Filmi Geek

Jab We Met (2007)

Something I have learned about myself during my several years of watching Hindi movies is that I actually like pure love stories.  I'm content to watch a movie whose only plot point is how - not even whether - the principals will get together.  As long as the movie is well made, the characters enjoyable to spend time with, and the pairing adequately motivated, a romance alone can be enough to hold my interest.  Imtiaz Ali's Jab We Met ("when we met") is such a movie.  It doesn't have any cricket matches, or any goonda seeking redemption. It is largely unburdened by broader themes, like communalism, independence, or justice, that often distinguish masala films.  And yet, it's an engaging and sweet romance between two likeable people - and for that alone, a solidly entertaining movie. 

Aditya Kashyap (Shahid Kapoor) is a depressed, disaffected executive, the heir to his late father's huge but ailing industrialist empire.  In a suicidal funk, Aditya one day walks out of a business meeting and just keeps going.  He boards a train out of Bombay, with the seeming intention - to the extent he even has one - to leap to his death once the train hits speed in the countryside.  A kinetic young passenger, Geet (Kareena Kapoor), accosts him with a wall of chatter, and unwittingly saves his life.  Aditya escorts Geet to her family's home in Punjab, where her enormous, lively family takes him for her paramour.  But Geet confesses to Aditya that she intends to elope with a fellow she met in Shimla.  Aditya again hits the road with Geet, this time taking her to the Himachal Pradesh hill station Manali, to her Anshuman (Tarun Arora).  Along the way, Geet's vivacity touches Aditya - he falls in love, but willingly leaves her to a happy life with Anshuman.  Revived and inspired by Geet's moxie, he returns to his business and dives in with renewed vigor, setting the company back on track.  Soon, though, Aditya learns that things between Geet and Anjuman haven't gone as planned.  He sets off on another journey to find out what happened to Geet, and to help her set her life on a better course, as she helped him. 

Jab We Met draws on well-worn, even tired, romance elements.  There is nothing new in the story of a garrulous young woman wearing down the reserve of a long-suffering man.  The boisterous Punjabi family, full of strapping men equally eager to protect their womenfolk as to break into a bhangra, is another time-worn filmi trope.   Jab We Met does not exactly offer a fresh take on these themes, but it does present them with enough craft to make their very familiarity engaging, like cinematic comfort food.  

And Jab We Met is not entirely without originality.  Geet's uncompromising independence is a fairly uncommon feature in a Hindi romantic heroine.  I have seen its like before largely in movies that are close adaptations of western romances, like Pyar to hona hi tha, or Chori chori.  In those movies, the heroines have no family to speak of - their independence is wrought from necessity.  Geet, though, does have very a strong bond with her family.  She is on her own because she wants to be, because she feels a compelling drive to write her own destiny.  As she explains to Aditya in a thoughtful moment, Geet will be happy in life so long as she makes her own choices - even if she makes mistakes, they will be her mistakes.  This self-claimed autonomy gives Geet an unexpected depth in an otherwise by-the-numbers story, and is the greatest distinguishing strength of Jab We Met.  

A character like Geet presents Imtiaz Ali with a tough challenge. How do you make Geet's effusive (and often annoying) prattling get under Aditya's skin without also driving the audience to distraction?  It's guaranteed by the script that Aditya is eventually charmed by it, but the same cannot be said for the rest of us. Ali puts his actors to work walking this fine line, and while the balance ultimately comes out in the right place for me, I can't say with conviction that it would for everyone.  Kareena Kapoor seem a divisive star - I know many who positively hate her as an actor.  But she handles Geet well, toning it down when necessary to let some thoughtfulness or vulnerability show through.  Shahid Kapoor, too, proves his acting chops in key moments.  When Aditya leaves Geet in Manali with Anshuman, Shahid delivers a smile that is warm and sincere, and yet tinged with sadness.  It is a fairly subtle expression, and Shahid nails it.

As a final word, Jab We Met turns out to be a great movie to see as I get ready for my first trip to India in just a couple of weeks - its many road sequences deliver loads of lovely travel scenery that just make my heart race in anticipation.  From the Punjab to Himachal Pradesh and back again, there are soaring mountainscapes, idyllic fields, and supreme local color.  A highlight is Kareena's song "Yeh ishq hai", shot in Manali and packed with fascinating Tibetan dancers in gorgeous festival costumes.  

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.

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.

Mixed Doubles (2006)

Hindi movies do a lot of things very well, but frank investigations of mature sexual relationships aren't usually considered to be one of those things.  It's a difficult subject for any movie - in any language - to handle well, with the right mixture of humor, sensitivity, and sexiness.  Rajat Kapoor's Mixed Doubles, despite choosing the absurdly sensational device of spouse-swapping as its point of departure, manages reasonably well.

Malti (Konkona Sen Sharma) and Sunil (Ranvir Shorey) have been married for ten years, and they are content in their domesticity - but their sex life has gone to sleep.  Malti feels frisky, but Sunil isn't interested.  Sunil is troubled by his absent libido, but unsure how to spark it - until a boastful friend plants the idea of spouse-swapping in Sunil's mind.  Sunil becomes obsessed with the idea, and through advertisements placed in the back of salacious magazines, discovers a willing couple, Vinod (Rajat Kapoor) and Kalpana (Koel Purie).  But Sunil has to convince Malti to go along with the plan.  And even if he can wrangle a way to do that, there's the matter of the fateful night itself, and the consequences for Sunil and Malti's marriage.

This plot is a minefield, in which a misstep could cause an explosion of bad taste or juvenile tittering.  For the most part, though, Mixed Doubles hits the right notes.  Its portrayal of Sunil and Malti's marriage is natural and believable enough to balance out the squirmy gratuitousness of the notion of spouse-swapping.  It's wonderful - not to mention, a refreshing twist on the steretypical bed-death scenario - that Malti is a mature, faithful wife with a healthy sexual appetite.  And, of course, the performances are excellent - especially Konkona Sen Sharma, whose mixture of concern, indignation, disgust, and love is just pitch-perfect.  

Most of the movie's laughs are of the awkward variety, where the audience laughs because of character's discomfort.  I am not usually a fan of this brand of comedy - The Office is the canonical example, a show that I know is good but that I simply cannot watch.  Here, though, it works, as a source both of comedy and of pathos.  There is something ineffably sympathetic in Sunil's irrational obsession with the spouse-swapping scheme; I can identify with his restless pursuit of an outrageously bad idea.  Ranvir Shorey's confused everyman performance helps keep him sympathetic - up to a point.  Indeed, the deception with which Sunil convinces Malti to accede to the plan is the movie's only real wrong note. 

Sunil's maladroit encounter with the bizarrely fascinating Kalpana is another source of awkward humor.  Kalpana is an extremely irritating character, childish and impulsive, a caricature of a Bohemian free spirit - but also, at least to me, wildly physically appealing, and that juxtaposition is oddly engaging.  Her husband Vinod is bland and formal by comparison.

The ending of Mixed Doubles doesn't offer much in the way of resolution, but that probably makes for a better film than any attempt to wrap the extreme emotions of Sunil and Malti's mutual misfires into a too-tidy package.  Each of them has deceived and deeply wounded the other, and the damage of that is just too heavy to try to fix in one movie.  The final scenes offer a gentle settling back into the quotidian domestic routine, suggesting that a peaceful resolution is possible for them, even if it hasn't yet happened by the time the credits roll. 

Dhobi ghat (2011)

धोबी घाट

Aamir Khan productions come with a lot of baggage, given his reputation for being self-consciously highbrow, condescending toward the cinema traditions that made him famous, and caring too much about what the West thinks of his movies.  Whether that's deserved or not - I don't follow his interviews closely enough to weigh in on that - his latest release stands on its own merits.  Written and directed by his wife Kiran Rao, Dhobi ghat ("washerman's wharf") is at its best an engaging meditation on the ephemeral nature of life in Mumbai.

Shai (Monica Dogra) is an American-born banker on a sabbatical of self-discovery in Mumbai.  An aspiring photographer, she combs the city looking for subjects to shoot.  She befriends a hard-working washerman named Munna (Prateik Babbar), who introduces her to some of the city's grittiest and most colorful quarters.  She also meets a brooding artist, Arun (Aamir Khan) - they have a one-night stand, and after an awkward, angry morning-after parting, she retains an attraction and curiosity about him.  Meanwhile Arun, moving into a new apartment, discovers some video letters shot by a girl named Yasmin (Kriti Malhotra), intended for Yasmin's brother but evidently never sent.  Arun becomes engrossed in Yasmin's story, raptly studying the letters, taking inspiration for his new set of paintings, and eager to discover what happened to her. 

One of the themes of Dhobi ghat is that the city exists in multiple layers, both physical (shore, gutter, house, high-rise) and class (rat-killer/dhobi, servant, wealthy educated classes).  The movie happens in the spaces where these strata meet and slide against each other.  Only the American-born character, Shai, willfully and self-consciously disregards this stratification, nudging herself into Munna's spaces.  Apart from Shai, the only customer who invites Munna into her home is a dour woman who, it is implied, wants him for sex, and dismisses him as a dhobi when she realizes he will no longer provide that.  For upper-class Mumbai-walas, Munna is a service provider, not a person.  Shai uses him as well, in her own way, but she also genuinely cares for him, especially by the film's end.  Yet their friendship, like nearly everything else in the film's Mumbai, is transient.

Indeed, the loveliest moments in Dhobi ghat are its many symbols of the transitory nature of city life - characters move house and leave scant artifacts behind; names are scratched in sand and washed away by the waves; construction sites stand for the relentless pace of change.  Even the videos, paintings, and photographs that drive the film's stories can only imperfectly capture moments; the records may remain, but like Arun's elderly neighbor they are mute and leave questions unanswered. 

The weak link in the script is Arun; the brooding, temperamental, loner artist is a cliche and just a flatter character than the others.  His obsession with Yasmin's letters is meant to add depth, but it doesn't tell us much about Arun, it's not personal enough to him - who would not be bewitched by such a vibrant young woman, by the mystery of her unsent letters and her unknown fate?  Arun only takes on dimension at the very end of the film, as he deduces the logical conclusion of Yasmin's story and wordlessly struggles with the possibility that the art she inspired him to make is an exploitation of her suffering. 

The performances in Dhobi ghat range from adequate (Aamir Khan, Monica Dogra) to exquisite (Prateik Babbar and Kriti Malhotra); the latter do as much with their faces as their dialogue and are as engaging and believable as the script allows.  Kriti Malhotra renders especially well the slow choking of Yasmin's spirit, as her bright, vivacious smile early in the film fades to a haggard exhaustion by its end.  At any rate, criticizing minor weaknesses in characterization or performance feels like nitpicking a film that is as much impressionist painting as tightly-woven text.  On balance, Dhobi ghat is delicate, touching, visually rich, a pastiche of engaging stories very well told. 

 

Welcome to Sajjanpur (2008)

Shyam Benegal's tales of village life are mostly tense, dense, gritty affairs.  Welcome to Sajjanpur, though, is none of the above.  Though not without substance or statement, the movie is light for the most part, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.  Neither is it a wry, dry humor like Benegal's Mandi. It is jaunty, airy, even self-consciously silly - the sort of film where characters have theme melodies that chime as they strut onto the screen. 

Mahadev (Shreyas Talpade) longs to write novels, but to make ends meet he charges a small fee to write letters for the largely illiterate residents of his village, Sajjanpur.  It seems a simple enough job, yet it lands him in the middle of several sticky situations.  A local thug Ramsingh (Yashpal Sharma) uses Mahadev's services to manipulate local politics to favor his wife's bid for village head.  Her opponent in the election, the hijra Munnibai (Ravi Jhankal) hires Mahadev to write a catchy campaign song - and also to write to the state government for protection when Ramsingh threatens her.   A superstitious mother (Ila Arun) has him write to her brother as she schemes to break a curse against her ill-starred daughter Bindiya (Divya Dutta) by marrying her to a dog - against the modern, sensible Bindiya's wishes.  And Mahadev's childhood sweetheart Kamla (Amrita Rao), now grown and married, engages him to write to her husband, who is working in Bombay.  Mahadev, attracted to Kamla, tailors the letters in hopes of driving a wedge between them and winning Kamla's heart.

The best thing about Welcome to Sajjanpur is Shreyas Talpade, whose performance is comic, physical, and likeable.  Many movies tell stories in which terrible things happen to loveable people.  Mahadev, by contrast, is a loveable person who does a reprehensible thing - and it speaks to both Benegal's and Talpade's own deft touch that Mahadev remains so darn cute even when you want to smack him upside the head for his wrong-headed attempts to sour Kamla's marriage.

Backing up Talpade is the colorful parade of side characters, also all perfectly cast and rendered.  Welcome to Sajjanpur is far from the first movie to provide a series of village vignettes or a pastiche of village archetypes, but I never tire of seeing such stories when they are as well-executed as this.  Ila Arun fills the screen in her appearances with a performance that is loud, and physical - she seems to never stop talking and her scenes are incredibly funny.  After just a few lines, Divya Dutta as the scowling, scolding Bindiya had me wanting to see a whole movie about her.  Other characters add more hues, as well as more comic situations for Talpade to work for all they are worth - like the peculiar snake-charmer (Daya Shankar Pandey) who keeps offering virility potions in payment to a very uncomfortable Mahadev.  The weak link in this bustle of villagers is, unfortunately, Amrita Rao, whose demure, rural mannerisms never quite stop feeling affected.  

Despite all the levity, Welcome to Sajjanpur is grounded - or, arguably, burdened - by a number of polticial statements.  Indeed, you can play "Shyam Benegal bingo" while watching it, checking off the social issues it systematically touches - anti-Muslim prejudice; corruption in the election process; the effect of big-business development on rural life; various traditions surrounding the rights and treatment of women, especially with regard to marriage; and polilical enfranchisement of marginalized communities, embodied in this case by the hijra leader Munnibai.  I never quite know what to make of hijras in the movies, largely because of my near-complete ignorance of them and their standing in different quarters of Indian society.  Sometimes they are portrayed as vile, sometimes as pitiable; Benegal here walks a fine line between these two, eventually landing firmly on the side of respecting them both as human beings and as a political force. 

The film's ending puts a puzzling twist on the notion that life is stranger than fiction, and muddies the social message a little by pulling a switcheroo, where one side character's happy ending turns tragic, and another character's tragic death is undone.  Perhaps Benegal is saying that it's not the destination that matters so much as the journey; that regardless of whether these specific individuals live or die, the social issues raised by their stories remain real and meaningful. 

 

Yashpal SharmaYash

Peepli Live (2010)

पीपली लाइव

The best political satires, like Jaane bhi do yaaro, handle challenging subjects with wry humor, and yet manage to leave the audience feeling sad and aware.  Anusha Rizvi's debut film Peepli Live treads a similar delicate ground, offering a successful farce that nevertheless packs a meaningful punch.

Brothers Budhiya (Raghuvir Yadav) and Natha (Omkar Das) are struggling to stay afloat; the bank is about to foreclose on their farm.  They learn of a government program that pays a substantial sum to the families of farmers who commit suicide due to debt, and Budhiya convinces the hapless, melancholy Natha that taking advantage of this program is the best way forward.  A local newspaper reporter Rakesh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) publishes a small piece about Natha's intentions, and before long the story is picked up by a star television reporter Nandita (Malaika Shenoy).  A vast media circus follows Nandita into Natha's remote little village as hundreds of reporters descend hoping for a piece of the sensational "live suicider" story.  But reporters aren't the only ones hoping to make hay out of Natha's plight - state politicians fighting a bitter election and even the national Minister of Agriculture, Salim (Naseeruddin Shah), all leap on the opportunity to spin the Natha story to advance their own agendas.  Meanwhile, Natha is bewildered by the flurry of attention - and doesn't want to die.

A subject like the problem of farmer suicides almost has to be handled with a satirical edge, or the film would be unbearably depressing.  And really Peepli Live is more about the press's sensationalist mentality and the government's fundamental insincerity than it is about farmer suicides or the plight of poor rural Indians.  Budhiya and Natha, while sympathetic, seem rather indolent; they are never once shown working a field, but are often shown smoking and gabbing with their neighbors.  Meanwhile the circus swarms around them.  The press are so desperate for an angle that reporters shoot film of Natha's clothesline and analyze his excrement.  The politicians scramble to one-up each other in disingenuous concern, showering Natha with useless gifts.  Everyone capitalizes on Natha's plight - reporters grabbing ratings, electioneers grabbing votes, and even Natha's fellow villagers who pitch vendor stalls and carnival rides to entertain the visiting throngs. Peepli Live presents all of these maneuverings with a healthy dose of humor, and the movie does offer quite a few wry smiles and even genuine laughs among them. 

Another of the movie's themes is the great gulf that exists between India's urban, urbane middle class and its rural poor.  On this theme Peepli Live's exploration is most layered - it relies not only upon the obvious clashes of culture, but also on subtleties of casting, costuming, and performance that make the audience's experience of this disconnect almost visceral.  In one scene the flawless line of trimmed whiskers of the Chief Minister's moustache presents a stark contrast to Budhiya's grizzled face and Natha's wild unkempt curls and beard.  The farmers stand rooted and hunched while the slick, tall Nandita strides around them.  Even the putative leader of the backward castes wears slick aviator sunglasses as he presents Natha with a gift of a television that Natha's hut lacks electricity to run.  The politicians wear neat, high-quality, expensive clothes; the reporters wear slick modern-style shirts and designer jeans; the villagers wear moth-eaten sweaters and rags.  In one scene, Natha slips and falls in a pile of dung, and then just gets up and keeps on walking.  It reminded me of the exchange in Monty Python and the Holy Grail - "How do you know he's a king?"  "He hasn't got shit all over 'im." 

Among the outsiders, only Rakesh begins to see across this great gulf, and to recognize the depth of the villagers' poverty not just as a vehicle for political advancement or ratings, but as a deep injustice and a real national crisis.  He takes an interest in the story of another Peepli farmer who lost his land to foreclosure, and now digs ditches just to sell the dirt - but, Nandita tells him, marketing research says the only bankable story is Natha's threatened suicide.  Peepli Live deals Rakesh an unutterably cruel blow that is both sucker-punch and wake-up call to the audience.  The abrupt change of tone is jarring, and yet it would be disingenuous of Peepli Live not to end with a dark and serious turn.  After all, if the audience gets to laugh all the way through the story and leave feeling cheerful, we've exploited Natha's misery just as surely as Nandita, Salim, and their ilk do. 

 

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. 

 

 

Khosla ka ghosla (2006)

खोसला का घोसला

What do you do when someone steals your dream - not to mention your life savings - out from under your nose?  Dibakar Banerjee's Khosla ka ghosla ("Khosla's nest") pits a family against one such thieving scoundrel, and over that backdrop delivers an affectionate take on the complex of relationships between a father and his grown son.  

Khosla (Anupam Kher) has worked hard for decades, saving up for his dream - a plot where he plans to build a grand house for his entire family.  When the family visits their new property, though, they find that a wealthy developer named Khurana (Boman Irani) has claimed it for himself.  Khurana, ever gracious, is willing to sell Khosla the property - for just half of what Khosla has already paid for it!  Khosla tries the available legal channels to assert his ownership - but the police, lawyers, and even charities just want to shave their share off the deal, rather than saving Khosla from the extortionate demand. Khosla's older son Bunty (Ranvir Shorey) turns to strong-arm tactics, without making much headway.  Finally Khosla's younger son, Cherry (Parvin Dabas), comes up with a plan.  Cherry's relationship with his father is strained to say the least - but Cherry is determined to help his father one last time before he takes off on his planned emigration to the US.  So with the help of a small-time con man (Vinay Pathak), Cherry's friend and frustrated paramour Meghna (Tara Sharma), and Meghna's theater troupe led by her mentor Bapu (Navin Nischol), Cherry plans a con of a lifetime, hoping to beat Khurana at his own game.

While watching Khosla ka ghosla I couldn't help but compare it to Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year, another recent film that looks at what happens when nice people find themselves treading the waters of Indian corruption.  I criticized that film for its "two wrongs make a right" message.  But as the same thoughts cropped up during Khosla ka ghosla, I realized that as an outsider, I just don't have the right perspective to judge this sort of movie theme.  If you live with the daily effects of corruption on a small and large scale, in both public and private spheres, it might be very satisfying indeed to root for a hero who beats that corruption by becoming just as corrupt and beating the swindlers at their own game.  It leaves an uncomfortable taste in my mouth - but I am not the target audience. And unlike the loveably naive gang in Rocket Singh, who never seemed quite to understand that their actions were wrong, many of the characters in Khosla ka ghosla have serious qualms about their blatantly unethical scheme.  That makes the story a little easier to swallow, even if that thread is dropped by film's end.

At any rate, Khosla ka ghosla is only half about corruption - it is also about family, and it nails that theme with perfect pitch.  Khosla's relationship with Cherry is the real sleeper star of this movie.  Cherry is proper, uptight, and straight-laced, yet he rebels more stridently than his hapless older brother.  And his attempts at asserting autonomy - his desire to change his name, his secret arrangements to emigrate - leave Khosla bewildered and hurt.  Meanwhile Cherry's sudden obsession with recovering the stolen property for Khosla seems almost a misguided gesture; by the time the scheme underway, Khosla himself is all but resigned to the loss, and is disappointed at Cherry's imminent departure.  Father and son seem doomed to miss the mark in their efforts to reach out to one another, even when their hearts are in the right place.

The relationship between parents and their grown children is not an uncommon theme in Hindi films, of course; with the prevalence of joint households, Indian adults have far more quotidian interaction with their parents than I or most of my US contemporaries.   Still, Khosla ka ghosla is an unusual look at this theme, because its tension hangs on what's inside hearts and heads, rather than on more common hooks like parental disapproval of lifestyle choices or romantic partners.  Anupam Kher is an actor of unlimited depth, and his performance as Khosla is tender and moving.  The young actors hold their own as well; Parvin Dabas is especially endearing in his rendering of the tense, slightly discombobulated Cherry. 

 

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).