Propagating wrong ideas through Movies...

Today I saw the movie ‘Jannat’ (with lead actors Imraan Hashmi and Sonal). I like movies on varied subjects and this being a movie on a different kind of subject - that of gambling, cricket match fixing/batting, I liked this one too.

Now this is not one of my most favourite movies or I didn’t like it so much that I would write a Blog on the same. But there are two three points I want to make through this blog about how movies propagate wrong ideas. There are a few strong points about the movie 'Jannat' which I would like to discuss through this Blog.

The hero is a gambler and is greedy creature who has left his home as his father is a poor honest fellow who could not fulfill all his son’s materialistic wishes. The hero is a firm believer that money if earned through a way like gambling where there is no direct harm to anybody or direct implication on anybody ), is fair(I believe there is direct implication on gambler's family members by gambling). The hero does not have any fear of loosing at all while gambling. He takes tremendous risk and looses lakhs of rupees in a single gamble game.

This hero has an innate skill of predicting the moves of a cricket match. By intuition he predicts the batsman will hit a six and the batsman actually hits a six. He says the batsman will now be clean-bowled and the batsman is clean-bowled on the next ball! He is unaware of his own skill and one day accidently realizes about it in a hotel while watching a cricket match.Later, exploiting this skill he earns a lot of money. He becomes very famous in Bookie’s world and due to this skill reaches South Africa with his girlfriend. He works for an underworld Don there. He makes a lot of money and becomes a very prominent Match-Fixer. The large amount earned by him is spent by the Don on Terrorist activities, for other illegal means like drugs, cocaine etc. But the Hero is indifferent to this aspect. Even though he knows the money earned by him is going for wrong means and is killing lakhs of innocent people around the world, he believes it is not his business to bother about how the money is spent. When the heroine confronts him, he even argues that even Indian Government is taxing the citizens heavily and then uses this amount for making nuclear weapons and guns and bombs. Now this point I have a problem with. How can he make such a statement? The Government also may be using a part of the tax money for the purpose our hero is mentioning, but he forgets that the whole idea of investment by Government in weapons and guns and bombs is for the Security of the citizens and not for killing them. So how can he justify his own indifference by blaming the Government?

Second point I disliked about the movie was a scene where the hero narrates his childhood days when he didn’t get all the luxuries the children of rich families get to enjoy. He says his father never took him from the way on which Ice-cream parlour or a Toy shop was present as they didn’t have the money to buy it. The hero says he does not wish his children also to pass through the same phase. He wants to give them all the pleasures in life. But at what cost? With the money earned by illegal ways? The hero speaks all these dialogues so convincingly that the gullible youth watching the movie gets convinced by his ideology and would get the wrong message. I heard two youngsters talking during the interval of the movie about this point. One of them was favouring the hero and said why one needs to bother about others when he is making money for self and the family? It is justified even when one does a little wrong by being little unethical and being selfish. I felt really sad hearing their conversation.

The end of the movie is fair. The wrong does not live longer and the hero gets killed by the police. The message – bure ka ant bura (wrong always looses/dies in the end) comes but very late in the movie. The whole movie according to me propagates wrong ideas by which the youth and the immature minds may get influenced wrongly. Movies are a very strong media impacting the minds of the audiences heavily. So directors and writers of the movies have the social responsibility of not propagating the wrong ideas.