Medical Rebirth

In an era of artificial cosmetic surgeries, which attempt to recreate and rejuvenate the beauty of the bygone era, legendary director B. R. Chopra joins the bandwagon with his classic Naya Daur.

To be very honest, the coloured offering doesn’t really impress the way it should have, and rather than being the rediscovered classic it ends up being a mere medical rebirth. The surgery enables it to embody all the superficial embellishments (the colour, the visuals and the jazz) but somehow the life is absent.

And if I am not wrong, even the editing of the film has been tampered with. Otherwise, why on earth would Dilip Kumar promise his friend to first decide on who gets the girl and then sing Maang ke saath tumhara with her; or why would the workers be laid off in the first place owing to the mechanization of the factory and then later they’d celebrate the inauguration of the machine in the factory? Naya Daur wouldn’t have been the classic with this haphazard editing, and if the editing has been altered, then the makers have no moral right to promote it with the same name. It is high time we acknowledge the editor’s contribution to a film and as audiences understand that a film with an edited flow isn’t the same film.

Amongst the positives of the film, well I am glad that in my lifetime I got to experience the magic which the name Dilip Kumar creates on the silver-screen. Legends are legends after all. The more you say about them, the less it is. Vyjanthimala has been a childhood favourite. But for someone who has experienced her acting prowess in Sangam, this role isn’t too much value addition. As for the music, instead of praising it, I’d just say that it is composed by O. P. Nayyar Saab. That should exemplify its extraordinary quality and timelessness.

For us yuppies who are used to splurge in the multiplexes over candy-floss cinema, Naya Daur is a refreshing change, for its honesty, its earnestness, its modesty, its humbleness, the progression in thought, and director B. R. Chopra deserves all the laurels for the same. Though the background music reaches way ahead of even the foreground and jars the beauty and innocence of the visuals, just like K serials; the colour treatment of the film isn’t exactly as bad as it was with Mugal-E-Azam.

Amongst other classics which are being remade, or revived today, Naya Daur has a special place reserved for itself, because India herself is going through a Naya Daur presently. Where is the era of globalization taking India today, will the result of this sudden inflow of the western moolah cause another conflict in the Indian interests, just like the narrative of Naya Daur and most importantly are we as a country poised to face the repercussions if any with the heroic zest and superhumanly zeal which Dilip Kumar’s character in the film is blessed with, become the resounding and lingering questions which one is arrested with after an otherwise enjoyable joyride in the theatre!