Filmi Geek

Himmatwala (1983)

हिम्मतवाला

I really want to love Sridevi.  I truly do.  Her talent bursts out of the screen when she smiles, when she dances, even when she pratfalls.  But, through no fault of her own, Sridevi's filmography makes appreciating her a tiresome slog.  For every great movie Sridevi is a part of (such as Mr India), there are numerous terrible movies in which she is the only watchable element (I'm looking at you, Chaalbaaz).  Worse still are movies so dire that even the magnificent presence of Sridevi cannot redeem them.  Himmatwala ("man of courage") is that dire. 

The titular Himmatwala is the upstanding goody-two-shoes Ravi (Jeetendra), the dreariest sort of film hero.  You know the guy - he is flawlessly devoted to his mother's honor, never tells a lie, delivers incessant lectures on morality to everyone around him, and can beat up four bad guys without breaking a sweat.  Yawn.  This kind of intolerably boring character can nevertheless be appealing if he's played with charm and cuteness (Shashi Kapoor made an art form out of this) but here, Jeetendra has none.  It's hard enough to swallow this sniveling, creepy old man as a freshly-graduated engineer and a romantic hero; I would say he was an obvious inspiration for the physical appearance of The Dirty Picture's Suryakant, but I don't know whether Ekta Kapoor could really have backed such explicitly unflattering reference to her own father. More than that, it's hard even to believe this is the same actor who made Caravan so delightful with his chubby-cheeked stupid cuteness.

Same guy?  Are you sure?

The villain of Himmatwala, Sher Singh Bandukwala, is played by Amjad Khan.  This, too, you might think would be a plus - how many awesome filmi villains has Amjad Khan delivered over the years?  Alas.  Here, he is doughy, bloated, mealy, and as far from menacing as an Amjad Khan villain could be.  There is some weak humor surrounding a running joke where he yells for his rifle-bearing sidekick - "Banduk!" - since his name is Bandukwala, you might think he'd have a rifle close at hand himself.  But a corny running joke hardly makes a villain, at least not in an apparently earnest morality tale like this one. Speaking of corny running jokes, dialogue-writer Kader Khan has a role in the movie as Bandukwala's spineless accountant (and father of Ravi's chief romantic rival, naturally played by Shakti Kapoor), whose every dialogue is peppered with arbitrary references to geographical locations.  Weird.   

Speaking of weird, guess who plays Ravi's mother.

 

What on earth is Waheeda Rehman doing in this God-awful movie? 

Himmatwala is not utterly without redeeming quality.  After all, it does have Sridevi.  When we first meet her, as Bandukwala's spoiled daughter Rekha, she is clad in a dreadful pleather outfit, leading a pack in cruelly taunting another girl.  This, I suppose, is Hindi film's first glimpse of its future rani. 

Instant stardom?

Once the petulant, brutish Rekha gets a taste of Ravi's morality lectures, though, she begins to soften, and sheds the skin-tight pleather in favor of classical dancing togs, as she dreams about her upstanding new love in the movie's best-remembered song, "Nainon mein sapna."

 

This is a really terrific song and is worth watching; no need to squirm through the rest of the movie to enjoy it, though.  Jeetendra comes closer to appealing here than at any other point in the movie.  His outfit is horrible and he looks as creepy and weird as ever, but at least he can dance.   He demonstrates this as well in another of the film's better songs, "Wah wah khel shuru ho gaya."  These songs seem to have pioneered the side-by-side dancing style that is so characteristic of the 80s and early 90s. 

But before you get too comfortable with the idea that Himmatwala's songs are safe and pleasant enough to watch even if the rest of the movie is cringe-inducing, be warned: "Imtehaan" blindsides you with grim stock footage of dead flood victims arrayed in a muddy plain.  That's right, corpses in a song:  WTF, Himmatwala?  This is just one of the gruesome lurches in tone taken by this barely coherent movie, which careens from goofy lowbrow comedy to high-falutin' moralizing and back again without warning, all in service of demonstrating the many skills and qualities of its infallible, justice-driven hero.  Feh. 

And then there is Sridevi, the only reason I subjected myself to this drivel in the first place.  Sridevi is certainly cute here, if not yet quite fully-formed.   She does display marvelous presence in the movie's songs (see above).  Her comedic skill gets pressed into service too - one of the movie's better scenes comes where Ravi and Rekha scheme convince Sher Singh Bandukwala that Rekha is pregnant, and as Rekha hams for Bandukwala's benefit and feigns a green mango craving, we get a glimpse of the Sridevi that is to come.  But as in Chaalbaaz, she's just not enough to rescue an otherwise tiresome excuse for a movie. 

There is a remake of Himmatwala coming out later this year which, in the time-honored filmi tradition of ouroboros-like self reference, aims to introduce a Southern star to the Hindi-language audience.   As much as Tamannah is a guilty pleasure of mine (see Konchem ishtam konchem kashtam), the first trailer of this Sajid Khan indulgence looks every bit as dire as the original.  And the wizened, leathery Ajay Devgn (sic) opposite fresh-faced Tamannah appears  just as revolting as Jeetendra 2.0 was with Sridevi.  I can't wait. 

Karz (1980)

क़र्ज़

An inspiration and source for Farah Khan's Om Shanti Om, Subhash Ghai's Karz ("debt") is in virtually every respect a flawless masala entertainer. It has everything, and I mean everything.  As one of Hindi cinema's canonical peechle janam stories, it has a healthy dose of mysticism and larger-than-life themes like justice, karma, and familial bonds. It has a main character, Monty (Rishi Kapoor), who is a famous stage performer, for no reason other than to provide excuses for its fantastic, over-the-top songs - set pieces like song from which Om Shanti Om took its name, in which Rishi Kapoor dances awkwardly on a giant spinning record after riding in on the tone arm.  It has Pran, playing a good guy who speaks largely in couplets.  It has a brilliant Aruna Irani item number that also features Pran disguised as a fakir.  It has Simi Garewal, in a melodramatic yet wonderfully rangy performance - cold and creepy as a murderer, and increasingly disturbed and distressed as Monty gaslights her into explosive confession of her crimes.  It has Durga Khote, who recognizes Monty as the reincarnation of her murdered son without question.  It has strange, inappropriate nude photographs sprinkled throughout its sets, for the camera to focus on at symbolically charged moments.  It has a bizarre, greedy villain, Sir Juda (Premnath), who communicates by tapping out codes that only his henchman Mac Mohan can understand.  It has Iftekhar and Yusuf Khan in hilarious fake beards.  It even has Jalal Agha. In short, Karz has just about everything there is to love about Hindi movies in one fantastic package, with a quick pace and very little fat (allowing for a little pudge around Rishi Kapoor's rapidly spreading middle).

My utter delight as I soaked in every frame of this hilarious, satisfying movie came out in the tweets I made while I was watching it, many with screencaps to highlight the visual awesomeness.  Thanks to Storify, I have collected all those tweets here, and allow them to serve as my review of this fantastically entertaining movie. 

So without further ado, here is the joy and brilliance of Karz, summarized via live-tweets from a gobsmacked, delighted Carla.

 

 

Be sure to click the "Read More" link after Durga Khote - there are more tweets and I'd like you to see them all.

Namkeen (1982)

नमकीन

Sharmila Tagore made a career playing living embodiments of female sacrifice and suffering. In movies such as Amar prem and Aradhana, her characters endure a lifetime of loss and debasement, rewarded at the end with the exalted recognition of mother-worship. Gulzar's Namkeen ("salty") offers an alternative perspective on this theme. Delicate, quiet, and sad, Namkeen is a shifting blend of flavors to slowly savor - part salty, part sweet, and part tangy, like the three sisters of the family it portrays.

Nimki (Sharmila Tagore) is the mortar that holds her fragile family together. She looks after her younger sisters, the mute, sweet Meethu (Shabana Azmi) and spirited Chinki (Kiran Vairale). Together the three sisters care for their aging Amma (Waheeda Rehman), a troubled, frail woman bordering on senile dementia. Geru (Sanjeev Kumar), an itinerant construction hauler in the family's village for a brief contract, rents a room from the family, and before long bonds of friendship and even love develop between Geru and each of these women.

Namkeen unflinchingly delivers the raw hardship of village life for a family of women living without a man. The men of Namkeen are rootless wanderers; Geru's job takes him from town to town, and even the three women's father Kishenlal leads a traveling dance troupe that only rarely passes through the village. The women are rooted to the village but that rooting is their downfall. Amma scrapes and sells cow dung to get by, but fertilizes nothing within her own household; her daughters take on the rough physical labor of pounding spices, a quintissential domestic chore, but the spices are for other people to cook with. Geru's fellow construction workers, as they come and go, pause to harass and badmouth the women. Only Geru forms a connection, and even his is mercurial, expiring with his contract.

Each woman frames her own escape from these strangling roots. Meethu's youthful escape is into poetry, which gives her some joy, but her muteness renders this joy solitary. And it is inadequate as the outgrows the naïveté of youth; her ultimate escape is only through madness and death. Chinki's departure appears on the surface more voluntary - she flees to join her father's dance troupe - but there are hints of abuse and coercion in Amma's wild fear of him, which solidify with Chinki's transformation into hard bitterness after joining the troupe.

Nimki, though, finds no escape. She makes relentless sacrifices for the family. When Geru shows interest in marrying her, she first tries to deflect his interest to Meethu, willing to pass her own chance for escape on to her sister.  Then Nimki refuses Geru outright, insisting that she cannot leave her mother and sisters behind.  I read that Rekha was originally cast in the role of Nimki, replaced by Sharmila Tagore at some point in production.  I am very glad this change happened.  With any other actor, Namkeen would have been a straightforward, sad tale of the hardships of village life for women.  The casting of Sharmila elevates it into commentary on her canonical mother-goddess roles; it makes the reference, comparison, and contrast explicit.  Unlike Sharmila Tagore's other long-suffering goddesses, Nimki's self-conscious sacrifice does not bring apotheosis.  Nimki loses everything, and her endurance is rewarded with almost nothing.  Only a chance encounter that drives Geru back to the village rescues Nimki from utter loneliness and obscurity.  Although Geru saves Nimki from an utterly tragic ending, their salty-sweet reunion has the air of a narrow escape, not the inevitable due of a sanctified mother goddess.  Namkeen's is a more balanced look at life's suffering, more real and less allegorical, than the almost religious fables of movies like Amar prem and Aradhana.

The beauty of Namkeen as a film comes through in its quiet use of detail to convey relationships and themes with subtlety.  Amma's anxiety and confusion, Meethu and Chinki's sense of humor, Nimki's grounding competence are all illustrated by gentle domestic vignettes that are thoroughly engaging.  In early scenes, Geru struggles grumpily to adjust to the raw simplicity of life in Amma's home while the sisters look on in amusement, able to help but declining to offer.  At first Geru thinks basic hospitality and necessities are not forthcoming, until Nimki arrives and puts everything in order.  Geru's growing affection for the sisters, too, is gently portrayed, in an outstanding performance of Sanjeev Kumar, one with a low center of gravity that is nevertheless not overly heavy, and reminds me once again why he is my favorite male actor in Hindi movies. 

Indeed every note in Namkeen is perfectly struck, from Chinki's wry smiles to Amma's crooked spectacles to Nimki's resigned labor.  The dust of the village fills the camera but never obscures the colors of village life.  It is simply a beautiful movie, presenting the balanced flavors of life that blend and interact to build complexity from simplicity.  Part tangy, part salty, part sweet.  

Sadma (1983)

सदमा

When I was in college, I participated in a group-authored comic-fantasy story.  We would gather in the dorm lounge and scribble in our large notebook, sometimes collaborating, sometimes each of us writing a chapter on her own.  Once, one of the authors wanted to change the sex of her character from male to female. To make this happen, she caused his horse to gallop through a "Plot Device" - that is what she called it in the story, a cloud of mist into which Lord Brandon rode, and from which Lady Brendan emerged.

Balu Mahendra's Sadma ("blow, shock, trauma") relies on an equally expedient plot device, a bit of filmi-medicine sleight of hand that turns Nehalata (Sridevi) from a vibrant young woman into a mental seven-year-old trapped in a grown-up's body. A similar device repairs her mind at the film's end, with a convenient amnesia for the time she spent mentally as a child.  But if these absurd expediences are forgiven, if one gives oneself over to the conceit and goes with it, the reward is a touching, subtle, and moving story about love, and bonding, and the nature of nurture.

I went into Sadma with unfairly low expectations.  Beth had seen the Tamil original, Moondram pirai, and had some serious problems with it. Meanwhile, I was fettered by the assumption that even Sridevi's best movies are dire and unrelatable to non-Indians like myself; my experience with Lamhe, another movie so often cited as a highlight of Sridevi's career, had confirmed this feeling. As I began watching the movie, I tweeted:

I was quite wrong; Sadma is not downhill from there.  It is often disturbing and hard to watch; the ending is magnificently brutal.  But it is marked by splendid performances and a surprisingly delicate touch.  I have seen a few people comment that Kamal Haasan's character, Somu, is creepy and inappropriate in his care for the childlike Nehalata.  But I do perceive no creepiness in Somu at all.  To the contrary, he is consistently shown to be a good-hearted, straight-laced fellow - he eschews alcohol, is inexperienced with sex, and refuses the aggressive advances of his boss's wife Soni (Silk Smitha).  His concern and caring for the fragile, damaged Nehalata is evident from the moment he encounters her in the brothel she was sold to after being kidnapped by some unnamed evildoer.  And throughout the film, Somu's love is patently paternal, never lewd or inappropriate.  In just one sequence does Somu view Nehalata as a lover, and this comes in a dream, which he seems eager to shake off on awakening.  The fantasy seems to make Somu as uncomfortable as it makes the viewer.

The sweetness of the relationship between Somu and Nehalata is epitomized the adorable song "Ek dafa ek jungal tha," in which Somu acts out the panchatantra fable of the jackal who fell into a vat of blue dye and briefly fooled the rest of the jungle's animals into treating him as a god.

 

I am not crazy about the filmi mode of presenting mental illness (or in this case, traumatic brain injury) in the form of arrested development, even though I have seen it used in some very good films.  Diya Mirza plays such a character in  Tehzeeb, where the device a bit of a weakness and distraction in an otherwise excellent movie. In the much older Bahurani, Guru Dutt's rendering of the same deficit is touching, and works as well as it does partly because of its allegorical value.  Here in Sadma, it is more contrivance than symbolism; it does not seem to carry any particular emblematic meaning, but rather provides a canvas on which the movie's touching relationship is painted.  Sadma is widely viewed as one of the best performances of Sridevi's career, perhaps because of the challenge of portraying the unrealistic deficit in a believable way.  Sridevi meets that challenge more than adequately; even in her more typical roles she often has a woman-child quality to her performance, and Nehalata is the quintessence, the distillation of such characters to pure crystalline form.  Sridevi's performance is remarkably consistent and unselfconscious, free from winks at the audience or inappropriate moments of preternaturally adult behavior.  The performance works, and is satisfying, sympathetic, and moving, despite the inherent weakness of the device itself. 

Woven through Sadma are several coarse threads that contrast with the fine tenderness of the relationship between Somu and Nehalata.  The sad, desperate Soni flails about for escape from her decidedly untender marriage to Somu's employer.  Her breathless, brazen attempts to seduce Somu are distressing to watch.  And Soni's erotic dream about him, which from a pure marketing point of view is merely an excuse for a sexy Silk Smitha item number, nevertheless highlights the extreme disconnect between her desires and the plodding reality of her life. 

 

Soni's pathetic overwrought worldliness casts Nehalata's innocence in sharp relief.  Contrasting along a different axis is the lecherous Balua (Gulshan Grover), who exploits Nehalata's childlike mind to take advantage of her adultlike body.  There is contrast, too, between Somu's earnest goodness and the boozy appetites of his friend Paintal, who drags Somu to the brothel where he first encounters Nehalata and resolves to rescue her.  The roughness of these stories makes the warmth and sympathy between Nehalata and Somu that much more gentle in contrast; Somu's home becomes a haven in which gentle fables can be told and puppies played with in peace, while the harshness of the world remains outside.  These tendernesses - especially the tenderness with which Kamal Haasan renders Somu - makes the unutterable cruelty that the film does to Somu in its climax all the more vicious a sucker punch.  Haasan's performance in the film's final minutes is truly memorable, rendered in pure emotion and without background score apart from the driving beat of the rain and the engine of the train taking Nehalata away from Somu forever.

 

 

Satte pe satta (1982)

सत्ते पे सत्ता

As I mentioned in my recent review of Sridevi's superb English Vinglish, as a non-Indian, an  outsider and relative newcomer to Hindi movies, I lack the nostalgic perspective that infuses and informs the desi experience of certain movies.  It is a great pleasure and fascination for me to learn about the movies that give my desi friends and acquaintances that magnificent nostalgic thrill. And so I love to watch the old favorites that would have been a part of my childhood had I grown up with Hindi movies.  When I tweeted about watching Satte pe satta ("seven for seven"), I learned that this outrageously silly movie was one of those favorites so cherished by Indians roughly my age, and their delight in remembering it made watching this movie even more fun than it already is on its own.

Amaluu's thorough and loving tribute to this movie handily provides a detailed summary of its story along with many screencaptures.  In short, the movie starts as a quotation of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and then takes a decidedly filmi turn.  Ravi (Amitabh Bachchan) is the eldest and closest to civilized of a pack of seven brothers who literally live in a barn.  Ravi's six brothers are poorly socialized squabblers who are pathologically afraid of bathing.  Ravi meets Indu (Hema Malini), and woos and weds her.  Indu is horrified by the pigsty of a homestead and its denizens, but she gamely sets about civilizing them.  Meanwhile the boys meet a group of girls they take a shining to, who are caretakers to a paraplegic heiress named Seema (Ranjeeta Kaur).  Seema's uncle, Ranjit Singh (Amjad Khan), wants her dead, hoping to get his hands on her fortune.  Singh hires a vicious mercenary, Babu (also Amitabh), who just happens to be a dead ringer for Ravi.  Singh's men kidnap Ravi, and Babu infiltrates the family hoping to get his chance to off Seema.  But the warmth of the family's love for each other gets under Babu's skin, and his second thoughts lead him on the road to redemption.

There is so much to love in this hilarious, delightful movie.  The antics of the six brothers are a riot, from  prancing about in their chaddees to wrecking the house in sprawling melees in which they hurl food, flour, and even livestock at one another.  These scenes are marvelously choreographed and a pure belly laugh to watch.  All six of the brothers are terrific, but Shakti Kapoor especially stands out in a rare nonvillanous appearance. Amitabh is a treat, too, showcasing his talent for comedy instead of his angry young man avatar.   The scene in which Singh gets Ravi drunk is an absolute scream, one of the funniest drunk scenes I've ever seen in any language.  And Amitabh delivers as expected the film's many songs - his arms really do go on for ever and ever.       

 

Hema Malini is a perennial favorite in Filmi Geek's house, and she delivers amply here, funny, charming, gorgeous, and sweet. 

(I want to be that rose.)  Indu's arc, of course, is problematic if one thinks too hard about it.  Ravi marries her under rather false pretenses - she believes that she is joining a quiet, idyllic household of just Ravi and his sweet youngest brother Sunny (Sachin Pilgaonkar).  Ravi's nervousness as she is about to learn the truth about the chaos that awaits her is quite hilarious, but one can't help but bristle a bit at the deception.  And naturally, Indu's role in the household is somewhere between housekeeper, babysitter, and den mother.  She takes over the kitchen duties the moment she arrives, almost without changing out of her wedding sari.  She forces the boys to wash and shave, and teaches them some manners.  The movie tempers the nauseating sexism of these tropes by couching them in so much humor and charm that one just has to laugh along and forgive.  The sequence in which she marches the brothers off to the bath with military precision is riotous.  And the song in which she teaches them how to woo a woman, "Jhuka ke sar ko puchho," offers a generous helping of the heart-melting charm that makes Hema such a pleasure to watch.

 

The movie's second half offers up much of what one expects from a rollicking  masala ride.  The very notion of a villain who just happens to look exactly like the hero is, on its own, satisfyingly filmi.  And Babu's villainy is hilariously over-the-top, until the power of love melts his cold assassin's heart.  In one of the most egregious morsels of Masala Logic one will ever see, after Babu's deception is revealed, Indu decides to forgive him because he never took sexual advantage of her even when she believed he was her husband.  That's right, folks - he lied to us, infiltrated our home, and tried to stab Seema - but at least he didn't rape me!  It's hard to imagine setting one's standards much lower.  The film also teaches us, in time-honored masala-medicine ishtyle, that all one needs to overcome paralysis is a good solid scare. 

There are even a few nudge-nudge, wink-wink moments - look for something weirdly suggestive involving a lollipop, as the movie heads into its climax.  And then there is this, which caused me quite a double-take.  Did someone really just hand Amitabh a condom?

All in all, Satte pe satta is just too much fun to miss. It's not hard to see why so many people my age grew up loving this movie.  Its slapstick and broadness is perfectly silly for kids, and at the same time it offers winking laughs for the grownups too.  I'm thoroughly glad I got to know it, even if in my case that knowledge  comes 30 years after the fact.  I'll be nostalgic for it from now on.

Tezaab (1988)

तेज़ाब

The excellent Asim Burney won the drawing to choose Filmi Geek's 200th review, and his choice was Tezaab ("acid"), the 1988 film that made a star out of Madhuri Dixit. The movie was a huge hit, and folks roughly my age who grew up with Hindi movies no doubt remember it with loving nostalgia. 

Shyamlal (Anupam Kher) is a gambling alcoholic, who finances his carefree lifestyle by exploiting the singing and dancing talents of his daughter Mohini (Madhuri Dixit).  But his debts catch up with him when the underworld boss Lotiya (Kiran Kumar) kidnaps Mohini.  Mohini's friend Jyoti (Suparna Anand) witnesses the kidnapping and sends for her brother Mahesh (Anil Kapoor), who had been Mohini's college classmate and beau, to come rescue her.  There is just one problem:  Mahesh is now a gangster known as Munna, wanted by the police and banned from the city.  Police Inspector Gagan Singh (Suresh Oberoi), who remembers Mahesh from his pre-crime days as a promising young naval cadet, captures him, and after listening to the story of how he became a banished criminal, strikes a deal with him - Inspector Singh will look the other way for 24 hours, to give Munna  a chance to save Mohini.  In return, Munna must return to his upstanding, law-abiding ways.

So much for summary - the top comment on the YouTube page for Tezaab does a much better job at hitting the highlights:

Epic Dance 0:06:33 Epic Scene 0:30:27 Best "You are under arrest" ever 0:24:37 Best "Hi" ever 0:57:50 Epic Jump 1:14:00 Epic Pose 1:14:12 Epic Laught 1:28:11 Epic Fight 1:45:14 with Epic Win Face 1:45:37 another Epic Dance 1:47:27 THE EPIC SCENE 2:08:50 The Epic Pursuit 2:11:53 Epic Hammer Fight 2:34:30 The Epic Last Fight 2:37:41

What can I add to that?  Tezaab is EPIC.  And I think the best way to appreciate this movie is to put yourself in the mind of someone to whom it really would be epic - say, an Indian male who was a young adolescent at the time of this movie's release.  Tezaab is in no way a movie for me.  But there is enough in it for me to understand something of why it was a hit in its time, and why a certain generation - especially that generation's boys - remember it so fondly.   Everything about this movie is BIG - big fights, big car chases, big explosions, overwrought drama even by filmi standards, all supported, of course, by a background score full of bombastic fanfares and strategically-timed thunderclaps.  It's not hard for me to imagine that a boy of certain age would, at the time, have found Anil Kapoor's Munna the coolest thing EVER, what with his self-sacrificing bravery and the stupendous super-filmi dialogue that rolls effortlessly from beneath his trademark mustache. 

When I started up the movie, I was greeted with this:

 

This may as well say "Carla, you will hate this movie."  I am a complete wimp when it comes to movie violence; no matter how fake or stylized it is, I really have no tolerance for it.  When I saw Ram Lakhan, I was pleasantly surprised at how rich and interesting it turned out to be.  Tezaab, though, is the movie I feared I would get when I sat down with Ram Lakhan - weakly plotted, needlessly violent, and overwhelmingly male.  The story is, on the whole, weak and barely coherent - the flashbacks-within-flashbacks narrative structure doesn't make it any easier to follow - and largely an extended excuse for motorcycle chases, explosions, and fistfights.

And there is more "violent" than "love" in this violent love story.  Indeed, Tezaab's is one of the lamest, most weakly motivated love stories I've ever seen.  Mahesh first meets Mohini when both are fresh-faced college students.  He seduces her on a bet, to prove to his idiot friends that he knows the secret to winning a girl.  This trope - the idea that all women are identical, and are guaranteed to respond like automata to an expert execution of the right formula - is offensive enough that I can't give it a pass in any movie, of any era.  And the nominal love story only gets stupider from there.  Mohini discovers Mahesh's ruse and responds with justifiable anger.  For some reason this makes him decide he really does love her after all, enough not to just threaten suicide but actually attempt it.  Naturally this melts away Mohini's anger, and after his wounds heal they frolic together for a song or two.  Later, though, after his exile from Bombay, Mahesh decides that he's no good for Mohini, and abuses her horribly in order to make her hate him.  This isn't so much love story as it is incoherent nonsense.

On the plus side, though, it's incoherent nonsense involving Madhuri Dixit, who is blessed with a perfectly radiant smile and the sheer talent to elevate even the most unbearable garbage to near watchability, at least while she is on the screen. 

I could look at that all day!  Madhuri does a lot with what she's given in Tezaab.  Mohini has a few nearly fierce moments as she tries to stand up to her drunken, abusive father.  And she has some truly funny moments as well, especially when Mahesh feigns interest in another girl (part of his magic formula, which of course works flawlessly), and Mohini works out her jealousy in a hilarious sequence of frustrated facial expressions.

You can't talk about Madhuri in Tezaab without mentioning her famous number "Ek do teen".  This song may have launched a star career, but in the eyes of this firangi Madhuri-lover with the benefit of a quarter-century of hindsight on it, I really have to say that the song is more famous than good.  While I can imagine its impact in its day - even on this insipid song with ridiculous choreography, Madhuri is clearly something special - if I want to watch Madhuri today, I have dozens of much, much better songs to choose from. 

Also in Tezaab's assets column are a few notable performances from supporting actors.  Bolstering the film's underlying message (to the extent it has one) of redemption and moral rectitude are the story arcs of Inspector Singh and Mahesh's loyal friend Baban (Chunky Pandey).  Both shine through the bombast and bluster and even offer something approaching subtlety.  As Singh,  Suresh Oberoi projects a delicate charm and maturity akin to Jackie Shroff's character in Ram Lakhan - his seriousness and upstanding morality is wrought too broadly and stiffly to be believed, but he is perfect as an archetype and a foil for Munna's bitterness.  And even his straight-arrow  flawlessness has its limits; when they are finally reached at the film's end, it is a satisfying closure for his arc.  As for Baban, he is a wonderful surprise, and the most three-dimensional and complex character in the film.  He shows tenderness, loyalty, fearlessness, rage, wits, roguishness, and charm.  Chunky Pandey does a great job with this interesting character (and even gets a sweet song  nearly to himself, "So gaya yeh jahan").  I would watch a whole movie about him - even without Madhuri.

At any rate, while I can't say I really enjoyed watching Tezaab, I didn't really expect to either.  (In fairness to it, I liked it much better on second viewing, when I could better follow the nested flashbacks, better appreciate what little subtlety there is, and skip the most unbearable parts.)  But I do get a lot from watching movies that were huge commercial hits - if nothing else, they offer a small, imperfect window onto the time and culture that created them and on the people who cherish them.  And that window is a big part of the fascination of Hindi movies, for me. 

Apne paraye (1980)

अपने पराये

Recently, thanks to a couple of thoughtful visitors, discussion has revived on my review of Swami.  By coincidence, the next movie I had in my queue to watch and review was, just like Swami, a Basu Chatterjee film based upon a novel by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay, Apne paraye ("our own and others"). 

Chander (Amol Palekar) is a bit of a layabout, a good-hearted man with a poor head for business and no taste for hard work.  He lives, on suffrance, in the household of his absent-minded elder cousin (Utpal Dutt), a wealthy and successful Calcutta lawyer.  Chander's wife Sheela (Shabana Azmi) runs the household with a stern hand, to the consternation of the laywer's weak-minded and sickly wife, Sideshwari (Ashalata).  Sideshwari can't deny Sheela's domestic competence, though, and she dotes on Sheela's children as enthusiastically as her own.  This fragile domestic peace is shattered when the lawyer's younger brother Harish (Girish Karnad), also a lawyer, arrives with his family and moves into the Calcutta haveli.  His wife Naintara (Bharati Achrekar) is jealous of Sheela, and angry that Sheela doesn't coddle Naintara's spoiled eldest child.  Naintara schemes to drive a wedge between Sheela and the impressionable Sideshwari.  This tension comes to a head when Naintara manipulates Sideshwari into having Chander and Sheela and their family thrown out of the house, and exiled to the family's farmland, where matters only get worse for them. 

Apne paraye has the potential to be the kind of movie I love - a taut, compelling exploration of the social problems of the joint family system through an intimate study of the lives of its characters.  This is the kind of movie that Shyam Benegal does so well, and I had high hopes that between Chatterjee's delicate touch and Chattopadhyay's story, Apne paraye would shine.  Unfortunately, the movie does not quite measure up.  The first half, which focuses on the relationships among the women, is unsatisfyingly superficial.  Zooming reaction shots and a booming soundtrack lends something like the feel of a saas-bahu serial to this otherwise delicately directed piece, and trivializes the tensions among the women by reducing them to catty jealousies over who is boss of the kitchen and who dotes on whose precious little offspring.  

The movie's second half fares better, as the story moves beyond the tight confines of the crowded Calcutta homestead and begins to develop some symbolism that adds richness.  Chander and Sheela are forced to face the harsh realities of the outside world, while for those who remain at home, the world almost seems to fold in on itself like a domestic ourobouros.  Naintara's bitchy manipulations escalate to fever pitch, while Sideshwari implodes in weepy dithering.  The men, especially Harish, overreact to the complaints of their wives, quite literally making a federal case out of a very ordinary domestic squabble.  The members of the household who remain in Calcutta seem to utterly lose perspective, while Chander and Sheela face the daily cold-water splash of trying to make ends meet in the real world.  Despite this potentially interesting contrast, though, the movie suffers from a facile ending, a giant "reset" in which the conflict is resolved without any sign of lasting consequences or transformation. 

The best moments of the movie are those that simply reflect domestic life without trying to wring drama from them - such as the family's meals, obviously a focus of the daily rhythm of life.  At mealtimes family business is transacted, grievances are aired, power is exerted and conceded, sacrifies are made, burdens are shared.  In the movie's only real hint of character development, early in the film Sheela manipulates her husband and sister-in-law by refusing to eat; later, she declines to eat out of sacrifice, when there is no longer enough food to go around, and Chander shows his maturation by offering to make the sacrifice along with her.

Making six adult characters all distinguishable and human is not a trivial task for a movie, and Apne paraye does a reasonably good job of it.  Naintara and Harish are a little one-dimensional in their self-absorption. Sideshwari's defining characteristic is her weakness and impressionability, but in moments when the movie is steering clear of melodrama, there is some interesting tension in her perpetually shifting loyalties.  Chander's shiftlessness is balanced by his evident good intentions and affection for his family.  Sheela is the most complex of all, and most of that complexity is thanks to Shabana Azmi's performance (and Basu Chatterjee's direction), as it is conveyed in subtleties of expression and body language.  While she is stern and dour in her direction of the household and discpline of her children (including the adult-child, her husband Chander), Sheela often betrays her tender side with a small indulgent smile. 

For every Chattopadhyay adaptation I have seen and been to some degree disappointed by - from Swami to Devdas to Parineeta - my lukewarm reviews have been met with staunch defenses based on the novel's texts.  I have no doubt that Chattopadhyay's novel (entitled Nishkriti) is better than Apne paraye, and presents the characters and their relationships with more depth and subtlety.  But I write about movies, not the books they are based upon, and I do believe that a movie - even an adaptation - has to stand on its own strengths and answer for its own weaknesses.  In its best moments, Apne paraye perhaps offers glimpses of the social insights for which Chattopadhyay is renowned.  On balance, though, it misses the mark - not by much, but by just enough to be frustrating.

 

Kalyug (1981)

कलयुग

This expansive, ambitious film by Shyam Benegal maps ancient parables of the Mahabharat onto a modern story of corporate and familial warfare.  With an enormous, gifted cast and Benegal's gift for storytelling, Kalyug is a compelling movie indeed.

The scions of a great family are at war.  The two branches of the family, Puranchand and Khubchand, celebrate life cycle events together - but the engineering firms run by each are bitter rivals in the marketplace.  The Puranchand company is led by Dharamraj (Raj Babbar), with the help of his younger brothers Balraj (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) and Bharatraj (Anant Nag).  At the helm of the Khubchand company is their cousin Dhanraj (Victor Banerjee) and a close associate of the family, Karan Singh (Shashi Kapoor).  The two companies compete fiercely for lucrative government contracts.  The Khubchand company wins a tender due to high-tech machinery that Karan Singh procured.  The Puranchand company appeals the grant and succeeds in wresting back the contract.  The dispute escalates, driven by Bharatraj and Dhanraj, who take the rivalry most seriously - and most personally.  Karan Singh's manipulations on behalf of the Khubchand company incite labor infighting in the Puranchand shop, through the volatile labor leader Pandey (Om Puri).  Karan and Dhanraj even scheme to frame the Puranchand company on charges of insurance fraud.  Soon the rivalry turns violent, and both sides of the family are caught in a terrible storm of bitterness and grieving.

What makes Kalyug a wonderful film is Shyam Benegal's gift for telling intense stories that are very intimate, even while being totally allegorical.  The dramatis personae of Kalyug is packed with many players, most of whom do not get more than a few minutes screentime.  But each is so delicately characterized, and the movie conveys enough of their lives and personalities, that they remain distinct, and the anger and anguish of each is keenly felt as the internecine conflict grows.  The older generation grieves to see their children warring with each other; the Puranchand matriarch Savitri (Sushma Seth) is especially troubled, and the pain is written on her face and in her futile pleas to her sons and nephews to reconcile.  Bheeshanchand (A.K. Hangal), uncle to both sides of the family, is perplexed by the battle; though he works for the Khubchand company, he carelessly reveals confidential information to the Puranchand side, throwing gasoline on the flames. Khubchand himself (Vinod Doshi), wheelchair-bound and ailing, can do little more than watch, tragically helpless as his family disintegrates around him. 

The tensions take their toll on the younger generations as well.  The older Puranchand brothers do not share Bharat's intense focus on the business.  Dharamraj only wants to watch his race horses train, and takes a "jo bhi ho so ho" attitude toward losing the contract to Khubchand company, to Bharat's great frustration.  Balraj is a cheerful fellow, more interested in his still-steamy relationship with his wife Kiran (Reema Lagoo) than in anything to do with tenders and profits.  The tenderness with which their relationship is portrayed early in the film makes it that much more heartrending when the escalating rivalry hits them personally.  And perhaps most compelling of all is the stark contrast between Dhanraj's response to the escalation, and Karan Singh's.  Dhanraj begins the film an intense personality, and he only becomes darker, more brooding, and more raging as the battles wear on.  Karan Singh enters as a cool manipulator, driven only by profits - but comes to find himself seeking redemption, and holding a more personal stake than he ever imagined.

Kalyug's atmosphere and visuals, too, are remarkably rich and interesting.  Providing a constant backdrop are the quotidian pleasures of wealthy life; horse racing, badminton games, golf.  Karan Singh returns to his richly appointed bachelor pad after a long day's work to pour himself a glass of scotch from a crystal decanter and listen to Bach.  Scenes of family meals and gatherings add texture, conveying both the tendernesses and the tensions among the many members of the extended families.  Juxtaposed with these are engaging shots of the working factory; heavy machinery manipulating flaming iron pigs and clanging out the companies' unspecified, weighty products.   

Despite all this delicate storytelling, though, I can't help feeling that there is still a great deal of shorthand built into the film, on the assumption that its viewers are intimately familiar with the Mahabharat. The movie opens with a family tree that neatly sets forth the relationships among characters.  My guess is that viewers are meant to map the Puranchand and Khubchand relationships directly onto the Pandavas and Kauravas of that epic - and that without that knowledge, I am missing even more depth and richness in the film. To highlight just one example, Dharamraj's wife Supriya (Rekha) says little but hovers dark and glaring through many scenes, and I feel I would understand her better if I knew where her character fits into the mythological structure.  Some day I would like to return to Kalyug with the Mahabharat under my belt.  The movie's complexity rewards repeat viewing, and I imagine I would get even more out of it with a better understanding of its antecedents. 

***

I don't often provide lots of screen captures in my reviews, but Kalyug's cast is so large and magnificent that I don't want to give them all short shrift, so here is an additional selection - click the thumbnails for a larger view.

Savitri, Supriya, Kiran

Another cousin, Kishanchand (Amrish Puri), and Bharatraj

Most of the greater family - Karan Singh, Kishanchand, Balraj, Kiran, Dhanraj's wife Vibha (Rajshri Sarabhai), Dharamraj, his son Parikshit (Urmila Matondkar plays the little boy), Supriya, Balraj's son Sunil (Sunil Shanbag), Subhadra, the youngest Khubchand brother Sandeep, Bharatraj, and Dhanraj

Balraj

Pandey, the labor leader who opposes the official Puranchand union

Karan Singh

Dhanraj

 

Ram Lakhan (1989)

राम लखन

Listening to the Masala Zindabad podcast on movies of the 80s reminded me how little I know of that era in Hindi film.  Fears of gratuitous rape and violence have led me to steer clear, except for artier films and the occasional delicate social.  But the podcast roused my curiosity about some of that decade's better-regarded mainstream movies, and so I gritted my teeth and dug into Subhash Ghai's Ram Lakhan.  Three hours, no rapes, and only a little excessive violence later, I was very happily surprised to have seen a rich, excellent masala movie that I thoroughly enjoyed. 

Pratap (Dalip Tahil) and Sharda (Rakhee) are delighted at the birth of their second son, Lakhan, who grows up close to his brother Ram.  But a dubious family friend Bishambhar (Amrish Puri) cheats Pratap out of his inheritance and later murders him, leaving Sharda and her sons disgraced and destitute.  Sharda vows that her sons will be her weapons of revenge against Bishambhar.  The boys grow up close, but very different - Ram (Jackie Shroff) is a stern and serious police inspector, while Lakhan (Anil Kapoor) is a gadabout and a bit of a con man with big dreams of big riches.  To prove his worth to Ram and Sharda - not to mention to his childhood love Radha (Madhuri Dixit) and her father Devdhar (Anupam Kher) - Lakhan joins the police force himself.  But he is quickly seduced by the bribes of Bishmbhar and the gang of smugglers he treats with, the peculiar Kesariya (Gulshan Grover) and imperious Sir John (Raza Murad).  Ram is disgusted when he learns of Lakhan's abuse of the uniform.  Sharda despairs at the wedge this drives between her two sons, and fears that she will never see Pratap's cruel death properly avenged. 

What I expected from Ram Lakhan was a very male, very violent revenge fantasy.  What I got was a fun, well-crafted masala ride, packed with religious allegory, real laughs, and some great songs to boot.  There is some excessive violence, but it only goes over the top in the movie's climax, after more than two and a half fully engaging hours.  And while the brothers and their relationship are clearly the focus of the story, the female characters are strong and satisfying too.  Madhuri Dixit is at her best in Radha's two wonderful songs, the pleading "O Ramji", and the cathartic, rageful "Bekadar, bekhabar."  I sometimes lament the bad timing of Madhuri's career, such that her talents are largely wasted in mediocre movies that she elevates with her magnetic presence.  Here, though she has a relatively small part to play (albeit with a generous helping of songs), she adds delight to an already strong movie.  

The other women in Ram Lakhan offer more substance than I might have expected.  Ram and Lakhan's mother, Sharda, can only be described as the fiercest of masala maa characters - when she grows angry, thunder peals and lightning flashes.  Rakhee is amply suited to this role - she brings the perfect blend of mainstream melodramatic style and serious acting chops, and so there is some nuance in her face, even as the bombast of her dramatic scenes swells to true masala proportion.  Ram Lakhan is a movie that any Rakhee fan should see. 

The men, too, bring quite a lot to the table - and go a long way to helping me understand why they are stars.  Anil Kapoor is adequately cute and convincing in the mischief-maker role, highlighted in his introductory song "My Name is Lakhan."  (Any actor who gets that many drums to herald his first appearance in a movie is clearly already a larger-than-life star.)  Jackie Shroff is at times a little too stern and overbearing - he lays it on especially thick in the scenes that make the Ram-Lakshman allegory explicit.   But this is amply balanced by his tenderness in emotional scenes with Anil, and especially in his romantic song with Ram's love interest Geeta (Dimple Kapadia), "Tera naam liya". This superbly filmed song is perhaps the biggest surprise and my favorite song of the movie.  Jackie and Dimple are well-matched in age and gravitas; the song has a mature feel that is unusual for masala romance, and is yet utterly romantic. 

Ram Lakhan is not without weaknesses, but it's difficult to make a 3-hour movie without taking some missteps.  The most egregious of these is the terrible "Main hoon Hero" song, in which an utterly charisma-free villain (Bishambhar's son Deboo) challenges Lakhan to a dance-off.  The script also leans too heavily on irritating catchphrases, such as Kesariya's annoying "Bad man!", and Deboo's mind-crushingly stupid "India is greeeeaaaat."  But the teeming cast of over-the-top villains is a masala stand-by, and their bombast is appropriate to the movie's overall tone.  Even some of the comedic moments offer real laughs.   Anupam Kher gives the best of these - Lakhan tricks him into sitting on some eggs, and he lets out a whimper that sounds for all the world like the clucking of a hen.  In short, Ram Lakhan is masala done right, not nearly as violent as I feared, and thoroughly paisa vasool.

Chaalbaaz (1989)

चालबाज़

In honor of "Sridevipalooza" - a blogosphere-wide celebration of the work of the wonderful Sridevi - I chose to watch Chaalbaaz ("deception").  I can't entirely say I'm glad I did. 

Identical twins Anju and Manju are separated in infancy when a servant (Aruna Irani) steals Manju away from their wealthy family's luxurious mansion.  Manju (Sridevi) grows up in the slums, feisty and self-reliant, with dreams of being a dancing star.  Anju (also Sridevi) grows up under the care of her uncle Tribhuvan (Anupam Kher) and his companion Amba (Rohini Hattangadi), who are unspeakably cruel and sociopathic - the only thing that stops them from murdering her outright is that she is their ticket to the family wealth.  Suraj (Sunny Deol), a handsome young heir with a wild streak, meets Manju and the two are instantly smitten.  In the meantime Anju meets Jaggu (Rajnikanth), a long-time foil of Manju's, and sparks fly there as well.  Also in the mix is Balma (Shakti Kapoor), a relation of Amba's, whom Tribhuvan and Amba intend to marry to Anju in order to secure their hold on her wealth.  But none of the three men - not to mention Anju and Manju - realize that there are actually two identical girls.  Needless to say, wacky hijinks ensue.

I'd had Chaalbaaz in my collection since my first Sridevi experience, Mr India, where I'd been so impressed by her cuteness, her dancing, and her talent for physical comedy.  Her gifts are evident here as well, but instead of being the highlight of a satisfyingly entertaining masala film, they are small bits of sparkle almost lost in the pile of unapologetic crap one has to dig through the find them.  Chaalbaaz is simply a terrible movie.  Sridevi's best efforts, along with an otherwise promising cast, are just not enough to overcome the non-descript music, the excessive violence and general algogenic nature of 1980s style, or the script's phoned-in take on an unoriginal story. In the modern era, with great films so readily available on DVD and other media, there is really no reason to watch Chaalbaaz when one can watch Seeta aur Geeta instead.  

What few moments of quality Chaalbaaz has are mostly thanks to Sridevi's skill, and the movie does its best to undermine them.  The best of these is a direct quotation from Waheeda Rehman's snake dance in Guide - in the irresistible, almost trance-like passion of dance, poor Anju is momentarily liberated from the misery of her life.  (It's the second clip of this video.)  The scene is early in the movie and offers the potential for an interesting variation on the hackneyed separated-twins theme, but Chaalbaaz drops the thread.  Instead, the film fills its allotment of time with a jumble of half-assed, supposedly comedic elements like Tribhuvan's overbite or Balma's pointless catchphrases (one catchphrase is not enough - the character has several). Even the songs offer little in the way of redemption - only one is close to memorable, "Tere bimar mera dil," an entertaining fantasy sequence between Sridevi and Sunny Deol.  

It's a shame that the best I can do for Sridevipalooza is honor Sridevi's vast talents by saying that she is far, far above awful movies like Chaalbaaz. I do want to see more of her, but her era was a dark, dark time - most of her films, I fear, do her as little justice as this one.