Start the week with a film: Revisiting ‘Shakti’, the other Ramesh Sippy classic

Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay turned 50 on August 15. A mid-century after the vengeance drama’s release, fans continue to marvel at its technical mastery, iconic characters, Sippy’s eye for both intimate moments and grand spectacle. Lines from Salim-Javed’s screenplay are still being quoted in conversation.

But as filmmaker Atul Sabharwal pointed out in his excellent essay for Scroll, Sholay was something of a paradox – a peak that its director didn’t always scale in his subsequent films; a blockbuster whose inventiveness was lost to the Hindi film industry.

Sippy’s follow-up to Sholay was the underwhelming Shaan (1980). In 1982, Sippy changed course, making a film that ignored the scale of Sholay and Shaan by turning inwards.

Shakti is a compelling character study of an upright police officer and his wayward son. Starring Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan, the film was written by Salim-Javed and loosely inspired by the Tamil movie Thangappathakkam (1974).

As a child, Vijay is kidnapped by the smugglers JK (Amrish Puri) and Narang (Kulbhushan Kharbanda). Vijay’s father Ashwini Kumar (Dilip Kumar) refuses to release one of JK’s men in exchange for Vijay. The boy learns about this. Although Vijay escapes from his abductors, his father’s perceived treachery scars him.

The grown-up Vijay’s idea of revenge is to work with Narang, which saddens Ashwini. Caught between the righteous...

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