Subhash K Jha looks back at 21 Years Of Farhan Akhtar’s Lakshya, which starred Hrithik Roshan.
Here’s a rare, refreshing, pathbreaking film which is as noble in intent as it is in treatment. Intensely individualistic and pioneering in its fusion of a social conscience with fiction, Lakshya takes us to Kargil …slowly and deliberately. The pacing of the narration is so uniquely unhurried, you wonder if Farhan Akhtar is out on a sublime stroll through a picaresque highway where, like his aimless protagonist Karan, he can encounter anything at any point.
But you soon realize nothing is by chance in this film about finding one’s metier in life. Lakshya takes us through one man’s journey into finding a purpose in life. In doing so, the narration effortlessly finds its own centre. There are no full stops in the seamless narration. And yet the punctuation marks, like Hrithik’s subtly shaded, unapparent performance, are discernible in the way Farhan Akhtar glides in and out of situations so wonderfully created in Javed Akhtar’s screenplay.
For a film about an inner battle and an on-location war, the soundtrack of Lakshya is awfully quiet. The distracting stillness secretes a bedrock of expressions that become apparent to those who care to listen to the sounds of silences, punctuated by bouts of booming guns and the sounds of wounded soldiers as they reclaim our land from the enemies.
But Lakshya isn’t really about battles, within or outside. It isn’t even about the second-time director triumphantly proving to the world that he is no one-film wonder. Lakshya is really about one individual’s odyssey in life from embarrassing idleness to a redeeming self-motivation. This epic transition is achieved through layers of illuminating leitmotifs–the wonderful soundtrack by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, for one.
You may not think much of the songs and music on the tape. But on screen, they light up the characters’ inner motivations as fluently as they create a sense of ongoing ‘poetry’ in the narration.
Lakshya is ‘poetic’ in the most prosaic sense. It has the fluent flow of poetry but not the ornate opaqueness. The virile verse in the visuals is unique to this film. We haven’t even seen Farhan Akhtar use the same perkily poetic pattern of narration in Dil Chahta Hai, though we did we see Mani Ratnam employ some of the same rugged rhythms in parts of Yuva. Indeed, Hrithik’s restless energy at the outset echoes Vivek Oberoi’s here-there-everywhere ambitions in Yuva. And for sure, the starting point for Hrithik’s character is Aamir Khan from Dil Chahta Hai. Cockily defiant.
But Hrithik takes the aimless urban drifter (the kind of South Mumbai brat who wakes up at noon and takes hard decisions on which parties to attend in the evening) far beyond where Aamir took it. Without getting into the bravura lather that Koi…Mil Gaya allowed him, Hrithik creates a gripping graph for his character. The before-and-after effect whereby Karan goes from wastrel to soldier could have easily become broad and caricatural.
Hrithik plays it subtle and shaded. It’s a performance that affords him no opportunities to be flamboyant, and that’s what makes it so special. It’s time to acknowledge Hrithik as the most devious and engaging actor of contemporary times. Like Lata Mangeshkar’s lyrics, Hrithik’s dance steps seem to have been invented on the spot. He’s effortless and flawless.
As Romila, the TV journalist, Preity Zinta does a Barkha Dutt with lip-smacking credibility. Her terse but well-articulated relationship with an ostensibly liberal fiancé who finally gives her a choice between a career and marriage is one of the many bylanes that Farhan’s film takes before cruising the highway to heroic redemption.
Shorn of her chic glamour props, she’s a perfect foil to Hrithik’s intense, introspective performance. But the film features other extremely talented actors like Om Puri, Lilette Dubey, and especially Amitabh Bachchan in glorified cameos. Boman Irani’s comparatively more spacious part as Hrithik’s father never gets going. The father-son conflict, like the Hrithik-Preity love story, is woven into the battle with free-flowing facility.
Mr Bachchan is a special disappointment. He has neither the space nor the chance to grow beyond the space provided. The only actor who makes some impression beyond the all-pervasive impact of Hrithik’s main performance is Sushant Singh as the Muslim soldier. Singh features in one of the film’s slyly jingoistic moments when a Pakistani voice on the phone asks the Indian soldier if he’s a Muslim. “Right now I’m only an Indian,” is the rabble-rousing reply.
Javed Akhtar’s splendid skill as an undramatic rhetorician really rocks in the scene where Romila is tongue-lashed by a bitter soldier who wants to know if Kashmir should be given to the Pakistanis on a thali just for the sake of a warless scenario.
Apart from Hrithik, if there’s any other hero in Lakshya, it’s cinematographer Christopher Popp. The film is shot not only in real colours but shades that heighten reality without tampering with the equanimous tenor of the silently seductive storytelling. The peaks of Ladakh and the ruins of Delhi are projected into the plot with an inevitability that suggests a link between emotional topography and geopolitical reality.
Javed Akhtar’s work, both on the screenplay and dialogues, is refreshingly free of triteness and bombast. Though Hrithik’s flag-on-the-Kargil-peak finale may seem a trifle too manipulative, its impact isn’t thrust on the script in any other way but the most inevitable and natural.
Finally, what strikes us the most is the underplayed manner in which the characters play out their hectic karma. Though epic in quality, Lakshya chooses to be quiet about its ambitious design. But you can’t miss that colour of excellence which underlines the pastel shades of life on the brink of destruction. Lakshya is as inspiring as it is an inspired piece of cinema.
