Page 31 - Seniorstoday Sep 2024 Issue
P. 31
Films
Image courtesy: livemint.com
The Writer As Star
It is rare that two screenwriters captured the zeitgeist of a tumultuous
decade in Indian society so astutely, writes Deepa Gahlot
Nostalgia is not something this attention- rare that two screenwriters captured the
deficient generation indulges in, but zeitgeist of a tumultuous decade in Indian
cinema of the Seventies is suddenly the society so astutely. Amitabh Bachchan’s
flavour of the season, and it may have Vijay – or the Angry Young Man—was
something to do with the docuseries created by them and brought to life by the
Angry Young Men, about the work of smouldering intensity the actor brought to
the scriptwriters Salim Khan and Javed the characters they wrote.
Akhtar, who dominated cinema of that era, Directors like Prakash Mehra, Ramesh
as a powerful writing team that went by Sippy, Manmohan Desai, Yash Chopra
the hyphenated Salim-Javed. benefited from the genius of these two
Today, a lot of the dialogue that they writers, and of course, their work needed
wrote for their various films have passed the skill and understanding these directors
into colloquialism, and someone might brought to the screen.
say, Mere paas maa hai, Aaj khush to Even with the lax logical standards of
bahot honge tum (Deewar), or Itna sannata Hindi mainstream cinema, Salim-Javed
kyon hai bhai, or kitne aadmi the (Sholay), came up with credible plots, created
without realising that they are film memorable characters and wrote lines
dialogues written by Salim Javed. that were different from the heavily Urdu-
Cinema does not exist in a vacuum and influenced declamatory dialogue that was
does reflect the times it exists in, but it is de rigeur in Hindi cinema. Their lines
SENIORS TODAY | ISSUE #63 | SEPTEMBER 2024 31
