Shool

See it as a film and it is entertaining. See it as a film with a message and it kicks our conscience in like we do with beer cans. Shool, the Hindi film directed by the debut filmmaker E Nivas, is more than just the story of an upright police officer who dares to swim against the prevailing currents in society. It is a punch in the faces of all those Indians who are comfortable with the idiom that we cannot do anything to change the system. So who created this system?

Didn't we all together pitch in to bring to power corrupt politicians who would have no qualms about selling off their own wives, children and parents for the sake of their coveted chairs? Didn't we antagonize our own police force so that the men who were once willing to fight for the common men are now more than willing to lick the soles of their masters? Didn't we all seek the easy way out by greasing the palms of bureaucrats so that our files may make swift transitions from one desk to another? If we are responsible for this mess, why do we always blame the others?

In that respect, Shool goes beyond the narrative of an inspector who has to sacrifice his daughter and wife in the process of standing up for his job of fighting crime. When he dares to challenge a politician in a town of Bihar (notorious for goondaism), he knows too well what may be the repercussions. But within him is a soul on fire which knows that bowing down to the forces will only fuel it further. If the frustration created out of an inability to fight against a system which has turned as menacing as a dark hole has to be given its vent, there can only be one option - Stand Up And Fight Like A Man, for whatever it takes.

Brilliantly directed with performances of its lead
actors Manoj Bajpai, Raveena Tandon and Sayaji Shinde reaching well above the normal limits set for chocolate or action heroes of Hindi cinema, the film is successful in making you angry. So angry that you want to go and bust your head against the wall.

Because that, as you know, is the only solution. Can we, like Bajpai's character, destroy the web so carefully woven by politicians who exhort us to kill our own neighbours? Can we cut into pieces those corrupt government officers who, with spit dribbling down their lower jaws, want a bigger and bigger share of every pie they set their sights on? Are we in a position to do anything about anything at all? Or have we turned into enunchs who, as victims of society, can do nothing but clap, beg and occasionally terrorize the meek ones?

The truth is that we are as bad as those politicians, underworld dons, corrupt police officers, greedy businessmen and what have you. We are them just as they are us. And when E Nivas presents sequences like the brutal killing of a political contestant, the police officer's argument with a railway coolie, the death of his daughter during a street brawl, the suicide of his wife, the confrontation with his senior and the finale in the assembly house where he puts a bullet through the politician's head, there is in each of these scenes the angst of a disturbed mind which refuses to accept the theory that it is the herd mentality which works the best. It does, if the objective is to live the life of a cockroach and slink around the gutter and the wash basin when it is dark, fearing the stamp of a shoe or the tornado of a broom which will at once snuff out its remaining breath.

So, are we ever going to come out of our hibernation? Or is life too short to waste on idealism?