Yash Chopra's Deewar is a film about the
sociopolitical tensions in India during the 1970s. Throughout the film, I was
struck by how structurally similar it was to Mehboob Khan's Mother India. For example, the entire
film, except for the beginning and ending scene was told through flashback, the
character structure was nearly identical (a mother who raises a good, dutiful
son, and a rebellious, violent son), and the plots shared the ultimate death of
the bad son at the end of the film. However, this broadly similar structure
serves to draw our attention to the specific differences between the films.
Most strikingly, at the end of Deewar, it is not the righteousness-representing
mother who kills the bad son Vijay, but Ravi, the good brother, who commits the
murder. This indicates that the focus of the film is not to depict the woman as
a symbol of a newborn nation, but rather to portray the moral tug of war
between police forces and crime syndicates, or more broadly, between the vast
social scene of government policies, labor strikes, and law enforcement in
1970s India. However, this leaves me wondering – what does Chopra advocate as
the morally correct path? To try to answer this, I look to the central
"mere pas ma hain" scene that is not only a key point in the plot when
the two opposing parties – the police vs. smuggler (and good vs. bad) confront one
another, but also an iconic scene in all of Indian cinema. By taking a closer
look at the lighting, costume, shot, setting, sound, and dialogue in this
scene, it increasingly becomes clear that the portrayal of "good" and
"bad" is far from apparent. Chopra complicates the moral
righteousness of the brothers in a way that allows readers to engage with the
questions raised by the film and decide for themselves who is superior.
First,
it is important to consider the characterization that has been established
leading up to the scene. As Kaushik Bannerjee says in the "Fight
Club" reading, the actions of the two brothers have been such that Vijay
symbolizes "lawless anti-nationalism" and Ravi a "civic
disenchantment […] produced within institutional settings" (171). When the
two brothers come face to face as adults under the bridge where they once lived
as homeless children, what ensues is truly "desperate melancholia"
(Bannerjee 172). However, when we ask the question of which brother dominates
in the scene, there is not a clear answer. Although the dialogue between the
brothers is about, on surface level their future plans and reflections on the
difference in their life trajectories, "it is possible to hear something
else in their emotionally charged encounter" (171). But where can we find
this something else?
Consider the
lighting of the scene (or rather, the lack thereof). The entire scene takes
place at night in the dark. Upon first viewing, it seemed like Ravi's face was
illuminated by a faint white light, coming from a streetlamp or the moon, while
Vijay's face was on the darker half of the screen. However, upon watching the
scene several more times, I see that when Vijay speaks, Ravi's face becomes
smaller and cast into the darkness. In fact, whenever one person is delivering
more than two sentences in a row, the other's face goes to the background and
becomes darker. Thus, we are brought to see more brightly whoever is speaking, which
tosses the clarity (and by extension, moral clarity) back and forth between the
brothers. Furthermore, thinking about light reminds me of Ravi's name. Indeed,
the numerous parallels with Mother India suggests
to me the importance of the character names in this movie. Ravi, which refers
to the sun, is generally shown as bright throughout the movie – he is portrayed
with lighter skin, he is usually clothed in the light, khakhi-colored uniform, and
on a metaphorical level, he is educated and generally happier and chattier.
This establishes the contrast between Vijay, who is always shown with darker skin
and under darker lighting, with very similar close-up shots to those of Birju
in Mother India. Clearly, the rest of
the film shows Ravi as "day" and Vijay as "night" – moral
opposites. However the juggling of light between the two in this iconic scene
blurs that moral clarity.
The costumes in
this scene are also interesting. Ravi did not wear his police uniform, a fact
for which Vijay is scathingly thankful, as revealed by the dialogue. In fact,
the brother's outfits are strikingly similar – they both wear black suits – which
serves to draw even more attention to the subtle aspects of their appearance
that are different. Ravi stands with his hands behind is back, symbolizing perhaps
that his hands are tied both officially by his government job but also by his
moral standpoint. He later crosses his hands protectively over his chest, and
so when we inhabit Ravi's character, we are inherently more uptight and nervous.
On the other hand, Vijay keeps his hand firmly but more comfortably in his coat
pockets throughout the scene, striking a more natural pose when we try to
understand his side of the argument.
In general, the
shot is usually an indication of which character we as the audience are
supposed to use as a vehicle into the scene. In this particular scene, Ravi
faces his back to the camera for the majority of the shot, while we see
Ambitabh Bachchan's full front view and he speaks almost directly into the camera.
This provides some insight into Chopra's intentions – the "bad
brother" is clearly exposed to us, allowing us to connect with him
physically and visually, while our conscience feels that we should support Ravi
the "good brother" who has tread the virtuous path – creating a
miniature personal moral dilemma for viewers. In addition, Vijay is in the
foreground, while Ravi is in the background, which exemplifies this effect. We
see Vijay's full face while all we see is Ravi's profile, which suggests that
their moral contrast is complicated by the extent to which their motivations
are justified in the real world, based on how audiences are allowed to connect
with them. In this way, as Bannerjee states, "Ravi is just as much the
outsider" as his outlawed brother (171).
Another notable
aspect of the shot is the dramatic, full-screen focus on the faces towards the
end of the scene as we reach the climactic line. This reminds me of the zooming
in that happened in the scene when Anand Babu was signing the papers – the
morally questionable yet difficult action that started this whole brotherly
schism. The shot transfers an echo of the moral ambiguity of that scene to this
one by rapidly switching between front views of the brothers' faces just as it
switched over the lightning-struck faces of his father's blackmailers. This
reminiscence of earlier scenes in the movie is also achieved through the sound
and music in the scene.
As Bannerjee
points out, the background music for the beginning of the scene is a chorus of
"Sare Jahan se Achcha." In the beginning of the film, this song
represented Vijay's longing for education and was heard in children's voices,
growing and hopeful. Now it is in women's voices and fades away, as does the
façade of an all-welcoming country, reflective of the challenges and turmoil
1970s India faced with worker unrest, Indira Gandhi's Emergency (declared in
the same year that Deewar was
released), black markets, and gangs. Then as we move forward to the climactic dialogue
of the scene, the music becomes dramatic and the shot switches between Ravi and
Vijay's faces with every note the orchestra plays, but the music is discordant,
in stark contrast with the faded patriotic promise of the opening music. This
music reminds me of the extended scene in which the bells clanged, representing
the passage of time as Ravi and Vijay grew up. It is interesting to consider
this passage of time when contrasted with the passage of time in Mother India –
Ramu and Birju were shown to grow up as they fell in the mud with their mother
and emerged laughing, whereas the decades pass in Deewar in a much more troubling and ominous way, reflective of the
novel social challenges that Indian communities faced in Mumbai and also on a
larger national scale. When the long-anticipated line finally comes, it rings
with the lines of the mandir scene,
where Vijay repeats three times "Meri ma mujhe wapas de do"– after
which there is also a clanging of bells. Bannerjee puts it well when he says
that the music "blurs certain themes and dramatic moods within the
film" (172). After the "Mere pas ma hain" declaration, the scene
ends with a long, shrill train whistle that almost sounds like a scream. The
train marks the boundary between the brothers – a loud, large tube of metal
that physically cuts their moral territory in two.
Given
all the verbal discussion of bridges and walls, I find it striking that Chopra
does not show a physical wall in the mise-en-scène. Instead there are only references to the
metaphorical wall that stands between the brothers. This reminds me of the
other place in the movie when walls are mentioned – for instance, when Vijay
remarks that elevator walls don't have ears, it establishes walls as a symbol
of secrecy, mistrust, and double-crossing. This also reminds of the brick wall
that the mother worked to build and the gift that Vijay was never able to give
back to her, which shows that complete redemption is not possible through the
path that Vijay chooses. Walls are thus endowed with a negative connotation in
the film, an idea that becomes explicit in this scene. Here, the wall is a
metaphorical social barrier between the two brothers – between the working
class and authority. The overwhelming rest of the rest of the mise-en-scène is blackness. There is
little remarkable about the background except a glimmer of water towards the
bottom right towards the beginning of
the scene – a subtle glimmer of peace perhaps that is cast away as the end of
the scene focuses on the actors' faces. The only other noticeable element of
the setting is the line of taxis in the background, which draws attention to
the differences between the brothers, especially when Ravi utters the line "Those
who come in cars are often late" establishing his purported dominance and
presence as a first responder and police officer, which is cancelled out by his
defensive body posture as well as the idea that "his poor employment
prospects bely the broken promise of his education [and] create the very
conditions for fratricide" (Bannerjee). This also accentuates the few
English words that are scattered throughout the dialogue, including
"jeep" when Vijay lists the measly gains that Ravi has made by taking
the lawfully correct path.
One of the
biggest strengths of the scene is, in fact, the well-crafted dialogue. Ravi
delivers his dialogue very majestically, in a way characteristic of political
speeches. He uses loaded language including repeated words like adarsh and asul spoken almost pompously – words that are immediately spat out
by Vijay, who draws a clear argument against idealism when there are so many
struggling to feed themselves. However, Ravi is also logical, declaring that he
will listen as a brother as long as a brother is speaking. He speaks evenly and
calmly while Vijay begins to shout; while we are instinctively averse to Vijay's
increase in volume, we also identify with his reasoning and frustration. The
rest of the English words used in the scene – "police officer,"
"duty," "quarter," and "footpath" – are also used
to widen the gap between the brothers and showcase their moral differences.
Returning to
the bigger picture, Deewar, like its
contemporaries such as Sholay, emerged
"against a backdrop of increasingly repressive state legislation in 1970s
India" (Bannerjee 166). But the question remains: who do we root for? We
are proud of Vijay but we feel morally obligated to side with Ravi. Vijay does
not win the mother, but he is the one whose name means "victory."
Throughout the scene, Ravi cannot even turn to look at the audience and mostly
hides his face, while Vijay is open with us. Vijay dies while Ravi lives to win
an award. And yet their mother explicitly states that Vijay was always her favorite
son. Overall, due to these contradictions, I believe that Deewar is deliberately constructed to leave the moral nationalistic
nuances open for viewers to consider more carefully their moral views about 1970s
India.
