The Film Corner is a new series on InPEC by Yayaati Joshi. Yayaati is a blogger and a short story writer whose work can be found here and in his book, ‘The Recluse and the Rag Picker’. He specialises on cinema of all kinds including commercial, arthouse and foreign films. This collection of film essays looks at the nature of film in society and the purposes that it serves.  In the first of these Yayaati analyses Gulzar’s 1971 movie, Mere Apne.

By Yayaati Joshi, 22nd June, 2012.

Long before Omkara introduced us to the manipulative, jealousy infested and gun waving antics of student politics, Gulzar, back in 1971, had made a film on a similar subject. This film, called, Mere Apne, a rather ill-assorted title for a film that deals with student politics, had the two macho men of that age Vinod Khanna, and Shatrughan Sinha, pitted against each other as (student) political rivals. The film was released at a time when the appetite of the audience had not been whetted for the out and out action films, where the likes of Amitabh Bachhan or Dharmendra would bash up goons, either out of animosity, or pure rage against a goonda upstart. This was the time of the long locked “heroes”, proposing to the “heroines”, crooning romantic verses to woo the women. But, at the same time, a film in Bengali cinema was garnering appreciation for being daring enough to tread the less chosen path. The film, called Apanjan, was remade as Mere Apne.

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