Skip to main content

Sholay - The Greatest Story Ever Told

By Jaideep Sen 



The other day I saw an interview of Karan Johar where he mentioned how upset he gets when he meets film related people who say they’ve not seen Sholay. Seeing the respect, he gave Sholay made my love and respect for Karan Johar go many notches higher because for you to be in Love with Indian Cinema, you have to be in love with Sholay. 

I see some part of Sholay almost every day. In fact even while punching the keys of my laptop while writing this piece, the epic is playing in front as an inspiration. The reason Sholay stands on the Number 1 block of the victory stand of Indian Cinema since 15th August, 1975 and is unshakeable even 47 years after its release and will always be immovable is because it’s the only perfect amalgam of writing and form, that too in every department of filmmaking. 


We need to be grateful to the writing of Salim Saab, Javed Saab, the big heartedness of G.P Sippy Saab and the craftmanship of Ramesh Sippy Ji for giving us what Shekhar Kapur has termed as the most defining film of Indian Cinema. 

Even today we see traces of Sholay in modern day gigantic blockbusters like Bahubali where “Katappa ne Bahubali ko kyon maara” at the end of part one feels like an equivalent to why did Thakur not pick up the gun close to the interval point. 

Bheem and Ram of RRR are the modern day Veeru and Jai which Javed Saab has himself expressed at the RRR Success Party and the audience, including me, is referring to Sanjay Dutt as Adheera in KGF 2 as a modern day Gabbar. 


In fact, immediately after seeing RRR on the first day of its release I called its Story Writer V. Vijayendra Prasad Ji to tell him that I felt the film was a homage to Sholay. In fact, while seeing RRR a second time, I realized how a single bullet connects it to Sholay because here Ajay Devgn’s character and, in Sholay, Jai use that one last bullet to sacrifice their lives while blowing up the opposition.

These are the permanent footsteps of eternal brilliance left on the sands of time by Sholay for which we need to be in eternal reverence and gratitude to Salim Saab, Javed Saab, G.P Sippy Saab, Ramesh Ji and Team Sholay for blessing us with The Greatest Story Ever Told.

 Jaideep Sen is a filmmaker and a connoisseur of the art of storytelling. 

  

Read his earlier posts in the Salaam Salim Saab Series: 


#1 Salaam, Salim Saab 

 #2 Silence that Speaks 

#3 The Invaluable Value of the Pen

 #4 The Guru of Screenwriting

 #5 The Forever Burning Flame of Sholay

 #6 The Strength of Characterisation 

 #7 Bond of Brotherhood

 #8 The Sangam of a Genius and his Admirer 

 #9 First Link in the Zanjeer 

#10 Vijay – The Eternal Winner 

 #11 Let's Celebrate Salim Khan! 

 #12 The Memorable Women Behind the Angry Young Man

 #13 The Definition of a Love Story 

#14 Relevance Etched in Stone 

 #15 Fuelled by Rejection 

#16 Dialogue - the Spoken Word 

 #17 When Salman Khan Chose to Strip Off his Stardom

 #18 The Most Memorable Line of Indian Cinema

#19 The Doomed Characters

 #20 Mere Paas Baap Hain!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Facing my fear - one Pitch at a time

Pitching makes me freeze up. In fact, the very thought of it makes me wanna run away.  For a screenwriter that's simply bad news. Because no matter what, if you want to get your stories out of your computer and hit the big screens, then you need to get comfortable with selling your story to potential producers and studios. And the first step in that journey is pitching.  My fear of pitching has prodded me to find different ways of overcoming the hurdle. So, for a few years I tried to work with agents in the hope that they would read my book and be able to handle the job of pitching. But soon I realized that agents were not into reading. So, I was just another name in their long list of clients. How that helps them grow their business is a different story, and one that I will perhaps share at a later point when I get around to solving that mystery! But the turning point (life does imitate screenplays!) came when I was called to pitch my book to a prominent OTT channel. This was...
1 comment
Read more

Basu Chatterji's "Balcony Class" Films

Basu Chatterji's Rajnigandha was like a breath of fresh air in the 1970s film universe of Bombay. At a time when the Angry Young Man was beginning to dominate celluloid screens, Amol Palekar was as un-hero-like as you could get. He was the Common Man who traveled in buses, did not have hero-like mannerisms and did not breathe fire and brimstone at his opponents. Basu Chatterji's Middle of the Road Cinema burst on to the scene and surprised the movie-going audience with its everyday situations and storylines that had an undercurrent of humour. Chatterji catered to an audience that he liked to call the "Balcony Class".  Anirudha Bhattacharjee, author of Basu Chatterji and Middle-of-the-Road Cinema writes an entertaining and heartwarming account of the life and work of Basu Chatterji, one of the most under-rated directors of Indian cinema. Recall of Chatterji's brand of feel-good, slice-of-life movies is perhaps highest for his Rajnigandha, Chotisi Baat, Baaton Baa...
4 comments
Read more

'Pure Evil' has been my biggest and most complex project - Author Balaji Vittal

Love them or hate them, you simply can't ignore them. That cliche is perhaps most apt when it comes to the bad men of Bollywood. In fact, some of the most memorable lines of dialogue have been mouthed not by the heroes but by the villains of Hindi cinema. So it is only fitting that these shining stars of the dark world (after all, antagonists are the protagonists of their own stories!) deserve to be spotlighted. Balaji Vittal , the author of Pure Evil: the Bad Men of Bollywood undertakes this onerous task of highlighting the world of these evil characters and how they have come to occupy a special place in the hearts and minds of movie goers.  I spoke to Mr. Balaji Vittal, a National Award winning and MAMI Award winning author of Bollywood books, a columnist for News18, Outlook India, The New Indian Express , a Bollywood commentator and a public speaker, about his journey of venturing into the world of Pure Evil .   Here are some excerpts:   Your book "Pure Evil: the Bad...
Post a Comment
Read more