Filmi Geek

Katha (1983)

कथा

With Sparsh and Chashme buddoor, director Sai Paranjpe had already proved to me her great skill at presenting down-to-earth, real, sweet stories about believable characters, so I came to Katha ("fable") with high expectations.  I was not disappointed.

Rajaram Purshottam Joshi (Naseeruddin Shah) lives in a chawl, a kind of boarding house common in Bombay.  A hardworking office clerk, Rajaram is pleased when he is promoted to permanent status at his company, and looks forward to celebrating with his neighbor Sandhya (Deepti Naval), a charming girl with whom he is quite obviously smitten.  Soon Rajaram's childhood friend Vashudev (Farooq Shaikh) - he prefers the hip nickname "Washu" - arrives, and casts a spell over all the residents of the chawl - including Sandhya.  He even cons Rajaram's boss, landing himself a job as Rajaram's superior.  Rajaram sees through his friend's slick-talking charm, but with his gentle demeanor he is powerless to stop the juggernaut that is Washu in pursuit of something - or someone - that amuses him. 

Just as in Sparsh and Chashme buddoor, Sai Paranjpe shows her gentle touch in Katha, offering characters who are real, relatable, and engaging.  In particular, just like Chashme buddoor, Katha offers adorable humor without outlandishness, real-life believable situations that make the audience laugh because it's not difficult to project them onto ourselves and our neighbors.  The portrayal of life in the chawl is particularly charming and satisfying, and is itself a reason to see the movie for anyone interested in workaday Indian life.  The chawl is a tight-knit community is like a small village or, as one character in the film analogizes, a great joint family, in which individuals and families live in small flats centered on a common courtyard and shared water and other utilities.  There is a bitter barren woman who yells at children playing in the courtyard; a newlywed couple who rarely emerge from their rooms but whose giggles can be heard through the closed shutters; a disabled man who asks incessant favors from every visitor; a grandma who cooks yummy snacks for every young visitor she receives; a couple, whose son is a doctor in Canada, who love nothing more than to show off their richly appointed flat and their refrigerator and television; and more.  Paranjpe paints the inhabitants of this microcosm with great vividness and affection, and their interactions are tremendous fun to watch. 

The enjoyable bustle of the chawl forms a delightful backdrop for the interactions of the main players (they even serve as a Greek chorus of sorts, especially in the film's wonderful songs).  The principals' performances are all executed without flaw, especially those of Naseeruddin Shah and Farooq Shaikh.  Naseeruddin Shah is at his droopy, sad-sacky best; Rajaram wears his frustration physically as Washu runs circles around him, projecting a confused and adorable mixture of disdain and admiration for his friend's antics.  And Farooq Shaikh nails Washu's puff-chested confidence to perfection.  In Chashme buddoor, Farooq's character was charming in part because despite being marginally smarter and more competent than his friends, he was still mostly a dork.   The same is true here, with a faintly sinister edge since Washu is, at base, a con-man.  But the joke which Paranjpe lets the audience in on - a joke that escapes Washu - is that Washu is nothing more than a small-time con, not half the player he thinks is.  For example, while Washu both cons and cuckolds Rajaram's boss, it's established early on that the boss is a weak target, not a very bright guy to begin with.  The result is a sense of desperation and cheapness about Washu, as if he's conned his own low-watt self right along with the easy marks he chooses.   

And so, as in the titular fable that provides the film's bookends - the story of the tortoise and the hare - Katha ends with the satisfying feeling that the wheel will turn and both Washu and Rajaram will get what they deserve from the universe.  And we, the audience, get a warm, delightful, and utterly charming film, another very, very fine feather in Sai Paranjpe's cap. 

Mr. India (1987)

What happens when two masters of populist, allegorical, entertaining screenwriting and a gifted, creative, intellectual director put their heads together with the goal of creating a film that is over-the-top even compared to the most outrageous masala Hindi films have to offer?   Mr. India is what happens.  Screenwriters Salim-Javed and director Shekhar Kapur, with some intrepid help from a terrific cast, pulled out every stop in this all-out goofy entertainer.  It's self-conscious, it's ridiculous, and it's riotous fun - but there's a patriotic moral, too. 

Arun Verma (Anil Kapoor) is a musician with a cheerful disposition who looks after a houseful of adorable orphans.  When his natural charm ceases to satisfy the shopkeepers and landlords from whom he wrangles rice and credit, he sets out to find himself a paying guest to supplement his income.  He rents a room to a persnickety, child-hating reporter named Seema (Sridevi) and they proceed to get on one another's nerves.  Soon Arun learns that his father, a scientist who died when Arun was a small boy, had been killed by some goons intent on stealing an invisibility formula the scientist had devised.  Now the goons are back, at the behest of their despotic boss, Mogambo (Amrish Puri), and they want not only the invisibility formula but all of India to boot.  Arun learns of the terrorist tactics of Mogambo's thugs, who use such nefarious tools as tainted food supplies and explosive-rigged toys to sow the seeds of fear in the populace, and he decides to use the invisibility formula to mete out justice against Mogambo's army of evildoers, transforming himself into Mr. India, the invisible avenger of the people.

The best parts of Mr. India are the moments that are crafted with no purpose other than to showcase the stars' first-class shtick.  In one delightful sequence, for example, Sridevi launches into an extended Charlie Chaplin impression that highlights her talent for adorable physical comedy; in others, she flings her dangerous curves across the screen in both a comical dance sequence and a passionate one.  Amrish Puri is at his bug-eyed, scene-chewingest best in every one of Mogambo's scenes, preening and strutting and ingeiously crafting a seemingly limitless number of ways to utter the villain's signature phrase, "Mogambo khush hua." ("Mogambo is pleased.")  These elements are brazenly, unabashedly entertaining in the manner in which Hindi films are particularly excellent; it is art without artifice.  Even the big-hearted sweetness Anil Kapoor shows nurturing his passel of adorable orphans is calculated more to win the hearts of the audience than to support the story. 

But for all its wanton crowd-pleasing, Mr. India is still a Salim-Javed film, and so the masala can be expected to be served up with an edge and with a generous side helping of social message.  The former manifests in Salim-Javed's willingness to kill even some of their most loveable characters; the latter in Arun Verma's declaration, as the invisible force called Mr. India, of the power of the "aam hindustani," the ordinary Indian.  The film's central message that larger-than-life forces of bloodshed and terror - represented by the larger-than-life Mogambo - can be stopped by the invisible yet undeniable power of the compassionate Indian citizen who looks out for the interests of his compatriots.  Mogambo's critical error is to presume that Arun Verma loves his own life more than he loves his country; Arun's patriotism and his love for every citizen of India, is Mogambo's downfall.  That's a heavy message indeed, that the commitment of the aam hindustani can defeat the devil himself; Mr. India works by lightening the load, delivering it in an outlandish and fun package. 

Mr. India was my (long overdue) first Sridevi film, and for the record I absolutely can see what all the fuss is about.  The three segments mentioned above - the Charlie Chaplin scene, the fantastic comedy number "Hawa Hawai," and the sensual song "Kaate nahin kate yeh din yeh raat" together represent a very nice sampling of her abilities.  She is adorable and precise, thrillingly sexy and at the same time uproariously funny.  It is Sridevi's misfortune that she reigned during a particularly bleak period of Hindi films, but I am nevertheless eager for more of her. 

Koi ... mil gaya (2003)

कोई ... मिल गया

One of India's rare science fiction films, Koi ... mil gaya ("I've met ... someone") borrows elements from ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and mixes them with some more typical filmi conventions to create an innocuous and mostly forgettable drama. 

Rohit Mehra (Hrithik Roshan) is developmentally disabled; though a full-grown adult, he has the innocence and the intellect of a not-terribly-bright child.  He has a very sunny disposition, though, and a happy life, well cared for by his mother Sonia (Rekha) and loved by his friends, a group of young boys with whom he attends school.  When a young woman named Nisha (Preity Zinta) arrives in his town and strikes his fancy, Rohit's attempts to impress her raise the ire of the jealous bully Raj (Rajat Bedi).  Raj's taunting and harassment cast a cloud over Rohit's bright days.  One day, though, Rohit discovers and activates the apparatus his deceased father - a maverick scientist - had used to attempt to communicate with other worlds.  Rohit's transmission summons an expedition of aliens, one of whom befriends Rohit.  The alien's otherworldly power transforms Rohit from an awkward naif into a remarkable man of super-human strength and intelligence.  Rohit needs all that and more to put Raj in his place and protect his new alien friend from the destructive curiosity of the Earthly authorities who seek to capture and dissect him.   

Like its more action-oriented sequel Krrish, Koi ... mil gaya has something to say about the abuse of innocence at the hands of the hard, cruel world.  But the sentiment is an easy one, presented without the kind of sophistication that would challenge the audience to any kind of introspection.  There is nothing wrong with that - a film doesn't need to be hard-hitting and provocative to be entertaining.  And Koi ... mil gaya is endearing enough, though some would certainly find it unbearably cloying, and its unbeguiling tone makes it, at base, a film whose greatest appeal will be to children.  It's a fairy tale in which bullies are unrealistically mean, revenge is exacted in improbable ways, and fantasies are fulfilled without cost.

Even though the script doesn't give him much opportunity for nuance, Hrithik Roshan certainly earns high marks for the effort he puts into playing Rohit.  Hrithik's greatest strength as a performer is his outstanding physical skill; he is a superb dancer with masterful control of his body.  Here he uses that control to give Rohit an idiosyncratic physicality that is reminiscent of Dustin Hoffman's performance in Rain Main.  Rohit child-like mind is driven by emotion, and Hrithik translates that emotion into body language, throwing his shoulders back and his chin high in the air when Rohit is happy, slouching with despair when something doesn't go his way, wearing his constant puzzlement at the complex world of grownups.  It would be a treat to see Hrithik Roshan apply all this skill in a subtler vehicle. 

In Koi ... mil gaya, though, the important thing is that the meanies get what's coming to them and the cute little alien gets home, and there's never any doubt that these things will happen.  First, though, the audience must wait patiently through an improbable basketball match (why on Earth would a gang of 20-something bullies think that beating a group of tiny children at basketball was necessary to prove themselves reigning champs of cool?) and a few unnecessarily violent fight scenes.  Eventually, innocence and purity wins out, and justice is done - with a little magical help - with a few sweet and colorful songs along the way, like Haila haila.  You can't ask much more of a simple, derivative fairy tale.