Early in Angry Young Men, about Hindi cinema’s renowned scriptwriting duo Salim-Javed, there is an iconic clip from Sholay (1975), the one in which the brigand Gabbar Singh inquires about the number of men who took down his gang: “Kitne aadmi the?”
“Sardar, do thay” (only two) comes the plaintive answer, before cutting to the credit: “Written by Salim-Javed.”
From this punchy beginning, director Namrata Rao settles into a lightweight, meandering exploration of the backstory of the Salim-Javed collaboration on 24 productions (22 of which were hits) and their massive impact on Hindi cinema and beyond. Although featuring directors, other writers, actors and family members, the stars of the Prime Video docuseries are indubitably 88-year-old Salim Khan and 79-year-old Akhtar.
They wouldn’t have had it any other way. In 1973, the upcoming writers hired painters to stencil their names on to the posters of their breakthrough film Zanjeer, an audacious act committed without the knowledge of Zanjeer’s makers.
Among the themes of Angry Young Men is the respect that Salim-Javed created for the screenwriting profession by demanding high salaries, proper credit and acknowledgement of the importance of a script to a film’s box-office performance.
Namrata Rao, a reputed editor, makes her directorial debut with Angry Young Men. The series follows the format of the celebrity-studded The Romantics, about the legacy of Yash Raj Films.
Angry Young Men has been produced by the writers’ families. Insider access results in anecdotes that are entertaining and occasionally frank.
Salim-Javed loved to praise themselves, Jaya Bachchan says: “To put it in a nice way, they were the brats”. Says Javed Akhtar’s ex-wife Honey Irani, “They were not humble.”
The leitmotif behind the show’s title emerges soon enough. The archetype of the Angry Young Man in the 1970s, perfected by Salim-Javed and portrayed by Amitabh Bachchan, refers as much to the swaggering writers as to Bachchan’s smouldering characters, the series suggests.
Both men speak of their struggles after they moved to Mumbai at different points in the 1960s. Khan wanted to be a hero, but had to be content with roles in forgettable films. Akhtar was pursuing direction, and was working as an assistant until he ran into Khan on a movie set in 1969.
They were too proud to ask their families to bail them out of near-penury. When their ideas faced rejection, when they were not paid what they felt they deserved, when they were treated with contempt, they lashed out in righteous rage.
In projecting their angst onto their scripts, were they acting as oracles? The conventional understanding is that Salim-Javed tapped into the political ferment of the 1970s by crafting situations that were not merely brilliant but, as the K.G.F star Yash says, reflected “philosophy”.
Shyam Benegal comments that the writers were gifted at creating heroes who would “get things done” and “clean up the system” of corruption that was starting to spread in post-Nehruvian India.
Although Akhtar and Khan were separately interviewed – even their families could not persuade them to share a room – they speak as one voice about their scripts. Akhtar claims that while he and Khan were “innocent” of the simmering tensions, they were “breathing the same air” as their audiences. Akhtar also says that Zanjeer anticipated the Emergency in 1975.
The question of whether Salim-Javed presaged, mirrored or shaped public opinion about the growing rot in Indian cities is not settled in any meaningful way. The influences on Deewar (Mother India, Gunga Jumna) or Sholay (Once Upon a Time in the West, Mera Gaon Mera Desh are barely tackled. It appears that popular Hindi cinema’s celebration of outliers began with these gents, rather than with older filmmakers such as Guru Dutt, Dev Anand, Abrar Alvi or Vijay Anand.
However, a few interviews offer a nuanced approach to the throbbing anger in the Salim-Javed screenplays. Salim Khan’s eldest son, Salman Khan, observes that the writers gave it back to their perceived detractors through their work.
Film scholar Sangeeta Datta points out that both men lost their mothers at a young age and both had largely absent or distant fathers. Financial anxiety or the loneliness of Mumbai could have equally been driving the scripts, Datta suggests – an observation borne out by Deewar, Trishul (1978) and Shakti (1982).
Akhtar and Khan supply the best anecdotes. Akhtar on why their films had such unforgettable villains as Sholay’s Gabbar Singh: at the zoo, kids always want to see the tiger first. Gabbar is free of the morality that shackles the rest of us.
When the partnership ended, it was shocking but unsurprising too. Honey Irani bluntly says that the writers were swayed by their success. Their judgement was affected since “they felt that they could do no wrong”, Irani adds”. Ramesh Sippy’s Shaan (1980) had nearly the same cast and scale as Sholay but “didn’t have one memorable scene or line”, screenwriter Anjum Rajabali points out.
Such insights are infrequent. Since the key Salim-Javed scripts are not analysed for their filmmaking qualities, we’re left with vacuous celebrity vox pops.
Had Angry Young Men featured only the writers and their immediate families along with detailed breakdowns of their screenplays, it might have been more relevant. Rakishly handsome as young men and charismatic even now, Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar have a commanding presence, ensuring that the viewing time passes swiftly, although not always satisfactorily.
