Filmi Geek

Lamhe (1991)

लमहे

Reading obituaries after Yash Chopra's unexpected death last weekend, I was surprised to realize how many of his movies I counted among my absolute favorites - movies like Deewaar, Kaala Patthar, and Waqt.  These films were groundbreaking, trendsetting, with an intensity and attention to moviemaking craft that makes them stand up, even decades later, as classics.

Other Yash Chopra movies that I have seen do not rise as loftily.  Silsila is thoughtful and mature in its exploration of extramarital passion, but somewhat flawed in its resolution. Kabhi kabhie is mopey, dull, and downright stupid at times (although I admit that a recent conversation with a friend gave me some new perspectives on it, that may demand a rewatch).  And Dil to pagal hai is nearly forgettable, save Madhuri's mesmerizing smile.

So it was with some tempered expectations that I turned to Lamhe ("moments") to commemorate Yash Chopra's career on the day of h is death.  In recent reviews (Satte pe satta, English Vinglish), I have given thought to the power of nostalgia, and the special appeal that films cherished by desis as childhood favorites have for me, as an outsider and a student of modern Indian cultures.  Lamhe is one such beloved film - as with Satte pe satta, when I tweeted about watching it, I received many comments from desi women of roughly my age who hold it close to their hearts.  But I was prepared, from other commentary I had read (such as Beth's hilarious response) to not relate that well to the movie myself.

As it happens, I do not hate Lamhe.  But I do not particularly like it, either.  I suppose that in its time - coming as it did in such a dire and violent era for Hindi films - it was refreshing, different, exciting. For me, though, without that perspective, it's just puzzling and lackluster.  It falls very close to Kabhi kabhie on my Yash Chopra spectrum - a dull film with a few nice songs and a great deal of moping by people whose decisions and dilemmas are not terribly relatable.  Lamhe is remembered as one of Hindi film's great romances. But it is a romance that I find it hard to get behind, because neither of principals' great lifelong loves does anything much to move me.

As a young man, Viren (Anil Kapoor) falls in love with Pallavi (Sridevi), the daughter of a family friend who lives in the next palace over from Viren in Rajasthan.  It's not hard to see what Viren loves about Pallavi - she is beautiful, sassy, bold, and a whole lot of fun.  After Pallavi's death, though, Viren clings desperately to her memory for nearly two decades.  Rather than coming across as romantic, Viren's obsession rings to me  joyless, self-indulgent, and tiresome.  It's terribly depressing, and it's difficult to imagine the spirited Pallavi would have been much impressed by Viren squandering his life in such incessant, intolerable moping.

This, I suppose, is an example of theme I don't quite get because I did not grow up immersed in desi culture.  The notion that each of us is allotted only one great love, and that our joy is finished when that love is gone, is seen often in Hindi movies - at least as a source of dramatic tension, if not the ultimate message of most movies.  But the theme has little resonance for me, being as I am a person who falls in love early and often.  I just cannot relate to a character who refuses to see beauty in anyone other than the frozen memories of a long-dead girl. 

And then there is Pallavi's orphaned daughter Pooja (also Sridevi). Raised in apparent isolation by Dai Jaa (Waheeda Rehman), Viren's own surrogate mother, Pooja is bound to be more than slightly dysfunctional.  But her lifelong love for Viren is not just unmotivated - it's anti-motivated.  As far as the movie shows us, Pooja never even meets Viren until she is 18; he worked assiduously to avoid her throughout her life.  Despite this, she is convinced she loves him, enough to tolerate his gloominess, his ongoing neglect, and the particularly appalling slap across the face that he delivers to her when she confesses her love. This is more the girlish fantasies of a maladjusted young woman than a deep, substantial love.

I have been told that part of what makes Lamhe shocking and significant is the notion of romance between a guardian and his ward, a man in loco parentis to the woman he pairs with by the end of the movie.  But of all the aspects of Lamhe that set wrong with me, this is the least.  Viren is not Pooja's guardian in any substantive sense.  He provides for her financially but has no relationship with her whatsoever.  And so there is as little substance to their parent-child relationship as there is to their romantic relationship.  Viren's about-face in the movie's end, his sudden love for Pooja, is just as unmotivated as her lifelong passion for him. This is passion by fiat, love that exists merely because the script says there should be love.  Romance movies always have a disadvantage - we know how they are going to end.  A movie that makes us wait a couple of hours for that inevitable result had better back it up, and make the couple's trajectory to togetherness interesting and compelling.  Lamhe doesn't manage this.  Viren's sulking and Pooja's girlish squealing - punctuated by the forced comedy of Viren's friend Prem (Anupam Kher) - make for a long, dull slog.  Yash Chopra may be the king of romance, but Lamhe just plods. 

If Lamhe has a redeeming feature, it is of course the marvelous Sridevi herself.  Amrita said of her in this moive, "Sridevi was just this magical creature to us who could do no wrong."  This goes a long way to explain why this dull movie with its bizarro story is so fondly remembered by desi women my age.  Supriya Nair, in her wonderful article about Sridevi (which I referenced in my review of English Vinglish) talked about the resonant appeal to contemporaneous young girls of Sridevi's woman-child characters like Pooja.  But for me, Pooja is strange, puzzling, even unappealing.  As charming and gifted as Sridevi obviously is, Pooja's terminal ingenuousness is a turnoff, as is the notion of her paired with the middle-aged, gloomy Viren.  Sridevi is far  more appealing as the bright, clever Pallavi - I would have thoroughly enjoyed a movie about that character. 

There are a few nice songs in Lamhe -  the best of these is Sridevi's gorgeous rain song, "Megha re megha," which I had to back up and watch several times over before I could continue the movie.

 

Another sure crowd-pleaser is the medley of old songs that Pooja, Prem, and Dai Jaa perform in an attempt to get a smile out of the perpetually pouting Viren.  This is interminable, and eventually nearly insufferable, but Waheeda Rehman dancing to "Aaj phir jeene ki tamanna hai" is such a deliciously pleasurable filmi in-joke as to make it all worthwhile.

But the movie as a whole?  I'm afraid I have to say I miss the appeal.  As much as I respect Yash Chopra's contributions and the groundbreaking classics he created, the specialness of Lamhe is lost on me, with my outsider's perspective on its themes.  There is always more for me to learn.

Ghulam (1998)

ग़ुलाम

After the surprisingly unviolent Ram Lakhan, watching the excessively violent Ghulam ("slave") was - dare I say it - a slap in the face.  This frustrating movie is the proverbial "little girl with a little curl" - when it's good, it's very good, but its weaker moments are horrid indeed.

Siddhu (Aamir Khan) is a sometime amateur boxer, a petty criminal, and a layabout, haunted by troubling memories of his father (Dalip Tahil), a one-time freedom fighter who died a violent death when Siddhu was a boy.  Siddhu's Dongri neighborhood is terrorized by the hot-headed extortionist entrepreneur Raunak Singh, or "Ronnie" (Sharat Saxena), for whom Siddhu performs occasional thug-duty, delivering messages and roughings-up to anyone reluctant to do Ronnie's bidding.  After winning the heart of a sad young woman named Alisha (Rani Mukherjee), Siddhu meets a social worker named Hari (Akshay Anand), who is trying to galvanize beleaguered members of the community into legal action against Ronnie.  After he unwittingly delivers Hari into a trap laid by Ronnie, Siddhu is inspired to take up Hari's cause.  But Siddhu's brother Jai (Rajit Kapoor) reminds Siddhu that their father might not have been the great man Siddhu remembers, and calls into question the very foundation of Siddhu's righteous beliefs. 

The worst parts of Ghulam are so bad that they are hard to watch.  The motorcycle gang that features an embarrassing squealy caricature of an effeminate man is bad enough, and the gang's reappearance toward the film's end is particularly stupid. The violent scenes are too numerous, and too interminable - Siddhu's showdown with Ronnie at the movie's climax is especially improbable and egregious.  And if I gave star ratings to movies, any movie that features a boxing match would automatically be docked at least one star.  (At least in Ghulam, the boxing match is merely gratuitious, rather than a proxy for real achievement - or worse, redemption - as it in that unbearable genre of movies that are actually about boxing.) 

Ghulam is redeemed somewhat by the contrast in its well-wrought characterization of the two brothers. Jai is the clean-cut, educated brother in spectacles and khakis.  He contrasts sharply with Siddhu's leather and chains, and rough Tapori dialect - to all appearances, he is far more like Siddhu's idealized memory of their father, the "bespectacled master."  Yet Jai puts all that class and education to work as Ronnie's accountant, cooking the tyrant's books and laundering his extortionate earnings.  Siddhu, for all his thuggish affectation, proves to have the stouter heart and the purer conscience, in a pleasing (if somewhat facile) turnabout of stereotype.  Even Alisha, clearly attracted to bad boys who feed her fantasy of liberation from her penthouse prison, only falls for Siddhu after he demonstrates his true nature by saving a rival's life.  Siddhu is the descendant of both the Angry Young Man character perfected by Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970s, and the sort of Tapori trickster embodied by Anil Kapoor in Ram Lakhan. 

And so it is fitting, and in hindsight not at all surprising, that Siddhu's great triumph is not that he musters the courage to testify against Ronnie in court - Hari's righteous quest turns out to be a bit of a red herring - but rather that he incites his neighbors to riot in a physical and violent defeat of Ronnie and his gang.  To me and my ordered, Western perspective, the violence of this victory is unsatisfying.  But I have to acknowledge, as I often do as a student of Indian movies, that I am not the target audience, and what I personally think is the correct course would not be the most effective course for people menaced by the likes of Ronnie.  In the movie, Ronnie's case is adjourned for a weekend, setting up his climactic confrontation with Siddhu; I know that in real life, a more likely outcome would be for the slow wheels of justice to creep along for a decade or more while he continues his reign of terror.  And so the violent solution is perhaps the only solution that would ring true to Ghulam's Indian audience.

The appeal of the stars carries the movie a long way too.  Aamir Khan's performance is, as usual, both physical and soulful, and Rani Mukherjee, while still very young, is thoroughly cute.  Their appeal is highlighted in the movie's best song, "Aati kya Khandala," which features Aamir singing his own part, and which is adorable; I especially love it when they dance next to the Buddha sculpture. Somewhat less effective, but still pleasant, are the two - not just one - romantic songs with scenes shot in Switzerland.  Of the minor characters, I particularly liked Akshay Anand as Hari, as well as Sharat Saxena as Ronnie (he does quite well with a character whose vein-popping apoplexy is a bit overdone).  I also enjoyed Siddhu's lawyer (Mita Vasisht).  Her performance makes me wonder whether they offer "Shabana Azmi" classes in acting school; if so, she appears to have studied very hard.    

Pyar to hona hi tha (1998)

प्यार तो होना ही था

After some weighty discussions about feminism and Partition, it was definitely time to write about something with a bit more levity.  Fortunately Pyar to hona hi tha ("Love had to happen") was there to do the job.

Sanjana (Kajol), an orphaned Indian living in Paris, is engaged to her sweetheart Rahul (Bijay Anand).  Rahul's business takes him on a trip to India, where he is swept off his feet by a sexy modern vixen named Nisha (Kashmira Shah), and breaks his engagement to Sanjana.  Heartbroken, Sanjana heads to India to win him back.  On the way, she meets the roguish thief Shekhar (Ajay Devgan), on the run from his one-time friend, Police Inspector Khan (Om Puri).  Circumstances conspire to strand Shekhar and Sanjana in Shekhar's village, where she learns that inside scoundrel there beats a heart of pure gold.  Shekhar agrees to help her win back her lost love.  Sanjana and Shekhar pretend to be lovers to make Rahul jealous.  But as the film's title suggests, it's not long before the pretense becomes reality.

Pyar to hona hi tha is an innocuous and pleasant romance.  Like any romance, its charm depends upon the appeal of its principals, and they deliver well enough to make the movie engaging and sweet.  Kajol is talented at physical comedy, and that talent is put to good use in Sanjana's clumsy streak; her klutziness is cute and funny (though, unfortunately, it has no real bearing on the story).  And Ajay Devgan is better here than in some films where he broods and mopes incessantly; Shekhar is permitted moments of insecurity that show through his facade of cool.  The result is an endearing pairing that the viewer can really root for.  

I've been told that Pyar to hona hi tha is a remake of a Hollywood romance flick called French Kiss.  I've never seen the original, but most people seem to think the filmi touches are an improvement.  I guess that Bollywood really does have a way with romance.  Some of the better filmi elements in Pyar to hona hi tha are the songs, which are very cute; they are mostly innocuous pop, but surprisingly catchy.  There are entertaining picturizations too, especially the village engagement party and a trippy song that takes place on an airplane.  The latter includes segments having different musical styles, including a qawwali and a uniquely filmi adaptation of the Macarena.   The less felicitous additions from the filmi bag of tricks include a couple of lengthy car chases and a random, unnecessary shooting and hostage sequence in a shopping mall.  On balance, though, Pyar to hona hi tha offers a pleasant helping of everything one might require of a Hindi popcorn romance. 

Greta of Memsaab Story, with whom I watched Pyar to hona hi tha, considers the film a sentimental favorite; here's what she has to say about it. 

Taal (1999)

ताल

In the bestiary of rich-poor romances, Taal  ("rhythm") is a lackluster specimen.  Laden with cliches, sodden with obnoxious product placement, and burdened by a bland heroine and a pompous hero, Taal's only distinguishing features are a zany performance by Anil Kapoor and a soundtrack by A.R. Rahman that far outshines the forgettable film it supports. 

Manav Mehta (Akshaye Khanna) arrives in a Himalayan hill town from his education abroad, joining his family of industrial titans - including his formidable father Jagmohan (Amrish Puri) - for a vacation.   There, he meets Mansi (Aishwarya Rai), the poised daughter of a singer named Tarababu (Alok Nath).  Manav is instantly smitten and successfully woos Mansi, promising her that he will overcome the inevitable resistance of their families to their pairing.  After the Mehtas retreat to their massive palace in Bombay, Tarababu and Mansi make a visit to the city to discuss the possibility of a relation.  A standard-issue poor-but-noble versus rich-and-snooty culture clash ensues (helped along by some of Manav's smarmier relations), and Manav and Mansi renounce one another, each feeling that the other's family has given insult. 

Instead of returning to their village, though, Tarababu and Mansi fall in with a famous producer-performer-composer named Vikrant (Anil Kapoor), who wants to give modern arrangements to Tarababu's songs and make a singing-dancing-modeling star out of Mansi, which he does, practically overnight.  Mansi, still smarting from her broken relationship with Manav, adapts well to her new, successful life, until a marriage proposal from Vikrant forces her to face the possibility that her first love is lost to her forever.  But a contrite Manav pledges that Mansi, Jagmohan, and even Vikrant will come to bow to the power of his love - that Mansi will return to him and the others willingly give their blessing.

There is a strain in recent Hindi films of movies whose characters are singing stars - not merely musicians, but giant superstars - providing a justification for breaking out into elaborate production numbers, but offering nothing of import to the story.  This strikes me as defensive, an answer to perceived criticism (from westerners, perhaps) that songs come randomly from nowhere in Hindi films.  "Look," these films seem to say, "the character is a singing star - now the songs aren't coming out of nowhere!"  Particularly egregious examples that leap to mind include Dil to pagal hai and Hum tumhare hain sanam, but even better movies like Tehzeeb have submitted.

Taal suffers terribly under the weight of this needless conceit.  Mansi rockets overnight from a simple village girl to an international MTV sensation with legions of screaming fans.  This transformation would induce whiplash in a normal young woman, and would certainly have wrought some changes in Mansi's character or behavior in a well-written film in which her status as a musician was of any significance.  In Taal, though, there no perceptible response to Mansi's drastic change in circumstances.  Mansi's instantaneous stardom added nothing to the story apart from a platform for an army of backup dancers in flaming spandex bodysuits. 

The production numbers were entertaining enough, but a good film can stand on the strength of its narrative and be enhanced by such storytelling traditions as musical scenes, without need of distracting and convoluted explanations for the songs.  Unfortunately, Taal is not that film.  The conflict generated by Manav's slimy relatives and Mansi's simple, proud father is beyond eye-rolling, an embarrassing slop of rehashed and recycled parts.  The romance in the film's first hour is mildly charming, but Manav's arrogance quickly grows tiresome.  Akshaye Khanna, with his crooked smile and soulful eyes, is better used as vulnerable and confused young men like Dil chahta hai's Sid; here, as cocky as a Shah-Rukh-Khanish dandy, he is perhaps even less charming than Shah Rukh Khan himself, and uninteresting as a hero; what use is a character with absolutely no doubts about himself?  Aishwarya Rai adds little to the mix either, but then, she's given little to work with; whatever potential her story has is squandered in service of a cheap plot device.

The only interesting element in the film is the spastic Vikrant, and even interesting doesn't necessarily mean good.  Anil Kapoor has his moments, but these are equal in number to the moments that too far over-the-top or that simply make no sense.  Taal is fortunate to have a top-notch, pulsing soundtrack by A.R. Rahman which saves the film from utter uselessness.  The soundtrack is helped along by some creative (if over-spandexed) picturizations, especially the first rendition of "Ishq bina", which is thrilling and acrobatic before it unfortunately turns into an ill-placed Coca-Cola advertisement three quarters of the way through. 

Ek doctor ki maut (1991)

एक डाक्टर की मौत

Some people dismiss Indian art films as ponderous and boring.  I'm usually an enthusiastic cheerleader for art cinema - the more variety of films available the better.  If I wanted to convince a mainstream film-lover that art films weren't ponderous, though, Ek doctor ki maut ("Death of a doctor") would not be the place to start.  This tale of a maverick scientist going up against the establishment just falls flat. 

Dipankar Roy (Pankaj Kapur) is a physician who practices in a government hospital.  He's not that interested in clinical medicine, though - his passion is his research on a vaccine for leprosy.  He works into the wee hours - to the chagrin of his long-suffering wife Seema (Shabana Azmi) - in a tiny makeshift lab in his home.  Huddled amongst the caged lab animals, dusty reference volumes, and burbling beakers, Roy toils away night after night, his work punctuated by verbal sparring matches with Seema.  One day he has a breakthrough - he has discovered that females inoculated with his compound give birth to offspring immune to leprosy, and what's more, the compound has a secondary effect of reversing certain kinds of sterility in females.   His results are published by an eager science reporter (Irrfan Khan), but the reception in the scientific community is chillier than Roy anticipated.  Specialists in leprosy are skeptical of his findings, and gynecologists are incensed by his speculation that the compound may treat sterility.  Instead of getting a fair hearing for his work, Roy is shut down by his superiors in the health ministry, cut off from his work, forbidden to share it with the international medical community, and transferred to a remote village. 

That sounds like a pretty good story, and having summarized it just now I am struggling to understand why the film in execution is so gratingly dull.  Part of the problem lies in script and direction.  The film is shot in a hyper-realistic, hyper-literal style; there is no artistic camera work, no symbolism, nothing to layer the dialogue or add depth or allegory to the events unfolding on the screen.  It is more like reading a newspaper article than watching a piece of cinematic art.  And, like a newspaper article, Ek doctor ki maut presents its events in words - Roy explains his results to his friends; Seema orates her frustrations with her marriage, puts her threat to leave Roy in a letter, and then expounds, in words, on why she decides to stay.  All the verbiage smothers the lovely, subtle performances of both Pankaj Kapur and Shabana Azmi, the latter especially; she seems to want to show Seema's conflict in body language in the kind of performance that she can give better than anyone, but the script won't let her stop talking long enough to do it. 

Stylistic matters aside, as a former scientist, I was nonplussed by the film's treatment of the process of scientific discovery and review.  In the U.S., when scientists choose to present their work via the press rather than in a peer-reviewed publication,  they frequently meet with a skeptical response - not without reason, as illustrated by Fleischmann and Pons's now infamous announcement of cold fusion.  So I don't perceive any great injustice in the response in the medical community's circumspect reaction to Roy's self-published results.  This leaves me somewhat at a loss to interpret the message of Ek doctor ki maut.  Perhaps the practice of scientific research is different in India from my own experience, so that in the film's context it's clearer just what is being criticized.  To my eye, though, other researchers are justified in viewing Roy with some suspicion; he appears to be more eccentric than not, puttering in a makeshift homemade laboratory, forgoing  peer review, and lashing out in anger at any who dare challenge him. 

Ek doctor ki maut is not all bad; I've mentioned the delicacy of the actors' performances, and there were a few excellent moments shining in the film's bland substrate.  In one excellent sequence, Roy steals Seema's sterno cooker out from under her when he runs out of propane for his Bunsen burner; later, he predictably scolds her for failing to cook his dinner, and the skirmish is a poignant microcosm of their entire relationship.  And in the closest thing to a character arc there is in the film, Roy later demonstrates a growing awareness of his reliance on Seema and her need for some reciprocation.   This is best shown in several tender interactions between  them, one during her visit after his exile to village practice, and another in the film's final scene.  If the rest of the film had been handled as delicately, Ek doctor ki maut might have felt less like two hours of squandered potential. 

(Ek doctor ki maut is available for download at Jaman.  Also please see this post at Sounds Like Power for a more Shabana-centric look at the film.)

Bombay (1995)

बम्बई

There is something about sectarian violence that pushes all my buttons.  I am not Indian, and I am neither Hindu nor Muslim, but for some reason stories of communities torn apart along that particular axis simply breaks my heart.  By the end of Mani Ratnam's Bombay I was in tears - not merely weeping, but crying huge, hot, racking sobs.   I haven't bawled like that at the end of a film since 1947: Earth.  As I said, there's something about sectarian violence.  Bombay is very different from Earth in most ways - it's lot more hopeful, for one - but it's also less remote, covering events in recent memory.  And like Earth, its characters are so lovable that their anguish sears that much more. 

Shekhar (Arvind Swamy) has finished school and returns to his village to tell his family of his plans to take a job at a newspaper in Bombay and attend night classes in journalism.  Before he returns to the city, Shekhar catches a glimpse of a young burqa-clad Muslim woman, Shaila Banu (Manisha Koirala) when her veil flutters off her face in a seaside breeze.  Shekhar is instantly captivated; he sees her again at a village wedding and then contrives to meet her, learning that she returns his interest.  Rebuffed by their furious fathers - his a respected orthodox Hindu pandit, hers a devout Muslim brick-maker - the couple elope to Bombay and marry in a civil ceremony at a municipal office.  Disowned by their parents, they build life of modest contentment and are blessed with twin sons.  Then internecine tensions spark the Bombay riots of winter 1992-1993 - Hindus and Muslims tear after one another with Molotov cocktails and machetes, upending Shekhar and Shaila Banu's peaceful little world.

Bombay is more a series of beautiful moments than a story.  Some of these moments are warm and sweet, others harrowing, others unbearably sad.  But they encapsulate the full range of the human experience, from exuberant joy to unbridled anguish.  They also demonstrate the depth of tenderness that can exist within a family and that can develop even to bridge the widest gulf.  The film offers these elements in a measured and balanced mixture, gently retreating just when the pain seems too much to bear.  So, for example, as the sectarian hatred tears violently through the streets of the city, it is held in counterpoint by good-natured and humorous sparring between Shekhar's father and Shaila Banu's.  And when the destruction of the riots reaches its apex,  Shekhar's father risks his life to save the other man's Koran. 

The first time I watched Bombay I felt it was perfect, an engaging story told beautifully with a solid-to-outstanding soundtrack by A.R. Rahman and stunning performances by its principals.  Arvind Swamy brings an everyman sensibility to his role; pudgy and relatively ordinary-looking, he is nevertheless completely appealing, and his face registers every emotion perfectly.  And Manisha Koirala is not only gorgeous; she is one of the most skilled and expressive actors I've seen.  The film seemed utterly flawless.

On second viewing (the very next day) I had to acknowledge its imperfections.  Like many a filmi romance, Shekhar's and Shaila Banu's is based on little more than a glance and developed, in shorthand, in a song.  And the film offers their mixed-religion household as an idyllic haven, free from the tensions that plague the rest of the city - absent is any sign that compromise or adjustment is necessary to make a marriage work between two people raised so differently.  Shaila Banu declares dreamily that Allah gave her children "two gods," but in real life one would expect some conflict between the life cycle rites and customs of the two religions.  Bombay sweeps these details under the rug, establishing instead a simple dichotomy where home is pluralistic and safe while the outside world is full of hate and venom.

But on first viewing, critiques like these were beside the point; the movie just enthralled with its beautiful and symbolic moments, carefully crafted and perfectly rendered - like the moment in the gorgeous song "Tu hi re" where Shaila Banu's cloak, the last remnant of her burqa, catches on an anchor as she runs along the shore, and she must shed it to make her first secret meeting with Shekhar.  Or the heartbreaking and terrifying moment when one of Shekhar and Shaila Banu's twin boys, riding on the shoulders of his Hindu grandfather, furiously wipes the tilak from the old man's forehead when the pair are confronted by a group of Muslim rioters.  At its best, Bombay is a gripping succession of breath-stopping moments like these, and a simply unforgettable film. 

(A note on language:  Bombay was originally shot in Tamil and dubbed into Telugu and Hindi - the latter being the version that I saw - which is why I've included it in the "regional" category.  I suspect it would have been even better in Tamil.)

Dharavi (1992)

धारावी

This gritty film by Sudhir Mishra offers a window into life in the titular Bombay slum.  It's harrowing yet compelling, and though its focus is a depressing tale of defeat and loss, it somehow achieves a hopeful tone at its conclusion. 

Rajkaran (Om Puri) is a cab-driver living in a tidy, one-room Dharavi shack with his mother (Anjana), his wife Kumud (Shabana Azmi), and their son.  Rajkaran yearns for success in business and a better life; he is gathering funds to buy a small cloth-dying factory.  When one of his partners pulls out unexpectedly, Rajkaran reluctantly accepts a loan from the local underworld boss Tiravi, whose goons are suspected to be behind any number of neighborhood beatings and murders.  Now indebted to Tiravi, Rajkaran finds himself drawn into ever more shady dealings, to the despair of Kumud, whose brother dared to stand up to Tiravi's tyrrany and was murdered for it.   Kumud finds solace in the peaceful company of her first husband Shankar, with whom she had parted ways years before, and who has returned to Dharavi helpless and partially paralyzed after suffering a stroke.  On the verge of losing his livelihood and alienating his family, Rajkaran grows ever more desperate.

What is most fascinating about Dharavi is its slice-of-life look at Bombay's slums.  In small but vivid details as well as in big-picture themes the film illuminates this world that is so different from my own.  The slum neighborhood itself is like a village, where everyone is all up in everyone else's business - you cannot keep secrets, and you can't cross the thugs and heavies who rule over the place; there is violence almost daily.  Kumud engages in a daily struggle with the local corrupt water-mongers; they illegally tap the municipal water supply - there are no official municipal services in Dharavi - but they won't let Kumud take more than one bucketful without a fight.  But there's also a strong sense of community; women gather in the streets to make pappadums and gossip, and in the evenings, everyone gathers in a little alley movie theater to watch escapist movies starring the likes of Anil Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit.  Rajkaran has romantic dreams in which he and Madhuri (who plays herself) roll around in mustard fields, he confiding his troubles to her, she confessing her love for him. 

Rajkaran and Kumud live in a tiny one-room corrugated shack, reminiscent of the shantytown dwellings I saw in the South African film Tsotsi.  But Kumud keeps it tidy and neat; there is a pretty little rug on the floor and potted plants on the sill, and other small comforts that can help preserve one's sanity and dignity when living in squalor.  Kumud works in a small oppressive tailor shop, like the old sweatshops of the lower east side tenements in New York, working a sewing machine while sweat beads on her forehead.  As hard as their life is, though, Kumud seems to manage it - early on, she questions why Rajkaran isn't satisfied, why he has to try to push for more - she doesn't seem, at least at this point in the movie, to share her husband's eagerness to get out of Dharavi.  But while his ambition might be inspiring, it enrages him when his industrial dreams begin to crumble, and his rage drives away everyone around him.  The message of the film is therefore a little ambiguous - should one just accept one's lot and leave well enough alone, or should one try to make something better for one's self and family?  The film resolves this ambiguity for the best by allowing Rajkaran to emerge from his trials bruised and set back, but not defeated.

Rajkaran dreaming of Madhuri:

And, a look at Shabana - I'll post a few more over at Sounds Like Power.

Dharavi is available for download from Jaman.com.

Antareen (1994)

Antareen ("confined"), a quiet and literary Bengali film by Mrinal Sen, examines a peculiar relationship that arises between two profoundly isolated individuals.  They connect and affect one another, in a demonstration that the effects of human contact can traverse both distance and anonymity.

A young writer (Anjan Dutt) arrives for an extended stay at the isolated, palatial home of a friend, who has given him the run of the house while he and his family are away.  Completely alone - save for the occasional company of a servant and the servant's grandson - the writer settles in for late-night, tea-fueled writing sessions.  One night the telephone rings, and though the other end is silent, the caller rings again the next day, and soon the young writer engages nightly in cryptic, languid conversations with the woman at the other end of the line.  She is a rich man's mistress (Dimple Kapadia) whose lover has apparently lost interest in her.  Still, he keeps her in a luxurious high-rise apartment, and also supports the rest of her family, from whom she is estranged.  The young woman is lonely and depressed; she never leaves the apartment, and reaches out only to random strangers on the telephone.  Their conversations, and the effect those conversations exert on each of them, is the focus of the film.

Though the film's pace is deliberate at best, it is intriguing enough as it unfolds, especially as the details of the woman's life come gradually into focus.  Through the woman's conversations with the writer, she slowly overcomes her inertia and begins to pull the pieces of her life together.  For the writer's part, in the beginning his interest in her appears somewhat mercenary, seeing her cynically, as grist for his writing.  But he comes to truly care for her, as we are shown, for example, by his distress when she fails to call for several days.  The dynamics of their relationship are constantly shifting.  He has the power to reach her emotionally, offering observations that strike close to home.  But for most of the film she holds the ultimate control over their interactions - she has his telephone number, while he does not have hers.  The moment when she relinquishes that control marks a clear turning point in their interaction, and by the end of the film both of them have been thoroughly transformed by the experience.

What is less clear is the statement that Mrinal Sen intends to make with the film.  It may be a statement about the randomness of human relationships, how we can be touched by input from completely unexpected and even virtually unknown sources.  I can't help but feel that if I were acquainted with Bengali literature I would have a better sense of the film's message, as it contains numerous explicit references - and probably even more implicit ones - to the short stories of Rabindranath Tagore, among others.  Without that background, Antareen is more of a mildly interesting curiosity than a truly compelling film. 

Antareen is available for download at Jaman.com.  The film is less than 90 minutes long; Dimple Kapadia is as pouty and lovely as ever in it; and the download is free - so if you are a fan of Dimple's it's definitely worth a look. 

Sarfarosh (1999)

सरफ़रोश

In 1947, in the process of yielding the governance of Hindustan, Britain divided the subcontinent into primarily Hindu India and primarily Muslim Pakistan, formalizing a religious and nationalist divide that has caused millions of deaths and that today still dominates politics within the two nations.  Part of the legacy of Partition is a host of entangled relationships among numerous Hindu majority communities in India, the Muslim minority that stayed in India after Partition, and various communities in Pakistan.  The complexities of these interactions are both fascinating and of vital importance to the region.  And so it is no surprise that they are a fertile source of material for good movies, like Sarfarosh, that explore them. 

When Ajay Singh Rathod (Aamir Khan) is a young college student, his brother is killed and his father gravely and permanently injured by terrorists.  Ajay is inspired to enter law enforcement - every criminal, he says, reminds him of the men who tore apart his family - and quickly rises to the rank of assistant commissioner.  He is assigned to crack a weapons-smuggling operation that is arming bands of village militiamen, backed ultimately by Pakistani intelligence service, with the assistance of a network of local elements within India.  On Ajay's investigative team is a brooding Muslim police inspector named Salim (Mukesh Rishi).  Ajay also meets a contemplative, philosophical ghazal singer whom he has admired since boyhood, Gulfam Hassan (Naseeruddin Shah), and enjoys a sweet romance with Seema (Sonali Bendre), a girl he had a crush on in college.  As Ajay's investigation gets closer to the truth, he comes into greater and greater peril, and learns that some of his friends are not as trustworthy as he thinks. 

Sarfarosh means "one who is prepared to die for a cause," and indeed, Sarfarosh is most compelling not for the story itself (which, though it provides an interesting glimpse into the infrastructure of terrorism, is not particularly suspenseful), nor for the fight scenes (which are violent and plentiful), but rather for its variations on the themes of religious and national identity.  Inspector Salim is passionately patriotic, but as a Muslim he suffers from the prejudice and unwarranted suspicion of his fellow officers.  When one of the smugglers escapes after a shootout with Salim, the inspector is accused of allowing the culprit - a fellow Muslim - to escape, and temporarily removed from the investigation.  Salim is deeply wounded, and lashes out with a moving speech in which he admonishes Ajay to "never tell a Salim that this is not his country."   

Gulfam sahib's story also raises the identity question.  He is a Muslim whose family was driven from its ancestral palace during Partition; he fled across the border to Pakistan.  He is revered as one of Pakistan's national treasures, yet, he tells Ajay, even fifty years later he is still held apart as a muhajir, a refugee.  He is no longer Indian and yet not fully Pakistani as well.  He is an engaging character, and the sad eyes and smile of the perfectly cast Naseeruddin Shah add depth to the sense that Gulfam sahib is something of a lost soul.

The gun-running story provides the canvas on which Gulfam sahib's and Inspector Salim's inner conflicts are painted.  Indeed, the film could have been even better had it been more about them, and less about Ajay, who is too fresh-faced to be believable at his elevated rank in the force, and too flawless to be a compelling character.  Ajay's romance with Seema, while very charming, is a distraction that is completely unnecessary except perhaps to provide a few moments of peace - for both Ajay and the audience - between rounds of gunfighting.  (In one delicious scene, Seema teases Ajay for being old-fashioned when he comments on her short short skirt; moments later, she blushingly insists that she can't meet Ajay's mother that day because "my skirt is too short!")  Also enhancing the mood is some beautiful desert cinematography and a hit-and-miss assortment of songs by Jatin-Lalit.  The standout here is the song that plays over the opening credits,  "Zindagi maut na ban jaye" ("may life not become death"), an upbeat and patriotic call to arms that plays over the films opening scenes, which are a menacing overview of the smuggling operation's clandestine transport of automatic weapons.   The film has some weaknesses, but on balance it is a solid and substantial piece. 

My thanks to Amit for comments that helped refine my initial impressions of the film.

Sarfarosh is available for free download at Jaman.com. 

Khamoshi: The Musical (1996)

ख़ामोशी

This movie is so lovely I hardly know where to begin.  Driven by the truly outstanding work of its actors, Khamoshi: The Musical tells a story that in its particulars is specific to the concerns of its deaf-mute characters, but that nevertheless resonates universally for anyone who has parents or a child.

Joseph (Nana Patekar) and his wife Flavy (Seema Biswas) are the deaf-mute parents of a hearing daughter, Annie (Manisha Koirala).  In the film's opening scenes Annie is gravely wounded in a car accident.  As she lies in a hospital bed clinging to life, the narrative shifts into flashback, and Annie recounts her life story.  When Annie was a young girl, her love of music was fostered by her singing, dancing grandmother Maria (rendered adorably by the legendary Helen).  As she grows up, and her family weathers hardship and tragedy, Annie becomes distanced from her music.  Her parents - especially Flavy - grow to resent the music because they cannot hear it; they fear that it will pulls her away from their world and from them.  As an adult, Annie meets Raj (Salman Khan), a musician and music producer.  Raj falls in love with Annie's voice, and with Annie, redoubling the tension between Annie and her parents.  Raj wants both to record Annie and to marry her; Flavy hates music, Joseph hates Raj, and Annie is agonizingly torn between her love for and responsibility to her parents on the one hand, and her need for autonomy and for music on the other. 

The film's story is poignant and well-executed; like other films by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, it is melodramatic and a little bombastic, but unlike some of his others, the melodrama and bombast are deflty executed in just the right measure to magnify and project emotions rather than parodizing them.  (Contrast Bhansali's terrible Devdas, which I can hardly believe was made by the same person.)  But more than anything, it is the stellar work of the actors that makes this film so powerful.  Nana Patekar and Seema Biswas, as the deaf-mute couple, had a difficult job to do - conveying their emotional states with their faces and hands instead of with words - and they were simply mesmerizing.  The tenderness between them was beautiful, and their interactions with their daughter - whether sharing joy or locking horns - were just gripping.  I can't tell you how many times the work of the actors stopped my breath while I while watching this film. 

Manisha Koirala was outstanding as well.  Anyone who has seen Dil se knows what Manisha can do.  She was excellent throughout Khamoshi but one scene stands out and haunts me particularly; after a dispute with her father Annie stands outside their house screaming out her frustration through the door and signing frantically, even though Joseph can neither hear nor see her.  It's a moving speech bringing to the fore the undercurrents of Annie and Joseph's relationship; Annie suppressed a lifetime of resentment at Joseph for using her as a mouthpiece, for wanting to keep her a child, for stifling her music, and it came bursting magnificently forth in this one intense scene. 

Khamoshi: The Musical is ironically and evocatively titled; "khamoshi" means "silence," and so the tension between the silent world of Joseph and Flavy, and Raj's music-filled world is compressed into the film's title.  But while the details of the story turn on Joseph and Flavy's deafness - their fear of interacting with the hearing world and their fear of losing their daughter to it - the film's themes translate to generational conflict more universally.  Parents sometimes fear losing their children to pursuits they don't understand; children sometimes experience guilt at seemingly abandoning their parents to pursue their own lives, marriages, careers.  Khamoshi addresses these universal conflicts touchingly, through its story of a family that has faced more than its share of difficulty and yet still bonds together with tremendous love. 

If there is a weakness in the film it is the music, which is largely unmemorable and ordinary, and at times worse than that.  This is frustrating to me, because I have often found that movies about music - where you might expect particular attention to be given to this aspect - nevertheless have poor music.  This was an irritation in Morning Raga and Tehzeeb and it is an irritation here as well. Still, this is a minor quibble - the movie is so fantastic otherwise that a couple of middling songs are easily overlooked.

(Khamoshi: The Musical is available for free download at Jaman.com)