Entertainment

On the road

by Trans World Features (TWF) 21 Apr 2014, 07:18 am

With the recently released films Highway and Queen creating a buzz, Ranjita Biswas looks at the charm of road movies, a genre by itself, in Hollywood and Bollywood

What is it about road movies that make people take a look at their own lives, their own experiences, even unrealised dreams ? In Imtiaz Ali’s Highway as hardened criminal Mahabir Bhati (Randeep Hooda) accidentally kidnaps Veera (Alia Bhatt) , a poor little rich girl, and then is on the run criss-crossing large swathes of  north Indian highways, something about the characters’  transformation, call it self-discovery,  tends to make many in the audience introspect about their own journey as they get introduced to lands less known, metaphorically and physically.

Road movies are not necessarily only about travelling or scenic beauty, though Highway has plenty of the latter throwing up wonderful vistas of this diverse country. It is a genre where the characters move out of home to travel on a journey  which  in the process, becomes an altering experience for the protagonists.  The book The Motorcycle Diaries made into a movie that chronicles Che Guevara’s own epic journey across South America that saw a happy- go- lucky doctor turn into a man with revolutionary ideas encountering poverty in the land, is one such.

Some say that this genre of films - “Celebrations of the Eternally Restless Self” , has its roots in oral and written tales of epic journeys as in Greek mythology like the  Odyssey. Hollywood used this kind of plot in the beginning of the American cinema but it really took off  in the post Second World War era when  the automobile industry boomed and youth culture thrived putting a wing to their feet.

Frank Capra’s ever-popular comedy-romance It Happened One Night  (1934) about a runway spoiled heiress Claudette Colbert and cynical reporter Clark Gable out for a story is one of the earliest  road movies. It  has seen many clones subsequently, not forgetting our own runaway hit Dil Hai Ke Maanta Nahin  with Aamir Khan and Puja Bhatt.
The hugely successful Jab We Met with Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor is one of the best examples of road movies from Bollywood in recent years. The rich guy on the verge of suicide and an impulsive girl trying to escape an arranged marriage to join her love interest find themselves travelling together after accidentally coming into contact. That love unknowingly develops between them and they discover their inner selves as individuals, thus transforming their perspectives, resonates with the core of a road movie.

Then there are  friends-on-a- tour kind of film in this genre. Ridley Scott’s  critically acclaimed female buddy film Thelma and Louise  (1991) sees  transformation of a meek housewife Thelma (Geena Davis) and a strong-willed  waitress Louise (Susan Sarandon) as they set on a two-day vacation in the mountains. Events happen the way they had never planned- robbery, shooting of a man who attempts rape, police chase, et al. Even then  the women taste a new freedom, a discovery of their strength in this danger-fraught journey. The screenplay which won many awards, has been praised for its feminist overtones attacking conventional chauvinistic ideas about women. Critic Kenneth Turan called it a  "neo-feminist road movie.”
In Bollywood it is easier to find male-buddy films than female ones. For obvious reasons. Contemporary films in general reflect society after all.

In recent times Zoya Akhtar’s well-made male buddy film Zingagi Na Milegi Dobara reestablishes the charm of road movies. Three school friends, now adults and in different professions, Farhan Akhtar, Hrithik Roshan and Abhay Deol team up and travel across Spain and in the process rediscover their friendship and reconnect.

Saying that, Vikas Bahl’s recently released Queen that translates from Rani the protagonist (Kangana Ranaut) is a buddy road movie with a difference.  A girl from a conservative family from Rajori Garden, Delhi, as she repeats, is ditched  on the eve of her wedding by her boyfriend. Devastated  , she makes an unusual decision- to go to the long-planned honeymoon alone. There the adventure begins, in Paris and then Amsterdam where she befriends  an unlikely group of young travellers and her transformation from a meek girl to a confident woman begins. Kangana, as Aamir Khan complimented, ‘rocks.’ But more importantly, this kind of film is being made reflecting a changing look at women in urban India , more assertive and ready to break free from set ideas.

A road journey can even change families with their own dynamics as Oscar winning film Little Miss Sunshine (2006) displays. It is about a dysfunctional extended family travelling great distances to California in a dilapidated Volkswagen so that Olive, the little girl in the family, can take part in a beauty contest. The journey changes their lives, despite the bickerings, tension and even death of a member due to heroin overdose. They discover that they are supportive of each other after all and bond together.

Talking about road movies, one cannot forget Satyajit Ray’s Abhijan (Expedition, 1962) based on Tarashankar Bandopdhyay’s eponymous book with Soumitra Chatterjee playing Narsingh, a taxi driver, and Waheeda Rehman as Gulabi, as prostitute. Narsingh is a temperamental Rajput with a great attachment to his vintage 1930 Chrysler. Absconding from the police due to a so-called offence to a powerful local policeman, he operates on the border of Bengal and Bihar.

In his taxi he plies people of all classes including the two main women characters, Mary and Gulabi. Narsingh is attracted to Mary, a reserved Catholic schoolteacher, who has least interest in him but Gulabi likes him instantly. The rough and tough Narsingh who also gets involved in a trafficking gang changes and rescues Gulabi  on the verge of  getting sold off to an unsavoury character.

Ray’s contemporary, the uncompromising New Wave filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak’s Ajantrik (The Mechanical Man, 1958) is also a road movie with a twist where protagonist  Bimal, a taxi driver, feels close to his old jalopy  as if it is an intimate friend and calls it Jagaddal. While transporting passengers to different locations it is as if he lives their lives by proxy.

Indeed, in road movies the inanimate highway takes on a life of its own- changing lives, changing their world view.