Birthday Special: When Urmila Matondkar stopped working with Ram Gopal Varma, his films got scary for all wrong reasons

Feb 4, 2023 - 10:30

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Birthday Special: When Urmila Matondkar stopped working with Ram Gopal Varma, his films got scary for all wrong reasons

The magic of the movies is that it foretells a success story even before the story unfolds. Urmila who did half a dozen inconsequential films before Rangeela (1995) never anticipated the storm in a tee-cropped that her character whipped at the box-office. Playing the middleclass Mumbai girl Mili (the protagonist’s name was a furtive tribute by director Ram Gopal Varma to Hrishikesh Mukherjee) Urmila rocked the box-office and shook up every definition of how the conventional heroine conducted herself on screen. Bindaas is the word that comes to mind when describing Urmila in Rangeela. Gyrating sensuously to A R Rahman’s seductive sounds Urmila scorched the screen ,setting the audiences’ collective libidos on fire.

The plot was a cleverly cloaked fairytale. Girl dreams of stardom , is secretly loved by the street hoodlum Munna (Aamir Khan) but is swept off her feet by the nation’s heart-throb Raj Kamal (Jackie Shroff, playing an amalgamation of Rajesh Khanna and Kamal Haasan).The film was fresh ,sassy, unselfconsciously and unabashedly dream-like in choreography, mood and tempo. Mili’s life at home is portrayed with a lightness of touch that Ram Gopal Varma(RGV) never seemed to achieve in his subsequent films. In fact RGV’s cinema leaned progressively towards dark blood-soaked themes of gangsterism.

The delight he derived in serenading the artless joy of first love or the first flush of success or for that matter, the first dance of effervescence as Urmila’s native joie de vivre jumped out of the sceen, remains contagious to this day.

The domestic scenes with Urmila’s parents (Achyut Poddar and Reema Lagoo) and her kid brother, curiously named Motilal and weirdly incompatible-looking in skin-tone with the rest of the family,are vehemently vibrant. In his later films Ramu invested his energy into the dark region.He sold himself ‘ouch’ .

Rangeela is RGV’s lightest film to date. Its unmistakable power-source can be traced to Urmila’s fidgety constantly-restive performance that invites audiences’ adrenaline level to take a high-jump. She epitomizes the yearnings of the young Mumbai girl with a strong family support-system to see her dreams through.

‘Family’ also means Munna (Aamir Khan) the tapori in yellow pants, knitted vests, stubborn stubble and cocky caps. It would be seriously wrong to call Munna a goonda. He is more the neighbourhood rowdy Rathore in anything but khaki. Arguably the finest performance of Aamir’s career Munna gave Aamir a chance to let go, to simply have fun with a part without bothering with the earlier and future history of the character. The scenes were he coaches Urmila to memorize her dialogues for her shooting the next day, show the actor’s gaze melting in unrequited love as he gets ‘in character’.

Aamir actually played the all-giving Chandramukhi from Saratchandra Chatterjee’s Devdas with a sex change. He didn’t have to perform a Mujra to entertain love. The lovelorn looks when Mili isn’t looking (she has her eyes trained to a distant dream) kept Munna’s character on the level of a street-smart lover-boy without reducing him to a caricature. Munna’s hurt when Mili excitedly walks off in the middle of a lunch date to be with the superstar, was so palpable, we were inclined to shake Mili by her shoulders and point her to the obvious love that flowed out of Munna.

Interestingly, films set in the film world were known not to work at the boxoffice. Guru Dutt’s Kagaz Ke Phool had nearly killed the filmmaker’s self-esteem. Then there were Vijay Anand’s Tere Mere Sapne, Meraj’s Sitara and Rituparno Ghosh’s Shubho Mahurat. After Rangeela RGV’s Mast which was also set in the film industry bombed, as did Sudhir Mishra’s Khoya Khoya Chand and Zoya Akhtar’s Luck By Chance.

Rangeela was another experience altogether. The excesses of the entertainment industry were harnessed into telling a tale where it was okay for the wannabe screen-queen to overnight replace the tantrum-throwing leading lady. Rangeela is about wish fulfilment. Urmila gets stardom. Aamir gets Urmila. The superstar Jackie Shroff gets left behind. You can’t have a love story without a broken heart.

While the songs and dances were uniquely evocative and erotic, scenes from the film industry were deliciously tongue-in-cheek. The late Neeraj Vora as a sozzled gatecrasher pretending to be an influential producer who beleaguers Urmila at a party, the finicky director Steven Kapur (Gulshan Grover) who threatens to pack up at the smallest pretext, the tantrum-throwing heroine (Shefali Shah), the harassed film producer (Avtar Gill) quoting box-office figures to lull his own insecurities, the faithful father-like star-secretary (Ram Mohan)… these are all figures from the film industry.

RGV wove the wackiness of Bollywood into an oven-fresh rags-to-riches saga. The working-class wannabe star was draped in dresses that defied gravity. But RGV never resorted to low-angle vulgarity. His camera had not begun to peer into thighs and cleavages as yet. The film has long swift legs.But no thighs. Rangeela is a celebration of unalloyed innocence. The fun quotient was not thrust on the plot. It flowed freely and smoothly from the actors’ own enjoyment of the material that was served up to accentuate the contrast between dream-like aspiration and harsh day-time reality.

Significantly, Munna sold tickets at blackmarket rates outside the theatres were Mili aspired to be on screen.The dream that stars live out on screen often fades into the harsh reality of daylight.

Urmila’s character was partly based on RGV’s dream-woman Sridevi. Urmila had earlier worked in RGV’s Drohi. The two subsequently worked in six films and were often linked together. Though they both denied it. The last time Urmila worked for RGV was in Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag where she performed the iconic Mehbooba Mehbooba.

Actor Rajesh Joshi who played Aamir Khan’s friend Pakiya died soon after in a road accident. He was actor Manoj Joshi’s sibling.The unforgettable performance by the waiter when Aamir takes Urmila to a 5-star hotel for lunch apparently provoked RGV to say the waiter performed better than Aamir in the scene.The actor who unknowingly caused a rift between Ramu and Aamir was the Gujarati stage television and film actor Rajiv Mehta.Aamir and RGV fell out after Rangeela, both vowing they’d never work with the other.Madhur Bhandarkar who worked as an assistant to RGV made a cameo appearance during a scene showing a film shoot.

Shefali Shah’s tantrum-throwing leading lady was apparently based on Moushumi Chatterjee.

Besides Rangeela, Urmila shone in the bright light in a number of other films. Pinjar (2003) marked s change of image for the femme fatale, as she transformed into a rural Punjabi woman during Partition who accepts her rapist as her husband. It was a tough role requiring grueling levels of focus and dedication. Director Chandraprakash Dwivedi was filming Amrita Pritam, and that is a big deal. Urmila was up to the challenge.

In Pyaar Tune Kya Kiya (2001), Ram Gopal Varma once again turned his muse to a wickedly subverted ode to womanhood. If in Rangeela Urmila played a sexually innocent seductress (Urmila oomphed only in dream sequences) in this film she lusted after Fardeen Khan like Sharon Stone on coke. It was frighteningly desperate performance filled with rage and longing that went beyond the mediocre direction(by the late Rajat Mukherjee). Her expressions of yearning and aggression in the song Rondhe hai tera pyaar (Alisha Chinai smouldering up the soundtrack) were killing.

Ek Haseena Thi (2004): Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Who knows this better than Saif Ali Khan? He was left by Urmila to be eaten by live rats at the end Sriram Raghavan stunning revenge saga. From the innocent virgin seduced by the cunning Casanova to the psychopathic avenger, what a range Urmila revealed! To think they didn’t give her the best actress award for this.They didn’t give Mumtaz the award for Tere Mere Sapne either.

And to conclude with Kaun… I still get shivers when I recall Urmila’s psychotic expression at the end as she peeps out of her home’s eyehole to catch her next victim. This was a film that required her to ‘act’ like a normal frightened victim all through when in fact she was a frigging lunatic killing people who had the misfortune of knocking on her oak door. Among all the films that Ram Gopal Varma directed with Urmila this was the scariest. And for the right reasons.