by Subhash K Jha

Starring: Ajay Devgan, Shahid Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Amrita Rao, Jawed Shaikh, Sushant Singh, Farah.
Directed by John Matthew Matthan
Rating: ***

It's the easiest thing in the world to get cynical about a film that embraces idealism and a vision of corruption-less India. It's the toughest thing in the world for a filmmaker to attempt a film that tries to outrace the breathless rituals of cynical filmmaking that seems to be the order of the day.

Like Ashutosh Gowariker's Swades which came exactly a year ago, Shikhar attempts to look at life in the rural hinter-land as idealistic, unspoilt and desirable. The city-folks represented by an utterly materialistic Ajay Devgan air-drop into this world of looming idealism to bung a spanner into the works.

Still the film works...and how! It peels away layers of our saturated sensibilities to give us a glimpse into a world where principles of beauty and innocence still reign supreme.

Into this ecological arcadia comes the ruthless builder with his obscene designs and vulgar vision.

GG(Ajay Devgan) wants to turn Guruji (Jawed Shaikh)'s utopia into a concrete jungle, "Just like Las Vegas," he dreams away, with his girl Natasha(Bipasha Basu) as a nubile spectator.

The two set off to seduce Guruji's impressionable son Jai...And herein lies Matthan's main master-stroke in this film about the end of innocence. Shahid Kapoor as the boy-man lured into a world of decadent materialism strikes such rich chords of believability into his character, you are one with the director's vision of corrupted idealism.

Matthan's screenplay, co-written with Abbas Tyrewallah has enough sustenance and force to make the spirit of idealism shorn of wide-eyed innocence. Portions of the film (for example the distraught Jai looking for his father in the forest, or the contrived crowd-fuelled climax) are almost mythological in their melodramatic velocity.

But the narration holds together, thanks to the lucid sub-text and a high level of professionalism applied to the telling of the idealistic story.

The characters are plot-driven all the way, so that it becomes easier for the director to manoeuvre them through a limpid labyrinth of pulls and pushes effectively worked into the narration.

The director doesn't dwell into too many moral or physical details of the two worlds that the protagonists inhabit. Shahid's character goes swiftly and fluently from innocence to worldly wisdom. The speech patterns change and so does the slur of his sensitivities as his orphaned companion (Amrita Rao, sweet and competent) helplessly watches her sweetheart turn into a sweat-heart.

The scenes between Jai and his machiavellian mentor Devgan lack a certain dynamism. But Matthan makes up for that loss by focusing on the dynamics of degeneration that drive Jai away from his father.

The sharply-drawn interludes in Singapore where Shahid busies himself with his new trendy friends(Devgan and Bipasha) neglecting and belittling his old friends from his Utopian universe, and the morality-defining scenes where Jai tries to question GG's values (for example his mild objection to the word 'sexy') qualify the film's ambitious vision , using an economy of expression and an intuitive understanding of the mechanics of modern morality.

Most of all Matthan's film is a well-pitched morality tale. Its ramrod-straight ideological underbelly comes alive in sharp strokes of leisurely expressions which do not preclude a celebration of cinematic values from its principled purview.

Like Guru Dutt's Pyasa, Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Satyakam, Goldie Behl's Bas Itna Sa Khwab Hai and Ashutosh Gowariker's Swades, Shikhar is a valid cinematic documentation of ideological annhilation. A.K.Bir's cinematography enhances the tonal textures of the mutating mores.

But this guileless film isn't about technique. It's about the heart, and how to open it to feelings and moods that we thought were gone with the morality-driven filmmakers like Guru Dutt and Hrishikesh Mukherjee.

It's no coincidence that Shahid Kapoor often reminds us of Raj Kapoor in Shree 420. He gets surprisingly strong support from one of Bollywood's most powerful character actors Sushant Singh.

The film marks a notable return to a grassroot morality. Matthan's idealism is predominantly Nehruvian. The builders and politicians of independent India have had a field day at out expense.

Is it pay-back time now?Shikhar suggests it might be. Naïve or conscientious? The choice is entirely ours.