There are very few Indian directors right now who have the craftsmanship of taking an audience through the roller coaster ride of emotions and making them cry at a fictional story or a character.
Today the entire platoon of directors have a very simple and fool proof formula .
- A List Actor
- Exotic Location
- Dance Numbers
- Slow motion Action
- Slow motion sequences before and after action
- Slow motion sequences at Hero’s Entry
- Story ( Last and the least )
All Diwali, New Year , Eid releases have this formula and it has worked very well(Hate as much as you want but it works and people are making money). Just look at Race 3 , Happy New Year, Dilwale, Tiger Zinda hai , Ek tha tiger .. the list goes on. And because this formula works, most of them follow this blindly.
But then comes a Director RAJKUMAR HIRANI
15 years – 5 movies
This in itself is a rare thing and even rare is that all his movies have worked very well commercially as well as critically.
SANJU is the latest of his offerings . Now even Raju has his own formula that has worked very well in all his movies. Lets dig into it. The intent of this blog is to hope some of the co called choreographers .. oops ….sorry ….directors (cough … Remo ..cough ) read this and make movies that make sense. (And yes good movies make ton of money if that’s what you want. so please read .. will ya .. )
- A relationship and its ups & downs – In Sanju it is about a Father & son. In PK it was between an alien and earthly beings, in 3 idiots it was between a Principal & student… and so on and so forth.
- Friendship– Friends and friendship play a very important role in his films. In Sanju it is the very talented Vicky Kaushal who plays the best friend of Sanju. I would go ahead and say that Vicky performed even better than Ranbir.
- Title track – Every movie has a unique title track or theme song . In Sanju it is a music made out of mouth organ. Other movies too have it … Munnabhai has the track from its title song and so do other movies
- Comic Scenes – Who can forget the monologue of Chatur, or the kidnapping of Chinese for a demand of corpse by Munna in Munna bhai . There are comic scenes and characters in Sanju as well. A Politician who sleeps with his eyes open, Sanju going to his girfriend’s house for a drink where they have miscommunication. etc etc
- Emotional Scenes – These are the anchors of Raju’s movies and 90% of these scenes will make an average person cry. Like the Zhappi scene in Munnabhai, the child delivery scene in 3 idiots and so on .. Here too you have these scenes with Sanju and his father as well as with his best friend
- Cliff hanger Scenes – There is always something that happens at the start or in the 2nd act of his movies where we as audience don’t understand the reason behind the same. And when it is revealed we are positively elated. Like the scene in PK where we didn’t knew why Sushant didn’t turn up for marriage at the church and instead send a letter, or what is the real name of Rancho in 3 Idiots etc. There is a similar scene here as well which had broken between Sanju and his best friend 12 year long friendship.
So this is the primary formula that Raju uses in most of his films and we don’t complain as every artist has his signature style. Also the end result is so amazing that you keep going back to Raju’s movies and watch it again and again ( I have watched 3 Idiots at-least 15 times till now )
More power to you Raju … Hope you keep entertaining us for a long long time and i hope we get some more good directors like yourself… Cheers ….. KAR HAR MAIDAN FATEH….
