Subhash K Jha tirns the spotlight on 2002’s Sur, the musical drama directed by Tanuja Chandra.
Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anuradha and Abhimaan, Mohit Suri’s Aashiqui 2, various versions of A Star Is Born… so many films about the male ego obstructing the female from attaining her full potential.
Sur is a film that would make itself visible and audible to those who care for quality cinema.
Tanuja Chandra’s unblinking gaze at the male ego rips a hole in our soul. It’s sensitive , tender, gnawing, and haunting look at the guru-shishya tradition in Indian classical music whereby the teacher is forced to hand over his art to the worthy pupils. But does he always do it happily?
One school of cultural thought in our country suggests that our most prominent exponents of classical art want to keep their talent within the family—hence the advent of the classical progeny who ‘s privy to his or her father’s jealously guarded art form. But what if someone outside the family fold is equally deserving of that precious classical heritage?
Tanuja Chandra’s first completely original screenplay is an illuminating illustration of an iffy situation when super-musician Vikramaditya (Lucky Ali) chances upon an untainted virginal vulnerable and unspoilt talent Tina Marie (debutant Gauri Karnik ) in Goa. In a string of amusingly done scenes Vikramaditya convinces Tina’s pretty sister (Divya Dutta in a guest appearance) to let the undiscovered prodigy find her place in the song.
Tanuja Chandra captures the first flush of symbiotic sonority at Vikramaditya’s music school in Goa through prettified vignettes demonstrating the director’s surehanded treatment of a complex and far-reaching theme. Unlike Tanuja Chandra’s previous film , the well-intended but aborted Yeh Zindagi Ka Safar, the smooth course of Sur is never hampered by a free flow of fund.
Though it isn’t a lavish film , Sur opens up a beautiful world of green alfresco passions. Except for one cutely compact stage show at the end when the hurt and withdrawn protegee is coaxed into singing the redemptive Jab shaam dhale mere dil mein aaja na (akin to the immortal ‘Tere mere milan ki yeh raina’ melody in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Abhimaan) by the repentant and guilt-stricken Vikramaditya, the film brings alive a world of optically represented spiritual disenchantments expressed as an ongoing symphony of heartbreak and redemption.
In her brave and often brilliant endeavour Tanuja Chandra gets unstinted support from her leading man. Casting Lucky Ali in the role of the egoistic guru is a masterstroke. Lucky has two invaluable advantages while playing Vikramaditya: like his character he’s a musician and his face is a map of tortured angst. Ali brings all of Vikramaditya’s dark ugly insecurities out in the open. As the character stands naked before us, we feel his shame and degradation as a humanbeing and an artiste.
Going from a showily generous guru who takes great pride in playing the Talent Scout Vikramaditya quickly moves into the malicious mode.
The director doesn’t spare is any of her protagonist’s mean and monstrous ugliness as he sets out to crush his most talented pupil in the palm of his powerful hands. As in Chandra’s directorial debut Dushman, Sur looks at human insecurities and depravity with a straight no-nonsense gaze.
The song recording where Vikramaditya shamelessly steals Tina Marie’s tune and proceeds to humble her till her selfesteem touches the ground is too unclothed for comfort. Could Tanuja Chandra, Mahesh Bhatt’s closest protegee, have suffered some of what Tina Marie goes through in the film?
As a woman filmmaker , Tanuja Chandra errs in drawing Vikramaditya’s cyclic all-good-bad-all-good graph without pauses and punctuations. Vikramaditya’s transformation from a caring teacher to a selfish artiste is too abrupt. The director confines the drastic character alteration to one major sequence where a couple of over-eager music producers rush towards the sound of Tina Marie’s music leaving Vikramaditya fuming in his tracks. We expect more tact from Tanuja.
Also, the great musician’s rise after his abysmal fall is charted too frivolously. Maybe Tanuja wanted to counterbalance the heaviness of the fallen hero’s Shakespearean guilt with a purposely light-footed prologue. As was the case with her Sangharsh and Yeh Zindagi Ka Safar, the last 20 mins of Sur lose their earlier narrative gleam.
It’s not difficult to overlook the film’s avoidable blemishes. The screenplay is, on the whole, one of the best in recent times . The characters project the emotions with a sharp intuitive alacrity. The principal performances specially Lucky Ali are award-worthy. Telelevision actress Gauri Karnik in her film debut conveys a reasonable amount of charm on screen. With her shining eyes and loppy grin she reminds us of Kajol. But the emotional scenes in the second- half leave the debutante gasping for ‘breadth’.
The supporting cast also creates a supple tenderness in the storytelling. Simone Singh as Vikramaditya’s right-hand woman gets the ‘sur’ of her characrter right. In one sequence where she comes to Vikramditya’s home to thank him for all that he had had done for her sister, Divya Dutta makes our hearts melt with emotions. Wonder why she couldn’t have played the lead in this film!.
Nirmal Jani’s sweeping and yet restrained camerawork and Vibha Singh’s unselfconsciously philosophical dialogues add their own lyrical footnotes to this ‘sur’-prisingly moving treatise on the wages of ‘sing’. But the real supporting star of Sur is M.M. Kreem’s violin-driven songs and music. The numbers specially ‘Aa bhi jaa’ are so expressive of the film’s innermost tensions that we wonder what Sur would have been without them!
This is a film that must be seen for its delicate designed framework and moments of emotional catharsis that bring a lump to the viewers’ throats.
Speaking on Sur to Subhash K Jha, Tanuja Chandra says, “ Sur is the closest to my heart of my films. It was the first I independently wrote and directed. It was the first one of mine produced by Pooja Bhatt for PNC. There was an innocence in our hearts and a sweetness in our approach, which brought about some brilliant music with MM Keeravaani. And my times with the late, most amazing, Nida Fazli saheb are forever memorable. In fact, the making of Sur always gives me warmth whenever I feel somewhat defeated by my profession. I just felt at that time, surrounded by the gorgeousness of Ooty, that I was telling an important tale. That this film of mine would be remembered with love despite any shortcomings. And that’s what’s happened. I feel ever grateful.”
About directing Lucky Ali and Gauri Karnik, Tanuja Chandra sid, “Lucky couldn’t remember his lines! Hahahaha. Had to keep pushing him. But he never complained. His expressions were all heart and that’s what I needed – the regret as well as the meanness in his relationship with his student, it was all deeply felt. Gauri, I lost touch with for many years and only recently found her on Instagram! She’s doing well, has two children. Keeravaniji was magic, as always. I had worked as an assistant with him for Zakhm but this was my baby! The music especially was my kingdom so to speak. And Keeravaaniji would just respond to my provocations, my thoughts musically! We used to sit in Pooja’s lovely office with yellow walls, and he’d hum a tune with his harmonium. Nida Fazli saheb would leave without saying a word and then come back with the lyrics of ‘Aa bhi jaa….’ As a director I had all the freedom in the world. Pooja Bhatt wouldn’t ever instruct me what to do, she quietly took over the aesthetics of the film based upon my thoughts of the Production design and Costume styling and for the telling of the story she just let me do my thing. I couldn’t have asked for more. I remember the music company telling me that it was a hit on the day the music released. We couldn’t believe it. It was so exciting!”
