Taking you back in time before the 90s (or rather 80s), SHAREEK once again brings forward an ages old feature of PUNJAB and its conventional style of living, wherein the ownership over land and ego issues were (and still are) widely considered as equivalent to some kind of ‘social status’ much ahead of any level of education, values, affection, love or even blood-relationships. There were a significant number of Punjabi films made around this particular subject in the past decades and it was supposed to be a ‘must-have’ sub-plot even in the projects dealing with some contrasting genres.
Putting it differently, this family rivalry and a bloody history of ugly events related with the same can easily be considered as an essential feature of life in (mostly rural) Punjab and that is the reason a major chunk of the Punjabi Songs (even in the present times) revolve around the theme of ego wins, guns, clashes, killings, court cases and similar things.
So honestly where the majority of audience (of Punjab) might enjoy SHAREEK taking it as a highly satisfying extension of their own similar outlook towards various issues, I would like to draw a completely different picture of the film with a noble intention of diverting your heated energies to an extremely positive and socially relevant point of view in the text ahead.
Explaining the meaning of its title first, though in Urdu the word means ‘participating, sharing’ or ‘associating’, in the film’s Punjabi context the word SHAREEK refers to a competitor, rival or enemy to be exact (that might be even cousins). Focusing well on its specific theme of mutual rivalry, the film has a script that strictly follows its core issue right till the end and keeps hitting the target repeatedly resulting in some strong engaging moments at regular intervals. The excellent performances of the lead actors including the ever-reliable Jimmy Sheirgill, the veteran Guggu Gill, the brilliant learner Mukul Dev (coming from a contrasting world of Hindi films), the spirited Kuljinder Singh Sidhu and the beautiful Mahie Gill superbly add to its overall impact on the viewer without any doubt.
But giving the other four aces of the film their much deserving due it’s the combined effort of a realistic direction, well-written dialogues, a fast moving script and the impressive portrayals of Jimmy-Kuljinder and Mukul put together that SHAREEK doesn’t turn out to be something unimpressive made on the same old formula with all familiar things. Along with that, what further provides a much stronger support to the film is its appreciable cinematography, splendid background score and the emotionally touching slow musical tracks that start playing in the backdrop just at the right moments having some hard hitting lyrics rendered soulfully.
Having said that SHAREEK has an equal number of shortcomings too that doesn’t allow it to be rated as any classic product or masterpiece as many might feel. And its major minuses include, a few deliberately added average songs (as usual), the weak presentation of the younger generation by the inexperienced debutants, less attention given to the changes in the physical appearance of characters despite more than a decade passing in its storyline, the repetitive & easily predictable events in its script progression, the weird-illogical sequence of two ‘baraats’ of cousins heading for the same girl and a highly stretched climax that unnecessarily adds to the film’s painfully long length of over 140 minutes. In other words with a better edited product and more (serious) emphasis given to the performances of the second generation in the storyline, SHAREEK could have been a much finer product having an important message to give to its younger viewers.
Besides, bringing in the Hindi film enthusiast in me watching a Punjabi film, I many times felt as if the narration, the character of ‘Jassa’ and its overall treatment, more or less was highly inspired from the famous ‘Tiger’ of Mukul Anand’s HUM (1990) majestically enacted by the one and only Amitabh Bachchan. SHAREEK’s Jassa surely had the elements of Tiger in it in his various sequences as I strongly felt.
Coming to the most critical part of the review sharing an entirely contrasting study of SHAREEK as a realistic take on the bloody family rivalry between two brothers. Just try to think about each and every character of the film for a moment. Simply consider the persona of every single person participating in its long storyline going into decades and then see if you can find even a single positive character in the entire film right from its first sequence to the last giving some optimistic message.
No you will not, as there is none.
As a matter of fact, SHAREEK is a kind of unique eye-opener film with all NEGATIVE characters in the script giving an all POSITIVE message to the ones who are willing to learn.
In other words, no one is ever interested in the film to talk about compromises, re-establishing relationships or finishing the rivalry off for the sake of future generations. On the contrary it even has the women of the house effectively adding scary fuel to the fire and the elders successfully sowing poisonous seeds of revenge in the innocent adolescent minds working on their own egoistic agendas focusing on the near future.
Winning the ownership of the disputed land remains the only sole motive of their entire living and the grown-ups feel no kind of shame in even using their 20+ young sons and widow daughter-in-law too for the purpose quite pathetically. In fact even ‘the old mothers’ are willing to provoke their young boys to pick up the guns and no one is even remotely interested in thinking about making peace ever, even in their wildest of dreams.
Yes, this has been the undeniable feature of life in Punjab from ages.
But the problem is that if you are still living that way in the year 2015 and also enjoying watching the same on screen finding fun in the bloodshed shown, feeling some kind of sync with any one of the characters in the script cheering his agitated act as if it’s your own story being told……. then that indicates that we still haven’t learned from the mistakes of the past and all education and better standard of livings have failed to purify our egoistic souls even in the changed times of the new millennium.
So SHAREEK can also be considered as a clear mirror revealing that ugly state of Punjab, wherein family rivalries have eaten up many more lives along with the over famous political conspiracies of the last century. And I can only hope the film forces the present generation to finally think and move over this sick tradition…… instead of relating to the larger than life depiction on the screen……. enjoying it negatively!!!!
Ratings : 3 / 5
