Filmi Geek

Ghanchakkar (2013)

घनचक्कर

Dir. Rajkumar Gupta

There are sucker punches, and then there are lead-pipe cold-cocks. Any movie that includes a mystery has to pack a twist, and the more the twist surprises the audience, the better - right? Well a twist in the story is one thing. A complete shrieking, wheeling change in tone is quite another. The climax of Ghanchakkar is more cold-cock than entertaining surprise. It feels like a scene from a completely different movie. It is a shock, and not at all a pleasant one. And this bait-and-switch, more than any of Ghanchakkar's other warts, compromises a movie I had up until then been prepared to praise, if not to gush about.

The first two hours of Ghanchakkar have a lot going for them - more than I'd expected based on some early reviews. The pacing may be a little slow, but nothing unforgivable. The characters are fun, the premise promising. Sanju (Emraan Hashmi), a safecracker hoping to retire, is convinced to perform that chestnut of caper movie heists, the Last Big Job. Hired by the gruff but almost avuncular Pandit (Rajesh Sharma) and his dopey, volatile muscle Idris (Namit Das), Sanju pulls off the 300-crore job and hides the loot. By the time Pandit and Idris come to claim their shares, though, Sanju has suffered an accident that damaged his memory - he no longer has any recollection of Pandit, the heist, or the hiding place. Naturally, Pandit and Idris are skeptical. To keep an eye on Sanju and, let's say, encourage him to remember where he stashed the money, they move in with Sanju and his fiery, fashion-obsessed wife, Neetu (Vidya Balan).

There is a great deal of fun to be had in this set-up. At its best, Ghanchakkar is smart and funny and even tender. The heist scene itself makes clever use of celebrity masks - a smiling Dharmendra, a scowling Amitabh, and a hilariously gobsmacked Utpal Dutt. There is a cute, if implausible, running gag about a man carrying vegetables on a late-night train whom Idris repeatedly harasses. Pandit's efforts to keep a lid on his mounting frustration are genuinely funny.  And there are a few standout moments between Sanju and Neetu, as the tension of their situation strains and tests their marriage. The best of these occurs at the dinner table. Pandit and Idris dump salt on Neetu's dishes.  Neetu waits anxiously as the salt is passed to Sanju; they have had a running squabble about "kam namak, aur namak."  But Sanju refuses the salt and a delighted, tender smile warms Neetu's lips.  Such gentle expositions of love between them - despite all the friction and the bickering - offer glimpses of a deeper characterization than Neetu's brash (and mercurial) Punjabi-accented exclamations or Sanju's disaffected fatalism.

It's true that Ghanchakkar could do more with its promising ideas.  No scene past the first twenty minutes matches the cleverness of the bank heist, and the pace flags throughout the middle.  There is some exploration of the various possible resolutions to the mystery - perhaps Sanju is faking the memory loss; perhaps his own beloved Neetu is double-crossing him.  But none of these becomes very gripping.  This perhaps a result of Sanju's own disaffection; his detachment is catching for the audience.  And there are hints of a tone problem as Sanju's condition deteriorates in the second half - if his memory really is getting worse, as it appears, it's uncomfortable to laugh at that developing tragedy.   None of this is fatal to the film, though, which floats along languidly on its unresolved tension and running gags, cute characterizations and solid performances.  (Some reviewers have found Vidya Balan's rendering too shrill, but to me she's delightful, sidling up to the edge of annoying and pulling back just in time.  She modulates her voice magnificently, from low murmurs to a piercing shrieks, and gives glimmers of a depth to Neetu that perhaps even the script doesn't contemplate.  Vidya Balan, as always, operates with a solid theory of her character in mind.  She's not merely playing to the back of the house.) 

But then there is that climax.  A new character materializes, and suddenly we are watching a very different film, one with much less humor, and much more horrifying violence.   Up until now Ghanchakkar simply has not been the kind of film where people get shot and writhe in agony as blood pours from their sucking wounds.  There are any number of ways in which the film could have effectively reached the same resolution and maintained its slightly surreal, gently slapstick tone.  The ending is far, far too uncertain and bleak for the film that has come before it.  Instead of leaving the theater with the tickled smile of the first two hours, one leaves with a sick and unsettled feeling.  The shift in tone is bizarre, unjustified, and unnecessary; what was wrong with the charming, if dark, comedy of the previous two hours?  This blunt-force blind attack is the biggest swindle of the movie, and the victim is us. 

Raanjhanaa (2013)

राँझना

Dir. Anand L. Rai

Flawed characters are obviously essential to storytelling of any depth and maturity.  But here's a riddle:  How many reprehensible acts can the principals in a movie undertake before the audience just stops caring what happens to them?  Whatever the precise answer, it's at any rate fewer than offered by Raanjhanaa.  The movie seems a contest between its leads, Kundan (Dhanush) and Zoya (Sonam Kapoor), to see who can be more awful. 

And in this race, Kundan takes an early lead.   He harrasses the annoyed, uninterested Zoya (whom he professes to love) until she finally caves to his "persistence." He cuts his wrist right in front of her to manipulate her into caring for him, and later threatens to cut her wrists if she doesn't respond as he likes.  He even follows her across the country from Banares to Delhi, ingratiating himself to her friends though she's made it abundantly clear that she doesn't want him there.  But Zoya holds her own in the horrible-person stakes.  She takes advantage of Kundan's devotion to her, lying to him and manipulating him to get what she wants, which is marriage to a bland, if handsome, student political leader (Abhay Deol, wasted in a flavorless special appearance). Indeed Zoya may win the ultimate prize, proving herself the worse person by a long margin, but Kundan's unwavering (and utterly unmotivated) devotion to her earns him the runner's up prize of being the character with the most unsympathetic stupidity.

If it's not abundantly clear by now, I hated this movie.  I hated every excruciating, miserable second of it.  Others reacted with less visceral disgust than I did.  Bharadwaj Rangan rightly takes it to task for glorifying the trope of stalking-as-love, but ultimately finds something satisfying in its tale of ultimate sacrifice and redemption.  I find that I just can't be that magnanimous to the film.  It is so weakly scripted from start to finish that anything of value it might have to say is lost in its incoherent mess of a story.  Kundan's arc begins with love at first sight, that laziest of movie conventions, love by fiat, love because the scripts say us so and not for any other reason.  We are asked to believe that that Kundan's one childhood glimpse of Zoya is enough to nourish his passion through years of not even knowing her name, of repeated rebuffs and slaps.  There are ample chances to motivate the passion, as they do spend time together as adults.  But instead of building a tender foundation for Kundan's devotion, the movie only presents him stubbornly clinging to his claim even as Zoya repeatedly mistreats and uses him. 

The result is that Kundan is more pathetic than loveable, his alleged redemption nothing more than an extreme consequence of his immaturity and stupidity. I found myself becoming increasingly angry as the arc of the movie progressed.  Out here in the real world, we adults must work hard to detach from passions that do not serve us, of desire for people who repay our devotion with indifference or worse.  I know this all to well, and I resent the glorification and romanticization of this persistence as the ultimate expression of love. There is nothing heroic about Kundan, yet the film elevates his attachment as though it were the purest love.  The film's attempt to manipulate the audience through Dhanush's puppy-dog cuteness is insulting, if not downright sexist; this childish harasser is aggrandized as a pure lover, an innocent, blinded by saintly devotion to yet another undeserving shrewish and calculating female.  Feh.

Raanjhanaa bears some similarities to Dil se, another film whose first half romanticises a cross-country stalker who convinces himself (and his victim) that his intrusive, manufactured obsession is properly labeled love.  But Raanjhanaa, apart from featuring a weaker and far less memorable A.R. Rahman soundtrack, is in its own way considerably crueller to its characters.  Dil se's Amar convinces Meghna to forsake her broadly destructive intentions and let just the two of them be sacrificed, and there is a sense of relief to their final release.  In contrast, Kundan's sacrifice leaves Zoya to bear the burden of her own viciousness; there is no relief for Zoya in the film's resolution.  If what had come in the previous two hours had been less insipid, less obnoxious, less frustratingly juvenile, there might be some satisfaction in this result.  As it stands, though, there is only relief for the audience that the brutal ordeal of this dreadful film is finally over.   By the time Kundan turns the tables on Zoya, we are long past caring what happens to these thoughtless, insipid people.  

 

 

 

 

Revisiting Padosan

When I first watched Padosan, six years ago,  I didn't enjoy it much.  At the time, though, so relatively new to Hindi films and aware of how widely the movie is beloved, I tread fairly lightly, and attributed my cold response largely to an inadequate understanding of the cultures it drew on for its comedy.

Today I rewatched Padosan, prepared to give it another shot in light of my own better (though still far from flawless) understanding of Hindi films, Hindi comedies, regional stereotypes, etc.

Well, I still didn't like it.  If anything, I liked it even less.  For now I know with certainty that getting the film's jokes doesn't make them funny. 

Here are some of the reasons I did not enjoy rewatching Padosan, in no particular order.

• Kishore Kumar's constant paan-gobbling, lip-smacking, rivulet of dribble running down his chin is stomach-churning.  It's criminal to take such an adorable man and make him so repulsive.  Criminal; not comical.
• 39-year-old Sunil Dutt playing a 25-year-old naif is about as convincing as 39-year-old Aamir Khan playing a college student.

• Dutt's bizarre helmet-wig doesn't help at all.

• There is absolutely nothing funny about five grown men leering at a young woman as if they have never seen one before. 

• Saira Banu.

• Mehmood's accent.  This is about as funny as an "Italian" character in an American movie who "talks-a like-a this-a."  About as funny as Mr Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's.  Which is to say, not funny at all.

• There is no reason for sweaty Om Prakash in his chaddees, ever.

• Romantic principals essentially competing to see which can be more stupid than the other. 

To Padosan's credit, the songs are still marvelous.  The physical humor throughout the picturization of "Ek chatur naar" is magnificent (if only Mehmood's ridiculous accent didn't persist throughout the song).  "Meri samnewali khidhki mein" is a charmingly wonderful tune, and so is "Kehna hai."  It's amazing to me that a movie whose songs are such delights can sink to such borderline unwatchable depths in between them. 

So there it is.  Unlike Andaz Apna Apna, which I appreciated much more when I watched it a second time after years of learning, Padosan remains an anti-favorite. 

 

Supermen of Malegaon (2012)

Dir. Faiza Ahmad Khan

As an outsider, I am aware of India's broad love of the movies.  I have read about the crowds that gathered on the footpath in front of Amitabh Bachchan's home in hopes of a glimpse of the superstar as he convalesced after an injury.  I have read about entire villages assembling at village center for the weekly movie, projected on an improvised screen.  Faiza Ahmad Khan's documentary Supermen of Malegaon opens with another iconic scene of India's passion for movies, one that is likely played out week after week in hundreds of industrial towns across the nation: Each friday evening in the Maharashtra town of Malegaon, the power-looms clatter and clack to a halt, and scores of young men clamber over one another to pile into the town's cinema hall.  And one man, Sheikh Nasir, pursues his dream of entertaining his hardworking neighbors by creating his own adaptations of beloved films.

Nasir has already tackled Malegaon ke Sholay and Malegaon ka Shaan.  Faiza Ahmad Khan's cameras follow Nasir and his cast and crew as they take on Malegaon ka Superman.  Nasir rounds up resources, designs special effects, and shoots his movie with a tiny handheld camcorder in the crowded galiyan of Malegaon. There is a certain naivete to Nasir, but a great deal of intelligence too.  One has the sense that the naivete is studied, a willful application of idealism that allows him to see his projects through, undaunted.  Nasir says that once he believed an entire movie from script to direction to editing was the work of one mind, not a vast team; yet he has an astute instinct for teamwork and a remarkable adaptability in the face of obstactles.   If the story is Superman, Nasir observes, the audience expects to see him fly; but the professional equipment he would need to produce such effects proves out of his budget; he remarks that he could make three or four entire films for the cost of the software alone.  Undeterred, Nasir arranges his own makeshift green-screen rig and digital processing to complete the effects.  To raise funds, Nasir cuts a product-placement deal with a local milk business; in exchange for about Rs. 10,000, Nasir shoots a scene in their storefront and works mentions of milk into the script.

As relentlessly optimistic as Nasir is, his writer, Farogh, has the soul of a tortured artist.  Nasir seems content to thrill the people of Malegaon, but Farogh's ambitions lie 300 km away, in Bombay.  On the first day of the shoot, Nasir finds Farogh languishing in bed; it is unclear whether he is simply sleepy, sleeping one off, or profoundly depressed.  It is agony to make films, Farogh tells the camera.  You can only execute a fraction of the ideas you have in your head; the rest, the unexpressed and unrealized, you live with every day.

Supermen of Malegaon shows the bustle, the dust, the poverty of this depressed industrial town.  There are hints of communal tension, as well; we are told that Muslims and Hindus live in different parts of town and do not mix much.  Khan also suggests, without explicit comment, the economic strata that coexist in Malegaon.  Nasir is not a rich man by any stretch, but he is strong and healthy, and owns a computer.  The contrast with the hero of his movie is stark; a stick-thin loom-worker who is not permitted time off work to shoot, Shafique cannot even fill out his custom-sewn Superman costume.  A title card at the documentary's opening remembers Shafique, who died of cancer at just 28, before the documentary's general release.  It is a poignant bookend to the story. 

Supermen of Malegaon is a touching tale of ordinary folks finding a way to bring their dreams to life.  But it is also a commentary on some of the harsh facts of day-to-day existence for India's working urban poor.  India loves her movies, the documentary says, but they are also a necessary escape.  This is not a novel view; it's rather a stereotyped and oft-repeated one, but like most stereotypes there is a core of truth to it.  It is not lost on Nasir himself, which is what makes him - and by extension the story of his project - such a fascinating watch.

(Supermen of Malegaon is available in full, with English subtitles, on YouTube.  It's scarcely an hour long, and well worth the time.  A subtitled six-minute collection of clips from Nasir's film, Malegaon ka Superman, is also available.) 

Bees saal baad (1962)

बीस साल बाद

Dir. Biren Nag

Just recently, I wrote about the necessary mental game of forgiving misogyny and regressiveness in older movies. In those comments, I observed that some movies make this easier to do than others, for reasons both discernible and ineffable. For Bees saal baad ("twenty years later"), a tremendous hit in its time, eye-rolling regressiveness is only one of many ways in which the movie is so dated and weak as to be a tough slog - one that seems to take bees saal to watch.  

The movie looks great on paper.  It features an effervescent, ingenuous, almost adolescent Waheeda Rehman; this is not the sad-eyed, grave, gauzy girl of Guru Dutt's masterpieces. It introduces the alleged charm of Biswajeet to Hindi cinema.  It is a visually atmospheric, creepy suspense-mystery that is compared to "The Hound of the Baskervilles," although it is notably hound-free. And the movie must have resonated along several dimensions in its time - it was Hindi films' highest grossing hit of 1962.

And yet to my modern, jaded eye, Bees saal baad is an unintentionally hilarious mess, a suspense thriller unburdened by any suspense or thrill.  An absurd parade of creepies populates its roster of murder suspects. There is a stiff, underspoken doctor (Madan Puri, whom I now believe is in every movie, to a first-order approximation), who wears improbably shiny shoes, though he lives in a swamp.  A servant, Laxman (Dev Kishen), who appears to be the love-child of Lurch and the Hunchback of Notre Dame, delivers his lines with a wide-eyed unfocused stare and a deliberation that rival Madhubala in the equally moody-ridiculous Mahal.  There is a strange man on crutches (Sajjan) who is not at all what he appears; early on in the movie we learn that he can walk unaided.  His sidekick is a sinister man with an enormous mustache and matching eyepatch. And since a murder mystery is apparently not sinister enough without a supernatural element, there is a ghost, a payal-wearing apparition who jangles ephemerally past each murder scene.  When the mystery really gets going, we  hear of men in disguises or misleadingly wearing one another's clothes, the story takes on the aspect of a Scooby Doo mystery - and I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!

And don't forget creepy fake-fingernailed murder hand of death!

Despite the constant lurking presence of this array of suspiciously-behaving freaks, though, the film's hero Kumar (Biswajeet) is thoroughly nonplussed. Kumar's grandfather and uncle were both murdered there, and as the heir to the estate it is widely presumed around the village that he is the murderer's next target.  But Kumar seems indifferent to all this.  Unlike the insufferably shrill and moronic obligatory comic sidekick, the private detective Gopichand (Asit Sen), Kumar shows no interest in bringing his ancestors' killer to justice, no curiosity about lingering curses on the family engendered by his grandfather's lecherous crimes, and no fear for his own safety. And Kumar is as bland to watch as he is unimpressed by tales of ghostly revenge.

Only Waheeda Rehman offers anything really with watching, and even that pleasure is not unalloyed. She is Radha, the naive and bouncy village girl, niece of the local healer, Ramlal (Manmohan Krishna).  Radha provides the only spot of color and vivacity in this heavy, swampy, village tale, and of course Kumar, so blandly indifferent to everything else, springs to playful life in her presence. And just as naturally, Radha, who apparently has never seen someone who doesn't walk with a limp or speak in a creepy halting drawl while staring into space, or who isn't 40 years older than she, falls for Kumar in turn. Waheeda ji is charming enough in the movie's best and cheeriest song, "Sapne suhana ladakpan ke", an obligatory springtime romp complete with Disneyesque bunnies and birdies, and of course, a fresh-faced ingenue prancing and praising the ephemeral joys of youth.  But Waheeda ji is just so young.  Some years later, such as in Guide, Waheeda ji had developed a gravitas and grace to go with all of that natural beauty, and had by then become downright hot. But that smoldering, womanly appeal is missing from the adolescent presentation of this character. She is lovely, but watching a lovely teenager doesn't grab me by the gut, if you know what I mean.

But, bunnies!

And that raises the most troubling aspects of Bees saal baad, to this viewer's modern eye.  Kumar praises Radha's innocence, youth, naïveté; he infantilizes her, making explicit that what attracts him to her are her most girlish, immature qualities.  And the idea that a grown man could perceive these adolescent traits and find them sexually appealing is, in a word, icky.  I know this is a common trope in cinematic romance (and not just Hindi cinema either), and there are almost certainly movies for which I've been willing to overlook it. Here, though, it pricks at me throughout.  

Matters are not improved by the attitude of Radha's doting uncle Ramlal. He is so mortified by Radha's conduct with Kumar (on one occasion she innocently visits Kumar's mansion at night), that he threatens suicide.  His melodramatic selfishness puts a bold underscore on Radha's value to him: not her happiness, not the pleasure of her company, but her notional virginity (for even the suggestion of its compromise sets him off) is her value.  How can a movie spell out more explicitly that the value of a charming young girl is not the breath of fresh air she brings to this dank village, not the thinking she might do with her mind or the beauty she might create with her hands and voice, but the sanctity and purity of what lies between her legs, and the preservation of its appearance of pristine chastity for whatever man is lucky enough to pluck her from the stagnant pond in which she grows. 

Again, Bees saal baad is hardly the first or the last Hindi film to subject its heroine, and its viewers, to this kind of value system. But as I wrote before, it seems to take a certain frame of mind, and a movie that has a lot else to offer, to overlook the sour taste it leaves.  Bees saal baad just doesn't work for me in so many ways - the dated, self-conscious moodiness, the contrivance of the story, the blandness of the hero - that by the time Ramlal's rantings burst forth I am so predisposed to roll my eyes that there's just no getting past them.  It's the coup de grace on a movie that, in so many ways, doesn't pass the test of time.