Frankly, I was reeling by the end of the film.
If you missed Soham Shah’s multi-starrer Race released in 2008, you really missed something. It was a relentlessly wicked film. And when I say ‘wicked’, I mean it.
Rarely has a mainstream Indian movie glorified greed in quite the same way as Race. The premise of the story was based on the making of money. Period. Every single character was after just one thing – more moolah. And, in order to achieve that objective, nothing or no one was allowed to stand in the way. Brothers cold-bloodedly planned each other’s murder; their girlfriends thought nothing of duping and double crossing their partners. Why, even the investigating officer was after his generous cut! In other words, there were only bad guys (and gals) in this set up. You might say what’s so new about all this? Plenty, as it turned out.
Indian films have an old, old tradition of basing stories along mythological lines. The context may be modern, but the themes rarely go beyond the good vs. evil theme. Villains and vamps are clearly delineated, and audiences are fed a morality tale that follows a familiar tradition in which evil never ever triumphs over good. Oh … bad people have to pay for their crimes by the time the titles roll.
In Race all the old rules were broken in one stroke. Interestingly enough, not a single character preached any moral message. Looting, killing, sleeping around were the givens, minus any apology or explanation. Gratuitous violence was the name of the game, and nobody was spared. Treacherous girlfriends? Sure. Psychotic siblings? Yup. Venal cops? You got them. Vicious business partners – hey, are there any other kind? Perhaps, this was the first Hindi commercial film to venture boldly into unknown territory by doing away with virtue altogether. The fact that the film was a huge commercial success, says a great deal about changing moral values in our society. Especially when it comes to the representation of women.
There was a time, not so long ago, when the heroine had to be a vestal virgin, pure as driven snow. Untouched and innocent, clad in pristine white (film maker Yash Chopra’s ultimate fantasy), the female protagonist came through as a creature who embodied the traditional Indian dream. If she was shown as a ‘westernized’ outsider (Kareena Kapoor as ‘Pooh’ in Kabhie Khushi Kabhi Gham), she invariably found herself ‘reformed’ by society and the love of an honourable man. About five years ago that stereotype was replaced by a more contemporary version of the modern day Bharatiya Naari, who wore risqué costumes, danced in discos with strangers, defied her parents and fell in love with a rakish hero. But even within this new formula, she was projected as a wayward but hymen-intact girl, misled by the depraved West, attracted to the spiritual East, and ready to convert, thanks to the power of true ‘pyaar’. Which is what made Race so exciting and provocative.
It challenged the status quo on every level, and threw up a new breed of heroines, who have no family, no support system, a suspect past, and are so aggressive when it comes to achieving their goals (money!), that they’re willing to seduce (even eliminate) every male in sight! The character played by Bipasha Basu was relentlessly avaricious. Not only does she bed her husband’s brother, she is willing to kill her husband (and anyone else), who stands in her way! Ditto for Katrina Kaif, who donned many hats in her pursuit of wealth. She too had no qualms when it came to the seduction stakes. The two female leads brazenly bumped-and-ground their way into the audiences’ hearts.
Race was declared a box office hit. To me, it was a defining moment in cinema. It marked a turning point. Back in the seventies, Amitabh Bachchan changed the stale, old format of goody-goody, chocolate-faced, saintly heroes, when he set the screen on fire as the Angry Young Man. Race upturned the outdated Sati Savitri imaging of women in our films and replaced it with the ruthless, self-seeking, overtly sexual creatures, who maim and murder men at will – for personal gain, of course. ‘Touch me, touch me … Kiss me, kiss me,’ crooned Katrina, tantalizingly.
Goodbye, Sita. Hello, Gita! Welcome to the schizo world of new age killer babes in Bollywood.