Filmi Geek

Aamne saamne (1967)

आमने सामने

Dir. Suraj Prakash

I have said this so many times: I love the 1960s. I love thrillers. I love Shashi Kapoor. And I simply adore Sharmila Tagore, who ranks on the list of filmi women who melt my shorts. So when Amrita told me that Aamne saamne ("face to face, opposite") had all that plus Sharmila on waterskis, I knew I had to watch it. And when I sat down to it, my expectations were high. Despite that great potential, though, I have to admit that Aamne saamne comes up a little short. I watched it with Memsaab, and her review fairly thoroughly covers all the half-assed devices and wrong turns the movie takes. But what can I say - I enjoyed myself all the same. I am a sucker for all that pretty - and with "the ShaSha" (thanks, Amrita) rocking magnificent 60s style, there is loads of pretty to go around.

One terrible night, a woman is murdered. Her husband Deepak (Shashi Kapoor) is caught at the scene, and tried for her murder. Deepak is acquitted in court, but he inherits his wife's wealth, and for that reason is convicted in the court of public opinion. He heads to Bombay to start a new life with a new name, Gopal. Gopal whiles away the hours stalking his pretty young neighbor Sapna (Sharmila Tagore), who finds him rightly creepy and annoying at first, but in grand filmi tradition, warms to him in time. Sapna's brother Pran (Madan Puri) wants her to marry her eager suitor Prem (Prem Chopra), and they threaten to kill her if she doesn't comply. So Sapna and Gopal elope to Kashmir, where they frolic happily - and gorgeously - until shades of Gopal's mysterious past begin to cast looming shadows of suspicion.

It is undeniable that Aamne saamne does not have much to offer in the way of substance, and that the plot, such as it is, is loaded with problematic tropes.  For example: there is not a single man in this movie who does not, at some point, threaten to kill Sapna if she refuses to do as he commands.  This is bad enough coming from the film's nominal villains, Pran and Prem; it's downright appalling when even Gopal gets in on the coercive action. 

And Gopal's pursuit of Sapna is creeptastic, a particularly egregious example of filmi stalking.  Which is not to say he doesn't look lovely doing it:

 

Indeed, only Shashi Kapoor could find a way to be adorable and creepy at the same time, as he does during the stalkalicious song "Aaj kal humse roothe".

It's very easy to be blinded by the pretty here and forget that what's really going on is quite twisted and skeezy.  After all, Shashi himself looks good enough to eat - good enough to make me question my sexuality several times over.   And if that's not enough, he's not just perving on Sapna - he's perving on Sapna in a bubble bath.

Good lord, isn't she a delicious frosted cupcake?  Between this and Vidya Balan's bathtub romp in The Dirty Picture, well, I'll be in my bunk.  (If someone can think of a movie with Shabana Azmi in a bubble bath and complete the hat trick for me, I'll die a happy woman.) 

This creepy side of Shashi is rather enjoyable at first.  Typically, only in relatively early films of big stars does one get to enjoy them playing rather unsavory characters.  It's something I love about Amitabh Bachchan's Saudagar - admittedly a very different sort of film from Aamne saamne - in which he plays a truly reprehensible character that one could never imagine him playing just a few years later at the peak of his stardom. Likewise, I took some pleasure in watching Shashi look dark and sinister early in the movie.  But the truth is there is no payoff, no substance behind it.  Gopal is not dark, and not sinister - it's all a big fat red herring, contrivance for the sake of manufactured suspense that is neither particularly effective nor sustained by the story. 

Aamne saamne does have, like many movies of its era, a noisy comedy side plot.  This one features Rajendranath as a rather bumbling Bengali chap who appends himself to Gopal as a sort of valet.   I haven't seen a ton of Rajendranath but I loved him to death in Tere ghar ke samne and even his brief appearance in Chhoti si baat.  So I was ready and delighted for more when I saw his name in the credits.  His turn here, though, is largely a broad Bengali stereotype that falls somewhere between "I don't fully get it" and "I get it and it's just not that funny."

And yet despite all that meh - the lackluster plotting, the unfunny comedy, the creepy unromantic romance, the multiple instances of extortion in the name of love - I can't say I had a bad time watching Aamne saamne.  It has some truly outstanding songs - Shashi absolutely kills in his white stove-pipe pants in Rafi's superb "Nain milakar chain churana," a song which also features some epic pouting by Sharmila.

 

As if that's not enough, this song follows an interlude in which Prem Chopra attempts to dance the Mashed Potato.  Later in the film there is also a truly bizarre "African dance" featuring Laxmi Chayya and a bunch of blackfaced men.  The 60s just don't get any better than this, folks.

And then there is "Mere bechain dil ko chain tune diya," ostensibly the reason I watched this movie in the first place:

But Sharmila is just as tasty fully dressed as she is in that swimsuit. 

And as a pair, the ShaSha romp around Kashmir as well as anyone.

What can I say?  When the payoff is this kind of pretty, the movie doesn't have to be all that good to get the job done.   Aamne saamne may not have a ton going on in the substance department, but it earned itself what is likely the most pic-spammy post in Filmi Geek's history.  That's got to be worth something. 

Ek tha Tiger (2012)

Dir. Kabir Khan

It's well established here at Filmi Geek that I am not an action movie fan.  I do, however, enjoy seeing the occasional big-banner commercial release.  The Salman Khan action flick Ek tha Tiger ("there was a tiger") has been showing in a cinema hall in my area, and when I saw it receiving fairly favorable reactions, I decided to give it a shot.  I watched with low expectations and, I'm slightly ashamed to say, with my brain mostly disengaged - and I wasn't disappointed.  Indeed, Ek tha Tiger is a simple, sweet, and - dare I say it - entertaining movie.  It's not terribly ambitious, and because of that, succeeds at just about everything it sets out to do. 

Tiger (Salman Khan) is an experienced RAW agent who has spent a dozen years traveling around the world, mostly tracking down and killing traiterous double-agents.  Concerned that Tiger needs a break from that bone-breaking, soul-breaking life, his boss Shenoy (Girish Karnad) sends him to Dublin on a peaceful surveillance mission.  There, Tiger is supposed to collect intelligence on a professor, an Indian national, suspected of disclosing Indian military secrets to agents of Pakistan's ISI.  Tiger doesn't get far with the professor, but he is smitten with Zoya (Katrina Kaif), the young woman who looks after the professor's housekeeping.  To the frustration of Tiger's friend and local handler Gopi (Ranvir Shorey), Tiger finds himself falling in love with Zoya, and questioning the anonymous, transient life of international spying. But Zoya, of course, is also not all she appears.  And when the two of them follow their hearts and abscond together, it throws into disarray the international intelligence apparatus of two great nations - India and Pakistan - united only in their great enmity.

Enjoying Ek tha Tiger does require overlooking a handful of sins.  First, the sin of being an action movie - I know there are people out there who enjoy these for what they are, but I am not one of them.  The story simply hasn't been written that I would enjoy more for being told with extended fistfights, gunfights, and car chases than without them.  That said, the action sequences in Ek tha Tiger are remarkably satisfying.   They go on too long, and are the only times when the movie threatened to bore me, but they have redeeming qualities.  The first action sequence is visually gorgeous, shot in the sunbleached rooftops, winding alley stairways, and bustling souks of a Turkish village (though the locale is supposed to be northern Iraq) - the backdrop of this sequence is a dazzling visual adventure.  Averting my eyes from the kicking and shooting, I was rewarded with marvelous photography at every turn.

A later action sequence in the film traverses a similarly thrilling landscape, this time in Havana, Cuba.  This sequence catapults across rooftops, hurdles over painted ironwork, and whirls down winding apartment-complex stairways.  The backdrop of Havana is one that to me, as an American born in the early 1970s, is almost impossibly exotic.  I would not have guessed that after more than 200 Indian movies, the location that would give me the greatest frisson of the foreign would be right here in my own hemisphere, barely 1500 miles from my home.  And yet, when the action moved to Havana, my jaw dropped.  I am not sure I have ever seen a movie shot in Cuba.  The entire sequence was delightful, from the city streets to the lush beaches to the Cuban extras and bit players peppering the scenes.  (The one notable exception is perhaps the only very badly wrong note struck in the entire movie: Tiger and Zoya are mugged by a black Cuban assailant whose bulging eyes and ooga-booga delivery conjures up unpleasant racial stereotypes.)  And the Havana action sequence allows Zoya to flex her muscles a bit, both holding her own in the melee and doing some impressive climbing and jumping.  Even though physical strength should never be the only metric of a female character's quality, it's nevertheless a guilty pleasure for some primal part of my brain to see a woman kicking some ass, at least in a movie where ass-kicking is a principal mode of expression for the male lead.

The rest of the action sequences, though, are just action sequences - questionable physics, impossible stunts, innumerable anonymous "bad guys" with terrible aim getting picked off right and left by lucky shots from our mostly unscathed hero.  But that is the kind of movie Ek tha Tiger is.   I am not sure how people who enjoy action movies watch them - it can't be with too much of a critical eye, because no one on earth has the kind of superhuman endurance to keep up the pace of the fistfight on a barrelling tram or the barroom brawl after crashing through so many plate glass windows.  I can't legitimately criticize a movie designed as a sequence of such thrills for relying too heavily on them.  You either think this sort of thing is fun to watch, or you don't.

Ek tha Tiger's second sin is the sin of its casting.  Neither Salman Khan nor Katrina Kaif turns in a great performance here, but then, the script doesn't demand a whole lot in the way of acting from them.  Apart from the age-inappropriate pairing (which is a problem hardly unique to Ek tha Tiger or Salman Khan films genereally), the love story is appealing enough.  I admit to having an inexplicable soft spot for Salman Khan, and he somehow works for me as a muscle-bound tough with a gentle heart.  I am suitably charmed when Tiger appeals to the spirit of Zoya's deceased father, addressing himself to a twinkling star she has pointed out in the night sky.  And in the full blossom of the romance, it doesn't even feel like a terrible stretch that Tiger might soothe his soul in his Cuban retirement by learning to paint, as he does in a sweet sequence during the song "Laapata."

Katrina Kaif, too, is adequate to the task she is handed.  Astonishingly, this film marks my first Katrina Kaif experience (discounting the Slice ad, shot in Orchha, where she performs oral sex on a mango.)  My expectations, based upon years of reading harsh critiques of everything from her acting to her dancing to her diction, were very low. But - if she can forgive me for damning with faint praise - she just isn't that bad in this movie.  Her second-language Hindi (only marginally better than my own) is fully explained by her backstory, and she manages to convey enough sadness on her face as Zoya struggles with her divided loyalties. 

I have no doubt that Ek tha Tiger could have been a better, more substantial movie with a female lead who brings a bit more maturity and gravitas, someone with the air of being as experienced and world-weary an agent as Tiger is supposed to be.  But one of the reasons that Ek tha Tiger works is that it doesn't try to do too much. It's a very simple story that doesn't ask a lot of its actors - or of its audience.   And this, at bottom, is why I enjoyed Ek tha Tiger more than the superficially similar Agent Vinod.  That movie had so many disparate elements that the result was confusing, incoherent, and soulless.  MacGuffins, secret codes, and confusing double-crosses built false and substanceless intrigue, while obscuring any humanity in the characters - Saif Ali Khan and Kareeena Kapoor's characters cross paths repeatedly but don't really develop a relationship.  In Ek tha Tiger, by contrast, the plot is kept simple and free of distractions.  In short, Ek tha Tiger doesn't try to do to much, and because of that, reaches reasonably satisfying results.

Finally a word for Ek tha Tiger's clever soundtrack, which careens all over the world  just as the action does, fusing international sounds with the staple beats of modern desi blockbusters.  The song set in Dublin incorporates an Irish reel; "Laapata," set in Cuba, adds a hot salsa beat; darbuka, Arabic musical modes on bowed strings, and some Arabic lyrics color the superb "Mashallah," the song set in the Iraqi souk (and sadly relegated to the closing credits).  I adore this kind of musical syncretism, and it highlights what can be added to even a simple movie by putting just a little bit of thought into how the songs mesh with what's happening on the screen.

 

Kab? Kyoon? Aur kahan? (1970)

कब? क्यों? और कहाँ?

Dir. Arjun Hingorani

I like thrillers, and Hindi thrillers of the 60s and 70s can be especially delicious.  The license to take filmi liberties that stretch the edges of plausibility, combined with the nifty mod style of that era, can, in the hands of someone like Vijay Anand, yield results that effervesce and sizzle.  Unfortunately, Arjun Hingorani's Kab? Kyoon? Aur kahan? ("Who? Why? And where?") does not measure up to that sparkling standard.  Dharmendra, a few cute songs (including one with Helen), and a fun incarnation of villainous Pran are just not enough to save this otherwise bland, forgettable, unsuspenseful movie.

Asha (Babita) is thrown together with C.I.D. inspector Anand (Dharmendra) when the two are improbably booked into the same cabin on a sea voyage.  After Anand proves his worthiness by protecting Babita in a ballroom brawl, Anand and Asha fall in love.  Returning home after the journey, Asha discovers that her father, a wealthy philanthropist, has died in an apparent car accident.  But there is something fishy about the accident, and Anand is assigned to investigate it.  Asha's creepy step-uncle Daljeet (Pran) has designs on both her fortune and her attractive friend Lata (Ashoo).  Asha discovers Daljeet apparently forcing himself on Lata, and shoots him dead in the ensuing melee.  Asha and Lata dispose of the body.  But Asha's conscience pricks at her, tormenting her with terrifying ghostly apparitions of Daljeet. And, Asha conceals her terrible truth from Anand, driving a wedge between them. 

The most charitable description of Kab? Kyoon? Aur kahan? is that it is a handful of somewhat entertaining moments, strung loosely together long stretches of weakly plotted and poorly paced filler that more or less passes for story and romance.   In a movie like this, the difference between entertaining timepass and boring time-waste can be made by the strength or weakness of the stars.  Dharmendra is always an asset; here, while he is not at his most delightful, it's likewise not his most phoned-in performance ever, and he's serviceably appealing.  Babita, however, ought to have been named "Blahbita" - she brings absolutely nothing to the party - though she does give lots of good "nahin face:" 

So desperate is the beleaguered audience to find anything of interest about Babita, that we resort to examining the vicissitudes of her hairstyle - Beth remarks on it in her comments on this film, and Memsaab, with whom I watched the movie, couldn't stop herself from analyzing in every scene whether we were seeing Babita's real hairline or a wig. Not to say that such questions aren't entertaining - but they don't particularly sustain.

The movie also suffers from a touch of expositionitis in its climax - it makes for a dreary thriller when a character explains the mystery verbally, as Anand does at the end of Kab? Kyoon? aur Kahan?  Whatever surprises there may be in the raveling of the threads is undermined by presenting them this way, instead of letting the audience see how it all happened.  It's not the worst sin a thriller can commit, if the other elements are engaging, but in a movie already teetering on the brink of utter forgettability, this device is the coup de grace.

There are, however, a few redeeming features.  Top among these is the return of Daljeet in the film's climax, where he pivots from prone to standing in the horrific apparition of Zombie Pran and creepily peels bugged-out false eyeballs out of his orbital sockets.  It's one of the strangest and best instances of Pran villainy I've ever had the pleasure to see. 

(To see Zombie Pran in action, have a look at this video, starting around the 46-minute mark.)  The delight that is Zombie Pran follows a series of "Telltale Heart"-esque scares to Asha that amount to this thriller's only suspenseful element.  There is also a superb underwater fight sequence that must have been a real technical challenge to shoot - it lasts much longer than the actors (Pran and Babita) could possibly have stayed underwater, so it must have required many dives and many takes.  Beth captured a screenshot of this (to highlight the stylish swimsuit) which I shamelessly steal here:

The movie also includes a Helen song, "Yeh aankhein jhuki jhuki si," which while not the best use of Helen in a thriller (see the aforementioned Vijay Anand flicks for much better) is still far superior to no Helen at all.  It's quite a good song, featuring the terrifically large and elaborate stage set that one expects of Helen songs of this era.  

And finally, Kab? Kyoon? aur Kahan? is not without its own sense of supermod visual style, starting from the very beginning, with the lushly-decorated midcentury modern stateroom that Asha and Anand share on the cruise ship.  When I mentioned that I was finding the movie rather unremarkable, Beth replied, "OMG BUT THE STYLE!"  At the moment I was not feeling particularly wowed by the style, but in hindsight it is, in fact, one of the few aspects that make Kab? Kyoon? aur Kahan? worth the time, especially when watched with a similarly-inclined friend.  Beth's review has more on the visuals. 

 

 

Sachaa jhutha (1970)

सच्चा झूठा

Dir. Manmohan Desai

My favorite Manmohan Desai movies, like Amar Akbar Anthony and Parvarish, cloak grand allegorical themes in glorious wackadoodle masala trappings.  Continuing the unorthodox Rajesh Khanna retrospective that I began with Haathi mere saathi, I went into Desai's Sachaa jhutha ("truth and lies") hoping for more of the same.  What I got doesn't quite measure up in substance - but it is nevertheless a satisfying masala meal.

Bhola (Rajesh Khanna) is a simple village guy, a musician who wants nothing more than to see his beloved sister Belu (Kumari Naaz) happily married.  Suitors demand a hefty dowry, though, because Belu is lame, dependent upon crutches for mobility.  So Bhola heads to Mumbai in hopes of making enough money to get Belu settled.  Once there, Bhola is mistaken for an eccentric millionaire, Ranjit (also Rajesh Khanna), for whom he happens to be a dead ringer.  Ranjit happens to moonlight as a serial jewel thief, and he sees an opportunity - he hires Bhola to impersonate him, duping the innocent fellow with a sob story about his mother, so that he can pull off big heists with Bhola supplying his alibi.  Meanwhile, police inspector Pradhan (Vinod Khanna) suspects Ranjit for the larcenies, and sets his colleague Leela (Mumtaz) to go undercover and get close to Ranjit.  But it's Bhola, not Ranjit, that Leela gets to know - and naturally, sparks fly.

Where Haathi mere saathi was all about the elephants, Sachaa jhutha is mostly about Rajesh Khanna and his double role.  And I have to get this out of the way:  I still don't much like Rajesh Khanna.  If I have to watch him, though, Sachaa jhutha is the best way I can think of to do it.  As Ranjit, Khanna's role demands that he be smarmy and repulsive - so my usual response to him suits quite nicely.  And the double role, requiring him to distinguish Bhola from Ranjit, gives him more opportunity for range, for projecting a state other than droopy, froggy, and supercilious.  Bhola is, on the whole, more wide-eyed, ingenuous, and energetic than most Rajesh Khanna characters.  Which is not to say Bhola is entirely consistent - he may be a bit too smooth in his wooing of Leela than his character, otherwise a guileless bumpkin, really should be.  But these are minor critiques of a pair of performances that are fun and more than adequately appealing even to this decided non-fan.

As to the film as a whole, one does have certain expectations of Manmohan Desai masala, and in that I can't fairly say that Sachaa jhutha disappoints.  The movie may lack the grand philosophical scope of some of Desai's more expansive films, but it nevertheless does have - as the title promises - a minor point to make about the triumph of truth and guilelessness over deceite and subterfuge.  The two adorable and hilarious sequences in which love is confessed and blossoms under the influence of a truth serum (really!) underscore this point.

And substance aside, Sachaa jhutha is crammed full of juicy masala morsels.  There are unexplained, inexplicable dopplegangers and ensuing mistaken identities; a hilariously stylish costume party (see this song); a villain's teched-up, tricked-out underground lair.  There is a cute gender-reversed Pygmalion sequence, reminiscent of one in Jab jab phool khile, in which Ranjit's moll Ruby (Faryal) teaches Bhola to behave like a gentleman.  And the climax relies on the mass administration of a stupefaction drug - in a movie that already contains a truth serum.  (Soul-baring and stupefaction? That sounds like the effect certain women have on me...) 

Desai's masala Bombay is a city of magnified coincidence, one in which the same half-dozen people run into one another again and again - or nearly miss doing so, as the story demands.  And that doesn't even reach the village side of the story, which features Belu's smart and loyal dog, as well as Belu and Bhola's cruel, wretched stepmother (Praveen Paul) who gets her just deserts in a magnificent filmi flood.  She goes out in grand, symbolically-charged Desai style, with nothing left as she sinks beneath the surge but a few floating Rupee notes, notes she earlier snatched from Belu's hand and stuffed into her greedy choli. 

Yet with all that going on, Sachaa jhutha is surprisingly taut for 150 minutes of masala.  Rounding out the fun is a terrific appearance by a young, dashing Vinod Khanna as the serious Inspector Pradhan.  This is first class Action Vinod stuff - he provides most of the movie's dishum-dishum, while putting nary a crease in his expensively-tailored suits.  And then there is the delectable Mumtaz, adorable as a cupcake.  She, of course, is at her best in the movie's many fabulous songs.  From her groovy moves in "Pyar karle pyar" to her superfab outfit in "O tum jo kehdo," Mumtaz makes sure there is no shortage of eye-candy. But the hottest song of all is "Yunhi tum mujhse baat karti ho," in which, under the influence of the truth serum, Bhola and Leela confess their love on the deck of a boat in the harbor.

 

Sachaa jhutha is simply great fun to watch, as any masala movie should be.  And, as many good movies do, it just gets better and better in memory - writing this review has made me itch to return to it and revisit the all grooviest, funniest, wackiest, sexiest scenes.  Thanks to Memsaab (from whom I cribbed the screen-grab at the top of this post) I may do just that ...