Satish Shah's genius use of ‘death’: Iconic role as D'Mello and his body in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro

Satish Shah dies at 74, leaves a long legacy behind, but his most absurdly brilliant performance might just be as a mostly dead man in a 1983 cult classic

Actor Satish Shah, who died at 74 on October 25, leaves behind a filmography studded with roles that make him an icon for multiple generations, with his Sarabhai vs Sarabhai TV act bringing his appeal up to Gen Z — if not through the show as such, then certainly through the Insta memes that live on.

Satish Shah and Om Puri in a still from Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro(YT/Shemaroo)

But his most absurdly brilliant performance might be as a mostly dead man in a 1983 cult classic movie, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, that had a cast of geniuses any director would want for any film even today.

Playing Municipal Commissioner D’Mello in the film directed by fellow Gujarati Kundan Shah — who passed away in 2017 amid talks of a sequel — Satish Shah was one among stars such as Naseeruddin Shah, Ravi Baswani, Om Puri and Pankaj Kapur in that film.

Playing dead, with expressions!

Satish Shah's character dies an untimely death early in the Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro narrative, but D’Mello’s dead body becomes the central, albeit inanimate, pivot around which the film's spiraling chaos revolves, including the final Mahabharat stage play.

The body wasn't really that inanimate, though.

In one of the film’s most hysterical and referenced scenes, corrupt builder Ahuja (Om Puri), deeply inebriated and loudly Punjabi, finds a coffin containing D'Mello's body (Satish Shah) and mistakenly believes it to be a car with a driver needing help to fix a puncture.

He first yells at the “driver” to start the car. Then he brings a tyre to help change but “it's too big”, and finally decides to towline it.

The body is still, carrying a saintly expression, the perfect cinematic counterpoint to Ahuja's slur and stumble.

Watch a part of that scene below:

Art of the undead

But the expressions come, go, change in between — no matter that D'Mello is dead.

The “dead body” goes from wide-eyed shock to passive resignation and, later, to a kind of surprised confusion — depending on the indignity being inflicted upon it/him.

To many studying cinema in a linear sense alone, this would be a “continuity error”. But it was a deliberate, improvised choice that added layers to the JBDY absurdity.

Satish Shah was asked about it in one of his interviews. He revealed that the shifting expressions of D'Mello's corpse were largely part of how the film was made — a chaotic, improvised set of sequences. He said he understood D'Mello's body as another character.

Director Kundan Shah and the actors liked the idea that the body should reflect the escalating absurdity.

The subtle changes included eyes flickering open wider and wider; or a slight shift in the jaw, all part of the commentary on the corruption unfolding around.

How the ‘body’ is a gaze

Enhancing the film's very theme, the body and its many expressions were a visual cue to the audience. That this guy D’Mello, even in death, was with them witnessing the sheer lunacy of the real world he once lorded over as a corrupt government employee.

The final expression, of shock as a dead D’Mello is forced to play 'Draupadi' in the Mahabharat climax, takes the theme to its crescendo. A ‘dead’ character provides a silent but deepest critique of whatever's going on in the world.

The body is the macabre gaze that moves from one one corrupt person's possession to the next, eventually becoming a prop right at the centre of it all, when everything dissolves into heights of absurdity.