New Delhi:
The defining attributes of the Zanjeer, Deewaar and Sholay screenplays – pace and potency – are impossible to replicate in a documentary series even if it is about the men who wrote them. Angry Young Men – The Salim-Javed Story is, however, crammed with elements that render it instantly engaging and entertaining.
Produced by the progeny of the iconic writing duo – Salman Khan (Salman Khan Films), Farhan Akhtar (Excel Media and Entertainment) and Zoya Akhtar (Tiger Baby) – the three-episode Amazon Prime Video show does a perfect job of spotlighting the cornerstones of the Salim Khan-Javed Akhtar partnership that, in the 1970s, yielded a few of the greatest Hindi megahits.
Directed by film editor Namrata Rao, whose oft-demonstrated sense of narrative tempo comes in handy, the series has the vim and vigour to turn an appraisal of a remarkable body of work into a lively blend of information and analysis.
Salim Khan arrived in Bombay from Indore to try his luck as an actor. Javed Akhtar, ten years younger, made his way to the city from Bhopal. Both weathered years of struggle before they became a duo who churned out a series of blockbusters.
Their phenomenal success rate, a part of Hindi cinema folklore, is absolutely deserving of the documentary mini-series treatment that it has earned not a day too soon. “Two boys came out of nowhere and became gamechangers,” says Salim. “They changed the status of film writers.”
Keenly aware of the enormous value that they lent the films they scripted, the two writers, one of whom was in his mid-20s in the early 1970s, asserted their right to be recognised. Ahead of the release of Zanjeer, the 1973 vengeance drama that rescued Amitabh Bachchan from the lowest ebb of his career and sent him on his way to superstardom, Salim-Javed had their names stencilled on the film’s posters. It was an act of defiance and a statement of intent.
Most of the anecdotes are narrated by Salim and Javed themselves, with a host of contemporaries, collaborators and successors pitching in with their reminiscences and impressions. The series contextualises the two screenwriters’ meteoric rise and subsequent conquests and focuses on the films, stories and characters they created to help Hindi cinema leapfrog into the future.
Just as the personal and the social merged in Salim-Javed’s “angry young man” – a seminal figure brought to life on the screen by Amitabh – the series uses the perspectives of the two screenwriters who parted ways after delivering 20-odd blockbusters in a decade and a bit and presents lucid portraits that combine the professional and the private, the creative and the commercial.
Angry Young Men dives into Salim and Javed’s relationships with their parents, spouses, children and the movie industry. Besides Shabana Azmi, Honey Irani and Helen throwing light on the two men they know up close, the series has many Mumbai industry stalwarts recalling and evaluating Salim-Javed’s output.
At one end are Amitabh, Jaya Bachchan and Hema Malini, at the other Salman, Farhan, Zoya and Arbaaz Khan. It also incorporates interviews with Dharmendra, Shatrughan Sinha, Ramesh Sippy, Aamir Khan, Rahul Rawail, Ramesh Talwar, Mahesh Bhatt, Karan Johar and screenwriter Anjum Rajabali, among many others. Each one of them articulates a point of view or a nugget of insight that adds a layer to the picture.
Angry Young Men underscores the anti-establishment sensibility that informed Salim-Javed’s screenplays. They played up the discontent brewing among the middle class, the struggles of the downtrodden and the fury of the wronged. Their scripts broke away from independent India’s flirtations with 1960s music-filled, hope-fuelled romance.
The male protagonist in Zanjeer does not sing or romance the heroine in the manner that Hindi film heroes of the 1960s did. He fights the system and forces of evil single-handedly in a way that reflects the angst of the increasingly disillusioned masses.
By creating that brooding, abrasive and aggressive male rebel, Salim-Javed captured the spirit of the age to perfection – a facet of their work that is repeatedly brought up in Angry Young Men.
The fact that it was largely through the male gaze that they viewed society and its ills is mentioned by Anjum Rajabali, who notes the “insignificance of women” in their films but acknowledges “the mother factor” in Deewaar, Trishul and Shakti.
The counterpoint is provided by others, including Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti, who emphasise that Salim-Javed’s fictional women were never short of agency and that they were certainly no pushovers. That debate could be the theme of a wider discussion, something that is beyond the ken of this series.
One might wonder if a series backed by those closest to them can ever be completely candid about who Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar were (or are) and what they brought to the business of filmmaking at the height of their screenwriting prowess.
That reservation is dispelled in significant measure by a longish passage that touches upon aspects of their life and work – “arrogance comes with unprecedented success,” someone says – that may have led to the somewhat premature end of their dream run.
Angry Young Men isn’t hagiography. While it tracks the peaks of success that the duo scaled, it does not shy away from probing what led to their split and consequent eclipse as scriptwriters. Javed himself admits: “Salim-Javed did not realise the value of goodwill.”
Indeed, Angry Young Men documents the occasional lows. None was worse than the Immaan Dharam debacle in 1977. The purple patch began with 1971’s Andaz and lasted till the early 1980s (Mr. India, made from the last Salim-Javed script, was, however, released in 1987).
Besides Deewaar and Sholay, both in 1975, the pair scripted runaway successes like Yaadon Ki Baaraat, Trishul, Kala Patthar, Don and Shakti. Such was the magnitude of the triumphs that Salim-Javed achieved with their “angry” Bachchan films that works like Haath Ki Safai, Aakhri Dao and Chacha Bhatija are barely remembered and Dostana, which, Javed avers, had “less fire” than Deewaar and Zanjeer, aren’t spoken of in the same breath as their 1970s releases.
Underlying the Salim-Javed story is a friendship between two men who arrived in Bombay looking for work and found each other, a creative partnership that rewrote the ground rules for Mumbai cinema scriptwriters, and the process of parting and moving on without nursing regrets or guilt.
Angry Young Men is a story that gallops along nicely and makes for an important, absorbing and well-composed chronicle of a movie industry and a society at the cusp, and in the midst, of a dramatic new dawn.
