Man, woman, child -- and therein hangs a tale...

RAHUL (Delite, Chanakya and other Delhi theatres): IT IS said that the simplest of stories is often the most difficult to tell. But this doesn't seem, for good reasons, to have unnerved Prakash Jha who directed "Rahul", and Subhash Ghai of Mukta Arts who produced it. Both Jha and Ghai have a commendable track record though their approach to cinema might be as different as chalk from cheese.

About-to-be-five Rahul is denied the innocence of childhood because of his two feuding separated parents. The piquant family situation forces upon him the harsh realities of life he cannot even begin to understand. Finally when he is made to cross the Rubicon -- to choose between his mother and father -- the child manages to live almost a lifetime in just one fleeting moment.

All happy families are alike. But each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Tolstoy's observation has not lost its relevance with the passage of time. What could have been a simple story of an emotionally tormented child becomes, under Jha's focus, the anatomy of the broken marriage of a modern couple. Two hundred years ago a Rahul would not have had to make that choice. There was no divorce in Hindu society. But Rahul now has parents who have that choice. Also, modernisation has uprooted them from their traditional moorings. Both man and woman are on their own which perhaps is the most painful part of it. Frame by frame Jha raises the emotional temperature till the film becomes a crucible in which a modern marriage burns its dross.

A lesser director would have struck a chord against non- traditional attitudes. But Jha is not against modernisation per se. Neither Neha nor Jatin Grewal, playing the parents, are unacceptable as human beings. But Jha quietly slips in the question: for all their sophistication and education, what kind of life are they bestowing upon their only child? They have to pass that litumus test before they can call themselves truly civilised.

"Rahul" also tells us that in matters of human relationships there are no alternative routes to the one that has been laid down by nature. Wisdom does not lie in defying the law of gravity but in complying with it. In the scrimmage of joint family relationships Neha and Jatin's marriage gets strangulated. But it does not mean that love is dead. It just lies in suspended animation. It has been pushed away from the emotional spaces now occupied solely by an unmitigated urge for self-aggrandisement. This is not simply the personal failure of the parents but the curse of modern life which has devalued tradition.

In the end you realise that Jha is not narrating a simple story but trying to simplify a complicated one. Master Yash Pathak as Rahul is really quite a charmer who takes many complicated emotions in his stride. As his tormented parents, both Neha and Jatin give controlled performances as do the others. Anu Malik's music is in tune with the theme. But it really is a director's film. And Prakash Jha so far has always been first-rate.

Not to be missed.

CENSOR (Shiela): The censorship code was devised by our erstwhile rulers who wanted to ensure that nothing was slipped into cinema by the restive natives which would besmear the fair name of the ``impeccable Raj''. After 1947, it de-focused itself into the political will of a swadeshi raj to protect the integrity of the time-honoured social values of India that was Bharat.

For a while there was confusion whether one should put more India into Bharat or more Bharat into India. It was a sort of national pastime which got reflected in the proceedings of the first day of the first Parliament. The redoubtable Mr. Mahavir Tyagi wondered in the Lok Sabha what the army top brass was doing in the sacred portals of Parliament walking in step with the President when he came to address the members of the two Houses. The Prime Minister, Pandit Nehru, was pleased to ask whether the Honourable Member wanted the armies of Mahabharata to accompany the President! Now an old campaigner, Dev Anand, seeks to revive the debate in his film "Censor" -- needless to say, in his own and highly individualistic style.

In the 1950s when Dev's career was on the rise, Seth Chandulal Shah of Ranjit Movietone served as a member of the Censor Board. One day he was confronted by a dowager Parsi lady dressed in all her finery who indignantly pointed out to him that the song picturised on `Cheese Cake' Helen, De doongi dil ka khazana, was positively ``vulgar''. The Sethji stretched himself to full height, adjusted his glasses to focus on his fellow-Censor, and said, "Young lady, dil ka khazana is never below the belt."

Poor Helen at best only tried to titillate imagination while the Govinda generation now does not believe in leaving anything to imagination. Compared to the leading ladies, including Mamata Kulkarni, in Dev's "Censor", Helen was always more conservatively dressed which denotes the march of time. Still, Dev harnesses three-fourths of the acting talent of Bollywood to prepare a rejoinder to the Censor Board which has been tormenting the film- makers for the past 50 years. As it should have been, it is all in the formula format so dear to Bollywood.

The Indian censors have long shifted their focus from watching the strategic areas of the female anatomy to move to crucial areas of crime and violence. Even here of late they seem to have shown greater understanding of their times than they did in "Bandit Queen" in which the lady was seen walking in her birthday suit. It might be of some interest to Dev Saheb that one of his heroines, Vyjayantimala, who presided over the jury for the National Film Awards this year, said at the press conference that some of the films she saw were really quite "vulgar". These films were all passed by the Censor Board.

Dev makes the point that a global culture is on the march in the world, coming freely to cable TV like spiritual manna from the skies. Censors cannot block its entry into cinema in India. Well, evidently Dev Saheb hasn't been watching films lately, films like `Josh' (latest version of `Westside Story'). `Har Dil To Pyaar Karega' (`While You Were Sleeping') or `Chori Chori Chupke Chupke' (`Pretty Women'). And his own film `Censor'. Most of the censors in `Censor' are hypocrites which is a point well made. But if Dev Saheb recognises that there is a core of a 5000-year- old culture which needs to be nurtured and cherished as an Indian even in our turbulent times, it is not reflected in his film. And that is a pity.

No other film has so far presented such a conglomeration of stars as `Censor'. For that reason alone it is well worth a visit. My favourites are Rekha (spoofing on Asha Parekh, the former chairperson of the Censor Board), Amrish Puri and Jackie Shroff (playing pandit and maulvi). You might like Hema Malini, Shammi Kapoor and, above all Govinda. The long list doesn't end there, of course!

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