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Raakh
1988 153’ col Hindi d/st/co-sc Aditya Bhattacharya pc Emotion Pics, Second Image Ents co-sc/dial Nuzhat Khan c Santosh Sivan m Ranjit Barot lp Aamir Khan, Pankaj Kapoor, Supriya Pathak, Naina Balsavar, Homi Wadia, Chandu Parkhi
Aamir Khan’s first starring role prior to his breakthrough with Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak later in the year. The story, told in flashback, focuses on a young man whose interior monologue accompanies the film. The hero (Khan) helplessly watches his girlfriend (Pathak) being gang-raped. To refurbish his male pride (the woman’s suffering is trivialised in the film), he spends the rest of the film, aided by a good cop (Kapoor), avenging the slighting of his manhood by the gangster and his henchmen responsible for the rape. The revenge story is presented as a fatalist meditation on ‘meaning of life’. Using closeups, flashing lights and throbbing music (composed by the rock drummer Ranjit Barot) under the dialogue, the film tries to induce the viewer to wallow in the choreography of violence.