Filmi Geek

Dabangg (2010)

दबंग

The last few years of Hindi movies have seen something of a resurgence of big masala.  I have seen very few of these movies, and so to begin to remedy that gap, I turned to Arbaaz Khan's blockbuster, Dabangg ("headstrong" or "fearless").  I can't say I was disappointed - the movie is a (mostly) retro-feeling entertainer on classic masala themes of corruption, revenge, and family bonds, updated with slick modern production values.  At its heart is an incarnation of the classic Angry Young Man archetype, rendered with just enough nudge-nudge-wink-wink by Salman Khan, whom I seem to like, in spite of myself.

As a boy, Chulbul Pandey is tenderly cared for by his mother Naini (Dimple Kapadia).  But his stepfather Prajapati (Vinod Khanna) openly and cruelly favors his natural son, Chulbul's dull, lazy half-brother Makkhi.  Once grown, Chulbul (Salman Khan) is uncensored in his contempt for his father and Makkhi (Arbaaz Khan), despite still living with them.  Chulbul is a police inspector - a corrupt one, who builds a minor fortune in bribes and blackmail from smugglers and other criminals he is supposed to be keeping in line.  Chedi Singh (Sonu Sood), ostensibly a student political organizer - but really more of a thug for the political party of Dayal (Anupam Kher) - tries to enlist Chulbul's help for his strong-arming dirty work.  But Chulbul doesn't like or trust Chedi, and extorts him instead.  Not one to readily to submit to that sort of demand, Chedi takes advantage of the slow-witted Makkhi, manipulating the rift between the brothers to try to gain the upper hand over Chulbul.

There is an awful lot of swagger in Dabangg.  Chulbul is nearly all swagger - Salman Khan's stiff physique almost won't allow him to move without it, and his crisply ironed shirts, expensive shades, and neatly-trimmed mustache multiply the effect.  But swagger is appropriate for Chulbul the anti-hero, who is a throwback to characters like Amitabh Bachchan's Vijay in Deewaar - he is unabashedly corrupt and criminal, despite an over-inflated sense of honor and fierce loyalty to those whom he respects, and especially to his mother. Indeed, Chulbul's notion of honor - and his somewhat out-of-proportion response to perceived violations of it - is his defining characteristic and a theme throughout the film.

Chedi Singh would like to have as much swagger as Chulbul - on some level, Chedi's rivalry with Chulbul is more about who is the coolest, most muscley guy in the village than it is about anything else.  Chedi is shirtless in about half his scenes - Chulbul, despite Salman's reputation for disrobing, doesn't lose his shirt until their climactic final melee.  And when he does, it happens with a style and humor that epitomizes the best of Dabangg's winks at the audience:  as Chulbul grasps for the first time the depth of the violence that Chedi has done to his family, his muscles bulge in rage, tearing the fabric right off his body. 

Despite all the self-conscious bravado, though, there is plenty of richness too, just as you'd expect from classic-style masala.  Makkhi is a dolt, but there is a sort of sympathetic sweetness to him as well; his main motivation is not to defeat the huge alpha-personality of his brother, but rather to marry girl he loves (Mahie Gill), whom his father rejects because she lacks for a palatable dowry.  One gets the sense from Arbaaz Khan's surprisingly nuanced performance that Makkhi resents his father's attention, that he never asked for it, and that he envies Chulbul's freedom to do and say anything he wishes.  Chulbul's scenes of reconciliation with him, and especially with their father, are genuinely touching, in that excellent way Hindi movies often have of allowing even the toughest and most relentlessly masculine of men to nevertheless display deep emotion. 

Dabangg's women add some depth as well, and as often happens in masala films, provide some anchoring and counterpoint to what would otherwise be overwhelming maleness.  Chulbul's romance with a sad potter girl named Rajjo (Sonakshi Sinha) begins with at-first-sight suddenness, but develops more satisfyingly after their marriage, as Rajjo gives hints of an independent personality and a backstory that is mostly left to the viewer's imagination.  Sonakshi Sinha - Shatrughan's daughter - is quite promising here in her debut.  She is perhaps a little too grave for the big masala feel of the movie, but at its best that gravity is reminiscent of the intense characters that Jaya Bhaduri sometimes played in masala films.  I'd like to see her in a serious role - I think she might have the chops for it, which is not something I often feel about very young actors.   The wonderful Dimple Kapadia is underused as Chulbul and Makkhi's mother, but fills the screen with tremendous presence in every scene she gets. 

Songs can make a mediocre masala movie memorable, and make a good one great.  The songs in Dabangg do not go so far as the latter, but they are satisfyingly pleasant and fun. The title song is an excellent number; its neo-traditional sound is far superior to the monotonous club tunes that frequently mar modern movies.  Its picturization offers a good sense both of village life, and of the protagonist's character.  And then there is the item number, "Munni badnam hui," picturized on an energetically sexy Malaika Arora Khan.  This number is very well-rendered, and I want to like it more than I do.  I admit, without attempting to rationalize, that I hold older films to a different standard when it comes to item numbers - I sure do love me some Helen, some Aruna Irani, and even some Bindu now and again - but there is something off-putting to me about a nautch-girl in a modern movie.  (I had similar issues with the widely beloved "Kajra re" in Bunty aur Babli, a song that "Munni" references briefly).  Add to that Chedi Singh's cartoonish leering - his eyes bulge out of his head as though he has never seen a woman before - and the overall effect on me is not entirely entertaining.  (It doesn't help that I don't much like Sonu Sood; he looks too much like Amitabh Bachchan.) 

I have to add a note about the violence.  As I have recently mentioned in reviewing Ram Lakhan and Ghulam, my tolerance for movie violence is already very low.  In movies of the 1970s, poorly synced dishoom-dishoom sound effects and watery, orange-pink fake blood yield violence that is too silly to be very disturbing.  In Dabangg, by contrast, violence is rendered with modern production values, and just becomes too much for me to bear. Body-checks are accompanied by hyper-realistic bone-crunching sounds, and gunshots by viscous spurts of blood and spatterings of flesh.  Even if I avert my eyes - and there were times I had to - the audio remains to churn my stomach.  The fight scenes are highly stylized and even cleverly amusing at times - Chulbul's first melee is interrupted when the cell phone of one of his foes starts to ring, and Chulbul stops mauling the man to dance to the jaunty tune.  The way that Chulbul and Makkhi finish off Chedi Singh in the climax is appropriately imaginitive and dramatic for the movie's masala tone (not to mention aggressively homoerotic!) - but also especially nauseating.  Most viewers probably have a higher tolerance for stylized movie violence than I do, but for me, it was just too much of too much, and eroded my delight with this otherwise very entertaining film.

Ram Lakhan (1989)

राम लखन

Listening to the Masala Zindabad podcast on movies of the 80s reminded me how little I know of that era in Hindi film.  Fears of gratuitous rape and violence have led me to steer clear, except for artier films and the occasional delicate social.  But the podcast roused my curiosity about some of that decade's better-regarded mainstream movies, and so I gritted my teeth and dug into Subhash Ghai's Ram Lakhan.  Three hours, no rapes, and only a little excessive violence later, I was very happily surprised to have seen a rich, excellent masala movie that I thoroughly enjoyed. 

Pratap (Dalip Tahil) and Sharda (Rakhee) are delighted at the birth of their second son, Lakhan, who grows up close to his brother Ram.  But a dubious family friend Bishambhar (Amrish Puri) cheats Pratap out of his inheritance and later murders him, leaving Sharda and her sons disgraced and destitute.  Sharda vows that her sons will be her weapons of revenge against Bishambhar.  The boys grow up close, but very different - Ram (Jackie Shroff) is a stern and serious police inspector, while Lakhan (Anil Kapoor) is a gadabout and a bit of a con man with big dreams of big riches.  To prove his worth to Ram and Sharda - not to mention to his childhood love Radha (Madhuri Dixit) and her father Devdhar (Anupam Kher) - Lakhan joins the police force himself.  But he is quickly seduced by the bribes of Bishmbhar and the gang of smugglers he treats with, the peculiar Kesariya (Gulshan Grover) and imperious Sir John (Raza Murad).  Ram is disgusted when he learns of Lakhan's abuse of the uniform.  Sharda despairs at the wedge this drives between her two sons, and fears that she will never see Pratap's cruel death properly avenged. 

What I expected from Ram Lakhan was a very male, very violent revenge fantasy.  What I got was a fun, well-crafted masala ride, packed with religious allegory, real laughs, and some great songs to boot.  There is some excessive violence, but it only goes over the top in the movie's climax, after more than two and a half fully engaging hours.  And while the brothers and their relationship are clearly the focus of the story, the female characters are strong and satisfying too.  Madhuri Dixit is at her best in Radha's two wonderful songs, the pleading "O Ramji", and the cathartic, rageful "Bekadar, bekhabar."  I sometimes lament the bad timing of Madhuri's career, such that her talents are largely wasted in mediocre movies that she elevates with her magnetic presence.  Here, though she has a relatively small part to play (albeit with a generous helping of songs), she adds delight to an already strong movie.  

The other women in Ram Lakhan offer more substance than I might have expected.  Ram and Lakhan's mother, Sharda, can only be described as the fiercest of masala maa characters - when she grows angry, thunder peals and lightning flashes.  Rakhee is amply suited to this role - she brings the perfect blend of mainstream melodramatic style and serious acting chops, and so there is some nuance in her face, even as the bombast of her dramatic scenes swells to true masala proportion.  Ram Lakhan is a movie that any Rakhee fan should see. 

The men, too, bring quite a lot to the table - and go a long way to helping me understand why they are stars.  Anil Kapoor is adequately cute and convincing in the mischief-maker role, highlighted in his introductory song "My Name is Lakhan."  (Any actor who gets that many drums to herald his first appearance in a movie is clearly already a larger-than-life star.)  Jackie Shroff is at times a little too stern and overbearing - he lays it on especially thick in the scenes that make the Ram-Lakshman allegory explicit.   But this is amply balanced by his tenderness in emotional scenes with Anil, and especially in his romantic song with Ram's love interest Geeta (Dimple Kapadia), "Tera naam liya". This superbly filmed song is perhaps the biggest surprise and my favorite song of the movie.  Jackie and Dimple are well-matched in age and gravitas; the song has a mature feel that is unusual for masala romance, and is yet utterly romantic. 

Ram Lakhan is not without weaknesses, but it's difficult to make a 3-hour movie without taking some missteps.  The most egregious of these is the terrible "Main hoon Hero" song, in which an utterly charisma-free villain (Bishambhar's son Deboo) challenges Lakhan to a dance-off.  The script also leans too heavily on irritating catchphrases, such as Kesariya's annoying "Bad man!", and Deboo's mind-crushingly stupid "India is greeeeaaaat."  But the teeming cast of over-the-top villains is a masala stand-by, and their bombast is appropriate to the movie's overall tone.  Even some of the comedic moments offer real laughs.   Anupam Kher gives the best of these - Lakhan tricks him into sitting on some eggs, and he lets out a whimper that sounds for all the world like the clucking of a hen.  In short, Ram Lakhan is masala done right, not nearly as violent as I feared, and thoroughly paisa vasool.

Zanjeer (1973)

ज़ंजीर

Like their later script Deewaar, Salim-Javed's Zanjeer ("chain") attempts to fit a tense, gritty story into masala clothes.  Unfortunately, Zanjeer is less successful - rather than delivering an intense, visceral experience, Zanjeer lurches(*) like a movie that can't decide how to present itself. 

Inspector Vijay Khanna (Amitabh Bachchan) is a brooding man, with deep-seated anger that even he doesn't understand.  Haunted by dreams that stem from a repressed memory of his parents' murder, he throws himself into the work of bringing criminals to justice - even, sometiems, exceeding the bounds of justice to do so.  When Vijay tries to break the illegal liquor-brewing and smuggling ring of Teja (Ajit), Teja arranges to have Vijay sent to prison on trumped-up corruption charges.  Disgraced and stripped of his badge and authority, Vijay vows vigilante justice against Teja.  Mala (Jaya Bhaduri), an itinerant girl whom Vijay rescued and fell in love with, fears for Vijay's life.  She prevails on him to give up the vendetta.   But without that purpose in his life, Vijay is lost.  Mala and Vijay's friend Sher Khan (Pran) have to find a way to help him, before his seething rage consumes him from within.

Zanjeer is not by any stretch a bad movie.  The script is less taut than Deewaar and the result far less tense and engaging, but at least Amitabh delivers as the roiling Vijay, struggling to contain his anger and venting it in tense, explosive bursts. Zanjeer is at its best a close psychological study of this troubled man, and the effects of his anger on the people who care about him.  But a close psychological study is not the stuff of masala films, and over-the-top masala trappings need larger-than-life masala themes to hang on, else the movie sags and bends under their weight.  Zanjeer hints vaguely in the direction of some social statement or the other, but never hoists any of the great masala banners like brotherhood, family, democracy, communalism, et al. 

And so, with Amitabh's strong performance as its foundation, Zanjeer could have been so much better that it's difficult not to be hard on it for its inability to decide whether it is masala or not.  For example, it's great fun to see Pran in a good-guy role, and he is as charming and sweet as Sher Khan as he is creepy and villainous in his many blackguard roles.  (He even has a marvelous song, the qawwali "Yaari hai imaan mera".)  But the way Sher Khan becomes Vijay's best friend just doesn't fit the somber tone that Zanjeer otherwise aims to set - after taking a beating from Vijay, whom he calls the first man with guts he's ever met, Sher Khan immediately casts aside his illegal gambling empire and pledges his eternal friendship.  This sort of over-the-top twist works well in out-and-out masala, but only lends a split personality to Zanjeer.

Mala's arc is frustrating as well, another microcosm of the sharp zig-zags taken by the script.  She starts the film as a feisty, independent gypsy girl, and it's delightful to see Jaya Bhaduri taking a Hema-esque turn in the song "Chakku chhuriyan".  But Vijay sprinkles Mala with some kind of magic dust that instantly transforms her into seedhi-saadhi boring ladki.  The magnificent qawwali during which they tenderly realize their love ("Deewane hai diwaanon ko", picturized on Sanjana and the movie's lyricist, Gulshan Bawra) is a highlight of the movie - Vijay and Mala don't speak and hardly move, and yet convey an entire world of  emotion with subtleties of body language and facial expression.  In the circumscribed context of the song, Mala's delicate shyness is touching - but the larger personality transplant that turns the spirited gypsy into the picture of demure domesticity just doesn't work overall, and disrupts the tone of the movie.  Instead of a meeting of two rageful independent souls, Zanjeer gives us a quivering and fretting Mala who steps into a premature sort of "ma" role.   It leaves me wondering what happened to the girl who put a guy in a headlock at the beginning of the film, just for questioning her honor.

Despite its warts, Zanjeer is worth a look, especially for fans (like me) of the young, pre-stardom Amitabh.  This is one the roles that defined the "angry young man" of the 1970s, and even if this Vijay's story lacks the polish of later incarnations, the best moments of the film are gems that shine in the rough substrate.  And besides, you get Pran in a wig that is spectacularly orange even by Pran standards, giving him a look that is eerily prescient of a character who comes some 30 years later:

(*) Heartfelt thanks to Beth for suggesting the magnificent phrase "tone lurch" when I told her about this movie. 

3 Idiots (2009)

Raju Hirani movies are thoroughly modern and yet still express a uniquely Bollywood sensibility.  He does not shy away from melodrama or big unambiguous messages.  Yet he still puts entertainment first, with an attention to detail and characterization that yields truly loveable and fun-to-watch movies.  As Lage raho Munnabhai before it, 3 Idiots leaves you grinning like a dope even as you're thinking about ways to make the world a better place.  And there is no doubt that his approach resonates hugely - Lage raho Munnabhai was a massive hit, and the success of 3 Idiots eclipsed it.

When they were classmates in engineering college, Chatur (Omi Vaidya) and Rancho (Aamir Khan) were rivals.  Or, at least, Chatur was - competitive, materialistic, and rote, he chafed at Rancho's playful attitude and seat-of-the-pants, intuitive approach to engineering.  Now, 10 years later, Chatur gathers Rancho's best friends from their college days - Farhan (Madhavan) and Raju (Sharman Joshi) - and sets off on a quest across India to find Rancho.  Chatur wants only to gloat, to flaunt his success over Rancho, whom none of the men have heard from since school days.  Farhan and Raju, though, just want to find their cherished friend, whose influence was immeasurable.  As they travel, they flash back to memories of the school days together.  Rancho's compassion and thirst for hands-on learning put him at odds with the college's stern, tyrannical dean, Viru Sahastrabuddhe (Boman Irani), whom the students called "Virus".  It also won him the heart of Virus's daughter, a medical student named Pia (Kareena Kapoor).  But Rancho disappeared after graduation, and as his friends drive from Shimla to Ladakh to find him, remembering how he changed their lives, they learn a puzzling secret about his past.

I've been told by people who studied engineering in India that 3 Idiots perfectly captures the stresses of the pressure-cooker, rote-learning environment of colleges like the one it portrays.  It's easy to see why the movie strikes a note so close to the audience's heart; the boys' situations are readily relatable.  Farhan studies engineering to only to fulfill his parents' expectations - his own dream is wildlife photography, an ambition that his father values not at all.  Raju's desire to succeed at engineering is more sincere, but he places on himself the great burden of rescuing his family from crushing poverty.  And who doesn't remember an irritating helium-handed brown-noser like Chatur from our own days in school? 

On top of these relatable themes, the movie is full of laughs that run the gamut from fart jokes to clever linguistic humor (as there also was in the Munnabhai movies). The most prominent example is Chatur's memorized speech in shuddh Hindi - Rancho tampers with the speech, and the unsuspecting Chatur pompously delivers an outlandishly bawdy oration before the whole school.  (The point is to illustrate the pitfalls of rote learning, but it also exposes a much-needed, humanizing flaw in the otherwise godlike Rancho's character - that humiliating others is acceptable to him so long as it furthers his principles.)  But there are subtler plays on language as well, such as a cross-linguistic play on suffer/safar (the latter meaning "journey"). 

The language play is just one aspect of the terrific level of detail in this tightly crafted film.  Other nice touches include Virus's introductory speech to the students, which "Millimeter," the young boy who runs errands for pocket change, recites verbatim.  Another is that Raju's poor urban family is shown in black & white, a wink to the echos of 1950s-filminess of their situation.  There are too many more to mention. 

It feels nitpicky to point out flaws in such a well-crafted movie.  Still, there are a few.  One that gets under my skin just a little is that the story is overwhelmingly male.  There are female students in the college but they are just visual backdrop - none has so much as a line of dialogue.  Pia is a smart, level-headed medical student, but her only story arc is deciding which man she should marry.  Nevertheless, no movie can be about everyone, and so it's a forgivably small irritation for me. 

The movie's overarching message, too, is delivered with a cudgel, even by filmi and standards.  One student committing suicide would have been enough to convey the toxicity and destructiveness of the college environment - but the movie doesn't stop there.  Instead, there is one suicide, a plot reference to another earlier suicide, and a suicide attempt by a major character.

Yet the preachiness - along with a few extremely filmi, over-the-top plot twists - is forgivable, even charming, in such a good movie overall, especially with the loveable performances of all the actors.  The naturalness of these (except for Irani, exercises his typical wonderful broad comic physicality) tends to offset the extreme aspects of the story, tempering the shrillness of the melodramatic turns.  The result is a movie firmly grounded in Bollywood's melodramatic roots, yet offering natural, breathing characters who are relatable and modern.  And the twist at the movie's end is so marvelous and satisfying that anything less than perfect about what went before is readily forgiven.

Junglee (1961)

जंगली

An unabashed Shammi Kapoor star vehicle, Junglee ("savage", "wild") is mostly uncomplicated by usual masala elements such as babies switched at birth, long-lost relatives, and the like. Instead, it is a rather simplistic but entertaining story about the power of love, with a message of populism tossed in for good measure. 

Shekhar (Shammi Kapoor), a very serious young man, returns from studies abroad to take over his family business.  His mother (Lalita Pawar) is even more stern than he.  She raised him in the shadow of his deceased father, forbidding laughter and merriment of any kind from their household.  She intends for Shekhar to marry a princess (Azra) to whom he was betrothed as a boy, though unbeknownst to her, the princess's family has become destitute and turned to cons and ruses to get by.  Shekhar's sister Mala (Shashikala), a lively girl who chafes against the household strictures imposed by their mother, is secretly married to one of Shekhar's employees, Jeevan (Anoop Kumar).  While they don't know of the marriage, Shekhar and his mother know that something is up with Mala.  To set her right, they send her on a jaunt to Kashmir under Shekhar's watchful eye.  In Kashmir, Mala gets some startling news - and Shekhar finds his tense heartstrings finally loosened when he falls in love with a local girl (Saira Banu) who happens to be named Rajkumari (meaning "princess" - misunderstandings naturally ensue).  Now all Shekhar has to do is convince his mother that his new-found love and joy is more important than her stale, ancient, and joyless family principles.

Wild gyrations and mad physical antics mark Shammi Kapoor's performances through the 1960s.  Yet Junglee is the only movie I can think of where these are actually explained by the plot.  In the movie's first half, Shekhar is mean and unsmiling, but he is anything but stiff.  His face and body contort in rage as he berates his terrified employees or scolds his sister.   He seems a caricature of his father Prithviraj Kapoor at his most constipated, as in Awara. There is undeniable cleverness in using a character's pathological absence of humor for comic effect, and it works - the physical comedy of the first half of Junglee delivers plenty of laughs.  And when Shekhar finally cuts loose with a wild "Yahoooo!" during the film's jubilant title song, the manic excess almost makes sense - after all, it's the first time in his life he's felt or expressed joy. 

Saira Banu is surprisingly appealing as well, here in her debut role.  I've seen a couple of her later films (such as Padosan) and never found much to like about her, but here she brings a good balance of charm to the table, and is playful and clever without too much dimple-poking ingenuity.  (If Rajkumari had been played by Sharmila Tagore, Junglee might be one of my favorite films - but fortunately I've got Kashmir ki kali.)  The movie wrings a few touching moments out of young Rajkumari teetering on the brink of womanhood.  Her song on the subject, "Ja ja ja mere bachpan," is sweet despite being overloaded with thin dupatta-flinging symbolism.  The song follows what might be my favorite moment of the film; it is a lovely brief scene that perfectly captures Rajkumari's transitional child-woman nature - she takes a long, serious look at herself in a mirror, before sticking out her tongue and running away. 

The rest of the characters are fairly well-rendered as well.  Shashikala is very charming as the beleaguered sister trying to make a life for herself despite being trapped in the house of unmirth.  Anoop Kumar's star may not have soared a fraction as high as that of either of his brothers, but I think he's a cuteypie.  And Lalita Pawar is appropriately over-the-top as Shekhar's elitist, joyless mother.  She is almost unbearably stern; it is difficult not to roll your eyes when she delivers a literal "over my dead body" speech when Shekhar announces his intent to marry Rajkumari.  The burden of the film's anti-classism message falls squarely on her shoulders - her obsession with not being common is the driving force of the plot, and she is the one who must be convinced of the film's two messages.  The first is that regular folk can be honorable, while well-bred folk can be crooks and schemers.  The second, of course, is that love and laughter must always win the day.  That's a lot of substantive resolution for a broad caricature to carry, but Lalita Pawar has ample presence to pull it off. 

In short, Junglee offers a better-than-average masala sort of story, delivered by an appealing cast, with the attention to visual style that make so many movies of the 1960s satisfying on multiple levels.  (For example, one shot draws your attention to a fabulous wall clock in the shape of a sunny-side egg.)  As if that's not enough, there is a vaguely Flamenco-inspired Helen song on a magnificent set, a giant artist's palate with a Van Gogh backdrop.  It's hard to ask much more from an afternoon with a movie. 

 

Chak de India (2007)

चक दे इंडिया

It's not a deep insight to observe that Yash Raj films are full of heavy-handed delivery and emotional manipulation.  And my judgments of them sometimes turn on whether I'm in the zone when I watch them - whether I happen at that moment to be in the right frame of mind.  I was squarely in the zone when I watched Dil bole hadippa for the first time, and I adored it. For Chak de India ("Let's go, India") - perhaps through no fault of the film's - I was not.  Despite some eye-rolling at its ham-fisted buffeting of patriotic and feminist messages, though, I still found plenty to enjoy, even if I was several years late to the game of writing about this surprise blockbuster film.

Kabir Khan (Shah Rukh Khan) is a star of field hockey and captain of the men's national team.  After his missed shot costs his team the World Cup, Kabir, a Muslim, is rumored to have thrown the match in collusion with the opposing Pakistani team.  He is thrown into disgrace and run out of town on a rail.  Seven years later, he volunteers to coach a ragtag women's team that no one in the nation's sports administration takes seriously.  Kabir faces the formidable challenge of uniting a disparate bunch of young women from all over the country and leading them to victory on the international stage. 

Chak de India at times feels like an extended clown-car gag - how many cliches can we pack into one film?  Disgraced coach seeks redemption on the field?  Check.  Doling out slices of humble pie to arrogant, indolent players?  Check.  Male athletes who refuse to respect women's athletic competition?  Check.  Also in the mix is a near-constant stream of ham-handed nods to Indian diversity.  There is a burly hot-headed Punjabi girl (Tanya Abrol), a feisty little village girl (Chitrashi Rawat), an elephant-riding dark-skinned southerner who doesn't speak a word of Hindi (Nisha Nair), and a girl with east Asian features (Masochon Zimik) whose only significant line is a complaint about "being treated like a foreigner in your own country".  And then there are the speeches - oh the patriotic speeches - that pour out of Shah Rukh Khan's quivering lips at every turn.  Throw in the foregone conclusion of all sports films, and it's hard for me to resist the temptation to adapt Geoff Pullum's delightful zing of Dan Brown - to call this film formulaic is an insult to the beauty and diversity of formulae.

Yet with all of those strikes against it, Chak de India manages to be a remarkably entertaining and engaging movie.  Shah Rukh Khan broods and bristles as Kabir, and its the right role for his delivery, which always errs on the side of pontification even when that style less appropriate than it is here. The hockey action is well-shot and exciting, if highly improbable.  And the team is adorable and easy to root for.  Despite slotting neatly into their diversity campaign pigeon-holes, the players come across with strong and memorable individual personalities - they are more than a pile of tokens.  This is largely because some of them, at least, are given story arcs of their own.  Particularly notable among these are those of the three senior players.  Bindiya (Shilpa Shukla) stubbornly refuses to play if she's not given her favorite position, and gets such a poor read on what makes Kabir tick that she offers him sexual favors if he'll name her team captain.  The married Vidya (Vidya Malvade) has to defy the wishes of her husband and father-in-law, who expect her to retire from competition and be a proper wife.  And Preeti (Sagarika Ghatge) is engaged to a rising cricket star (Vivan Bhatena) who thinks he's God's gift, and tells Preeti that cricket is "important," while field hockey is "just a game." 

All of these stories are engaging and handled quite well, and give the film an undeniable girl-power flavor that helps elevate Chak de India above the mass of sports-film and patriotic-film cliches that might otherwise drown it.   Unfortunately the movie undermines this quality just a little at its end, by relegating the resolution of the girls' stories to abrupt bites underneath the rolling closing credits, reminding the viewer that Chak de India is first and foremost A Movie About A Man; the girls' arcs are just incidental to his redemption.

Also mildly frustrating is that after all the film's emphasis on teamwork (as obvious allegory for national unity, of course), the ultimate match is decided on penalty shots. But that is a nitpick; viewed merely as a feel-good tale about a likeable bunch of unlikely heroes - from the smallest player right on up to Kabir - coming together for the glory of their homeland, defeating both prejudice and enormous unfavorable odds, Chak de India more than delivers. 

 

 

Waqt (1965)

वक़्त

I love 1960s Bollywood, with its grand homages to modern style and its riffs on the tension between tradition and modernity.  My favorite Hindi films of that era delight me with their heady fusion of East and West - not to mention stars in cigarette pants dancing the Mashed Potato or driving flashy mod roadsters, and sets decked out in elaborate mood-lit pastels.  And for a generous helping of all of these, the multi-star hit Waqt ("time") absolutely delivers.  

Lala Kedarnath (Balraj Sahni) is on top of the world.  With a booming retail business, a beautiful wife Laxmi (Achala Sachdev) whom he adores, and three adorable little boys, Kedarnath believes that fate has dealt him a winning hand, and life will only get better.  But, the film tells us in the opening voice-over, time's "moving finger" has other plans for Kedarnath.  A terrible earthquake destroys Kedarnath's business, and his family is scattered in its aftermath.  Laxmi wanders through refugee camps with their youngest son, eventually finding work as a seamstress, and the boy Vijay grows into a serious young graduate (Shashi Kapoor).  The middle son is taken in by a wealthy childless couple, growing into Ravi (Sunil Dutt), a playful young man on the threshold of a career in law.  The oldest son Raja, after a brief stint in an orphanage run by a cruel schoolmaster (Jeevan), escapes to a life on the streets.  Taken under the wing of a crooked diamond dealer named Chinoy (Rehman), Raja matures to become a suave hustler (Raaj Kumar).  After learning of Raja's treatment at the orphanage, Kedarnath murders the schoolmaster in a fit of rage and frustration, and spends upwards of twenty years in prison.  But destiny works toward reuniting the star-crossed family.  Raja and Ravi both fall for the same girl, Meena (Sadhana), the beautiful daughter of an upstanding jurist.  And Ravi's adoptive sister Renu (Sharmila Tagore) meets the studious Vijay in school and pursues a romance with him.  Vijay, eager to earn some money to help the ailing Laxmi (and to be worthy of Renu), takes a job as Chinoy's driver.  Soon, Chinoy's shady dealings bring the three unknown brothers together, with lives hanging in the balance.

The box cover of the Waqt DVD claims that the film is a pioneering multi-starrer that defined the Yash Chopra style for decades to come.  I can easily believe this.  Waqt is truly enormous in scope, with equal attention given to all its numerous stars.  (Though, I couldn't resist the thought that the movie could have been even more epic had the brothers been played by Shashi, Shammi, and Raj Kapoor.)  Even the parents get a song of their own, the beautiful qawwali "Ae meri zohra jabeen", picturized on a dashing Balraj Sahni and a blushing Achala Sachdev. 

The movie's ultimate message is that the wheel of fortune never stops turning, and even its happy ending is tempered by Kedarnath's somber reminder that joy in the moment is only fleeting, and luck can change in an instant.  In addition to that sobering idea, such themes as destiny, sacrifice, familial devotion, and transcending of class barriers that characterize many Yash Chopra (and, later, Aditya Chopra) films are amply explored in Waqt as well.  Young Vijay is prepared to sacrifice his career prospects, his love for Renu, and even his principles to save his ailing mother - and his piety protects both of them, in grand dramatic style, when he breaks down after swearing on a copy of the Bhagavadgita.  Ravi initially turns up his nose at Vijay, telling him that a driver should know his place - but he is set straight by a chastisement from the democratically-minded Renu.  Even the hardened Raja is not immune from the pull of fraternal responsibility, willingly laying everything he values (including Meena) at the feet of Ravi when he learns of their true relation.  Three decades before Karan Johar made a film under the Yash Raj banner, Waqt was all about loving your family.  

Even more than that, though, Waqt is about epitomizing the visually sumptuous style of its time.  In a competition that feels almost prescient of American Graffiti, Raja and Ravi drag-race their tiny convertibles with high mid-century elan.  Vijay and Renu's adorable dockside song "Din hai bahaar ke" exemplifies the style as well.  From Meena's colorful outfits to the lavish decor of her home, from Raja's tailored tuxedos to Ravi's cigarette pants and V-neck sweaters, every lovingly-composed scene in Waqt is packed full of mod.  The screen capture at the top of this post offers a taste, and while I don't normally use a lot of screen captures in my posts, it's unfair to Waqt not to, so here are a few more (click to see them larger).  

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. 

Mother India (1957)

The exquisite sacrifice that is the life of an Indian woman is a common and moving theme upon which many great Hindi films are based, from Amar Prem to Lajja.  And the mother of all these films may be Mother India, in which an Indian woman survives an almost unimaginable series of hardships and rejuvenates an entire village with her own backbreaking work, only to face the ultimate sacrifice - one she must make not only for her family, but for the good of the entire community.  

Radha (Nargis) marries the handsome Shamu (Raaj Kumar) and settles well into life with his solid agrarian family.  She soon learns, though, that her mother-in-law mortgaged the farm to pay for her and Shamu's lavish wedding celebrations.   The moneylender Sukhi Lala (Kanhaiyalal) claims three-fourths of the farm's produce, having tricked Radha's illiterate mother-in-law into signing a usurious contract.  As the family grows - Radha has three children - it becomes more and more difficult to subsist on their meager share.  The hardships multiply, leaving Radha and her children alone, homeless, and starving.  They survive through Radha's own tireless hard work, and her sons grow into strong young men, though each is scarred in his own way by the traumatic experiences of his childhood.  The spirited Birju (Sunil Dutt) is mischievous and temperamental; he is hungry to seek revenge from Lala, who still claims the lion's share of their produce.  The solemn Ramu (Rajendra Kumar) is protective of his mother and reflects her values, relying on hard work to make his way.  The tension between the two philosophies sets the stage for the film's ultimate conflict, as Birju's rash, violent nature clashes head-on with his mother's stern, grounded integrity. 

Mother India is a beautiful film, shot in beautiful brown and orange tones that both highlight the majesty of the rural Indian landscape and bring to life the grit and heat of working the soil.  The themes lend themselves to an abundance of iconic and symbolic images - Radha hauling a plow that is meant to be hauled by an ox; Radha standing neck-deep in flood waters, hefting her young children over her head on a pallet.  And Nargis, as Radha - really as the titular Mother India - is in absolute top form.  She is the epitome of badass filmi womanhood; she is simply fierce.  Nargis has crafted a performance that is melodrama at its finest, focused and heightened emotions that magnify the viewer's sense of Radha's experience.  Indeed, the multiplying calamities that befall poor Radha can be hard to watch - there are times when the story is so bleak it seems hard to carry on. 

Still, there is a current of hopefulness as well.  Radha's story is told in flashback; the film opens with the villagers asking Radha, now an old woman, to bless the inauguration of the village's new canal.  "You are the mother of us all," the villagers plead with the recalcitrant old woman.  And so the viewer knows, from the outset, that Radha not only will survive her trials, but will come to hold a revered place as the savior of the village.  Radha shoulders the burden of rearing her family and restoring a village upheaved, in what is surely a metaphor for the construction of modern India and healing the fresh wounds of Partition.  And so the film's message is, as it must be, that once Mother India has made the difficult decisions and painful sacrifices, those of her children that remain will be squarely on the road to prosperity. 

The film's second half is as much about Radha's sons as it is about Radha; much time is devoted to developing their contrasting approaches to reconciling with the past and preparing for the future.  The hot-headed Birju thirsts for revenge and lives in the moment; Ramu is practical, methodical, and hardworking.  The film is abundantly clear in its endorsement of the latter philosophy.  And yet as much as Birju frustrates her, Radha adores him; as in Deewaar, Mother India favors her miscreant son over her honest one.  The only limit Radha sets for her indulgence of Birju is one that reflects the film's girl power subtext:  "You may do as you like and I will always love you," she tells him, "but don't you dare ever disrespect a woman."

These comments are quite long enough, but I have to add a few words about Mother India's beautiful music.  The songs encapsulate the agrarian beauty of the film and present delightful tableaux of idealized life in a farming village.  While they don't stand alone - there are no singular dances or set pieces that stand out in my memory (except perhaps the Holi song) - they add texture, and in the film's darker moments, respite, to an already lovely movie. 

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.