Filmi Geek

Barnali (1963)

বর্ণালী

Dir. Ajoy Kar

Beth's thoughtful discussion of this tender Bengali film dwells mostly on its love story. You should go and read it, because on that subject I don't have a lot to add. As Beth notes, the romance is underscored by a social theme: The cravenness of rich people, and the nobility of poor.

The worst of the rich is embodied in our hero's uncle, who may as well twist his moustache. His rapaciousness is explicit, even in his own words; he as much as asks why he would invite someone to his daughter's wedding who could be of no use to him? And when he rates someone worthy, or potentially useful, he twists himself into knots to please them, feigning interest in their interests, kowtowing and scraping and brown-nosing like a seasoned pro. He is repulsive to watch.

Our hero himself, Ashesh (Soumitra Chatterjee) floats above this plane. While it is clear that Ashesh thinks his uncle's conduct wrong, for most of the film he fails to challenge it, following instead the least-resistance path of doing whatever his uncle asks. Ashesh certainly enjoys the privileges of his station and his wealth, but to his credit he does so without ostentation. He is matter-of-fact about his huge, marble-appointed home, his access to cars and servants. He takes things for granted that are hardly even dreamed of by the girl he falls for, Aloka (a radiantly young Sharmila Tagore), the daughter of a modest schoolteacher who lives with her modest family in a modest home. In one telling scene, Ashesh leaves Aloka alone in a richly decorated room of his sprawling mansion. Aloka grows increasingly alarmed at the perceived abandonment. Ashesh, on his return, is incomprehending of her anger; you don't think I'd leave you alone? he asks her. He tells her that the manservant was around, and the cook, and the driver, a bustling household full of people whom it would not occur to Aloka to turn to for help, who she might not even be aware are present.

But while Ashesh handles his wealth and privilege with a certain amount of nonchalance, while he is naïve and (at least early on) yielding to his uncle's authority, he is nevertheless a good guy, acting gently and without entitlement. Contrast with Ashesh's friend, a young scholar who breaks an engagement with Aloka without so much as telling her.  He does this because he has the opportunity to marry a girl with considerably more money and status, Ashesh's cousin, the daughter of Ashesh's awful uncle. Ashesh is disgusted with his friend's venal and cowardly betrayal of Aloka, enough so that it seems friendship-ending.  At this point in the film, though, Ashesh keeps his contempt to himself; while we have the sense he knows right from wrong, and has no intention of associating further with that friend, he is not yet ready to speak truth to power.

And so Aloka, serious and proud and alert, presents a contrast to the easy, comfortable wealth of Ashesh and his friends, and their sometimes reprehensible beahvior; Ashesh's conversations with Aloka begin to draw him down the path of standing up to both the petty and grievous wrongs he sees around him.  Aloka is bristly and challenges Ashesh's complacency in a way no one ever has before, and Ashesh is both moved and attracted by the challenge.  And Aloka's father provides the stark contrast to Ashesh's insufferable uncle. He is the picture of grace and humility, ready to think the best of people and give them second chances, but maintaining his moral standards throughout. And we presume it is the model of Aloka's father that finally inspires Ashesh to challenge his uncle's worldview to his face.

But we must presume, because for some reason this is not shown. Ashesh and his uncle take a car ride together, offscreen, and at the end of this ride the uncle has had a change of heart, offering sincere apologies to the humble and forgiving schoolteacher. Perhaps the message is that public shaming is not an effective tool of social change, but that the seeds of humanity must be sown in private, in one heart at a time.

   
Proto-Sharmila is so pretty.

Coolie (1983)

कुली

Dir. Manmohan Desai

There is much that can be said about Coolie, a stellar exemplar of the socially meaningful masala movie. It is a rich text packed with social commentary, in which the working poor organize and strike against rich, corrupt, and cruel-hearted bosses. It is loaded with masala archetypes, symbols of brotherly and motherly love, religious iconography, unlikely coincidences and grand-scale tragedies, the goofy non-literalism of filmi medicine. And it's long on the kind of entertainment one expects from Manmohan Desai films, superstars palling around and one-upping each other in songs, villains occupying posh and outrageously decorated spaces, romance and charisma and dishoom-dishoom.

The titualar coolie Iqbal (Amitabh Bachchan) is, as you might expect, a charismatic figure with a traumatic past. As a boy, Iqbal is separated from his mother Salma (Waheeda Rehman) during a tragic flood engineered by a narcissistic and entitled millionaire, Zafar Khan (Kader Khan), who kidnaps Salma, traumatized into muteness and amnesia, for his own.  Iqbal grows into the de facto leader of a group of coolies. He organizes them against Zafar's attempt to cheat them out of a promised housing development, and leads a dramatic strike in which one by one they throw their badges to the ground, beginning with Iqbal's own 786, of course (cf. Deewaar).

 

Iqbal befriends a drunken and sympathetic newspaper reporter, Sunny (Rishi Kapoor), who has ambitions of breaking the big story of the coolies' strike. Sunny was raised by Iqbal's mother; Zafar believed that abducting a child for her to raise would ease her trauma, or at least his conscience. At any rate, of course neither Iqbal nor Sunny know for most of the movie that they share a mother, leading to some of the film's many almost-but-not-quite reveals. In one fantastic shot Sunny and Iqbal share reminiscences of their beloved mothers; Sunny keeps a photograph of her inside his typewriter, and Iqbal sits beside it, framed with the portrait, but never seeing the photo.

Coolie is a rich meta-text, too. As is well known, Amitabh Bachchan was seriously injured when the timing of a choreographed fight scene went wrong; he took a full-strength punch to the gut from Puneet Issar. For months during Amitabh's recovery, crowds gathered near his home and prayed for his health. This fact alone says much about the place Amitabh Bachchan occupies among the many gods worshiped in India. Even more telling is the astonishing breaking of the fourth wall that occurs in Coolie itself; the action stops during the fateful scene, and an overlay tells us (in three scripts, so that everyone who can read can understand) that this is the very moment at which Mr Bachchan sustained the terrible injury.

It is difficult to imagine the story taking second seat to the actor in any other circumstance. Film is already a medium in which much suspension of disbelief is required; Hindi film arguably moreso, and the genre of Hindi film to which Coolie belongs, masala, most of all. Yet when it is the life of Amitabh Bachchan on the line, the audience is asked to suspend its suspension of disbelief for a moment, to pay respect to this legend among men and the sacrifices he makes to bring us a good story.

In addition to this worship of Amitabh Bachchan, worship of God is a powerful theme in Coolie. But in contrast to Manmohan Desai's masterpieces of syncretism, Amar Akbar Anthony and Naseeb, the God that is present in Coolie is unequivocally Allah. This is no doctrinally-vague Bhagwan. Allah literally drops from the sky, in the form of a Koran that falls from the rafters of a flooded home into the boy Iqbal's arms, letting him know he is not alone; in an inscribed prayer that tips off a lintel and clocks Salma on the head, restoring her memory; in a preternatural circle of lightning, summoned by Iqbal's fervent prayer, that encircles Salma with divine vivifying energy. Allah even flies through the sky, in the form of the super-intelligent falcon called Allah Rakha (“Allah the protector”), who repeatedly swoops in to save our heroes from one scrape after another.

 

Over and over again Allah descends from heaven to grant his blessings to the good guys in Coolie. In the climactic fight scene between Iqbal and Zafar Khan, which takes place in a Muslim shrine, a silken shroud embroidered with the name of Allah blows off an altar and drapes itself protectively around Iqbal's body, rendering him immune to the bullets from Zafar's gun. Desai's trademark syncretism appears only at the very end of the film, where various characters pray to a diverse array of gods, and Krishna, Jesus, Sai Baba and the rest all contribute to Iqbal's recovery from the wounds he sustained in his defeat of Zafar.

 
    

There are weaknesses in Coolie that make it less a perfect masala specimen than films like Amar Akbar Anthony  or Parvarish; like Naseeb, it suffers from dime-store heroines, a common place to cut corners in masala films. At least Naseeb had the gorgeous sparkle and presence of Hema Malini to make up for the relative dullness of Reena Roy and Kim; here, there is no relief from Rati Agnihotri and Shoma Anand, who are both so unmemorable that it is difficult to tell them apart as the story progresses. One of them (I think it's Rati Agnihotri) gets a little bit of a revenge plot, but it is mostly filler. They are there because heroes need heroines to dance around trees with, else how do you get the flavor of romance into your masala? But their blandness doesn't matter much; Coolie is Amitabh Bachchan's film all the way, and that's just fine. Accept that truth, and you are rewarded with satisfying masala, worthy of the Desai name, and with plenty to chew on, whether watched purely for its fun, or the pleasure of examining all its textual levels.     

 

Abhinetri (1970)

अभिनेत्री

Dir. Subodh Mukherjee

(This review is somewhat more spoilery than usual.)

Sometimes it's good to let viewers supply their own ending to a story.  An audience won't always agree on the best outcome, and letting each viewer decide for herself what happens after the lights go up can be a nice way of keeping everyone happy.  Recently The Lunchbox took this approach.  There, an unambiguous result would have required addressing grim realities that would have broken the movie's lovely spell.  Leaving the final chord slightly unresolved let romantically-inclined viewers keep their happily-ever-afters intact.  

In Abhinetri, though, the unresolved ending is a lame cop-out, a weaksauce attempt at having and eating one's cake.  It is presented like a happy ending.  Superficially, Shekhar (Shashi Kapoor) and Anju (Hema Malini) seem as the curtain falls to have patched up the rift in their marriage.   Anju's friend Ratna (Nazima) conspires with Shekhar's mother (Nirupa Roy) to bring the awkward, angry couple back together, and the film ends with a scene of renewed domestic joy.  But the issue that drove Shekhar and Anju apart in the first place remains unaddressed.  

Early in Abhinetri, when the romance between Shekhar and Anju begins, Anju is a professional dancer - a hugely talented and popular professional dancer.  Shekhar is delighted by this at first, watching Anju perform with the rapture of a child.  This is perhaps because Shekhar is a child, an overgrown child still so umbilically attached to his mother that he brings Anju to her for appraisal the very day after they meet, and repeatedly pouts off to her for validation at the slightest sign he might not get his way.  

Mommm!  

This Shekhar is painfully immature.  In one scene, a fan leers at Anju in a restaurant.  Anju keeps her cool; one has a sense of urbanity and maturity in her nonchalant poise, and it makes Shekhar that much more of a bumpkin and a child for being so flustered and distraught at the very idea of other men appreciating his wife for her beauty and talent.  Anju has no family of her own, and this has taught her how to be a grown-up.  Shekhar, in contrast, between his doting, indulgent mother and his patronizing boss (Nasir Hussain), has no idea how to relate to the outside world as an adult.  

And so as much as Shekhar enjoys Anju's dancing the first time he sees it, he expects her to give it up when they marry, just as his mother gave up a singing career to devote her life to the care and hand-feeding of the little god to whom she gave birth.  At first Anju is on board with this plan, but when her former dancing-master (Asit Sen) comes to her with financial troubles, she agrees to return to the stage.  The performance elates her, but the sensuality of it, and the fantasies it inspires in her fans, are horrifying to Shekhar.  Shekhar gives Anju a choice:  dancing, or him. 

Abhinetri should be extraordinary for the gutsiness of Anju's response:  She walks away from her marriage, in pursuit of her passion and her very public career.   This is a bold move for Anju, and for a movie.   But Abhinetri's spineless ending undoes its boldness, sacrificing any merit in the movie's bravery for raising the issue of women working (and especially performing) after marriage.  Abhinetri reunites its broken couple but doesn't tell us whether Shekhar will aquiesce, whether the threat of losing Anju makes Shekhar grow up, acknowledge her autonomy, trust her to handle zealous fans on her own.  Abhinetri sets the stage for profound debate but bows out without any substantive discussion.  It is as cowardly as an internet troll who lobs a conversational grenade and then hides to watch the fireworks.  

The result is a deeply frustrating movie, as the audience receives no payoff, no reward for putting up with two hours of Shekhar being a huge, annoying baby.  It's a waste of the things that the movie has going for it.  For one,  Abhinetri is loaded with pretty.  Hema and Shashi both look about as good as they ever do, Hema with her gorgeous big eyes and dazzling smiles, Shashi with his snaggle-toothed bashfulness and mile-long eyelashes.  

 

Abhinetri also offers wonderful songs and Hema's marvelous dancing; Anju's professional shows provide all the excuses needed to show off the breadth of Hema's talent, from Bharatnatyam to mujra to a perfectly mod shimmy.  And there is a hilarious Bela Bose number featuring a twelve-headed dancing horse - and Shekhar looking profoundly uncomfortable at the very notion of a cabaret performance - which I highlighted in this post on Shashi's 75th birthday.

 

"Milte hi rahenge hum" - three radically different styles in one song about ageless love.

Nazima provides a stellar exemplar of the saucy-friend archetype, always ready with a sarcastic or off-color remark, the perfect garrulous contrast to Hema's elegant, fresh sweetness.  And the scenes in Shekhar's workplace - a chemistry lab - are just plain filmi-science fun. 

 

 
Science has finally learned how to synthesize Hema Malini in the laboratory.

But all of this potential is squandered in what amounts to a dreary, unsatisfying film about a whiny man-child who can't make room in his navel-centered worldview for a wife who has an autonomous and fulfilling life.   At its best, Abhinetri is entertaining enough - it's hard to complain too much about a movie that offers up Hema Malini in a bubble bath - but be prepared to pay the price of annoyance and frustration. 

Aan (1952)

आन

Dir. Mehboob Khan

Aan may be the most awful movie I ever loved watching.   Its story is full of regressive and revolting portrayals of love and feminine agency.  Its hero is Dilip Kumar at his smarmiest, all smirk and swagger and absolutely no humility or charm.  And once again, in that venerable tradition that never ceases to grate on me, this arrogant piece of work is loved by two different women.

Among the many despicable achievements of Kumar's character Jai Tilak is the repeated belittling, throttling, and even threatening to drown Mangala (Nimmi), his childhood friend who, despite the constancy of this treatment, is in love with him.    If that's not bad enough, Jai himself loves his locality's haughty, Jodhpur-wearing rajkumari, Rajshree (Nadira), and gives her the old "your lips tell me no but your eyes say yes" routine, insisting that she loves him - or will come to love him, anyhow, which is all the same to him.   He shows that he is willing to bank on her future love, by physically (and arguably sexually) assaulting her throughout the movie, as if all will be forgiven when she realizes his truth.  It's a funny thing about Jai, that he treats the woman he loves and the woman he's indifferent to just about the same. Both are subject to beatings if they don't do just what he happens to want in the moment.

There are a few more threads in the story of Aan.  Rajshree is the younger sister of a kind-hearted maharaja (Murad) who enjoys staging cheerful public games and giving gifts to his subjects.  The maharaja perceives the dawn of a new era; he announces a plan to cede royal power entirely, naming the people themselves as his heir.  This is too much for Rajshree and the maharaja's ambitious brother Shamsher (Premnath); he arranges to have the maharaja killed so that he can sieze power for himself.  (Shamsher also kidnaps Mangala and treats her not significantly worse than Jai ever did.  But you see, Jai is the hero, while Shamsher is the villain.  So when Shamsher manhandles Mangala, it's bad.)   

Thus Aan is in part framed as a kind of allegorical triumph of populism over monarchy; Jai's triumph over Shamsher is the triumph of the regular guy over the most entitled, abusive, and self-serving aspects of aristocracy and anti-democracy.  But that is not Jai's only victory (see what I did there?).  Much more central to Aan, and highlighted by its title, is Jai's taming of Rajshree's pride.  Jai is supposed to have won her over with his boldness but also to have taught her a lesson in humility. In the second half of the film, after the villagers flee an an attack from Rajshree and Shamsher's army, Jai kidnaps Rajshree and forces her to live among the rabble in the villagers' refugee camp.  Rajshree is quickly brought to earth by her inability to perform tasks that the village women do day in and day out, such as grinding flour, carrying water, and mending clothes.  Her pride eventually gives way under this populist onslaught, and Aan's glorification of the everyman is underscored.    Mehboob Khan seems to have missed the irony of lessons in humility coming from smug, arrogant Jai, who hasn't had a humble moment in his life.  But just like the physical abuse of Mangala, arrogance and superciliousness are only evil when perpetrated by the nominal villains, not by the anointed hero Jai.  And perhaps they are even worse when committed by a woman; Rajshree is not so much a lover to be wooed as a filly to be broken, like the mare Jai wins from Rajshree at the maharaja's games.

And yet I thoroughly enjoyed this film even with its hot mess of a story.  For one, it is absolutely glorious visual gluttony.   The sets are marvelous, even fantastical.  The interiors of the maharaja's palace are a ceaseless parade of delights, festooned with animal sculptures, baroque pillars, elaborate fountains. 

On the left, wall sculpture of tiger attacking elephant. On the right, Rajshree's bathroom. Rajshree's bathroom.

Rajshree's dungeon is accessed through a door made of an enormous pair of crocodile jaws that swing open onto the imposing stone staircase.  Shamsher's dungeon (yes, each has his or her own. The modern rajkumar and rajkumari need personalized spaces in which to toss those who displease them) features huge spiked pillars, sliding wall panels, and a cage in the shape of a tiger's jaws, which opens to release an actual lion when Shamsher flips an outsized, gothic-style electrical breaker. 

 
"That is serious lair flair," said Beth.

 

Mehboob Khan with technicolor is both a kid in a candy shop and a bull in a china shop.  Each scene seems calculated to outdo what came before, delivering spectactle in every sense - especially the interiors, though there are some gorgeous exterior shots as well, such as the palace gaming arena, a terrific holi song, and a stampeding camel herd.   A dream sequence late in the film marries large scale and dizzying color with marvelously inventive design; the result is literally fantastic. 

 

That last must surely have inspired some of Rekha's looks down the years.

And apart from the sumptuous visuals, Aan has Nadira.   Oh, Nadira.  I have observed before that she melts my shorts.  Here, she delivers Bette Davis cheekbones and Joan Crawford intensity, in a performance that is hugely theatrical.  It is a wildly melodramatic delivery that amplifies each emotion with eyes, brows, nostrils, lips that never stop working.  Every muscle in her face is pressed into service with focus and intent, for a performance that is simply over the top in all the best ways. 

     
  

Also, perhaps because she is an outsider, a Jewish actor appearing in her first film, Nadira gets to do stuff in Aan that you don't often see Hindi film heroines doing - riding horseback, wielding pistols and rifles (and firing them),  and just generally being fierce.  As Rajshree, vibrating with pent-up rage and passion, viciously proud and paralyzingly haughty, she seems as likely to go off as the loaded pistol she tucks in her pocket when she finds Jai swashbuckling his way into her private chambers.  

   
As with all screenshots on Filmi Geek, click to embiggen. Trust me, it's worth it.

There is nothing restrained about this performance - indeed, it is the opposite of restrained - but Rajshree is constrained, and Nadira's presence and ferocity convey those emotional fetters with absolute clarity.  It's a shame that Aan sees Rajshree as a shrew to be tamed.  Imagine what this character could do with some agency, some ability to free all that intensity and channel it toward something other than loving a domineering, arrogant man.  That would be a hell of a movie.