Filmi Geek

Delhi Belly (2011)

I recentlty read Neal Stephenson's new novel, Reamde, which is about (among other things) regular people who get swept into the circles of very dangerous criminals, and find themselves in desperate situations doing very desperate deeds.  Watching the recent dark comedy Delhi Belly, I was struck by the similarities of its basic outline to that summary of the novel. Most of us will never find ourselves face-to-face with the likes of the movie's diamond smugglers or Reamde's panoply of international gangsters, terrorists, and spies.  But there is something nevertheless compelling about such stories; even with its veneer of silliness, it's hard to watch Delhi Belly without thinking, what would I do if that happened to me?  

Tashi (Imran Khan) is a young, unambitious Delhi reporter who lives in squalor - borne more of laziness than necessity - with his two roommates, the lecherous photographer Nitin (Kunal Roy Kapoor), and a depressed commercial artist named Arup (Vir Das).  Tashi's breezy fiancee Sonia (Shenaz Treasury) has cluelessly agreed, as a favor to friend, to deliver a package that is quite obviously (to the audience, at least) contraband.  Sonia asks Tashi to complete the delivery, but thanks to a series of mishaps the package is confused with a stool sample of Nitin, who is afflicted with the filmi's titular ailment.  Needless to say, the intended recipient, a diamond smuggler (Vijay Raaz) isn't too pleased with the delivery.  And when the young men discover that they have a cache of stolen diamonds, they make a series of spectacularly bad decisions that lead to them chasing all over the city trying to sell the diamonds and, later, recover them.  Tossed in the mix is a colleague of Tashi's, the worldly Menaka (Poorna Jagannathan), whose homicidal ex-husband Rajiv (Rahul Singh) is violently jealous of Tashi - as if Tashi's life isn't complicated enough, an attraction is developing between him and Menaka.

Delhi Belly is, in an objective sense, a very good movie.  It's well crafted, nicely paced, and genuinely funny at times (despite a generous helping of toilet humor).  The three young men in their filthy apartment evoke a sort of parallel-universe version of Chashme buddoor, where post-modern ennui and bitterness replace the dreamy innocence of the trio in Sai Paranjpe's charming movie.  The characterizations are mostly lively, even if the characters are not always likeable.  The acerbic Menaka is especially appealing, though (partly because she is an older actor) she seems at times to belong to a different movie with more mature characters.  Tashi is the least lively; he moves through the film in a nearly emotionless haze.  This is probably intentional, as he seems rather buffeted and passive in his life, bullied into marriage by Sonia's family and shoved into a violent underworld he isn't at all prepared to handle.  And so even his dazed performance is engaging in its own way. 

And yet, despite Delhi Belly's strengths, I can't exactly say I enjoyed it.  Usually I relish high-fidelity renderings of Indian life, and this movie offers a very unusual serving of that, with its young urban atmosphere, its salty language, and its open, realistic, and often funny sexuality.  But perhaps I am simply too old for a movie like this one.  There are for sure some Hindi movies I like more than I would like their Hollywood counterparts, simply because they are Hindi movies.  Delhi Belly, though, is mostly in English, and while I can take some interest in it as an Indian movie, perhaps the overwhelming ways in which it is a youth movie leave me, teetering on the brink of middle age as I am, somewhat cold. 

Then there is the question I raised in the opening paragraph - what would I do in Tashi's situation?  The characters in Reamde do violence I could never imagine myself doing, but in the simple morality of that story the correctness of their actions is never really in question.  In Delhi Belly, by contrast, Tashi and his friends, motivated entirely by selfishness, take steps that ensure their bad situation gets worse and worse.  While that could arguably add an interesting shade to what is essentially an absurd sort of comedy, it does make it harder for me to root for them unconditionally.  And that leaves me feeling that I missed the point - that if I were younger, with nothing to lose, I would sympathize with them and be more willing to get into the spirit of the movie. 

 

Apne paraye (1980)

अपने पराये

Recently, thanks to a couple of thoughtful visitors, discussion has revived on my review of Swami.  By coincidence, the next movie I had in my queue to watch and review was, just like Swami, a Basu Chatterjee film based upon a novel by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay, Apne paraye ("our own and others"). 

Chander (Amol Palekar) is a bit of a layabout, a good-hearted man with a poor head for business and no taste for hard work.  He lives, on suffrance, in the household of his absent-minded elder cousin (Utpal Dutt), a wealthy and successful Calcutta lawyer.  Chander's wife Sheela (Shabana Azmi) runs the household with a stern hand, to the consternation of the laywer's weak-minded and sickly wife, Sideshwari (Ashalata).  Sideshwari can't deny Sheela's domestic competence, though, and she dotes on Sheela's children as enthusiastically as her own.  This fragile domestic peace is shattered when the lawyer's younger brother Harish (Girish Karnad), also a lawyer, arrives with his family and moves into the Calcutta haveli.  His wife Naintara (Bharati Achrekar) is jealous of Sheela, and angry that Sheela doesn't coddle Naintara's spoiled eldest child.  Naintara schemes to drive a wedge between Sheela and the impressionable Sideshwari.  This tension comes to a head when Naintara manipulates Sideshwari into having Chander and Sheela and their family thrown out of the house, and exiled to the family's farmland, where matters only get worse for them. 

Apne paraye has the potential to be the kind of movie I love - a taut, compelling exploration of the social problems of the joint family system through an intimate study of the lives of its characters.  This is the kind of movie that Shyam Benegal does so well, and I had high hopes that between Chatterjee's delicate touch and Chattopadhyay's story, Apne paraye would shine.  Unfortunately, the movie does not quite measure up.  The first half, which focuses on the relationships among the women, is unsatisfyingly superficial.  Zooming reaction shots and a booming soundtrack lends something like the feel of a saas-bahu serial to this otherwise delicately directed piece, and trivializes the tensions among the women by reducing them to catty jealousies over who is boss of the kitchen and who dotes on whose precious little offspring.  

The movie's second half fares better, as the story moves beyond the tight confines of the crowded Calcutta homestead and begins to develop some symbolism that adds richness.  Chander and Sheela are forced to face the harsh realities of the outside world, while for those who remain at home, the world almost seems to fold in on itself like a domestic ourobouros.  Naintara's bitchy manipulations escalate to fever pitch, while Sideshwari implodes in weepy dithering.  The men, especially Harish, overreact to the complaints of their wives, quite literally making a federal case out of a very ordinary domestic squabble.  The members of the household who remain in Calcutta seem to utterly lose perspective, while Chander and Sheela face the daily cold-water splash of trying to make ends meet in the real world.  Despite this potentially interesting contrast, though, the movie suffers from a facile ending, a giant "reset" in which the conflict is resolved without any sign of lasting consequences or transformation. 

The best moments of the movie are those that simply reflect domestic life without trying to wring drama from them - such as the family's meals, obviously a focus of the daily rhythm of life.  At mealtimes family business is transacted, grievances are aired, power is exerted and conceded, sacrifies are made, burdens are shared.  In the movie's only real hint of character development, early in the film Sheela manipulates her husband and sister-in-law by refusing to eat; later, she declines to eat out of sacrifice, when there is no longer enough food to go around, and Chander shows his maturation by offering to make the sacrifice along with her.

Making six adult characters all distinguishable and human is not a trivial task for a movie, and Apne paraye does a reasonably good job of it.  Naintara and Harish are a little one-dimensional in their self-absorption. Sideshwari's defining characteristic is her weakness and impressionability, but in moments when the movie is steering clear of melodrama, there is some interesting tension in her perpetually shifting loyalties.  Chander's shiftlessness is balanced by his evident good intentions and affection for his family.  Sheela is the most complex of all, and most of that complexity is thanks to Shabana Azmi's performance (and Basu Chatterjee's direction), as it is conveyed in subtleties of expression and body language.  While she is stern and dour in her direction of the household and discpline of her children (including the adult-child, her husband Chander), Sheela often betrays her tender side with a small indulgent smile. 

For every Chattopadhyay adaptation I have seen and been to some degree disappointed by - from Swami to Devdas to Parineeta - my lukewarm reviews have been met with staunch defenses based on the novel's texts.  I have no doubt that Chattopadhyay's novel (entitled Nishkriti) is better than Apne paraye, and presents the characters and their relationships with more depth and subtlety.  But I write about movies, not the books they are based upon, and I do believe that a movie - even an adaptation - has to stand on its own strengths and answer for its own weaknesses.  In its best moments, Apne paraye perhaps offers glimpses of the social insights for which Chattopadhyay is renowned.  On balance, though, it misses the mark - not by much, but by just enough to be frustrating.

 

Dabangg (2010)

दबंग

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ghulam (1998)

ग़ुलाम

After the surprisingly unviolent Ram Lakhan, watching the excessively violent Ghulam ("slave") was - dare I say it - a slap in the face.  This frustrating movie is the proverbial "little girl with a little curl" - when it's good, it's very good, but its weaker moments are horrid indeed.

Siddhu (Aamir Khan) is a sometime amateur boxer, a petty criminal, and a layabout, haunted by troubling memories of his father (Dalip Tahil), a one-time freedom fighter who died a violent death when Siddhu was a boy.  Siddhu's Dongri neighborhood is terrorized by the hot-headed extortionist entrepreneur Raunak Singh, or "Ronnie" (Sharat Saxena), for whom Siddhu performs occasional thug-duty, delivering messages and roughings-up to anyone reluctant to do Ronnie's bidding.  After winning the heart of a sad young woman named Alisha (Rani Mukherjee), Siddhu meets a social worker named Hari (Akshay Anand), who is trying to galvanize beleaguered members of the community into legal action against Ronnie.  After he unwittingly delivers Hari into a trap laid by Ronnie, Siddhu is inspired to take up Hari's cause.  But Siddhu's brother Jai (Rajit Kapoor) reminds Siddhu that their father might not have been the great man Siddhu remembers, and calls into question the very foundation of Siddhu's righteous beliefs. 

The worst parts of Ghulam are so bad that they are hard to watch.  The motorcycle gang that features an embarrassing squealy caricature of an effeminate man is bad enough, and the gang's reappearance toward the film's end is particularly stupid. The violent scenes are too numerous, and too interminable - Siddhu's showdown with Ronnie at the movie's climax is especially improbable and egregious.  And if I gave star ratings to movies, any movie that features a boxing match would automatically be docked at least one star.  (At least in Ghulam, the boxing match is merely gratuitious, rather than a proxy for real achievement - or worse, redemption - as it in that unbearable genre of movies that are actually about boxing.) 

Ghulam is redeemed somewhat by the contrast in its well-wrought characterization of the two brothers. Jai is the clean-cut, educated brother in spectacles and khakis.  He contrasts sharply with Siddhu's leather and chains, and rough Tapori dialect - to all appearances, he is far more like Siddhu's idealized memory of their father, the "bespectacled master."  Yet Jai puts all that class and education to work as Ronnie's accountant, cooking the tyrant's books and laundering his extortionate earnings.  Siddhu, for all his thuggish affectation, proves to have the stouter heart and the purer conscience, in a pleasing (if somewhat facile) turnabout of stereotype.  Even Alisha, clearly attracted to bad boys who feed her fantasy of liberation from her penthouse prison, only falls for Siddhu after he demonstrates his true nature by saving a rival's life.  Siddhu is the descendant of both the Angry Young Man character perfected by Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970s, and the sort of Tapori trickster embodied by Anil Kapoor in Ram Lakhan. 

And so it is fitting, and in hindsight not at all surprising, that Siddhu's great triumph is not that he musters the courage to testify against Ronnie in court - Hari's righteous quest turns out to be a bit of a red herring - but rather that he incites his neighbors to riot in a physical and violent defeat of Ronnie and his gang.  To me and my ordered, Western perspective, the violence of this victory is unsatisfying.  But I have to acknowledge, as I often do as a student of Indian movies, that I am not the target audience, and what I personally think is the correct course would not be the most effective course for people menaced by the likes of Ronnie.  In the movie, Ronnie's case is adjourned for a weekend, setting up his climactic confrontation with Siddhu; I know that in real life, a more likely outcome would be for the slow wheels of justice to creep along for a decade or more while he continues his reign of terror.  And so the violent solution is perhaps the only solution that would ring true to Ghulam's Indian audience.

The appeal of the stars carries the movie a long way too.  Aamir Khan's performance is, as usual, both physical and soulful, and Rani Mukherjee, while still very young, is thoroughly cute.  Their appeal is highlighted in the movie's best song, "Aati kya Khandala," which features Aamir singing his own part, and which is adorable; I especially love it when they dance next to the Buddha sculpture. Somewhat less effective, but still pleasant, are the two - not just one - romantic songs with scenes shot in Switzerland.  Of the minor characters, I particularly liked Akshay Anand as Hari, as well as Sharat Saxena as Ronnie (he does quite well with a character whose vein-popping apoplexy is a bit overdone).  I also enjoyed Siddhu's lawyer (Mita Vasisht).  Her performance makes me wonder whether they offer "Shabana Azmi" classes in acting school; if so, she appears to have studied very hard.    

Zanjeer (1973)

ज़ंजीर

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Junglee (1961)

जंगली

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Chori chori (2003)

चोरी चोरी

Like another Ajay Devgan vehicle, Pyar to hona hi tha, Chori chori ("stealthily, secretly") serves up a pretend romance that blossoms into a real one.  Also like Pyar to honi hi tha, Chori chori is based upon a mid-rate Hollywood rom-com that I never saw (in this case, Housesitter). For me, though, Chori chori is a sllightly better and more memorable movie, thanks to the wonderful Rani Mukherjee's portrayal of a surprisingly interesting character.

Khushi (Rani Mukherjee) lives on her own in Delhi.  She nominally works in a hotel kitchen, but finds excuses to skip work more often than she shows up.  Meanwhile Ranbir (Ajay Devgan) dreams of building a sprawling mountain home in Shimla for his childhood love Pooja (Sonali Bendre), but Pooja rejects him.  Khushi meets a brooding, depressed Ranbir when he attends a party at her hotel, and she learns of his planned and half-built dream-house.  When her boss finally tires of her indolence and she loses her Delhi apartment, Khushi heads to Shimla and cons her way into everything from food to furniture by pretending to be Ranbir's betrothed, charming his family.  Ranbir discovers the deception and is enraged at first - but Khushi convinces him that playing up the charade will win him Pooja for good.  So, they carry on, arranging opportunities to make Pooja jealous. But it isn't long before the pretense turns to real romance.

One unusual aspect of Chori chori is that its heroine Khushi lives alone in a big city.  (Almost needless to say, just like the orphan NRI heroine of Pyar to hona hi tha, Khushi owes her independence to the Hollywood origin of the storyline.)   Unfettered by a large, protective family the way most Hindi film heroines are, Khushi has the freedom to take off for Shimla when the mood strikes her.  But it also frees her to fabricate stories about her past and her situation with a fluidity that is oddly touching; she's very effective at conning people because there are few bothersome truths to interfere with the smoothly flowing lies.  

The result is a poignancy to Khushi's character - and Rani Mukherjee's performance - that is what ultimately makes Chori chori a better movie than Pyar to hona hi tha.  She is adorably charming - and downright funny - as she talks her way into and out of trouble, as in a standout scene where she unknowingly introduces herself as Mrs. Ranbir Malhotra to Ranbir's father (Kulbushan Kharbanda).  Yet there is a longing wistfulness in her tale-spinning, as if she believes the charade is as close as she can get to real happiness.  This yearning often rises to the surface when she is alone, confiding to her stuffed toy monkey.  Khushi's preternatural perkiness is tempered by these moments of melancholy. 

Compared to Khushi's unexpected depth, Ajay Devgan is serviceable, but flat - Ranbir's arc isn't very interesting, and he mostly broods his way through the film.  This is not really a complaint, though, as his blandness provides a suitable canvas for Rani's show.  Sonali Bendre is equally bland as the third vertex of the love triangle, but she is little more than a plot device that motivates the Khushi and Ranbir's romantic charade.  There are some nice songs, notably "Mehndi na mujhko lagake," and "Tu mere samne" - at the end of the latter, Khushi keeps dancing with abandon for a few moments after the song ends, which is both an adorable bit of comedy, and a hinting at the bleed between make-believe and reality that is beginning the in relationship between Khushi and Ranbir.

 

 

Dream Girl (1977)

Writing about an average masala movie can sometimes feel as formulaic as the movies themselves. You hit all the highlights - your favorite adorable jodi, a couple of fun songs, a comedy scene with wacky disguises, a progressive social message.  The Hema-Dharmendra vehicle Dream Girl offers all of these, plus the requisite baby-switching plot twist and syncretic and populist themes.  With all of that, though, Dream Girl is very, very average, even among average masala movies.  It meets the Recommended Masala Allowance, but for the most part it's rather bland, phoned-in and unmemorable.  To misapply Gertrude Stein, there is no there there.

Dashing Anupam (Dharmendra) is the sort of guy that girls fight over - he's handsome, he's rich, and he has the world on a string.  But the only girl he wants is an anonymous mystery girl in a painting he bought from a street vendor.  Then one day, in a shop, he runs into the girl of his dreams, the girl from his painting (Hema Malini), and watches in surprise as she steals his car and his money.  The dream girl, as it happens, is a bit of a Robin Hood - with her brother Chandu (Asrani), she runs a variety of hustles and cons, all for the benefit of the bevy of orphans she cares for in her "Happy Home" orphanage.  In the meantime, under pressure from his grandfather Verma (Ashok Kumar) to marry, Anupam extracts a favor from his dream girl - whom he fittingly calls Sapna (dream).  He introduces her to Verma as his betrothed, and as a princess to boot.  Verma is charmed, and insists that Sapna stay in their luxurious home.  But Anupam's disinherited cousin Prem (Prem Chopra) discovers a terrible secret about Sapna's past, and is determined to use it to get at Anupam's share of Verma's fortune.

Though it has a few sparkling moments, Dream Girl is, for the most part, an amorphous puddle of failed potential whose whole somehow manages to be less than the sum of its parts.  The pairing of Dharmendra and Hema can be so electric, but here they have little screen-time together, and what they do have lacks any sizzle.  The songs, which can make a good masala film great or make a mediocre masala film a raucous good time, miss the mark here.  Dream Girl even manages to make Hema doing a gypsy dance forgettable.  Hema's interactions with the children in her orphanage are cute - but they are also lifted wholesale from Brahmachari. 

The best moments of Dream Girl are the comic scenes stolen by Asrani, as Chandu, Sapna's partner in crime and co-parent to the orphans.  In the countless films in which I've seen him, Asrani has been little more than a dorky lightweight character actor.  In Dream Girl, though, Asrani is the one element that reaches full potential - most of the real laughs come at his hands.  His disguises and his hijinx complement his tenderness toward Sapna and the children, adding up to a delightful and well-rounded performance. 

Finally, if anything absolves Dream Girl's sins of mediocrity, it's the climactic melee, in which Dharmendra not only drives a motorcycle up a spiral staircase, but also leaps on it from one building to the next, and then wields it as a weapon in a bit of truly inspired dishoom-dishoom.  Hema and even the children get in on the action too.  The fight scene, together with Asrani and a few other genuine smiles sprinkled here and there, offer at least a light snack for the serious masala connoisseur. 

(My apologies for the absence of my customary one original screencapture.  The computer is being a bitch about reading DVDs, and it seemed silly to hold up the entire post until I get that sorted out.) 

Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year (2009)

I am often much harder on films that have tremendous potential and take a few missteps, than I am on films that aim lower and squarely hit the mark.  There is something particularly maddening about a good film that you just feel could have been truly extraordinary if something about it had been handled just a little differently.  I'm sorry to say that for me, Rocket Singh:  Salesman of the Year is one such film.  

Harpreet Singh Bedi (Ranbir Kapoor), known to his friends as HP, has graduated - but just barely.  He's not a terribly ambitious fellow but he does have a plan to make himself a good living:  he's going to be a salesman, and he lands a position with AYS, a computer firm.  Soon, though, HP sees the dark side of AYS, when he encounters a customer who expects a hefty kickback in exchange for signing a deal.  HP questions this approach to business, angering his boss Nitin (Naveen Kaushik) and the company director Puri (Manish Chaudhary), who cut off his access to sales leads and turn his coworkers against him.  Desperate to prove himself, HP hatches a scheme to work behind his AYS bosses' backs to provide better value and superior service to the customers that AYS fleeces and neglects.  With the help of an unlikely alliance of AYS employees, HP launches the Rocket Sales Corporation - named for the paper airplanes that his disgruntled colleagues continuously toss at his desk - and takes AYS on in the field, all the while hoping he won't get caught back at the office.   

The elephant in the room during Rocket Singh is that his plan is flagrantly illegal and unethical.  Instead of leaving AYS and starting his own company, HP and his team work out of AYS offices, piggy-backing on AYS infrastructure like office space, telephone services, and supplies.  HP may be outraged at the high rates that AYS charges its customers, but the only reason he can afford to dramatically undercut them is that he steals from them right and left.  Without that pesky overhead, the real-world costs of doing business, HP gets to undersell AYS while using the company's own infrastructure to grab market share at AYS's expense.  HP's righteous indignation at AYS's corruption is substantially eroded by his own unethical approach, and his unilateral pledge to pay back the costs of all these stolen services just isn't enough to shore up his moral high horse. 

This flaw in HP's character might be chalked up to the naivete of youth; but, unfortunately, it damages an otherwise charming film and squanders Ranbir Kapoor's very believable performance.  Ranbir Kapoor here harnesses a more restrained and believable version of the manic energy that bounced him around the screen in Saawariya, the only other film of his I've seen at this writing.  The result is a character I very much wanted to root for; the story's interference with that sympathy was frustrating, bobbing up in my mind at inconvenient moments. 

Even so, Rocket Singh is a very well-made film with some unusual strengths. The casting of lesser-known or unexpected actors (such as perennial masala villain Prem Chopra as HP's cuddly grandpa) helps to lend the film an immersive realism that is unusual in the land of Yash Raj; the characters (for the most part) are more individuals, and less totems or archetypes.  AYS's office manager Koena (Gauhar Khan) - one of HP's partners in crime - is particularly delicious; a smart, ambitious woman without any romantic notes in her story arc, she is the sort of character who is a rare treat in the cinema of any country. Even the immature, horny technician Giri (D. Santosh) is rendered as something more loveable than a pure walking stereotype of the porn-ogling computer nerd.

The AYS sales office is a sort of slightly cuter version of Glengarry Glen Ross, embodying every cringe-inducing stereotype of the sales environment in all its extremes of competitiveness and cruelty.  Sexism is present and prevalent, whether in Nitin's persistent refusal to grant Koena a much-deserved promotion, or in the resigned glances shot between Koena and the office's one female sales agent when Puri drops crude comments.  Other prejudices are exposed as well, as when HP remarks to Koena that the others should not have underestimated "me the Sardar and you the item girl."  In letting such issues be prevalent without letting them take over the story, Rocket Singh avoids becoming a heavy-handed message piece. 

In short, Rocket Singh is flawed over all, but its shining moments are bright and frequent enough that it amply rewards watching, despite the missteps.   I only wish it had been scripted with just a little bit more care - it could have been not just a cute afternoon's timepass, but instead something truly memorable.

Brahmachari (1968)

ब्रह्मचारी

As Shammi Kapoor vehicles and stylish 1960s movies go, Brahmachari ("celibate man," also the main character's name) is not the most memorable exemplar of either category, compared to gems like Teesri manzil or Kashmir ki kali.  For the most part, it is a series of entertaining set-pieces knit together fairly loosely.  Supplemented by a terrific soundtrack and entertaining supporting cast, though, Brahmachari is a satisfying enough movie for smiling away a rainy afternoon. 

The young man who calls himself Brahmachari (Shammi Kapoor) has opened his house to a passel of orphaned children.  He devotes his life to caring for them and finding ways to provide for them - whether by selling his photographs to the newspaper, singing in a nightclub, or sweet-talking the landlord (Asit Sen) into giving them a break on the rent and an extra Rs. 200 besides.  When he comes across Sheetal (Rajshree) on the brink of drowning herself in the sea, he has a new waif to care for.  The source of Sheetal's distress is her rejection by the rich playboy Ravi Khanna (Pran), to whom she was engaged to marry when both were children.  Observing that Ravi's tastes run to westernized sorts of women, Brahmachari offers Sheetal a complete makeover, giving her a brief education in how to dress, dance, and eat like a modern girl.  The plan works, and Ravi falls for Sheetal - but not before Brahmachari's unique kindness to her and the children begins to turn Sheetals's heart in a different direction.  To get what he wants, the powerful and unscrupulous Ravi stops at nothing to drive a wedge between Sheetal and Brahmachari, and hits Brahmachari where it hurts most - threatening the well-being of the children. 

Brahmachari is an obvious antecedent to Mr. India, which followed it two decades later.  In that film, too, the hero selflessly devotes himself to caring for helpless orphans, and fast-talks his landlord into letting them stay and providing them with favors.  However, where the villains in Mr. India engineer injustice on a grand scale - tainting food supplies in a hostile takeover bid aimed at the nation itself - Brahmachari's injustices are writ smaller.  Nevertheless, there is still a sense of grandness in them, a hint of the struggle between traditional Indian goodness and western wickedness that was so commonly addressed in movies of the 1960s. Sheetal's demureness and Brahmachari's self-sacrifice are presented in sharp relief to the wicked western ways of the libertine Ravi Khanna. Another of Ravi's innocent victims, a girl named Rupa (Mumtaz) whom he married, impregnated, and cast aside, is caught between the two worlds - an innocent victim but also perhaps a cautionary tale.

Whatever there is in the way of broad social theme, though, is not what feels first and foremost as Brahmachari careens from bit to comical bit (including a funny, but too long, comical side plot involving a reformed pick-pocket trying to win over his girlfriend's father).  Shammi Kapoor is in fine form, charming and adorable and somewhat less manic than he is in some other movies (such as his spastic performance in Kashmir ki kali).  His interactions with the children are funny and sometimes very touching, as when he sings them to sleep with the haunting and lovely "Main gaoon tum so jao."  His antics as he investigates Ravi Khanna offer some laughs, too, despite the cringe-inducing blackface disguise he wears.  There's no danger of forgetting it's the 1960s, either, as he shakes it to the superb "Aaj kal tere mere pyaar" with a bee-hived, twisting Mumtaz.

The Pygmalion-esque sequence in which Brahmachari teaches Sheetal to wear western clothes, to dance, and to eat with a fork is good for several laughs too, although one should not think too hard about why he's doing it.  After all, by that point he's had a good look at what sort of a jerk Ravi Khanna really is.  I do wish the Pygmalion aspect of the story had been a stronger thread - there are brief scenes of Sheetal struggling with each of her lessons, but the film jumps to her complete mastery of western self-presentation, and that's all we get - there's nothing like My Fair Lady's "Move yer blooming arse!" scene to make comedy hay after the transformation is complete.  No matter, though, as Brahmachari is not at all short on entertaining moments.  Fans of trippy, nonsensical song picturizations will not want to miss "Dil ke jharoke" which features men in Robin Hood getup competing with men in lizard costumes for the pleasure of dancing with women in evening gowns.  And rounding out the random bits of fun is the send-up of Mehmood's song from Gumnaam that earned the child actor Junior Mehmood that nickname.