Filmi Geek

Jab We Met (2007)

Something I have learned about myself during my several years of watching Hindi movies is that I actually like pure love stories.  I'm content to watch a movie whose only plot point is how - not even whether - the principals will get together.  As long as the movie is well made, the characters enjoyable to spend time with, and the pairing adequately motivated, a romance alone can be enough to hold my interest.  Imtiaz Ali's Jab We Met ("when we met") is such a movie.  It doesn't have any cricket matches, or any goonda seeking redemption. It is largely unburdened by broader themes, like communalism, independence, or justice, that often distinguish masala films.  And yet, it's an engaging and sweet romance between two likeable people - and for that alone, a solidly entertaining movie. 

Aditya Kashyap (Shahid Kapoor) is a depressed, disaffected executive, the heir to his late father's huge but ailing industrialist empire.  In a suicidal funk, Aditya one day walks out of a business meeting and just keeps going.  He boards a train out of Bombay, with the seeming intention - to the extent he even has one - to leap to his death once the train hits speed in the countryside.  A kinetic young passenger, Geet (Kareena Kapoor), accosts him with a wall of chatter, and unwittingly saves his life.  Aditya escorts Geet to her family's home in Punjab, where her enormous, lively family takes him for her paramour.  But Geet confesses to Aditya that she intends to elope with a fellow she met in Shimla.  Aditya again hits the road with Geet, this time taking her to the Himachal Pradesh hill station Manali, to her Anshuman (Tarun Arora).  Along the way, Geet's vivacity touches Aditya - he falls in love, but willingly leaves her to a happy life with Anshuman.  Revived and inspired by Geet's moxie, he returns to his business and dives in with renewed vigor, setting the company back on track.  Soon, though, Aditya learns that things between Geet and Anjuman haven't gone as planned.  He sets off on another journey to find out what happened to Geet, and to help her set her life on a better course, as she helped him. 

Jab We Met draws on well-worn, even tired, romance elements.  There is nothing new in the story of a garrulous young woman wearing down the reserve of a long-suffering man.  The boisterous Punjabi family, full of strapping men equally eager to protect their womenfolk as to break into a bhangra, is another time-worn filmi trope.   Jab We Met does not exactly offer a fresh take on these themes, but it does present them with enough craft to make their very familiarity engaging, like cinematic comfort food.  

And Jab We Met is not entirely without originality.  Geet's uncompromising independence is a fairly uncommon feature in a Hindi romantic heroine.  I have seen its like before largely in movies that are close adaptations of western romances, like Pyar to hona hi tha, or Chori chori.  In those movies, the heroines have no family to speak of - their independence is wrought from necessity.  Geet, though, does have very a strong bond with her family.  She is on her own because she wants to be, because she feels a compelling drive to write her own destiny.  As she explains to Aditya in a thoughtful moment, Geet will be happy in life so long as she makes her own choices - even if she makes mistakes, they will be her mistakes.  This self-claimed autonomy gives Geet an unexpected depth in an otherwise by-the-numbers story, and is the greatest distinguishing strength of Jab We Met.  

A character like Geet presents Imtiaz Ali with a tough challenge. How do you make Geet's effusive (and often annoying) prattling get under Aditya's skin without also driving the audience to distraction?  It's guaranteed by the script that Aditya is eventually charmed by it, but the same cannot be said for the rest of us. Ali puts his actors to work walking this fine line, and while the balance ultimately comes out in the right place for me, I can't say with conviction that it would for everyone.  Kareena Kapoor seem a divisive star - I know many who positively hate her as an actor.  But she handles Geet well, toning it down when necessary to let some thoughtfulness or vulnerability show through.  Shahid Kapoor, too, proves his acting chops in key moments.  When Aditya leaves Geet in Manali with Anshuman, Shahid delivers a smile that is warm and sincere, and yet tinged with sadness.  It is a fairly subtle expression, and Shahid nails it.

As a final word, Jab We Met turns out to be a great movie to see as I get ready for my first trip to India in just a couple of weeks - its many road sequences deliver loads of lovely travel scenery that just make my heart race in anticipation.  From the Punjab to Himachal Pradesh and back again, there are soaring mountainscapes, idyllic fields, and supreme local color.  A highlight is Kareena's song "Yeh ishq hai", shot in Manali and packed with fascinating Tibetan dancers in gorgeous festival costumes.  

Golmaal (1979)

गोलमाल

As much as Delhi Belly is not my sort of comedy, Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Golmaal ("confusion") is a movie made for me.  Light, smart, and downright funny, Golmaal is a story of clever people improvising their way through a thoroughly ridiculous series of deceptions.  It is a simply delightful movie, similar in feel to Hrishida's equally charming Chupke chupke. 

With his freshly minted degree in accounting, Ram Prasad Sharma (Amol Palekar) needs a job.  To land a position with the stern businessman Bhavani Shankar (Utpal Dutt), Ram plays up his studious, serious side - dressing in traditional clothing, spouting aphorisms about the value of hard work, and concealing his passion for sports.  After Bhavani spots Ram skiving off work to watch a hockey match, the quick-thinking Ram invents a no-good, layabout twin, whom he calls (of course) Lakshman, and convinces Bhavani that the fellow he saw at the match was Lakshman, not Ram.  Bhavani, wanting to favor his protege's family, insists that "Lakshman" tutor Bhavani's daughter Urmila (Bindiya Goswami) in music.  Now Ram has to play two roles for Bhavani - the earnest respectful Ram, and the modern loudmouth, Lakshman.  Other improvisations force Ram to enlist an amateur actress, Kamla Shrivastav (Dina Pathak) to introduce to Bhavani as his mother.  Soon, when Kamla runs into Bhavani at a party, she too invents a twin for herself, so as not to blow Ram's cover.  It's not long before all hell breaks loose when Bhavani decides that the hard-working Ram is a perfect match for Urmila - she, of course, prefers the free-spirited Lakshman.

It's hard to say what is most to love about Golmaal.  It's crisply paced and smartly scripted, full of the sort of linguistic humor that I especially love (and that was also in Chupke chupke) - Ram graces Bhavani with such upstanding shuddh Hindi that Bhavani can't quite keep up.  The physical humor is hilarious and masterfully performed.  Utpal Dutt pulls a diverse array of magnificent expressions as Bhavani - wistful as Ram praises the value of the mustache, horrified as Bhavani listens to Urmila recite shamefully modern lines from a play she is acting in.  Amol Palekar, too, is charming, adorable, and very, very funny as he squirms every which way to convince Bhavani that his two sides are two different people.  One cute running physical joke has Ram constantly tugging at his uncomfortably short kurta.  The kurta itself is the result of another of Hrishida's favorite devices, movie in-jokes.  Ram borrows the kurta from his childhood friend, the actor Deven Verma (playing himself), on a movie set - it's short because it's Asrani's kurta, settled on after rejecting Amitabh Bachchan's as too long, and Sanjeev Kumar's as too wide.

Golmaal has too many funny set-pieces and running jokes to call them all out, but a few bear mention.  In one great sequence, Bhavani's widowed sister overhears Urmila rehearsing the melodramatic lines from her play, and concludes that Urmila is pregnant by a man who is now abandoning her.  Much hilarity ensues.  There are very funny running jokes about Ram's mustache.  Bhavani is nearly obsessed with the idea that the mustache makes the man, and Ram is equally attached to his own, which he sacrifices for the sake of his double life.  Every interaction between Ram and Bhavani is hilarious, whether showcasing Bhavani's over-the-top paternal affection for Ram Prasad, or his equally extreme disdain for Lakshman. 

The greatest joy of Golmaal is that even in its comedy of errors, it resonates with everyday experience.  Ram is neither as earnest as Ram Prasad, nor as breezy as Lakshman - his true character is a blend of both.  But most of us find that different aspects of who we are emerge in our interactions with various people.  I do not show the same face to the head of my department at work as I do to my closest friend.  By amplifying this sort of common multiplicity and taking it to an absurd extreme, Hrishikesh Mukherjee makes Ram - and Golmaal - supremely relatable.  Add in a lot of laughs and a few catchy songs, and the sum is just a thoroughly delightful movie. 

Delhi Belly (2011)

I recentlty read Neal Stephenson's new novel, Reamde, which is about (among other things) regular people who get swept into the circles of very dangerous criminals, and find themselves in desperate situations doing very desperate deeds.  Watching the recent dark comedy Delhi Belly, I was struck by the similarities of its basic outline to that summary of the novel. Most of us will never find ourselves face-to-face with the likes of the movie's diamond smugglers or Reamde's panoply of international gangsters, terrorists, and spies.  But there is something nevertheless compelling about such stories; even with its veneer of silliness, it's hard to watch Delhi Belly without thinking, what would I do if that happened to me?  

Tashi (Imran Khan) is a young, unambitious Delhi reporter who lives in squalor - borne more of laziness than necessity - with his two roommates, the lecherous photographer Nitin (Kunal Roy Kapoor), and a depressed commercial artist named Arup (Vir Das).  Tashi's breezy fiancee Sonia (Shenaz Treasury) has cluelessly agreed, as a favor to friend, to deliver a package that is quite obviously (to the audience, at least) contraband.  Sonia asks Tashi to complete the delivery, but thanks to a series of mishaps the package is confused with a stool sample of Nitin, who is afflicted with the filmi's titular ailment.  Needless to say, the intended recipient, a diamond smuggler (Vijay Raaz) isn't too pleased with the delivery.  And when the young men discover that they have a cache of stolen diamonds, they make a series of spectacularly bad decisions that lead to them chasing all over the city trying to sell the diamonds and, later, recover them.  Tossed in the mix is a colleague of Tashi's, the worldly Menaka (Poorna Jagannathan), whose homicidal ex-husband Rajiv (Rahul Singh) is violently jealous of Tashi - as if Tashi's life isn't complicated enough, an attraction is developing between him and Menaka.

Delhi Belly is, in an objective sense, a very good movie.  It's well crafted, nicely paced, and genuinely funny at times (despite a generous helping of toilet humor).  The three young men in their filthy apartment evoke a sort of parallel-universe version of Chashme buddoor, where post-modern ennui and bitterness replace the dreamy innocence of the trio in Sai Paranjpe's charming movie.  The characterizations are mostly lively, even if the characters are not always likeable.  The acerbic Menaka is especially appealing, though (partly because she is an older actor) she seems at times to belong to a different movie with more mature characters.  Tashi is the least lively; he moves through the film in a nearly emotionless haze.  This is probably intentional, as he seems rather buffeted and passive in his life, bullied into marriage by Sonia's family and shoved into a violent underworld he isn't at all prepared to handle.  And so even his dazed performance is engaging in its own way. 

And yet, despite Delhi Belly's strengths, I can't exactly say I enjoyed it.  Usually I relish high-fidelity renderings of Indian life, and this movie offers a very unusual serving of that, with its young urban atmosphere, its salty language, and its open, realistic, and often funny sexuality.  But perhaps I am simply too old for a movie like this one.  There are for sure some Hindi movies I like more than I would like their Hollywood counterparts, simply because they are Hindi movies.  Delhi Belly, though, is mostly in English, and while I can take some interest in it as an Indian movie, perhaps the overwhelming ways in which it is a youth movie leave me, teetering on the brink of middle age as I am, somewhat cold. 

Then there is the question I raised in the opening paragraph - what would I do in Tashi's situation?  The characters in Reamde do violence I could never imagine myself doing, but in the simple morality of that story the correctness of their actions is never really in question.  In Delhi Belly, by contrast, Tashi and his friends, motivated entirely by selfishness, take steps that ensure their bad situation gets worse and worse.  While that could arguably add an interesting shade to what is essentially an absurd sort of comedy, it does make it harder for me to root for them unconditionally.  And that leaves me feeling that I missed the point - that if I were younger, with nothing to lose, I would sympathize with them and be more willing to get into the spirit of the movie. 

 

Apne paraye (1980)

अपने पराये

Recently, thanks to a couple of thoughtful visitors, discussion has revived on my review of Swami.  By coincidence, the next movie I had in my queue to watch and review was, just like Swami, a Basu Chatterjee film based upon a novel by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay, Apne paraye ("our own and others"). 

Chander (Amol Palekar) is a bit of a layabout, a good-hearted man with a poor head for business and no taste for hard work.  He lives, on suffrance, in the household of his absent-minded elder cousin (Utpal Dutt), a wealthy and successful Calcutta lawyer.  Chander's wife Sheela (Shabana Azmi) runs the household with a stern hand, to the consternation of the laywer's weak-minded and sickly wife, Sideshwari (Ashalata).  Sideshwari can't deny Sheela's domestic competence, though, and she dotes on Sheela's children as enthusiastically as her own.  This fragile domestic peace is shattered when the lawyer's younger brother Harish (Girish Karnad), also a lawyer, arrives with his family and moves into the Calcutta haveli.  His wife Naintara (Bharati Achrekar) is jealous of Sheela, and angry that Sheela doesn't coddle Naintara's spoiled eldest child.  Naintara schemes to drive a wedge between Sheela and the impressionable Sideshwari.  This tension comes to a head when Naintara manipulates Sideshwari into having Chander and Sheela and their family thrown out of the house, and exiled to the family's farmland, where matters only get worse for them. 

Apne paraye has the potential to be the kind of movie I love - a taut, compelling exploration of the social problems of the joint family system through an intimate study of the lives of its characters.  This is the kind of movie that Shyam Benegal does so well, and I had high hopes that between Chatterjee's delicate touch and Chattopadhyay's story, Apne paraye would shine.  Unfortunately, the movie does not quite measure up.  The first half, which focuses on the relationships among the women, is unsatisfyingly superficial.  Zooming reaction shots and a booming soundtrack lends something like the feel of a saas-bahu serial to this otherwise delicately directed piece, and trivializes the tensions among the women by reducing them to catty jealousies over who is boss of the kitchen and who dotes on whose precious little offspring.  

The movie's second half fares better, as the story moves beyond the tight confines of the crowded Calcutta homestead and begins to develop some symbolism that adds richness.  Chander and Sheela are forced to face the harsh realities of the outside world, while for those who remain at home, the world almost seems to fold in on itself like a domestic ourobouros.  Naintara's bitchy manipulations escalate to fever pitch, while Sideshwari implodes in weepy dithering.  The men, especially Harish, overreact to the complaints of their wives, quite literally making a federal case out of a very ordinary domestic squabble.  The members of the household who remain in Calcutta seem to utterly lose perspective, while Chander and Sheela face the daily cold-water splash of trying to make ends meet in the real world.  Despite this potentially interesting contrast, though, the movie suffers from a facile ending, a giant "reset" in which the conflict is resolved without any sign of lasting consequences or transformation. 

The best moments of the movie are those that simply reflect domestic life without trying to wring drama from them - such as the family's meals, obviously a focus of the daily rhythm of life.  At mealtimes family business is transacted, grievances are aired, power is exerted and conceded, sacrifies are made, burdens are shared.  In the movie's only real hint of character development, early in the film Sheela manipulates her husband and sister-in-law by refusing to eat; later, she declines to eat out of sacrifice, when there is no longer enough food to go around, and Chander shows his maturation by offering to make the sacrifice along with her.

Making six adult characters all distinguishable and human is not a trivial task for a movie, and Apne paraye does a reasonably good job of it.  Naintara and Harish are a little one-dimensional in their self-absorption. Sideshwari's defining characteristic is her weakness and impressionability, but in moments when the movie is steering clear of melodrama, there is some interesting tension in her perpetually shifting loyalties.  Chander's shiftlessness is balanced by his evident good intentions and affection for his family.  Sheela is the most complex of all, and most of that complexity is thanks to Shabana Azmi's performance (and Basu Chatterjee's direction), as it is conveyed in subtleties of expression and body language.  While she is stern and dour in her direction of the household and discpline of her children (including the adult-child, her husband Chander), Sheela often betrays her tender side with a small indulgent smile. 

For every Chattopadhyay adaptation I have seen and been to some degree disappointed by - from Swami to Devdas to Parineeta - my lukewarm reviews have been met with staunch defenses based on the novel's texts.  I have no doubt that Chattopadhyay's novel (entitled Nishkriti) is better than Apne paraye, and presents the characters and their relationships with more depth and subtlety.  But I write about movies, not the books they are based upon, and I do believe that a movie - even an adaptation - has to stand on its own strengths and answer for its own weaknesses.  In its best moments, Apne paraye perhaps offers glimpses of the social insights for which Chattopadhyay is renowned.  On balance, though, it misses the mark - not by much, but by just enough to be frustrating.

 

Dabangg (2010)

दबंग

The last few years of Hindi movies have seen something of a resurgence of big masala.  I have seen very few of these movies, and so to begin to remedy that gap, I turned to Arbaaz Khan's blockbuster, Dabangg ("headstrong" or "fearless").  I can't say I was disappointed - the movie is a (mostly) retro-feeling entertainer on classic masala themes of corruption, revenge, and family bonds, updated with slick modern production values.  At its heart is an incarnation of the classic Angry Young Man archetype, rendered with just enough nudge-nudge-wink-wink by Salman Khan, whom I seem to like, in spite of myself.

As a boy, Chulbul Pandey is tenderly cared for by his mother Naini (Dimple Kapadia).  But his stepfather Prajapati (Vinod Khanna) openly and cruelly favors his natural son, Chulbul's dull, lazy half-brother Makkhi.  Once grown, Chulbul (Salman Khan) is uncensored in his contempt for his father and Makkhi (Arbaaz Khan), despite still living with them.  Chulbul is a police inspector - a corrupt one, who builds a minor fortune in bribes and blackmail from smugglers and other criminals he is supposed to be keeping in line.  Chedi Singh (Sonu Sood), ostensibly a student political organizer - but really more of a thug for the political party of Dayal (Anupam Kher) - tries to enlist Chulbul's help for his strong-arming dirty work.  But Chulbul doesn't like or trust Chedi, and extorts him instead.  Not one to readily to submit to that sort of demand, Chedi takes advantage of the slow-witted Makkhi, manipulating the rift between the brothers to try to gain the upper hand over Chulbul.

There is an awful lot of swagger in Dabangg.  Chulbul is nearly all swagger - Salman Khan's stiff physique almost won't allow him to move without it, and his crisply ironed shirts, expensive shades, and neatly-trimmed mustache multiply the effect.  But swagger is appropriate for Chulbul the anti-hero, who is a throwback to characters like Amitabh Bachchan's Vijay in Deewaar - he is unabashedly corrupt and criminal, despite an over-inflated sense of honor and fierce loyalty to those whom he respects, and especially to his mother. Indeed, Chulbul's notion of honor - and his somewhat out-of-proportion response to perceived violations of it - is his defining characteristic and a theme throughout the film.

Chedi Singh would like to have as much swagger as Chulbul - on some level, Chedi's rivalry with Chulbul is more about who is the coolest, most muscley guy in the village than it is about anything else.  Chedi is shirtless in about half his scenes - Chulbul, despite Salman's reputation for disrobing, doesn't lose his shirt until their climactic final melee.  And when he does, it happens with a style and humor that epitomizes the best of Dabangg's winks at the audience:  as Chulbul grasps for the first time the depth of the violence that Chedi has done to his family, his muscles bulge in rage, tearing the fabric right off his body. 

Despite all the self-conscious bravado, though, there is plenty of richness too, just as you'd expect from classic-style masala.  Makkhi is a dolt, but there is a sort of sympathetic sweetness to him as well; his main motivation is not to defeat the huge alpha-personality of his brother, but rather to marry girl he loves (Mahie Gill), whom his father rejects because she lacks for a palatable dowry.  One gets the sense from Arbaaz Khan's surprisingly nuanced performance that Makkhi resents his father's attention, that he never asked for it, and that he envies Chulbul's freedom to do and say anything he wishes.  Chulbul's scenes of reconciliation with him, and especially with their father, are genuinely touching, in that excellent way Hindi movies often have of allowing even the toughest and most relentlessly masculine of men to nevertheless display deep emotion. 

Dabangg's women add some depth as well, and as often happens in masala films, provide some anchoring and counterpoint to what would otherwise be overwhelming maleness.  Chulbul's romance with a sad potter girl named Rajjo (Sonakshi Sinha) begins with at-first-sight suddenness, but develops more satisfyingly after their marriage, as Rajjo gives hints of an independent personality and a backstory that is mostly left to the viewer's imagination.  Sonakshi Sinha - Shatrughan's daughter - is quite promising here in her debut.  She is perhaps a little too grave for the big masala feel of the movie, but at its best that gravity is reminiscent of the intense characters that Jaya Bhaduri sometimes played in masala films.  I'd like to see her in a serious role - I think she might have the chops for it, which is not something I often feel about very young actors.   The wonderful Dimple Kapadia is underused as Chulbul and Makkhi's mother, but fills the screen with tremendous presence in every scene she gets. 

Songs can make a mediocre masala movie memorable, and make a good one great.  The songs in Dabangg do not go so far as the latter, but they are satisfyingly pleasant and fun. The title song is an excellent number; its neo-traditional sound is far superior to the monotonous club tunes that frequently mar modern movies.  Its picturization offers a good sense both of village life, and of the protagonist's character.  And then there is the item number, "Munni badnam hui," picturized on an energetically sexy Malaika Arora Khan.  This number is very well-rendered, and I want to like it more than I do.  I admit, without attempting to rationalize, that I hold older films to a different standard when it comes to item numbers - I sure do love me some Helen, some Aruna Irani, and even some Bindu now and again - but there is something off-putting to me about a nautch-girl in a modern movie.  (I had similar issues with the widely beloved "Kajra re" in Bunty aur Babli, a song that "Munni" references briefly).  Add to that Chedi Singh's cartoonish leering - his eyes bulge out of his head as though he has never seen a woman before - and the overall effect on me is not entirely entertaining.  (It doesn't help that I don't much like Sonu Sood; he looks too much like Amitabh Bachchan.) 

I have to add a note about the violence.  As I have recently mentioned in reviewing Ram Lakhan and Ghulam, my tolerance for movie violence is already very low.  In movies of the 1970s, poorly synced dishoom-dishoom sound effects and watery, orange-pink fake blood yield violence that is too silly to be very disturbing.  In Dabangg, by contrast, violence is rendered with modern production values, and just becomes too much for me to bear. Body-checks are accompanied by hyper-realistic bone-crunching sounds, and gunshots by viscous spurts of blood and spatterings of flesh.  Even if I avert my eyes - and there were times I had to - the audio remains to churn my stomach.  The fight scenes are highly stylized and even cleverly amusing at times - Chulbul's first melee is interrupted when the cell phone of one of his foes starts to ring, and Chulbul stops mauling the man to dance to the jaunty tune.  The way that Chulbul and Makkhi finish off Chedi Singh in the climax is appropriately imaginitive and dramatic for the movie's masala tone (not to mention aggressively homoerotic!) - but also especially nauseating.  Most viewers probably have a higher tolerance for stylized movie violence than I do, but for me, it was just too much of too much, and eroded my delight with this otherwise very entertaining film.

Half Ticket (1962)

I don't think I can give a more fitting synopsis of this adorable madcap comedy than the one on the box of my Ultra DVD, which begins thus:  "Vijay (Kishore Kumar) was born reverse.  Seth Lalchand, a millionaire business magnate of Jubbalpur, who fathered this abnormal addition to mankind, began suffering its chain reactions right from the day Vijay acquired mobility with the postures of a quadruped.  Years later, when Vijay was skipping about rather too vivaciously on his hind legs, his antics and acorabaties (sic) were immeasurably greater than those normally found in the average biped animals."  The movie makes a little more sense than that - only a little - but it matters not at all, as Kishore Kumar's limitless zany energy, Madhubala's irresistible charm, and several absolutely superb songs combine to make Half Ticket a delightful and hysterical ride.

Vijay (Kishore Kumar) is a relentless troublemaker.  His antics get him kicked out of college, and when they embarrass his father (Moni Chatterjee), they get him kicked out his home as well.  Left to fend for himself, he decides to head for Bombay by train.  To con his way into a reduced fare "half ticket," Vijay dresses as a young boy and poses as an arrested development case, and caromes around as a zany man-child.  A jewel thief on the lam from police, Raja (Pran), sneaks a stolen diamond into Vijay's pocket, thinking that Vijay, an apparent mental patient, will be easy to manipulate and recover the diamond from.  Trying to escape from Raja, Vijay meets a performer named Asha (Madhubala), who also goes by Rajni, and charms her into protecting him.  Asha's marriage-obsessed aunt (Manorama) sees a match between Vijay and Asha too good to resist.  But just when Asha begins to fall for this peculiar fellow, Raja and his girlfriend Lily (Shammi), scheming to recover their stolen diamond, interfere to set Asha against Vijay. 

So much for the story, which is light, improbable, and totally beside the point.  The point, rather, is Kishore Kumar horsing around, donning goofy costumes, making silly noises, and just generally being funny.  And he delivers many laughs indeed, both on his own and with the help of the rest of the cast.  Sometimes the shouting-and-slapstick variety of Indian comedy doesn't work on me, but Kishore Kumar brings a transcendent ability to the screen - his wild flailing is utterly manic, yet he performs with perfect physical control.  He really is a riot. It's difficult to choose just a few scenes to highlight, but some of the best include a scene in which Vijay squirms away from Lily's aggressive grab-ass tactics as she tries to pluck the purloined diamond from his rear pocket.  Another comes in the form of a magnificent song, "Aake sidhi lagi," in which Vijay (fleeing from Raja), and Raja (fleeing from police), stumble into a gypsy camp, don costumes, and perform a love song together.  This song really has to be seen to be believed - you have not lived until you have seen Pran and Kishore romancing each other. 

(click for full size awesomness)

Madhubala is good with physical comedy too, and Asha's reactions to Vijay's antics are delightful.  There is something ineffably charming in watching a poised and competent young woman like Half Ticket's Asha (or Nutan in Dilli ka Thug, whose character is also called Asha) slowly and incredulously falling, against her better judgment, for one of Kishore's completely loonytunes characters.  Madhubala is masterful - and delicious - with facial expressions, especially in her two delightful songs with Kishore, like "Aankhon mein tum."  There are not enough superlatives to describe how beautiful Madhubala is in songs like this one.  And speaking of mastery of facial expressions, Half Ticket offers a generous helping of Manorama at her best as well, especially in the film's climax, where she drives a crane from which poor Vijay is dangling. 

On reflection, it occurs to me that Half Ticket offers less in the way of substance than other Kishore comedies I've seen - Chalti ka naam gaadi has a lot more going on, and even Dilli ka thug has a mild social context (the villains are purveyors of tainted medicine).  No matter - Half Ticket is chock full of deliciousness, laughs, and absolutely amazing songs - I can't neglect to mention "Woh ek nigah", which features Helen conspiring to protect Vijay from Raju.  (How can you not love a  movie that has not just one, but two Pran songs?)  Some of the humor is even a little less broad - there is very comical dialogue (including one great scene where Vijay scares away a pandit intent on finding him a bride), and some wonderful sight gags as well - look for the moment in "Woh ek nigah" where Raju pulls off Vijay's fake mustache, and Vijay reaches into his pocket to pull out a fresh one.  With all of this going for it, Half Ticket is naturally an instant favorite.

More screencappy goodness - once again, as always, click to enlarge.

Woh Ek Nigah Kya MiliWoh

Kalyug (1981)

कलयुग

This expansive, ambitious film by Shyam Benegal maps ancient parables of the Mahabharat onto a modern story of corporate and familial warfare.  With an enormous, gifted cast and Benegal's gift for storytelling, Kalyug is a compelling movie indeed.

The scions of a great family are at war.  The two branches of the family, Puranchand and Khubchand, celebrate life cycle events together - but the engineering firms run by each are bitter rivals in the marketplace.  The Puranchand company is led by Dharamraj (Raj Babbar), with the help of his younger brothers Balraj (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) and Bharatraj (Anant Nag).  At the helm of the Khubchand company is their cousin Dhanraj (Victor Banerjee) and a close associate of the family, Karan Singh (Shashi Kapoor).  The two companies compete fiercely for lucrative government contracts.  The Khubchand company wins a tender due to high-tech machinery that Karan Singh procured.  The Puranchand company appeals the grant and succeeds in wresting back the contract.  The dispute escalates, driven by Bharatraj and Dhanraj, who take the rivalry most seriously - and most personally.  Karan Singh's manipulations on behalf of the Khubchand company incite labor infighting in the Puranchand shop, through the volatile labor leader Pandey (Om Puri).  Karan and Dhanraj even scheme to frame the Puranchand company on charges of insurance fraud.  Soon the rivalry turns violent, and both sides of the family are caught in a terrible storm of bitterness and grieving.

What makes Kalyug a wonderful film is Shyam Benegal's gift for telling intense stories that are very intimate, even while being totally allegorical.  The dramatis personae of Kalyug is packed with many players, most of whom do not get more than a few minutes screentime.  But each is so delicately characterized, and the movie conveys enough of their lives and personalities, that they remain distinct, and the anger and anguish of each is keenly felt as the internecine conflict grows.  The older generation grieves to see their children warring with each other; the Puranchand matriarch Savitri (Sushma Seth) is especially troubled, and the pain is written on her face and in her futile pleas to her sons and nephews to reconcile.  Bheeshanchand (A.K. Hangal), uncle to both sides of the family, is perplexed by the battle; though he works for the Khubchand company, he carelessly reveals confidential information to the Puranchand side, throwing gasoline on the flames. Khubchand himself (Vinod Doshi), wheelchair-bound and ailing, can do little more than watch, tragically helpless as his family disintegrates around him. 

The tensions take their toll on the younger generations as well.  The older Puranchand brothers do not share Bharat's intense focus on the business.  Dharamraj only wants to watch his race horses train, and takes a "jo bhi ho so ho" attitude toward losing the contract to Khubchand company, to Bharat's great frustration.  Balraj is a cheerful fellow, more interested in his still-steamy relationship with his wife Kiran (Reema Lagoo) than in anything to do with tenders and profits.  The tenderness with which their relationship is portrayed early in the film makes it that much more heartrending when the escalating rivalry hits them personally.  And perhaps most compelling of all is the stark contrast between Dhanraj's response to the escalation, and Karan Singh's.  Dhanraj begins the film an intense personality, and he only becomes darker, more brooding, and more raging as the battles wear on.  Karan Singh enters as a cool manipulator, driven only by profits - but comes to find himself seeking redemption, and holding a more personal stake than he ever imagined.

Kalyug's atmosphere and visuals, too, are remarkably rich and interesting.  Providing a constant backdrop are the quotidian pleasures of wealthy life; horse racing, badminton games, golf.  Karan Singh returns to his richly appointed bachelor pad after a long day's work to pour himself a glass of scotch from a crystal decanter and listen to Bach.  Scenes of family meals and gatherings add texture, conveying both the tendernesses and the tensions among the many members of the extended families.  Juxtaposed with these are engaging shots of the working factory; heavy machinery manipulating flaming iron pigs and clanging out the companies' unspecified, weighty products.   

Despite all this delicate storytelling, though, I can't help feeling that there is still a great deal of shorthand built into the film, on the assumption that its viewers are intimately familiar with the Mahabharat. The movie opens with a family tree that neatly sets forth the relationships among characters.  My guess is that viewers are meant to map the Puranchand and Khubchand relationships directly onto the Pandavas and Kauravas of that epic - and that without that knowledge, I am missing even more depth and richness in the film. To highlight just one example, Dharamraj's wife Supriya (Rekha) says little but hovers dark and glaring through many scenes, and I feel I would understand her better if I knew where her character fits into the mythological structure.  Some day I would like to return to Kalyug with the Mahabharat under my belt.  The movie's complexity rewards repeat viewing, and I imagine I would get even more out of it with a better understanding of its antecedents. 

***

I don't often provide lots of screen captures in my reviews, but Kalyug's cast is so large and magnificent that I don't want to give them all short shrift, so here is an additional selection - click the thumbnails for a larger view.

Savitri, Supriya, Kiran

Another cousin, Kishanchand (Amrish Puri), and Bharatraj

Most of the greater family - Karan Singh, Kishanchand, Balraj, Kiran, Dhanraj's wife Vibha (Rajshri Sarabhai), Dharamraj, his son Parikshit (Urmila Matondkar plays the little boy), Supriya, Balraj's son Sunil (Sunil Shanbag), Subhadra, the youngest Khubchand brother Sandeep, Bharatraj, and Dhanraj

Balraj

Pandey, the labor leader who opposes the official Puranchand union

Karan Singh

Dhanraj

 

Ghulam (1998)

ग़ुलाम

After the surprisingly unviolent Ram Lakhan, watching the excessively violent Ghulam ("slave") was - dare I say it - a slap in the face.  This frustrating movie is the proverbial "little girl with a little curl" - when it's good, it's very good, but its weaker moments are horrid indeed.

Siddhu (Aamir Khan) is a sometime amateur boxer, a petty criminal, and a layabout, haunted by troubling memories of his father (Dalip Tahil), a one-time freedom fighter who died a violent death when Siddhu was a boy.  Siddhu's Dongri neighborhood is terrorized by the hot-headed extortionist entrepreneur Raunak Singh, or "Ronnie" (Sharat Saxena), for whom Siddhu performs occasional thug-duty, delivering messages and roughings-up to anyone reluctant to do Ronnie's bidding.  After winning the heart of a sad young woman named Alisha (Rani Mukherjee), Siddhu meets a social worker named Hari (Akshay Anand), who is trying to galvanize beleaguered members of the community into legal action against Ronnie.  After he unwittingly delivers Hari into a trap laid by Ronnie, Siddhu is inspired to take up Hari's cause.  But Siddhu's brother Jai (Rajit Kapoor) reminds Siddhu that their father might not have been the great man Siddhu remembers, and calls into question the very foundation of Siddhu's righteous beliefs. 

The worst parts of Ghulam are so bad that they are hard to watch.  The motorcycle gang that features an embarrassing squealy caricature of an effeminate man is bad enough, and the gang's reappearance toward the film's end is particularly stupid. The violent scenes are too numerous, and too interminable - Siddhu's showdown with Ronnie at the movie's climax is especially improbable and egregious.  And if I gave star ratings to movies, any movie that features a boxing match would automatically be docked at least one star.  (At least in Ghulam, the boxing match is merely gratuitious, rather than a proxy for real achievement - or worse, redemption - as it in that unbearable genre of movies that are actually about boxing.) 

Ghulam is redeemed somewhat by the contrast in its well-wrought characterization of the two brothers. Jai is the clean-cut, educated brother in spectacles and khakis.  He contrasts sharply with Siddhu's leather and chains, and rough Tapori dialect - to all appearances, he is far more like Siddhu's idealized memory of their father, the "bespectacled master."  Yet Jai puts all that class and education to work as Ronnie's accountant, cooking the tyrant's books and laundering his extortionate earnings.  Siddhu, for all his thuggish affectation, proves to have the stouter heart and the purer conscience, in a pleasing (if somewhat facile) turnabout of stereotype.  Even Alisha, clearly attracted to bad boys who feed her fantasy of liberation from her penthouse prison, only falls for Siddhu after he demonstrates his true nature by saving a rival's life.  Siddhu is the descendant of both the Angry Young Man character perfected by Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970s, and the sort of Tapori trickster embodied by Anil Kapoor in Ram Lakhan. 

And so it is fitting, and in hindsight not at all surprising, that Siddhu's great triumph is not that he musters the courage to testify against Ronnie in court - Hari's righteous quest turns out to be a bit of a red herring - but rather that he incites his neighbors to riot in a physical and violent defeat of Ronnie and his gang.  To me and my ordered, Western perspective, the violence of this victory is unsatisfying.  But I have to acknowledge, as I often do as a student of Indian movies, that I am not the target audience, and what I personally think is the correct course would not be the most effective course for people menaced by the likes of Ronnie.  In the movie, Ronnie's case is adjourned for a weekend, setting up his climactic confrontation with Siddhu; I know that in real life, a more likely outcome would be for the slow wheels of justice to creep along for a decade or more while he continues his reign of terror.  And so the violent solution is perhaps the only solution that would ring true to Ghulam's Indian audience.

The appeal of the stars carries the movie a long way too.  Aamir Khan's performance is, as usual, both physical and soulful, and Rani Mukherjee, while still very young, is thoroughly cute.  Their appeal is highlighted in the movie's best song, "Aati kya Khandala," which features Aamir singing his own part, and which is adorable; I especially love it when they dance next to the Buddha sculpture. Somewhat less effective, but still pleasant, are the two - not just one - romantic songs with scenes shot in Switzerland.  Of the minor characters, I particularly liked Akshay Anand as Hari, as well as Sharat Saxena as Ronnie (he does quite well with a character whose vein-popping apoplexy is a bit overdone).  I also enjoyed Siddhu's lawyer (Mita Vasisht).  Her performance makes me wonder whether they offer "Shabana Azmi" classes in acting school; if so, she appears to have studied very hard.    

Ram Lakhan (1989)

राम लखन

Listening to the Masala Zindabad podcast on movies of the 80s reminded me how little I know of that era in Hindi film.  Fears of gratuitous rape and violence have led me to steer clear, except for artier films and the occasional delicate social.  But the podcast roused my curiosity about some of that decade's better-regarded mainstream movies, and so I gritted my teeth and dug into Subhash Ghai's Ram Lakhan.  Three hours, no rapes, and only a little excessive violence later, I was very happily surprised to have seen a rich, excellent masala movie that I thoroughly enjoyed. 

Pratap (Dalip Tahil) and Sharda (Rakhee) are delighted at the birth of their second son, Lakhan, who grows up close to his brother Ram.  But a dubious family friend Bishambhar (Amrish Puri) cheats Pratap out of his inheritance and later murders him, leaving Sharda and her sons disgraced and destitute.  Sharda vows that her sons will be her weapons of revenge against Bishambhar.  The boys grow up close, but very different - Ram (Jackie Shroff) is a stern and serious police inspector, while Lakhan (Anil Kapoor) is a gadabout and a bit of a con man with big dreams of big riches.  To prove his worth to Ram and Sharda - not to mention to his childhood love Radha (Madhuri Dixit) and her father Devdhar (Anupam Kher) - Lakhan joins the police force himself.  But he is quickly seduced by the bribes of Bishmbhar and the gang of smugglers he treats with, the peculiar Kesariya (Gulshan Grover) and imperious Sir John (Raza Murad).  Ram is disgusted when he learns of Lakhan's abuse of the uniform.  Sharda despairs at the wedge this drives between her two sons, and fears that she will never see Pratap's cruel death properly avenged. 

What I expected from Ram Lakhan was a very male, very violent revenge fantasy.  What I got was a fun, well-crafted masala ride, packed with religious allegory, real laughs, and some great songs to boot.  There is some excessive violence, but it only goes over the top in the movie's climax, after more than two and a half fully engaging hours.  And while the brothers and their relationship are clearly the focus of the story, the female characters are strong and satisfying too.  Madhuri Dixit is at her best in Radha's two wonderful songs, the pleading "O Ramji", and the cathartic, rageful "Bekadar, bekhabar."  I sometimes lament the bad timing of Madhuri's career, such that her talents are largely wasted in mediocre movies that she elevates with her magnetic presence.  Here, though she has a relatively small part to play (albeit with a generous helping of songs), she adds delight to an already strong movie.  

The other women in Ram Lakhan offer more substance than I might have expected.  Ram and Lakhan's mother, Sharda, can only be described as the fiercest of masala maa characters - when she grows angry, thunder peals and lightning flashes.  Rakhee is amply suited to this role - she brings the perfect blend of mainstream melodramatic style and serious acting chops, and so there is some nuance in her face, even as the bombast of her dramatic scenes swells to true masala proportion.  Ram Lakhan is a movie that any Rakhee fan should see. 

The men, too, bring quite a lot to the table - and go a long way to helping me understand why they are stars.  Anil Kapoor is adequately cute and convincing in the mischief-maker role, highlighted in his introductory song "My Name is Lakhan."  (Any actor who gets that many drums to herald his first appearance in a movie is clearly already a larger-than-life star.)  Jackie Shroff is at times a little too stern and overbearing - he lays it on especially thick in the scenes that make the Ram-Lakshman allegory explicit.   But this is amply balanced by his tenderness in emotional scenes with Anil, and especially in his romantic song with Ram's love interest Geeta (Dimple Kapadia), "Tera naam liya". This superbly filmed song is perhaps the biggest surprise and my favorite song of the movie.  Jackie and Dimple are well-matched in age and gravitas; the song has a mature feel that is unusual for masala romance, and is yet utterly romantic. 

Ram Lakhan is not without weaknesses, but it's difficult to make a 3-hour movie without taking some missteps.  The most egregious of these is the terrible "Main hoon Hero" song, in which an utterly charisma-free villain (Bishambhar's son Deboo) challenges Lakhan to a dance-off.  The script also leans too heavily on irritating catchphrases, such as Kesariya's annoying "Bad man!", and Deboo's mind-crushingly stupid "India is greeeeaaaat."  But the teeming cast of over-the-top villains is a masala stand-by, and their bombast is appropriate to the movie's overall tone.  Even some of the comedic moments offer real laughs.   Anupam Kher gives the best of these - Lakhan tricks him into sitting on some eggs, and he lets out a whimper that sounds for all the world like the clucking of a hen.  In short, Ram Lakhan is masala done right, not nearly as violent as I feared, and thoroughly paisa vasool.

In Memoriam

Shammi Kapoor, 1931-2011

By now you all know the sad news that Shammi Kapoor passed away last weekend.

As (still) a relative newcomer to Hindi movies and an American, I don't have a lot to add to the many eloquent tributes that have been written and published over the last week.  I will only say this:  the essence of Shammi Kapoor's star persona was joy, love, and vivacity.  His movies brimmed over with energy.  And so, my own remembrance of Shammi Kapoor is a celebration, not a mourning. 

I've been celebrating by listening to and watching some of my favorite Shammi Kapoor songs, including "Meri jaan balle balle" from Kashmir ki kali, "Main gaoon tum so jaao" from Brahmachari, and "Aaja aaja, main hoon pyar tera" from Teesri Manzil. 

I'm celebrating with his movies as well.  I began re-watching An Evening in Paris last night (I wanted to rewatch Teesri Manzil but it turns out that even my rather absurd DVD collection doesn't include it).  I have plans to watch Prince in the near future and maybe catch up on some other of Shammi's movies as well.

I haven't seen much of Shammi Kapoor so far, but here are my reviews of a few of his starring roles:

• Brahmachari (1968)
• An Evening in Paris (1967)
• Junglee (1961)
• Kashmir ki kali (1964)
• Teesri manzil (1966)

Godspeed, Shammi ji, and thank you for all the smiles.