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Any artwork cannot happen in a vacuum. It is a product of its time. Yet, an honest critique of a film is not supposed to factor in the constraints or any external factors. All that matters is whatever happens on the screen. The censor scrutiny, lack of an actor’s call sheet, lack of technology, budget issues, and all such reasons don’t hold water once the film is on the silver screen for the audience to judge. But Indian film culture is a different ball game. Here stars on-screen and off-screen are seldom differentiated. When Vikram Rathore says, “Baap Se Baat Kar,” we know who is actually telling the dialogue and what he actually means by it. One cannot talk about just what goes on the screen of Jawan, because when the film is looked at without the current political context, it is just a middling masala film in director Atlee’s stable.
When compared to Atlee’s other films like Mersal, Theri, and Bigil, Jawan is choppy. Everything other than SRK’s mass moments are just build-ups to the very scenes. In Mersal, the best romantic portion is between Vetrimaaran (Vijay) and Aishwarya (Nithya Menen). The whole flashback part, which is pretty much similar to the one between Vikram Rathore (SRK) and Aishwarya (Deepika Padukone), is a convincing set-up. And when Aishwarya in Mersal dies in a gory manner, it enrages the viewer. It is, of course, emotional manipulation, but at least it was effective. Aishwarya’s death in Jawan lacks the same impact because what we keep waiting for is SRK to avenge her death.
However, Jawan cannot be just weighed based on its cinematic merit. Its success is an important and a much-needed one for the times. Not just for Shah Rukh Khan, but for the whole film industry. And not just for the business of cinema, but for the freedom of it. The most important reason for the success of Jawan is it brought back social commentary to the mainstream. When the audience was bombarded with one biography after another glorifying Indians, the industry had forgotten its long-standing tradition of critiquing governments.
This is where Atlee has come in handy. Tamil cinema has kept at social commentary no matter who was in power. In fact, Kollywood has dug deeper into issues and has taken up caste discrimination as its current subject for films. Pa Ranjith, Mari Selvaraj, and TJ Gnanvel kept the dialogue with the establishments going. On the other hand, filmmakers like AR Murugadoss, Atlee, and Shankar kept the ball rolling in the mainstream with vigilante films like Spyder, Bigil, etc.
After a long while, we saw a hero hitting out at the establishment. On top of that, many of the issues in Jawan were based on real-life events. One of the prevalent discussions about the film after its release was about how it passed the censor board intact. It is true that the film doesn’t even scratch the surface of the ongoing problems of the country nor does it deal with some problematic terrains. But the biggest message is not what’s said in the film, but the film itself. Jawan’s existence is the message that a film like this one is still possible. A lot of credit goes to Atlee for showing how one can be part of a system and still find ways to criticise it– the very essence of democracy.
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