Sholay remake undergoes a ’see’ change
In his version of “Sholay”, Bollywood filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma has reportedly revamped, refurbished and re-dressed almost all the immortal characters from Ramesh Sippy’s 1975 historic epic.
In fact, the relationships that bound the memorable characters in the film have also been completely moved around to suit the dark contemporary underworld milieu where Varma has situated his film.
The widow-in-white Radha, played by Jaya Bachchan in the earlier kitsch-classic, is now named Devi. And she no longer wears white, but sparkling black.
According to Varma’s “Sholay”, she is not Thakur’s silently grieving daughter-in-law but will be seen as the widow of inspector Ranveer’s (Mohanlal) brother.
Varma’s Devi, a trained nurse, is far more aggressive in her desire for revenge than Radha could’ve ever been. Her relationship with one of the two mercenaries, who are hired by Ranveer to exterminate the gangster and his goons, also takes a course quite different from Sippy’s “Sholay”.
Hema Malini’s extroverted loud ‘tangewali’ Basanti in “Sholay” transforms in Varma’s “Sholay” into Ghungroo, to be played by Nisha Kothari. Ghungroo is the only female auto-rickshaw driver in Mumbai who throws attitude like a male but is actually feminine at heart.
Deviating completely from Basanti’s tonga and horse Dhanno, Ghungroo’s auto, which is named Laila, is going to be a state-of-the-art creation.
“Ghungroo’s tonga will be an art director’s nightmare. It would contain several hangings, multi-speaker music system with synchronised disco lights, leopard print upholstery and a large image of Durga, all within the confines of the miniature auto,” said a source.
Most interestingly, while the widow Radha and the outspoken and flamboyant Basanti never came together in Sippy’s film - because Hema never wanted to be seen anywhere near Sanjeev Kumar, who played the widow’s father-in-law, as Sanjeev had proposed to Hema, Devi and Ghungroo are very close friends - a cinematic subversion that cheekily echoes Paro and Chandramukhi’s unprecedented bonding in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s “Devdas”.
Apart from these characters, the two male protagonists Jai and Veeru are also being seriously revamped and modified to suit the requirements of Varma’s new-age “Sholay”.
“So far, I haven’t decided the personality and look of the girls. I feel Devi and Ghungroo are the women of today. There’s no Radha or Basanti in my film. My two heroines Devi and Ghungroo are best friends,” Varma told IANS.
Varma’s “Sholay” is about an encounter cop, who’s on a massive hunt for a gangster. In retaliation the gangster kills the cop’s brother, leaving his wife a widow. This cop and his widowed sister-in-law live in a part of Mumbai where the gangster terrorises the residents to evacuate the space so that a builder can build a shopping mall. The cop takes the help of these two jobless out-of-towners.
Sippy would be hard put to recognise his “Sholay” in Varma’s film.
— IANS
Leave a Reply