Underworld in Martin Scorsese and Ram Gopal Varma’s Cinema
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Date
2021-09-01
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Chainany E-Journal
Abstract
Martin Scorsese and Ram Gopal Varma have their own vision to showcase the mafia
world on the silver screen. If Scorsese along with Fritz Lang, Brian De Palma, Takashi Miike,
Francis Ford Coppola, and Quentin Tarantino is considered the master of gangster cinema in
English, Japanese and German films Varma, Mahesh Manjrekar, Apoorva Lakhia, and Anurag
Kashyap have largely portrayed the cool Mafiosi in their films in Bollywood. But nothing quite
comes close to GoodFellas (1990) whose inspiration reflects in about a dozen films and television
shows. Similarly, Varma is called an agent provocateur largely because of Satya (1998). Like
GoodFellas, Gangs of New York (2002) is also about underworld and based on a non-fiction
book. In the case of Varma, he followed Satya with Company, a film also about the rise and the
end of the underworld. This research study aims to understand the process of direction and the
stories of the sample films of Martin Scorsese and sample films of Ram Gopal Varma. It is to
analyze the difference and similarities between their craft. The four key elements to be analyzed
are portrayal of the characters, fascination of the two directors for the underworld, taking
cinematic liberty to tell the story and relevance of the story in today’s time.