Guru Dutt by Nasreen Munni Kabir
“To make a film is to create a world.” This one sentence by the British film and theatre director Lindsay Anderson gives us an idea of the extent of intellectual creativity and sophistication that a film maker ought to possess. After all creating a world is no mean task. Guru Dutt too crafted several movies in colour as well as black and white. Some like Baaz flopped; others like Baazi, Jaal and Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulaam became hits, while still others like Pyaasa and Kaaghaz Ke Phool are being hailed as classics. But, in his lifetime, he hardly got such rave reviews. After all he was a typical outsider trying to carve out a niche for himself in the Hindi film industry by dint of sheer talent and perseverance.
For Steven Spielberg movies represented heightened reality that could be turned into “fun to live with”. Unfortunately, for Guru Dutt movies became his life in a tragic sort of way. The characters that he portrayed marked him as tragedy personified, be it Vijay, the struggling poet, in Pyaasa, Suresh Sinha in Kaghaz Ke Phool, Bhootnath in Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam or Aslam in Chaudhvin Ka Chand. My personal favourite is Pyaasa. When I saw this movie for the first as an adolescent in 1970s I was gripped by the pathos exemplified by the struggling poet. This pathos was reinforced by the sheer artistry of the cameraman. The scene where Guru Dutt stands in the door, with his arms raised gave one the impression of Jesus Christ on the Cross. This particular sequence and the song Yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaye… impelled me to buy the cd and play it repeatedly. My generation was enamored with Rajesh Khanna, and influenced by Dev Anand’s Hare Rama Hare Krishna. It took Guru Dutt quite some time to become an all time icon. Today he is eulogized as a wizard by movie buffs. Posthumous glory for the protagonist was a recurring theme in some of his movies, and the same proved to be true in his case too.
Dutt’s film making technique and his skill at using light and shade to heighten variegated moods show him as a film maker of evolved sensibility. Kudos to Nasreen Munni Kabir for coming up with this updated version of the great Dutt’s life and times.
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