‘Sholay’ turns 50: Let the movie be

The narrative interstices throughout Sholay allowed space for audiences to imagine for themselves, creating a magical communion between the art and its consumer

At a time when five-year anniversaries of films are celebrated by stars on social media, the 50th anniversary of one of India’s best-loved films is indeed a momentous occasion. Sholay, released on August 15, 1975 in the thick of the Emergency, was a slow starter at the box office. It would be a full two-weeks before the swashbuckling tale of Jai-Veeru and Gabbar and Thakur gripped the nation’s imagination, making it the biggest film after Mughal-e-Azam.

From the lack of backstories for the main characters, to the wordless romance between Jai and Radha, there was a lot that Sholay left unsaid. (HT Archive)

As with all classics, an inexplicable alchemy turned this desi spaghetti western into cinematic gold. The set pieces, the ringing dialogues, the cameos, Dharmendra’s comedic timing and the tragic crescendo worked seamlessly. But for a film made of broad brushstrokes, there was a lot that Sholay left unsaid. Other than Thakur, we know little about the backstories of the main characters, while the romance between Amitabh Bachchan’s Jai and Jaya Bachchan’s Radha is near wordless. At the film’s end, we see only Thakur’s raised jackboot but not him actually kill Gabbar. These narrative interstices throughout allowed space for the audiences to imagine for themselves, creating a magical communion between the work of art and its consumer.

A branch of the Sippy family that holds the film’s rights, hoping to cash in on this milestone moment, is now creating merchandise, and re-releasing the film with restored footage of Thakur smashing Gabbar’s face and killing him which was left out in the original. Ours is an age of oversharing and the baring of everything — from one’s tonsils to one’s traumas, but with Sholay, the film was made by what it left out as much as what it said. As Javed Akhtar, one of its writers, said, “Would we really want to know that James Bond’s mother was a school teacher?”