Filmi Geek

Sadma (1983)

सदमा

Dir. Balu Mahendra

When I was in college, I participated in a group-authored comic-fantasy story.  We would gather in the dorm lounge and scribble in our large communal notebook, sometimes collaborating, sometimes each of us writing a chapter on her own.  Once, one of the authors wanted to change the sex of her character from male to female. To make this happen, she caused his horse to gallop through a "Plot Device" - that is what she called it in the story, a cloud of mist into which Lord Brandon rode, and from which Lady Brendan emerged.

Balu Mahendra's Sadma ("blow, shock, trauma") relies on an equally expedient plot device, a bit of filmi-medicine sleight of hand that turns Nehalata (Sridevi) from a vibrant young woman into a mental seven-year-old trapped in a grown-up's body. A similar device repairs her mind at the film's end, with a convenient amnesia for the time she spent mentally as a child.  But if these absurd expediences are forgiven, if one gives oneself over to the conceit and goes with it, the reward is a touching, subtle, and moving story about love, and bonding, and the nature of nurture.

I went into Sadma with unfairly low expectations.  Beth had seen the Tamil original, Moondram pirai, and had some serious problems with it. Meanwhile, I was fettered by the assumption that even Sridevi's best movies are dire and unrelatable to non-Indians like myself; my experience with Lamhe, another movie so often cited as a highlight of Sridevi's career, had confirmed this feeling. As I began watching the movie, I tweeted:

I was quite wrong; Sadma is not downhill from there.  It is often disturbing and hard to watch; the ending is magnificently brutal.  But it is marked by splendid performances and a surprisingly delicate touch.  I have seen a few people comment that Kamal Haasan's character, Somu, is creepy and inappropriate in his care for the childlike Nehalata.  But I perceive no creepiness in Somu at all.  To the contrary, he is consistently shown to be a good-hearted, straight-laced fellow - he eschews alcohol, is inexperienced with sex, and refuses the aggressive advances of his boss's wife Soni (Silk Smitha).  His concern and caring for the fragile, damaged Nehalata is evident from the moment he encounters her in the brothel she was sold to after being kidnapped by some unnamed evildoer.  And throughout the film, Somu's love is patently paternal, never lewd or inappropriate.  In just one sequence does Somu view Nehalata as a lover, and this comes in a dream, which he seems eager to shake off on awakening.  The fantasy seems to make Somu as uncomfortable as it makes the viewer.

The sweetness of the relationship between Somu and Nehalata is epitomized the adorable song "Ek dafa ek jungal tha," in which Somu acts out the panchatantra fable of the jackal who fell into a vat of blue dye and briefly fooled the rest of the jungle's animals into treating him as a god.

 

I am not crazy about the filmi mode of presenting mental illness (or in this case, traumatic brain injury) in the form of arrested development, even though I have seen it used in some very good films.  Diya Mirza plays such a character in  Tehzeeb, where the device is a bit of a weakness and distraction in an otherwise excellent movie. In the much older Bahurani, Guru Dutt's rendering of the same deficit is touching, and works as well as it does partly because of its allegorical value.  Here in Sadma, it is more contrivance than symbolism; it does not seem to carry any particular emblematic meaning, but rather provides a canvas on which the movie's touching relationship is painted.  Sadma is widely viewed as one of the best performances of Sridevi's career, perhaps because of the challenge of portraying the unrealistic deficit in a believable way.  Sridevi meets that challenge more than adequately; even in her more typical roles she often has a woman-child quality to her performance, and Nehalata is the quintessence, the distillation of such characters to pure crystalline form.  Sridevi's performance is remarkably consistent and unselfconscious, free from winks at the audience or inappropriate moments of preternaturally adult behavior.  The performance works, and is satisfying, sympathetic, and moving, despite the inherent weakness of the device itself. 

Woven through Sadma are several coarse threads that contrast with the fine tenderness of the relationship between Somu and Nehalata.  The sad, desperate Soni flails about for escape from her decidedly untender marriage to Somu's employer.  Her breathless, brazen attempts to seduce Somu are distressing to watch.  And Soni's erotic dream about him, which from a pure marketing point of view is merely an excuse for a sexy Silk Smitha item number, nevertheless highlights the extreme disconnect between her desires and the plodding reality of her life. 

 

Soni's pathetic overwrought worldliness casts Nehalata's innocence in sharp relief.  Contrasting along a different axis is the lecherous Balua (Gulshan Grover), who exploits Nehalata's childlike mind to take advantage of her adultlike body.  There is contrast, too, between Somu's earnest goodness and the boozy appetites of his friend Paintal, who drags Somu to the brothel where he first encounters Nehalata and resolves to rescue her.  The roughness of these stories makes the warmth and sympathy between Nehalata and Somu that much more gentle in contrast; Somu's home becomes a haven in which gentle fables can be told and puppies played with in peace, while the harshness of the world remains outside.  These tendernesses - especially the tenderness with which Kamal Haasan renders Somu - makes the unutterable cruelty that the film does to Somu in its climax all the more vicious a sucker punch.  Haasan's performance in the film's final minutes is truly memorable, rendered in pure emotion and without background score apart from the driving beat of the rain and the engine of the train taking Nehalata away from Somu forever.

 

 

I Can't Think Straight (2008)

Dir. Shamim Sarif

I have to admit up front that the desi content of this movie is so minimal that it doesn't strictly belong on Filmi Geek.  But what the heck, I'll write about it anyhow.  I crave stories about love between women, and I crave stories in which women in patriarchal cultures (including my own culture, I must point out) find the value of asserting autonomous control over their own sexuality.  Shamim Sarif's I Can't Think Straight at least attempts to offer both.  And with my interest in the rich, diverse cultures of both the Middle East and India, this romance between a Jordanian aristocrat (Lisa Ray) and a London daughter of middle-class Indian immigrants (Sheetal Sheth) should have hit all my sweet spots.  Instead, it's a warty, often cringe-worthy production.  But I can't bring myself to shred it mercilessly.  I Can't Think Straight is a movie whose ham-fisted unsubtlety is punctuated by occasional moments of smart and sexy.  It's a movie, in short, that is a lot like me. 

To its credit, I Can't Think Straight has some sweetness to it and strikes a few good targets.   The relationship between Tala (Ray) and Leyla (Sheth) starts off contrived but becomes more believable as the film progresses.  Early on Tala's brash confidence overwhelms the tentative Leyla.  But it becomes clear that Tala's numerous broken engagements are not the result of strong-headed wilfulness - to the contrary, they are the detritus of her confusion, uncertain attempts to be what her overbearing mother wants her to be.  In the meantime, Leyla's arc takes the opposite trajectory - as she comes into her own as a writer and as a lesbian, her uncertainty transforms into absolute strength and confidence.  "You have to admire her guts," says a mutual friend of the two women (Rez Kempton), and he's quite right.

And so the two women don't just feel attraction to one another, but they do deeply change one other.  Tala challenges Leyla's  already shaky adherence to her Muslim faith.  In return, Leyla inspires Tala to stand up to the culture that Tala feels limits her choices so severely.  When Tala insists that she cannot pursue her love for Leyla because Jordanian high society is closed-minded and conservative, Leyla points out that "it will stay that way, as long as no one is willing to challenge it." 

These are the movie's strengths.  Unfortunately this simply moving story is embedded in a distracting matrix of cliché, stereotype, caricature, and unsubtlely that requires an entire tray of freshly-baked eyerolls to get through.  Tala's mother Reema (Antonia Frering) is a cartoon witch of a Middle-Eastern socialite, making her daughters miserable with constant harping on their weight and fashion choices, and barking orders at staff who despise her.  ("Where is my husband?  And where is my coffee?")  Leyla's mother (Siddiqua Akhtar) is even worse, hitting every stereotype of the provincial, fresh-off-the-boat NRI housewife.  Her performance is dreadful, full of mealy smiles and nahin-faces that would be better suited to a saas-bahu serial than to a movie that appears to want to be understated.  This is the only remotely desi content in the film, and it's just cringe-inducing.

The early stages of Tala and Leyla's relationship are particularly fraught with facepalm moments of dreadful writing.  Leyla seems perpetually to attract bits of lint that Tala is compelled to pluck off of her, leading one to wonder why Sarif could not come up with other excuses for the two women to touch.  A tennis match provides an especially corny and heavy-handed metaphor for their growing attraction, complete with a breathlessly panted "That was amazing!" at its conclusion.  Tennis is not effete enough to convey Tala's aristocratic milieu, so she also plays a polo match, leading to one of the film's most nauseating exchanges:

Leyla (practically batting her eyelashes): I was worried you were going to fall, leaning across the horse like that!

Tala (with forced nonchalance): I like to take chances.

Filmi Geek:  Puke.  

Moments like this are bad enough, and the unsubtlety just gets thicker and thicker.  At its nadir, Leyla's sympathetic and proactive sister Yasmin (Amber Rose Revah) tries to figure out what's troubling Leyla, before the latter has come out even to herself.  The astute Yasmin notices a stack of books on Leyla's dresser - Jeanette Winterson, Sarah Waters, even Martina Navratilova's autobiography - and a k.d. lang CD nearby.  Really, Sarif?  Really?   And finally, the entire movie may be one extended setup for this chestnut of a punchline uttered by a gossipy Middle Eastern lady in its denouement:  "She's what? But some of my best friends are Lebanese!" 

The weak writing - both for the caricatured parents and the lovers themselves - hog-ties all the actors into stiff, formulaic performances. In contrast to all this woodenness, the movie's sex scenes are outstanding - fluid, passionate, and downright hot.  It seems that when Sarif cuts her actors loose and lets them just be and feel, they can do a lot more than when constrained by the fetters of Sarif's unnatural scripting.

The movie's 80-minute running time, while merciful, also forces it to short-change anything more than superficial examination of how either woman's cultural and religious heritage affects their prospect for life together.  Tala asserts that her reluctance to lead the "difficult" life in a lesbian relationship is due to the strictures of Jordanian society, but her family is so outrageously wealthy and her life so apparently divorced from Jordanian society that her reasoning is suspect.  Even a white American child of such a socially prominent and controlling mother would have a hard time rebelling against parental expectations; there is nothing especially Middle Eastern about this.  Meanwhile, Leyla's struggle against her culture is painted in the color of stereotype and seems to resolve itself the moment she comes out to herself and her family.  If the dialogue weren't so painful, it would be nice to have 40 minutes more of it, to give some more depth to aspects of these characters' lives that could have been more particularly Arabic and desi.      

Still, I wouldn't devote so many words to complaining about the weaknesses of a movie that doesn't also show a lot of potential to be better.  For all those stiffly executed, lazily written scenes, I Can't Think Straight offers moments of delicate thoughtfulness and sympathy for its characters.  These (plus the terrific sex scenes, which are worth watching again, for research purposes of course) make it worth cringing through the worst parts, if stories about love between women are as close to your heart as they are to mine.   

Chor sipahee (1977)

चोर सिपाही

Dir. Prayag Rai

When I read about how Hindi movies were made in the 1970s, I can't help but be impressed by the alacrity with which the Bombay studios churned out product. Actors shuttling between three shootings a day and dubbing sessions in the evening; dialogue writers cranking out lines on set; stories resketched on the fly as actors' schedules conflicted or productions ran out of money - it's miraculous that movies of any quality were produced at all. Many a masala movie with an exciting cast and a promising first hour falls casualty to the risks of that kind of improvisational, shoestring filmmaking. The "curse of the second half" bumps more such movies than I can count right off the rails.

Chor sipahee ("thief and officer") is a textbook case of this, stylish fun masala with a lot going for it before it disintegrates into incoherence. You can feel the production becoming more rushed and careless as the film wears on. Twists in the story become more ad hoc and less clearly rendered; characters recede into the background or disappear altogether. And yet there is enough of both style and substance to redeem these sins of sloppy production, yielding sufficient reward for the masala connoisseur.

On the side of substance, Chor sipahee - like all the best masala films - hangs its wacky trappings on a profound social theme. In this case, the theme is the nature of criminality and redemption, and whether punishment or rehabilitation is the better philosophy for stopping and deterring criminal behavior. Shankar (Shashi Kapoor), a maverick but effective police inspector, believes so firmly in the principle of rehabilitation that he actually undermines attempts to punish criminals. When he encounters Raja (Vinod Khanna), an unrepentant gang leader, Shankar sees the ultimate opportunity to put his views into practice, and vows to reform Raja. Shankar is willing to go to great lengths to secure Raja's turnaround - he joins Raja's gang, renounces family ties, and apparently becomes a vicious evildoer himself. This is a subterfuge intended to show Raja the error of his ways.

Naturally, the plan is effective, and by out-badding the bad guys (including Ranjit as a gang leader who is either an Arab or peculiarly Arabophilic), Shankar convinces Raja that a life of crime is no life worth living. I would be lying if I said I understood the logic here, either of Shankar or of the script. For an alternate view, though, do see the excellent exegesis by Post-Punk Cinema Club, which finds remarkable depth and coherence in what seems to me slapdash filmmaking at its most joyously ad hoc.

On the side of style, Chor sipahee is 70s masala at its full-bore best.  From Vinod Khanna's superb high-heeled boots, to Shashi Kapoor's badass leather jacket (he is decked throughout in fantastic costumes designed by his wife, Jennifer Kendall), there's no shortage of awesome to feast your eyes on.  It's almost  a waste to write a review of a movie such as this when I don't have a DVD to take screencaptures from.  Fortunately Post-Punk and Memsaab are both on the case; see their posts for the full complement of visual goodness. 

No masala movie worth its salt is complete without an outlandishly-costumed qawwali, and Chor sipahee delivers with "Duniya hai aati jaati," in which Shashi Kapoor and Vinod Khanna, in identical qawwal outfits, repeatedly exchange places via cleverly executed backflips. This song, only about 45 minutes into the movie, also marks the last interesting thing my beloved Shabana Azmi gets to do in it. 

 

As often happens in her masala turns, Shabana Azmi is woefully underused in Chor sipahee.  She has a terrific scene very early in the movie, in which she outwits Raja while he tries to rob her father's safe.  (At this point in the film it must be admitted that Raja doesn't seem terribly smart for a successful recidivist crook.)  Parveen Babi gets a bit more substance to her role, as Raja's righteous sister Bharti.  In a delightful bit of masala melodrama, Bharti, disgusted by Raja's criminal pursuits, refuses his angry demand that she demonstrate her love by tying a rakhi on his wrist.  Durga Khote gets a marvelously filmi turn as well,as Raja and Bharti's mother.  In one terrific scene, she demonstrates her loving forgiveness for Raja by fixing him a bowl of kheer, and he demonstrates his unrepentant viciousness by refusing to eat it.  Fortunately for everyone, Shankar turns up and eats the sweet with relish, to mother's wide-eyed delight.

On reflection, especially after reading the other reviews I've mentioned, I feel I should have found Chor sipahee more satisfying than I did.   As Memsaab enumerates, it hits all the required masala elements and then some.  70s masala is a little bit like pizza - even when it's mediocre, it's still pretty good while it's happening.  Chor sipahee is a good time, even if there's not much to remember the next day.  And Shashi Kapoor does look mighty groovy when he dons appropriate threads for joining a smuggling ring:

(Thanks to Memsaab for the shamelessly purloined screencaptures.)

Kismet (1943)

क़िस्मत

Dir. Gyan Mukherjee

Gyan Mukherjee's taut, bold drama Kismet ("fate") was a mega-hit in its time, and held the crown of the longest-running movie for more than three decades before being deposed by Sholay.  Even 70 years later, it's not hard to see why.  Kismet is fascinating, influential, and even subversive.  Ashok Kumar delivers an engaging performance as a morally ambiguous character.  The songs are stirring - and, in one case, gutsy.  And the film introduces Hindi-movie audiences to a number of devices and themes that resonate through the movies for decades to come.

Shekhar (Ashok Kumar) is an unrepentant thief.  Released from his third stint in prison, he banters with the inspector (Shah Nawaz) that he'll be back soon enough, and heads right back to his pickpocketing life on the streets of Bombay.   Soon Shekhar meets a sad theatrical performer named Rani (Mumtaz Shanti).  Rani, a former lead dancer, suffers from a leg injury that relegates her to the side of the stage, as a backup singer.   Shekhar is moved by Rani and her troubles, and gives her an extravagant necklace that he steals from the wife of the theater owner, Indrajit (Mubarak).  When this thievery is discovered, Rani feels betrayed by the man she thought was an angel.  But Shekhar is determined to care for her - he wants to steal enough to pay for a surgery that will restore Rani to her former glory as a dancer.  Shekhar escapes from custody, intending to turn himself in after carrying off one last heist for Rani's sake. 

Roshmila Bhattacharya's article on Kismet (captured and linked by Memsaaab) notes that Shekhar is not a hero but an anti-hero.   A nearly remorseless criminal, Shekhar is nevertheless a charming gentleman with a heart readily moved by the suffering of others.  Shekhar's sympathy for the sad plight of Rani's father (PF Pithawala), an alcoholic former music-master who holds himself responsible for Rani's injury, leads him to his initial acts of kindness.  And Shekhar's love for Rani drives him both to donate the proceeds of his thievery and, eventually, to go straight. There are some genuinely touching scenes as Shekhar, the criminals he associates with, and even the police inspector realize that love for a woman has inspired him to mend his ways where even multiple imprisonments could not.  Bhattacharya credits the fresh, bold, subversiveness of this character with the immense and unexpected popularity of the movie.

Much of what is moving about Shekhar emerges from the gentleness of Ashok Kumar's performance.  Writing on Indian films tends to indelibly attach certain labels to certain actors; Ashok Kumar is often heralded as a "natural" actor, but nowhere more than in Kismet is the aptness of this label apparent.   Kumar has crept up of late to become one of my favorite actors.  Here, in the rising arc of his stardom, he is no less fascinating.  His performance in Kismet has less gravitas than he shows later in his life; the performance is more tentative, and perhaps more deserving of the tag of "natural" acting.  Despite the drama inherent to his profession and the melodrama that swirls around him, Shekhar moves through the story like an ordinary man.  His young face is fresh, open, and honest - Kumar emotes, but does not play to the back of the house, does not amplify emotions in the classic melodramatic style.

The naturalness of Ashok Kumar's performance is even starker in contrast to Mumtaz Shanti, who as Rani gives a true midcentury melodramatic turn.  Her performance is classic soft-focus tragic acting, gazing moist-eyed at an imaginary horizon while delivering words of hopelessness in slow, gauzy, breathy tones. This is not a style I normally find effective; it tends to feel anemic and mealy, and here it renders Mumtaz Shanti the weak link in an otherwise superb movie.  But it is a matter of style; it is certainly of its time and place, and in the context it is not too terribly distracting.  And on the rare occasions when she smiles, as in the movie's gorgeous lullaby "Dheere dheere aa re badal," Mumtaz Shanti is radiant.

Shekhar's heroic criminality is not the only boldly subversive element of Kismet.  Rani's sister Leela (Chandraprabha) becomes pregnant by her lover Mohan (Kanu Roy), the son of Indrajit, who opposes their marriage because of Leela's poverty; he cruelly informs Rani that he can get a 10,000 rupee dowry from another girl.  Not only is Leela not punished for this transgression, but her pure heart earns her a happy ending with Mohan.   (It is both moving and fascinating that in confessing her pregnancy to Mohan, Leela cannot bring herself to say she is going to be a mother; instead, she scratches the word "maa" into a wall with her fingernail.) 

Even more subversive is the magnificent patriotic song, "Door hato aye duniyawalo, Hindustan hamaara hai."  Bhattacharya's article claims this aggressively nationalistic and anti-colonial song got past British censors because the only nations it identifies by name are Germany and Japan, Britain's enemies in the war which was then raging around the globe.  This seems too facile to me; that one line doesn't erase the otherwise obvious pro-independence message of the song (whose set features an enormous map of pre-Partition India).  Perhaps the censors were somewhat sympathetic to the cause of independence; or, perhaps they really were too complacently paternalistic to see the song as a rabble-rousing threat. 

 

Finally, Bhattacharya credits Kismet with introducing Hindi cinema to a number of tropes and themes that resonated so with Indian audiences as to become a staple of Manmohan Desai and other filmmakers throughout the years.   Principal among these is the backstory of Indrajit's wayward son, Madan (Mehmood in his first role!), who disappears as a young boy and is reunited with his family at the movie's end, identified through such devices as a tattoo and a locket, which are now masala clichés.  (No points to the seasoned filmi fan for guessing which character Madan grows up to be.)  It may be correct that Kismet marks the first time such a story was presented in an Indian movie.  But given the strong cultural resonance and enduring popularity of such concepts, it's difficult to believe that they don't have their origins in older stories that are woven into the tapestry of India's many cultures.  Isn't Karna of the Mahabharata raised apart from his brothers, only to learn of his true parentage as an adult? 

Even if it does draw on earlier sources, though, Kismet clearly blazed a path that thrilled audiences and that filmmakers returned to for decades to come.  Shekhar is a model for numerous filmi incarnations of the rogue with a heart of gold (surely also an ancient archetype).  For instance, a scene in which he pleads with the inspector to release him - asking for 48 hours to save Rani with a promise to turn himself in -  is nearly quoted in Tezaab with Anil Kapoor.  There must be countless other references over the past 70 years, direct and indirect, to this fascinating and influential  movie. 

For information on how to watch Kismet with subtitles, see Memsaab's post about the movie. 

 

Naya daur (1957)

नया दौर

Dir. B.R. Chopra

"Dead machinery must not be pitted against the millions of living machines represented by the villagers scattered in the seven hundred thousand villages of India." So wrote Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, as a title card at the opening of Naya daur ("new era") declares. And so begins a movie that indeed pits milling machine against woodworker, bus against tonga, unthinking mechanized progress for its own sake against the value of human teamwork. It is in no way a fair fight. In the real world, obsolescence of traditional ways of life may be an inexorable consequence of modernization. In the movies, though, the rugged salt of the earth always get their romantic, improbable victories over the sneering, cravat-wearing forces that would cast them aside in the name of greed. And such victories are always satisfying.

Shankar (Dilip Kumar) and Kisna (Ajit) are the best of friends, village boys who grew up together. Shankar makes his living as a tonga driver. Kisna chops lumber for the local mill owner (Nazir Hussain), who treats his workers with tremendous compassion, and reiterates his belief that his money and the workers' labor are in symbiosis, neither superior in value to the other. The mill owner leaves for a pilgrimage, though, and his son Kundan (Jeevan), who takes over operations, doesn't see things the same way - he brings in machines and fires all the woodworkers. Meanwhile, the bond of friendship between Shankar and Kisna is threatened when both fall in love with Rajni (Vijayantimala). Believing that Shankar has tricked him out of his chance with Rajni, Kisna allies with Kundan, who hires a bus to put the tongewale out of business. When the tongewale confont him, Kundan challenges them to a race. If your tonga can beat my bus to the temple, he says, I'll send the bus away and you can have your business back. Shankar accepts the challenge. But first he will have to get all the villagers working together to build a shortcut road for his tonga to outpace the bus. And the fire of Kisna's rage burns brightly enough to threaten not just this ambitious public works project, but Shankar's very life.

My friend @maxqnz described Naya daur as "the Lagaan of its time."  The comparison is not merely apt - Lagaan clearly owes a great debt to Naya daur, and even quotes from it.  For instance, in one scene, a boy asks Kisna to carve a stick and ball for him out of a hunk of lumber.  The scene in which Shankar accepts Kundan's challenge to the race - the incredulity of the other tongewale, and Shankar's speech about the value of taking some action over taking no action, however long the odds - also seems echoed in Lagaan.   Both movies feature the unlikely triumph of a ragtag bunch of villagers against sinister outside forces that senselessly oppress them.  In both movies, the livelihood of the village is at stake.  In both movies, a man is driven by unrequited love to betray the villagers and serve as a double-agent for the enemy, and is later moved to redemption by the magnanimity of the hero.  And in both movies, the heroine does little beyond smile and pout charmingly as the hero brings the villagers together for their victory against the odds. 

So the similarities between Lagaan and Naya daur are much more than superficial.  Lagaan is one of my all-time favorite movies, and as its antecedent, Naya daur matches up very well as an entertaining and inspiring fable about unity and courage.  I have never been a great Dilip Kumar fan - his acting style is often smug and mumbly, and he makes me think too much of Shah Rukh Khan to be of much appeal.  Here, though, he is relatively natural and charming enough.  Shankar's friendship with Kisna is delightfully portrayed, and one's heart breaks for Kisna when a misunderstanding drives them apart.  Indeed, Ajit as Kisna nearly steals the show from Dilip Kumar - he is startlingly handsome, and his expressive face shows tremedous emotional range, from innocent joy to malevolent, jealous rage.

There is some rich symbolism in Kisna's arc.  In his unholy alliance with Kundan, Kisna sabotages a bridge that the villagers have built at a key point along the road that Shankar's tonga will take in its race against Kundan's bus.  After Shankar's sister sets Kisna on his path to redemption, he works feverishly to repair the beams he has removed from the bridge, and ends up supporting the bridge with his own bodily strength as the tonga passes overhead during the race.   Thus the villager's ultimate success rests literally as well as figuratively on Kisna's redemption and the power of his friendship with Shankar.  Without that bond, there is no victory. 

Like Lagaan, Naya daur is punctuated by a number of excellent songs.  While through most of the movie Vijayantimala's charm is as wasted as Gracy Singh's, her magnificent dancing skills are well displayed.

 

The most inspiring sequence in the film comes in the superb song "Saathi haath badhana," in which the villagers - men and women alike - work together to build their literal road to victory.  This song has a terrific modern-sounding refrain combined with a classic midcentury filmi melody, along with lovely visuals.

 

There's lots of pure entertainment too, including a song tailor-made for me, "Reshmi salwaar kurta jaali ka," in which a cross-dressing girl romances another girl. 

 

I've been told that a colorized version of Naya daur was released fairly recently, and that's obviously the version the above clip comes from.  The black and white original of this song does not appear to be available on YouTube, and it's a pity, because the music track is better (it lacks the strange synthesized chords that fill out the sound but don't match the folks tonality of the tune at all), and it also has a couple of shots that are missing from the color version, such as the delighted head-bobbing of this enthusiastic fellow, which pretty well conveys how I felt while watching the song:

Jeevan cuts a fine villainous figure as always, with his outlandishly effete clothing (has anyone ever looked more ridiculous in a pair of Jodhpurs?) and his ever-present riding crop, with all of the attendant phallic symbolism.

What more can you ask of a Hindi movie than charismatic stars, excellent songs, and a rich, unsubtle populist message of unity and the importance of preserving traditional village values in the face of modernization and westernization?  Naya daur begins with the words of Gandhi and ends in Gandhian triumph, offering a full complement of romance, buddy-pyaar, villainy, betrayal, naach-gaana, and a even few Johnny Walker pratfalls in between.  It's about as perfect a midcentury filmi experience as there is.