What’s the future - Can it get any darker?

RGV’s latest venture Contract explores the nexus between underworld and terrorism. While it has been a case of cinema imitating life in all the RGV movies so far, real life seems to have been inspired by cinema this time around. The perpetrators of the Ahemedabad blasts that have claimed 49 lives last week seem to have been distinctly influenced by the plot of the recent Bollywood release, Contract. The main villain in the movie ‘Contract’ plans to first carry out low intensity explosions in crowded places, and then, when the injured throng the nearest hospital, triggering a much bigger blast at the hospital itself. In Ahmedabad too, two deadly high intensity explosions two hospitals - the Civil Hospital and the L. G. Hospital - killing 27 people followed the less lethal which saw the injured being admitted to these hospitals. The future literally seems to get darker in this case.

Underworld is perhaps as huge as the real outside world. There seem to be myriad aspects of the underworld that are yet to be explored. That’s the reason RGV who doesn’t seem to lose his fancy for them seems to come out with new kind of underworld movies in his every attempt. If Satya is the story of an immigrant, who comes to Mumbai seeking his fortune, but instead gets sucked into the Mumbai underworld, Company is a fictional exposé of the Mumbai underworld, loosely based on the Indian mafia organization. Going by the current trend, we are likely to see many more underworld movies from Ramgopal Varma (RGV). “Somebody asked me if Contract is a trilogy. I wouldn’t say that, because trilogy sounds more like a finale and my intent is to make a hundredology of gangster films” is what RGV has to say to all this fans.(Source: http://rgvarma.spaces.live.com).

RGV certainly seems to have a loud message to convey through his underworld movies. But then he doesn’t shout the message loud. He does it a subtle manner though the clever use of what semiotics calls the signifiers (hero, heroine, and other characters of the story, camera work, background music and dialogues). All these seem to perfectly blend in to put his message (connotation or signified) about the underworld across to the audience. So then, three cheers to RGV and his underworld movies.