INTEGRITY IN POLITICS: RARE AS FOOTPRINTS IN QUICKSAND
To paraphrase the American columnist and humorist, Molly Ivins, satire is the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. That weapon is portrayed with patent potency in “ಚಿತೆಗೂ ಚಿಂತೆ” (‘Chitegu Chinte’, which translates somewhat nebulously to ‘Distress Too of (the) Funeral Pyre’), a 1978 Kannada comedy. The allegorical masterpiece won critical acclaim.
Gajasimha takes to politics like fish to water. The new avatar only
caters to his narcissistic desires. Gajasimha, however, wins the election and
is sworn into the government. In due course, he becomes too big for his boots
and turns against his mentor, who entrusts Malini (Manjula) with the task of getting
Avinash (Ram Prakash), a black-belt in karate languishing in jail, to kill
Gajasimha. A foreign secret agent, Mary (Paula Lindsay) too gets into the act.
So, does Gajasimha escape the assassination attempts? That is the rest of
the story.
Director MS Sathyu is sassy and spirited in his depiction of the
narrative. He bluntly suggests with this Orwellian plot that people get a
government that they deserve. He uses all tropes typical of mainstream cinema
for his satire.
The screenplay of Sathyu and Javed Siddiqui gets a tad too tedious in the
latter half. More of the same becomes a bore…definitely. In spite of the drag
in the story-telling, punchy dialogues of S Ramaswami are razor sharp and
rollicking good. Music of maestro GK Venkatesh is terrific, as always.
CR Simha, as the self-serving, power-hungry anti-hero, is delightfully exaggerated. The rest of the cast,
comprising of Manjula, Shivaram, Uma Shivakumar, Mac Mohan, Paula Lindsay and others, has performed
remarkably well.
A veritable classic, this flick is a
side-splitting, hard-hitting tale about politicians’ lust for power and
festering corruption in the system.
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