Filmi Geek

Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela (2013)

गोलियों की रासलीला राम-लीला

Dir. Sanjay Leela Bhansali

Bhansali films have been a mixed bag for me. For instance, while I am very fond of Khamoshi and Bajirao-Mastani, Saawariya hits some terribly wrong notes, and my seething hatred of Devdas is well-documented. Bhansali's aesthetic sense is strong, and even if he doesn't always pull it off, it's clear that he always has a grand vision in mind. In Ram-Leela, Bhansali fires on all cylinders.  Everything that Bhansali sets out to do in all his films with such mixed degrees of success, he achieves in Ram-Leela - his fairy-tale settings, his superstars so sexy it almost hurts, his visuals so splendid they are almost edible. For me, Ram-Leela turns out to be a nearly flawless film, and one that has only improved with repeated viewings. 

"Inspired by Romeo and Juliet," as the title cards put it, Ram-Leela sets its love story in the fantastical city of Ranjaar, and like any good fairy tale, it is firmly fixed neither in place nor in time. Ranjaar sits on the Gujarati seacoast, although bits of it are quite recognizably shot in Udaipur. And while the characters carry mobile phones and talk about Twitter, nearly all wear elaborate, traditional-style dress, dhotis and shawls and turbans. Only Ram Rajadi (Ranveer Singh), the rising scion of one of Ranjaar's two warring families, wears jeans and button-front shirts.  And from the moment Ram comes rolling on screen, reclining in a beefcake pose on a motorcycle that seems to drive itself, propelled by Ram's awesome sexiness alone, it's clear that he's the black-sheep rebel of Ranjaar.

In Ranjaar, an astonished tourist tells his friend at the film's opening, guns and gun-sellers are as common as bhel puri and sugarcane juice stands in Mumbai.  The half-millennium feud that dominates this landscape pits the smuggling Saneras against the gun-running Rajadis, and no one, not even small children, is exempt from the fight.  Alone among both families, Ram longs to set down his weapons and make love, not war. In pursuit of this noble goal Ram strides boldly into a holi celebration in Sanera territory, and a few colorful and smoking-hot flirtation scenes later, is bound in love to the Sanera scion, Leela (Deepika Padukone).  

But you can't grow up in an environment steeped in toxic masculinity without absorbing some of it into your own blood, and Ranjaar is nothing if not a sultry breeding-swamp for testosterone-fueled violence. It is the kind of place where completely absurd and reckless dick-fights routinely end in bloodshed. In one such contest, instead of dropping their dhotis and breaking out the measuring sticks, a group of virile young Rajadis and equally manly Saneras each decide to prove their superiority by shooting bottles off of the others' heads, William-Tell style. Unsurprisingly, Ram's brother is killed. In response, the peace-loving Ram loses his cool, and pumps Leela's brother full of bullets.  In the aftermath, Ram and Leela flee, vowing to end the cycle of violence. But their families scheme to put a quick end to their elopement, and thus comes the thin end of the wedge that drives our lovers apart.

Ram-Leela puts one entertaining twist on its testosterone-soaked fever dream: The leader of the Saneras is a woman, Dhankor Baa (Supriya Pathak), Leela's mother. Dhankor is as vicious and ruthless as any of her deputies. She is also a treat to watch. Supriya Pathak both chews scenery and adds subtle emotive touches that keep her grounded. As hot as Ram and Leela are, Dhankor is the real scene-stealer of their movie, alternating carefully calibrated bursts of vicious temper with unctuous displays of measured wryness.  It is a brilliantly controlled melodramatic performance.  On a recent rewatch I found myself wondering what Ram-Leela would look like with Shabana Azmi in the role of Dhankor; I quickly realized that such a movie exists, and is called Godmother.  Like Rambhiben of that movie, Dhankor Baa operates far outside the sphere of traditional femininity, wielding nearly incontestable power and commanding terrified respect.  But Rambhiben is embedded in a matrix of realism, while Dhankor resides in a fable. And that gives Supriya Pathak a little more latitude to have fun with her menacing role.

 

I didn't even get to mention Richa Chadda, almost unbearably hot and fierce as Leela's bhabhi. 

Though the film at first hews pretty closely to the Romeo & Juliet outline - warring families, clandestine balcony rendezvous complete with an adaptation of the "rose by any other name" line, brothers slain in revenge, secret elopement, even a suitor for Leela (a hilariously bumbling NRI archaeologist) - in a rather thrilling embellishment, Bhansali ups the stakes with events that propel both Ram and Leela to the heads of their respective families. And so the final showdown begins as a face-off and negotiation between Ram and Leela themselves, standing for Rajadi and Sanera in toto - an intense blending of business, vengeance, and passion.

The film is full of sequences like this, full of amped-up explosive intensity.  Ranveer Singh pulls off this kind of barely-restrained mania like no other actor, and with both his oiled pecs (Leela actually makes fun of Ram's perfectly hairless chest) and Deepika Padukone on the screen, there is almost too much beauty to bear.  They look amazing together, and while this worked well enough in Bajirao Mastani, it is off the charts in Ram-Leela. The color palates of Ram-Leela are gorgeous as well; there is a running metaphor involving peacocks, and at times the whole film seems peacock-colored, shimmering blues and deep blood reds.  In one of the film's generous complement of songs, Priyanka Chopra looks good enough to eat on a backdrop that is somehow both infinitely parti-colored and soothingly pastel blue, a set that puts the excess of Devdas to shame in the way it successfully layers more and more and more and yet stays just this side of too much.

If there is a flaw in Ram-Leela - and this is such a nitpick - it is some ill-advised choreography.  In one song Ram and his army of background dancers do (and overdo) a move that must have been lifted out of a dandruff-shampoo commercial, flapping their palms on the backs of their heads long enough that you start to feel a little embarrassed for them. In another, Ram and Leela recall the 90s with some very goofy side-by-side dancing worthy of Govinda-Karishma or Jeetu-Sridevi.  Still these are such minor complaints. The songs themselves are marvelous, now recalling Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, now Devdas, and all visually dazzling. The film is just pure joy to watch, and to watch again - sexy, beautiful, gripping, and damn good fun.  

 

Jugnu (1973)

जुगनू

Dir. Pramod Chakravorty

Jugnu is a super-satisfying masala film built around a title character who is part Batman, part Robin Hood. Batman, because Ashok Roy (Dharmendra) is a wealthy, respected member of his community who moonlights as a disguise-wearing do-gooder. And Robin Hood, because the good that Ashok's alter ego, Jugnu, does is robbing other rich people to finance the orphanage he runs for apparently hundreds of little boys (little orphaned girls are on their own, I guess). As Ashok, he is always nattily dressed, a man about town. When he transforms into Jugnu he might impersonate a sardar or a pathan, defraud a bunch of smugglers out of their booty or creep into a heavily guarded museum to pinch the jewel-encrusted treasures within.  Ashok Roy leads a very busy life.

And the movie about him is a ton of fun, about as satisfying masala as there is, seasoned with a few borrowings from the spy-movie and heist-movie genres.  In one sequence, Jugnu goes after a bejeweled fish sculpture, protected by the most high-tech security system that the movies can offer: the criss-cross cage of invisible beams that, when breached, trigger an alarm. In Jugnu, the beams become visible to anyone who dons a special viewer that looks suspiciously like a swim mask, and thanks to the film's budget the beams themselves look a whole lot more like neon tubes than ephemeral beams of infrared radiation.

 

After a jaunty song (of course) distracts the museum guard long enough for Jugnu to climb onto its roof, there is a bit lifted right out of my favorite heist movie, How To Steal A Million (which for all I know lifted it from somewhere else).  Jugnu uses a strong magnet's pull through a wall to manipulate a key off its hook and into its keyhole just like Peter O'Toole. Sadly, it isn't followed by setting off the alarm with a toy airplane or making out with Audrey Hepburn in a broom closet, but that's really not a strike against Jugnu.  Because who needs Audrey Hepburn when you have Hema Malini, who is as much of a badass in this film as ever?  When we (and Ashok) first meet her character, Seema, she is giving a sharp-shooting demonstration with a pair of pistols that charms Ashok right out of his snakeskin shoes. Later, she holds her own in a melee scene or two, something that Hema Malini does more and better than any heroine of her era.  She even gets to pilot a helicopter.  A HELICOPTER.  Seema is also a superior dancer - of course - providing the opportunity for just one of Jugnu's fantastic songs. Another one of those great songs comes when the jealous Ramesh (Prem Chopra), hoping to make a fool of Ashok, spikes a glass of soft drink that is naturally consumed by Seema instead.  The result is something magical: not merely a drunk song, and not merely a rain song, but a drunk-in-the-rain song.  Bada maza aaya, indeed.  

 

Ramesh's relationship to Ashok is a tangled masala microcosm in itself; after Ashok's grandfather (Nasir Hussain) becomes estranged from Ashok's father (Pran), he is defrauded into believing that Ramesh is his long-lost grandson, and raises the boy with all the love and privilege that should have been Ashok's. In the meantime, Ashok's mother is murdered and little-boy Ashok kills her murderer in revenge; this guy turns out later, of course, to be Seema's father. No masala element is spared in the construction of this magnificent narrative. 

And there is more, so much more.  Jugnu is an epitome of all the reasons we watch masala.  There's Dharmendra's cute patriotic song, performed with the help of a hundred adorable little boys and capped by "Jai Hind" written in fireworks.  The theme of patriotism is flogged rather hard throughout, in fact; Ashok's father was a freedom fighter, and though Ashok never knew him, Ashok himself frequently proclaims his loathing for traitors.  There's a comic sidekick as well, Mehmood, who gets his apotheosis while wearing a clown suit and evading a prowling tiger. There is even Ajit as the head bad guy, menacing about his stylish tricked-out lair with a steel lobster claw in place of a hand.  Jugnu just pulls out all the stops in the name of paisa vasool, and it doesn't disappoint - not for a minute.

 

 

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. 

 

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.

The Train (1970)

Dir. Ravee Nagaich

Notwithstanding a fairly unremarkble (if not downright dumb) plot and a star I do not especially like, The Train is a terrifically fun mystery-suspense sort of movie that more than makes up in style what it lacks in other elements.  In both visual sensibility and story-framing, it is almost as good as a Vijay Anand gem.  And even though Rajesh Khanna is in nearly every scene, he somehow restrains the froggy, droopy-eyed mumbling that makes him so doughy and unpleasant in certain other films. 

One of the many pleasures of The Train is its abundance of Helen, who not only gets two songs but plays a substantial role as well, as Lily, the gangster's moll who is also in love with our hero, Inspector Shyam (Khanna).  In a noteworthy detail, Lily is a former college classmate of Shyam; it is not so common for a vamp to have an education.  But if you have ever seen a movie in which Helen plays a character, Lily's ultimate fate won't surprise you.  It occurs to me to advise Hindi film characters that if they want to survive to the film's end, they should not be played by Helen. 

  

Like a Vijay Anand film, The Train motors along at a fairly engaging pace.  This is partly because it foregoes the development of a romance.  At the film's opening.  Shyam and Neeta (Nanda) are already seriously involved.  This is a smart move, as it trims the story, keeping the focus mostly on the crimes and the intrigue.  But it is clever, too, in that it raises the stakes; when the romance goes wrong, there is a sense of a deep relationship in jeopardy, not the cheap fluff of a love-at-first-sight infatuation that just began a few minutes ago. 

And so The Train remains gripping, even as the story grows a little stupid.  Neeta and Shyam are on the rocks because Shyam, ever the upstanding police inspector, turned in Neeta's father when he escaped from prison after being accused (falsely, Neeta insists) of murder.  Meanwhile Shyam is on the trail of some murderous jewel thieves led by "Number 1" (Madan Puri).  The cartel operates a hotel where Neeta has taken a job, and where Lily dances, when she is not trying to seduce Shyam.  Soon Shyam is saddled with a buffoonish witness, Pyarelal (Rajendranath), who has been conned by a member of the gang - a woman who looks a whole lot like Neeta.  Shyam must endure traveling around with Pyarelal for while, tracking this mysterious woman from city to city on the Calcutta Express (the titular train), so that Pyarelal can identify her.  

In another clever pacing maneuver, the obligatory comic side plot of movies of this era is absorbed into the main story in the form of Pyarelal, who is doofusy but good-hearted.  Pyarelal is more than a little stupid; he surely tries Shyam's patience, though Shyam maintains a facade of equanimity.  But I do love Rajendranath, big lovable teddy bear that he is.  He projects the most delightful, guileless sweetness.  And since he is part of the story, his goofy antics do not anchor the motion of the film the way comic side-plot characters so often do.

The Train makes use of some interesting visual metaphors as well, mostly through several rapid-cut sequences.  One such intercut sequence of images conveys a sort of dream-state version of Shyam and Neeta's romance; it seems like the beginning of a song picturization.  But it ends abrubptly with an overhead shot of the two of them, reclining in a patch of grass among a flurry of falling flower petals, as Shyam dreamily asks, "kya yeh asli hai, ya sapna?" The clever sequence invites us into Shyam's sleepy, love-warmed state of mind.  Detailed bits of craft like this help to elevate The Train above its pulpy plot, to something beyond mere timepass, making it a memorable, stylish piece of cinema.