Basu Chatterjee’s characteristic feel-good cinema has been a source of joy to generations of film-lovers who have discovered this fabulous filmmaker in their own personal ways. Feeling blue? Called in sick? Fam-jam? There’s a Basu da film for every mood; they’re bonafide conversation starters and natural mood-lifters.
The director entered Hindi movies in the 70s. For a generation struggling with political turmoil and economic instability, Chatterjee’s Rajnigandha (1974), Chhoti Si Baat (1976) and Baton Baton Mein (1979) made the turbulent times tolerable.
Then, in 1978, Chatterjee made Chakravyuha , which remains an aberration in his wholesome, non-masala brand of films. It’s unlike anything the middle-cinema maverick ever directed. There are secret agents, chase sequences, political sabotage and even someone getting his face blown off.
This action-adventure drama starring Rajesh Khanna and Neetu Singh was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (1935) based on John Buchan’s novel of the same name. The plot is simple: a common man who gets accidentally embroiled in an espionage crossfire races against time to thwart a political assassination.
This was the first time Khanna and Chatterjee worked together. The director was charting new territory, while Khanna, in his post-superstar phase, was experimenting with different roles and films.
In Chakravyuha, the hero, Amit (Khanna), finds himself in a soup when his mysterious government spy neighbour Raman (Vinod Mehra) is found murdered. Before dying, Raman had confided in him about an enemy outfit’s plot to assassinate a foreign dignitary on Indian soil. Amit discovers Raman’s notebook, with intelligence on the enemy agents and a message urging him to rush to Delhi to alert the authorities. Wanted by the cops for Raman’s murder and by the villains for the notebook, Amit undertakes a precarious journey to the capital. What follows next makes the rest of the story.
Languid pace
In a year when Dharmendra was fighting a tiger with a bucket in Azaad and Amitabh Bachchan was being chased by “ gyaarah mulkon ki police ” in Don , a film like Chakravyuha , where Khanna was in almost every frame, was supposed to bring him back to the top. Only it didn’t.
Chatterjee is clearly influenced by Hitchcock’s visual storytelling and tries to emulate him. But his unfamiliarity with the genre and his quest to make the narrative palatable to desi audiences makes him lose the plot.
In a runtime of over two hours, there are no dramatic payoffs and the only impetus the film gets is from the many versions of the groovy Rafi number ‘Chal Chal Aage Nikal’. The easy, languid pace, a forte of Chatterjee’s cinema, becomes Chakravyuha ’s bane. Each time there’s an urgent situation demanding attention, the characters drop everything to have tea. For inspiration, perhaps?
The climax is a one-man show. Khanna cracks the enemy’s code, arrives just in time to stop the assassination, nabs the shooter, and even addresses the media afterwards. It’s bizarre scenes like these that make Chakravyuha a guilty pleasure.
Khanna’s natural performance, minus his trademark mannerisms, aided by Jainendra K. Jain’s casual, non-filmy dialogues, makes up some of the film’s genuinely good bits. Otherwise, it’s so fervently focused on letting Khanna shine that there are hardly any other significant players. Even Neetu Singh’s character is conspicuously sidelined, almost as if the makers forgot about her after starting the film.
The Bengaluru-based freelance writer believes one Rafi song a day keeps the doctor away.
