Filmi Geek

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. 

Shaan (1980)

शान

When you watch enough masala movies, they start to blend together in a sort of meta-masala of fun pranks, wacky costumes, and sociopathic villains.  Only a few standout films rise above this masala miasma, distinguished as truly great movies and not just paisa vasool masala.  Shaan ("grandeur") is not one of them.  But even if it's not the richest masala dish ever offered, Shaan serves up a tasty enough meal for a rainy afternoon.  

Shiv Kumar (Sunil Dutt) is a fine, principled police officer.  He risks his life to chase bad guys, and puts law and order first in his life, as he repeatedly explains to his wife Sheetal (Rakhee).  To his chagrin, though, Shiv's younger brothers Ravi (Shashi Kapoor) and Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) are little more than layabouts and con artists. When Shiv Kumar runs afoul of a smuggling gang headed by the megalomaniacal sadist Shakal (Kulbhushan Kharbanda), the villain forces sharpshooter Rakesh (Shatrugan Sinha) to attempt to assassinate the officer.  Rakesh betrays Shakal, who completes the job himself and offs Rakesh's wife for good measure.  Devastated, Rakesh joins forces with Ravi and Vijay to extract their revenge from Shakal.

Shaan fully provides what Beth calls the "Recommended Masala Allowance" of comedy turns, caricatured villains in elaborately unlikely lairs, and cute stars pursuing cute romance.  It's asking a lot of a masala movie to deliver more than that.  And yet, director Sippy and writers Salim-Javed set such a high bar with so many superb masala films - dishing substance with the dishoom-dishoom - that Shaan can't help but come out unsatisfying in comparison.  In Shaan, there is little more than personal revenge at stake; unlike Salim-Javed's Mr. India - a later film with a similar ending - there's no greater message about the common man giving his life to protect the republic.  Indeed, there is little of anything in the way of grand theme; the value of law and order gets some lip service but the film doesn't seem to mean it.  There is no message of redemption or friendship or unity, or any of the principles that lend gravitas to the best masala movies. 

Still, when one doesn't hold it to the gold standard movies of its era, Shaan is a heck of a lot of fun.  Most of its best moments come in the first hour, in a brilliantly constructed series of escalating cons.  After duping a hotel operator out of 15,000 rupees, Ravi and Vijay find the tables turned as the uncle-niece team of Chacha (Johnny Walker) and Renu (Bindiya Goswami) con them out of twice the sum.  Then the four of them join forces, only to be one-upped again by the night-club singer Sunita (Parveen Babi).  These sequences are as good as any cleverly turned by Salim-Javed and are a joy to watch.  They reach their culmination as Sunita joins the gang for an elaborate religious and musical hoax, the hysterical song "Dariya mein jahaz". 

There are other surprising touches as well, including some remarkably good cinematography.  The film is full of interesting shots through doorways, from overhead angles, and other unusual vantage points.  A friend of Ravi and Vijay, the paraplegic Abdul (Mazhar Khan), propels himself through Bombay on a wheeled board, and his excellent song ("Aate jaate hue main") and chase scene are full of dizzying views of the whirling bustle of Bombay whizzing by at knee-level.  And of course, in addition to the photography, the "Shashitabh" combo always delivers some good old-fashioned musical double-romance ("Jaanu meri jaan").  And for the connoisseur of masala villains with elaborate underground lairs, the bald-pated Shakal's tribute to the classic Bond villain Blofeld (almost two decades before Mike Myers gave us Dr. Evil) is not to be missed - complete with remotely-operated exploding chairs, shark tanks, and an alligator moat. 

Ashanti (1982)

अशांति

Not all masala is created equal.  There is masala with a message - Amar Akbar Anthony comes to mind - where there is a bit of social commentary baked into the fluffy cake of  wild stunts, dashes of romance, comedic disguises, and over-the-top misanthropic villains.  And then there is masala that invites you to check your brain at the door and just come along for a wackadoodle ride.  Ashanti ("unrest") is that kind of masala.

Bhishm Bahadur Singh (Amrish Puri), scion of maharajas, is bitter that he is merely rich, and no longer royalty.  He vows to undermine law and order, sowing chaos and unrest to take his revenge against the democratic society that dethroned him.  To carry out this plan he engineers a counterfeiting operation and a string of bank robberies executed by his son Ramesh.  Police inspector Kumar (Rajesh Khanna) is framed and sent to prison by Ramesh.  Released from prison some years later, Kumar hunts Ramesh down, only to lose his leg in their violent confrontation.  Plotting his revenge, he collects three young women - Kamini (Shabana Azmi), Sunita (Parveen Babi), and Sonia (Zeenat Aman) - all of whom have been terribly and violently wronged by Bhishm Bahadur Singh and Ramesh's gang.  He trains them in combat and surveillance, and with the help of the spirited bootlegger Shankar (Mithun Chakraborty), they set to work tracking down the villains and seeing that justice is done.

As with many light-on-substance films, though, the pleasure of Ashanti is not in the intricacies of the plot - it's in the grab-bag of masala elements and over-the-top moments.  Ashanti puts its filmi touch on its Charlie's Angels-inspired setup.  Kumar and his three angels solemnize their vow of revenge in a temple in a kind of 4-way wedding.  The angels get up to wild disguised comedy antics as they carry out their plan.  And in the scenes leading up to the climax, they naturally perform a jaunty song to con their way into Bahadur Singh's palace.  To Ashanti's great credit, as well, it's very satisfying that the girls get to kick some serious ass in the movie's wacky fight scenes.

The angels aren't the only ones who contribute to the parade of memorable masala moments that make Ashanti thoroughly paisa vasool.  Shankar has a big gay shirtless fight with Bob Christo, and a truly terrific drunk song with Sunita.  A sweaty Bahadur Singh proves how badass he is by deliberately goading a venomous snake to bite him.  There's even a role for the wonderful Nadira, who in a kitchen fight scene, gets a brinjal in the mouth from Sonia:

That fight scene also bears mention as another of Ashanti's tempting, if trippy, set pieces - the girls take on the hijra kitchen staff with ridiculously comic violence, as when Sonia slaps dough on top of a hijra's head and stuffs the head, and the dough, into a tandoor - pulling out a perfectly cooked naan. 

Kumar, for his part, makes the most of his maiming - he gets a gun installed in one of his crutches and fires it with wild abandon, and in the film's climax he pulls off his prosthetic leg and beats Ramesh with it (never mind how he stays standing while he does so).

In short, if you are a fan of nutso masala, then run - or at least hobble on your bullet-loaded crutches - to the nearest DVD player and watch Ashanti.

Main Azaad hoon (1989)

मैं आज़ाद हँ

Main Azaad hoon ("I am Azaad"), one of a very few Javed Akhtar films that Shabana Azmi appeared in, is an interesting rumination on how an ordinary - and anonymous - man can be moved to tremendous sacrifice by the plight of his fellow human beings.   

Publisher Gokulchand's (Manohar Singh) newspaper is not selling, and his columnist Subhashni (Shabana Azmi) is facing the ax.  To boost the paper's sales - and to save her job - quick-thinking Subhashni concocts and publishes a letter from a fictional man named Azaad - the name means "independent" - who threatens to kill himself in protest against social injustice throughout the state.  Azaad is an immediate sensation throughout the city, and Subhashni pens more letters, creating an entire backstory for the fictional man.  Gokulchand is delighted with the result in the paper's bottom line, and to keep the charade going he authorizes Subhashni to find a suitable man they can pay to play the role of Azaad.  Subhashni discovers a charismatic vagabond (Amitabh Bachchan) who is willing to take on the role in exchange for a few good meals and a generous handful of rupees.  Azaad's mystique grows, and everyone with a grievance seeks his aid, from slumdwellers in search of clean water to striking factory workers clamoring for a living wage.  Azaad is moved by these causes, and soon he is acting from his heart instead of merely acting the part that Gokulchand and Subhashni have paid him to play.  And his heart is tested when the power players who created him try to use him as a pawn for their own advantage.

Main Azaad hoon's script is little too wordy; there were places where the story dragged.  But Javed sahib's award-winning dialogues deliver with the expected style the film's statements against manipulation of the common man by those in power  - like when one character, an elected official, says that the key to politics is to "make promises to the poor, and make deals with the rich."   Subhasnhi's character arc in particular is compelling.  She starts out just as manipulative as the power players - she is very shrewd in fact, acting in calculation of her own interests only, and is not moved until she sees Azaad willing to commit himself to the fullest for the rights of others.

Indeed, there are parallels to Shabana Azmi's own experience built into Subhashni's story that are so striking I had to wonder if Javed sahib didn't write the script with his wife in mind.  Subhashni begins with the view that her newspaper column is strictly entertainment for the masses.  As the film wears on, she struggles to keep entertainment separate from social responsibility, just as Shabana Azmi herself did, and, again like Shabana, ultimately follows her heart in the direction of activism.  The film contains parallels between Azaad and Amitabh Bachchan too - in one scene, Azaad emerges from his rooms to find an overwhelming crowd of supplicants awaiting darshan; I have read about such crowds at Amitabh's own home, especially in the early 1980s.

Javed Akhtar once said that Hollywood films are short stories while Hindi films are novels. But the characterizations and scope of Main Azaad hoon are, in some ways, more like the former.  Rather than offering reels of epic backstory, Azaad's true origin and life story remain a complete mystery.  We learn a little about Subhashni's father - he was a hero, a freedom fighter on the eve of independence - but no friends or relatives of hers are present in the film.  By filmi standards, the two principals are unanchored and lonesome (though Azaad has a sidekick who makes a few appearances) - these loners are given their sense of purpose by devoting themselves to a wider community to which neither fully belongs. 

Katha (1983)

कथा

With Sparsh and Chashme buddoor, director Sai Paranjpe had already proved to me her great skill at presenting down-to-earth, real, sweet stories about believable characters, so I came to Katha ("fable") with high expectations.  I was not disappointed.

Rajaram Purshottam Joshi (Naseeruddin Shah) lives in a chawl, a kind of boarding house common in Bombay.  A hardworking office clerk, Rajaram is pleased when he is promoted to permanent status at his company, and looks forward to celebrating with his neighbor Sandhya (Deepti Naval), a charming girl with whom he is quite obviously smitten.  Soon Rajaram's childhood friend Vashudev (Farooq Shaikh) - he prefers the hip nickname "Washu" - arrives, and casts a spell over all the residents of the chawl - including Sandhya.  He even cons Rajaram's boss, landing himself a job as Rajaram's superior.  Rajaram sees through his friend's slick-talking charm, but with his gentle demeanor he is powerless to stop the juggernaut that is Washu in pursuit of something - or someone - that amuses him. 

Just as in Sparsh and Chashme buddoor, Sai Paranjpe shows her gentle touch in Katha, offering characters who are real, relatable, and engaging.  In particular, just like Chashme buddoor, Katha offers adorable humor without outlandishness, real-life believable situations that make the audience laugh because it's not difficult to project them onto ourselves and our neighbors.  The portrayal of life in the chawl is particularly charming and satisfying, and is itself a reason to see the movie for anyone interested in workaday Indian life.  The chawl is a tight-knit community is like a small village or, as one character in the film analogizes, a great joint family, in which individuals and families live in small flats centered on a common courtyard and shared water and other utilities.  There is a bitter barren woman who yells at children playing in the courtyard; a newlywed couple who rarely emerge from their rooms but whose giggles can be heard through the closed shutters; a disabled man who asks incessant favors from every visitor; a grandma who cooks yummy snacks for every young visitor she receives; a couple, whose son is a doctor in Canada, who love nothing more than to show off their richly appointed flat and their refrigerator and television; and more.  Paranjpe paints the inhabitants of this microcosm with great vividness and affection, and their interactions are tremendous fun to watch. 

The enjoyable bustle of the chawl forms a delightful backdrop for the interactions of the main players (they even serve as a Greek chorus of sorts, especially in the film's wonderful songs).  The principals' performances are all executed without flaw, especially those of Naseeruddin Shah and Farooq Shaikh.  Naseeruddin Shah is at his droopy, sad-sacky best; Rajaram wears his frustration physically as Washu runs circles around him, projecting a confused and adorable mixture of disdain and admiration for his friend's antics.  And Farooq Shaikh nails Washu's puff-chested confidence to perfection.  In Chashme buddoor, Farooq's character was charming in part because despite being marginally smarter and more competent than his friends, he was still mostly a dork.   The same is true here, with a faintly sinister edge since Washu is, at base, a con-man.  But the joke which Paranjpe lets the audience in on - a joke that escapes Washu - is that Washu is nothing more than a small-time con, not half the player he thinks is.  For example, while Washu both cons and cuckolds Rajaram's boss, it's established early on that the boss is a weak target, not a very bright guy to begin with.  The result is a sense of desperation and cheapness about Washu, as if he's conned his own low-watt self right along with the easy marks he chooses.   

And so, as in the titular fable that provides the film's bookends - the story of the tortoise and the hare - Katha ends with the satisfying feeling that the wheel will turn and both Washu and Rajaram will get what they deserve from the universe.  And we, the audience, get a warm, delightful, and utterly charming film, another very, very fine feather in Sai Paranjpe's cap. 

Mr. India (1987)

What happens when two masters of populist, allegorical, entertaining screenwriting and a gifted, creative, intellectual director put their heads together with the goal of creating a film that is over-the-top even compared to the most outrageous masala Hindi films have to offer?   Mr. India is what happens.  Screenwriters Salim-Javed and director Shekhar Kapur, with some intrepid help from a terrific cast, pulled out every stop in this all-out goofy entertainer.  It's self-conscious, it's ridiculous, and it's riotous fun - but there's a patriotic moral, too. 

Arun Verma (Anil Kapoor) is a musician with a cheerful disposition who looks after a houseful of adorable orphans.  When his natural charm ceases to satisfy the shopkeepers and landlords from whom he wrangles rice and credit, he sets out to find himself a paying guest to supplement his income.  He rents a room to a persnickety, child-hating reporter named Seema (Sridevi) and they proceed to get on one another's nerves.  Soon Arun learns that his father, a scientist who died when Arun was a small boy, had been killed by some goons intent on stealing an invisibility formula the scientist had devised.  Now the goons are back, at the behest of their despotic boss, Mogambo (Amrish Puri), and they want not only the invisibility formula but all of India to boot.  Arun learns of the terrorist tactics of Mogambo's thugs, who use such nefarious tools as tainted food supplies and explosive-rigged toys to sow the seeds of fear in the populace, and he decides to use the invisibility formula to mete out justice against Mogambo's army of evildoers, transforming himself into Mr. India, the invisible avenger of the people.

The best parts of Mr. India are the moments that are crafted with no purpose other than to showcase the stars' first-class shtick.  In one delightful sequence, for example, Sridevi launches into an extended Charlie Chaplin impression that highlights her talent for adorable physical comedy; in others, she flings her dangerous curves across the screen in both a comical dance sequence and a passionate one.  Amrish Puri is at his bug-eyed, scene-chewingest best in every one of Mogambo's scenes, preening and strutting and ingeiously crafting a seemingly limitless number of ways to utter the villain's signature phrase, "Mogambo khush hua." ("Mogambo is pleased.")  These elements are brazenly, unabashedly entertaining in the manner in which Hindi films are particularly excellent; it is art without artifice.  Even the big-hearted sweetness Anil Kapoor shows nurturing his passel of adorable orphans is calculated more to win the hearts of the audience than to support the story. 

But for all its wanton crowd-pleasing, Mr. India is still a Salim-Javed film, and so the masala can be expected to be served up with an edge and with a generous side helping of social message.  The former manifests in Salim-Javed's willingness to kill even some of their most loveable characters; the latter in Arun Verma's declaration, as the invisible force called Mr. India, of the power of the "aam hindustani," the ordinary Indian.  The film's central message that larger-than-life forces of bloodshed and terror - represented by the larger-than-life Mogambo - can be stopped by the invisible yet undeniable power of the compassionate Indian citizen who looks out for the interests of his compatriots.  Mogambo's critical error is to presume that Arun Verma loves his own life more than he loves his country; Arun's patriotism and his love for every citizen of India, is Mogambo's downfall.  That's a heavy message indeed, that the commitment of the aam hindustani can defeat the devil himself; Mr. India works by lightening the load, delivering it in an outlandish and fun package. 

Mr. India was my (long overdue) first Sridevi film, and for the record I absolutely can see what all the fuss is about.  The three segments mentioned above - the Charlie Chaplin scene, the fantastic comedy number "Hawa Hawai," and the sensual song "Kaate nahin kate yeh din yeh raat" together represent a very nice sampling of her abilities.  She is adorable and precise, thrillingly sexy and at the same time uproariously funny.  It is Sridevi's misfortune that she reigned during a particularly bleak period of Hindi films, but I am nevertheless eager for more of her. 

Mandi (1983)

मंडी

Shyam Benegal films often explore broad social themes through a closely focused lens, in detailed studies of relationships among a handful of people.  Mandi ("market") is broader in scope, featuring a large number of characters whose relationships form an intricate web in which concepts like loyalty, morality, and duplicity are tangled.  A wry film with a healthy dose of black comedy, Mandi presents a sarcastic look at the tension between venerable but questionable traditions and modernity in its various forms. 

Rukmini bai (Shabana Azmi) is a madam who runs her brothel with a stern and demanding hand.  Aided by her melancholy houseboy Dhungrus (Naseeruddin Shah), Rukmini is protective of her girls, especially the brothel's virginal prize, Zeenat (Smita Patil), who is permitted to spend her days practicing her music and kathak instead of submitting to the kotha's more lascivious customers.  When a sanctimonious moralist, Shanti Devi (Gita Siddharth), flexes her political muscle in an attempt to drive the brothel out of town, Rukmini turns to her landlord Mr. Gupta (Kulbushan Kharbanda) for assistance, but finds in him only a conditional ally.  Caught in the crossfire is the town's mayor, Agrawal (Saeed Jaffrey), who is under the powerful Shanti Devi's thumb but also beholden to Rukmini, lest she air his own dirty laundry.  Rounding out the vast network of players is a terrified mute girl (Sreela Majumdar) married under pretext and sold by her new husband to Rukmini; a dirty-minded photographer (Om Puri) who prowls around trying to snap naked pictures of the tawaifs; a police-wala who does his "night duty" at the brothel; Agrawal's son, engaged to Gupta's daughter but madly in love with Zeenat; Shanti Devi's beleaguered assistant (Pankaj Kapur); a crazed and pious hermit (Amrish Puri) who shows Rukmini how to extract wishes from a variety of holy objects; and all the girls of the brothel (including Soni Razdan and Ila Arun), with their varying levels of satisfaction and loyalty to Rukmini.

That's an awful lot to squeeze into a film, and the squeezing does, to some degree, compress Benegal's characters into two dimensions.  The outstanding talent of the cast offers some compensation, though, allowing each character to be vividly rendered despite the tendency toward archetypy.  The darkly comic tone of the entire film enhances the vividness of the characterizations.  Without it, the film would collapse under the weight of its themes.  Delivering the tale with archness, teetering on the brink of tumbling over the top, allows the actors a breadth of expression that helps them pop out of the screen.  Amrish Puri's bug-eyed ascetic, Saeed Jaffrey's nervously buffoonish aristocrat, Naseeruddin Shah's droopy drunk - each plays to the back of the house in a departure from Benegal's usual hyper-realist style, yet the broad style is precisely what renders each of them memorable. 

Shabana Azmi's turn is the broadest of them all, and her performance is deliciously physical and yet still evoactively subtle.  Rukmini flits between angry snarls and obsequious smiles at a moment's notice, one minute dripping with maternal concern and the next barking orders like a foreman.  And she cannot resist a mirror, interrupting herself often, whether mid-tirade, mid-sob, or even mid-prayer, to smooth a stray strand of hair.  If there is an overarching mood to the changeable Rukmini, it's that she never for a moment displays an ounce of sincerity.  Indeed, most of the characters in Mandi are somehow scheming, double-crossing, or working both sides against the middle.  From the brothel girls whose loyalty to Rukmini is fragile and fleeting, to Zeenat who is not nearly as ingenuous as she seems, and even to the pompous Shanti Devi who (we learn from a throw-away line of Rukmini's) is having an affair with her own son-in-law, each of the characters is concealing a card or two.  And it is this ubiquitous duplicity that gives Mandi its entertaining edge -  it's hard not to laugh watching these colorful characters squirm, hedge, and lie through their teeth. 

Mandi's final scene is a little bit puzzling, but the ultimate message may be that degradation is in the eye of the beholder, and that perhaps the concealed hypocrisy of those who call themselves modern and upright is just as oppressive as the ancient traditions of the kotha.  Whatever the true moral of this amorality tale may be, though, it is a terrific film.