Filmi Geek

Dev.D (2009)

I almost gave up on Anurag Kashyap's Dev.D after the first half hour, when it threatened to be just another retread of the classic Devdas story - a story of a pathetic, unredeemable narcissist, a story that never resonated with me.  I was well rewarded for sticking with it.  This new adaptation makes some adjustments that, while small, nevertheless yield a far more satifying film Sanjay Leela Bhansali's execrable 2002 version.

The story of Dev.D is familiar, as Devdas is a Bengali tale that has been told many times both in Hindi film and in other Indian cinemas.  Dev and Paro are childhood friends, separated when Dev's family sends him to school abroad.  They remain in touch through his long exile, and upon his return, the young adult Dev (Abhay Deol) and Paro (Mahie Gill) find that their friendship has developed into strong romantic attraction.  They intend to marry, but social forces intervene.  In this version, Paro is led to doubt that Dev will want her because her family is of lower status than his, while Dev overhears an angry servant telling salacious tales about Paro and, electing to believe them, rejects her.  Paro marries a widower selected by her family, and Dev falls into a deep drug- and alcohol-fueled despair, in the company of a prostitute called Chanda (Kalki Koechlin), who cares for him despite his narcissism and his rage.

It is in the treatment of Dev's relationship with Chanda (Chandramukhi in more traditional versions of the story) that Kashyap's Dev.D improves over earlier renderings of the tale.  Chanda is given a heartbreaking backstory that offers her some substance and helps motivate her warmth for Dev.  And Dev, for a change, is permitted an arc; in contrast to the simpering, unchanging pile of misery in Bhansali's film, here he grows in Chanda's care.  Chanda analyzes Dev, seeing that he loved the idea of possessing Paro more than he loved Paro herself.  The film's best moments come when Chanda confronts Dev with his narcissism; he accepts her insight and evolves in response to it.

In addressing, rather than indulging, the flaws of Dev's character, Dev.D is elevated.  It is not merely a gritty retelling of the old tale, dressed up with frank sexuality, coarse language, and a rock soundtrack.  Instead, it's a touching and mostly believable story of two damaged people finding each other in the darkness of their anguished lives.  Paro is sidelined, compared to other tellings of the tale, but she isn't missed; the story is Dev's and Chanda's.  And when Paro does reappear in the film's second half, she too has grown; instead of wasting herself pining for Dev, she takes a maternal pity on him.  The result of giving these young characters a chance to develop is that Dev.D advances the Devdas legacy.  Like its characters, Dev.D learns from history, rather than wallowing in it. 

Loins of Punjab Presents (2007)

I waited almost a year for my chance to see this film, and the charming comedy was worth every minute of the wait.  11 months after its successful festival opening and notable 7-week run in Indian theaters, Manish Acharya's adorable and fun debut film, Loins of Punjab Presents, has finally begun a limited theatrical run in the United States.

Loins of Punjab, the largest distributor of pork loins on the east coast, is sponsoring a weekend-long talent contest called Desi Idol, and desi dreamers from all over New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut have descended on a humble New Jersey conference hotel to work their talents for a chance at the $25,000 prize.  The contestants include Sania Rehman (Seema Rahmani), a mediocre New York actress with Bollywood aspirations; Vikram Tejwani (Manish Acharya), a laid-off financial analyst who breaks down everything - including romance - into probabilities and statistics; Preeti Patel (Ishitta Sharma), a high school student suffocating under the thumb of her rigid, but loving, immigrant family; A gay hip-hop Bhangra dancer calling himself the Turbanotorious B.D.G. (Ajay Naidu); and Joshua Cohen (Michael Raimondi), an American admirer of Indian culture.  Joshua enters the contest at the urging of his girlfriend Opama Menon (Ayesha Dharker), who soon grows less supportive when she realizes he is the ridicule of the Indian contestants. 

The film's delight is in the detail with which each of these characters, and even the many others who come and go throughout the film, are painted.  Although Acharya draws on stereotypes, he does so with deep affection for the many-faceted NRI culture from which the stereotypes arise.  And more importantly, he does so with great original humor; the jokes are not merely based upon the stereotypes, but are built upon them in satisfying layers.  So while there are broad laughs to be had from such moments as a Gujarati uncle asking for "wedge snakes" (his mispronounced version of "vege snacks") or Sania's inability to string together a sentence in Hindi despite her Bollywood dreams, there is subtler humor as well - like a running joke of desi characters taking Joshua for a waiter, or the poignant jokes about the contestant called Saddam Hussein, a security specialist who can't get work because of his unfortunate name.  This sort of joke adds a slight tinge of edginess to the humor, hinting at the darker aspects of life as a desi in America, without burdening the film with too much preachy politics. 

Of course the main attraction for me is the vicious socialite, Mrs. Rrita Kapoor (Shabana Azmi), for whom no tactic is too low if it will help her win the contest.  She intends to donate the prize money to her pet charity - if only to upstage a generous donation by her chief rival in her high-tone social scene - but her noble intentions can't compensate for the dirty pool she plays.  Her performance is as broad and scene-chewing as any in her career, and watching it almost is almost as much fun for us as giving it seems to have been for her.  But notwithstanding my own Shabana-centric reasons for awaiting this film so eagerly, no one character stole the show.  They are all likeable (well, except Mrs. Kapoor), sweet, and very, very funny. 

The resolution of Loins of Punjab Presents carries a warm-hearted message which, in one of the film's many clever and funny twists, is incoherently verbalized by its dumbest character.  If you have the opportunity to see it, you should.  It is an outstanding debut film, full of smiles and "awwww"s, and deserves to be picked up for broader distribution. 

Hey Ram (2000)

हे राम

Kamal Haasan's daring, intense film Hey Ram draws heavily on the symbology of Hindu myths to tell its story about the spasms surrounding partition.  Even though much of that layered meaning is shamefully lost on me, the film's commentary on sectarian violence - an issue that always gets to me - is both compelling and moving.

Saket Ram (Kamal Haasan) is an archeologist, a scholar and an intellectual.  Though he is a Tamil Brahmin by birth, his own political beliefs are open, progressive, and secular.  Ram's ideology is shaken to the core, though, when, in rioting following the announcement of Partition, his beloved wife Apurna (Rani Mukherjee) is brutally raped and murdered by a Muslim gang.  Ram is distraught to the point of madness, and he wanders the streets of Calcutta in a daze.  He is recognized as a fellow Brahmin by a charismatic Hindu nationalist, Abhyankar (Atul Kulkarni), who tells him that revered hero Mahatma Gandhi is true cause for the violence.  Abhyankar convinces Ram that obliterating Gandhi would solve the "Muslim problem" once and for all and allow the creation of a great Hindu nation.  Ram, traumatized and thirsty to avenge his loss, joins Abhyankar's plot on the revered leader's life, and is selected to be the lone assassin.  His quest to fulfill what he perceives to be his destiny brings him face to face with an old friend - his former colleague, a Muslim, Amjad Ali Khan (Shah Rukh Khan) - and in the heat of battle Ram must decide where his true loyalties lie. 

Ram's arc is driven by his extended case of post-traumatic stress disorder; recurring visions of Apurna's violent demise haunt him and goad him in his descent from humanist man of science to the incarnation of a vengeful impulse.  The film is rife with images of masculinity, as if Ram feels less of a man for having failed to save his beloved wife from the rioters.  The pull of the Hindutva ideology on Ram is presented as a way to restore his manhood.  In his dreams he is beefcakey, bare-chested and strong.  In one arresting sequence, after he makes love to his new wife she transmutes into an enormous rifle in his arms.  And when Ram's Hindutva group plots the assassination, the group's leader (a deposed maharaja whose motivations are closer to bitterness and greed than to ideology) exhorts Ram to show the world that Hindus are "real men," not "effeminate lovers of truth."

While the powerful imagery (as well as the names of some of the characters) suggest analogues to the Ram of mythology that I don't fully understand, I can grasp the film's larger point:  Sectarian violence as a whole, says the film, is a hallucinatory spasm of PTSD, and only real connections with family and friends can stop it.  Indeed, Ram's first attempt on Gandhi's life is interrupted by his father-in-law, and it's the strong pull of his friendship with the Muslim Amjad that finally snaps him out of his Hindutva torpor.  Ram's true ideology seems to be the progressive, humanist one he expresses at the beginning of the film; his Hindutva phase is presented as a trauma-induced hallucination, taken advantage of by the darker forces in the film. 

The film supports all these rich layers of narrative with very good performances by a vast, accomplished cast - in addition to those mentioned above there are brief appearances by the likes of Hema Malini, Girish Karnad, Om Puri, and Naseeruddin Shah as Gandhi.  Ilaiyaraja's soundtrack is memorable too, especially the haunting "Janmon ki jwala," in which Ram reminisces about Apurna.  Even with the limitations of my own inadequate background, Hey Ram is a powerful story, well told. 

Koi ... mil gaya (2003)

कोई ... मिल गया

One of India's rare science fiction films, Koi ... mil gaya ("I've met ... someone") borrows elements from ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and mixes them with some more typical filmi conventions to create an innocuous and mostly forgettable drama. 

Rohit Mehra (Hrithik Roshan) is developmentally disabled; though a full-grown adult, he has the innocence and the intellect of a not-terribly-bright child.  He has a very sunny disposition, though, and a happy life, well cared for by his mother Sonia (Rekha) and loved by his friends, a group of young boys with whom he attends school.  When a young woman named Nisha (Preity Zinta) arrives in his town and strikes his fancy, Rohit's attempts to impress her raise the ire of the jealous bully Raj (Rajat Bedi).  Raj's taunting and harassment cast a cloud over Rohit's bright days.  One day, though, Rohit discovers and activates the apparatus his deceased father - a maverick scientist - had used to attempt to communicate with other worlds.  Rohit's transmission summons an expedition of aliens, one of whom befriends Rohit.  The alien's otherworldly power transforms Rohit from an awkward naif into a remarkable man of super-human strength and intelligence.  Rohit needs all that and more to put Raj in his place and protect his new alien friend from the destructive curiosity of the Earthly authorities who seek to capture and dissect him.   

Like its more action-oriented sequel Krrish, Koi ... mil gaya has something to say about the abuse of innocence at the hands of the hard, cruel world.  But the sentiment is an easy one, presented without the kind of sophistication that would challenge the audience to any kind of introspection.  There is nothing wrong with that - a film doesn't need to be hard-hitting and provocative to be entertaining.  And Koi ... mil gaya is endearing enough, though some would certainly find it unbearably cloying, and its unbeguiling tone makes it, at base, a film whose greatest appeal will be to children.  It's a fairy tale in which bullies are unrealistically mean, revenge is exacted in improbable ways, and fantasies are fulfilled without cost.

Even though the script doesn't give him much opportunity for nuance, Hrithik Roshan certainly earns high marks for the effort he puts into playing Rohit.  Hrithik's greatest strength as a performer is his outstanding physical skill; he is a superb dancer with masterful control of his body.  Here he uses that control to give Rohit an idiosyncratic physicality that is reminiscent of Dustin Hoffman's performance in Rain Main.  Rohit child-like mind is driven by emotion, and Hrithik translates that emotion into body language, throwing his shoulders back and his chin high in the air when Rohit is happy, slouching with despair when something doesn't go his way, wearing his constant puzzlement at the complex world of grownups.  It would be a treat to see Hrithik Roshan apply all this skill in a subtler vehicle. 

In Koi ... mil gaya, though, the important thing is that the meanies get what's coming to them and the cute little alien gets home, and there's never any doubt that these things will happen.  First, though, the audience must wait patiently through an improbable basketball match (why on Earth would a gang of 20-something bullies think that beating a group of tiny children at basketball was necessary to prove themselves reigning champs of cool?) and a few unnecessarily violent fight scenes.  Eventually, innocence and purity wins out, and justice is done - with a little magical help - with a few sweet and colorful songs along the way, like Haila haila.  You can't ask much more of a simple, derivative fairy tale.

Dor (2006)

डोर

As an engaging film about the bonds between in women in which the women are sharply drawn and neither archtypical nor sterotypical, Dor (thread) reminds me a little of some of Shyam Benegal's films.  But it is sweeter and gentler than Benegal's gritty tales, and that sweetness endures long after the film is over.

Though Zeenat (Gul Panag) and Meera (Ayesha Takia) live half a nation apart and have never met, their lives are destined to intertwine.  Zeenat's husband Amir (Rushad Rana) and Meera's, Shankar (Anirudh Jaykar), both join a crew of migrant workers in Saudi Arabia, leaving their wives behind.  One night, in a heated argument, Amir (perhaps accidentally) kills Shankar.   Amir is convicted of murder, and under Saudi law, will be executed unless Shankar's widow Meera signs papers pardoning him.  And so Zeenat, desperate to save Amir, treks across hundreds of miles of Rajasthani desert to find Meera. Spurned by Shankar's family, Zeenat befriends the melancholy Meera directly.  But the bond that forms between them is shattered when Meera learns the true motive behind Zeenat's warmth.

Dor is a lovely, delicate, engaging film, and is most unusual in its presentation of the transformative power of friendship between women.  Meera, prior to Shankar's death, is so young and full of life that seeing her broken under the strictures of traditional Rajasthani widowhood is heartbreaking; where before she sang and danced to film songs, afterwards, wrapped in an unadorned cotton sari, she is tentative, afraid to move or speak, even to voice her grief.  Zeenat prods Meera to take control of her own destiny (to a degree) and helps reintroduce color into her life.  Zeenat, in contrast, is strong and practical almost to a fault - when we first meet her she is working on a construction project, and when Amir distracts her from her work and tries to kiss her she produces a nail from between her lips.  Meera teaches her an empathy for the emotions of others that she never had previously. 

There are men in Dor too but the story - refreshingly - is not about them, though it does demonstrate the action-at-a-distance force that the actions of men can have on the lives of women, as Meera and Zeenat would not have been brought together at all but for Shankar and Amir's cataclysmic burst of testosterone that fateful night in Saudi Arabia.  Some of the men in the film are piggish and cruel, like Meera's father and his wealthy tenant, who attempt to arrange a business transaction in which Meera is the barter.  Others, though, bolster the women's strength and spirit with their love and support, like Amir and Shankar, each of whom loves his wife exactly for the woman she is and would not dream of trying to mold her into something else. 

The standout among the film's men is Behroopiya (Shreyas Tapalde), an actor and a trickster who first cons Zeenat, then befriends her and helps her in her quest to find Meera, and finally falls in love with her - though his love is not the demanding kind, and he never intrudes on her marriage or her love for her husband. Behroopiya's friendship is a kind of anchor for Zeenat's passion, and the aid he provides is both practical and spiritual.

Dor is well-wrought and memorable, delicate and sweet, and achieves that rare feat of being both real and touching at the same time.  It achieves a very fine balance, making its bittersweet point with a gentle touch.

Jodhaa-Akbar (2008)

जोधा-अकबर

Ashutosh Gowariker's take on the story of the ecumenical court of the great Mughal emperor Akbar owes a debt to Hindi classics like Mughal-e-azam as well as modern Hollywood epics in the vein of Gladiator or Troy.  Epic in scope as well as in length, Jodhaa-Akbar does not quite hit all the right notes, but at its best moments it's effective, painting a story with modern resonance on a lush historical canvas.

The young Mughal emperor Jalaluddin Mohammed (Hrithik Roshan) dreams of a united Hindustan, joining both his own Mughal territories with the tribal lands ruled by the valiant and proud - and Hindu - Rajput clan.  He attempts to annex the Rajput kingdoms with a combination of military might and honorable rule, doing away with his ancestors' practices of slaying conquered kings and making slaves of their people.  Meanwhile a succession struggle within one of the Rajput kingdoms, coupled with the ambitions of certain members of both the Mughal and Rajput houses, leads to a marriage between the young emperor and a Rajput princess, Jodhaa (Aishwarya Rai).  This alliance - and in particular the marriage of the Muslim emperor to a Hindu princess - sends shockwaves through both the Mughal courts and Rajput palaces alike, and tensions flare even within Jalaluddin's own household.  Jodhaa demands respect for her religious traditions, and the ecumenical Jalaluddin is happy to comply, to the outrage of his Muslim advisors - particularly his closest advisor, his wet-nurse and surrogate mother Maham Anga (Ila Arun).  She begins plotting against Jodhaa almost the moment the Rajput princess arrives.  In the midst of this grand-scale political battle and the politics of the royal court, Jalaluddin has clear goals that are easier to state than to achieve - to unite Hindustan without bloodshed; to rule a peaceful nation where Hindus and Muslims are each free to worship as they choose; and to win the heart of his stubborn Rajput bride. 

This is truly the stuff of which epics are made, but it's a whole lot to fit into a movie.  Gowariker attempts to graft a classic filmi love story - where partners in an arranged marriage gradually develop real tenderness - onto a grand historical tale with all the full complement of battle scenes, palace intrigue, and allegorical resonance.  The result is a film that is not always sure what it's trying to be. 

It is one part a paean to Jalaluddin, whom history remembers as Akbar - the Great - and the film's Jalaluddin is certainly flawless almost to the point of dullness, with his limitless capacity for compassion and forgiveness, and his vision of a united and tolerant Hindustan.  Jalaluddin is presented as the first Mughal emperor actually born in Hindustan - these roots are part of why he sees himself as an emperor of the people rather than a conqueror.  The parallel between Jalaluddin and the generation of Indian leaders born after Partition is certainly not lost on Gowariker.  And just as Mughal-e-azam made its subtextual plea for Hindu-Muslim unity to a post-Partition audience, Jalaluddin's impassioned speeches about tolerance are clearly directed to the modern audience even more than to Jalaluddin's ministers and subjects.  Indeed, the film portrays his great proclamation of religious equality - abolishing the Pilgrimage Tax against Hindus - as the act that earned him the title Akbar.

In another aspect Jodhaa-Akbar is a grand swords-and-horsemen drama, with interminable battle scenes in which Gowariker shows his technical skill at managing sophisticated shots stuffed with thousands of extras and adding little to the film except a Hollywood sense of spectacle.  The alliances and betrayals swirling through the Mughal and Rajput camps add more in the way of substance, but even the best of these episodes of palace intrigue - the betrayal engineered by the terrifying Maham Anga - is reduced to shorthand and resolved almost instantaneously after it unfolds, with no real lasting consequences for the story. 

Finally, and perhaps most indulgently, Jodhaa-Akbar is a romance, developing a love story between the emperor and the princess in occasional moments of erotic heat embedded, unfortunately, in a large base of rather ordinary filmi conventions.  In one of Gowariker's cleverer moves, he provides the requisite gratuitous bare-chested shots of Hrithik Roshan exercising in the sun - firmly anchoring the scene to the story's arc by showing Jodhaa (who has not yet allowed her husband to touch her) slack-jawed with lust, surreptitiously watching him.  The effect is that even if the beefcake show isn't your thing - it isn't mine - the scene is memorable and appealing.

On balance, despite Jodhaa-Akbar's directorial indulgences, it's a satisfying spectacle, a solid timepass with a few elevated moments.  While its stars are too pretty by half - their bearing is more like movie stars playing dress-up than like a young emperor and princess - their performances are adequate to the film's unsubtle presentation.  (In a nice detail, Jalaluddin speaks high Urdu while Jodhaa and the Rajputs choose a much more Sanskrit-derived vocabulary.)  It is a waste that neither Hrithik nor Aishwarya gets to dance in the film. Gowariker attempts to compensate by giving them swordplay but it isn't the same; Jodhaa's swordplay in particular is a gratuitous and silly plot device, if pretty to watch.  But there is some wonderful music all the same, including two very memorable song sequences - the grand, imperial celebration of "Azeem-o-shaan shehenshah" and the gorgeous hymn "Khwaja mere khwaja" (discussed further by Sanket here).  The latter ends with the swirling dance of a troupe of Sufi dervishes, and in another of the film's touching moments the sensitive Jalaluddin is moved to join them in the dance. 

Aaja nachle (2007)

आजा नचले

Madhuri Dixit is back, and as stunning as ever, in a vehicle whose very title, Aaja nachle ("Come and dance"), tells you that it's designed to play to her greatest strength.  That alone makes Aaja nachle worth seeing, and while the film otherwise doesn't quite meet its potential, it's still a good solid all-around entertainer.

As a young girl, Diya was the toast of her small town of Shamli - both the star dancer in the local troupe and the breaker of local hearts.  Impulsive and thirsty for adventure, Diya eloped with an American photographer, and Shamli was never the same.  Diya's parents were shamed right out of town, and Shamli's stage, Ajanta, where Diya once dazzled with her performances, fell into disuse.  Some ten years later, Diya, now divorced, returns to Shamli at the request of her dying mentor and decides to take on the establishment - in the form of a young MP named Raja (Akshaye Khanna) and a scheming businessman Farouq (Irfan Khan) - who would like to see Ajanta torn down and replaced by a shopping mall.  Diya sets out to woo the hearts of Shamli back to her, and back to dance as well, orchestrating a home-grown production of the classic romance of Laila Majnu.  She's operating against long odds though.  The town is arrayed against her, and her troupe, led by the recalcitrant Imran (Kunal Kapoor) and the unpolished Anokhi (Konkona Sen Sharma) is ragtag at best.  Diya's work is cut out for her.

Aaja nachle doesn't mess around.   There's no coy opening, no stalling the much-anticipated revelation of its heroine.  Instead, it gives you what you came for right in the very first frames - Madhuri smiling, Madhuri dancing.  But this delectable appetizer is not offered without a hint of reproach toward Bollywood's prodigal daughter.  Madhuri is dancing, all right, but she's dancing in New York, to a distinctly American-sounding R&B song with English lyrics, and surrounded by gora extras so pale that even fairer-than-fair Madhuri looks dusky in comparison.  The effect (clearly calculated, and perhaps enhanced by makeup) is both striking and confusing, as if the film is simultaneously chastising Madhuri for fleeing to the States while reminding the audience that she's still very much theirs.

Unfortunately that symbolically laden opening is the last opportunity Aaja nachle takes to tie its feel-good story to a deeper message.  There are numerous opportunities for allegory here, but none of them are clearly taken.  There is neither a clear nod to the modern NRI incarnation of Madhuri Dixit as the prodigal savior of Hindi film, or a sharp criticism of those who might see her such.  The groundwork is laid for a strong message on the tension between the benefits of progress and development on the one hand and the preservation of traditional art forms on the other, but nothing is built on that foundation either.  Every time Aaja nachle gets close to saying something about anything at all, it shies away, retreating into the bright, shiny, familiar clothes of an all-out entertainer.

If that's all you demand from Aaja nachle, though, it delivers amply.  After all, Madhuri is Madhuri, and she's as gorgeous and perfect as ever; there's nothing like watching her do her thing in a colorful production number, whether the resplendent title song in the film's first half or the intense 20-minute extravaganza that is the town's Laila Majnu production.  And she's given a supporting cast that enhances the fun.  Konkona Sen Sharma is particularly brilliant as the rough, gruff, tomboy Anokhi - she's an actor with seemingly limitless range and guts to match, and she inhabits this unglamorous character with delightful fearlessness. 

And so Aaja nachle takes its place among satisfyingly solid entertainers, films that look great and leave you tapping your toes and smiling but that don't stand up to much deep thought afterward. Though I know that Madhuri is good for more than that, I can't really complain -  I'll watch her come and dance any old time.   

(Thanks to David for some helpful discussions.)

Taare zameen par (2007)

तारे ज़मीन पर

Aamir Khan acts in his own directorial debut, but he doesn't fill the screen with himself.  Instead he steps aside, giving top billing to an engaging little boy.  The result is Taare zameen par ("stars on earth") a film that's charming and sweet - if a touch preachy at moments - and highly, highly recommended.  Just don't forget to bring the Kleenex.

Ishaan (Darsheel Safary) is struggling in school.  His homework makes no sense to him; scorned by his teachers and laughed at by his classmates, school is a daily torture that he endures the best he can.  His doting mother (Tisca Chopra), demanding father (Vipin Sharma), and affectionate big brother (Sachet Engineer) don't know what to do with him.  After Ishaan fails the third standard for the second time, his father sends him to a boarding school whose strict discipline he believes will set Ishaan straight.  But things only get darker for the boy, who is beaten and declared hopeless by his teachers, until he's all but given up on himself.  Then Ishaan's rescue arrives, in the form of Ram Shankar Nikumbh (Aamir Khan), a substitute art teacher who sees his own childhood in Ishaan's lonely struggle, and helps to give it a name: dyslexia.  Ram sets to work getting through to Ishaan and showing his teachers and parents how to see the world through his eyes.

A story meant to raise awareness about dyslexia - especially in India, where I suspect the disorder is even less widely understood and accommodated than it is in the U.S. - will not be able to completely avoid the pitfalls of pontification, and Taare zameen par has its moments when the preaching gets out of hand.  For the most part, though, it hits all the right spots, giving its instruction by illuminating Ishaan's world - a world where letters and numbers dance on the page, transforming themselves into imaginitive flights of fancy reminiscent of Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes strips.  The occasional wrong note - like Ishaan's father bowing his head and taking an insolent lecture from Ram Nikumbh without a trace of defensiveness or outrage - is more than made up for by the numerous soaring - and searing - moments.  In one standout scene, Ishaan, confused and enraged after his first week or two at the boarding school, breaks away from his visiting family and runs as hard as he can - in tiny circles, around a basketball court. 

Aamir Khan asks young Darsheel Safary, as Ishaan, to shoulder the burden of his film, and the child actor rises to the challenge stunningly.  He is on the screen in nearly every scene, and he fills it with his infectious joy and his heartbreaking anguish. The meticulous detail of his relationship with his family is another of the film's strengths, especially that with his successful older brother Yohan, who takes firsts in every class and plays competitive caliber tennis. Yohan is puzzled by his little brother's failure to thrive but he never once calls him "stupid" or questions the boy's spark.  Aamir himself stays out of the way for the film's first half - he doesn't even appear until seconds before the intermission - but he can't really help taking over in the second half, making it a little less pure and immersive than the first.  But again, like the preachy moments, these are small quibbles about a lovely and winning film. 

The Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy soundtrack, like the film itself, hits all the right manipulative notes, now sweet and melancholy, now driving and manic like Ishaan's frustration.  The standout songs include "Jame raho," detailing in frenetic stop-motion the morning routine of Ishaan's family - and the contrast between his father and brother's approach to the day, and his own.  Another memorable song is "Maa," a hymn of love and loneliness played when Ishaan is left alone at the boarding school watching his family recede into the distance.  Reach for the hankies - in scenes like this one, Taare zameen par had me crying buckets. 

Saawariya (2007)

साँवरिया

No one can say that Sanjay Leela Bhansali lacks vision - meticulous, elaborate, rich vision.  If he were apply that vision to a story with some depth and potential, the result could be astonishing, but Saawariya ("beloved") is not that film.  It's not as awful as his Devdas - but it's hard for me to find more than that faint praise for this film that manages to be dull despite all the sparkle.

Young loner Ranbir Raj (Ranbir Kapoor) appears one night in the red light district of some nameless fantasy town.  Late at night at the grand RK Bar he meets a melancholy prostitute Gulabji (Rani Mukherjee) and she is instantly taken with him.  Looking for a place to stay, he works his charm on Lillian (Zohra Sehgal), the elderly matron of a local flophouse.  He also wins over all of Gulabji's downtrodden colleagues.  The one person he has some trouble getting through to, though, is a young girl he meets in the street late on night, the dreamy Sakina, whom he falls for thoroughly.  Sakina is by turns amused and annoyed by Raj; her heart belongs to a mysterious stranger, Imaan (Salman Khan), whom she met and fell in love with a year before - now she anxiously awaits his promised return. 

The chain of longing and desire is taut - Gulabji is tenderly protective of Raj, Raj is manically in love with Sakina, Sakina waits breathlessly for Imaan.  And for all the fantasy of the settings, Raj and Sakina embody a fairly faithful portrayal of teenage obsession.  Raj spins an elaborate fantasy of the progress of his courtship of Sakina, and when it doesn't measure up to his expectations, he seems to think his world is coming to an abrupt end.  Saawariya captures the mood swings and manic intensity of adolescent longing.  The trouble for Saawariya is that these elements just aren't all that interesting.  The characters are distilled archetypes - Sakina the distracted romantic, Raj the happy go-lucky charmer harboring a lonely heart (his origins, and the reason for his wanderings, is left a complete mystery), Imaan the darkly sexual mystery man.  But since the characters are totems, rather than people, their loves and losses are unengaging.  The fantasy city of Bhansali's setting - an all-indoor construction that is part Moulin Rouge, part Devdas, part Singin' in the Rain, and part Dickens - is pretty, but doesn't make up for the dull stretches of the narrative.

Much of the hype surrounding Saawariya was the introduction of its two young stars, especially Ranbir Kapoor, the newest scion of the venerable filmi dynasty.  Bhansali has loaded his film with references to Ranbir's grandfather, the legendary showman Raj Kapoor: the sign adorning the RK Bar evokes the logo of Raj Kapoor's production house, and Ranbir's vagabond clothes evoke the man himself. While these homages are charming, they are also unnecessary and distracting.  Ranbir may have the talent to carry his family's mantle but constantly reminding the audience where he comes from doesn't make him any more appealing on screen.  At any rate, his performance in Saawariya needs toning down; in his character's most manic moments he resembles a crazed ferret on speed, substituting Snoopy dancing for real emotion.  There is a fine line between charming and annoying, and if the audience has to ask itself "is that charming, or annoying?" then chances are it is not charming.   Meanwhile, Saawariya's other debutante, Sonam Kapoor (a distant cousin to the Prithviraj-Raj line of Kapoors) is given precious little to do other than look pretty and run dramatically through the fairy-tale sets. 

Saawariya is the most engaging when Rani Mukherjee is on screen; her portrayal of Gulabji captures a melancholy resignation and a bittersweet air that makes her the least caricatured of all the characters in the film.  If Saawariya has one foot in reality, it is Gulabji's foot,  and the character says as much as the film opens.  A film about her mature suffering, instead of Raj and Sakina's growing pains, could have been a thing of beauty. 

One thing that Bhansali did beautifully even in the execrable Devdas was the songs, and there are some gems here as well, especially Gulabji's very cheeky turn in "Chhabeela," in which she praises Raj's sexy youthfulness, and the gorgeous "Yoon shabnami," a qawwali in which Raj compares his love to the new moon rising to signal the end of the Ramadan fast and the start of the Eid celebration.  There was one song that struck me as an utter failure, though others have liked it:  "Padi," in which Raj cheers all the neighborhood prostitutes with the promise that some day angels will come from the sky and save them from their degraded state.  I find this appalling, an absurdly patronizing sentiment.  It is a major wrong note struck very early in the film, and a missed opportunity to expand on the story of the compelling Gulabji  - the film would have done better to focus on Raj shining some light into her life, instead of making him a cheesy magician winning depressed hearts by spewing pablum all over them.

Om Shanti Om (2007)

ओम शांति ओम

God bless Farah Khan.

This nervy director proves in her reincarnation saga Om Shanti Om what I already suspected after Main hoon na - that she knows better than anyone how to use Shah Rukh Khan.  Om Shanti Om is not without its warts, but it's a solidly entertaining film, pure modern masala in the tradition of (and with cheeky homage to) the likes of Manmohan Desai and other masala greats of the past. 

Om Prakash Makhija (Shah Rukh Khan) is a two-bit actor, struggling to rise above his junior artiste status in the competitive melee of the 1970s Bombay film scene.  Advised by his sidekick Pappu (Shreyas Talpade), Om throws himself into his small parts, dreaming that someday, he'll be a revered hero.  He has other dreams as well - he is in love with a young superstar heroine, Shantipriya (Deepika Padukone), and spends his free time pining before her three-storey effigy on a film hoarding.  After a mishap on a film set, Om bravely saves Shanti from a fire, and the two become friends.  Shanti has dark secrets, though, some of which involve the shady producer Mukesh Mehra (Arjun Rampal), and these lead to a calamity from which Om cannot save Shanti - or even himself.  On his death Om is reborn into the body of Om Kapoor, the scion of a filmi dynasty, who grows up to be a spoiled, vapid diva of a superstar known in the biz by his initials, OK.  Circumstances conspire to jog OK's memory of his past life, and he resolves to right the wrongs that led to Om Prakash and Shanti's premature demise.

Om Shanti Om is stuffed to the gills with self-referential humor and filmi references.  The jokes come fast and thick, especially in the first half, and some of them are ingenious.  A constant barrage of filmi jokes might or might not get tiring to someone who grew up with Hindi films, but to me it is a pure delight even to be able to get as many of the jokes as I do.  There are hilarious spoofs of filmi conventions and filmi lore, clever uses of footage from classic films, and an absolutely uproarious Filmfare Awards ceremony in which nothing is sacred - everything is skewered, from Shah Rukh Khan's penchant for bubblegum romance to the recent trend toward sequel-mania to industry nepotism to the big egos of the stars.  Even my beloved Shabana Azmi is not above the fray, joining a lengthy parade of superstars who give cute, self-deprecating cameo appearances. 

And at the center of all the self-referential humor is Shah Rukh Khan himself, who cuts loose with all the body language and exaggerated range of facial expressions that his fans find so charming and the rest of us so irritating.  But in Om Shanti Om, subtlety is not the order of the day, and Shah Rukh's special style fits right in, working well as broad, scene-chewing, physical comedy; as his character notes:  "overacting mere khandan mein hai" - overacting runs in my family.  This is the special intelligence of Farah Khan, and it's what makes her movies with Shah Rukh Khan great watching even for this non-fan - she knows not to use him in earnest.  His excess of lover-boy intensity may induce eyerolls in a romance, but it's perfect for a Farah Khan musical dream sequence.  Same for his lip-quivery emoting, which doesn't always pass for acting in a serious movie; it's perfect in comedy, as in the hysterical sequence where Om tries to tell Shanti his feelings - his poetically-formed thoughts come out in voice-over, while his eyebrows wobble and lips tremble, unable to form the words. 

For all its side-splitting cleverness, the film has been criticized as a series of genius bits in search of a soul, and this criticism is not without merit.  The reincarnation-revenge plot doesn't offer much to sink one's teeth into, and yet the film's second half drags in service of its resolution.  And, as Beth points out, as fearless and terrific a woman as Farah Khan is, she doesn't give her heroine a whole lot to do.  Deepika Padukone, here in her debut, is pretty and elegant as Shanti, and serviceable in her acting, showing the right mixture of innocence and melancholy.  She fades in the second half, though; she has a few comic turns that she handles adequately but there's little of substance in her role.  Arjun Rampal as the villainous Mukesh fades as well; an amusing homage to slick Danny Denzongpa characters in the first half, he recedes in the second half, losing his villainous edge just as good storytelling would demand that he get nastier. 

If such weaknesses deny Om Shanti Om masterpiece status, though, they don't detract from the good solid fun to be had throughout most of this stylish, witty comedy.  After an outstanding opening it will surely go on to reach blockbuster status in India, and it deserves to be seen and enjoyed; any fan of Hindi films should find something to laugh at within.  And I remain a steadfast fan of Farah Khan and her special cheeky brand of spectacle.  Here's to many more.