If there is a singular thread that binds the historic partnership of screenwriters Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, it is that a mother’s love is eternal. Through their enigmatic storytelling, these men repositioned the landscape of Hindi cinema in the ’70s from the brooding romantic to the borderline oedipal ‘Angry Young Man’. Their simplistic declaration, “Mere paas maa hain,” delivered through the eyes and voice of Shashi Kapoor in Deewar (1975) continues to reverberate almost half a century later, signifying that if you’re lucky enough, this is indeed enough.
In a tender portrait of the epochal writing duo titled Angry Young Men released on Prime Video this week, long-time editor and debutant director Namrata Rao lays her gentle feminine gaze on the creators of these wrathful heroes who themselves lost their mothers at significantly young ages. Through Rao’s lens, these men are anything but angry, although the viewer doesn’t see them in the same frame until the very end—a conscious decision made by Rao and her diligent editor Geeta Singh. Salim-Javed’s split of 1982, which rattled the film industry, hasn’t been dramatised in the three-part series either.
Instead, the camera acts like a mirror for their deep-rooted respect for one another, which has endured even after all these years. “I wasn’t interested in a hagiography. As a woman, my whole curiosity was what led them to make the characters they made, and then paint a portrait of them as artists,” says a passionate Rao, whom I spoke to after watching Angry Young Men .
The idea of the show as well as its title was the brainchild of screenwriter , director and daughter of Javed Saab, Zoya Akhtar, who felt like she was too close to the subjects to make this herself. It was Rao’s mastery over editing that prompted Zoya to approach her to build this age-old classic love story (if I may). Rao, who has edited Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! (2008), Band Baaja Baaraat (2010) , Kahaani (2012) and Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015) amongst a large repertoire of films , was thrilled by the idea of directing; something that she was longing for even before her journey as an editor began.
“I studied editing at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Kolkata, mostly because I never thought I could be a top dog director in the landscape 20 years ago. It was a largely male world at the time and I didn’t have the confidence to pursue direction,” Rao contemplates. In stark comparison to Rao’s scepticism, we witness a scene in Angry Young Men, when Salim-Javed, who felt cheated by the poster release of their film Zanjeer (1973) omitting their names, hired a man to go around Bombay and stencil the posters with the words ‘Written by Salim-Javed.
’ Overnight, Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bhaduri’s faces were marked by the names of the people who created them, paving the way for ‘the writer’ who was no more than a mere ghost in the shadows at the time. While it was most definitely a result of the duo’s determination and strong self-worth , I wonder if it was also their gender that emboldened and protected them. Incidentally, it is the female director’s curious voice that makes itself effectively present in a story of two men.
Rao’s on-screen questions act as conjugations of male experiences from the ’70s, which are honest, vulnerable and sometimes enquiring of their own aukaat . Simultaneously, Singh’s edits of the quieter moments, such as Salim-Javed’s chai/coffee routine, showcase a sense of synergy and are reflective of a female gaze that notices the smaller details of a larger story. Salim Saab’s first wife, Salma Khan, and Javed Saab’s ex-wife, Honey Irani, also appear in the series, waxing eloquently alongside their current partners , Helen and Shabana Azmi.
For Rao, the organic nature with which the women interacted was something that she noticed on her first day of shoot and it seamlessly wrote itself into this emotive portrayal. It helped that the heads of departments on Angry Young Men were primarily women . “The energy was so vastly different from other sets that I’ve worked on, where you’ll usually have men and then maybe a singular woman,” she elucidates.
Questions about Salim-Javed’s portrayal of female characters are also addressed in the two-hour prosopography. For instance, in the 1972 film Seeta Aur Geeta, even while Geeta sets out to save her twin sister in peril, her character still yearns to be a good cook and stitch well. When Rao asks Javed Saab about this detail, he admits that it was written for a different time and wouldn’t feature in his writing today.
Similarly, in the classic superhit Sholay (1975) , there is a mention of widow remarriage but it isn’t completely seen through. When asked, Salim Saab explains that it was tough to push the envelope all the way through in the ’70s but it is a seed that they wanted to plant in the hope that it would be accepted eventually. Seen in the context of their time, most of their female protagonists had a strong sense of agency, a detail that Rao both appreciates as well as contemplates.
In a couple of reviews, the series has been critically described as a ‘home movie’ which doesn’t unearth the dark reasoning behind the shocking split. As someone who is part of a photography collective with 9 women called 8.30, I am acutely sensitive to the sanctity of a creative collaboration, where everything you put out is intertwined with another person’s state of mind.
It’s the same for Salim-Javed and Jai-Veeru—the names leave the lips in unison. “ Dosti, pyaar, emotion . Ek hi picture (Sholay) mein puri life hain,” (Friendship, love, emotion.
There is a whole life in a single picture) says Sanjay Verma, the sparkly-eyed manager of Edward Cinema. Many years later, in a parallel reality, the script holds true. Also read: In Paris for the holidays? This Bollywood exhibition should be on your list Bollywood movies today need to be shamelessly camp again 8 evergreen Bollywood movies you can watch again and again on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
