What The Sad Climax Scene Of Classic Films Reveal
Not Do Bigha Zamin, Pyaasa, Guide, Sholay, Sairat, but Dil Se gets it all wrong.
Cinema fascinates us but only consumes a few.
I became aware of my obsession in 1998. I was a teenager walking out of a theatre after a matinee show of Dil Se. I went home and wrote in my diary:
The climax of Dil Se could have been better. Instead of the hero (Shah Rukh Khan) being blown apart, the heroine (Manisha Koirala) could have pushed him away. She could have run away from him. He could have taken a tumble, trying to catch her. He could have fallen down with her green dupatta (a religion indicator) in his hands, watching her explode at some distance with the bomb tied to her waist. He could have been sitting in the radio studio, playing a melody as an ode to his incomplete love story. Ae ajnabi, tu bhi kabhi, awaaz de kahin se…
I was rewriting the climax. Such temerity.
I was invested in the moral of the story. What did it tell us about us? If it did not, what purpose did it serve? Art without purpose, like life without meaning, and as sappy and sentimental as that sounds, even the most cynical of hearts will pause to wonder.
I was writing without warning. Who was I to tell Mani Ratnam how to make a film? Quite clearly, I was just a fan. I was not yet aware of the concept of fan fiction or else I would have known where my climax belongs. In a trash bin.
My alternative climax sounds idealistic but in the garbled mess of that very filmy film it was a beacon of hope (at least to me). The best works do that. They give us the weightless ammo to move on, however irreparable the damage has been. We lick our wounds and strive for better. The end is a start.
Take Pyaasa for instance. What if Guru Dutt’s character Vijay had died on the railway track where a beggar wearing his coat is found crushed under a running train? Even though Dutt returns to renounce fame, his retirement from the stage with Gulabo in his arms is a noble failure that sings to our complicit souls.
Raj Kapoor’s Raj goes to jail in Awaara for killing a man and almost committing patricide. These are serious crimes. The end is bleak, but soul-searching begins. His girlfriend Rita (Nargis) comes to visit him in jail. He has a good reason to live.
Nargis is Radha in Mother India, the long-suffering woman who puts an end to her son Birju’s (Sunil Dutt) derangement with a gunshot in the climax, allowing us to be on the right side of the fence inspite of the heart-breaking cost of justice.
What about Anarkali in Mughal-E-Azam? She is banished from the court and entombed underground, but we also see her being pardoned by the stone-hearted emperor Akbar. Her life is consigned to anonymity but at least she redoubles our faith in love. Pyaar kiya toh darna kya!
A young Dalit boy hurls a stone at a window in the climax scene in Ankur, somewhat similar to the climax in Fandry, both as reactions to unfair treatment by upper-caste men. Sad and violent climaxes but also conversation starters: Who started it?
Jai dies in Sholay, but what if Veeru died too? Would their dosti still be a paragon? I doubt. Jai‘s legacy lives through Veeru staying alive. It is a story to pass on into countryside folklore.
In Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, the proud father could have easily shot down his daughter Simran and her lover Raj to save the family’s honour at the railway station in the climax. It would have made for a grim end to an otherwise enjoyable film, and would not have led to Sairat, where honour killing pulls the rug from under our feet but does so with a glimmer — an infant crawling towards the dead bodies of his parents.
Raju, the tour guide, dies in Guide. Vijay dies in Deewar. What if they had not? The climax would have fallen flat. Raju’s spiritual awakening empowers the film with a metaphysical quality few works of art can accomplish. Vijay’s death in his mother’s lap is his biggest triumph. He is in a good place now.
Satya, and its predecessor Ardh Satya, both have harrowing climaxes. Satya (J. D. Chakravarthy) wants to get a glimpse of Vidya (Urmila Matondkar) before he dies. It will set him free. Om Puri’s cop character Anant in Ardh Satya commits a crime that emancipates him.
Gloom foreshadows the small boy Chaipau (Shafiq Syed) who stabs Baba (Nana Patekar) in the end of Salaam Bombay. It follows Salim Mirza (Balraj Sahni) who blends into the agitating protesters demanding employment in Garm Hava. Phoolan Devi (Seema Biswas) surrenders before a crowd that has gathered to watch her decline in Bandit Queen. Geeta (Chitrangada Singh) comforts the now-handicapped Vikram (Shiney Ahuja)in Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi. The finale musical number in the circus of Mera Naam Joker is suffused with immense sadness. There is a respite of momentary bliss in Nargis serving water to a parched labourer Raj Kapoor in Jagte Raho. The disappearance of Chhoti Bahu (Meena Kumari) in Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam, the dance of death by Sahib Jaan (Meena Kumari) in Pakeezah, the personal sacrifices of Aarti Devi (Suchitra Devi) in Aandhi, the ostracisation of Umrao (Rekha) in Umrao Jaan, the price of independence for Pooja (Shabana Azmi) in Arth, the retaliation of Sonbai (Smita Patil) in Mirch Masala, Reshmi’s (Sridevi) retrograde amnesia and her cruel return to memory in Sadma, the false imprisonment of Vinod (Naseeruddin Shah) and Sudhir (Ravi Baswani) in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, the raging but also calming fire of Parinda, the aftermath of the 1993 Bombay blasts in Black Friday. Everywhere, death and grief looms, and at times it is a metaphor that has more that one interpretation in Devdas (all versions), Maqbool, Rang De Basanti, and Kaagaz Ke Phool, hinting at liberty and peace.
In Do Bigha Zamin, Balraj Sahni’s family loses everything they have but not each other. Losing their loved ones would have intensified their suffering into yet another relentless wheel spin of hardship. We know that is how it will be but we don’t need a reminder.
Mortality prolongs life in these classic films. The redemptive nature of such art enshrines it into greatness, when it speaks to us directly about the impermanence of life but celebrates its ephemerality. These films with a perfect high-art/low-art balance aspect ratio alter our objective truths into subjective realities.
In Dil Se, if the hero’s bride-to-be Preeti (Preity Zinta) had seen his obsession with another woman and we saw her recalling her brief time with him after his death, then we’d know that all is not lost. That his death was not a waste. That his troubled love story remains alive in her memory as an admirable failure. Perhaps that would have been a more appropriate climax.
Ratnam’s classic film Nayagan finds karma in the bullet-ridden revenge climax. Even Bombay ends on a hopeful note with hands joining to form a chain of humanity to protect the helpless in a turbulent period.
The end of something lost is the beginning of something new to recoup. We can take a bullet but we must survive the fall.Tell us it will be just fine and we will get on with our mundane lives. If that cannot be achieved, then the work of art is unlikely to endure. Cinema must never lose sight of our loyalty that comes cresting in the comfort of our tears — aas toh hai. There is hope.
