Celebrating 25 years of a movie that made itself

Friday, July 3, 1998. An innocuous rainy day in Mumbai. That time of the year when the monsoons have settled into a pattern, where the sun goes missing for days on end and there is a perennial dampness caused by constant drizzling, if not heavy downpours.

I have mentioned in one of my previous posts that in my first workplace I was nicknamed First Day Third Show. There was a reason for that. While everyone professes a love for watching movies, there was a gang of about six of us from my management college days that had made it into a ritual of sorts to watch a movie every Friday. With jobs in hand, the first day first shows became first day third shows. Those were our high. And just like addicts have some bad fixes occasionally, so did we experience some bad, some awful, and some downright outrageous films in our time. Our barometer was the trailer of the movie. Either we got a ‘handle’ - our gang’s term for how much we looked forward to watching a movie - or we didn’t. But even if we didn’t, it didn’t stop us from watching. Our gang of six that were the usual suspects at a movie hall on Friday nights had by now become a gang of ten what with some of us were either married or betrothed, and having successfully managed to lure our better halves into our habit.

With most Hindi movies in the 90s, it often was a leap of faith that one had to take. Oftentimes it was the star power. And in absence of that it was either the reputation of the director or the producer that became the straws we clutched on to, to justify our addiction.

The reason for such a long preamble to what this post is actually about is that the movie that was released on July 3, 1998 was one that proved all of us wrong.

It was promoted with minimum fanfare. It had no stars to speak of - the only known faces were Paresh Rawal, (let’s face it - he is no crowd puller) and Urmila Matondkar who, unlike her ultra glam avatar in Rangeela went the other extreme of deglam by fully covering herself in cotton sarees thereby significantly dropping the sensuality quotient. To add to that, the mercurial director’s previous outing was disastrous. And in a dog eat dog world of Hindi films, one bad film meant being permanently written off. So the movie was kind of under the radar as against ones that are promoted with massive hype. As a result there was minimal ‘handle’ for watching the movie. And our usual gang of ten came down to three brave hearts - a friend for whom watching first day releases continues to be a higher calling, the wife and I - who ventured into Plaza cinema at Dadar. And boy, were we in for a MASSIVE surprise!

The masterpiece that I have written this long introduction to was Satya: The Other Side of Truth. And on July 3rd, 2023 it celebrated 25 years.

When I realised the significance of the date and the year, and the opportunity it presented to me to write about something really close to my heart, I thought it would be a cakewalk. That this post would get over in a jiffy. The truth couldn’t have been farther. The movie has presented itself as such a complex entity that I silently cursed myself for making it the topic of this post.

Where do I even begin? 

One more barometer about a Hindi movie’s outcome on the first day, besides the trailer, is the crowd’s reaction during the interval. Over samosas, chai and cigarettes (yes, one could smoke indoors those days) a movie would either be lauded or decimated. With this particular movie even this reaction was completely out of the ordinary - there was a deafening silence! It was like the audience (including us) was still absorbing and processing what they had just been witnessing on screen. They were still not able to come to terms with it simply because something like this was not experienced before by anyone. The mahaul during the interval was almost like everyone wanted to quickly get over with their interval rituals to rush back into the darkness of the cinema hall. It was like the interval was an unwelcome interruption that had to be quickly banished so that the momentum of watching a masterpiece unfold could continue. By the time the movie got over we were itching to do a nyah-nyah-nyah to the rest of our gang for having missed out on a never-before kind of an experience. Sure enough phone calls flew fast the very next morning raving about the movie. Like Ramgopal Varma said in an interview,

“People were coming out of the theatres with their mouths open; their reactions weren’t like ‘it’s a nice decent film, you have to see it. It was more like ‘arrey tu dekha kya? You have to f*****g see it!’ 

It was a movie that just stuck, and refused to get unstuck. It’s a feeling that has been with me the last 25 years. So what made it tick? I have my own theories about that, and while doing some research around the phenomenon called Satya a lot of information and trivia came through to the fore. There are just so many things about it that I have tried to give some structure to it. Hopefully that should cover the gamut. 

THE TEAM

25 years back only five names could be recognised in the credits as having proper credentials - only two of which appeared on screen, Urmila Matondkar and Paresh Rawal. The other three were Gulzar (lyrics), Bharat Shah (producer/financier) and Ramgopal Varma (director).

25 years later, while going through the credits, what strikes you is that Satya has the veritable who’s-who of the Hindi film and entertainment industry of today - faces that were raw and fresh then, have become increasingly familiar over the years. Satya turned out to be a launch pad for a significant chunk of the acting and behind-the-scenes talent of the industry.

Stalwart performers like Irrfan Khan (R.I.P.) and Kay Kay Menon have credited Satya for giving them hope in an industry that was (even then) being ruled by good looking Khans and a clutch of other ‘film-star-look’ actors. It was a true constellation of sheer acting talent that came together and shone so brightly that they became stars to reckon with themselves. 

THE THEME

Like Zanjeer in 1973, Satya was an idea whose time had come. The 90s were an indifferent decade as far as powerful movies were concerned. By powerful I mean movies that defined the decade. The resurgence of music dominated movies of Nadeem-Shravan made them the Salim-Javed of their times - movies were being sold at a hefty premium only basis the names of the music director duo. Storylines took a back seat. Candy floss took the front seat. At the other end there was the non-stop comedy, often bordering on the raunchy, that was being dished out by Govinda, Shakti Kapoor and Kader Khan, with David Dhawan at the helm. Akshay Kumar had found his calling card in the Khiladi series. And the Khans (sans Saif) had captured the lion’s share of people’s imaginations. The world of Hindi films was coated with a veneer of opulence, dreams, fantasies and everything that was as far removed from reality as it could be. There was however a simmering tension that was prevalent, not just in films but also in real life.

Crime had blossomed and had become mainstream. Films were offering a great avenue for the underworld to go legit. A lot of unknown and seedy sounding individuals suddenly came into the film industry from professions as diverse as cargo handling to become producers and directors. Film stars were increasingly at the mercy of the underworld, with some of them being overtly associated with it also bearing the brunt of prison time. The veneer had started cracking and August 1997 turned out to be a turning point - Gulshan Kumar was assassinated in broad daylight. The free-for-all that the industry had become suddenly reined in its cavalier ways. 

Not just the zeitgeist as mentioned above, but also the fact that it had been 15 years since a gritty, underworld themed movie was made contributed to the uniqueness of Satya. Ardh Satya was released in 1983 and it was probably the first of its kind movie that dealt with the everyday-ness of crime and the associated fallouts of it on the police force. And yet, it was a cop movie at its core. It was a story about a cop called Anant Velankar, not as much about the crime lord Rama Shetty. The other movie that came closest to being true to the gangster/crime genre was Parinda. Again set in Mumbai, Parinda, though another personal favourite, however doesn’t do full justice to staying true to the crime genre as it strays too much into interpersonal relations with an overpowering love angle. Satya was the first movie that was true to its genre of being a gangster movie. It was about gangsters and their lives. The cops are of course there, but they are the background noise to the well orchestrated symphony that the small time gangsters led by Bhiku Mhatre are conducting. 

THE PERFORMANCES

Satya is that unique movie where when you mention its name, the first name that comes to mind is Bhiku Mhatre, not the titular character. (And to think that Bajpayee wanted to play Satya!) Once again as in the case of Zanjeer where Bachchan was coming off the back of some indifferent roles, so too did Bajpayee. And just the way Bachchan delivered in Zanjeer to catapult himself into national consciousness, so too did Bajpayee. What a powerhouse performance!! Bajpayee puts his heart, soul and everything else into bringing Bhiku Mhatre alive on screen. Think about it - all the key characters in the movie play a perfect foil for him. His wife keeps him on his toes and always underplays the power he wields. Satya steers and controls his actions. Kallu Mama plays a guy he listens to and respects. Bhau is the person he fears. Yet Bhiku Mhatre’s leadership is never under question. He is the boss who can also be a friend. The reason why Bhiku Mhatre endures. And endears.

Satya is the rational minded foil to the impetuous and instinctive Mhatre. J.D. Chakravarthy plays the subdued, but equally dangerous, Satya. As the only outsider without any known prior history in crime, Satya’s character is as unknown to his gang as it is to the viewer. Chakravarthy, as Satya, delivers one punch after another without usurping Mhatre’s space, and yet makes his mark in spite of his conflicted and brooding demeanour. Michael Shannon has said something to the effect that his job is to be invisible on screen while affecting things on it, and if he does that well then he considers it a job well done. Chakravarthy lives up to Shannon’s thought process to the hilt in Satya. All the acts and actions of Bhiku are actually an outcome of what Satya suggests. But it is Satya who remains in the background. It is only Bhau Thakurdas Jhawle who recognises Satya’s true power. It is a complex role to portray and Chakravarthy does full justice to it.

It’s not just these two lead characters that give standout and memorable performances in Satya.

Urmila Matondkar in a way reprises her role in Rangeela - there she was a middle class aspiring starlet, here she is a lower middle class aspiring singer. Rangeela had given her a worldly wise, glam and hot reputation. So taking on the role of a saree clad, demure, naive heroine was a huge risk that she was taking. And boy, did she too deliver!

Saurabh Shukla who plays the avuncular Kallu Mama has his task cut out of not only playing the conscience keeper of Bhiku Mhatre’s gang, but also its most menacing face. It’s a tricky role to depict and Shukla comes out trumps. If there is one character your heart goes out to in the movie, it is that of Kallu Mama. Says a lot about how well Shukla has essayed the role that you don’t want him to meet the same fate as some of the key members of the gang.

Shefali Shah as Pyaari Mhatre is as typical a ghati housewife as it gets. She is the perfect foil to Bhiku’s bravado, always keeping him in check. Her character too is so perfectly cast and etched that you actually start believing that Bhiku and she are a real life couple. Kudos to Ramgopal Varma and the writing team to build such strong women characters in a gangster movie.

The rest of the ensemble cast, Makarand Deshpande as Advocate Muley, Govind Namdeo as Bhau, Snehal Dabi as Chander, Aditya Srivastava as Inspector Khandilkar and a whole host of others who have bit (but memorable) appearances, just beautifully comes together to create an unforgettable experience. Not since Sholay can I think of another movie that made every role - starring or bit - memorable. (More on that later in this post.) If there is an unsung hero in the movie it is the casting agent, whose name sadly doesn’t appear in the credits. But like Anurag Kashyap said in an interview, everyone was a casting agent on Satya. Almost everyone was cast through word of mouth references and one hungry and desperate struggler recommended another. No wonder the camaraderie came through so strongly.

AS MUCH ABOUT THE CRIME, AS MUCH ABOUT THE CITY

There are very few movies that are inextricably linked with a city - that is one cannot separate the movie from the city, and vice versa. Mumbai has always offered a rich tapestry for film makers to exploit and weave into multi-coloured, multi-faceted patterns. But invariably one can change the city for any other metropolis as a setting. Not so with Satya. It is a story as much about crime, as it is about the city.

Any thoroughbred Mumbaiite will agree that there are two things that make Mumbai stand apart from the other metros - the rains and the sea. Satya’s rain drenched start sets the context of what lies in store for the audience, which only comes full circle towards the climax. The rains and the sea are inseparable - the rains reveal the filth - literally as well as metaphorically; the sea gulps down all the infestation and occasionally spews it back on to the city’s unsuspecting citizens.

Just like the rains reveal the hidden and unwanted curves of the city’s dwellers that are carefully covered and camouflaged by clothes and accessories, so does the rain in Satya reveal the hidden, seedier, unseen and unwanted aspects of life in Mumbai that are usually covered with a veneer of the city’s ‘chamak-dhamak’.

All the key happenings in the movie - Satya’s entry into the city, his first confrontation with Pakya in the buffalo stables, the first beating that he takes at the hands of Jagga’s goons, the film producer’s assassination, Satya’s dates with Vidya, Satya’s confession to Bhiku about wanting out, Bhiku’s famous line “Mumbai ka king kaun? Bhiku Mhatre!!”, and finally the brutal stabbing of Bhau at Chowpatty all happen with either the rains or the sea as backdrop. It is why Satya had to be set in Mumbai and would have been a misfit if set in any other part of the country. And it is the reason why Satya the movie, the crimes it depicts, and the city are so intertwined. Besides the element of water, the way the movie unfolds and is structured is also defining of how life in Mumbai is. The chawls in which people stay, the close bonds they form, the happiness the city’s people get out of small joys, the inherent filmy-ness that’s there in everyone, how everyone thinks they are the boss, while deep down realising they are nobody’s in the larger scheme of things, how wealth and power are not meant to be flashed around unlike some of the city’s North Indian siblings, and most important of all - the inherent goodness and spirit in people in spite of the harsh lives they lead are all as Mumbaiya as they get. As Uday Bhatia, author of Bullets Over Bombay: Satya and the Hindi film Gangster, states,

"Everyone thinks of Satya as a gangster film but it is actually a film about living in Bombay, about loneliness in Bombay, forming bonds, and how even amidst all the craziness that keeps happening in that city, life keeps chugging on at the same time. That’s the emotional core of the film. It’s not possible to take Satya out of Bombay and make it somewhere else. It’d then be a fundamentally different film. This occurred to me over time. Also because I went and stayed there, I understood the film a lot better.”

THE WRITING

Satya wouldn’t have been half the movie it became were it not for the outstanding writing of Saurabh Shukla and Anurag Kashyap. Between the two, these two non-Mumbaiites brilliantly captured the cultural fabric and nuances of the city and its citizens. In Saurabh Shukla’s words, the inspiration for Satya came from Goodfellas - not in terms of storyline, but the fact that the gangsters are a part of society and not removed from it. They go about their everyday lives where even their immediate neighbours would be hard pressed to know that they have a darker side to what they do for a living. Hence the script, and the actors, had to ensure that there were no real affectations that would give them away as being different from the crowds. Due credit to the actors too that they got the lingo and the intonations just right. Not only did the writers get the words right, but so did the actors get the accent. Satya is also the right mix of Bambaiya Hindi. There is no overkill on the street lingo that Hindi films have abused, especially while showcasing the tapori gangster types.

While rewatching it for the purpose of writing this post (yet one more excuse to watch it again), I was struck by the underlying humour in almost all the interactions. The beauty of this humour is that it’s not meant to be humorous, but it could be seen as humour as well. Right from the beginning where Manoj Pahwa’s character shows Satya his place to camp everyday and informs him about the morning alarm, to Pakya’s reaction when his face is slashed and all his bravado comes crashing down there is an undercurrent of humour - dark or otherwise. Of course the scene where Pyaari tells Satya and Vidya about the chipkali ka picture when they are out on a double date, or the scene where Chander is telling his joke ‘sab kuch Ram dega toh Shyam ka mofat mein lega’ are meant to elicit laughs. But even lines like music director Ronu Sagar melodiously telling Vidya ‘kuch paane keliye kuch khona padta hain, Vidyaji’ have a sense of dark humour to them. Or when Kallu Mama abruptly picks up his pistol and shoots down Gurunarayan’s henchman with the bullet whistling past Bhiku’s ears who complains to him, “pehle bolne ka na!” In a way it’s a bit like how Tarantino builds in humour into a situation through writing and delivery, even though the viewer is well aware of the macabre happenings on screen.

The other interesting thing about Satya is that there is no back story to any of its characters, including the titular character. Never before, and never since, a movie has been written where there is no backstory, no reason for why the character is the way she/he is. Satya just is the way he is. Everything in his life from the time he lands in Mumbai is all happening in the present, in real time. It’s just the way things are. Some people are already there, some new people come in, things happen, and life goes on.

The power of good writing is best evident when the cast’s role, however minor, is well etched in the audience’s mind and they associate the face with either a particular line, dialogue or throwaway punch. Salim-Javed were masters of this craft. Not since Sholay can I think of any movie that has successfully managed to associate the cast with specific lines or dialogues or names. Think Manoj Bajpayee and Bhiku Mhatre comes to mind. Think Chakravarthy and it is Satya. Think Chander and the joke comes to mind. Think Saurabh Shukla and Kallu Mama saying ‘yeda samajh ke rakha hain kya apunko’ comes to mind. Think Makarand Deshpande and Advocate Muley saying ‘Happy Morning’ comes to mind. Think Govind Namdeo and Bhau Thakurdas Jhawle it is. Each one of them have gone on to do multitudes of roles and donned different characters, but people of a certain generation will always associate them with their specific role in Satya. That, to me, is the power of brilliant writing. 

THE CINEMATOGRAPHY

The writing of Satya is taken several notches higher by the sheer brilliance of its cinematography. With Gerard Hooper to begin with, and later ably taken forward by Mazhar Kamran, the cinematography of Satya is its silent hero. The city of Mumbai is captured in all its dark glory - the filth, the muck, the squalor, the crowds, the mugginess, the colours. The camerawork is almost voyueristic, giving you an inside look of the lives of gangsters. The grittiness of the writing, or the dark humour underlying in it, is amplified by the way it is depicted through the lens. The rough edginess of the camerawork deliberates on, and accentuates, the rough edges of life in Mumbai.

There is a sense of impatience to the camera movements, almost as a reflection of the impatience of the characters in getting their respective jobs done. It doesn’t let you rest for a minute, there is never a dull moment in its presence. Almost like how the city is - constantly on the move, with some or the action unfolding in every nook and corner.

The shock treatment of certain scenes - the shot that rings out right after Chander tells the joke, the slashing of Pakya’s face, the shot that shatters the window of Ronu Sagar’s house to name a few - make you sit up and in full alert, is not just because of the writing, but also because of how the cinematography takes you deep into the scene, almost making you a part of the scene.

THE SONGS AND THE BACKGROUND SCORE

For a movie that was all about grittiness and murder and crime, it surprisingly has a decent song list. And to think that Ramgopal Varma had to include songs under duress from producers and distributors. Not having any star power to counter their demands with, he had to give in. Gulzar shook the purists to the core by penning lines like ‘goli maar bheje mein’ or ‘saara din sadkon pe khali rikshey sa peeche peeche rehta hain’. The lyrics and the accompanying music by Vishal Bhardwaj make most songs hummable. The important thing, however, is how the songs serve an important role in taking the narrative forward. In Satya, the songs are not interruptions.

Another barometer for how good the movie is and how important a role a song plays in it (besides for titillating purposes) is when the audience doesn’t get up to go out for a smoke or a bio break when a song is playing on screen. Satya was also a rarity in the times when an item song was mandatory - it didn’t have one. And yet the audiences were glued to the screen during the songs.

Even more important a role that music, besides songs, plays in a movie is that of the background score. Sandeep Chowta’s haunting background score, like the movie’s cinematography, is another silent hero of Satya. The triple-whammy of powerhouse performances, outstanding writing and brilliant cinematography is all given another dimension by the background score. It is the force multiplier of Satya. The background score is so good that they even released a separate album of only the background score, over and above the album containing songs. Once again, it was a first in Hindi films that even the background score was released.

LAST, BUT DEFINITELY NOT THE LEAST - THE DIRECTION

They say that one good deed has the power to wipe off a thousand misdeeds. As far as I am concerned, Satya it is for Ramgopal Varma. Quite uncharacteristic to how he has projected himself, and how everyone hankers after credit even when they don’t deserve it, Ramgopal Varma has been uncharacteristically modest and generous in his own assessment of his contribution to Satya. He has gone on record to say that 

“We didn’t make the film. It made itself.” 

He gave a free hand to everyone who was on board, while guiding them around his vision of the kind of movie he wanted to make. That abandon is evident in all aspects of the movie. By calling it Satya he doffed his hat to the other masterpiece that was a pathbreaker in its days, Ardh Satya (besides the fact that he wanted to impress his once one-sided love interest by naming a film after her!). The beauty of Satya is that it is as relevant today, as it was then. And the sole reason for that is the way Ramgopal Varma has treated it.

For a movie about gangsters, there is no villain in the movie. Perhaps that is the reason for its longevity of relevance. The moment there is a hero and a villain an element of datedness comes in, in the way the villain is vanquished by the hero.

Ardh Satya, though a powerful movie that was pioneering for its time, feels jaded when watched today. Because neither are there any upright police officers left who will sacrifice their everything, nor are there any delusions that the audience lives under of someone being upright, nor are the gangsters of today like Rama Shetty. When watched today, Ardh Satya feels too idealistic when the world around has changed multiple times over. Satya, on the other hand, is as relevant because the same story is as relevant today - the intensity of the activities might have changed, but the overall structure of how life is for up and coming gangsters, how they rise to eventually become politicians, and the general ineptitude of the authorities continues to date.

PARTING SHOTS

It’s been 25 years and the movie has still not aged. Like Uday Bhatia says in his book, Satya while being a true crime genre movie is also in equal measure a movie on life in a megapolis like Mumbai. Per me Satya remains relevant and contemporary because it’s a mirror to what the city and life in the city continues to remain. It has always been gritty, it’s full of struggle, it’s got its ups and downs, it’s got a lot of angst, it’s got a glossy veneer under which there are only layers of muck, darkness, quicksand that suck you in as you try to keep your head above to reach out to the light/brightness which oftentimes is a mirage. These themes of Mumbai have been its constant irrespective of which decade or era you have lived in. As the city’s contours and skyline continue to touch new heights, so do the depths to which it keeps plumbing down to. There will always be Satya’s who will keep migrating to the city. No one will know where they came from or where they are headed. Some will make a mark, and most will perish in obscurity. But the lure of breaking out of anonymity and obscurity to relative fame, or infamy, will keep driving throngs of Satya’s to migrate to the city.

Be braver. Be kinder.

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Since the above post is like an extended and detailed review of the movie, I thought I would leave you with some clips from the movie. For those who have seen the movie, these will help them relive some of the moments in the film. For those who still haven’t seen the movie (I sincerely hope there aren’t many), if these clips and my gushing review above don’t make you watch it, then nothing will! I can only feel sorry for you.

SPOILER ALERT: Don’t watch the mash-up clip if you haven’t watched the movie.

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