Filmi Geek

Kannathil muthamittal (2002)

கன்னத்தில் முத்தமிட்டால்

As highly regarded as Mani Ratnam is, I have often been told that his Tamil movies are better than his Hindi ones. I can believe it. I have been rather hard on those of his Hindi movies that I have seen. Perhaps because they are so often ravingly praised, I have unfair expectations. They have struck me as uneven in tone, unsure what kind of movies they wanted to be, what message they wanted to send.

Kannathil muthamittal ("a peck on the cheek"), in contrast, is nearly flawless. It is a simple story, simply told, unburdened by melodramatic embellishments or unrealistic characters. These clean lines, these relatable characterizations, allow the movie to explore some large, dense themes without tying itself in intractable knots. Dil se obscures its examination of terrorism with Shah Rukh Khan's hammy and under-motivated stalker romance. Yuva is severely compromised by its absurd superman character who takes bullets and falls off bridges without ever wavering in courage or commitment. But Kannathil muthamittal ranges from an adopted child's search for her identity to the vicious horrors of Sri Lanka's internecine conflicts without ever losing its emotional mooring.

Shyam Benegal's movies often probe big, society-shaking themes and events through close studies of the experiences of a small number of people. One does not always need an expansive cast and an epic storyline to examine rangy ideas. Mani Ratnam succeeds with Kannathil muthamittal because it, too, focuses a tight lens on a small family. Thiruchelvan (Madhavan) and Indira (Simran) adopt a baby girl born in a Tamil Nadu refugee camp to M.D. Shyama (Nandita Das), who has fled the fighting in Sri Lanka between Tamil Tiger fighters and the Sri Lankan army.  On her ninth birthday, the girl, Amudha (P.S. Keerthana) learns of her adoptive origins, and demands to meet her mother.  Her parents, burdened by guilt and concern for their headstrong little girl, take her to Sri Lanka in search of Shyama.

It is arguably foolish of this family to walk straight into a war zone as they do, all for the demands of an imperious child. The film seems not to judge them for this bad decision, however.  We see Indira's anguish at Amudha's suffering, her guilt at perpetrating the implied deception of adoption, and her helplessness in the face of Amudha's drive; the little girl runs away from home twice, set on finding her own way to Sri Lanka, so it is hard to blame her parents for taking her there.  And the family seems genuinely unprepared for what they find there, as if the remoteness of the conflict from their comfortable air-conditioned Madras home left them with little awareness of it, no framework in which to form expectations.  They are naive in their bold forays, even while accompanied by a local guide (Prakash Raj).  They find themselves buffeted in the confusion of a flood of refugees, shelled by army artillery even as they flee their village.  They find themselves rubbing elbows with suicide bombers, and caught in the crossfire of rifle and grenade battles.  They even find themselves in the jungle, surrounded by suspicious fighters who point guns to their heads and demand they prove their loyalties.  In the Sri Lanka the family visits, violence is a way of life.

It is perhaps the film's main message that being aware of this conflict, telling its stories, is of crucial importance to the individual lives that are rent by it.  Thiruchelvan is himself a storyteller, a writer; if he had not been hearing and telling the stories of refugees in the camp where Shyama gave birth, he and Indira and Amudha would never have come together to form a family.  And so Kannathil muthamittal tells their story, Amudha's and Shyama's and Thiruchelvan's and Indira's.  It tells those stories, not with a sweeping focus that outlines the grand history of Tamil/Sinhalese conflicts, but with an intimate focus on a child's perspective.  In a child's eye, the violence is not only senseless, but irrelevant.  All that matters is the connections of love, the connections that bind families together. 

Much of Kannathil muthamittal's expression of the love in Amudha's family is told impressionistically during the movie's gorgeous A.R. Rahman songs.  In these stunning picturizations, Amudha dances and cuddles and plays with each of her parents (Indira in the title song, and Thiruchelvan in "Nenjil Jil Jil") across diverse, colorful dreamscapes like those of the songs of Dil se.  These picturizations are paintings in motion, visual poetry singing the family's love.   Another song, "Vidai Kodu," presents the harsh, dirty anguish of a vast train of refugees against the stark beauty of thunderclouds and wilderness.  Red clay soil and the army-green of tank convoys splash the backdrop of this canvas on which the brightly-colored clothes of the refugees are anything but cheerful.

This thematic juxtaposition between the vastness of the civil war and the depth of the family's love is what makes Kannathil muthamittal its own effective and moving story.  It is how the movie can say so much, without trying to do too much. Mani Ratnam's Bombay takes a similar approach, and is equally effective.  It is not for nothing that these are by far the two best I've seen of his movies.  It may also be not for nothing that they are both written and shot in Tamil.

Parash pathar (1958)

পরশ পাথর

Though perhaps lacking in the depth and multi-layered richness of his later films or his Apu Trilogy, Satyajit Ray's Parash pathar ("Philosopher's stone") is a simple, familiar story, delicately and charmingly told. Its everyman protagonist, Pareshchandra Dutta (Tulsi Chakravarty), is middling in every way - middle class, middle aged, spreading around the middle, a middling bureaucrat with a better than middling chance of losing his job in the near future.

When Pareshchandra finds a stone that can transform ordinary objects into gold, he begins to fantasize about how the windfall can change his life, and even his daydreams are modest. He imagines himself saluting an honor guard of Indian soldiers; he dreams of a garlanded statue in his memory standing humbly in a city park. Even when he leverages his easy wealth to a place of recognition and adulation in high society, he does so with positive, not negative, influence:  He supports cultural programs that celebrate Bengali heritage, and makes generous charitable donations even to the most humble of causes.  While he moves himself and his wife into a gracious bungalow, he maintains the same solitary servant (Jahar Roy) who had worked for him in his cramped, crumbling flat. This servant - hilariously - hurries to change clothes as he rushes from one role to the next, driver to butler to chai-server. Even as a grand man, Pareshchandra remains simply hewn and relatable.

How far out of his element Pareshchandra has ventured becomes clear when his young assistant Priyotosh (Kali Banerjee) tells him he has been invited to a cocktail party.  Pareshchandra beams like a child; he seems never to have experienced anything as thrilling as a cocktail party in his life, and he skips from the office exclaiming "Cocktail! Cocktail!", trying on the unfamiliar idea with delight. At the party, though, he is awkward and unsuited.  He fails to make conversation with any of the other guests. He becomes desperately drunk (in a drunk scene too vividly real and viscerally stomach-churning to be especially funny), and in a frantic bid to remain interesting to the high-society crowd, reveals the supernatural source of his wealth.  Pareshchandra's downfall from here is unsurprising to anyone familiar with this kind of story, from any culture.

In the greater society's response to this revelation of instant gold for the taking, Parash pathar finally begins to take on some of the broader allegorical significance that one expects of Ray films. The rich react with greed (which the modest Pareshchandra had himself mostly avoided), and society at large reacts with hysteria, throwing the gold market into chaos.  It is easy to read this as a thin allegory for the function of world economies, especially for a film made at a time when many nations were debating the abandonment of the gold standard (though India itself was on a different precious-metal standard, silver).

For the most part, though, Parash pathar is a straightforward, unnuanced, and very funny fable about the dangers of greed and the non-negotiable truth that there is no such thing as a free lunch. What makes it most enjoyable are the touches of Ray's nascent craft - his use of surprising camera angles, a restrained and unusually light and evocative soundtrack, and his willingness to let Tulsi Chakravarty play to the cheap seats. Chakravarty is by no means a pretty man, but he is a master of broad, expressive physical comedic acting. His bulging eyes, fishy, fleshy lips, and enormous pot belly are almost characters in their own right. The way Charkavarty controls them, delivering their lines in perfect complement, elevates this simple fable into memorable cinematic and comedic art.

Charulata (1964)

চারুলতা

Among the many trademark expressions of Satyajit Ray's artistic genius is the exploration of a singular imprisonment:  that which confines the minds of bright young women in the households of rich, intellectual, Victorian-era high society.  Ray's sumptuously-appointed Victorian interiors stifle sumptuously-dressed young Bengali women, and hint at a kind of oppression particular to the upper classes.

In both Ray's Ghare baire and Charulata, a man concerned about the loneliness and intellectual satisfaction of his young, intelligent wife attempts to broaden her sphere by introducing her to a vibrant outsider.  In both movies, the foundations of identity and home and marriage are shaken, with catastrophic results.  And in both movies, the counterpoint of relationships is a proxy for the the complex dance of East and West.  In Ghare baire, the tension is epitomized in the woman's English studies and repetition of an English song.  In Charulata, it is captured in (among other ways) a scene very early in the movie, in which the titular Charu (Madhabi Mukherjee) peers through lorgnettes between the slats of the shuttered windows, watching a stereotypically ordinary Bengali man strolling by.  Something about him - his freedom, his ordinariness, his Bengaliness - captivates her attention, and she flits bird-like from window to window in her lushly filigreed European parlor to keep her gaze fixed upon him.  

Charu's husband Bhupati (Sailen Mukherjee), insted of inviting her to join his world of politics and newspaper editorials, indulges Charu's love for literature though he does not share it.  Curious to know whether she harbors real literary talent, Bhupati enlists his dreamy, indolent cousin Amol (Soumitra Chatterjee) to teach and encourage Charu to write.  The result of this experiment is both affirming for Charu, when her writing is successfully published, and devastating, when her growing love for Amol threatens her identity and her marriage.  The movie concludes on an ambiguous note, without resolution for Charu and Bhupati.  And Charu's literary and emotional awakening reminds me - as stories in this vein so often do - of Kate Chopin's The Awakening, whose protagonist has nowhere to go but into the sea once she has tasted freedom of spirit and body and mind.  Charu's ending is less tragic, but it carries just as strong a sense that there is no returning to her old life.  It takes only a tiny gesture to release a bird from its cage; coaxing her back in is another matter entirely.

As for the catalyst of Charulata's awakening, Amol himself is detached, sarcastic, even bratty.  Charulata's love for him reflects  her own immaturity more than a real emotional connection.  This is not a tragic love story of soulmates kept apart by the deep injustice of circumstances or society.  Rather, the story presents a talented but incompletely formed young woman with a sort of jealously competitive crush on a young man whose only advantage over her (and it is not an inconsequent advantage) is that he is male, and therefore more worldly and educated and confident than she.  Despite his own immaturity and indolence, however, Amol represents the hometown side in the East-West struggle that threads through the film. He wears Bengali clothes and writes in Bengali.  He sings Rabindrosangeet - even his "Ami chini go chini," nominally a love song to a foreign woman, is delivered with a sarcastic, mocking air.  He even refuses a generous opportunity to travel and study in Europe.  All of this is in stark contrast to Bhupati, in shirtsleeves and suspenders, penning English-language newspaper editorials about the English politics of the English rule over Bengal.  When Bhupati chides Amol for his literary passions, insiting that politics is far more important and real, Amol smirkingly plays "Good Save The Queen" on the piano.

The pleasure of Charulata, and indeed the pleasure of any Ray film, lies in the density of content and meaning that is packed into a movie of relatively few words. An incredibly rich, layered assemblage of visual imagery, subtle cues, and symbolism paints a story that operates on multiple canvases at once.  Commentaries on the value of literature and the futility of politics, on the tension between Bengali and European modes of thought, on the nature of youthful infatuation and ambition, on the frustrations of the idle upper-class life especially for women, all these threads mingle and cross at many points of juxtaposition and harmony.  Recurring symbols like Charulata's birdcage, stormy weather, and the newspaper itself highlight the movie's important themes.  One of the most touching visual metaphors contrasts Amol's confident, fluent writing with Charu's initial halting effort; when he writes, the words flow out of the pen in an effortlessly beautiful script, while her words scratch and blot the page.

Unlike movies made by mere mortals, where emotions are too often spelled out in explicit, expository dialogues, Ray requires you to divine characters' internal states of mind from expressions and circumstances.  He demands of his audience a great deal of thought, empathy, and theorizing.  The result is a movie-watching experience more akin to voyeurism than to being told a story.  It is both unsettling and compelling, and it is what makes Ray's movies so deliciously rewarding of rewatching.  Ray's films are packed with overloaded symbols, subtle cues of meaning, visual metaphors, and allegories that operate on multiple levels.  Charulata, in this respect, is perfect vintage Ray - a beautiful and beautifully crafted movie that reveals more and more of its richness with every viewing.

Konchem ishtam konchem kashtam (2009)

కొంచెం ఇష్టం కొంచెం కష్టం

I haven't explored much in the way of Telugu movies, or even any Indian films in languages other than Hindi.  This is not for want of curiosity - it's a matter of self-preservation.  I tend to go for depth - when I decide to learn about something, I become obsessed and compelled to learn as much as I can.  And so the rabbit hole of south Indian cinema beckons me, but I hesitate to jump in. 

A few months ago, though, I stumbled across the lovely song "En kadhal solla," from a Tamil film called Paiyya.  And I was rather taken with its scrumptious star, Tamannah.  So when I had a chance recently (thanks to Beth, from whom I stole the screenshot at the top of this post) to watch Tamannah in an entire film, Konchem ishtam konchem kashtam ("a little sweetness, a little sorrow"), I decided to dip my toe in. What I got was a movie that, as its title promises, is sometimes quite sweet indeed. But - while it thankfully never gets all the way to sorrowful - Konchem ishtam konchem kashtam does reach tedium more than once.  At its weakest, in its plodding and often stupid second half, the movie is part Dilwale dulhaniya le jayenge, part The Parent Trap. And when it ventures into that territory, the movie is just not very interesting.

Geetha Subramanyam (Tamannah) has such a close relationship with her father Subramanyam (Nasser) that she made his name part of her own.  So Geetha is recalcitrant when Subramanyam sends her to Hyderabad to study.  Once there, though, she settles in comfortably, staying with her cousin's family, and developing a close mentoring relationship with a professor, Rajyalaxmi (Ramya Krishna).   And she meets a fellow student, Rajyalaxmi's son Siddhu (Siddharth), a skirt-chasing pleasure-seeker who doesn't impress her much at first.  But soon, she sees a tender side of him, and romance blossoms.  The stern Subramanyam, though, doesn't approve of her choice.  Siddhu's parents are separated, Subramanyam notes, and so Siddhu, with no role model for a successful partnership, would not make a suitable husband.  Siddhu offers Subramanyam a deal - if he reunites Rajyalaxmi with Siddhu's father Prakash (Prakash Raj), then Subramanyam will give his consent to the match between Siddhu and Geetha.  Now Siddhu faces only the small challenge of bringing his estranged parents back together.

This last leg of the story, the conceit of reuniting the estranged Rajyalaxmi and Prakash, is what drags Konchem ishtam konchem kastham into the weeds.   It is just too naïve and unbelievable to be satisfying.   Some movies are, of course, supposed to be fantasies, and one can be sure that an effervescent Telugu romance with impossibly beautiful young principals is not in any way striving for realism.   But the one-two punch of tired, silly plot elements - the girl who won't take a step without her father's approval, and the boy desperate to repair his broken childhood by rekindling romance between people who fell out of love two decades earlier - is just too much for the movie to bear; it bends under the strain, and grows insipid.   One is left wondering why we are made to sit through it - if the plot succeeds, it's facile and childish; and if it doesn't, why did the movie waste so much time on it?

Despite this weak final lap, the movie does show signs of smartness, though these are sometimes frustrating because the payoff is so unsatisfying.   The "rakish gadabout goes to great lengths to win over his girl's father" device is handled better here than in Dilwale dulhaniya le jayenge, where the insufferably arrogant Raj's approach is to lie and cheat the family at every turn.   Here, at least, Siddhu has to make good on his end of the bargain, asinine though it is - when he tries to deceive Subramanyam by hiring actors to play his parents, Geetha vetoes the scheme.  

And there is some unexpected modernness and maturity in the backstory of Rajyalaxmi and Prakash's separation, which was rooted in Rajyalaxmi's dissatisfaction with being left to the duties of housekeeping and childrearing while Prakash, taking her utterly for granted, pursued the challenges of building a business.   Even Subramanyam, as a stern father and leader of a traditional village, shows signs of progressiveness.  After all, Subramanyam insists that Geetha go study in Hyderabad because he wants to set a good example in the village in support of higher education for young women.   And it's not a knee-jerk "divorce is a blot on a family name" sort of reaction that drives his disapproval of Siddhu as a son-in-law, but the considerably more reasoned position regarding Siddhu's inexperience with healthy relationships.  Whether you buy that reasoning or not, at least it is an attempt to get beyond the expected clichés of an old-fashioned patriarch.

These signs of intelligent life aren't quite enough to overcome the eye-rolling tedium of the movie's second half - but fortunately, Konchem ishtam konchem kashtam offers enough other pleasures to make it, on balance, still an enjoyable watch.   It is colorfully and artfully shot, with a bright primary palate like a bowl of Skittles.   Some of the relationships are touchingly handled - Siddhu's relationship with Prakash faithfully represents the awkward chumminess that sometimes characterizes divorced dads trying to negotiate whether to be a parent or a buddy.  Rajyalaxmi is that rare appealing mature woman of substance, not a sort of character one gets to see too frequently in any culture's movies.   And I get a special pleasure from Geetha's attachment to her chosen surname, Subramanyam - she steadfastly refuses to take Siddhu's name on marriage, and in an adorable moment of capitulation Siddhu finally offers to become a Subramanyam himself.  It is always a treat to see a young woman asserting the first and strongest symbol of her identity in this way, and to see young men realizing that it's not a threat to them.

Above all else, though, when Konchem ishtam konchem kashtam works well, it rides the the appeal of its leads, Siddharth and Tamannah.  Key to any romantic story is that the audience get behind the pairing and root for it to succeed.  Konchem ishtam konchem kashtam invokes the mildly annoying trope in which the solid love of an uptight good girl can transform an immature jerk into a nice guy - but there is enough of the genuine in Siddhu's emergent, gentle sweetness to make this forgivable.   Siddhu does beat up a bunch of thugs (as, I am told, any Telugu hero worth his salt must), but he does it out of Geetha's sight, and refreshingly, his fisticuff prowess has no influence on her feelings for him.  On balance, he is a just a cute guy who has a bit of growing up to do, and watching him do it is not an unpleasant way to spend a movie - especially when he cuts loose in the movies stupendous songs, like this one in which he expresses his frustration with Subramanyam.

 

And then there is Tamannah. Oh, my - Tamannah. She is a little younger - okay, significantly younger - than most heroines who make my heart race, and I admit I feel a bit like pervy uncle at times watching her on screen while my brain short-circuits and the only thoughts I can express go something like this: I WANT TO LICK.

 

(Watch past the horrible Black Eyed Peas song in the beginning; it gets better, I promise.)

Apart from being most lickable and blessed with magnificent hips, Tamannah is more than adequate to what her role asks of her - which is really not all that much more than being fetching, whether laughingly scratching the faces of people she dislikes out of photographs, pouting, or tossing her head in uptight indignation.  Tamannah has the art of being fetching down cold, and she's just a delight to watch.

All the songs are terrific, both the slick compositions that are unmistakably Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, and the colorful, jubilant picturizations.  The songs, in fact, are really where this movie and its adorable leads shine the most brightly.  The story may be artless, the comedy side plots a mixed bag.  (These revolve around Geetha's cricket-obsessed uncle (Brahmanandam) or Siddhu's inexplicably middle-aged chum (Venu Madhav).)   But get Tamannah and Siddharth together on a screen sparkling with gorgeous bursts of vibrant color - preferably with a passel of dancers and one of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy's springy songs behind them - and you'll quickly forget how laboriously you had to slog through the scenes between.  These sometime sweetnesses really do make the whole worthwhile.

 

Tamannah playing rugby in the rain? Kids doing air guitar? What's not to love?

Vanaja (2007)

Vanaja is a simple and sometimes lovely Telugu film, shot on a shoestring budget by a debutant director.  Though rough around the edges, it has a few moments of sparkle that make it well worth seeing. 

In a fishing village in Andhra Pradesh, fifteen-year-old Vanaja (Mamatha Bhukya) goes to school, giggles with her friends, and looks after her father.  After her father's  hard luck and drunkenness leaves him deeply in debt, Vanaja takes work in the household of the local landowner, Rama Devi (Urmila Dammannagari).  Rama Devi was, in her youth, the region's premier performer of traditional Kuchipudi dance, and Vanaja boldly and stubbornly prevails upon Rama Devi to teach her.  She proves reasonably talented, and she, Rama Devi, and Rama Devi's other servant, the elderly Radhamma (Krishnamma Gundimalla) fall into a happy routine for a while.  The balance is upset with the return from America of Rama Devi's strapping son Shekhar (Karan Singh), who, Rama Devi plans, will stand in a local election.   Shekhar is attracted to Vanaja, and Vanaja is fascinated by him.  But when a chain of events makes Shekhar resentful and suspicious of Vanaja, he takes decisive action that irreparably changes her life.   

Vanaja's director, Rajnesh Domalpalli, cast Andhra Pradesh villagers rather than professional actors in his film.  The effect is both the film's charm and its weakness.  The characters' raw authenticity and unpracticed emotions are engaging.  At the same time, though, the young Mamatha Bhukya is not quite up to the task of portraying Vanaja's shifting and confused motives, with the result that even her boldest actions sometimes feel detached or unmotivated.   Still, the film is often charming, and its best moments are driven by Urmila Dammannagari's performance as Rama Devi - she, though as amateur an actor as Mamatha Bhukya, is a mature woman, and seems able to draw on her lifetime of experience to make Rama Devi salty, sweet, stern, and soft, all in a delicate balance. 

Indeed, the relationship between Rama Devi and Vanaja is the most compelling facet of the film.  It operates on many levels:  master-servant, guru-pupil, and even mother-daughter - Vanaja's mother, we learn, died when she was very young, and Rama Devi appears to have no daughter of her own.  Sparks fly most when these disparate levels intersect, and Rama Devi is challenged by the clash of the proprieties of a high-caste landowner and the tenderness she feels for the girl.  The growth of the relationship between Vanaja and Radhamma, the elder servant in Rama Devi's household, also traverses a touching arc.  The result is that while Vanaja is in some ways a film about the gulf that separates high and low castes, it is even more than that a film about how the bonds between women, and the timeless universality of women's experiences, transcend those societal divides. 

The other delight of Vanaja is Vanaja's dancing.  As her lessons begin she is awkward and unsteady on her feet; she develops in grace and expressiveness as the film progresses, and her performances are a lovely counterpoint to the bleaker turns taken by the storyline.  Vanaja tries on many different roles as she feels her way through her traumatic adolescence - child, woman, seductress, mother - but the devotional roles she plays in traditional dance seem a respite for her from the painful complexity of her daily life. 

Bombay (1995)

बम्बई

There is something about sectarian violence that pushes all my buttons.  I am not Indian, and I am neither Hindu nor Muslim, but for some reason stories of communities torn apart along that particular axis simply breaks my heart.  By the end of Mani Ratnam's Bombay I was in tears - not merely weeping, but crying huge, hot, racking sobs.   I haven't bawled like that at the end of a film since 1947: Earth.  As I said, there's something about sectarian violence.  Bombay is very different from Earth in most ways - it's lot more hopeful, for one - but it's also less remote, covering events in recent memory.  And like Earth, its characters are so lovable that their anguish sears that much more. 

Shekhar (Arvind Swamy) has finished school and returns to his village to tell his family of his plans to take a job at a newspaper in Bombay and attend night classes in journalism.  Before he returns to the city, Shekhar catches a glimpse of a young burqa-clad Muslim woman, Shaila Banu (Manisha Koirala) when her veil flutters off her face in a seaside breeze.  Shekhar is instantly captivated; he sees her again at a village wedding and then contrives to meet her, learning that she returns his interest.  Rebuffed by their furious fathers - his a respected orthodox Hindu pandit, hers a devout Muslim brick-maker - the couple elope to Bombay and marry in a civil ceremony at a municipal office.  Disowned by their parents, they build life of modest contentment and are blessed with twin sons.  Then internecine tensions spark the Bombay riots of winter 1992-1993 - Hindus and Muslims tear after one another with Molotov cocktails and machetes, upending Shekhar and Shaila Banu's peaceful little world.

Bombay is more a series of beautiful moments than a story.  Some of these moments are warm and sweet, others harrowing, others unbearably sad.  But they encapsulate the full range of the human experience, from exuberant joy to unbridled anguish.  They also demonstrate the depth of tenderness that can exist within a family and that can develop even to bridge the widest gulf.  The film offers these elements in a measured and balanced mixture, gently retreating just when the pain seems too much to bear.  So, for example, as the sectarian hatred tears violently through the streets of the city, it is held in counterpoint by good-natured and humorous sparring between Shekhar's father and Shaila Banu's.  And when the destruction of the riots reaches its apex,  Shekhar's father risks his life to save the other man's Koran. 

The first time I watched Bombay I felt it was perfect, an engaging story told beautifully with a solid-to-outstanding soundtrack by A.R. Rahman and stunning performances by its principals.  Arvind Swamy brings an everyman sensibility to his role; pudgy and relatively ordinary-looking, he is nevertheless completely appealing, and his face registers every emotion perfectly.  And Manisha Koirala is not only gorgeous; she is one of the most skilled and expressive actors I've seen.  The film seemed utterly flawless.

On second viewing (the very next day) I had to acknowledge its imperfections.  Like many a filmi romance, Shekhar's and Shaila Banu's is based on little more than a glance and developed, in shorthand, in a song.  And the film offers their mixed-religion household as an idyllic haven, free from the tensions that plague the rest of the city - absent is any sign that compromise or adjustment is necessary to make a marriage work between two people raised so differently.  Shaila Banu declares dreamily that Allah gave her children "two gods," but in real life one would expect some conflict between the life cycle rites and customs of the two religions.  Bombay sweeps these details under the rug, establishing instead a simple dichotomy where home is pluralistic and safe while the outside world is full of hate and venom.

But on first viewing, critiques like these were beside the point; the movie just enthralled with its beautiful and symbolic moments, carefully crafted and perfectly rendered - like the moment in the gorgeous song "Tu hi re" where Shaila Banu's cloak, the last remnant of her burqa, catches on an anchor as she runs along the shore, and she must shed it to make her first secret meeting with Shekhar.  Or the heartbreaking and terrifying moment when one of Shekhar and Shaila Banu's twin boys, riding on the shoulders of his Hindu grandfather, furiously wipes the tilak from the old man's forehead when the pair are confronted by a group of Muslim rioters.  At its best, Bombay is a gripping succession of breath-stopping moments like these, and a simply unforgettable film. 

(A note on language:  Bombay was originally shot in Tamil and dubbed into Telugu and Hindi - the latter being the version that I saw - which is why I've included it in the "regional" category.  I suspect it would have been even better in Tamil.)

36 Chowringhee Lane (1981)

Taken at face value, this quiet film by Aparna Sen is a melancholy tale about a lonely woman facing her twilight years.  It has a clear allegorical reading, however, that is a forceful commentary on the role of the British in post-Independence India.

Violet Stoneham (Jennifer Kendal) is a mousy, quiet Anglo-Indian woman.  Living in 1970s Calcutta, she teaches Shakespeare to inattentive little girls, occasionally visits her senile brother (Geoffrey Kendal) in a nearby nursing home, and returns home to her tiny flat and the company of her cat, Sir Toby.  One day Violet encounters one of her former students, Nandita (Debashree Roy) and Nandita's boyfriend Samaresh (Dhritiman Chatterjee).  Eager to reminisce - and starved for companionship - Violet invites the young couple to her home for tea, and they politely, if reluctantly, agree.  In Violet's flat, Samaresh smells opportunity - the flat would offer a perfect, discreet hideaway for afternoon trysts with Nandita.  Nandita explains to Violet that while Samaresh is a writer, he finds it difficult to concentrate on poetry in his family's crowded home, and Violet is delighted to offer him the use of her flat.  Nandita and Samaresh frolic there every day, taking care to be dressed and presentable when Violet returns from school.  Often they serve Violet her tea or take her out for walks in the city, and their daily company cheers and energizes her.   It seems a very genuine and tender friendship, but Samaresh and Nandita see it quite differently from Violet.

At its face, 36 Chowringhee Lane is a very sympathetic tale.  Violet Stoneham is a lovable character, and her loneliness will resonate with anyone who has ever thought about getting older and being alone.  Her increasing isolation and marginalization is poignant.  And the tenderness that Nandita and Samaresh show her - at least while it appears sincere - and the warmth and joy in her response to it is touching. 

But the film seethes with symbols suggesting that its real message is a strong critique of the Anglo presence in India:  You are dated, you have outlived your usefulness; you aren't wanted or needed, so get lost.  The young couple uses her while it's convenient, but as soon as they have the opportunity to take off on their own, they do so.  The new principal at Violet's school - the school's first Indian principal, we are told - cuts back on her course load, assigning her a dreary grammar class while a new young teacher takes over the Shakespeare; even teaching quintessentially English subjects, Violet's English perspective is no longer needed.  Violet's visits to her brother are particularly unsubtle; a relic of the colonial era, he is now weak, helpless and disoriented, and Violet must repeatedly explain to him that the Raj is over, that India is independent. 

These two levels of meaning make 36 Chowringhee Lane a full meal, engaging, poignant, and thought-provoking.  The performances are smooth and natural - unlike some of Aparna Sen's later films (such as 15 Park Avenue and Mr. and Mrs. Iyer), in which her actors sometimes fumble stiffly with English dialogue.   The result is a satisfying film, and if it is a little bit sad for the increasingly irrelevant Violet Stoneham, it also portrays a confidence in the rising of an independent India.

Antareen (1994)

Antareen ("confined"), a quiet and literary Bengali film by Mrinal Sen, examines a peculiar relationship that arises between two profoundly isolated individuals.  They connect and affect one another, in a demonstration that the effects of human contact can traverse both distance and anonymity.

A young writer (Anjan Dutt) arrives for an extended stay at the isolated, palatial home of a friend, who has given him the run of the house while he and his family are away.  Completely alone - save for the occasional company of a servant and the servant's grandson - the writer settles in for late-night, tea-fueled writing sessions.  One night the telephone rings, and though the other end is silent, the caller rings again the next day, and soon the young writer engages nightly in cryptic, languid conversations with the woman at the other end of the line.  She is a rich man's mistress (Dimple Kapadia) whose lover has apparently lost interest in her.  Still, he keeps her in a luxurious high-rise apartment, and also supports the rest of her family, from whom she is estranged.  The young woman is lonely and depressed; she never leaves the apartment, and reaches out only to random strangers on the telephone.  Their conversations, and the effect those conversations exert on each of them, is the focus of the film.

Though the film's pace is deliberate at best, it is intriguing enough as it unfolds, especially as the details of the woman's life come gradually into focus.  Through the woman's conversations with the writer, she slowly overcomes her inertia and begins to pull the pieces of her life together.  For the writer's part, in the beginning his interest in her appears somewhat mercenary, seeing her cynically, as grist for his writing.  But he comes to truly care for her, as we are shown, for example, by his distress when she fails to call for several days.  The dynamics of their relationship are constantly shifting.  He has the power to reach her emotionally, offering observations that strike close to home.  But for most of the film she holds the ultimate control over their interactions - she has his telephone number, while he does not have hers.  The moment when she relinquishes that control marks a clear turning point in their interaction, and by the end of the film both of them have been thoroughly transformed by the experience.

What is less clear is the statement that Mrinal Sen intends to make with the film.  It may be a statement about the randomness of human relationships, how we can be touched by input from completely unexpected and even virtually unknown sources.  I can't help but feel that if I were acquainted with Bengali literature I would have a better sense of the film's message, as it contains numerous explicit references - and probably even more implicit ones - to the short stories of Rabindranath Tagore, among others.  Without that background, Antareen is more of a mildly interesting curiosity than a truly compelling film. 

Antareen is available for download at Jaman.com.  The film is less than 90 minutes long; Dimple Kapadia is as pouty and lovely as ever in it; and the download is free - so if you are a fan of Dimple's it's definitely worth a look. 

Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) (1959)

Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy films are considered by many to be the crowning achievement not just of Satyajit Ray himself, but of all of Indian film.  Apur Sansar (The world of Apu) is the final installment of the story, and I saw it without having seen the first two chapters, which recount events in Apu's childhood and adolescence.   

Apur Sansar picks up at Apu's graduation from school.  Living in a grungy Calcutta tenement beside the railroad tracks and barely scraping his rent together, Apu (Soumitra Chatterjee) aspires to be a great novelist, and we learn early on that he has had some success at it, selling a short story to a local periodical.  On a vacation with his practical and grounded friend Kulu - ostensibly for Kulu's cousin's wedding - Apu makes a rash and heroic decision that changes his life forever.  The bridegroom succumbs to mental illness, and Kulu prevails on Apu to take his place and marry Kulu's cousin Aparna (Sharmila Tagore, here only about fourteen years old).  Apu and Aparna settle into a spare life in Apu's dingy flat, and for a while they enjoy a delicious period of newlywed bliss.  Then tragedy strikes, though, and Apu, unmoored and confused, struggles to recover his bearings. 

Apur Sansar's story covers a period of six or seven years in Apu's life, and is therefore necessarily episodic in nature.  Indeed, the film may fairly be characterized as a series of beautifully shot, poignant moments.  The dialogue is sparse and one is left to fill in the blanks, to guess at what the characters are thinking and feeling.  But the direction and performances are both subtle and expressive, so the emotional content is very real, even if the viewer must supply it.   In one early scene, Apu visits a pharmaceutical factory looking for work.  His face droops in self-doubt as he realizes that he lacks the constitution for monotonous physical labor.  Later, a series of warm, tender scenes conveys the quiet happiness of Apu and Aparna's married life.  In every scene, emotions play subtly across the actors' faces and evocative symbols - a wounded animal, a torn curtain, an inkblot - do much of the film's heavy lifting. 

I feel somewhat out of my league reviewing Apur Sansar, which, despite the many ways in which it is fundamentally an Indian story, reads more like a European art film than an Indian film.  I don't know a thing about European art films, and while I enjoyed Apur Sansar and was moved by it, I don't know that I fully understood or appreciated it.  Each shot is loaded with complex symbolism that is rich and even apparently contradictory at times.  At the movie's conclusion I immediately wished I could watch it again to give more thought to those symbols.  Instead, here I am with my rather impressionistic and incoherent commentary.  For something more, please visit my friend Amit and read his thoughts.

Shatranj ke khilari (1977)

शतरंज के खिलाड़ी

International relations, domestic relations, and the game of chess.  There are elements shared by all three - strategy, tactics, sacrifice, give-and-take, the necessity of patience.  Satyajit Ray's Shatranj ke khilari ("The Chess Players") is an excellent little film that spins layered metaphors from these commonalities. 

It is the late 1850s, in Lucknow, capital of Awadh, the seat of elite Muslim culture in northern India, and two elite Muslim gentlemen - Mirza (Sanjeev Kumar) and Mir (Saeed Jaffrey) - have discovered the brilliant game of chess.  They play all day and deep into the night, with little awareness of the toll their obsession is taking on their marriages, and only slightly more awareness of what is happening on the larger political scene.  The latter is that the British East India Company has decided that it is time for King Wajid (Amjad Khan), the last semi-autonomous ruler in Hindustan, to step down.  Wajid, who now regrets having devoted less of his attention to affairs of state than to the music, dance, and poetry for which Awadh culture is famous, must decide whether his next move shall be to accede to the Company's proposal - he is offered a handsome pension - or pull together an army and go to war. 

And so there are chess matches at at least three different levels.  There are the literal chess games between Mirza and Mir, and there is the metaphorical chess match on the international scale between King Wajid and the British. Mirza and Mir's domestic situations map to chess games as well.  Mirza's wife Khurshid (Shabana Azmi) engages in a variety of tactical maneuvers to recapture her husband's attention; she feigns illness, attempts seduction, and even hides his chess pieces.  Mir's wife Nafisa (Farida Jalal), meanwhile, plans a more proactive attack: she takes a lover, and Mir makes the strategic blunder of misinterpreting her enthusiasm for his long nights out playing chess, mistaking it for wifely support of his intellectual pursuits.   

Mirza and Mir's clueless indifference to domestic matters is set forth in a strong parallel to King Wajid's neglect of his realm as the Company takes over.  The message seems to be a gentle criticism of India for its complacency in allowing the British to gain so much power, underscored by Mir and Mirza's casual decision to abandon the Hindustani rules of chess in favor of the speedier and more aggressive English rules with which we in the West are familiar today.  I say "gentle criticism" because Mirza and Mir are hapless and sympathetic characters, akin to Shakespearean buffoons in presentation, and their interactions - especially the desperate lengths to which they will go to put together a game - are airy and genuinely comical (thanks in no small part to the brilliant work of Saeed Jaffrey and especially Sanjeev Kumar, who was one of the finest actors ever in Hindi film).  As a result the film never feels heavy-handed, despite the fact that it swirls with metaphor; there is a always lightness and a balance tempering the many variations on the theme. 

Shatranj ke khilari is a delight to watch, for many reasons.  It is, I have been told, Satyajit Ray's most Bollywood-ish offering, and the cast is packed with faces familiar from Bollywood and beyond - in addition to Sanjeev, Shabana, Saeed Jaffrey, Amjad Khan, and Farida Jalal, there are also turns by Victor Banerjee, Farouq Sheikh, and even Richard Attenborough; as if that weren't enough, Amitabh Bachchan lends his distinctive voice to the film's narration.  The film is also visually appealing, shot for the most part with generous lighting and a clean style.  It is a terrific film that I expect to watch again and again.

Finally, regular Filmi Geek readers know by now to expect the following indulgence: