Filmi Geek

Daawat-e-Ishq (2014)

दावत-ए-इश्क़

Dir. Habib Faisal

If Daawat-e-Ishq has a lesson for me, it is not a lesson about the grim injustice of dowry practices.  Rather, it's that there is no substitute for seeing a film for myself before I judge it.  At the time of the film's release, a few reviews critiqued portions of its script as regressive and problematic, and damned the rest as dull and flavorless.  So I came to the movie with low expectations.  But when I finally watched it, I was pleasantly surprised. More than that, it's grown in my mind in the weeks since.  It is not a complicated movie, but it is a sweet and delightful one.

For sure, there are problems with the script, in which Gullu (Parineeti Chopra) engineers a scheme to entrap Tariq (Aditya Roy Kapoor) in marriage, and then prosecute him and his family under Sec. 498A, the anti-dowry provision of the Indian Penal Code. Gullu expects to extort a fat settlement in exchange for dropping the charges.  As a premise for a romance, this is problematic in all kinds of ways.  Not least, it risks trivializing the real injustice of extortionate dowry practices from which Sec. 498A exists to protect women.  And it furthers the stereotype of woman as predatory gold-digger, not to be trusted.  

And even the few men in the movie whom the script allows to speak out against dowry practices seem to miss the point.  Tariq complains that he is not a piece of meat to be auctioned by his parents to the highest bidder; these words are echoed later by another young man in what is meant to be the movie's heartwarming epilogue.  But Sec. 498A does not exist to protect men from objectification; its target is the devaluation of women.  Dowry says that a family accepting another family's daughter is taking on a burden, worthy of compensation, even though they can expect to press that daughter into service as babymaker and maidservant.  No family ever killed a boy child to avoid participating in the tradition of dowry.  Tariq's indignation notwithstanding, it is not the commodification of men that makes dowry practices immoral.  Daawat-e-Ishq's approach weakly sidesteps this reality, perhaps out of fear of making audiences uncomfortable with too radical a message.  

Nor does the script make very clear why Gullu's father Abdul Qadir (Anupam Kher) goes along with Gullu's complex and fraudulent plan. One can surmise that his capitulation stems from an indulgent, paternal love, the sort that would drive him to do anything to keep his little girl happy. This is the implication, but we are left to fill in a lot of blanks on our own to get there.  The only reason it works is that Anupam Kher gives one of his more effective performances, one that delicately walks the line between the more clownish comedic tendencies he sometimes shows in mainstream roles, and the sublter, more layered performances we know from films across his career, from Pestonjee to Khosla ka Ghosla.

So with all this weighing it down, I've puzzled to understand why Daawat-e-Ishq works for me as well as it does.  A certain amount is attributable to old-fashioned star charisma.  I fall harder for Parineeti Chopra with each film of hers I see; the relatable mix of brashness and vulnerability that she brings to the screen is irresistible.  And Aditya Roy Kapoor comports himself well, too; he lands in a very charming space of confidence without the arrogance that one often sees in handsome young heroes.  Tariq believes that if Gullu spends a few days with him she will fall for him, but he is also willing to let her go if that bet turns out to be wrong - no stalking, no no-means-yes, just a healthy confidence in who he is and what he has to offer.  He has an unpolished kind of appeal, goofy but genuine.

In short, Daawat-e-Ishq has the basic ingredient without which there can be no romance story:  The characters are likable and one really does want to see them get together.  As Gullu steams her way through her scheme, there are moments when her confidence wavers, when her conscience kicks in; but instead of aborting the scheme and facing the consequences, she draws herself up and makes the terrible decision to stay the course.  And I care about this, because I like Gullu enough to hate seeing her make stupid, stupid mistakes.  Gullu is a well-executed character because she undergoes some real growing pains over the course of the film. What she does to Tariq is reprehensible; unlike other turnabout-revenge type stories (think Ladies vs Ricky Bahl), a fundamental flaw in Gullu's scheme is that Tariq himself is an innocent victim, not a jerk who deserves comeuppance.  The long, slow arc by which Gullu comes to realize this for herself is frustrating, but it is also, ultimately, satisfying.  

There's one more thing that has stuck with me about Daawat-e-Ishq:  its title song, a raucous and delightful rocked-up qawwali in which Tariq bets that the food he serves up in the restaurant he owns (sadly we never get to see any cooking in the film) can win Gullu's heart.  What can I say - a hero trying to seduce a heroine with food is super adorable.  It is the food-is-love metaphor made concrete, and I can't help but melt into smiles when Gullu tastes the kheer and sings "Haan, hai qubool ye humne maana..."  I haven't been able to stop listening to or even watching this song.  When I watched the movie I was having a truly gruesome day, and this song cut through some of the worst feelings I've had in a while and made me grin like a dope.  It's an epitome of much of what I love about Hindi films.  That alone is enough to make Daawat-e-Ishq, despite its missteps, a lasting sentimental favorite. 

 

Trickster No. 1

Not too long ago I went on a bit of a tear and watched about half a dozen Govinda movies in the space of a couple of weeks.  My latest column in Outlook is my brain on Govinda, comparing his 1990s character to the ancient archetype of the Trickster.  

Please read it and share.  

 

Khuda gawah (1992)

ख़ुदा गवाह

Dir. Mukul S. Anand

There are certainly some ways in which this movie is a hot mess, but it really doesn't matter;  Khuda gawah is thoroughly enjoyable in its bombast and excess all the same.  As a ferociously proud Pathan, Badshah Khan, Amitabh Bachchan delivers every speech in a thundering string of capitalized abstract concepts:  MOHABBAT!  IZZAT!  JURM!  INSAAF!  And it works, because Badshah Khan is himself a capitalized abstract concept given flesh.  He is not a character, not a man, but a walking complex of pride and honor.  Each time he booms "MAIN PATHAN HOON PATHAN!" it is clear that Badshah Khan is driven not by the force of reason but by the force of that legendary heritage.

Thus Badshah Khan's plot-driving bond with Ranvir Singh (Vikram Gokhale), the Rajput jailor who arrests and imprisons Badshah Khan, and also becomes his lifelong friend.  Badshah Khan sees in this man a brother who also has an impossibly prideful lineage to live up to, and if "Tum Rajput, main Pathan" becomes almost a call of love between them, so too does the classic trope of respect between lawbreaker and law enforcer.  When Badshah Khan requests a 30-day furlough for his marriage, Ranvir Singh bets his career on his faith that the Pathan will keep his word and turn himself in at the end of the month. Of course Badshah Khan makes good, and both Rajput and audience are deeply satisfied. 

Then there are the two characters played by Sridevi, who are, both separately and put together, all over the map.  First is Behnazir, who in the film's visually awesome opening (more on that below), proves a serious badass in the tribal competition of buzkashi, where horse-mounted contestants vie to collect a goat carcass from the wilderness and deliver it to the village. Behnazir matches Badshah Khan gallop-for-gallop in this (presumably) uber-mardaani pastime, and her ferocity in that wins his heart.  (His subsequent courtship of her is shown in a grand and marvelous song, a hilarious filmi exoticisation of an Afghan tribal musical gathering. Great stuff, and completely commensurate with everything else that is BIG and entertaining and unintentionally silly about Khuda gawah.)  

 
Badshah Khan and his sidekick Khuda Baksh (Danny Denzongpa, supergreat here as a good guy) gobsmacked when the champion buzkashi rider turns out to be Behnazir; Badshah Khan gets ready to take a chomp out of Behnazir. 

Before surrendering her heart in return, though, Behnazir sends Badshah Khan on a mission to India, for revenge on HABIBULLAH (name always pronounced in all caps), the man who she says killed her father.  One is left to wonder why a woman with the chutzpah and skills to hold her own in the buzkashi fray can't, you know, exact her own revenge.  That would have been a pretty good movie, too.  But it isn't Khuda gawah.  Benazir has a few minutes of badass screen time, and then promptly begins her descent.

When told that Badshah Khan has died in India in pursuit of vengeance (spoiler: he hasn't), this once-fierce Behnazir loses her shit completely, and caroms into the realm of the "filmi mad" - mussed hair, muddy face, clad in a shapeless caftan, with but two modes of communication: the Mutter and the Wail.  So much for the ferocious buzkashi champ that turned Badshah Khan's head.

Badshah Khan's successful revenge mission earns him the lifelong enmity of HABIBULLAH's brother Pashahhhhh (name always pronounced in an elongated whisper) (Kiran Kumar), a man who menaces the mountainous countryside dressed as a scarecrow.

Time passes, as it does in the movies, and before long Behnazir and Badshah Khan's daughter Mehndi (also Sridevi) is grown.  Mehndi is the kind of Sridevi character who makes you want to plug your ears, because SCREECH, and lament the utter squandering of Sridevi's talent that was the 80s and 90s.  Mehndi is that effervescent, hyperactive, dog-whistle-pitched type of heroine that makes you wonder if the filmmakers have ever met or spoken to an actual spirited young woman - or, more cynically and probably more truthfully, if the filmmakers believe that their principal audience never has.

In her favor, though, Mehndi drives in road rallies for amusement - a clever updating of her mother's horse-riding chops, and a funny one too, because the first half of Khuda gawah seems to be set in the 17th century, while the second half is in the present.  And Mehndi shows some ferocity of her own, like the 1.0 version of her mother; at the end, she participates fully in thrashing the bad guys, together with her Rajput counterpart, Ranvir Singh's daughter, Heena (the also always fierce and often underutilized Shilpa Shirodkar, whom I will always adore because Mrityudand).  (Badshah Khan's and Ranveer Singh's bonding ritual includes this cute choice of names for their near- simultaneously born daughters; they give the two girls the same name, with a little cultural twist, so Khan's girl gets the Hindu version of the name and Singh's girl, the Muslim version.  But it's notable that while Mehndi inherits her father's propensity to bellow "MAIN PATHAN HOON PATHAN!" at every opportunity, the best Heena can muster is "Main Rajput ki beti hoon!"  In the universe of Khuda gawah, at least, Pathan knows no gender but only boys can be Rajput.)

All of this is just delightfully silly, bombastic, over the top, and often unintentionally hilarious, making for a completely entertaining film.  But at the foundation of it all is some truly remarkable technical craft for which Khuda gawah must be given complete credit.  I do not know the technical vocabulary but the picture quality is much sharper and richer than many films of its era.  The opening scenes especially, of the buzkashi players' thundering gallops across the bleak, baked Afghan landscape, are actually jaw-dropping.  

 

Not gonna lie, it's beautifully shot.  Click on the still for full-sized glory.

Podcast: Best of Bollywood, 2014 year-end edition

Folks, it was my great pleasure to join Sujoy Singha and Beth Watkins for Sujoy's "Best of Bollywood" podcast roundup for 2014. Please listen and share, and let us know what you thought was remarkable - for better or worse - about last year's Hindi films.

Ardh satya (1983)

अर्ध सत्य

Dir. Govind Nihalani

About two-thirds of the way through Govind Nihalani's Ardh satya, a retired rural cop (Amrish Puri) laments the difficulties that his son, Anant Velankar (Om Puri), is having as an urban police officer in Bombay. The senior Velankar paces, distraught and muttering. He taught his son how to conduct an "encounter" without leaving marks that could support brutality charges. And he urged his son not to move to the city - in the countryside, he thinks, it's much easier to work out deals and cover-ups when things do go pear-shaped.  In the city, there is too much pressure and too much oversight.

The senior Velankar is himself a violent, abusive man, and the son he raised did not want to be anything like him. Anant wanted to study philosophy, not join the police force.  And having joined the force to appease his rageful, controlling father, he wants to do the job well and with integrity.  As a young Bombay police inspector, though, Anant's idealism is quickly broken as he learns what the rules of the game that cops and gangsters play really are.

Anant's struggle with the truths and half-truths about the operation of evil in that society form the core of Ardh satya's bleak and sad and riveting study.  The film is not merely an exposé of police corruption and misconduct - it's likely that Nihalani's audience would have been all too aware of such happenings and would not have needed them exposed. What makes the film so powerful is what it reveals about the toll these realities take on a human being who wants to rise above them but, being merely human, struggles to find the strength to do so.

Anant's superiors dance to the tune of the local gang boss, Rama Shetty (a chillingly charismatic Sadashiv Amrapurkar), a Bal-Thackeray-like figure who both runs illegal gambling and smuggling operations, and runs for political office.  Anant arrests some of Shetty's men, and is appalled to see Shetty have them released with a single phone call.  Soon after, Shetty extends an invitation to Anant, offering a sort of deal where each can benefit from the other's position.

 

Both Amrapurkar and Puri do intense things with their eyes.

Anant refuses, in disbelief and disgust. Still, while he won't make openly corrupt material deals with crime bosses, Anant is no shining Dudley-Doright type; the violent temper he got from his father and a tendency to overdo the brutality in encounters gets him into trouble with his superiors, even in the context of the vicious practices of the Bombay police force.  And when Anant does find himself facing discipline, the same shady palm-greasing that thwarts his own attempts to serve justice on Shetty now work to his benefit.  The hypocrisy tears him apart.

Niahalani's telling of this bleak tale is deeply effective.  With all his anger and flaws, Anant is a startlingly sympathetic character, with an anguished yearning to right his path, brought into sharp focus by his tender relationship with Jyotsna (Smita Patil), a college instructor with whom he shares philosophy and poetry.  Jyotsna is Anant's respite from the vicious dark of his job; she seems to ground him in the world he wants to live in.  But her hold isn't strong enough as the stresses mount; Anant begins drinking, even as a cautionary tale pops up now and again, in the form of a disgraced and pathetic ex-officer, an alcoholic named Lobo (Naseeruddin Shah), who cannot let go of the fantasy that he will someday get his job back.

Jyotsna observes Anant's increasing distress with a loving but skeptical eye; as he becomes more troubled and erratic, she gives him mamy chances but ultimately chooses to protect herself, rather than get more deeply involved with a man so clearly headed toward tragedy.  This is an unusual sort of agency to see in films, where women are generally self-sacrificing and dedicated to shouldering any burden to benefit the men they love.  Instead, Jyotsna chooses to liberate herself, and it is both a relief and a heartbreak.  Anant too achieves a sort of liberation in the end, consistent with his principles but in a far more tragic mode.

These are just a few of the unflinching elements that make Ardh satya shine though all its hardness and grit.  The film is like a police thriller in which the filmi elements have been stripped away, leaving gut punches in place of dishoom-dishoom, and raw feeling in the place of melodrama.  In one scene, Anant and his colleagues visit a dank den in which a bar dancer wears an outfit and does moves that wouldn't be out of place in a Helen song. But the sparkly escapism of Helen's songs is drained out of the image; it's monochrome and dark, tinged with a sour kind of dread, and the men leer the way filmi villains do, even the sympathetic Anant.  In scenes like this, turning movie tropes on their heads, Ardh satya gets right under the skin.    

 

Yeah, this is no Helen song.