Deewar Reflection

            Directed by Yash Chopra, Deewar depicts the life of a family in Bombay, set against the backdrop of the socioeconomic turmoil of 1970s India. In a time when illegal smuggling was particularly rampant, Chopra presents that the landscape wasn’t one of objective morality by creating nuanced, complex characters. He motivates the choices of Vijay to be products of the power structures he's slave to, which resultantly shifts the blame from the individual. After watching Deewar, Chopra causes the viewer to be sympathetic to both smugglers and workers alike, as he refuses to draw black and white lines of morality.

            Deewar was filmed in the 1970s, a time when India was still struggling to cement its national identity. There was growing unrest among the people, and Indira Gandhi was turning to more drastic measures to try to keep the country under control. Bose described the power dynamic during Gandhi’s tenure as Prime Minister as a “structural contradiction” (187). Her tenure was marked by political appointments only of those she knew were loyal to her, a nepotism that hinders Ravi on his job search. Over and over again, Chopra highlights inherent corruption in overarching systems and uses it to motivate Vijay in particular and present him in a relatable light.

            Vijay’s actions are always viewed from the vantage point of his childhood. We see him deeply affected by his tattoo, a side effect that trickled down from the capitalist greed and dishonesty that was his father’s downfall. Then we again see him deeply affected by the horrible treatment of his mother after she accidentally tripped and dropped bricks, a reaction that was again the result of industrial greed. He continually resurfaces and mentions these incidents, which reminds the viewer of his motivations.

            By the framing of shots, Chopra showcases Vijay and other characters’ decisions to be products of their environment. Often, in a moment of realization, music would build up, and the camera would almost freeze for a few seconds on a close up of that character. For example, when Vijay first decided he was going to stand up against the mafia at the docks, there was a prolonged shot of his face. This forced the viewer to directly acknowledge his train of thought and note the root of his decisions. This connection to the character, this moment of “brooding, inward-looking, yet outwardly-searching vulnerability” witnessed, causes the viewer to identify more strongly with Vijay (Mazumdar, 243).  

            Deewar also appeared to pay homage to Mother India. The latter film explored similar morally ambiguous waters to Deewar; it too toyed with the concepts of trying to explore what is unjust when fighting injustice and corruption. Since Mother India was such a defining movie of its era and still one of India’s greatest box-office hits, Chopra could have expected much of his audience to be familiar with the plot of Mother India. Chopra demonstrates that the same questions and corrupt power structures that exist in villages endure after industrial progress, and that the backdrop of skyscrapers doesn’t mean anything has fundamentally changed. By creating a movie so similar to Mother India, Chopra is able to piggyback off that film, so that the audience’s emotional response to Deewar and Vijay is tied to that of Mother India and Birju. The strong emotional connection to Vijay elicits sympathy to his cause, and therefore shifts anger from the individual smugglers to the sphere in which they operate.

            Overall, Chopra’s crafting of the film yielded a moral grey space, which Vijay primarily occupied. Banerjea summed this up well, stating that Vijay was “a noble figure straddling the very limits of legality, pushed too far by the shadowy forces…and laissez-faire corruption” (170). As a result of this straddling of morality, the audience was left thinking about how to best react to injustice and left with a greater appreciation for alternate points of view.