Amitabh Bachchan @80: Revisiting the under-appreciated Satte Pe Satta, a musical that has aged like fine wine

The Raj N Sippy directorial has the heart of a leisurely, holiday musical but also gives the masses enough reason to cheer too

Satte Pe Satta

Amidst the heavy melodrama, crime, gore and action in the cinema of the 1970s and 80s, it’s hard to believe that a filmmaker (Raj N Sippy) would have the conviction to unite with a mass hero like Amitabh Bachchan for Satte Pe Satta, a star-vehicle with the spirit of a musical. Inspired by the 1954 hit Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Satte Pe Satta is a textbook example of Indianising a Hollywood film, catering it to the masses, while not missing out on the spirit of the original.

It’s not the easiest of films to adapt and requires a crafty filmmaker to understand its mood, sustain the feel-good, humourous vibe without making it look too sugary. Raj Sippy achieves this balance with ease and never lets its rusticity tinker with the soul of the story. The story of Satte Pe Satta is about seven siblings finding the love of their lives (named after the days of the week) and a lightweight conflict (about an uncle plotting to kill his niece to usurp her property) to showcase the significance of humanity and compassion.

The eldest among the brothers, Ravi, and the contract killer, Babu, are lookalikes and the antagonist Ranjit Singh (the evil uncle) uses this factor to his advantage in a bid to kill his niece. Will Babu fulfil the task he’s assigned? The beauty of the film is the fact that Sippy manages to distract the viewer from the wafer-thin plot and lets them soak in its relatable, candid moments. The lifestyles of the unkempt, animalistic brothers may turn you off initially but the film gains steam with the arrival of Indu, the lady love of the eldest brother Ravi.

The happy-go-lucky ambience is its USP and the journey of Indu transforming Ravi and his brothers while ‘civilising’ them makes for an enjoyable watch. Satte Pe Satta also slips into its songs effortlessly (RD Burman in the form of his life is a great bonus) and Sippy succeeds in filming them more like a celebration of life. Amitabh and Hema Malini fall in love within a five-minute melody Dilbar Mere and she later teaches the brothers about civilised behaviour in another song Jhuka Ke Sar Ko Bolo. In the second hour, Amitabh, with Pyar Hamen Kis Mod Pe, sympathises with brothers who’re hopelessly love-struck.

Sippy is smart to realise that the film needed a charismatic star who could add more flavour to the not-so-novel sequences. The true skill of Amitabh, for instance, comes through in the episode where he and Amjad Khan chat over a drink. The comic timing between the duo is near-perfect and Amitabh, despite uttering the same dialogue ‘mujhe peene ki aadat nahi hai’ multiple times, doesn’t make the lines sound redundant and proves how effective dialogue delivery could do wonders in an ordinary sequence.

The additional layer to Satte Pe Satta is its underplayed subplot on the transformative power of love. The transformation of a hard-core criminal into a sensitive man would’ve been hard to sell and even laughable in any other masala film but not this one. The scene where the lookalike Babu comes forward to murder his target but decides against the idea, moved by the family’s oneness, is enough to showcase how Sippy is matchless in capturing the truth of a moment in all its earnestness.

The tone of the performances of other stars beyond Amitabh, like Amjad Khan, Hema Malini and the six other brothers (played by Sachin Pilgaonkar, Sudhir Luthria, Shakti Kapoor, Kanwarjit Paintal, Kanwaljit Singh and Vikram Sahu) are constantly kept in check. Some of Kader Khan’s dialogues may not have aged well with the times now but remains good fun. Cinematographer Anwar Siraj doesn’t let the limitations of a singular backdrop come in the way of his aesthetics.

It’s not hard to understand why Farah Khan was keen on remaking Satte Pe Satta, until recently. She’s one of the rare filmmakers who knows how to pay an ode to yesteryear cinema and tweak its world to resonate with the modern-day audience. One hopes she hasn’t dropped that idea yet. Satte Pe Satta is escapism at its very best and Hindi cinema needs more of it now, given the slump it’s going through. The film is a perfect endorsement of Hindi cinema and reminds us that you don’t need to do anything pathbreaking to keep audiences glued to the screens.

(Satte Pe Satta is streaming on YouTube, ShemarooMe)

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