Synopsis
Two
bumbling photographers Vinod Chopra (Naseeruddin
Shah) and Sudhir Mishra (Baswani) are employed
by Shobha (Bharve) the editor of a scandal
sheet, Khabardaar. They have to spy on millionaire
property developer Tarneja (Kapoor) and
police commissioner D'Mello (Satish Shah).
The photographers uncover dirty business
between Tarneja and his equally unsavoury
rival Ahuja (Om Puri). Inadvertently they
stumble upon the murder of the commissioner
and capture it on film but in spite of repeated
blow ups of the photograph are unable to
identify the killer. The commissioner is
in fact killed by Tarneja who as a result
wins the contract to build the flyover that
collapses shortly after. The photographers
get hold of D'Mello's corpse to prove he
was murdered but they lose the corpse, which
leads to an extended chase where everybody
chases everybody and everybody chases the
corpse. Finally Tarneja, Ahuja and Shobha
all strike a deal amidst themselves and
the two photographers are framed for the
collapse of the flyover.
The film
Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron is without a
doubt the greatest comedy made on the Indian
screen. The film is outrageously funny and
remarkable for its freshness and spontaneity.
Director Kundan Shah casts a satirical eye
on Civic Admistration, The Police, The Press
and Big Business and combining slapstick
humour with farce and verbal wit comes up
with a film that is delightfully irrelevant
as it lampoons practically every institution.
The
film makes various direct and indirect references.
The collapse of the flyover shown in a TV
news clip in the film is in fact footage
of the actual Byculla bridge which collapsed
shortly before the film was made. Tarneja
and Ahuja are a composite of Bombay's biggest
builder Raheja while Shobha the editor of
Khabardaar is an allusion to Shobha De former
editor of a film gossip magazine. The film
is also full of in joke references. The
two photographers are named after Shah's
filmmaking colleagues and the code word
Albert Pinto of the two sleuths refers to
Saaed Mirza's film of the same name. Large
posters of Kumar Shahani's Maya Darpan
(1972) and Mani Kaul's Uski Roti
(1969) can be seen pasted on the walls
during the chase. The park wherein the photographers
take click the photograph of D'Mello's killing
and blow up the picture repeatedly is called
Antonioni Park since the sequence was obviously
inspired from Antonioni's Blow Up.
Almost
very sequence in the stands out brilliantly
by itself whether it is the cake throwing
or the secret meeting at Tarneja's house
or a drunk Om Puri encountering D'Mello
in his coffin and thinking his car has broken
down and thus towing him around! But the
highlight of the film is without doubt the
chase of the missing corpse, which is a
sizeable part of the film and provides the
film with some of its most inventive and
humorous moments. The sequence of the Mahabharata
being enacted on stage with the corpse,
as Draupadi is a scream!
The
acting is uniformly marvelous with each
of the actors spot on with their timings.
But Satish Shah's deadpan performance as
the corpse takes the cake. Mention must
be made of Om Puri who shows a wonderful
unexplored till now range of comic timing.
Though
the film ends on a pessimistic note. Shah
justifies it by explaining
"The
end is symbolic… I am trying to say
that the system has put the common man into
jail. In the kind of set-up which encourages
corruption, he suffers the most."
It
is a pity that after such a promising beginning,
Kundan Shah's subsequent films made within
the mainstream Hindi film Industry, while
having their moments, are nowhere near the
innovative level of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron
which remains his best film by far.
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