Kaala Patthar - A diamond from the coal mines

A sincere apology: I couldn’t keep my fortnightly date with all of you on July 31st as I had to take a forced break – a recurring and painful lower back issue had me laid up for more than a week. Much as I would have still liked to post, keying in on a laptop while being horizontally positioned has its limitations. It was the first interruption after 41 uninterrupted posts and I hope there are no more such interruptions. I understand it is presumptuous of me to think that you really missed my post, but for those who did – I know of at least one of you (thank you, Swapneel) who did check if my newsletter had inadvertently been relegated to spam – I thank you for your support. I had ambitious plans to break my fortnightly schedule and make up for the missed one by posting last week and follow that up with my scheduled post today. But then lethargy took over, as it invariably does whenever there is a break in any kind of routine or regimen. Anyway … here I am once again.

---

When Amitabh Bachchan is one’s favourite (and there are legions of those) and when one considers his phenomenal body of work over a 7-8 year golden period from mid-70s to early 80s, almost all movies he did then end up being classified by us fans as ‘my favourite movie ever’. The more popular ones are obviously Sholay, Deewaar, Trishul, Amar Akbar Anthony (though not strictly a Bachchan movie, and yet a Bachchan movie if you know what I mean), Don, Kaalia, and a whole host of others will always feature on the list. The ones that will not feature will be the likes of Mili, Shakti, Bemisaal, Barsaat Ki Ek Raat, and of course the movie that is the subject matter of this post – Kaala Patthar. A chance view of a reel on Instagram (or was it YouTube Shorts?) last week brought back fond memories. My chance view was meant to be, I guess. Because it just so happens that this masterpiece celebrated its 45^th anniversary of release last week (It released on August 9, 1979).

Kaala Patthar is an amalgamation of two distinct story sources. One is a real-life tragic event that happened in Chasnala, Dhanbad where almost 400 miners lost their lives in a coal mine explosion that resulted in flooding of the mines. The other source is Joseph Conrad’s book, ‘Lord Jim’, which is a story of a ship’s captain who is censured for abandoning his passenger ship that is in distress only to find out on reaching the shore that it was safely towed by another ship. The roll that the ace writing duo of Salim-Javed were on, Kaala Patthar infuses both these stories into a script that is full of an ensemble cast of diverse backgrounds, motivations, quirks, and compulsions.

On researching I found that the context in which Kaala Patthar was made had a very important role to play as well. The time when the movie was made was also a time of huge upheaval in the country. The tail-end of the post-independence idealism had given way to cynicism and a sense of betrayal with the establishment. It was also the time when the first ever political experiment of an alternative government that was formed as a resounding slap to the Emergency years had come undone in a short period of time. Mainstream Hindi cinema in those days was quite closely related to the politics of the country – classics like Naya Daur and Mother India celebrated ideals and the post-Independence euphoria. Over time movies strayed from these quasi-nationalistic narratives into full blown romances and other escapist subject matters that were portrayed by the likes of Rajesh Khanna. The harsh realities of everyday life, however, led to those narratives becoming counterproductive. Life was not a bed of roses and the overwhelming sentiment in the country was one of angst. This sentiment was ably captured by Salim-Javed in its various facets over a string of blockbusters. In Bachchan they found a more-than-able-and-capable face to represent the angst of the common people.

Kaala Patthar released in the year when the political experiment had failed and in that sense is like a culmination of the angry young man phase of Bachchan – how can you rebel against the establishment when that very establishment has been brought back by the people who had ousted it? While he did go on to live the image for a few more years, his angst and anger in his latter outings was more to do with personal grudges than societal.

Kaala Patthar is quite unlike a Yash Chopra movie. For a director whose movies were hardcoded in the urban landscape (Mumbai in Deewaar, New Delhi in Trishul), Kaala Patthar was as distanced from urbanism.

Dust, smog, heat, soot, gray, brown, black – that’s the colour palette with which the whole 3-hour canvas is painted on.

The contrast in lighting as well as the colours we see during scenes in the ‘basti’ of the miners with that of the lush greens and whites of the mine owner’s bungalow are a representative of the stark contrast in which India was getting polarized as a society. In fact, the only references to a much brighter world outside of the mines are when we see the mine owner’s private plane, his swanky car and when his friend’s daughter comes visiting.

It is also possibly the only ‘political’ movie that Yash Chopra made. It was a commentary on the socialization and nationalization of the country’s resources that played a role not only in its self-reliance, but also contributed to systemic corruption and looting of those resources along with valuing profits over people that continues unabated till date. This reality is captured in a single line that the mine owner says (without missing a beat) to chide his Chief Engineer who is advising the owner to forego 40 lakhs of revenues to save 400 lives, “Saxena tumhara hisaab itna kamzor hai ki tum yeh bhi nahi jaante ki chaalis laakh chaar-sau se kahi zyaada hai.”

Kaala Patthar is also yet another ensemble movie that will be known as a Bachchan movie. It does get a bit unwieldy especially in trying to run multiple parallel narratives, but the Salim-Javed duo does a fairly decent balancing act. So we have the enthusiastic and upright engineer Ravi (Shashi Kapoor), the idealistic doctor Sudha (Rakhee), the chirpy Channo (Neetu Singh), the urbane journalist Anita (Parveen Babi), the conniving and scheming Seth Dhanraj (Prem Chopra), the servile Chief Engineer (Yunus Parvez), the laidback and arrogant Mangal (Shatrughan Sinha), and last but not the least the brooding Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) who is deliberately shown to stand out from the rest, almost like an outsider. While he is very much part of the happenings and labours as much as the other mine workers in the same conditions, the flashes from his past in full naval uniform within the first few minutes into the movie create a sense of mystery and intrigue about his presence in such squalor.

Every actor shines in their respective parts. We empathise with Vijay’s brooding, yet sensitive nature. We relate to the quandry that Sudha as an idealistic doctor is in. We feel for Ravi’s fight for good. We despise Seth Dhanraj with a passion. We want to hate everything that Mangal is all about, but yet we don’t harbour any ill towards him. We share Channo’s optimism. And we want Anita to stand her ground. It is once again the beauty and the power of some crackling writing that each of these characters end up making their part really meaty and meaningful.

The beauty of Kaala Patthar lies in the way the paths of all these seven characters are interconnected. The way situations are created by the writer duo ensure that despite three parallel narratives the film stays together. While we happily enjoy the developments in the subplots the film doesn’t completely lose its focus from its aim of reaching the unfortunate climax. And while we meet seven different personalities, we also witness three different kinds of romances.

For a movie that is as grand in its vision and scale, Kaala Patthar is ultimately a compelling story of personal redemption for each of its lead characters. The most visible and obvious redemption is that of Bachchan as his is the heaviest burden of all – of having fallen in his own eyes.

However, for a movie that had everything going for it in terms of cast, director and writers, Kaala Patthar didn’t do well at the box office. There are many reasons for it. Some of them are documented, while some are my own surmising.

In an era of one TV channel that would play for half a day, movie promotions then were not like how they are now. The buzz around an upcoming release would be generated by what were called radio programs - 15 minute capsules that had a presenter walking listeners through the broad plot line of the movie interspersed with dialogues and song clips from the movie. Though they were avid movie goers, my parents were not exactly the types who simply had to watch every new release. However, they had to generally give in when it came to a Bachchan release because a Bachchan release had something for everyone to take back home. I don’t seem to remember even asking my parents about the possibility of watching Kaala Patthar at the theatres. Which in retrospect tells me that the buzz around the movie promotion must have been lacking or possibly the plotline as summarised in its radio program must not have been enticing enough for me. Or maybe what I heard sounded uninteresting and complicated and not for me. And that’s possibly the reason why there wasn’t any pester power from my end then. Losing out on a significant chunk of an audience due to lack of pester power of millions like me, and that too for a movie of a universally loved, adored and idolised mega star may be one of the reasons for its lacklustre performance at the box office.

Audiences walk into the cinema halls to escape from their reality, not to be confronted by it. And that too a reality that is difficult to relate to or empathise with. So it is also possible that because of the setting, the backdrop, the background story of Vijay, and the nuanced situations that abound the movie that it didn’t click as much at the box office as some of the monster hits that Salim-Javed, Bachchan, Yash Chopra and Shatrughan Sinha had given till then.

It is also equally possible that the masses may have missed the enormity of the burden of falling in one’s own eyes and fighting to redeem oneself. It is not as easily relatable a theme as exacting revenge on a known antagonist, which is what the angry young man had come to represent.

A Bachchan movie was also always replete with hard hitting dialogues that the audiences wanted to hear. They felt one with the angst portrayed on screen through those dialogues. They remembered those lines verbatim and many made it to everyday conversations. Kaala Patthar suffers from an absence of those dialogues.

In its quest to stay authentic to the characterisation of Vijay as a man from nowhere who has gone into a shell because of shouldering the burden of having fallen in his own eyes, the absence of whistle-inducing dialogues or histrionics was a distinct departure to the formula that always added up in the audience’s minds.

His one scene in the initial minutes of the film where the cheers of the mine workers are juxtaposed with the jeers and insults being hurled at him from a past episode resulting him breaking a mirror in anger saying ‘haan main kaayar hoon’ not only captures this inner turmoil, but also sets the ground for a restrained performance sans any dialogue-baazi or histrionics which he had become known for by 1979. Lines like ‘Why don’t you understand doctor, my pain is my destiny and I can’t avoid it’ were either too high brow, or the ones like ‘Main toh sirf gaadi nahi dekh saka, par aap toh kuch bhi nahi dekh sakte seth’ are too subtle in their impact for an audience thirsting for lines that they can throw at their real and imaginary foes. Audiences didn’t walk into cinema halls those days to watch Bachchan say ‘main kaayar hoon’. And so, I guess, they didn’t walk in much.

The film also suffered from the negative publicity surrounding the animosity between Bachchan and Shatrughan Sinha. While it was felt to be a great marketing gimmick to play upon their real life friendship turning sour, it didn’t work in the film’s favour. Sinha has gone on record to say that it was only Salim Khan who stood firm in his demand for him to play the role of Mangal. He was the most unwanted actor on the sets. It is possibly because of the fact that Sinha also saw himself as being in the same class as Bachchan as far as ‘dialogue-baazi’ is concerned, that the writers too succumbed to the lure of pitting the two stars against each other where they are not only throwing physical punches at each other but verbal ones as well. This does result in a few cringe inducing ‘filmi’ scenes between the two. Those were possibly attempts by the writers to make a film that would get whistles in the cinema halls. In an otherwise moderately tempered script these stick out like a sore thumb.

It is said of Raj Kapoor that after the box office failure of the one movie in which he put his heart and soul – Mera Naam Joker – he decided to let go of ‘creative’ storytelling and decided to live up to his showman tag with one ‘commercial’ potboiler after another. Turns out that post Kaala Patthar’s box office performance, Yash Chopra too turned his back on making movies steeped in realism and opted for the sunnier and snowier locales of Switzerland with breezy romances thereafter.

Kaala Patthar was also a landmark film for more reasons. It was the last time that the holy trinity of Bachchan, Salim-Javed and Yash Chopra ever worked together. The lukewarm box office performance also led to fissures in the producer – director pairing of Gulshan Rai and Yash Chopra resulting in Yash Raj Films being formed in its wake. It is quite a statement that even the credits of Kaala Patthar don’t have a mention of Trimurti Films or Gulshan Rai and credit Yash Chopra as Producer-Director.

While audiences largely are blissfully unaware of the behind-the-scenes machinations and problems, somehow they are able to still figure out that something is amiss in the total package. However much the makers may try to hide them or gloss over them, problems and discontent on the sets always has a way of creeping into the way the product is finished. Kaala Patthar, though an ambitious project in more ways than one and that too for more than one stakeholder, does suffer to an extent on the tautness of some of the earlier projects of the actor-director-writer trinity.

Now you may ask as to why does Kaala Patthar still make it to my must-see Bachchan films list? And why did I feel compelled to dedicate this post to it?

Having watched the movie many years after its release I was taken in by how different a subject it was to be made into a movie. It wasn’t the usual fare that Bachchan was increasingly getting trapped into by the late 70s / early 80s. In spite of being accused of belting out formulaic films, I have always felt that Bachchan did make some brave choices of roles at the peak of his career. Kaala Patthar, in my view, was also a brave choice.

My personal favourite Bachchan movies are all those in which he is more the smouldering, seething young man, rather than an outwardly angry young man. Where there are more shades to his personality and characterisation that are revealed in stages. Which is why my personal top 10 Bachchan movies have the likes of Mili, Namak Haram, Bemisaal and Shakti, along with Kaala Patthar.

I also have a personal bias towards redemption stories, so for me Kaala Patthar is up there in spite of its real and perceived shortcomings that I have mentioned above. It is firmly ensconced in my all-time top 10 Bachchan films.

Kaala Patthar, though about coal, is a diamond (carbon in another form) that wasn’t polished well enough to lure the masses, but is a diamond nevertheless with a few flaws in its carats. Generally speaking movies from the past seem to feel dated when one watches them now. Either the manner of storytelling, the direction, the acting (or overacting) or the subject matter don’t seem relevant anymore. Worse still many movies from the past are simply jarring to new sensibilities. Not so in the case of Kaala Patthar. Watching it again for the purposes of this post, I felt it is still as relevant in terms of the politics, the inequalities, the disparities, the unequal relationships, and the struggles of people to not only seek a better life but also redeem themselves of their personal burdens.

At 45, Kaala Patthar seems to have certainly aged well.

Be braver. Be kinder.

---

For Keep Watching I am sharing the trailer of the movie that this post is about. Hopefully it will make some of you who haven’t watched the movie yet to watch it. And for those who already have, it will be a great rewatch. The trailer is a remastered version where the credit titles have Yash Raj Films as the producer - something that’s not there in the original print that one can find on Prime Video.

---