Filmi Geek

Silsila (1981)

सिलसिला

I'm not sure whether it reflects any particular cultural turning point in India - or just events in the lives of the people who make the movies - but whatever the reason, the early 80s produced a cluster of excellent films about adultery.  I've written before about two of these, Arth and Masoom.  Another is Silsila ("Connection"), a film which illuminates the interplay between duty and desire, and which was perhaps at the vanguard of the adultery-film phenomenon. 

Amit Malhotra (Amitabh Bachchan) has fallen madly in love with Chandni (Rekha) and plans to marry her.  He and his brother, fighter pilot Shekhar (Shashi Kapoor) plan a double wedding: Amit to Chandni, and Shekhar to his patient fiancee Shobha (Jaya Bachchan).  When Shekhar is killed in the line of duty, and Amit learns that Shobha is pregnant, Amit decides to marry Shobha out of a sense of love and duty toward his brother's memory.  Without explanation, Amit breaks off his relationship with Chandni and marries Shobha.  Circumstances conspire to reunite Amit and Chandni, though, and although she is married to a good, kind man (Sanjeev Kumar), the spark between her and Amit burns too brightly for them to resist.  They begin a steamy, clandestine affair, but both their marriages crumble as the secret becomes increasingly difficult to keep.

Silsila's resolution is abrupt, overwrought, and contrived, and arguably compromises the integrity of the story.  Nevertheless, the film up to the last 20 minutes or so is deliberately paced, tense, and believable.  Its realism and sensitivity is driven by the performances of its principals.  Before Shekhar's death, Amit is the brash, boisterous hero archetype that Amitabh played in so many of his films; afterwards, though, Amitabh transforms the character, as Amit bends and breaks under the weight of his grief and the sacrifices he feels he has to make.  Both Amitabh and Jaya convey a sense of people reluctantly doing their duty and willing themselves to be, if not happy, then at least stable and not miserable. 

The true star of Silsila, though, is Sanjeev Kumar, whose performance is amazingly nuanced.  His Dr. Anand carries in his face and in his body the fear that he is losing Chandni.  In one stunning scene, Chandni sees Anand off on a business trip; Anand hesitates to leave her and board his plane, and his anxiety that she may leave him before he returns is palpable.  Sanjeev Kumar is one of the era's most subtle actors, and his moving performance in Silsila shines. 

The weak link for me among the work of the four principals (five if Shashi is included) is Rekha.  I have never really warmed to Rekha, except in Umrao Jaan, a role I think she was born to play.  In Silsila, she is a little too breathless and ephemeral a match for the solid and earthy Amitabh.  This is clearly just my opinion, though, as the two actors were long rumored to have shared a steamy romance in real life, and many Bollywood fans consider them a perfect pair.  Indeed, Silsila's casting is rather remarkable, as the film portrays Amitabh married to his real-life wife Jaya, having an affair with his putative real-life mistress Rekha.  It is hard for me to imagine what this must have looked like at the time, to observers both within the industry and among the janta, the general movie-watching public at large.

At any rate, my cold response to Rekha, combined with some weaknesses in her character - Chandni seems driven entirely by Amit's wishes and takes no decisive actions of her own - left me somewhat emotionally detached from her part of the story.  She came to life only when she smiled - or danced, as in the sparkling "Ladki hai ya shola" ("Is she a girl or a flame?"), marking Chandni and Amit's first meeting.  Other memorable songs include the Holi festival number "Rang barse" - a pivotal moment in the story - and "Dekha ek khwab" ("I had a dream"); the latter is a great song, but the picturization is a little cloying, as Amitabh and Rekha roll around in Dutch tulip fields.

Guide (1965)

Even in his prime Dev Anand had something of a creepy dirty old man about him, and his films tend toward the preachy side.  But somehow I like them anyway.  They are well-crafted and interesting, and always feature delectable heroines and terrific song and dance.  Jewel Thief in particular is a delicious confection from beginning to end; Hare rama hare krishna, while more serious and less perfectly wrought, also has its strengths.  Guide is still weightier fare, but it delivers its heavy-handed spiritual message with a beautiful sense of style.

Raja (Dev Anand), freshly released from prison, decides to get a fresh start in a distant city.  On the way, he takes a nap in a temple; the villagers mistake him for a wandering holy man, and he goes along with the error, enjoying the free food and free shelter.  A flashback that lasts most of the film's length provides Raja's backstory.  He started out as a tour guide in a small town.  A visiting archaeologist and his wife Rosie (Waheeda Rehman) engage his services, and as he gets to know them he learns that their marriage is troubled.  Rosie only wants to dance, an activity that her husband forbids.  When the marriage finally implodes, Raja helps Rosie pursue her dream - falling in love with her in the process - and before long she is a world famous dancer.  Eventually things turn sour for Raja and Rosie as well, and a distance grows between them; a series of poor choices by both of them leads to their separation and Raja's incarceration.  Back in the story's present, Raja is drawn deeper into the spiritual needs of the villagers who have anointed him their swami.  Ultimately, Raja must make a decision: withdraw from the con-game that made him the villager's spiritual leader, or face his own spiritual journey head-on.    

Raja's spiritual journey is moving, but it is also a peculiar bookend to the meat of the story:  his relationship with Rosie, and Rosie's confusion about what she wants from her life.  There were no delicate parallels to be found between Rosie's arc and Raja's; the two stories are connected because Raja is involved in both of them, but it seems that Raja could have had any number of troubled relationships and still ended up in the same place. 

Still, while it isn't the most cohesive film ever, Guide is gripping, not least  because of the dramatic, alluring intensity of Waheeda Rehman.  She is stunningly beautiful, and she offers a performance of tightly wound, dark intensity punctuated by eye-popping, brilliant dance.  In her first number of the film, the famous "snake dance," she cuts loose with an intensity that palpably conveys the passion that Rosie's disapproving husband has forced her to suppress.  And the profound, emotional S.D. Burman soundtrack gives her many more moments to shine:  "Piya tose" tracks Rosie's meteoric rise from village entertainer to international superstar; within the course of the song she dances in ever larger production numbers on ever larger stages.  And in "Mose chal," Rosie dances out her anger at Raja when she thinks he has cheated and betrayed her.

All in all, Guide is an effective film, quite different from your stereotypical Bollywood love story, and quite sensitive, if somewhat preachy, in both its portrayal of the earthly concerns of a sad divorced woman and its ultimate discourse in Vedic philosophy and spirituality.

Filmi Geek metapost

Filmi Geek is now completely up-to-date; there is now a post for every Indian movie I have seen.  Since on average I only watch 3-4 new (to me) Hindi films in a month, there will be more time between posts from now on. 

But I'm still here, improving things behind the scenes.  I have expanded and revised some existing posts, and will continue to do so as I re-watch films I saw a relatively long time ago.  For example, I recently expanded my Fire review, which I never felt did justice to my deep, irrational love for that film.  And this week I watched Nishant again, with a much different perspective from the first time I saw it well over a year ago, so I completely overhauled its post as well.  I've also been adding new YouTube video links to some of my existing posts.  So there's stuff going on, even if it doesn't appear as new posts on the main page. 

I invite you all to suggest features you would like to see added to Filmi Geek, such as additional categories or different kinds of posts.  I am considering doing some posts about filmi music, separate from posts about the corresponding films; I welcome your thoughts on what else I can add to make Filmi Geek more useful and more fun. 

Finally, I'm getting over a hundred hits a day now and so I want to thank everyone who stops by for reading.  I hope you enjoy your stay and I am grateful for your visits and your comments.  Filmi Geek is a labor of love for me, an archive for me to remember what I've seen and how I felt about it, but if others can enjoy it too so much the better.  Thank you! 

<---- Shabana Azmi reading Filmi Geek.  Okay, probably not.  But a girl can dream, can't she? 

Masoom (1983)

मासूम

Masoom is a sweet, sad story about the repercussions of bad decisions made by basically good people. 

Indu (Shabana Azmi) and DK (Naseeruddin Shah) have a happy marriage.  They are partners and lovers, and their prosperous home is filled with the laughter of their two sunny, affectionate daughters.  One day, this joyful peace is shattered when DK receives word that he has a son - early in his marriage to Indu, he had a brief affair with another woman, who had his child and never told him.  Now the woman is dead, and the boy, Rahul (Jugal Hansraj), is in need of a father and a home.  Over the objections of Indu, who is heartbroken and devastated to learn of her husband's unfaithfulness, the boy comes to stay with them for a time.  Rahul bonds with Indu and DK's daughters - and with DK - but Indu can't bear to look at the boy, who is a physical, tangible reminder of DK's breach of her trust. 

The film's title, Masoom, means "innocent," and there are a number of innocent victims of DK's transgression, not least the boy Rahul himself, who only wants to be loved, to be part of the family, and to find his father.  In one particularly heartbreaking sequence, Rahul, puzzled by Indu's coldness to him, makes her a birthday gift;  she struggles palpably with tenderness toward him on the one hand, and horror and anger at what he represents on the other.  Indu herself is innocent as well, and the film puts her in a terrible position.  It is heartbreaking to watch her take out her pain and anger on the boy and grapple to come to terms with what she knows she has to do for him.

I've expressed this particular fan-girl gushiness before, but Masoom inspires it afresh:  one of the things I love best about Shabana Azmi is that she conveys so much in her silences.  She never needs a lot of dialogue to make plain the contents of her character's heart and mind. Her performance in Masoom is no exception; she makes Indu's struggle palpable, as she alternates between tenderness and coldness toward the boy, or toward her husband.  One of the most poignant such scenes occurs when DK and Rahul return from a few days away from the family.  Indu's daughters leap with excitement at their father's return, and for a moment Indu is joyful as well - a broad smile crosses Indu's face, and she rises and begins to fix her hair in the mirror.   Then she stops, suddenly, and her face changes, becoming cold and sad, her pain overtakes her momentary joy at DK's return.  The film is loaded with small, aching moments like this, and Shabana makes each one real and heartrending. 

Naseeruddin Shah, too, provides a nice, evocative performance as DK.  Naseer is always good at portraying deeply sad characters; here, he wears his pain in his droopy face and frail, weary body. 

I've been reminded by the comments below that I meant to remark on the outstanding work of the children in Masoom.  They were real as children; neither too angelic, nor simply miniature adults, and all three child actors performed well, especially young Jugal Hansraj as Rahul.  The elder daughter was played by Urmila Matondkar, who grew up to be an acclaimed actress as an adult.

Masoom also features a handful of pretty songs by R.D. Burman (including this lullaby picturized on Shabana); I understand that some of these are remembered as beloved evergreen hits, and while I admit that they did not make a strong impression on me on first viewing, they have grown on me in subsequent listenings.  All in all, a delicate, sensitive film, thoughtfully crafted and movingly executed.

Bombay Talkie (1970)

Some films tell the stories of extraordinary individuals, true heroes.  Others show us very ordinary people tried by extraordinary circumstances, and the response of those ordinary people in rising - or in failing to rise - to the occasion is what makes the story compelling.  Then there are films that expose the lives of vapid, shallow people, films in which in which nearly every character is a pathetic, even hateful person.  Bombay Talkie, a relatively early product of the Merchant-Ivory-Jhabwala collaboration that produced so many of my favorite films in the 1980s and 1990s, is one such film.  And if you like the genre, it is a pretty good exemplar.

Lucia Lane (Jennifer Kendal) is an insufferable, superficial best-selling author who has traveled to India in search of ideas for her next novel.  Vikram (Shashi Kapoor) is a handsome Bombay movie star, a spoiled child accustomed to having whatever he wants, whenever he wants it.  They meet, sparks fly, and Vikram and Lucia dive headlong into a volatile relationship, to the chagrin of both Vikram's wife Mala (Aparna Sen) and a bitter scriptwriter named Hari (Zia Mohyeddin), who also has fallen in love with Lucia.  The film follows their on-again, off-again relationship, focusing primarily on Vikram's and Lucia's feeble attempts to figure out what they really want; somewhat less so on the toll their relationship takes on Mala and Hari. 

In one of the film's more interesting arcs, poor Hari, who (along with the sad suppressed Mala) is one of the few somewhat sympathetic characters in the film, is manipulated and goaded and victimized by his inexplicable love for Lucia; he seems to know she's not worthy of his love, and he despises himself for loving her all the same.  Even the relatively human Hari is not wholly likable, as he drips with open contempt for Vikram.  Still, his final outburst - though broadly telegraphed - is heartbreakingly tragic. 

Just as the film would have benefited from a closer look at Hari, it also spent too little time on the troubled Mala, doomed to be merely the movie star's wife.  We are given a tiny hint of the strain that her inability to have children has placed on their marriage (a time-honored theme in Indian film).  We also know that Lucia is hardly Vikram's first extra-curricular excursion.  There is a lot to be said about why women sometimes feel duty-bound to maintain a strong public face around philandering, selfish husbands, and Bombay Talkie only scratched the surface of that, because it wasn't about Mala.  And that's unfortunate, because she was much more interesting than the two petulant brats that the film actually was about. 

Finally, what irked me most about Bombay Talkie was that it seemed to treat India (and Indian films) with a certain condescension that I found both offensive and inappropriate.  The best example of this is in a sequence in the middle of the film in which Lucia, hoping to clear her head and put Vikram behind her, joins an ashram.  The sequence was promising in the beginning; there is a wonderful scene in which Lucia, so clearly uncomfortable and out-of-place, ducks out of sight of the guru and his devotees to adjust her sari, tucking and retucking, draping and redraping, unable to get the hang of the unfamiliar garment.  But instead of presenting Lucia's growing discomfort as an aspect of her own character, it is presented with a condescending wink and nod - not "Look at Lucia, too inflexible to adapt to a different culture," but "look at this adorable weird little Indian spirituality, too primitive for a civilized person like Lucia."  The film's whole approach - to the Bombay film industry as well as to Indian spirituality - rather had this tone to me. 

I have a friend who loves this film for the window it offers into a certain segment of Bombay society and the Bombay film industry of the late 1960s.  I have trouble appreciating Bombay Talkie on these terms, especially given its condescending tone; I can't take much pleasure in a putative insider like Ismail Merchant offering to the English-speaking audience such a contemptuous look at the world in which he cut his teeth.  Still, the film was compelling - rather the way a car wreck is compelling - and people who enjoy films that explore the weaknesses of the famous and powerful may similarly enjoy Bombay Talkie.  And the film has its whimsical highlights - one is the "Fate Machine," a giant typewriter upon which Vikram shoots a musical number with Hindi film's legendary item girl Helen.  The Fate Machine gave me the feeling that I've been watching the wrong Hindi films, as I have never seen a set that wild and surreal.

Khalnayak (1993)

खलनायक

One of the finest song picturizations I have ever seen is the magnificent "Choli ke peeche," the scandalously sexy number that outraged Indian religious conservatives and cemented Madhuri Dixit's place as the the queen of Bollywood in the 1990s.  The picturization is a brightly-colored eyeful of T&A topped by Madhuri's winning smile.  The song itself is packed with double- and single-entendres.  "Choli ke peeche kya hai?" asks its refrain - "What's behind your blouse?"  The answer, delivered with a delicious faux-demureness, is "Behind my blouse is my heart, and I'll give it to my love."  Yeah, right - as soon as you're done shaking it for a bunch of drunken bandits.

It's a great song, and Madhuri is good enough to eat in one of her most energetic and flirtatious performances.  Unfortunately, the rest of the film that spawned this legendary number, Khalnayak ("Villain") is not quite up to the standard of brilliance set by its most famous and memorable song. 

Ballu (Sanjay Dutt) is a terrorist and a murderer.  Early on he is captured by Police Inspector Ram (Jackie Shroff), but Ballu engineers his escape, leaving a frustrated Ram looking foolish and desperate to bring the villain to justice.  Ram's girlfriend Ganga (Madhuri), a prison guard, volunteers to go undercover to infiltrate Ballu's gang and lead them into Ram's custody.  She soon finds herself drawn to the charismatic villain, and finds her loyalty to law enforcement, and to Ram, severely tested.

The film's premise offers and opportunity for some tight psychological drama, and in occasional moments there are tantalizing glimpses of that potential.  Indeed, the film's first half is quite compelling.  Some of the scenes between Madhuri and Sanjay are quite memorable; Madhuri is particularly impressive, capturing the bold nervousness of a young idealistic woman in way over her head, and Sanjay movingly (if sweatily) conveys Ballu's internal struggle between his angry, violent nature and his tenderness toward Ganga.

Khalnayak suffers, though, from the formulaic requirements of being a masala film of its time.  In trying to be all things at once, the film jumps abruptly between the milieus of psychological drama, action thriller, romance, and comedy, and the result is a herky-jerky feeling, in which the viewer is unable to settle into the story before it shifts gears again.  Another side-effect of the masala bug is interminable, very violent fight scenes that had me reaching for the remote.  Finally, the film bumps completely off the rails in its third hour, where Ganga more or less drops out of the story and what is left is a quite ridiculous study of Ballu's apparent Oedipus complex, leading up to a throroughly improbable and disappointing ending.   

The best thing about Khalnayak (apart from "Choli ke peeche") is Madhuri, by a country mile.  She demonstrates her ability to rise above weak material, showing a sensitivity  in her acting that many of her roles in fluff films never took advantage of.  Madhuri's Ganga presages her tour-de-force performance in the excellent, weighty Mrityudand a few years later.  Sanjay deserves some credit, too, for his tense portrayal of the anti-hero Ballu.  He navigates cliche-ridden waters without falling into them himself - he is not a soulless villain, but neither is he a loveable rogue with a heart of gold. 

I place this film in my "Great naach-gaana" category with great reluctance.  There are some terrible, terrible stinkers in this film's soundtrack.  The first song in the film was so painful on both the ears and the eyes that it became the first song I have ever fast-forwarded through in a Bollywood film.  And the film's final song, Ballu's triumphant declaration of his villainy, is mere time-wasting filler, leaving the viewer squirming in impatient anticipation of the film's climax and end.    But "Choli ke peeche" is worth five times the price of the DVD, and there are some other very lovely songs as well, like "Aaja sajan aaja," in which Ganga faces the confusing struggle between her love for Ram and her desire for Ballu.

Hare rama hare krishna (1971)

हरे राम हरे कृष्ण

At the very nascence of my interest in Indian films, it flowed in two distinct strains.  One was fueled by Indian art films and my discovery of Shabana Azmi.  The other was driven by filmi music.  I was curious but cautious about taking the plunge into full-on Bollywood films - I didn't really know where to start - but I've always had a broad, eclectic taste for music from all over the world.  So I picked up a collection of Bollywood songs and started listening. 

I remember the first time I listened to that CD.  I was riding to work on the trolley, and as the first refrain of the first track on the disc played out, my jaw dropped to the floor.  I was amazed; it was the most perfect thing I had ever heard, and I could not believe it had taken me so long to discover it.  It felt like coming home.

That song was "Dum maro dum," penned by R.D. Burman and sung by his wife Asha Bhosle.  It was gorgeous; trippy, emotive, funky, alive, and still a most delicate blend of east and west.  It was only a little over two minutes long and I think I must have backed it up three times before I could bring myself to move on to the rest of the collection. 

Although I've discovered hundreds of wonderful filmi songs since that day, "Dum maro dum" has remained close to my heart, always a favorite, the song I credit with starting it all for me.  Still, it was more than a year and a half before I finally saw the film it came from, Hare rama hare krishna.

Prasant and Jasbir are a brother and sister, separated as young children when their parents divorce.  Prasant (Dev Anand) grows up in India with his mother, and becomes a jet pilot.  Troubled, rebellious Jasbir (Zeenat Aman) grows up in Montreal with her father, and flees as soon as she can to Nepal. There, she changes her name to Janice and becomes the charismatic leader of a rag-tag bunch of hippies, both Indian and western, who live, love, and smoke up in a commune aptly named "The Bakery."  Prasant catches up with Janice and finds her badly broken by her past, living only to tune in, turn on, and drop out.  Nevertheless, Prasant attempts to connect with her, to revive the tenderness they shared as children. 

At its best, Hare rama hare krishna is a very touching story about brotherly love, portraying Janice's damage with a sensitive and poignant touch.  It suffers, though, from several weaknesses.  Janice's struggle with her past is interesting, but the film takes far too long to get there - Prasant stalks her creepily for the first two thirds of the film without telling her who he is; she assumes his intentions are amorous.  Dev Anand's persistent preaching against the drug-addled hippie lifestyle tends toward the wearisome, as does a confusing and irrelevant subplot about an exporter named Drona who tries to frame Prasant for theft after Prasant wins the heart of Shanti (Mumtaz), a girl Drona had his eye on. 

Despite its weaknesses, though, there is plenty of treasure buried in Hare rama hare krishna that is well worth digging for.  Among the best aspects of the film were its two women, the heroine and the anti-heroine, Mumtaz and Zeenat.  Both women are very beautiful and appealing, each with her distinct style, character, and presentation, but Zeenat - here in her very first movie - completely steals the show as the stoned, tragic Janice. 

Hare rama hare krishna is also interesting as a sociological study, presenting hippie counterculture from an Indian perspective.  The film offers an Indian take on the phenomenon of  westerners flocking to the subcontinent and appropriating its religion and philosophy, which was mystifying to many Indians.   Dev Anand's view of it comes across loud and clear in his musical answer to the toke-up anthem "Dum maro dum" - his "Ram ka nam badnam na karo" ("Do not desecrate the name of Ram") is a plaintive call to lost youth, urging the stoners to find their way back to the ideals of upright Indian society.  Perhaps it is telling, though, that "Dum maro dum" - not "Ram ka nam" - is the film's evergreen hit.

The music alone - enhanced by with the vibrant authenticity of the Kathmandu locations where it was shot - is worth the price of the DVD.  Along with the iconic "Dum maro dum," there are several other memorable songs,  notably Prasant's sweet and lovely tribute to his sister, "Phoolon ka taaron ka," and Mumtaz's spunky street performance in "Ghungroo kya bole," neither of which I can find on YouTube, unfortunately.

Kaifi aur main (2006)

कैफ़ी और मैं

Kaifi aur main ("Kaifi and I") is not a film; it's a play of sorts.  Still, it seems to deserve a spot here at Filmi Geek, since it features my most favorite actress Shabana Azmi and her husband, filmi screenwriter and songwriter Javed Akhtar, in a series of reminiscences about Shabana's parents.  It was because this show was in town that I was lucky enough to meet Shabana Azmi.  Nothing could really top that experience, but nevertheless the show was wonderful. 

Kaifi aur main was adapted by Javed sahib from the writings of Shabana's parents, Shaukat Kaifi (a stage actress who also played the madam Khanum in Muzaffar Ali's Umrao Jaan; Shabana reprised her mother's role in the 2006 adaptation) and Kaifi Azmi, the revered Urdu poet and central figure in India's progressive writers' movement.  Shabana and Javed read the texts, poignant tales and funny tales from Shaukat and Kaifi's life together; Javed recited many exemplars of Kaifi's poetry; and an excellent singer named Jaswinder Singh performed some of Kaifi's filmi songs. 

The stories were told more or less chronologically, as far as I could tell, beginning when Shaukat and Kaifi met as students, and carrying through to Kaifi's death.  There were delicious excerpts from the love letters Kaifi wrote to Shaukat before they were married.  There were also tales of the sparkling, stimulating meetings of members of the Progressive Writers' Movement, and some distressing periods when Kaifi was under some scrutiny for his associations with Communist party in India. 

If my description seems a little vague, it is only because my comprehension was a little vague.  The show was entirely in Urdu, and today just 18 months into my study of Hindi-Urdu my aural comprehension skills are not quite up to the level that Kaifi aur main demanded.  For the most part I knew what was being talked about, but I did not always entirely know what was being said about it.  When the pace was slow - at the beginning of the show and in some of its sadder moments - I followed very well, but as the pace accelerated I could not keep up.  I couldn't understand any of Javed's funny stories, which was too bad, because the audience seemed to love them.   The final segment, though, began with Shaukat's lament upon Kaifi's death; I understood it completely, and I burst into tears, because, well, Shabana Azmi is a pretty good actress.

Indeed, the tasks were divided well; Javed - the writer of the couple - told the funny stories and gave the poetic recitals, while Shabana the actress did the emotive heavy lifting, as the stories assigned to her tended toward the poignant. 

The music was excellent; so good, in fact, that Kaifi aur main is worth the price of admission for it alone, even if you do not understand a word of Urdu.  Jaswinder Singh has a beautiful voice, and all of the ghazals were lovely.  They were chosen, when possible, to relate to the material read in the preceding segment, so (for example) after Shabana/Shaukat talked about the film Kaagaz ke phool, Jaswinder sang a song from that film.  And I am happy to report that there was room in the show for "Tum itna jo muskura rahe ho," from Arth, one of my very favorite filmi songs.  (It just delights me to think that this wonderful song, which in Arth is picturized so poignantly in a scene in which Shabana looked so sad and lovely, was written by her father.)

Kaifi aur main is scheduled for many more dates in the United States; these are listed on the show's website, so I do encourage you to consider catching it if it's coming to your town.   

The picture above is one I snapped of Shabana and Javed from my front-row seat; here is another that I took, of Jaswinder Singh and his band.  At the left-hand side of this picture you can see the stylized portrait of Kaifi Azmi that formed the centerpiece of the stage backdrop. 

Lage raho Munnabhai (2006)

लगे रहो मुन्ना भाई

I wish I had launched this blog just a month or so sooner than I did, so that I could have reviewed Lage raho Munnabhai ("Carry on, Munnabhai") while it was still playing in theaters.  If I had, I would have urged every one of you to stop reading, close your browsers, and head out to the nearest cinema you could find that was screening this wonderful film, even if it were hours away.  The film was just that good.

Munnabhai (Sanjay Dutt) is a con-man, crook, and heavy who was introduced to Hindi movie audiences a couple of years ago in a film called Munnabhai, MBBS.  Lage raho Munnabhai is not exactly a sequel; rather, it's a separate story involving some of the same characters.  (As of this writing I haven't seen Munnabhai, MBBS so that is all I have to say about it.) 

In Lage raho Munnabhai, in order to win an opportunity to meet Jhanvi (Vidya Balan), a radio host who has captured his heart with her cheery morning broadcasts, Munnabhai poses as a professor of history and an expert in the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi.  To maintain Jhanvi's interest, he has to maintain the ruse - so he goes on a Gandhi bender, spending hard days and sleepless nights in a library reading everything he can about the great man.  One morning, after Munnabhai has studied to exhaustion, Gandhi himself appears - but only Munnabhai can see him and speak to him.  The apparition of Gandhi helps Munna keep up the facade, but he also inspires the crook to some peaceful protest of his own, this time against the leader of Munna' own gang, Lucky Singh (Boman Irani), who is engineering a real estate scam that, it turns out, would evict Jhanvi, her father, and the crew of elderly friends who live with them, out of their home.  And thanks to Jhanvi's radio show, Munna is soon spreading his gospel of "Gandhi-giri" all over Mumbai.  But, eventually, he will have to tell Jhanvi the truth about who he is. 

Whew.  It's a difficult plot to summarize, but the film presents its gangster-with-a-heart-of-gold theme sweetly and earnestly.  The film is warm-hearted and touching without being overly sappy, and its humor is very funny without resorting to the sloppy, loud slapstick that infests many Bollywood comedies.  Much of the humor rides on the colorful, broad characterizations of the film's performers - Sanjay Dutt himself as Munnabhai, Boman Irani's Lucky, and especially Arshad Warsi as Munna's sidekick Circuit are the standouts in this area.  There is also cerebral humor, including lots of linguistic jokes running throughout the film.  For example, Munna speaks in the rough Tapori dialect of Mumbai's  street thugs; when he is coached by Gandhi, the apparition speaks to him in the pure Hindi of the intellectual elite; Munna doesn't always understand, or translates Gandhi's advice into his own terms.    Some of these jokes obviously require some knowledge of Hindi to fully understand, but subtitles in the print I saw (and I understand the DVD transfer as well) did a surprisingly good job of carrying these over to the English translation.

I think what really makes Lage raho Munnabhai shine is the perfect balance it strikes between its apparently disparate elements; the rough-and-tumble world of gangsters and con-men in which Munna lives, the upright and sunny environment of the sensitive and proper Jhanvi, the magical-realist aspect of Gandhi's presence all blend into a synergistic whole that is funny, touching, and purely delightful.  The film has been an enormous hit in India, and articles are still appearing in the press about instances of real-life "Gandhi-giri" - calculated and wide-spread attacks of tolerance and kindness - inspired by the movie. 

My only complaint about the film - and it is a minor one - is that Vidya Balan and Sanjay Dutt are a bit of a mismatch as a romantic pairing; most of the time he seems more like her father than her suitor.  But this is a tiny flaw in an otherwise perfect Bollywood experience.  I simply adore this film. 

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What a couple of days!  Today, I am a Featured Blog; yesterday, I met Shabana Azmi. वाह!