Filmi Geek

Fanaa (2006)

फ़ना

Fanaa ("Destroyed in love") marked the return of the actress named Kajol to the screen after a several-year hiatus to raise a young child.  Before Fanaa I had only seen Kajol in one awful film (Ishq), though she starred opposite Shah Rukh Khan in some of the biggest hits of the 1990s.  Because her comeback was so eagerly anticipated among fans of Hindi film, and because Fanaa paired her with GOAT favorite Aamir Khan, I looked forward to this one. Add to that the fact that I got to see it on the big screen in its first run, and my expectations were high.

Unfortunately, Fanaa did not quite meet those expectations.

It has a few strengths, especially the steamy romance between Kajol and Aamir – they set the screen on fire.  Zooni (Kajol) is a sheltered blind girl from the Kashmiri mountains who ventures to Delhi with some of her schoolmates to dance on stage at a government event.  Rehan (Aamir) is the carefree, flirtatious tour guide hired to show the young women around the city.  Their attraction crackles from the moment they meet, and they are the delight of the film's first half, as they playfully improvise poetry to one another and tear around the streets of Delhi.  At the intermission, the film takes a sinister turn.  But the film's second half dissolves into a masala mess with plot holes that a jetliner could fly through, and as the wheels start to come off and the ride gets bumpier, the magnetism of Fanaa's two stars is not enough to carry it through. 

The film does have a fun soundtrack and some gorgeous picturizations - "Chand sifarish," for example, is a catchy toe-tapper, and "Mere haath mein" is pretty both to listen to and to watch.   But the story's weaknesses ultimately distracted from the searing beauty and heartbreak of the romance. When Kajol and Aamir were alone together on the screen, Fanaa sizzled. The rest of the time, it fell somewhere between flat and ridiculous.

Hum tumhare hain sanam (2002)

हम तुम्हारे हैं सनम

At times this film is merely an overwrought, love-triangular, Bollywood melodrama.  Even so, Hum tumhare hain sanam ("I am yours, dear") occasionally shines when it digs deep into the damage that failure to communicate can wreak on a relationship.

The relationship at risk here is that between straight-laced businessman Gopal (overacting superstar Shah Rukh Khan) and his sweet but clueless wife Radha (the gorgeous Madhuri Dixit, in a role that doesn’t come close to taking advantage of her abilities). All Gopal wants is some romantic, intimate time with his wife – lots of it, in fact – but Radha would rather hang around with her childhood friend Suraj (goofball cutie and GOAT favorite Salman Khan), a successful pop musician. Gopal doesn’t tell Radha that he’s feeling neglected; Radha doesn’t catch on that Gopal is jealous of her closeness to Suraj; their marriage comes dangerously close to the brink before Suraj realizes what is going on and steps in to help them out.

The script has a few very sensitive moments, exploring the work that goes into really making a relationship out of a marriage. But the film doesn’t quite fire on all cylinders; the pacing is clunky, the mood overwrought and contrived. And the songs – except for "Gale mein laal taai," a dream sequence number that I adore – range from unremarkable to awful.

Water (2005)

Water is the third and final film in Deepa Mehta's "Elements" series that began with my beloved Fire and continued with the breathtaking Earth.  In my opinion, Water is the weakest of the trilogy, but it is still lovely and moving.

Set in the holy city of Banaras in the 1930s, Water portrays the experiences of a child bride Chuyia (Sarala).  Widowed before she is even old enough to know she is married, Chuyia is exiled to an ashram ruled by a tyrannical old hypocrite Madhumati (Manorama).  Chuyia is looked after by two of the other widows in the ashram, the contemplative Shakuntala (Seema Biswas) and the lovely dreamer Kalyani (Lisa Ray), as well as a dashing Gandhist scholar (John Abraham) who meets Kalyani and Chuyia on one of their rare excursions outside the ashram. 

The film’s real message is wrought in the juncture between the ashram's secluded cloister and a greater city in which the progressive ideas of Gandhi are beginning to take hold. The greatest strength of this film is Deepa Mehta’s visuals, which call on the titular element of water as a rich metaphor for so many things: a force for change and destruction and cleansing, but also, when stagnant, a haven for the breeding of disease.

As usual, Deepa Mehta extracts intense, cerebral performances from her actors, although Lisa Ray and John Abraham are not quite up to the standard set by the excellent work of Seema Biswas and especially little Sarala, who perfectly conveys the sadness and confusion of her story from the perspective of a little girl. 

Raja Hindustani (1996)

राजा हिन्दुस्तानी

Raja Hindustani is pure masala - it's fair to say that Raja Hindustani is the Platonic form of masala. 

The plot is Bollywood's classic time-tested poor-guy rich-girl romance.  GOAT favorite Aamir Khan is the titular character - his name also means "Indian king" - a proud taxi driver.  He meets Aarti (Karisma Kapoor) when she arrives in his town for an extended vacation and hires him and his cab to shepherd her around.  After a few obligatory misunderstandings, Raja and Aarti fall for each other.  Aarti's family schemes to drive them apart, however, and much weeping, hand-wringing, anger, and other masala elements - like a drunk Raja making a scene at a classy party - ensue.

Raja HIndustani, like many masala films, is better in the first half as the characters are introduced and their relationships established than it is in the second half, where the tensions rise in pitch and where Raja appears to go somewhat insane.  The climax is bizarre and over-the-top.  Still, it's not an awful film, and somehow works better than the sum of its parts would suggest.  It also includes a few really terrific songs, like "Pardesi pardesi jaana nahin" and "Aaye ho meri zindagi mein".  It was a tremendous hit in its day, though I'm not sure it holds up well. 

Main hoon na (2004)

मैं हूँ ना

I have to admit that when I first began watching this Shah Rukh Khan superstar vehicle, I didn't know anything about it, and for the first 45 minutes or so I thought it was intolerably stupid.  At some point, though, I realized that the whole thing was a spoof - it wasn't meant to be taken seriously at all - and after that epiphany I was able to sit back and quite enjoy this silly entertainer. 

Shah Rukh plays Ram, a 35-or-so-year-old military commando sent back to college with a dual undercover mission: protect a general's daughter (Amrita Rao) from terrorists, and find his own long-lost half-brother (Zayed Khan) to carry out his father's dying wish to reunite them.  In the process he falls in love with the school's chemistry teacher Chandni (Sushmita Sen), offs a bunch of bad guys, and saves the world to boot. 

Main hoon na ("I'm here, aren't I?") is rich with spoofing references to both classic Bollywood tropes and Hollywood films.  One memorable bit is a Matrix-style slow-mo sequence in which Shah Rukh dodges spittle instead of bullets.  Other recurring gags poke fun at the Bollywood musical romance tradition; each time Ram sees Chandni, a troupe of violin players suddenly surrounds him and he finds himself unable to resist bursting into song.

The fight scenes are tedious, and the portrayal of college life is inane, but Main hoon na makes up for these weaknesses with the sweet earnestness of the characters and a couple of very creative and fantastic song picturizations, like "Tumhe jo maine dekha", Ram's fantasy about romancing Chandni, and "Tumse milka dil ka hai," an exuberant ode to love in which all the main cast members participate. 

I am not really a fan of Shah Rukh Khan.  But Main hoon na is one of the few films I have seen in which Shah Rukh's studied, blow-dried performance style really worked for me.  His typically forced delivery suited Ram's awkwardness as a soldier undercover among students half his age.  And in his songs, since he was fancying himself a romantic hero, the over-the-top affect with which he usually plays came across, for once, as self-effacing and charming. 

I used to think this film would not be a great introduction to Hindi films because of its parody nature.  Also, the opening song ("Chale jaise hawaien") was, to my eye, a fairly nondescript college number that I thought (despite some impressive technical work - nearly all of it was shot in two very long takes) would leave Bollywood neophytes at best nonplussed.  But my friends at the BollyWHAT? discussion forums report wonderful reactions to this film even among the uninitiated, and so I include it in Filmi Geek's "good introductions" category.