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The present generation of cinemagoers have accepted Rohit Shetty as the epitome of Bollywood masala; the audience who is a little older often calls him the present-day Manmohan Desai. The filmmaker, who once made films like Amar Akbar Anthony, Dharam Veer, Parvarish, Suhaag, Coolie and Mard among many other hits, was known as the man who could pull the audience into a fantasy land with his cinema and then take them on a surreal ride, all the while pushing the boundaries of cinematic liberty. It needn’t be logical, but it had to be entertaining to a degree that the audience would gladly suspend disbelief and enjoy two, or three, hours of pure escapism. The modern-day version of the same is the ‘leave-your-brains-at-home-movie’ which really doesn’t have the same ring to it, and neither does it come with a message strong enough for you to suspend your disbelief.
Desai made it big in the 1970s and amongst his many hits is Amar Akbar Anthony, the ensemble star vehicle with a stupendous music album, that has become the glowing crown of his legacy. In the present time, when a love story between a Hindu and Muslim character can start Twitter wars, Amar Akbar Anthony seems like it was made in a utopian world. Because even in a fictional filmy world, surnames come with their baggage. In this world, Desai made a film where a Hindu couple’s three sons are separated at birth and grow up accepting different religions. They accept the faith they grow up with and are happy to respect each other’s faiths as well, which sounds like a decent enough way to live but has disappeared from our screens.
The three brothers here – Amar played by Vinod Khanna, Akbar played by Rishi Kapoor and Anthony played by Amitabh Bachchan, happen to meet each other by chance and accidentally discover their birth parents, thus finding their lost family. The three boys embrace different faiths in childhood but it is important to be noted that their conditioning in the said faith has them falling in love with women who follow the same religion. Even in the fictional world where a woman’s eyesight can magically come back, the directives to fall in love are crystal clear.
Desai made his films as popcorn entertainment, and hardly ever intellectualised his content to project his work as keeping up with the times. However, by expanding on subjects like secularism, he has archived a chapter of India that feels like forgotten history. In his own light-hearted way, Amar Akbar Anthony was an ode to secularism, that offered a slice of optimism to a darker world.
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