Filmi Geek

Gangvaa (1984)

गंगवा

Dir. Rajasekhar

For reasons that are mostly coincidence, I watched three 1980s masala flicks in the space of a little over a week.  All three had Kader Khan write them and act in them.  Two of the three had Rajnikanth in them; two had Amitabh; two had Amrish Puri; two had Shakti Kapoor; two had Bappi Lahiri scores.  And so I had to write them up quickly before the three films became blended into one giant protein-enriched masala smoothie in my brain.  

I've written about Naseeb and Geraftaar already, and now turn to the most unlikely of the three:  Gangvaa.  Here's how it happened.

Beth (on Twitter): One of the suggested videos after #TaxiChor was Gangvaa, starring Rajnikanth and...Shabana Azmi. O.o @carla_filmigeek

Me: @bethlovesbolly I am speechless. Did you watch?

Beth: @carla_filmigeek I did not - I thought I should watch it with YOU.

A true friend!  So Beth and I watched Gangvaa, starring Rajnikanth and Shabana Azmi.  Starring Rajnikanth and Shabana Azmi.  I want to repeat that and let it sink in, because despite nearly a decade of adoring Shabana Azmi and exploring the ins and outs of her career, I somehow had not really processed that such a thing existed.   I've seen a respectable amount of Shabana Azmi's mainstream work.  I've also seen a fair amount of her work in dire and terrible films.  I've even put myself through the agony of Son of Pink Panther out of pure love for her.  

But Shabana starring opposite Rajnikanth, that stylized superstar who is even larger than larger than life?  That is a whole new level of pleasing cognitive dissonance.  Gangvaa was a film I simply had to see, even without subtitles.  What we got was a film that was more enjoyable, and made with more attention to craft, than either one of us particularly expected.     

This really exists. 

The basic injustice at the core of Gangvaa is the way the landed classes take advantage of ordinary village folk.   Early on in the film, a work crew finds a pot full of gold coins (these are delightful yellow-painted circles of cardboard, near as I can tell), and a suitably mustache-twirling zamindar (Amrish Puri) confiscates them to add to his already massive wealth.  Enter Gangvaa (Rajnikanth) to save the day;  like a classical mythological warrior, he makes his first appearance in the film riding a chariot. 

 
I couldn't get a good screengrab of the chariot, but here's the man a couple moments later. 

Gangvaa punches and kicks his way through the zamindar's goons, and quickly dispatches the zamindar to an early exit (presumably freeing Amrish Puri to move on to the set next door where he can play the same villain in some other masala movie).    There is a satisfying, if gruesome, spatter of blood on the camera lens to mark the zamindar's final moment on earth.  And Rajnikanth's trademark fighting style is such an undeniable thrill to watch, even for someone like me who is not a big fan of dishoom-dishoom.  He delivers multiple punches of bone-crunching force without moving his arm - it really is all in the wrist, I guess.   

Gangvaa puts together a band of the men who had suffered under the zamindar's tyrrany. Together they hang out in the wilderness and perform Robin-Hood-esque raids for the sake of vigilante justice.  At some point Jamna (Shabana Azmi) encounters Gangvaa and is smitten.  Then a village girl accuses Gangvaa of rape, and Jamna is enraged - it is here that she gets the vigorously indignant speech that marks Shabana Azmi's movies of this time period, the kind of speech without which one presumes should would not have accepted the role.

But indignation looks so good on her. 

It turns out that the rape was actually done by a totally different guy named Gangvaa (Raza Murad), and righting this wrong wins Jamna back for our hero, but makes him a new set of enemies that he spends the rest of the film fleeing from.  Also on his tail is an upstanding police inspector in the handsome form of Suresh Oberoi, who cannot allow vigilante justice in his district, no matter how noble the intention.  Actually I am not sure that Oberoi's character is the archetypical blemishless uncorruptible officer - having watched Gangvaa without subtitles I am sure I missed some nuance.  It is possible that I am merely projecting Oberoi's character from Tezaab on this film.   But I'm pretty sure I have it right. 

Suresh Oberoi's resemblance to Vivek is stronger in Gangvaa than I've noticed before.  Suresh is much better-looking though. 

There is a certain grimness to 80s masala movies from which Gangvaa does not shy.  There are several distressing suicides.  One is quite unexpected; two are commited by characters who would evidently rather die than give up information about Gangvaa.  That's the kind of loyalty that only Rajnikanth can inspire.  

Gangvaa also features some very creative violence and action, like a scene where a disposable goonda is strapped to a rotating wagon wheel.   In one particularly well-crafted highlight, Gangvaa is strung up by his ankles; he frees himself by grabbing a burning candle in his mouth and contorting his limber body until the candle's flame contacts the rope he's suspended from. 

 

I'm glad I watched Gangvaa.  I really did need to have the experience of seeing Shabana Azmi paired with Rajnikanth.  This was in fact my first exposure to Rajnikanth - I watched it before Geraftaar - and as I noted in my review of that film, I get it.  His presence is enormous, and thrilling.

The movie packs a wollop of a surprise ending.  I won't spoil it here but it's not a happy one, even though it provides more opportunity for Shabana Azmi to get her sexy rage on.  Despite this, Gangvaa is  not a bad way to pass a rainy afternoon.  Good songs, good character actors, and Rajnikanth eating an apple off a knife blade.  Set expectations accordingly, and Gangvaa is pretty enjoyable.

Shuddh Desi Romance (2013)

Dir. Maneesh Sharma

It is difficult to gauge the success of a movie if you cannot discern what it set out to do.  Shuddh Desi Romance ("proper Indian romance") might want to be yet another manchild-finds-maturity-through-love tale.  It might be aiming for tart, frank commentary on modern - read, sexual - relationships between young people  And it might be, as its title suggests, a straight-up romance.  The muddle of all these narrative approaches yields a movie that is, unfortunately, confused and unenengaging.

Moreover, Shuddh Desi Romance commits the same error as Wake Up Sid - it teases us with an interesting, agentive female character, and then expends most of its time and focus on the far less compelling young man in the story.  Gayatri (Parineeti Chopra) lives alone, supports herself, and forms (and ends) relationships on her own terms.  Raghu (Sushant Singh Rajput) is mostly a horny dumbass; reasonable minds can perhaps differ on how cute and charming a horny dumbass is as a filmi hero - the industry sure thinks audiences love them - but I've had more than my fill of the archetype, thanks very much.  

Trudging out yet another clueless manchild instead of developing an actual character is the least of Shuddh Desi Romance's missteps, though.  When Gayatri leaves Raghu's life for a while, the narrative remains with Raghu.  Eventually, of course, Gayatri returns to the story - but we aren't shown what she does during that time.  How much stronger this movie would have been, had it followed the trajectories of both characters.  Each of them begins with a warped view of love - Raghu's simplistic and idealized, Gayatri's damaged and cynical.  Shuddh Desi Romance at least attempts to show how Raghu's attitude toward love changes.  (At least, that is a reasonable guess at what it's getting at with his lurching from relationship to relationship.  None of the narrative is especially coherent.)  The film should have examined Gayatri too, her backstory, and the time during her absence.  Instead, it tries sleight-of-hand, substituting the depiction of sexual liberation for actual narrative substance.  Gayatri doesn't need a personality - she's a totemic Modern Girl.  You can almost hear the filmmakers congratulating themselves.

With this focus on Raghu, this film once again turns a romance story into a story about a boy - and he is a boy with no depth at all.  His flailing about with Tara (Vaani Kapoor), the inexplicable girlfriend at the other vertex of the inevitable triangle, ranges from dull to painful to watch.  Raghu rebounds, and then rebounds from his rebounds, all the while sure that this time he's really In Love (TM).  Tara's motivations are even less clear.  At first she seeks revenge against Raghu for jilting her early in the film, but then she falls for him for real.  Tell me you've never heard that trope before - and tell me it makes any sense at all.  As is so often the case in films like this, one is left to wonder what not just one but two seemingly intelligent and free-thinking woman see in this overgrown twelve-year-old.

Shuddh Desi Romance isn't all bad.   Despite the characters' unusual, and weird and unexplained, disconnect from any friends or family, both Gayatri and Raghu have a father figure in the jolly Goyal (Rishi Kapoor).  Kapoor continues to have the time of his life in supporting roles like Goyal, and it is a pleasure to watch him laugh and chew scenery and give bemused, affectionate advice to the film's confused principals.  There is also occasionally trenchant commentary on love and heartbreak, delivered by the characters in fourth-wall-breaking sessions chatting with the camera, in the style of reality-show redux.  These are cute, and together with Kapoor's scenes, are Shuddh Desi Romance at its best.  There are also some sweepingly beautiful shots of Jaipur, the film's unusual setting.  The story as a whole, though, is a slapdash, jumbled treatment.  The tale's shallowness would be forgivable if it were one of several vignettes in an ensemble movie like Salaam-e-ishq.  On its own, though, there is not enough coherence to convey any depth of meaning, and not enough substance to satisfy. 

 

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. 

 

Shashi Gone Bad: Chor machaye shor (1974) and Aa gale lag jaa (1973)

There is a certain amount of sexism and regressiveness that one has to tolerate as a lover of old movies.  One can't be too critical of a forty-year-old film for failing to precisely match one's personal, post-modern sensibilities.

That said, I can't claim to be entirely consistent about the amount of misogynist bullshit I am prepared to tolerate for the sake of a good story or a few cute songs.  For whatever reason, my threshold varies from film to film (or even perhaps for a single film, watched in different states of mind).  Some days I find myself willing to overlook sexist remarks or themes with a mere eyeroll.  But there are some sins that are beyond the pale, some ideas so egregious, themes so creepy, that no amount of charm and chime can redeem them, no matter how delightful the film in other respects.

Shashi Kapoor, at the peak of his career, played a vast number of upstanding characters whose ma-and-bhagwan moralism was so over the top that only his curls and snaggletoothed smile could make them bearable.  Two movies I've watched recently, though, test the limits of how far Shashi's charm can go in overcoming reprehensibly creepy behavior.  And the results are mixed. In Manmohan Desai's Aa gale lag jaa ("come embrace me"), the pleasure of Shashi on rollerskates - and of Sharmila Tagore doing just about anything - redeems a bizarre and unwarranted "concern rape."  In Chor machaye shor ("a thief cries out", Dir. Ashok Roy), though, even Danny Denzongpa and a range of better-than-average masala inventions cannot redeem some truly horrible behavior by Shashi's character.

Aa gale lag jaa has so much going for it - all of which is discussed in delightful detail in Beth and Amrita's podcast episode on the movie.  There is little more I can add about a movie that opens with a song staged at a roller-skate fancy dress party; a movie whose hero, Prem (Shashi Kapoor) is a roller-skating master by profession; a movie whose climactic fight scene even occurs on wheels.  These are the kinds of utterly fantastic, pure-entertainment details that only the mind of Manmohan Desai could cook up, presented with remarkable consistency across the film.  As it riffs on its themes of familial bonds (few Desai movies, no matter how wackadoodle, are without some substantial theme on which to hang their masala tinsel), Aa gale lag jaa offers some genuinely touching sequences. The single-dad Prem frolicking on the beach with his little boy; Heera Chand (Om Prakash) softening to his illegitimate grandchild over a game of marbles; Preeti (Sharmila Tagore) coming to dinner at Prem's humble home and finding a place set there for the woman he loved and lost: Preeti herself.  And this is not masala-by-numbers; there are some unusual themes as well.  Preeti is a physician (though we don't see her do much doctoring) who survives, with much poise and grace, a terrible heartbreak as well as the birth and death (she believes) of an illegitimate son. She is no shrinking ruined woman, nor a Mother-India type bearing everyone else's burdens as penitence for her youthful errors.  Even the perennial villain Shatrugan Sinha is ambiguous here; his character Amar is a romantic foil, and his medical methods are unconventional at best, but he is not a bad guy.

And yet, despite all this satisfaction, the spectre of that "concern rape" looms over the whole film, as it is the sine qua non of all the movie's touching family moments.  Early in the movie, Preeti takes a tumble in the mountains, sliding into an icy pond.  Prem rescues her, but in a mountainside cabin she trembles with hypothermia. Reluctantly, Prem strips her and himself, and joins her in bed to warm her.  This treatment, taught to Prem by Preeti's medical-school instructor, presumably doesn't have to end in pregnancy.  Penetration is not part of the prescription.  But perhaps Prem can't resist the allure of a semi-conscious naked woman.  Whatever the explanation, each view must decide for herself whether the ugh!-value of this rape casts a shadow that the otherwise rich Desai feast of Aa gale lag jaa cannot outshine. 

Chor machaye shor offers Shashi sins that may be even worse, for being recurring and more malicious.  Here, it is not just a one-time bad decision that sets up the rest of the story.  Instead, this Shashi character, Vijay, is persistently violent and abusive toward his heroine, and suffers no lasting consequences for it.  Vijay wants to marry Rekha (Mumtaz).  Rekha's father (Kamal Kapoor) opposes the match, and schemes with his buddy, a corrupt politician (Madan Puri) to have Vijay tossed in prison on a trumped-up rape charge.

Vijay's first affront comes when Rekha visits him in prison.  Believing her involved in the set-up, Vijay is justifiably angry.  But it is a quite shock to see Vijay, the hero, reach between his cell's bars and throttle the heroine.  This is the kind of behavior one expects of a masala villain - indeed, there's plenty of it from Danny Denzongpa elsewhere in the movie.  It is jarring, to say the least, to see it from Shashi.

Later in the movie, the shock compounds as Vijay, having escaped from prison, contronts Rekha for her supposed betrayal.  Since you falsely accuse me of rape either way, he says, I may as well rape you for real.  And with that Vijay tosses Rekha on the bed and reaches for the fastener on his stylish sansabelts.

No, Shashi, no!  Bad Shashi.

Of course righteousness prevails; Rekha shows a  moment of fire, Vijay relents, and the two are immediately bound as trusting, united lovers.  This instant absolution for Vijay is most frustrating.  Heroes can make mistakes; indeed, a hero who does is far more interesting than a flawless one.  But Vijay perpetrates attempted murder and attempted revenge-rape on his heroine, and gets away scot-free.  Rekha's trust in him never wavers.  Worse, he maintains his air of moral superiority throughout the movie, as only a Shashi character can, sanctimoniously mounting the high horse when Raju (Danny Denzongpa) gets frisky with a village girl who captures his fancy. 

As if hauling Mumtaz around by a rope isn't bad enough.

And it's a shame, because Chor machaye shor is otherwise very satisfying masala fare.  Danny Denzongpa offers all the tasty moral angst that Shashi does not, as Raju grapples with his violent nature and strives to overcome his more animalistic desires.  There is a terrific jailbreak sequence, where Vijay and Raju work together to create a distraction with a plan that includes tempting a goat with a bit of roti.  There is some funny sidekick-work from Asrani and Tarun Ghosh.  There are some memorable songs, too - notably the defiant "Dilwale dulhaniya le jayenge," far more fun and delightful than the Shah Rukh Khan regression-fest that borrowed its name.  But the echo of Shashi Gone Bad resounds throughout the film, souring the masala sweetness.