Filmi Geek

Cheeni kum (2007)

चीनी कम

I am always pleased to review a film while it's playing in theaters, so I can add my small voice to the cacophony of reviews encouraging or discouraging others from seeing it.  In the case of Cheeni kum ("Less sugar"), my verdict is:  get out and see this film, if you are near a theater where Hindi films are shown.  It is a funny, quirky, and winning romance.

Buddhadev Gupta (Amitabh Bachchan) is a salty and egotistical chef who runs what he calls "finest Indian restaurant in London."  He's a perfectionist who rules his kitchen with an iron fist, not hesitating to dress down his staff for small errors, or to berate a young English waiter for failing to master the precise pronunciation of the names of the dishes.  When a visitor from Delhi, the no-nonsense Nina Verma (Tabu), sends one of his signature dishes back to the kitchen - complaining that it's too sweet, of all things - Buddha is mortally insulted, but he is also charmed.  The flirtation grows serious, and before long Buddha must navigate a minefield strewn with his own insecurities - he's a full thirty years Nina's senior - not to mention the objections of Nina's cricket-obsessed, Gandhist father (Paresh Rawal).  Supporting Buddha in this adventure are his sprightly mother (Zohra Sehgal) and a tiny little girl named Sexy (Swini Khara), Buddha's frail, leukemic next door neighbor.

Though it is an older-man, younger-woman romance, Cheeni kum thoroughly avoids any hint of the ickiness that sometimes pervades such stories like a bad odor.  The romance works because Nina is a grown-up, not a desperate and confused girl; she enters the romance with eyes open and without desperation or any sort of  daddy complex.  And Buddha treats her equally, not paternally; he has a great and easily bruised ego, but no excessive machismo, and there is no sense that he feels entitled to the attention of a beautiful young woman.  The power dynamic is clear from the character's early interactions; Nina has the upper hand, and so any inherent imbalance arising from the age differences is neutralized.

Cheeni kum isn't coy about the age difference, either; it's the main source of conflict in the film, and the film addresses it head-on, either in comic scenes (Buddha surreptitiously removing candles from his birthday cake), or slightly cliché ones (Buddha:  "Thirty-four - very old."  Nina:  "Sixty-four - very young.").  In one very funny moment, Nina fails to suppress a giggle as she reminds Buddha that he's not her father's age - he's actually six years older.  The side characters, too, emphasize the film's message that you're only as old as you feel - Buddha's elderly but irrepressible mother hounds him to work out and watches muscle-man competitions and "Sex and the City" on television, while little Sexy, who is knocking at death's door, longs to watch grown-ups' movies and spouts philosophical musings that convey wisdom far beyond her years.

In a lesser movie the cute-little-kid and cute-little-old-lady tropes would be tedious and cloying, but in the "less sweet" environment of Cheeni kum they somehow work well; the charm and humor is warm and light enough that even these characters hit a balance, offering us glimpses of Buddha's tender side even before his salty courtship of Nina is fully off the ground.  The film veers closer to melodrama in the second half, with a preachy speech or two and some distraught grieving.  But these are minor quibbles in a thoroughly delightful film, and are far overshadowed by the rich humor afforded by both the characterizations (such as the inconsistencies of Nina's father's semi-sincere Gandhism) and the situations (such as Buddha's mounting frustration as he waits for the right opening to break the news of the engagement to Nina's father).  Small imperfections are readily overlooked in as tasty a confection as Cheeni kum.

A word on the music:  The songs of Cheeni kum are largely abbreviated in the film, and are not picturized on singing characters.   Still, it is one of the finest and most melodic new soundtracks I've heard in a long time, and I've raved about it in other fora.  It is one of the few Hindi film soundtracks by the prolific and revered South Indian movie composer Ilaiyaraja.  Some have complained that Ilaiyaraja recycled melodies from earlier compositions for Cheeni kum, but as I wasn't familiar with his work before this didn't bother me in the slightest.  I think it's a fresh and wonderful soundtrack, highly worth a listen.   

Filmi Geek metapost

Namaste filmi dosto.

It's been eight weeks or so since my last metapost.  That time has seen the addition of more than a dozen reviews to the site, bringing the total number of films reviewed here to a staggering 105 (plus one play).

That represents pretty much every Indian (or Indian-themed) film I have seen in the past two years, and means I've watched, on average, one a week for two years.  Obsession is a great thing.  I am watching more now than I was in the beginning.  In the first 20 weeks of 2007, I watched and reviewed 36 films, for a pace of just under two a week.  I have to have something new to keep you all coming back!  This past weekend, a three-day weekend here in the US, I saw three more Hindi films, including the brand-new Cheeni kum currently showing in theaters, so you can expect a review of that and other new posts this week.

In the meantime you can visit the discussion boards at BollyWHAT? or at Jaman to talk about what's new and old in Hindi films.  Jaman, where I'm a reviewer and moderator, has a good collection of Hindi films available for free download. 

The Great Gambler (1979)

With its exotic locales, scheming baddies, long-lost brothers, nonsensical plot, and smitten heroines, there is little to set this film apart from dozens of other masala movies of its era.  Yet the charisma of its stars - Amitabh Bachchan in a dashing double role, and Zeenat Aman as smoking hot as ever - is enough to seat The Great Gambler solidly in the category of light, fun timepass.   

Jai (Amitabh) is a gambler, a man with the power to make the cards dance for him, hired by casino owner Ratan Das (Madan Puri) to separate rich businessmen from their money.  Ratan Das hatches a scheme to marry Jai to Mala (Neetu Singh), the daughter of another wealthy businessman (Iftekhar), and sends Jai to Lisbon to meet her.  Jai doesn't know that Ratan Das is engineering a scheme to steal the plans for the government's powerful new defense technology and sell it to the highest bidder.  His contacts in this scheme include a gang boss named Saxena (Utpal Dutt), whose henchmen Ramesh (Prem Chopra) and Marconi (Sujit Kumar) carry out his dirty work. 

Meanwhile, a police officer named Vijay (also Amitabh) is hot on the trail of Saxena's gang and eager to recover the stolen secrets.  Vijay is a dead ringer for Jai, of course, and when Saxena's gang realizes this they - with the help of their moll, Shabnam (Zeenat Aman) strongarm Jai into taking over Vijay's identity and helping them complete their transaction.  While Jai is diverted from his journey to meet his betrothed Mala, she finds Vijay instead and - once she's mistaken him for Jai - sparks fly. 

The story is much less coherent than that description, with numerous details, twists, and complexities that don't fit together and make little sense.  But the plot is not where The Great Gambler's entertainment lies.  It lies rather in odd scenes and fun moments, driven by Amitabh and Zeenat looking their best.  The henchman Marconi, who lives in Rome, speaks Hindi with a lilting Italian accent.  Jai and Vijay, once united, pull of a hysterical bamboozle in the guise of an impulsive emir and his bumbling secretary.  There is a stomach-churning fight scene that takes place in a meat locker.  Zeenat melts the screen with a hotter than hot belly dance in "O Rukasa mera naam".  Asha Bhosle sings the plaintive "Do lafzon ki hai," gorgeously picturized on a Venetian gondola.  Moments like these are the glue that holds The Great Gambler together when the plot gets too nonsensical or the chase scenes and fight scenes too repetitive. 

Amitabh did not do enough with his double role - it was too difficult to tell his characters apart, unless there were some linguistic cues that escaped my rudimentary Hindi comprehension.  But that didn't detract too much from the fun of watching Amitabh just do his thing.  If you're a fan of his, or of Zeenat's, there are worse ways to spend a rainy afternoon than watching The Great Gambler.   

Sarfarosh (1999)

सरफ़रोश

Dir. John Matthew Matthan

In 1947, in the process of yielding the governance of Hindustan, Britain divided the subcontinent into primarily Hindu India and primarily Muslim Pakistan, formalizing a religious and nationalist divide that has caused millions of deaths and that today still dominates politics within the two nations.  Part of the legacy of Partition is a host of entangled relationships among numerous Hindu majority communities in India, the Muslim minority that stayed in India after Partition, and various communities in Pakistan.  The complexities of these interactions are both fascinating and of vital importance to the region.  And so it is no surprise that they are a fertile source of material for good movies, like Sarfarosh, that explore them. 

When Ajay Singh Rathod (Aamir Khan) is a young college student, his brother is killed and his father gravely and permanently injured by terrorists.  Ajay is inspired to enter law enforcement - every criminal, he says, reminds him of the men who tore apart his family - and quickly rises to the rank of assistant commissioner.  He is assigned to crack a weapons-smuggling operation that is arming bands of village militiamen, backed ultimately by Pakistani intelligence service, with the assistance of a network of local elements within India.  On Ajay's investigative team is a brooding Muslim police inspector named Salim (Mukesh Rishi).  Ajay also meets a contemplative, philosophical ghazal singer whom he has admired since boyhood, Gulfam Hassan (Naseeruddin Shah), and enjoys a sweet romance with Seema (Sonali Bendre), a girl he had a crush on in college.  As Ajay's investigation gets closer to the truth, he comes into greater and greater peril, and learns that some of his friends are not as trustworthy as he thinks. 

Sarfarosh means "one who is prepared to die for a cause," and indeed, Sarfarosh is most compelling not for the story itself (which, though it provides an interesting glimpse into the infrastructure of terrorism, is not particularly suspenseful), nor for the fight scenes (which are violent and plentiful), but rather for its variations on the themes of religious and national identity.  Inspector Salim is passionately patriotic, but as a Muslim he suffers from the prejudice and unwarranted suspicion of his fellow officers.  When one of the smugglers escapes after a shootout with Salim, the inspector is accused of allowing the culprit - a fellow Muslim - to escape, and temporarily removed from the investigation.  Salim is deeply wounded, and lashes out with a moving speech in which he admonishes Ajay to "never tell a Salim that this is not his country."   

Gulfam sahib's story also raises the identity question.  He is a Muslim whose family was driven from its ancestral palace during Partition; he fled across the border to Pakistan.  He is revered as one of Pakistan's national treasures, yet, he tells Ajay, even fifty years later he is still held apart as a muhajir, a refugee.  He is no longer Indian and yet not fully Pakistani as well.  He is an engaging character, and the sad eyes and smile of the perfectly cast Naseeruddin Shah add depth to the sense that Gulfam sahib is something of a lost soul.

The gun-running story provides the canvas on which Gulfam sahib's and Inspector Salim's inner conflicts are painted.  Indeed, the film could have been even better had it been more about them, and less about Ajay, who is too fresh-faced to be believable at his elevated rank in the force, and too flawless to be a compelling character.  Ajay's romance with Seema, while very charming, is a distraction that is completely unnecessary except perhaps to provide a few moments of peace - for both Ajay and the audience - between rounds of gunfighting.  (In one delicious scene, Seema teases Ajay for being old-fashioned when he comments on her short short skirt; moments later, she blushingly insists that she can't meet Ajay's mother that day because "my skirt is too short!")  Also enhancing the mood is some beautiful desert cinematography and a hit-and-miss assortment of songs by Jatin-Lalit.  The standout here is the song that plays over the opening credits,  "Zindagi maut na ban jaye" ("may life not become death"), an upbeat and patriotic call to arms that plays over the films opening scenes, which are a menacing overview of the smuggling operation's clandestine transport of automatic weapons.   The film has some weaknesses, but on balance it is a solid and substantial piece. 

My thanks to Amit for comments that helped refine my initial impressions of the film.

Sarfarosh is available for free download at Jaman.com. 

Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) (1959)

Dir. Satyajit Ray

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

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

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

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