Sholay is much more than Bollywood’s most successful commercial film ever, it is in many ways Bollywood’s psychological touchstone. Which is why all the subsequent Hindi Mega Successes might have raked in the moolah but never ever quite achieved the stature of this iconic film. Its detractors have often described Sholay as a “curry” western. Some say it was ’patterned’ on American spaghetti westerns, but what sets it apart from many such other inspired products is the fact that the director Ramesh Sippy incorporates interesting innovations to what may seem like a run of the mill revenge drama. He obviously Indianineses the Western Format by adding songs, romance and comedy through engaging subplots, but also keeps a tight grip the main plot. The ambiance of the film might have been Indian but the storytelling is definitely western. The film narrates the story of an ex-cop Thakur Baldev Singh (Sanjeev Kumar) who hires two jailed con men (Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra) to help him deal with the menace of Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan) and his band of dreaded dacoits. The director employs the technique of intersecting flashbacks to establish the characters. The movie climaxes with the famous confrontation between Thakur and Gabbar Singh, where Thakur, whose arms have been cut off, kicks the bandit into submission.
The film was a landmark in several different categories. Its spectacular cinematography particularly stands out, with the camera fully utilizing the rugged landscape of the ravines often under menacing clouds. The cinematography indeed sets the mood for the film. The dusty canyons and the unrelenting heat of the valley almost sizzles up he cinemascope scene…One of the most impressive scenes is the one which shows a train being defended by Baldev Singh against a bandit attack…
The Director clearly drew inspiration from John Ford’s "Stagecoach" (1939). Like the 1939 classic Sholay too plays upon themes the conflict between man and nature, the encroachment of nature upon culture, and the constrictive meaning of civilization in wilderness.
Sholay also introduced to Indian cinema the reckless antisocial villain whose sole objective is to bring about a misunderstanding between the lovers’ families; Amjad Khan’s Gabbar seems to be a personification of evil. Even though the concept of bandits is an age old one in Hindi films Gabbar is definitely a departure, he is in fact an interesting sociological phenomenon- his evil pursuits are not substantiated with any motivations.
He does rob the villagers but he does not lust for wealth or women, neither does he have aspiration of ruling the village itself. His need to perpetuate violence comes from something much deeper than superficial needs. It won’t be wrong to say that Gabbar Singh is Mainstream Hindi Cinema’s first attempt at depicting a sociopath.
The other interesting thing about this film is that though it perpetuates Indian themes of loyalty in friendship and love, it totally neglects the concept of the “family”…indeed the family as a unit is in a way deconstructed. The two heroes are iconoclasts and are not the son/brother/husband of anyone; neither is the heroine Hema Malini a part of a family unit. On the other hand the group of bandits seem to be more of a family. Sholay went on to gross more than 150 Million Rupees in the box office.
Though it was panned by critics and declared a box office failure by trade pundits in its first few. Slowly but surely it gained popularity through word of mouth publicity. The huge cast contributed to its success and so did the dialogues between Gabbar and Baldev Singh, and between Gabbar and his henchmen. In retrospect most film historian say that Sholay was not just a movie, it’s was a phenomenon.
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