It could be said that I sort of backed my way into
Maula Jat. I’ve reviewed a few of Pakistani superstar
Sultan Rahi’s films in the past, but all of those were merely trying to recapture the magic of this, one of the most popular films -- if not
the most popular -- in the history of Pakistani cinema, and certainly the most popular in the Punjabi language.
In my review of
Changhezah, I touched upon a few of the things that contributed to
Maula Jat becoming the extraordinary phenomenon that it was, and to Rahi becoming something much more than a mere movie star. True, the actor was already a known quantity by the time of making the film, and had in fact already played the title character in a previous movie, 1975’s
Wehshi Jatt. But while
Wehshi Jatt met with a considerable amount of success, it was
Maula Jat -- arriving at a time when General Muhammad Zia-ul-Hag’s repressive martial law rule had instilled a sense of powerlessness in much of the country’s populace -- that found an audience hungry for exactly the type of righteous and ferociously masculine hero that Rahi so ably personified. As a result, Rahi came to carry the burden of not only portraying the outrage and wrath of the common man, but also of being their living, breathing -- and, most importantly,
yelling -- embodiment.
In keeping with that,
Maula Jat maintains an almost absurd level of intensity from its very first frame to its very last -- even more so than in those already quite fevered Rahi vehicles that I’ve reviewed before, if you can believe it. Between its ceaseless, thundering soundtrack, shouted dialogue, pushed-into-the-red sound effects (Thunderclaps! Sirens! Face slaps that sound like thunderclaps!), restless camera work, aggressively stylized performances, and furious violence, it’s enough to blow your hair back just watching it. While all of this -- as well as the film’s suffocatingly narrow conception of masculinity -- might sound as if it would invite easy mockery, in aggregate it speaks to a level of rage too deep to be so glibly dismissed.
The film hits the ground running -- literally -- as we watch a young woman desperately fleeing on foot from a leering bandit on horseback whose intentions couldn’t be any more obvious. This chase goes on for quite some time, and as the woman runs through street after street, she cries out for help, only to go unanswered by the many bystanders who are too intimidated to raise a hand. That is, until she arrives in the village where Maula Jat (Rahi) lives with his mom and best buddy. (The Jatt, by the way, are a Punjabi tribal group with a historical rep for fierceness in battle.) Maula and his pal give the rascal -- who, it turns out, is a member of the notorious Nath clan -- the thumping of his life, after which he goes scurrying home to his sister, Daro (played with some serious crazy eye by Chakori), who summarily executes him for shaming the family with his unsuccessful rape attempt. Her attacker vanquished, the young woman then begins doing a frenzied, triumphal dance, one that she continues even as her feet begin to spurt blood everywhere, and which eventually results in her collapsing dead from her exertions.
After this bucolic and low-key little prologue, we are introduced to the Nath clan’s leader, Nuri Nath, who’s played with googly-eyed menace by Mustafa Qureshi. It’s a portrayal that’s every bit as iconic as Rahi’s, which spurred producers to pair Qureshi off against Rahi in literally hundreds of films afterward. Another frequent screen partner of Rahi’s present here is leading lady Aasia, who, thanks to the tendency among Pakistani actresses of disappearing from the screen after marriage, was later replaced by Anjuman as the actor’s female co-star of choice. I guess that Aasia could be said to be playing Maula Jat’s love interest here, though, in truth, Maula has less than no time in his schedule for romance. The closest approximation that these two do of pitching woo is in those scenes in which Aasia sings to Maula -- scenes in which he stands by impatiently, looking as if he’s waiting for her to finish so that he can go kill some more people.
In his history of Pakistani Cinema, author Mushtaq Gazedar seems to suggest that the ensuing battle between Maula Jat and Nuri Nath is a clear cut one of good versus evil, resulting in a triumph of the oppressed against the forces of tyranny, represented in this case by the marauding Nath clan. Hampered as I am by a lack of fluency in Punjabi, I am in no position to disagree with him, but it did appear to me that there might be more than that going on. Maula and Nuri’s ongoing clashes are periodically interrupted by the police, who, clearly making no moral or legal distinction between the two of them, keep either throwing them in jail, or, worse yet, riddling them with bullets and causing them to spend forced down-time simmering in adjacent hospital beds. At the same time, the two men’s fierce tribal affiliations, as well as their identical obsessions with proving their manliness, certainly put them at equal odds with the authorities, and, as such, in relative alignment with each other. Again, I am probably misinterpreting, but it seemed at times that, in between the bouts of savage brawling, there were moments in which you could see an at least grudging sort of camaraderie between them.
Beyond my own linguistically blinded maulings of the text, an even more compelling argument for not judging
Maula Jat without the benefit of translation is the fact that, like so many of Rahi’s films, it relies very heavily on those screaming verbal sparring matches known colloquially as
barrak. Consisting largely of colorful threats, extravagant boasts, and bloodcurdling oaths, these dialogs -- best delivered with finger pointed accusingly, and in a voice that sounds like a methed-up Rottweiler strangling on a bone -- usually serve as the prelude to a physical fight, even though they end up taking up much more screen time than the fights themselves. It is, reportedly, the particular pithy-ness of these exchanges in
Maula Jat that accounts for a lot of the film’s enduring appeal. Much as Indian film fans over the years have delighted in quoting Amjad Khan’s lines from
Sholay (and, hey, Americans in quoting Al Pacino’s from
Scarface, for that matter), it is not uncommon for Pakistani filmgoers to be able to recite these heated exchanges between Rahi and Qureshi verbatim.
All of this is not to say that a lack of translation will prevent you from enjoying the film. After all, it works on such a visceral -- perhaps even primal -- level that it’s difficult to resist getting drawn in. However, you should keep in mind that the rigors of the experience might leave you trembling like a Chihuahua who’s had someone angrily yelling into his ear for two-plus hours. This is filmmaking at its most rough and raw, and anyone hoping for moments of meditative beauty or transporting flights of lyricism should probably run very far away.
At
Maula Jat’s conclusion, our hero faces off against Nuri Nath and a dozen of his men, armed only with his Gandaasa, a gnarly looking farming implement that is his character’s signature weapon (basically comprised of a long staff with a razor sharp, cleaver-like blade on the end). The rapid-fire carnage that follows -- with Maula bloodily slicing, dicing and chopping his way through the lot until his shirt is transformed from white to deep red -- is awe inspiring, but apparently not as much so in the currently available cut as could have been. Omar Khan over at the
Hotspot Online provides an account of attending a screening of the pre-censor-approved, original cut of the film, with producer Sarwar Bhatti in attendance, and confirms that that version contains enough tossing around of viscera and severed appendages to please even the most bloodthirsty gorehound.
Even with the aforementioned offending footage excised at the censor’s request, it was
Maula Jat’s violence that provided the Zia government with the excuse to attempt a ban on it. Fortunately, producer Bhatti succeeded in winning a court ordered, two-and-a-half year stay on that ban, during which
Maula Jat played in theaters
continuously, ceasing it’s monumental run only after the prints were forcibly removed by authorities. Meanwhile, Sultan Rahi had already embarked upon the hard work of being the personification of righteous fury for an entire, apparently pretty pissed off populace, keeping a staggering schedule that had him working on up to
thirty-five films at a time -- among the fruits of which would eventually be two official sequels to
Maula Jat. Certainly, numbers like that don’t frequently produce art, but, as
Maula Jat demonstrates, with the right ingredients, they can still produce works of undeniable, raw power.
The aforementioned actor is Farid Chawki, a popular star of Egyptian action films during the 50s and 60s who crowned himself with the title "The King of the Terzos". The term "Terzos" refers to Egypt's third class movie theaters, the lowest level in the Egyptian cinematic food chain. From what I can tell, these were essentially the same as America's grindhouses, being somewhat disreputable urban movie houses running a constant program of second and third run films for the benefit of a largely male, working class audience.
That largely male, working class audience had their own name for Chawki: "The Beast". And any mystery surrounding that moniker can be easily dispelled by watching a film like Antar The Black Prince. The young Chawki is gifted with both imposing physical stature and brute intensity, as well as a seething, street level machismo that makes him quite the credible screen brawler -- though less so when he is trying to portray a mastery of the sword than when he is simply tossing people around with his bare hands like Dara Singh. When angered or cornered in Antar, he frequently lets out a loud, guttural roar, making for quite a contrast to those moments in the film when he spontaneously gives voice to florid romantic verse.
As depicted in the film, Antar's struggle to free himself from slavery, win the acknowledgment of his nobleman father, and the hand of his highborn cousin, A'abla (Kouka, wife of Antar director Niazi Mostafa, who cast her as a series of Bedouin heroines in his films) is a tough row to hoe. It is only after he saves A'abla from a gang of rapacious bandits that his father, Shaddad, deigns to relieve him of his lowly sheep herding duties and make him a knight in his army. Even so, it takes yet more instances of Antar single-handedly saving the collective asses of his tribe before Shaddad will agree to publicly admit to being his father, and then more acts of selfless heroism before the tribe will recognize him as a suitable mate for A'abla.
And even then the battle isn't over, as the romantic designs of the foppish Prince O'Mara -- smitten with A'abla -- and Shaddad's adulterous wife Somaiyah -- likewise with Antar -- lead the two to resort to every kind of chicanery imaginable in order to derail the relationship between Antar and A'abla. Finally, A'abla's father schemes with O'Mara to get rid of Antar once and for all by demanding that Antar supply for A'abla a dowry of one thousand red camels, which can only be obtained after a lengthy journey into hostile territory via a particularly treacherous stretch of desert. Honestly, it's a wonder that Antar didn't just tell everyone to get stuffed and go off to form a tribe of his own.
In short, being the lover of a woman of legendary beauty like A'abla proves to be nothing but trouble for Antar, as she is relentlessly being carted off by one lustful bandit, unscrupulous nobleman or another -- invariably screaming "Antar! Antar!" as she goes -- throughout the film. This has the potential to give the story a sort of Perils of Pauline repetitiveness. But, despite being limited by an obviously modest budget, the filmmakers manage to keep thing lively through the use of lots of aggressive color, frequent fight scenes, rousing Bollywood-style musical numbers, and the occasional jolt of surprising gore. The film may not provide a lesson in tolerance for those who are otherwise inclined, but it at least might demonstrate to them the inadvisable nature of keeping down a black man who could easily snap their necks with his bare hands.
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