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. 

Comments

[Michael]

i agree fully with you - yet seen it yesterday on dvd its the must-seen movie of bollywood 2006. thanks also for writing about the linguistic jokes. you're right: subtitles let you realize there are jokes, but i think there is much lost in translation.

its one of the few movies i know a sequel (but LRM, as you wrote, is not really a sequel) i as good as the original. both are great movies both humorous and more deep thinkable.

sanjay and vidya: your're right. i didn't realize it by watching the movie. but reading your lines i'd to agree.

greetings from germany
michael

[Sanni]

Mmm, I love LRM. For comedy or a 'message' movie, it's totally one of my favourite films of 2006 or post-millennial Hindi cinema overall. I hope it causes some reactions in the Oscar jury audience or the overseas audience overall. I love the fact it was shown to a bunch of UN people as well. It has magic and it is also one of the most unique things Indian cinema has to offer, in my opinion.

[carla]

I just wanted to say, sanni, that I love the term "post-millenial Hindi cinema" - it has a feeling rather like "post-apoctalyptic Hindi cinema" and raises in my mind vivid images of the ragged remnants of humanity huddled around a makeshift television set, eating cockroaches and watching Akshay-Saif dosti films.