Jai Arjun Singh: The battle of the Dons

BACKSTAGBE

In a recent magazine interview, director Farhan Akhtar spoke about the sense of playfulness on the sets of Don "" The Chase Continues, his remake of the 1978 Amitabh Bachchan blockbuster. "The two of us," he said, alluding to the film's star Shah Rukh Khan, "approached it not just as director and actor but as enthusiastic fans of the original. We were being given the chance to redo this movie that we had loved so much as children! We were in awe!" But at the same time, he believes Don is a film that can be updated in a meaningful way for a modern audience "" unlike, say, Sholay, which remains as fresh as it was 30 years ago.

This attitude "" reverence mixed with practicality and a willingness to overlay his own vision on old templates "" may be a pointer to Akhtar's success in Bollywood. There's been plenty of cynicism about the new Don among both film critics and viewers: an acknowledged classic mustn't be tampered with, they say; the remake will be all style, no substance. But this is deluded Golden Ageism. Blasphemous as it may sound, there's very little of "substance" in the original Don beyond the Bachchan performance and the songs. (Yes, go ahead, watch it again, and prepare to feel embarrassed.) Even if Shah Rukh doesn't measure up, even if there's too much remixing, don't be surprised if the new Don is better than you've been led to expect. Its director knows something of both film history and film technique.

He should; he has quite a pedigree. Born in 1974 to scriptwriters Javed Akhtar and Honey Irani, Farhan never went to film school but chose to learn in the best way possible "" by overdosing on movies. During a two-year stint spent at home after finishing college, he watched everything from Martin Scorsese to Guru Dutt, Woody Allen to Akira Kurosawa. He then made one of the most assured directorial debuts in the history of Indian cinema with Dil Chahta Hai (2001), a film that captured the pulse of the urban youth of the new millennium and pleased nearly everyone in the metropolitan markets it was targeted at. Naturally, it also raised the bar, and he was unable to match up with his next, Lakshya. Though a competently made film (and one of Bollywood's few war movies that didn't overdo the jingoistic chant), it didn't do well commercially.

The good thing about this is that Akhtar has, in a relatively short span of time, tasted both success and failure. Those twin experiences can only bode well as he returns to his place at the forefront of the confident young directors who are bringing a new sensibility to mainstream Hindi cinema. Regardless of how Don fares, this is not a young man anyone will write off in a hurry.