The experience of watching SATYA 2 was certainly not a pleasant one for me, who once felt proud to be called a die-hard fan or follower of the cult cinema made by the innovative Ram Gopal Varma. No doubt, the scenario regarding his directorial ventures has gone from disappointing to poor in the recent years but honestly I never felt this bad before, while going for a new RGV movie released on a fresh Friday.
To put it straight, RGV was one of those few Indian directors who gave me butterflies in the stomach full of excitement before witnessing his each & every distinctive film made back in the 90s. But I had never really expected that a day would come when I will be the only person to buy a ticket for RGV's new film and then further would have to request the theater manager to run the movie despite of having no audience at all in its first show.
So as a review there is nothing to write about SATYA 2 (completely unrelated with the cult SATYA of Bhiku Matre), since it expectedly has the same old repetitive concept and doesn't offer even a single interesting scene right from its first frame. The film talking about the new underworld of 2013 is needlessly stuffed with songs as usual and its performances again range from decent to immature like many of RGV's recent debacles.
Anyway SATYA 2 did take me back in time to the late 80s when we repeatedly had several similar experiences sitting in the theater with our heads down, watching the severe mistakes made on the screen by some reputed names of that era. Those were the times, when film freaks like me, actually watched a movie more for its renowned director than the famous actors featuring in it to be precise. So even if the film had a great star-cast it was the director who had more reputation on stake than the actors and that is the reason even the slide with the director's name written on it (in the opening titles), was loudly cheered with a big applause from the enthusiastic audience showing their huge craze & expectations.
Now among these iconic directors, there were two names who gave some extremely disappointing films with Amitabh Bachchan in the late eighties and SATYA 2 made me feel just the same, sitting in the theater with a long sad face, exactly in the position as I was while watching films such as Ganga Jamuna Saraswati (Manmohan Desai - 1988), Jaadugar (Prakash Mehra - 1989) & Toofan (Ketan Desai - 1989) more than two decades back.
However the only difference was, that in those times the hall used to be fully packed on the first day and we had several friends (groups) looking at each other's faces questioning the messy content coming from our favourite director? And here while watching SATYA 2, I was all alone amongst the empty seats and there were only theater attendants watching the film standing along the walls and no one else to exchange the looks with.
Interestingly post the 80s, in the later years (around the new millennium), films like Trimurti (Mukul Anand – 1995), Jhooth Boley Kauwa Kaatey (Hrshikesh Mukherjee – 1998), Kisna (Subhash Ghai - 2005), Yuvraaj (Subhash Ghai - 2008) and few others also made me feel the same way and I really wonder that is it the age, over-exposure, burden, over- confidence or anything else which actually causes this fall in every legendary director's career
.in most of the cases!
But returning to RGV and comparing his style of film-making with the other directors, there is a unique & noteworthy kind of difference in the career of this visionary, which still leaves a certain amount of doubt in your mind about his 'losing the art' completely. And the difference is that where all the other reputed directors made some extremely poor films in the end of their careers, there RGV has been associated with such films right from the beginning without any doubt. In other words, more than 2 decades long career graph of the trendsetter has never been on the upward swing constantly but has always been an uneven ride (having a lot of valleys in the graph) with a mixture of outstanding and poor films coming at a regular gap simultaneously right from the 90s as mentioned in the following chart.
Shiva (1989) & Raat (1992).......followed by a Drohi (1992) Rangeela(1995).......followed by a Daud (1997) Satya (1998).......followed by a Mast (1999) Kaun? (1999).......followed by a Jungle (2000) Company (2002) & Bhoot (2003).......followed by a Naach (2004) Sarkar (2005) & Darna Zaroori Hai (2006).......followed by a Shiva (2006) Nishabd(2007).......followed by a Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag (2007) & Darling (2007) Sarkar Raj (2008).......followed by a Contract (2008 Phoonk (2008).......followed by a Agyaat (2009) Rann (2010) & Rakhta Charitra-I (2010).......followed by a Rakhta Charitra-2 (2010) Not a Love Story (2011).......followed by a Bhoot Returns (2012) & Department (2012) The Attacks of 26/11 (2013).......followed by a Satya 2 (2013)
Hence though his films might not have been appreciated by the critics or proved as runaway success at the box office since Sarkar (2005), yet one cannot say that he has completely lost the skill, vision or art, considering the projects such as Nishabd, Sarkar Raj, Rann, Phoonk, Not A Love Story and The Attacks of 26/11.
Having said that, the truth remains that RGV's latest Satya 2 is nowhere less than a RGV Ki Aag in terms of content as well as execution, but still the maverick has always bounced back in the past and who knows he may do the same in the next few years surprising us all
once again.
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