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. 

Main Azaad hoon (1989)

मैं आज़ाद हँ

Main Azaad hoon ("I am Azaad"), one of a very few Javed Akhtar films that Shabana Azmi appeared in, is an interesting rumination on how an ordinary - and anonymous - man can be moved to tremendous sacrifice by the plight of his fellow human beings.   

Publisher Gokulchand's (Manohar Singh) newspaper is not selling, and his columnist Subhashni (Shabana Azmi) is facing the ax.  To boost the paper's sales - and to save her job - quick-thinking Subhashni concocts and publishes a letter from a fictional man named Azaad - the name means "independent" - who threatens to kill himself in protest against social injustice throughout the state.  Azaad is an immediate sensation throughout the city, and Subhashni pens more letters, creating an entire backstory for the fictional man.  Gokulchand is delighted with the result in the paper's bottom line, and to keep the charade going he authorizes Subhashni to find a suitable man they can pay to play the role of Azaad.  Subhashni discovers a charismatic vagabond (Amitabh Bachchan) who is willing to take on the role in exchange for a few good meals and a generous handful of rupees.  Azaad's mystique grows, and everyone with a grievance seeks his aid, from slumdwellers in search of clean water to striking factory workers clamoring for a living wage.  Azaad is moved by these causes, and soon he is acting from his heart instead of merely acting the part that Gokulchand and Subhashni have paid him to play.  And his heart is tested when the power players who created him try to use him as a pawn for their own advantage.

Main Azaad hoon's script is little too wordy; there were places where the story dragged.  But Javed sahib's award-winning dialogues deliver with the expected style the film's statements against manipulation of the common man by those in power  - like when one character, an elected official, says that the key to politics is to "make promises to the poor, and make deals with the rich."   Subhasnhi's character arc in particular is compelling.  She starts out just as manipulative as the power players - she is very shrewd in fact, acting in calculation of her own interests only, and is not moved until she sees Azaad willing to commit himself to the fullest for the rights of others.

Indeed, there are parallels to Shabana Azmi's own experience built into Subhashni's story that are so striking I had to wonder if Javed sahib didn't write the script with his wife in mind.  Subhashni begins with the view that her newspaper column is strictly entertainment for the masses.  As the film wears on, she struggles to keep entertainment separate from social responsibility, just as Shabana Azmi herself did, and, again like Shabana, ultimately follows her heart in the direction of activism.  The film contains parallels between Azaad and Amitabh Bachchan too - in one scene, Azaad emerges from his rooms to find an overwhelming crowd of supplicants awaiting darshan; I have read about such crowds at Amitabh's own home, especially in the early 1980s.

Javed Akhtar once said that Hollywood films are short stories while Hindi films are novels. But the characterizations and scope of Main Azaad hoon are, in some ways, more like the former.  Rather than offering reels of epic backstory, Azaad's true origin and life story remain a complete mystery.  We learn a little about Subhashni's father - he was a hero, a freedom fighter on the eve of independence - but no friends or relatives of hers are present in the film.  By filmi standards, the two principals are unanchored and lonesome (though Azaad has a sidekick who makes a few appearances) - these loners are given their sense of purpose by devoting themselves to a wider community to which neither fully belongs. 

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. 

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. 

Mr. India (1987)

What happens when two masters of populist, allegorical, entertaining screenwriting and a gifted, creative, intellectual director put their heads together with the goal of creating a film that is over-the-top even compared to the most outrageous masala Hindi films have to offer?   Mr. India is what happens.  Screenwriters Salim-Javed and director Shekhar Kapur, with some intrepid help from a terrific cast, pulled out every stop in this all-out goofy entertainer.  It's self-conscious, it's ridiculous, and it's riotous fun - but there's a patriotic moral, too. 

Arun Verma (Anil Kapoor) is a musician with a cheerful disposition who looks after a houseful of adorable orphans.  When his natural charm ceases to satisfy the shopkeepers and landlords from whom he wrangles rice and credit, he sets out to find himself a paying guest to supplement his income.  He rents a room to a persnickety, child-hating reporter named Seema (Sridevi) and they proceed to get on one another's nerves.  Soon Arun learns that his father, a scientist who died when Arun was a small boy, had been killed by some goons intent on stealing an invisibility formula the scientist had devised.  Now the goons are back, at the behest of their despotic boss, Mogambo (Amrish Puri), and they want not only the invisibility formula but all of India to boot.  Arun learns of the terrorist tactics of Mogambo's thugs, who use such nefarious tools as tainted food supplies and explosive-rigged toys to sow the seeds of fear in the populace, and he decides to use the invisibility formula to mete out justice against Mogambo's army of evildoers, transforming himself into Mr. India, the invisible avenger of the people.

The best parts of Mr. India are the moments that are crafted with no purpose other than to showcase the stars' first-class shtick.  In one delightful sequence, for example, Sridevi launches into an extended Charlie Chaplin impression that highlights her talent for adorable physical comedy; in others, she flings her dangerous curves across the screen in both a comical dance sequence and a passionate one.  Amrish Puri is at his bug-eyed, scene-chewingest best in every one of Mogambo's scenes, preening and strutting and ingeiously crafting a seemingly limitless number of ways to utter the villain's signature phrase, "Mogambo khush hua." ("Mogambo is pleased.")  These elements are brazenly, unabashedly entertaining in the manner in which Hindi films are particularly excellent; it is art without artifice.  Even the big-hearted sweetness Anil Kapoor shows nurturing his passel of adorable orphans is calculated more to win the hearts of the audience than to support the story. 

But for all its wanton crowd-pleasing, Mr. India is still a Salim-Javed film, and so the masala can be expected to be served up with an edge and with a generous side helping of social message.  The former manifests in Salim-Javed's willingness to kill even some of their most loveable characters; the latter in Arun Verma's declaration, as the invisible force called Mr. India, of the power of the "aam hindustani," the ordinary Indian.  The film's central message that larger-than-life forces of bloodshed and terror - represented by the larger-than-life Mogambo - can be stopped by the invisible yet undeniable power of the compassionate Indian citizen who looks out for the interests of his compatriots.  Mogambo's critical error is to presume that Arun Verma loves his own life more than he loves his country; Arun's patriotism and his love for every citizen of India, is Mogambo's downfall.  That's a heavy message indeed, that the commitment of the aam hindustani can defeat the devil himself; Mr. India works by lightening the load, delivering it in an outlandish and fun package. 

Mr. India was my (long overdue) first Sridevi film, and for the record I absolutely can see what all the fuss is about.  The three segments mentioned above - the Charlie Chaplin scene, the fantastic comedy number "Hawa Hawai," and the sensual song "Kaate nahin kate yeh din yeh raat" together represent a very nice sampling of her abilities.  She is adorable and precise, thrillingly sexy and at the same time uproariously funny.  It is Sridevi's misfortune that she reigned during a particularly bleak period of Hindi films, but I am nevertheless eager for more of her. 

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.

Mandi (1983)

मंडी

Shyam Benegal films often explore broad social themes through a closely focused lens, in detailed studies of relationships among a handful of people.  Mandi ("market") is broader in scope, featuring a large number of characters whose relationships form an intricate web in which concepts like loyalty, morality, and duplicity are tangled.  A wry film with a healthy dose of black comedy, Mandi presents a sarcastic look at the tension between venerable but questionable traditions and modernity in its various forms. 

Rukmini bai (Shabana Azmi) is a madam who runs her brothel with a stern and demanding hand.  Aided by her melancholy houseboy Dhungrus (Naseeruddin Shah), Rukmini is protective of her girls, especially the brothel's virginal prize, Zeenat (Smita Patil), who is permitted to spend her days practicing her music and kathak instead of submitting to the kotha's more lascivious customers.  When a sanctimonious moralist, Shanti Devi (Gita Siddharth), flexes her political muscle in an attempt to drive the brothel out of town, Rukmini turns to her landlord Mr. Gupta (Kulbushan Kharbanda) for assistance, but finds in him only a conditional ally.  Caught in the crossfire is the town's mayor, Agrawal (Saeed Jaffrey), who is under the powerful Shanti Devi's thumb but also beholden to Rukmini, lest she air his own dirty laundry.  Rounding out the vast network of players is a terrified mute girl (Sreela Majumdar) married under pretext and sold by her new husband to Rukmini; a dirty-minded photographer (Om Puri) who prowls around trying to snap naked pictures of the tawaifs; a police-wala who does his "night duty" at the brothel; Agrawal's son, engaged to Gupta's daughter but madly in love with Zeenat; Shanti Devi's beleaguered assistant (Pankaj Kapur); a crazed and pious hermit (Amrish Puri) who shows Rukmini how to extract wishes from a variety of holy objects; and all the girls of the brothel (including Soni Razdan and Ila Arun), with their varying levels of satisfaction and loyalty to Rukmini.

That's an awful lot to squeeze into a film, and the squeezing does, to some degree, compress Benegal's characters into two dimensions.  The outstanding talent of the cast offers some compensation, though, allowing each character to be vividly rendered despite the tendency toward archetypy.  The darkly comic tone of the entire film enhances the vividness of the characterizations.  Without it, the film would collapse under the weight of its themes.  Delivering the tale with archness, teetering on the brink of tumbling over the top, allows the actors a breadth of expression that helps them pop out of the screen.  Amrish Puri's bug-eyed ascetic, Saeed Jaffrey's nervously buffoonish aristocrat, Naseeruddin Shah's droopy drunk - each plays to the back of the house in a departure from Benegal's usual hyper-realist style, yet the broad style is precisely what renders each of them memorable. 

Shabana Azmi's turn is the broadest of them all, and her performance is deliciously physical and yet still evoactively subtle.  Rukmini flits between angry snarls and obsequious smiles at a moment's notice, one minute dripping with maternal concern and the next barking orders like a foreman.  And she cannot resist a mirror, interrupting herself often, whether mid-tirade, mid-sob, or even mid-prayer, to smooth a stray strand of hair.  If there is an overarching mood to the changeable Rukmini, it's that she never for a moment displays an ounce of sincerity.  Indeed, most of the characters in Mandi are somehow scheming, double-crossing, or working both sides against the middle.  From the brothel girls whose loyalty to Rukmini is fragile and fleeting, to Zeenat who is not nearly as ingenuous as she seems, and even to the pompous Shanti Devi who (we learn from a throw-away line of Rukmini's) is having an affair with her own son-in-law, each of the characters is concealing a card or two.  And it is this ubiquitous duplicity that gives Mandi its entertaining edge -  it's hard not to laugh watching these colorful characters squirm, hedge, and lie through their teeth. 

Mandi's final scene is a little bit puzzling, but the ultimate message may be that degradation is in the eye of the beholder, and that perhaps the concealed hypocrisy of those who call themselves modern and upright is just as oppressive as the ancient traditions of the kotha.  Whatever the true moral of this amorality tale may be, though, it is a terrific film. 

Awara (1951)

आवारा

When I saw Raj Kapoor and Nargis in Shree 420 I was astonished in equal parts by the magnetism of the stars and by Raj Kapoor's mastery of the art of entertainment.  So I had high expectations for Awara ("vagabond") - perhaps too high, because while Awara was certainly an excellent film, it left me somewhat unengaged and disappointed.

Raghunath (Prithviraj Kapoor) considers himself a forward-thinking man, and bucks tradition and his family by marrying a widow.  When his wife Leela (Leela Chitnis) is kidnapped and then mysteriously returned, though, Raghunath is overwhelmed by the wagging tongues of his community.  He concludes, in shades of the Ramayana, that her honor is sullied, and casts her out of his household; she bears his son in squalor. 

Raghunath continues to rise in esteem and eventually becomes a judge who deals harshly with criminals, believing them born of bad blood and incapable of rehabilitation.  His son Raj (Raj Kapoor), meanwhile, under the influence of the same thug Jagga (K.N. Singh) who kidnapped his mother, grows up to be a crook and a bank robber.  When he is reunited with his childhood friend Rita (Nargis) - who happens to be Judge Raghunath's ward - sparks fly, and Raj is torn between his desire to be good enough for her and his belief, fostered by Jagga, that he is no good for anything other than crime.

Like Shree 420, Awara explores a wide range of social themes.  Dominated by ruminations on the question of nature versus nurture, it also addresses classism, injustice toward women, and other weighty issues.  But where Shree 420 clothes its missive to post-partition India in a truly entertaining package, watching Awara it is difficult to shake the feeling of being educated.  Everything, and everyone, is deadly serious.  The tone is set by Prithviraj's clenched jaw and furrowed brow and carried through Raj's dour sarcasm, a bitterness that sours even the film's tender moments.  The result is a movie that, despite the excellence of its craft, feels like work to watch. 

There are unquestionable strengths to Awara.  Raj Kapoor and Nargis turn in subtle and emotional performances.  And Nargis's character Rita is a rare treat - a young woman who also happens to be a lawyer.  She is cautioned against allowing her emotions (presumably a feminine weakness) to interfere with her rationality, but her introduction of compassion into the cold calculus of criminal justice is presented by the film as an unambiguous asset and the key to both Raj's and Raghunath's redemption.  This is possibly Awara's most radical idea, the notion that criminals should be treated as redeemable individuals with the potential to rehabilitate, rather than as the mechanical sum of their breeding and past bad actions. 

Awara also features a beautiful evergreen soundtrack, whose highlights include the title song, a creepy and gorgeous dream sequence in "Tere bina aag yeh chandni," and - especially - the cheeky "Dum bhar jo udhar munh phere,"in which Rita implores the bright full moon to give her and Raj some privacy for an amorous moment.  But the film's sweet, engaging, or moving moments just aren't enough to overcome the general tone of gloom and preachiness.  I realize that Shree 420 is an impossible standard to hold any film against (and that it was made after Awara), but Awara just misses striking that balance of offering its substantial message in a package that would make me want to watch the film again.  It's a great film in many ways, but just a little ponderous, a little off. 

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.