“Dil ki ye goli chali nainon ki bandook se” (“the bullet of the heart is shot by the guns in our eyes”) goes one song. Guns and bullets weave in and out of the dialogue and lyrics (Bhansali co-wrote the film with writing team Siddharth-Garima, who also wrote the lyrics). They shoot blanks in celebration (one stunning sequence has the Rajadis do a traditional Garba dance, shooting guns with the beat). Every character has a gun and is all too ready to shoot it. Ram Leela has two recurring motifs that often run in opposition to each other: guns and peacocks. As much as they oppose the violence between their families, even they can’t escape it. In the middle of this, the love between Ram and Leela is pure and resolute. In the end, however, women are the ones who have to break the cycle of violence begetting violence. A subtle failure of communication between women even allows for the violence to escalate to its extreme. Women, like Dhankor, benefit from and perpetrate the violence. Men are the ones with fragile egos and trigger-happy fingers. Each violent attack leads to the next one, with bruised egos nursed by the power one feels when shooting a gun. The film begins with a small strike at someone’s ego and escalates from there. Romeo and Juliet is a well-worn story, and Bhansali utilizes it as a critique of modern patriarchy. She immediately falls for him as well, and the couple begins an illicit romance in the midst of this bloody gang war. There, he instantly falls in love with Leela (Deepika Padukone), daughter of the Sanera matriarch Dhankor (Supriya Pathak). During the festival of Holi, son of the Rajadi don, Ram (Ranveer Singh) sneaks into the Sanera mansion. Ranjaar is a town in rural Gujarat where two families, the Rajadis and the Saneras, have been feuding for centuries, erupting into violent gunfights. Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram Leela (A Play of Bullets: Ram Leela) turns Shakespeare’s most famous play into a wild, high-octane crime-romance. The “star-crossed lovers torn apart” story factors into many Bollywood films. Romeo and Juliet has probably been the most influential. Shakespeare’s central premises are easily adaptable into Bollywood plots.
Many of his plays have been adapted into Bollywood films including Hamlet, The Comedy of Errors, Macbeth, Othello, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Manish takes a look back at Bhansali’s career, spanning two decades and nine films.īollywood is no stranger to William Shakespeare. Indian auteur Sanjay Leela Bhansali has a new film coming out, the period drama Padmavati.