Volume-04 ISSN: 2455-3085 (Online) Issue-01 RESEARCH REVIEW International Journal of Multidisciplinary January -2019 www.rrjournals.com [UGC Listed Journal]

Melodrama and War Films

Shashank Sameer

Research Scholar, Jawaharlal Nehru University,

ARTICLE DETAILS ABSTRACT Article History My paper makes use of melodrama and its theoretical framework as a broader aesthetic Published Online: 20 January 2019 category to the study of Bollywood war films . In this paper I use 3 films namely Chetan Anand’s and J.P. Dutta’s Border and Farhaan Akhtar’s Lakshya1 to Keywords argue that use of melodramatic theory allows war films to create an emotional impact so Melodrama, War, Film. that trauma is articulated and meanings is better explored in the Filmic text. In this paper, I will show how the Bollywood war film often relies on melodrama to create the emotional effects and how melodramatic mode is applied in the. In my paper the ideological

implications of war films can be better understood more clearly from the melodramatic framework. In this paper , I would like to argue that war films are produced when there is a crisis like situation and there is resolution through these films. For my paper I mainly focus on some of the war Films post 1960s that became common in subsequent years as a result of significant shift in the way Indian nation was imagined militarily and politically post 1962.2

1 Hindustan Ki Kasam (English: The Oath of Hindustan) is a 1973 war movie based on Operation Cactus Lilly in the Indo-pak war of 1971 directed by Chetan Anand , Border is a 1997 , Indian War film based on the Battle of Longewala during the Indo- war of 1971, produced and directed by J. P. Dutta (top 10 films on Indo- Pak conflict ,times of , 30 march 2011) , Lakshya (English: Aim) is a 2004 Indian war-drama, directed by Farhan Akhtar 2 By this I mean to say that In 1962, India was a humiliated and defeated nation in Sino- India conflict while In 1971 India was a victorious nation and was not a mere winner in the war, but was the midwife in the birth of a new nation (The reference here is to the formation of an independent Bangladesh (former East Pakistan) in 1971).

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Methodology marked by the narrative of shame that India has to face after For my paper, I will use melodrama and its theoretical being defeated by China. I argue that these war films were framework such as Peter Brooks’ seminal study The made because there was a crisis like situation and the nation Melodramatic Imagination (1976), which argues that and its interest was significantly challenged by the aggressor melodrama is not just a theatrical genre but a quintessentially nation state like China and Pakistan. In the 1960s there was an modern aesthetic mode and according to Brooks ,the purpose attack on cartographic sovereignty of Indian Nation by China. of the melodramatic mode is to chart out emotional excess, Result was Sino-Indian conflict in which India lost badly. improbable plotting, moral reductiveness, and a reliance on Therefore it was crisis of war that created the necessity of a exaggerated gestures and over determined bodily signs in a war films. SoIt could be safe to argue that necessity to making work of literature or film.3 war films only arises because there is a crisis like situation I will also make references to Linda Williams works who called war7. But Bollywood never had to make a proper war film argues that melodrama operates across a wide range of till the making of Haqeeqat. This was mainly because up until aesthetic forms and identifies the defining feature of the 1962 Sino-Indian War, India had not