Filmi Geek

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. 

Shaque (1976)

शक़

A story of a marriage worn down by fear and suspicion, Shaque ("doubt") has a very strong start but takes a few unfortunate turns that leave the film overall with a very unsatisfying heft. 

Vinod Joshi (Vinod Khanna) is a witness to a murder in his workplace.  He cooperates with the police investigation; there is an arrest and a trial at which Vinod testifies; and Vinod's colleague Subramaniam is convicted of the crime.   Vinod  and his wife Meena (Shabana Azmi) do their best to forget the harrowing incident, thinking it is behind them.  Ten years later, Meena receives an ominous letter from a man called Maan Singh (Utpal Dutt), who claims that Vinod was more involved than he let on and allowed an innocent man to be convicted in order to cover his own crimes of embezzlement from the company.  Meena is troubled by the letter, but while Vinod assures that it's nothing but the baseless ravings of disturbed old man, Meena can't shake the dreadful feeling that Vinod hasn't told her the whole truth.  She launches an investigation of her own, behind Vinod's back - but their marriage bends under the strain of her suspicions.

Shaque is at its best when its focus sticks to the relationship between Vinod and Meena and the strains placed upon it by Meena's suspicions.  Vinod Khanna and Shabana Azmi are understated and sweet in the scenes establishing their relationship early in the film, and the realist style of their performance lets tensions grow between them without too much overwrought dramatizing.  The tension is delicately enhanced by some very nice camera work, framing shots like the one pictured above.  Their tenderness and passion is apparent too, illustrated in a handful of touching, intimate scenes.

Unfortunately, the film's masala elements - especially the supposedly suspenseful confrontations towards the film's end - contrast with the delicacy of its study of the marriage, in a distracting rather than an effective way.  And Meena makes some very questionable judgments that make it hard to identify with her.  Her poor judgment about Maan Singh when it's painfully obvious that he's blackmailing betrays her as naive, and her incomprehensible suicide attempt seems like drama-mongering.   Neither paints a sympathetic heroine.  The film would have done better to give us a sensible woman caving to the temptation of doubt, rather than Meena almost wrecking her own marriage through stupidity.   In the end, the weaknesses outweigh the strengths, and even though Shabana and Vinod give the best performances they can under the circumstances, Shaque isn't much more than a forgettable timepass, despite its well-crafted moments. 
 

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. 

Makdee (2002)

मकड़ी

Vishal Bharadwaj's oustanding Makdee  ("spider's web") is a children's film that doesn't talk down to children.  Free from preachy moralizing and artificial cheeriness, Makdee is scary and gripping from beginning to end.  Its heroes are children who are mischievous and naughty,  yet good at heart and lovable.  Its witchy villain is creepy and cruel.   Mixed together in VIshal Bharadwaj's cauldron, these ingredients bubble over into a fun and thrilling adventure. 

Chunni and Munni (Shweta Prasad) are identical twins - they are distinguishable only by a mole on Munni's upper lip - but they couldn't be more different.  Timid, straight-laced Munni is a polite demure child and an ace student.  Her brash, troublemaking sister Chunni shoots her mouth off, steals food, cheats in school, and causes mayhem as naturally as breathing.  Chunni's friend and playmate, a boy named Mughal-e-azam (Alaap Mazgaonkar), is regularly ordered to do lengthy, unpleasant chores by his adoptive father, the village butcher Kallu (Makrand Deshpande), who feeds him next to nothing in exchange for his hard work.  Mughal-e-azam's treatment is an outrage to Chunni's sense of justice, and she engineers a massive prank to exact revenge on Kallu.  The prank goes awry, though, and leads to a chain of events that lands Chunni's sister Munni in the clutches of the terrifying local witch (Shabana Azmi).  So frightening is the witch that no one in the village - not even sensible adults - will enter the gates of the sprawling property in which her castle looms.   Determined to save her sister, Chunni screws up her courage and marches in, only to learn - to her horror - that the witch has turned Munni into a chicken.  The witch strikes a bargain with Chunni - bring me a chicken to eat every day, she says, and after you have brought me a hundred chickens you can have your sister.  In the meantime, to avoid bringing the witch's wrath upon her, Chunni must tell no one of the bargain, and so must pretend to be both Chunni and Munni so that the witch's nasty deed is not detected.  Chunni, scared and miserable, must face the terrible witch alone. 

Makdee's dark tone is set magnificently from the opening scenes, in which a boy who has stolen a few coins wanders through the witch's gates and is turned into a goat.  This is not a sanitized, Disney-fied witch, but a mean, scary, filthy monster.  Even the film's moments of levity have a dark edge, like the cheerful song the butcher sings about the pleasures of decapitating chickens, or Chunni and Mughal-e-azam's musical paean to mischief-making.

The performances, across the board, were outstanding, eliciting through tremendous empathy an emotional response in the viewer parallel to that of the characters.  In one scene, Chunni watches the witch drink down a bowl full of blood, and gags in revulsion; I found myself gagging too, connecting with Chunni's disgust.  Chunni's deep remorse when she fears that her troublemaking has cost her sister's life is moving, and her triumphs are uplifting.  At the moment where Chunni and Mughal-e-azam together make the realization that sets up the film's climax, I actually cheered.  This kind of empathy for the children comes readily because they are lovable despite their naughtiness.  Even though some of Chunni's antics have selfish motives, others are driven by her strong sense of justice and her desire to protect Mughal-e-azam. 

Shabana Azmi's performance is a treat as well.  She plays the witch with absolute relish, throwing herself into it with a broad physicality that is utterly delightful.  From her creepy gyrations as she performs the magic to turn children into animals, to the growly snarl with which she delivers every line, to her punching-and-kicking fight scene at the film's climax, she transforms into the villain, completely.  There is no dignity in this performance - just out-and-out entertainment.

All told, Makdee is a delightful ride, full of charming and repugnant characters, which reminds viewers - without conking them over the head with a weighty message - that things aren't always as they seem, not at all a bad lesson for kids to take home.  And even though Chunni's pranks get her and her friends into some hot water, Makdee even allows that a little mischief has its place.  This terrific little film is a quick and unexpected new favorite.

Shabana has never looked better!  More screencaps will be posted at Sounds Like Power in the near future. 

Ek doctor ki maut (1991)

एक डाक्टर की मौत

Some people dismiss Indian art films as ponderous and boring.  I'm usually an enthusiastic cheerleader for art cinema - the more variety of films available the better.  If I wanted to convince a mainstream film-lover that art films weren't ponderous, though, Ek doctor ki maut ("Death of a doctor") would not be the place to start.  This tale of a maverick scientist going up against the establishment just falls flat. 

Dipankar Roy (Pankaj Kapur) is a physician who practices in a government hospital.  He's not that interested in clinical medicine, though - his passion is his research on a vaccine for leprosy.  He works into the wee hours - to the chagrin of his long-suffering wife Seema (Shabana Azmi) - in a tiny makeshift lab in his home.  Huddled amongst the caged lab animals, dusty reference volumes, and burbling beakers, Roy toils away night after night, his work punctuated by verbal sparring matches with Seema.  One day he has a breakthrough - he has discovered that females inoculated with his compound give birth to offspring immune to leprosy, and what's more, the compound has a secondary effect of reversing certain kinds of sterility in females.   His results are published by an eager science reporter (Irrfan Khan), but the reception in the scientific community is chillier than Roy anticipated.  Specialists in leprosy are skeptical of his findings, and gynecologists are incensed by his speculation that the compound may treat sterility.  Instead of getting a fair hearing for his work, Roy is shut down by his superiors in the health ministry, cut off from his work, forbidden to share it with the international medical community, and transferred to a remote village. 

That sounds like a pretty good story, and having summarized it just now I am struggling to understand why the film in execution is so gratingly dull.  Part of the problem lies in script and direction.  The film is shot in a hyper-realistic, hyper-literal style; there is no artistic camera work, no symbolism, nothing to layer the dialogue or add depth or allegory to the events unfolding on the screen.  It is more like reading a newspaper article than watching a piece of cinematic art.  And, like a newspaper article, Ek doctor ki maut presents its events in words - Roy explains his results to his friends; Seema orates her frustrations with her marriage, puts her threat to leave Roy in a letter, and then expounds, in words, on why she decides to stay.  All the verbiage smothers the lovely, subtle performances of both Pankaj Kapur and Shabana Azmi, the latter especially; she seems to want to show Seema's conflict in body language in the kind of performance that she can give better than anyone, but the script won't let her stop talking long enough to do it. 

Stylistic matters aside, as a former scientist, I was nonplussed by the film's treatment of the process of scientific discovery and review.  In the U.S., when scientists choose to present their work via the press rather than in a peer-reviewed publication,  they frequently meet with a skeptical response - not without reason, as illustrated by Fleischmann and Pons's now infamous announcement of cold fusion.  So I don't perceive any great injustice in the response in the medical community's circumspect reaction to Roy's self-published results.  This leaves me somewhat at a loss to interpret the message of Ek doctor ki maut.  Perhaps the practice of scientific research is different in India from my own experience, so that in the film's context it's clearer just what is being criticized.  To my eye, though, other researchers are justified in viewing Roy with some suspicion; he appears to be more eccentric than not, puttering in a makeshift homemade laboratory, forgoing  peer review, and lashing out in anger at any who dare challenge him. 

Ek doctor ki maut is not all bad; I've mentioned the delicacy of the actors' performances, and there were a few excellent moments shining in the film's bland substrate.  In one excellent sequence, Roy steals Seema's sterno cooker out from under her when he runs out of propane for his Bunsen burner; later, he predictably scolds her for failing to cook his dinner, and the skirmish is a poignant microcosm of their entire relationship.  And in the closest thing to a character arc there is in the film, Roy later demonstrates a growing awareness of his reliance on Seema and her need for some reciprocation.   This is best shown in several tender interactions between  them, one during her visit after his exile to village practice, and another in the film's final scene.  If the rest of the film had been handled as delicately, Ek doctor ki maut might have felt less like two hours of squandered potential. 

(Ek doctor ki maut is available for download at Jaman.  Also please see this post at Sounds Like Power for a more Shabana-centric look at the film.)

Swami (1977)

स्वामी

Should a spirited, intelligent young woman follow her heart and trust it to lead her to the right place?  Or should she submit to her duty, and trust that doing so will lead her to the right place?  This is the question raised by Basu Chatterjee's Swami ("master"), but the film's answer is ambiguous.

Mini (Shabana Azmi) is a bright village girl with academic ambitions and an appetite for literature and philosophy.   Her intellectual uncle (Utpal Dutt) indulges her brainy bent, encouraging her studies and running interference between Mini and her mother (Sudha Shivpuri), a pious widow whose only concern is to see Mini married, and quickly.  Mini has a nascent love affair with her neighbor Narendra (Vikram), the zamindar's son, a student in Calcutta who on his frequent visits brings her Victorian literature, listens raptly to her discourse, and is bold enough to kiss her opportunistically when they are caught together in a rainstorm.  Circumstances  conspire against Mini and Narendra, though, and soon Mini finds herself married against her wishes to a wheat trader Ganshyam (Girish Karnad) from a neighboring village.  Plunged into despair, Mini struggles to become accustomed to life in her unwanted marriage and her new home, where Ganshyam's stepmother seems to favor Mini's sisters-in-law and where her new husband treats her with a patience that she finds perplexing. 

Swami feels like an artier version of Hum dil de chuke sanam; though it differs in the details, the basic elements are quite similar:   A spunky but fundamentally immature young woman falls in love with one man but is impelled to marry another; she mopes miserably for some period of time while her husband is kinder to her than she is in any state to appreciate; and when her husband, astonishingly, lets her follow her heart, she  comes to realize which man she truly belongs with.  And like Hum dil de chuke sanam, it's an engaging story (so much the more so when one imagines watching it from the perspective of a society in which many marriages are arranged).  The first 45 minutes are the most entertaining, as we get to know Mini and her uncle, and watch her relationship with Narendra blossom.  Mini is full of life, cheeky and smart; she takes as much pleasure in gathering jasmine flowers and weaving them into garlands as she does arguing the finer points of philosophy, and it is a joy to watch her enjoying her life.

After Mini's marriage, Swami bumps off the rails a bit.  It's somewhat interesting to see Ganshyam tolerating her sullen, withdrawn behavior, and once she starts to appreciate his extraordinary kindness the film picks up again.  But there's only so much petulant moping we need to see, and Mini's interactions with the other female members of her household are grating.  As the film's conclusion is inevitable, it could be a bit swifter about getting there.  The highlight of the second half is a surprise guest appearance by Dharmendra and Hema Malini as a pair of cheery wedding dancers, whose jaunty song about a young woman running away with her love not only foreshadows the film's climax, but also comes closest to bringing a smile to Mini's face as anything else in the second hour of the film. 

The most problematic aspect of Swami is the price that Mini pays for the reward of Ganshyam's gentle protection.  It's not the loss of Narendra that is troubling - young love comes and goes - but rather the sacrifice of what really set Mini apart from her sisters-in-law and presumably from other village girls as well: her love of books and studying.  At the beginning of the film, Mini announces proudly that she is in the middle of her B.A. studies; these are dropped without a word.  Without Narendra running errands to Calcutta, Mini's supply of new books is cut off; even if Ganshyam is kind enough to supply them for her, though, with whom is she going to debate them?  It is no wonder that Mini is still crying and depressed, even after the story's resolution. 

It is this confusion of message that leaves me most perplexed about the film's intentions.  Mini has certainly come to appreciate Ganshyam's warmth, but the overwhelming sense is that she has chosen him out of duty and propriety rather than out of love - and worse, has forfeited any venture outside the traditional woman's sphere.  The film seems to say that doing the dutiful thing will get a girl a kind husband who buys her saris and electric fans, and that should be a sufficient reward. 

(A more Shabana-oriented look at Swami will be posted in the next few days at Sounds Like Power.) 

Dharavi (1992)

धारावी

This gritty film by Sudhir Mishra offers a window into life in the titular Bombay slum.  It's harrowing yet compelling, and though its focus is a depressing tale of defeat and loss, it somehow achieves a hopeful tone at its conclusion. 

Rajkaran (Om Puri) is a cab-driver living in a tidy, one-room Dharavi shack with his mother (Anjana), his wife Kumud (Shabana Azmi), and their son.  Rajkaran yearns for success in business and a better life; he is gathering funds to buy a small cloth-dying factory.  When one of his partners pulls out unexpectedly, Rajkaran reluctantly accepts a loan from the local underworld boss Tiravi, whose goons are suspected to be behind any number of neighborhood beatings and murders.  Now indebted to Tiravi, Rajkaran finds himself drawn into ever more shady dealings, to the despair of Kumud, whose brother dared to stand up to Tiravi's tyrrany and was murdered for it.   Kumud finds solace in the peaceful company of her first husband Shankar, with whom she had parted ways years before, and who has returned to Dharavi helpless and partially paralyzed after suffering a stroke.  On the verge of losing his livelihood and alienating his family, Rajkaran grows ever more desperate.

What is most fascinating about Dharavi is its slice-of-life look at Bombay's slums.  In small but vivid details as well as in big-picture themes the film illuminates this world that is so different from my own.  The slum neighborhood itself is like a village, where everyone is all up in everyone else's business - you cannot keep secrets, and you can't cross the thugs and heavies who rule over the place; there is violence almost daily.  Kumud engages in a daily struggle with the local corrupt water-mongers; they illegally tap the municipal water supply - there are no official municipal services in Dharavi - but they won't let Kumud take more than one bucketful without a fight.  But there's also a strong sense of community; women gather in the streets to make pappadums and gossip, and in the evenings, everyone gathers in a little alley movie theater to watch escapist movies starring the likes of Anil Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit.  Rajkaran has romantic dreams in which he and Madhuri (who plays herself) roll around in mustard fields, he confiding his troubles to her, she confessing her love for him. 

Rajkaran and Kumud live in a tiny one-room corrugated shack, reminiscent of the shantytown dwellings I saw in the South African film Tsotsi.  But Kumud keeps it tidy and neat; there is a pretty little rug on the floor and potted plants on the sill, and other small comforts that can help preserve one's sanity and dignity when living in squalor.  Kumud works in a small oppressive tailor shop, like the old sweatshops of the lower east side tenements in New York, working a sewing machine while sweat beads on her forehead.  As hard as their life is, though, Kumud seems to manage it - early on, she questions why Rajkaran isn't satisfied, why he has to try to push for more - she doesn't seem, at least at this point in the movie, to share her husband's eagerness to get out of Dharavi.  But while his ambition might be inspiring, it enrages him when his industrial dreams begin to crumble, and his rage drives away everyone around him.  The message of the film is therefore a little ambiguous - should one just accept one's lot and leave well enough alone, or should one try to make something better for one's self and family?  The film resolves this ambiguity for the best by allowing Rajkaran to emerge from his trials bruised and set back, but not defeated.

Rajkaran dreaming of Madhuri:

And, a look at Shabana - I'll post a few more over at Sounds Like Power.

Dharavi is available for download from Jaman.com.

Filmi Geek metapost

Namaste dosto!

I'm interrupting the reviews with a metapost today because I have two announcements I want to make.

First, I am both excited and sheepish to report that I've founded a new blog which will be a place for me to channel the shameless gushing and worship of Shabana Azmi that occasionally pops up here.  As far as I know there is no blog or fan site dedicated to her and I figured if anyone was going to start one, it ought to be me.  Reviews of her films, of course, will still live here, but now I have a place to put other thoughts, links, news items, pictures, and the like that's just about her.  If you're curious please come check out Sounds Like Power.  I look forward to seeing you there. 

Second, I'd like to include another gentle plug for Jaman, the excellent on-line service that offers downloads of movies from all over the world, including an excellent - and growing - South Asian collection.  Jaman has recently added about 20 titles from the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) that include some of the finest art films India has ever produced - films by the likes of Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal, Mrinal Sen, and others. 

Jaman will give you three free movie rentals just for signing up.  In addition, if you follow this link, you can get five more free tickets, even if you are already a member.  So please consider giving Jaman a look. 

Okay, now back to the reviews for a while.  Up next:  Raj Kapoor's outstanding Shree 420, one of the finest films I've ever seen.  I've been stalling on the review because it was that good - I'd like to watch it again before I try to write about it! 

Khamosh (1985)

ख़ामोश

Khamosh ("silent"), a 1985 mystery thriller by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, is clever, self-referential, satirical, and thoroughly entertaining. 

Shabana Azmi and Amol Palekar - playing themselves - are at an idyllic mountain resort with a film crew, shooting a thriller.  When their co-star Soni Razdan (also playing herself) turns up dead, the crew and the local police assume it is a suicide.  Then a taciturn CID inspector (Naseeruddin Shah) turns up and begins his own investigation.  He is convinced that Soni's death was no suicide, and as he learns of the secrets and feuds that seethe among the cast and crew, his eye shifts from suspect to suspect - the producer Dayal (Ajit Vachhani), publicly humiliated by Soni; the mother of a young starlet competing with Soni for a part in Dayal's next film; Dayal's drug-addled brother Kuku (Pankaj Kapur), desperately in love with Soni, and others.  As the body count grows and the red herrings proliferate, it quickly becomes apparent that few of this rag-tag bunch are who they appear to be.

The plot is a straight-up murder mystery, quite Agatha Christie in feel, since it features a tense group, confined to close quarters, criss-crossed by passions and rivalries.  What makes Khamosh different from other exemplars of the whodunit genre is that it is stuffed with in-jokes, references, and homages.  It pokes fun at slapdashery in Bollywood filmmaking, when the director spontaneously decides to rewrite the script and orders the dialogue-writer to produce new scenes for the actors to shoot the next day.  Vidhu Vinod Chopra pokes fun at himself with a running joke of the director repeatedly saying, "This is just a thriller!  Wait until my next film!"  And the actors poke fun at themselves as well - the Shabana Azmi of Khamosh, for example, sleepwalks, reads stories about herself in the gossip rags, and declares that she "can't understand politics."  Khamosh also acknowledges its debt to the films that went before it; one standout scene pays explicit homage to the shower scene in Psycho with a reference to The Godfather for good measure.

Having the actors Shabana, Amol Palekar, and Soni Razdan play themselves - rather than playing fictitious movie stars with made-up names - was a stroke of absolute genius that added a self-referential layer to the film, lifting beyond the realm of cute, entertaining murder mystery.  The film operates on several layers at once, playing with the viewer's sense of movie-reality and suspension of disbelief.  I am accustomed to seeing Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi together on screen, but here there is a strange and pleasant disconnect; he is in character, and addresses her as "Shabana ji."  The loopiness also alters the viewer's expectations about what can happen to the characters and what they can do.  It's difficult to explain the full scope of this effect on my experience of the film without giving away too many of the plot details!  But it was very enjoyable.

The sleuth at the center of the story, Naseeruddin Shah's Bakhshi, was entertainingly fallible - far from the flawless master of deduction, he jumped to conclusions and acted rashly as frequently as he showed investigative insight.  And the story itself was sufficiently twisty and surprising to sustain the suspense.  My friend Amit points out that Khamosh suffers from a few plot holes.  To a certain extent, I think he's right - it rare that a script with complex twists can stand up to detailed scrutiny.  But I barely noticed these small weaknesses on first viewing, because I  was just having too much fun enjoying the ride.  It may be "just a thriller," but it's a solid, suspenseful, and thoroughly entertaining film.