Satya

Satya comes to Mumbai from the south looking for work. He starts in a bar, is put inside over a fight he had no part in, and meets Bhiku Mhatre there. Bhiku leads a gang; angry, loud and loyal. When they get out Satya is inside the organisation. In this city the gangs are entangled with politicians and film producers; extortion, murder and elections are parts of the same web. Satya meets Vidya, his neighbour downstairs, and looks at her as at another life. Living both lives at once is not possible. Ram Gopal Varma directs. Saurabh Shukla and Anurag Kashyap wrote the screenplay. J. D. Chakravarthi, Manoj Bajpayee, Urmila Matondkar and Shefali Shah are in the cast. It is an Indian production. The film came out in 1998 and is counted as the production that opened the way for realist gangster films in Indian cinema. Bhiku Mhatre, played by Manoj Bajpayee, became the character he was known for. It was shot in real neighbourhoods of Mumbai and the locations are not studio. The matter it treats is the ordinariness of the gang; these men marry, raise children and kill somebody the same day. The film does not present the police as clean either and gives the violence of both sides equally. The music is used inside the narrative and the songs do not interrupt the story. The narrative never tells Satya's past and the character stays closed to the end. The ending saves nobody. Its limit is harshness; the violence is heavy, the narrative dark, and most of the characters die. Who it is for: viewers who like realist crime films and the independent strain of Indian cinema. Who it is not for: it is violent, dark, and the ending bitter.