Repairing Lakshya: How To Fix Two-in-One Movie Effect
Lakshya released 14 years ago; I still meet people who light up at the mention of the movie and start relating how particular scenes stayed with them. One weird thing common among almost all of the scenes people talk about is that they are from the first half of the movie. This is in spite of the second half having some of the most grounded war scenes in Indian cinema. In this article, I’ll reflect on some reasons why this might have happened and suggest an alternative plotline which avoids these pitfalls.
While doing this, let me assure I’m aware this story is by Javed Akhtar. He is a master lyricist, dialogue writer, and a screenwriter; I, by no means, am implying he’s inferior in any way. I’m just expressing how I feel the story would’ve had more impact. Alright, having paid my respects, let’s proceed to criticism.
Lakshya Did Not Have A Focus
To understand the main issue with the movie’s story, let’s consider the goals Karan has in the movie:
Goal 1: To get into the military.
Karan has a comfortable life with rich parents and a girlfriend, Romila Thapar. But he’s constantly nagged for not having a goal in life. On a whim, he decides to apply in the Indian Military Academy. This riles his father up, who in turn threatens Karan against joining the army. But this only fuels Karan further. He passes the test and while at it, proposes Romila. After joining, he is overwhelmed by the military discipline and deserts the academy. This leads to him being further belittled by his father. Romila breaks up with him for not respecting his commitments. Belittled and lonely, he decides to take up the responsibility. Goes back to the military, faces the punishment, and finishes as a Lt. Karan Shergill.
While his external goal was to go into the military, his internal goal was to focus on a task and stick to it.
Goal 2: To conquer a strategically important ‘Peak-5179’
The second half of the movie is about conquering a strategic mountain peak they call 5179. The peak oversees a crucial road which transports supplies for the army. Karan’s regiment is assigned the responsibility to conquer the peak. They search for the locations of trespassers; attack those locations for control, and lose a large number of soldiers. Driven by the loss of friends and desperation, they execute a risky maneuver and finally conquer the peak.
Here, his external goal is conquering the peak 5179, but internally he wants to pay respects and avenge his martyred fellow soldiers.
Goals Don’t Mix:
Notice how the internal goals are independent of each other. Mentally, what hero is seeking in the first half is completely different from what he’s seeking in the second half. Hence, in spite of having many heartfelt sensitive moments, the movie felt like two separate self-contained stories.
This lack of one single point of focus, I think led to one of the biggest casualties of the movie.
We Aren’t Able To Appreciate the Deaths of Soldiers
I’m not saying we don’t appreciate the deaths of soldiers. I’m saying the movie doesn’t give us story reasons to appreciate the deaths through. Let me illustrate this by comparing it with another war movie, Border. That movie although criticized by many defense personnel for its skewed portrayal of war, was able to successfully make us feel for the characters through different types of sub-plots.
Subplot Type I: Backstories
Every time someone from the Indian army dies on the screen, you know exactly who died, and what his loss will leave behind — a disease-ridden widow, a newly married widow, a childhood sweetheart fiancee, a widowed mother, sightless weakened parents,etc.,
Whereas in Lakshya, we learn about Karan’s romantic life only to learn that in the second half, his fellow soldiers will be dying. As we don’t get to invest in any of the soldiers we don’t feel the loss when they die. We only get two two-second glimpses of family lives of the soldiers — One guy is getting engaged, the other guy has a pic of his family in the wallet which we see after his death, which they move on from immediately coz the mission is the focus.
Subplot Type II: Camaraderie
‘Border’ has a lot of scenes where soldiers interact with each other. That way for every time a soldier gets injured or dies, you know there’s at least one soldier who’ll be spurred by it to take bolder actions. This way story progresses with even greater intensity.
In Lakshya, that happens only once — Jalal Akbar, in presence of Karan Shergill and Dr. Mishra, shows them the flag that he wants to hoist on the peak. After Mishra witnesses Akbar dying from war wounds, he gives the flag to Karan Shergill to hoist it on the peak. Hoisting the flag is an emotional moment by default, but what would be a writer’s contribution if he let only the defaults generate emotions. With this backstory, he adds to the impact of flag hoisting.
Unfortunately, this was the only sub-plot like this. One may argue that Lakshya couldn’t have had so many sub-plots about soldiers coz lack of time and also because it was, primarily, the story of Karan Shergill. True. Exactly for this reason, I say the sub-plot of Romila Thapar’s engagement was not required. Emotionally it doesn’t contribute anything to the story from Karan’s pov. They were estranged before her engagement, they are estranged even after her engagement breaks. Their relationship status remains the same.
Now that the issues I had with the movie are laid bare. I will present the revised story which avoids the pitfalls, but that’s for the next article or you’ll say this feels two different articles in one article.
(To be continued…)