PHIR BHI
DIL HAI HINDUSTANI
(“But still my heart is Indian”)
2000, Hindi, 150 minutes
Directed by Aziz Mirza. Music: Jatin-Lalit. Lyrics: Javed Akhtar
After its titular nod to Raj Kapoor’s famous themesong in SHRI 420, this
stylish film plunges headlong (literally) into a video-saturated contemporary
India in which everyone, it seems, is a “420” (a fraud). Its frenzied
course veers erratically between dark satire of media manipulation and political
corruption, horrific recreations of communal riots, a rape and murder and its
coverup, and routine police brutality, and slapstick comedy and slick, predictable
romance. The film’s overall cynicism is leavened by glossy locations and
a Capra-esque (and Kapoor-esque) feel-good ending, in which the Indian (middle
class) Everyman, aroused by conscience-stricken TV journalists, marches en masse
to defeat the forces of corruption and tyranny—and cheer the engagement
of the two principals.
Ajay Bakshi (Shah Rukh Khan) is a celebrity reporter for upstart network K-TV,
and the darling of its boss Kaka Chowdhary (Satish Shah), a self-made millionaire
who once operated a teastall at rival network Galaxee. Through his frenetic
one-upmanship and yuppie megalomania, Baksi succeeds in making himself a household
word, until Galaxee chief Mr. Chinoy (Dalip Tahil) plots to outscoop him with
his own glamorous anchor Ria Banerjee (Juhi Chawla). That romance will ultimately
bloom between these high-adrenalin rivals is a foregone conclusion, but there
are some interesting twists along the way. Both networks are shown working hand-in-glove
with an all-too-believably amoral Chief Minister (Govind Namdev) as well as
his principal rival Ramakant Dua (Shakti Kapoor—made up to resemble Bal
Thakeray), and their brutal goondas. The ace reporters, bought off with shiny
new convertibles and beachfront homes, have no scruples about lying on camera
about instigated riots and rigged elections, but are eventually pushed over
the edge by (tellingly) a middle-class father’s tale of the violation and
murder of his daughter by an influential “Gandhian industrialist,”
who happens to be Dua’s brother. In this world in which the total criminalization
of the government, police force, and mass media is simply a given, real criminals
appear merely comical, and so the hero and heroine are assisted by a bumbling
underworld don, Pappu Junior (Johnny Lever), with a ghetto-king wardrobe and
a secret lair modeled (as he announces) on a set from a James Bond movie.
Despite its disjunctures, the film abounds in smart bits, often presented as
fleeting visual and verbal vignettes: during the opening credits, Khan lip-synchs
the title song against a fast-changing backdrop of contemporary Indian contrasts
(vegetable vendors yakking into cell phones; models posing against stylish scrims
that collapse to reveal villagers herding buffaloes); likewise, the climactic
scheme to mesmerize the nation with a live telecast of a corporate-sponsored
execution provides outrageous sight-gags (e.g., a barely-glimpsed billboard
parodying the slogan “another Kodak moment!”). Hindutva gets knocked
in an ironic send-up of Vande Mataram which plays over gruesome scenes of rioting
and a Vedic sacrifice “for world peace” performed by the ruthless
Dua. Then again, in a film in which only bad guys say “Jai Hind,”
the flag-waving finale seems (like a number of other jarring juxtapositions)
a perhaps too-odd masala mix.