By M. Ali Kapadia

Since its inception, Pakistani Cinema was always known for its sentimental, romantic films. But in 1979, the theatrical release of a violent film about feudal vengeance called Maula Jatt changed it all. Released two years into the dictatorial Zia-Islamization era (1977) that imposed censorship policies against displays of affection but not violence, it dominated cinema houses for 310 weeks, while the sentimental films remained crushed under restrictions.

This phenomenal success made Maula Jatt the poster child for success under the new rules. For decades, studios copied Maula Jatt’s rage-ridden storylines instead of getting creative with the rules, ultimately alienating the regular family cinema-goers and appealing only to a male demographic in rural parts of the country. Talented actors and technicians eventually left out of alienation, deteriorating the industry further.

The Jatt World

Maula Jatt (1979) is actually an unofficial sequel to the lesser known black-and-white film Weshshi Jatt (1975). We’ll take a deeper look at both of these films, and explore why the sequel was so much more influential than its own predecessor.

Maula threatens to cut open his enemy with his gandasa.

The Jatt stories take place in a Punjabi village. They revolve around Maula, an embodiment of raging machismo. With great pride in his strength and ironically, an out-of-shape body, his demeanor is a grand celebration of his own being. What makes him even bigger, is his ego. Walking with his chest out, arms swinging sideways, in his mind, he is like a greek god. The eighth wonder. A legend that Punjab will remember.

What drives Maula’s ego is a furious thirst for vengeance. Cutting the guts out of anyone who dares to dispute his imagined self-importance. That big mustache, territorial nature, and loud temper are blatant endorsements of a single concept: fire-pumping masculinity.

The writers are saying… look at him, he’s a man.

The difference between the two films is how they perceive the same man.

The Role of Women

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright once said, “Women put the civil in civilization.” They keep men in check. They sway them away from violence.

That said, the more a society suppresses the female voice, the more chaos it finds itself in. Afghanistan is a living example.

But unlike the reality of Punjabi villages, the Jatt franchise is set in a strange utopian village. Here, women are not suppressed, but live by entirely different values. Instead of being forced to cover themselves up, they roam around without restrictions. Instead of keeping men away from violence, they dare them to it. They choose men by a different criteria too. In one instance, our heroine (a milkwoman) falls in love with Maula not when she meets him, or sees him, but only when she hears that he has committed murder in public.

Some might interpret this as women empowerment. That’s not the film’s intention. Here, women are defined by caveman standards. For example, lets look at the character Malkani in Wehshi Jatt, the villain’s raging sister who roams around carrying a whip and calling for death to her enemies; probably the most empowered woman in the franchise.

A good portion of the film is spent with a humorous supporting character named Bala Gadi, who constantly hits on her. His advances are meant to be funny because this deadly woman rejects him with threats every time. So at one point, when Malkani furiously rejects yet another of Bala Gadi’s sleazy pickup lines, out of nowhere, Bala Gadi slaps her hard across the face.

With a loud thunder clap, she rolls, loses her balance, and falls on Bala’s gadi. Then, we get to look at Malkani’s face. To our surprise, instead of rage, we see a shy and lovestruck nimble lady breathing deeply, and softly.

A subservient Lollywood heroine emerges. Barely able to look Bala in the eyes, she poetically whispers her love for him, and thanks him for breaking her pride. She then spends the rest of the film inseparably in love with him.

Wehshi Jatt (1975)

Surprisingly, Wehshi Jatt, the first film in this series, begins with a monologue rejecting violence. The narrator cries out that humanity is lost at the hands of men who kill other men over “honor.” The film then spends the rest of its time following men who cut men over “honor.”

For instance, Maula wants to avenge his father’s murder, and everyone is calling for each other’s blood. The police, being ever-so-responsible in this franchise, captures his father’s killers, but Maula lies in court to release the murderers so that he can kill the entire clan himself.

In contrast to all this bloodlust is Maula’s friend Roshan — a level-headed individual who appears every now and then begging Maula to stop his madness for revenge. Roshan is probably the only major character in the entire franchise who is against spilling blood. More on him in a bit.

Ideological Confusion

I’m a fan of Korean thrillers. In these films, though violence by the protagonist is often committed for survival, most of the times, it is committed exclusively for vengeance. Two hours of that in a Pakistani film is fine by me, but I don’t think it was for Wehshi Jatt’s filmmakers.

Again, Pakistani films before the 1970s were internationally popular for their family-friendly love stories depicting high virtues. But in Wehshi Jatt’s case, a hero lies under oath to get an opportunity to murder other human beings. This idea of deriving entertainment out of a protagonist’s behaving like an antagonist was a new frontier for Pakistani cinema, and Wehshi Jatt’s filmmakers seem reluctant to wholeheartedly embrace it.

They do spend most of the film creating entertainment out of Maula’s ferocity, but before every one of Maula’s vengeful endeavors, Rohsan appears out of nowhere trying to lecture him out of violence, only to fail at it every time. Rohsan mostly serves as the story’s moral compass, reminding audiences that vengeance is wrong—ironically, just before said audience is entertained by glorified acts of vengeance!

To understand this moral tic-tac-toe a little better, let’s examine the scene where the most surprising thing of all happens. Maula finally swears to give up vengeance, puts down his blade, and renounces violence. What is significant about this scene, is that it happens with just 30 seconds remaining in the film — right after Maula has cut up and killed every villager from the enemy clan, leaving only a brutally slashed open villain drenched in his blood and guts, painfully breathing what may be his last breaths.

See, grandeur of violence in action scenes is Wehshi Jatt’s commercial value proposition — the bang for your buck, if you will.

However, rejection of violence is its intended ideological position. Such convoluted choices with no clever play inbetween left only awkward moments to assert an imagined moral standing that appears half-hearted at best, and confused at worst.

Emotional Distribution

Three key emotions are worth tracking in the film: rage, humor, and sentimentalism. The following chart tracks the value of these emotions in every scene from a scale of 0–100 (based on my personal impression) over the film’s two-hour timeline.