Tamil Nadu’s resident whizkid Shankar whose earlier forays into computer- generated cine-hijinks like Indian and Jeans have been dubbed into Hindi, steps into the big bland world of Bollywood with a full-fledged Hindi film. Nayak is a dramatic political blitzkrieg that fascinates exasperates dazzles and infuriates the audience.
A remake of Shankar’s own Tamil –Telugu blockbuster Mudhalvan which starred the Tamil heart-throb Arjun, Nayak takes on corruption in Indian politics headlong. Films about the Common Man grappling with red tapism, bungling and inefficiency at the highest places isn’t new for South Indian cinema. In Shankar’s Gentleman Chiranjeevi battled the trend of admission into college and institutions through large monetary donations.
In Nayak when we see the earnest and sincere –looking Anil Kapoor typing out suspension orders for every errant official, big or small, when he’s made the chief minister of Maharashtra for a day, we are tickled pink. Cleverly Shankar structures his story around the audience’s favourite fantasy—to see a political leader wave away all the slothful vulgarity and extravagances in our politics and bureaucracy almost by magic.
Kapoor’s run-in with degeneration in public places is depicted through forceful melodramatic overtures that take Shankar’s narrative way over-the-top. Sometimes quite literally. For one heart-in-the-mouth action sequence the television cameraman Shivaji Rao (Anil Kapoor) picks up a student injured in a street riot and takes him to the hospital by jumping from one bus –top to another.
Nayak gives Anil Kapoor a role to die for. He’s heroic and yet true-to-life. His combat with scummy political opponents (the caucus of corrupt and evil politician looks like a grotesque gallery of ogres with human faces) is both physical and cerebral. Besides, which other leading man in our cinema would ever get a chance to be bathed in milk by a fawning idolizing public? With Kapoor the political deification of the screen hero, a la MGR and NTR, comes to Hindi cinema. The actor makes the best of it, giving a well-tuned rabblerousing performance.
Regrettably the CM-for-a-day concept is padded up with superfluous formulism, and brainless gizmos. The narrative crumbles under the weight of walloping wizardry and heavy handed melodrama. There’s a long and tedious showoffy action sequence(done by FX guys from abroad) where Kapoor emerges from slush in a slick scrapyard (don’t miss the slick symbolism) to let feet and fists fly furiously in the air as automobiles ignite and fall all around us in majestic mounds.
Such concessions to gizmo-centric grandeur converts the working class political drama into a semi-mythological. Indeed, Mrinal Sen meets Cecil de Mille in this Shankar-helmed slam-banger! With some effective background music, and awesome camera manoeuvrings that zoom across crowds of thousands of cheering and worshipping mobs in streets and other public places, Shankar gets the frenzied mood of instant deification correctly. However, the frisky and fallacious transformations from political statement to flamboyant fantasy are not achieved fluently.
Our reluctant chief minister’s romantic diversions with his sweet-and-innocent pastoral girlfriend Manjari (Rani Mukherjee) is calendar-art at its worst. It seems to be implanted into the political parable with escapist insensitivity. Shankar further tries to liven up the political proceedings with bouts of boorish humour, courtesy Johnny Lever and other clowns of caper town. Even Anil Kapoor breaks into Govinda’s Main to raste se jaa raha tha to ‘impress’ his prospective father-in-law (Shivaji Satam).
The giggles are strictly off –limits. Did the lively political satire, charged with some scathing and unpredictable dialogues by Anurag Kashyap, need further livening up? The scenes in the television channel’s studio, reminiscent of Shah Rukh Khan’s Phir Bhi Dil hai Hindustani and Kundan Shah’s Hum To Mohabbat Karega, border on bizarre surrealism, with Sushmita Sen breaking into an inexplicable dance with incoherent visuals and images.
Consciously or subconsciously Nayak tries to operate on two levels, as a political statement and a flamboyant fantasy. The rabblerousing rhythms of Shankar’s crispy crunchy but finally gooey saga is bound to work with the audiences specially in the cow belt, where the slimeball figure of the glint-eyed politician played by Amrish Puri, seems like a comic book representation of real life politics.
Anil Kapoor and Paresh Rawal (who plays the CM’s wily right-hand man) walk away with the film. Rani‘s wide-eyed innocence is becoming repetitive and annoying. Pooja Batra playing a mike-wielding reporter gets to be in almost every frame with Anil Kapoor without having much to say. Eminently representative of the mob mentality.
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