Subhash K Jha Revisits the Guddu Dhanoa directed action drama Big Brother, starring Sunny Deol and Priyanka Chopra, as it turns 18. We also hear from Dhanoa about working with Priyanka, plus he reveals the film’s original title.
The best part of Guddu Dhanoa’s delayed eruption of exacerbated violence is the Sultan Khan-Zubin Garg music video played with the end titles. But by then, it’s too late. Assorted villains appear in various stages of this cut-n-paste bone-crusher. They represent various phases in the narrative’s gasping, wheezing existence. They also try to cover up for the film’s outdated pre-Munnabhai thesis of social justice.
Sunny Deol throws a mind-boggling punch. This is a film where Deol’s legendary punches go a lot deeper. Goons who throw acid on hapless girls’ faces are buried alive in the sand with one punch. This is a one-way ticket to a dhoom-fulled doom? Check out the rapes, murders, lynching, and looting in Big Brother; you could fall over your chair just hearing the hyper-strung insistent and cacophonic soundtrack that qualifies the constant search for brute force.
The film has two seamless halves done as an ode to the spirit of the vigilanteism. The hero, ironically named Gandhi, believes in a high for a high and an uncouth for an uncouth.
The narrative is plastered with preswallahs of both sexes pressing microphones into our hero’s face until he doesn’t know where to look… certainly not the mirror where Sunny Deol would have seen two looks that the plot has given him: one with a dishevelled wig and the other with a more manageable hair piece.
In both cases, Deol towers over the proceedings. Surprisingly the second-most important character is mama Farida Jalal whose one stern twitch drives Sunny-boy into a wild orgy of revenge. Priyanka, though hardly there, wears her middle-class saris and coy glances with surprising aplomb and a look of respectful detachment. Not only does she occupy her limited space with aplomb, but she has been better photographed here than in all her other films.
Among the villains, Siyaji Shinde has the best lines. He uses his cheesy character to butter up the dry script, giving us a kind of running commentary on the trite conventions of Hindi cinema, mocking them while using them to carry the creaking saga forward.
The noise level and the constant harping on violent means to get even with anti-socials makes you wonder which is worse, the malaise or the cure. Either way, Big Brother is only for those who are die-hard fans of the Guddu Dhanoa-Sunny Deol pair.
Guddu Dhanoa, who directed Priyanka in Big Brother and Kismat, is all praise for her. “When I did a film, finally titled Big Brother, with her, I was told that this would be her first film, that we were launching her. This was back in 2002-2003. I did not know that she was doing other films as well.”
Dhanoa recalls that Big Brother had another title. “Back then, this film was being made under the name of Gandhi, and Vijeta Films (the Deol banner) was producing the film. Sunny was producing and starring in that film; I was directing it. The title was later changed to Big Brother.”
The director affectionately recalls Priyanka’s rawness and enthusiasm in her initial days as an actor. “We were shooting in Hyderabad, and a scene was narrated to her. Back then, she did not know much about acting. She would say, ‘Please explain to me, how do I do it.’ It means she has a hunger to learn; she had it at that time, she wanted to do it, wanted to do it very well, and her looks were also good.”
After shooting with Priyanka in Hyderabad, Dhanoa started to hear negative things about Priyanka from Mumbai. “We started shooting, and we had a very long schedule. After we shot for 15-20 days and, we started getting reports from Mumbai that she looks very bad, she is a very bad actor, please watch the rushes. So I said okay, we will watch the rushes.”
Dhanoa recalls how he and Sunny Deol refused to succumb to pressures to sack Priyanka. “We saw the rushes, whatever we had shot there, however much we had shot, and after watching the rushes, Sunny Deol and I, both of us decided that we will work with this girl and complete the film with this girl only. And I think we liked her, I mean we liked her screen presence, and we liked her as an actor too. We thought she will grow and we were right. She later she grew a lot as a person and actor. I later did another hit film Kismat with her Bobby Deol in the lead.”
Recalling the Big Brother experience, Guddu Dhanoa says, “I believe in time and destiny Har film ki ek kundali hoti hai. Uss ka teh hota hai kab Kab shuru hogi aur Kab release, And I am very thankful to Priyanka Chopra. Uss ne mera Bahot sath diya tha. And Sunny toh hamesha mere sath hee hota hai. And you know how much I sold the Big Brother satellite rights? You can’t imagine. I am very happy. AUR satellite per kya chalti hai film!”
