Filmi Geek

Barsaat (1949)

 बरसात

Dir. Raj Kapoor

Of all the dreary and pretentious Raj Kapoor movies I've watched, Barsaat has to be the worst – at least it's a solid tie with the unbearable Aag. It's hard to believe that this is the same filmmaker who made the buoyant, kinetic Shree 420, which I adore. Barsaat has none of the elements that make Shree 420 such a delight – a charming hero who undergoes real character growth, a heroine with some will and personality, an uplifting message about something larger than the scope of the auteur's own navel. Barsaat, put simply, is a drag.

Raj Kapoor's character Pran is a self-absorbed, self-important young man. He speaks in what must to him seem poetic proclamations; but they resound as smugly-delivered adolescent expressions of the Byronic ideal. This would be fine if the audience were meant to reject them as such, but these ideas of Pran's are apparently offered in earnest: that love is measured in longing and pain, that love without tears isn't love, that love reaches purity only when it is utterly joyless. Feh.

Barsaat fails because Pran's foil, Gopal (Premnath) is a more richly-drawn and interesting person than Pran. Sure, Gopal is a cad; he plays fast and loose with the love of a country girl (Nimmi), with tragic (if thoroughly predictable) results. But he also banters with Pran and is the only person who seems to see Pran's pompous hot air for what it is, at least until the end, by which time he has adopted Pran's tiresome philosophy. Gopal makes some mistakes in this movie (something Pran never does, of course), but given the choice I'd much rather have a drink with him than with Pran, so insufferably far up his own ass.

 
Premnath bantering with Raj Kapoor; Nimmi moony over Premnath. There is also a weird interlude featuring KN Singh as an oafish lout who kidnaps Nargis and tries to force her into marriage.

Barsaat fails too because Nargis's character, who loves Pran, is almost as vapid and agencyless as her character in Aag. (At least here, she gets her own name, and doesn't have an entire persona assigned to her by Raj Kapoor's character.) It's bad enough that she falls for Pran's overblown intensity and his grandiose philosophy, but the giggling ingenue is a waste of Nargis's gravity and presence. For the man who discovered her and made a star of her, it seems to have taken Raj Kapoor not a few years to figure out what to do with all Nargis had to offer on screen. Watching Barsaat and Aag, one has the feeling that young Raj Kapoor had never met or talked to an actual woman.

   
At least there is some impressive cinematography to enjoy.

The only highlights of Barsaat come in a few songs, especially those in the first half hour of the film, like the superb title song in which Cuckoo fronts a troupe of musicians and dancers dressed as Kashmiri villagers.

 

 

Lahu ke do rang (1979)

लहू के दो रंग

Dir. Mahesh Bhatt

I chose this movie out of Shabana Azmi completism, but what I got turned out to be pretty satisfying masala in its own right. Its backstory is set forth with rare specificity in time; the film opens at the end of World War II, when Indian freedom fighters were operating in exiled cells in east Asia. In this “exotic” setting, a very appealing relationship forms between a delightfully angsty Vinod Khanna and Helen in an unusually non-dancing, non-vamp role.  

Fast forward to the present (as masala films do) and you're in pleasingly familiar masala territory: the martyred freedom fighter Vinod Khanna has left an illegitimate son (Danny Denzongpa) in Hong Kong with a distraught Helen, and a legitimate son (also Vinod Khanna) in Bombay with his grave and serious mother (Indrani Mukhejee, who is super-fabulous and intense in this role, and makes me wonder why she's never jumped into my consciousness before, despite the half-dozen or so films I've seen her in). The two young men are, of course, unknown to each other and, of course, on opposite sides of the law - Vinod a proud police inspector, Danny falling in with the smuggling ring that holds Shabana hostage.  

   
No one does man-pain quite like Vinod Khanna.

Highlights include Danny doing kung fu, a very sweet ballad picturized on Helen, and even a taste of filmi-paagal in the form of Shabana Azmi's character's mother, tortured and abused to madness by the villain, Kader Khan (accompanied in this standard-issue villainy ensemble by Ranjeet).  There's a pretty cute set of sequences where Danny falls in with a plucky orphan girl called Shabbo; together they engineer some minor cons and become fast friends.  Shabana Azmi is as wasted as she ever is in such masala fare, but she does get to wear some super pantsuits and tromp around Darjeeling looking pouty and fabulous. There's really nothing not to like here – an enjoyable bellyful of masala comfort food.

   

Chewing Paan with Aamir Khan

My latest column in Outlook India recalls the day I spent on the PK set in 2013.  Aamir Khan gave me my first paan, and I ate lunch cooked by Anushka Sharma's mother.  A pretty awesome day. 

As to the movie itself, now that I have seen it, I don't feel a compulsion to be especially critical. Lots of others have praised its strengths and critiqued its weaknesses, and I'm not sure I have much to add to the general hubbub. It's very sweet; I enjoyed it thoroughly.  

 

Bandini (1963)

बन्दिनी

Dir. Bimal Roy

There is something peculiar about the orientation of the moral compass of Bandini, something in its message that I cannot quite work out.

The self-sacrificing, self-effacing heroine, Kalyani (Nutan), is in prison as the film opens, serving time for a murder.  Eventually, we learn Kalyani's story in flashback.  She had fallin in love with a freedom fighter, Bikaash (Ashok Kumar), who promised to marry her but then disappeared.  Later, Kalyani learns that Bikaash is alive and married, to a vicious harridan whom Kalyani, as a caregiver in the nursing home where the woman resides, must serve despite her abuses.  In a moment of blinding rage - whether pure jealousy or a mad desire to rescue her beloved Bikaash from the prison of this horrible wife - Kalyani kills the woman with poison.

In that flashback, when Bikaash apparently abandons Kalyani, we see her suffer the harsh opprobrium meted out by villagers on a woman who is in any way disgraced. Kalyani is blameless, but the shame of being jilted makes her a laughing stock among the village women, who mock her openly. Her disgrace is borne by her father as well, of course – the men of the village harass and even physically threaten him. And he turns on her, blaming her as viciously as the villagers. For the crime of being mistreated by a man, Kalyani is scorned by one and all, and run out of the village on a rail.  Shamed, abused, and ridiculed, she flees to the city where her path eventually crosses that of Bikaash and his wife.

Bikaash's betrayal of Kalyani turns out to have been morally justified – he did it to advance the cause of independence for which his life is dedicated. The murder that Kalyani commits, in contrast, has little justification; yet nearly everyone in the film who learns of it is willing to overlook and forgive it, out of some belief that Kalyani is a decent person at heart. The prison doctor, Devendra (Dharmendra, extremely young and fresh-faced, yet already squarely masculine), loves Kalyani and wants to marry her, almost without regard to her past; he shows little interest in even hearing her story. The prison warden (Tarun Bose), Devendra's friend, is so moved by Kalyani's story that he petitions for her early release even though Kalyani, in full remorse over the crime she has committed, does not want any such leniency. And the warden pleads Kalyani's case to Devendra's mother, who is initially (and quite understandably) reluctant to see her son married to a convicted murderer.

The result here is that to Kalyani's village compatriots, being abandoned by a lover is a dreadful crime for a woman to commit, worthy of shaming and expulsion from the community. But to the educated city folk who observe Kalyani in prison, even an impassioned, vicious act of murder is forgivable. I do not know what to make of this. Is the film pitting the small-minded judgment of conservative village folks against modern, cosmopolitan mercy? If the film is commenting on the leniency afforded to a pretty young woman of poise and breeding, it is not a cynical commentary; Kalyani is presented in complete sympathy, and we are clearly supposed to agree with the assessment of those who believe her self-effacing years in prison are ample punishment for her crime. Not much of a thought is spared for the victim, Bikaash's horrid, shrewish wife. If anything, the murder is expedient for the ending; it disposes of Bikaash's wife so that Kalyani's true and noble love for her true and noble freedom fighter can prevail.  

Notwithstanding the puzzling message of the narrative, Bandini is visually mesmerizing, a magically beautiful movie to watch. Every shot is artfully constructed, lit as dramatically as a painting. In my favorite sequence, Devendra leaves the prison after one of his tender encounters with Kalyani.  She drifts toward the high prison wall as his tonga starts away on the other side, and for a moment the two of them are there, under the same sky but separated by this wall, a palpable symbol of what connects them and the great distance between them.

 

The songs of Bandini are pensive and lovely.  Strikingly, Kalyani is not given a song in the first half of the film – her misery and remorse are too great to permit even a mournful musical lament, I suppose.  The result is some very interesting songs picturized on other prisoners, who do sing, hopeful tunes of the expectation of better times to come, or laments of family members lost to time and distance.  These songs show (with some romanticizing) the sadness and drudgery of life in a prison. In “O panchhi pyare”, women do their chores, pounding spices and grinding grain in a rhythm that makes the work and the time go a little more smoothly, until a guard comes and chastises them for showing signs of good cheer.

 

Another of the film's superb songs is the gorgeous "Mat ro maata lal tere", a stirring patriotic martyr's song, proudly sung by a freedom fighter on his slow final procession toward the gallows. These songs add a richer and more expansive texture to the movie than one sometimes sees in movies of the era.  There is more going on here than an ingenue frolicking in a meadow or a pair of lovers running around trees.  Bandini is a story of one woman's downfall, bondage, and redemption, but it acknowledges a broader world in which that story is embedded. 

 

Jhumroo (1961)

झुमरू

Dir. Shankar Mukherjee

As Kishore Kumar movies go, Jhumroo follows a set of conventions that are relatively ordinary for filmi romantic comedy. The title character Jhumroo (Kumar) is a poor boy who falls in love with a rich girl, Anjana (Madhubala). Anjana's father Dwarkanath (Jayant) vehemently opposes the match, and machinates to drive a wedge between them. There is even some baby-switching backstory to lend an appropriate masala touch. But Jhumroo is a Kishore Kumar movie, and that sets it quite apart from the romantic genre it echoes in plot outline. The presence of Kishore Kumar is a sort of license to be wacky. Kishore's title character, Jhumroo, is a filmi kind of gypsy-tribal fellow, but the village he lives in lies at the foot of a mountain, and he dreams of being a Sherpa. This profoundly silly premise provides a pretext for lots of delightful physical comedy as Jhumroo attempts to guide Dwarkanath on a climb, and the movie is crafted to offer many more opportunities for Kishore to do his manic thing, layered atop the conventions of romance.

Even more than that, though, Jhumroo bears the unmistakable mark of Kishore Kumar on its music; Jhumroo was the first film on which he was music director, and he pulls out all the insane, goofy stops to make it wonderful and silly and fun. The movie is a treasure trove of hilarious, fun, and wild songs.  Kishore Kumar yodels his way through the title track like no one but he can. In “Babu aana, sunte jaana”, he competes hilariously with his fellow villager, Chamki (Chanchal) over who can make a sale to Madhubala in the market. It's hard to pick which is the most outrageous song of all, in a movie that offers you both tribal chieftan Kishore wheeled about on an expansive set festooned with a massive eagle totem,  and this brilliantly catchy piece of goofiness:

 

There's also a delightful nonsense song in which Jhumroo and Anjali's putative husband-to-be (Anoop Kumar) try to one-up each other for Anjali's attention.  It's enough to make you wish Kishore Kumar had been as prolific a music director as RD Burman or Laxmikant-Pyarelal.  The songs keep coming fast and thick, and they are all well-crafted both musically and visually. 

It's common in romances for the leads to span a vast social gulf, but in Jhumroo, Madhubala's character Anjana and Jhumroo himself are separated by a Himalayan peak, literally and figuratively, Anjana has earned an MA degree abroad, and lives in the pompous Dwarkanath's mansion atop the very same mountain at whose foot Jhumroo's village nestles. Anjana falls for Jhumroo in a fun, self-conscious reversal of an ever-so-familiar filmi trope: before the two meet, Jhumroo's singing wafts up to the mansion in an evening breeze, and Anjana is drawn by the sound, like Dilip Kumar in Madhumati. But it isn't the haunting trill of Lata Mangeshkar that hooks Anjana here – it's Kishore Kumar's trademark yodeling! And when they finally meet, she laughs heartily at his every goofy move and the nonsense he rattles off at speed. I love this about Kishore Kumar movies, the way competent, educated women – doctors, performers, degree-holders – fall for him just because he's adorable, and laugh from their bellies when he does his thing. (Stay tuned for more from me on that very topic.) Also Madhubala is genius at a gentle physical comedy that both gets out of Kishore's way to let him own the screen, and yet underscores and amplifies the delight of what he is doing.  Check out her reactions to his yodels in the first ten seconds of this song for a tiny sample of what I mean.

For all the familiarity of Jhumroo the movie, its commonality with other beloved Kute Kishore Komedies like Half-Ticket and Dilli ka Thug, there is something a little brooding and Dilip-Kumar-ish about Jhumroo the man. He yearns for the mountaintop and the woman who dwells there, and when he thinks these have been taken from him, he grows sullen and sharp. His mother (Lalita Pawar) wants to see him appointed head of the village; at first, proud and arrogant as any Dilip Kumar character, he spars confidently and successfully with his rival, but later, his spirit deflated by unrequited love, he falls to depression and loses interest in earthly power. And like a Dilip Kumar character he is absolutely horrid to his childhood friend Chamki, as in this song, a rather blatant borrowing from "Tequila," in which he slaps her around rather shockingly, one of the rare occasions in which the comedy in a Kishore movie fails the test of time.  Despite the smackdown, though, Chamki loves Jhumroo as well as any second heroine ever loved an abusive Dilip Kumar (cf. that actor's relationship with Nimmi in Aan).

So Jhumroo has some layers to it; it's not all-out zaniness like Half-Ticket, but also both draws on and pokes a stick at the tropes of romantic films, and of heroes, that prevailed in its time. This makes it all the more satisfying, offering both something to laugh about and something to analyze. And I challenge you to walk away from this movie without the staccato silliness of “Ge-ge-ge-geli zara Timbuktuuuu” stuck in your head for a good long while.