Magic Vs Logic in Deewar (Part I)
I think Deewar is Salim-Javed’s ‘the best’ piece of work in their career. For me Sholay is the clever amalgamation of various mise-en-scene* from number of movies all over the world. Sholay is not original – it’s heavily but in right manner influenced by various film genres from across the globe. By ‘not original’ here I mean the backdrop of the film is not realistic. The portrayal of Indian village in Sholay is utterly fictitious or rather it’s portrayed in a manner to please the urban audience of that time. But in case of Deewar, I always think that its narrative and mise-en-scene are truly originally Indian. It has the real urban ethos of 1970s’ India. It explores the moral dilemma of the urban middle class, it shows the dark side the underworld and at the end overtly it shows the triumph of good over the evil, moral over the immoral, ethical over the unethical, right over the wrong but at the core it subtly and successfully blurs the line between the two. The magic of Deewar h...