enact the dialogues with friends), but I'd probably be bored today.

[Meera]

Carla, Maxqnz & Maajhi

Another noteworthy movie of Amitabh is "Shakti" where he was pitched against the very famous and talented Dilip Kumar. Amitabh acted very well in the movie as did Dilip Kumar. Rakhee also did well as the woman torn in between the father and son. Smita Patil was the other heroine in the movie.

Meera

[the ppcc committee]

Why doesn't the PPCC get this movie? WHYYYY?! It's like we're stuck outside, looking in through a window. This is so painful. All the reviews of this movie are wonderful and thought-provoking, and yet the movie never moved us at all. Tragic!

[carla]

Don't know what to tell you PPCC - I expected to like *Deewaar* just fine but I was blindsided by just how much I liked it. And I can't quite put my finger on it - perhaps I was expecting masala instead of the taut, gritty story that I got. Who's to say why it didn't work on you?

show angry smoking photo

[yogesh]

I think Deewar is Amitabh's best movie till date.Its very difficult to find any flaws in the film and the script is mind blowing.

[Aндрей (Russia)]

Deewaar - the BEST!!!

[Advait]

The quintessential Amitabh Bachchan movie.. Every time any of my Aussie mates (or alternatively Indians who have grown up here in Australia and have only reecntly started watching Hindi movies) ask me whats so great about AB, I point them in the direction of 'Deewar' and save myself the explanations..

I love the wonderful/vivid characterizations of Vijay & Ravi

[kalyan]

man stop comparing the stupid midget srk to amitabh srk can only be someones pet dog but thats about it....

[познакомиться с мусульманкой]

i`m your permanent reader now

[Consistent]

Good movie