Deewangee
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Deewangee Overview
Starcast: Ajay Devgan, Urmila Matondkar and Akshaye Khanna
Director: Anees Bazmee
Music: Ismail Darbar
Deewangee Stills
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Deewangee Movie Review (16 Reviews)
If you happen to be in Jaipur for a few days and left with some free time after a day’s engagements, you cannot afford to miss visiting Raj Mandir Talkies, considered to be the best in India and the second best in Asia. Your friends from the host institution, the hotel staff where you are put up, the shops which you visit, the city conveyance that you may use, and others whom you may happen to interact, all would help you to decide to do that. And this precisely happened to me during my visit to the city in connection with attending a three-day training programme there during December 2002.
I was told that ‘Deewangee’ was being screened. However, without much interest on the film as such, myself and along with a co-participant went to see the 09.30 PM show. Since our primary intention was in the talkies, we also decided to leave the hall during the intermission.
On reaching the hall, we were really impressed. Its gigantic size, elegant architectural design and artistic illumination all-around made it appeared simply majestic. As we entered the hall, the lobby gave a vent of it as if we were in the banquet of one of the famous palaces of the world. When the film started, its state-of-art visual and acoustics devices created an ambience and effect, which no amount of revolution in home entertainment concept by the cable TV and multi-media PC could ensure. Probably, therefore, even for the night show, there were so many people.
‘Deewangee’ is a different film. In a village, a boy and a girl were childhood friends. When they got time to be together, the boy often played flute and the girl danced to its tune. They loved each other. Seeing the level of intimacy between them, they heard their parents talking of giving them in marriage when they grew up. In the meanwhile, girl’s father, who was holding a job, got a transfer to a city, and the family also shifted. It was a great blow to their togetherness and the day the girl’s family left the village was a tearful moment for both the children.
The boy studied in village schools. After some days, both of his parents died. He stopped pursuing formal studies but went through books of all kinds, particularly those relating to psychology and laws, as available in their village library. But with the passage of time, his desire to make the girl his own grew intensely. In the meantime, he also realised his potential to compose emotional songs and made a diary full with such compositions.
The girl on the other hand grew to become a famous singer and dancer. Her parents had also died by that time. One day the boy saw a news item on the girl and her address and went to the city. The girl gave him a warm welcome and took him to her residence. The girl showed the boy’s diary containing the songs to the producer. He appreciated, paid some money to the boy, and made the renderings in the voice and dance of the girl but named the composer as his brother as the boy was then a rustic and unknown entity in the circle. The songs hit the market and the producer’s firm became a blue chip company.
On an occasion organised to celebrate the success where the girl was to sing and dance, the producer made a romantic overture to the girl. This was just before the show. The girl severely objected to it and the producer felt insulted. This enraged him so much that he used force on her in a closed room guarded by his brother from outside. In the meantime, producer’s wife came in search of her husband and caught him red-handed and girl was set free.
However, the show took place. After the show, the girl got introduced to a young lawyer who had become very famous in his profession by that time. He was a bachelor and he had his first crush by seeing and talking to this girl. Next day morning, the producer was brutally killed at his residence. The policemen arrived, followed the trails left behind by the bloodstained boot-prints, spotted a fleeing person at a distance, chased and caught hold of this boy with blood smeared hands.
The girl called on the lawyer at his residence and expressed her firm belief that the boy of such simplicity could not be a killer. She requested that the lawyer may kindly do all that needed to save the life of the boy since she loved him as a good friend in life and she was prepared to foot all the bills in this respect. The lawyer took up the case as a friendly gesture against the advices to the contrary by all because there was faint chance of winning it given the circumstantial evidence in which the boy was caught.
The lawyer went to the cell and met the boy. He wanted to know as to what the boy had to say in the matter. And the boy said that he had not killed. He had of course gone to the producer’s house during that time, witnessed the incident, fled and caught but did not remember in between what happened or who the killer was. This temporary blackout syndrome of his memory developed in him when he witnessed his mother died in a well.
The assistance of a psychiatrist was taken and after due investigation, the boy was confirmed to be a psychic case and suffering from an acute form of ‘split personality’ disease. He was acquitted and ordered for being shifted to a mental hospital for treatment. When the case was on, the lawyer and the girl had to meet several times and they started liking each other so much that they decided to marry
While taking leave of the boy after the judgment, the lawyer discovered that the boy was indeed a killer since he also saw what the producer’s wife saw her husband doing. His knowledge of psychology helped him to enact the role of a ‘split personality’ flawlessly and, therefore, he could get released. The boy thanked the lawyer for the help rendered but warned him that he should forget the girl since she belonged to him only otherwise he would have to face the same consequence as that of the producer.
The young lawyer was perplexed. How could he for the first time wrongly read the eyes of a culprit? A party to celebrate his victory was arranged by his mother. But on reaching home, he said to his mother that he might have won the case but lost in life. Next day he went to the judge and pleaded for reopening the case but was told that there was no law in this regard. The lawyer then used all provocative gestures and talks aimed at making the real criminal tendencies of the boy get surfaced so that he was arrested and tried but each time the boy, given his some knowledge on the laws, used to get himself freed.
One day, the lawyer stage-managed the arrest of the boy and when he was being taken into custody, the boy snatched the revolver from the Inspector of Police escorting him and shot him dead. Since it was stage-managed, the accompanying policeman was fully prepared by wearing a bulletproof jacket and was not actually dead. But to the boy, he was dead. He, therefore, frantically ran, managed to escape and went underground. He planned to elope with the girl to some other city. The other underground criminals assured him all the help needed in exchange of hefty sums. They also informed him that the Inspector of Police was alive and, therefore, it was prudent for him to leave the city forever. The boy went to the producer’s house, asked the brother of the deceased producer to give all that which rightfully belonged to him (i.e. the boy) and managed to get huge cash at gunpoint.
The lawyer could get a smell of the boy’s planning and arranged a song and dance show of the girl so that when the boy would come to pick up the girl, he could be arrested and tried for the crime committed in snatching the revolver from a policeman on duty and shooting him to kill. In the process, it could be proved that he was not at all a psychic case any time.
The boy indeed came in the guise of a dhol-player. On being spotted, the policemen surrounded him. But in the shooting drama that took place and the scuffle and confusion which followed, the boy escaped. The lawyer gave the charge of the girl to two policemen to take her to his house and, with the remaining force, continued the searching operation.
The boy had by that time taken out the uniform of the lawyer’s home car driver, tied and thrown him near a bush, and taken the driver’s position. As the policemen entered with the girl, he drove them near an abandoned building of a dockyard, shot the two policemen dead and took the girl to the building. He sent a message through his mobile to the don of the underworld criminals whom he had paid earlier and requested him for the assured support so that he could escape with the girl from the city forever.
An idea stuck the girl. She indicated to be thirsty and asked for some water. When the boy left his mobile and went to fetch water, she picked it up and dialed the lawyer’s number. The lawyer was already on his way in search of the boy by his self-driven car. His mobile started beeping but there was no message. By the by when the boy said to the girl about the location where they were then, the lawyer could come to know of it and started heading towards the spot.
The boy then told all that he had dreamt of his life and his intense love towards her. He could not think of living without making her own in his life. However, given the situation, the girl was afraid to reveal her true mind i.e. by then how much did she really hate him. The inside of the building was like a labyrinth. The moment girl got a chance; she ran to one corner of the building so as not to be known as to where she was and said from there that she never meant her love towards him to the point of getting her married to him. The boy got furious. He placed his revolver pointing towards his head and said that until she agreed to marry her, he would kill himself. As the girl remained unmoved by that, he enacted the role and collapsed as dead. The girl came running and sobbed clinging the boy’s body assuming him as dead. The boy confirmed that she loved her and got up.
But the girl again started running away from him and he went on chasing her and the lawyer arrived. There was a prolonged exchange of shots between them. The boy got finally pushed to the edge on the terrace of the building. Beneath was the deep sea. When the boy felt that his arrest was imminent, he caught hold of one hand of the girl and jumped. However, the girl was unwilling. When he was hanging thus with the girl on the inner side of the parapet, the lawyer reached and freed the girl from the boy’s hold.
The divers carried out search operation but could not get the body. As the day broke, the lawyer and the girl were taking the morning fresh air from the rooftop of their house heralding the beginning of a new life for both of them. Just then a voice singing a familiar song of the boy was heard being sung by a person draped fully by black costume retreating limping on a bridge at a distance. The girl said it was ‘He’ but the lawyer said that there could be another person who could also sing like that boy. It was, therefore, left to the imagination of the audience to decide as to whether the boy was alive and left for his village wherefrom he came or he was actually dead.
During intermission, I spotted sitting, on my right, an elderly couple with their teenaged daughter. They were tourists from Goa. The wife said that the story of the film was based on a novel ‘The Primal Fear’ which she had read half. The other half was read by her daughter and according to her, it was also quite absorbing. Whatever may be, we remained glued to the screen till the end.
On our way back to the hotel, my friend shared the following words of wisdom: “Neither love anybody to a point whereby it becomes difficult to live without him/ her nor start hating a person till a point that it becomes impossible to forget him/ her in life. Both are the aspects of the same disease called obsession and give equal pain.” For a moment, I became thoughtful. Then I enquired, “What would according to you be the probable antidotes for the same?” “Know to sacrifice somebody you love, if that is what required at times for the good of that person and cultivate an attitude of forgiveness in other case”, he replied.
On our way back to the hotel, my friend shared the following words of wisdom: “Neither love anybody to a point whereby it becomes difficult to live without him/ her nor start hating a person till a point that it becomes impossible to forget him/ her in life. Both are the aspects of the same disease called obsession and give equal pain.” For a moment, I became thoughtful. Then I enquired, “What would according to you be the probable antidotes for the same?” “Know to sacrifice somebody you love, if that is what required at times for the good of that person and cultivate an attitude of forgiveness in other case”, he replied.
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