Bombay Talkie (1970)

Some films tell the stories of extraordinary individuals, true heroes.  Others show us very ordinary people tried by extraordinary circumstances, and the response of those ordinary people in rising - or in failing to rise - to the occasion is what makes the story compelling.  Then there are films that expose the lives of vapid, shallow people, films in which in which nearly every character is a pathetic, even hateful person.  Bombay Talkie, a relatively early product of the Merchant-Ivory-Jhabwala collaboration that produced so many of my favorite films in the 1980s and 1990s, is one such film.  And if you like the genre, it is a pretty good exemplar.

Lucia Lane (Jennifer Kendal) is an insufferable, superficial best-selling author who has traveled to India in search of ideas for her next novel.  Vikram (Shashi Kapoor) is a handsome Bombay movie star, a spoiled child accustomed to having whatever he wants, whenever he wants it.  They meet, sparks fly, and Vikram and Lucia dive headlong into a volatile relationship, to the chagrin of both Vikram's wife Mala (Aparna Sen) and a bitter scriptwriter named Hari (Zia Mohyeddin), who also has fallen in love with Lucia.  The film follows their on-again, off-again relationship, focusing primarily on Vikram's and Lucia's feeble attempts to figure out what they really want; somewhat less so on the toll their relationship takes on Mala and Hari. 

In one of the film's more interesting arcs, poor Hari, who (along with the sad suppressed Mala) is one of the few somewhat sympathetic characters in the film, is manipulated and goaded and victimized by his inexplicable love for Lucia; he seems to know she's not worthy of his love, and he despises himself for loving her all the same.  Even the relatively human Hari is not wholly likable, as he drips with open contempt for Vikram.  Still, his final outburst - though broadly telegraphed - is heartbreakingly tragic. 

Just as the film would have benefited from a closer look at Hari, it also spent too little time on the troubled Mala, doomed to be merely the movie star's wife.  We are given a tiny hint of the strain that her inability to have children has placed on their marriage (a time-honored theme in Indian film).  We also know that Lucia is hardly Vikram's first extra-curricular excursion.  There is a lot to be said about why women sometimes feel duty-bound to maintain a strong public face around philandering, selfish husbands, and Bombay Talkie only scratched the surface of that, because it wasn't about Mala.  And that's unfortunate, because she was much more interesting than the two petulant brats that the film actually was about. 

Finally, what irked me most about Bombay Talkie was that it seemed to treat India (and Indian films) with a certain condescension that I found both offensive and inappropriate.  The best example of this is in a sequence in the middle of the film in which Lucia, hoping to clear her head and put Vikram behind her, joins an ashram.  The sequence was promising in the beginning; there is a wonderful scene in which Lucia, so clearly uncomfortable and out-of-place, ducks out of sight of the guru and his devotees to adjust her sari, tucking and retucking, draping and redraping, unable to get the hang of the unfamiliar garment.  But instead of presenting Lucia's growing discomfort as an aspect of her own character, it is presented with a condescending wink and nod - not "Look at Lucia, too inflexible to adapt to a different culture," but "look at this adorable weird little Indian spirituality, too primitive for a civilized person like Lucia."  The film's whole approach - to the Bombay film industry as well as to Indian spirituality - rather had this tone to me. 

I have a friend who loves this film for the window it offers into a certain segment of Bombay society and the Bombay film industry of the late 1960s.  I have trouble appreciating Bombay Talkie on these terms, especially given its condescending tone; I can't take much pleasure in a putative insider like Ismail Merchant offering to the English-speaking audience such a contemptuous look at the world in which he cut his teeth.  Still, the film was compelling - rather the way a car wreck is compelling - and people who enjoy films that explore the weaknesses of the famous and powerful may similarly enjoy Bombay Talkie.  And the film has its whimsical highlights - one is the "Fate Machine," a giant typewriter upon which Vikram shoots a musical number with Hindi film's legendary item girl Helen.  The Fate Machine gave me the feeling that I've been watching the wrong Hindi films, as I have never seen a set that wild and surreal.

Comments

[Beth]

I hated almost everyone in this movie - Mala is the only exception that comes to mind easily. We'll have to talk about this at length some other time, as we should probably both be working at the moment, but I got an entirely different impression about the tone of the movie. I thought Lucia - her ignorance, her arrogance, her utter disregard for anyone or anything other than herself - was the target of the story's contempt. I _do_ think that India and the Bombay film industry could have been given a more nuanced treatment - and thus come across as more complex and compelling.

[maxqnz]

Now this sounds very interesting. Apart from the fact that even my father mistook a photo of Ismail Merchant for his own older brother, I'm predisposed to like the guy for his passionate commitment to Urdu. Even though I haven't seen this film, I also find it hard to attack him for a condescending approach to the Bombay film industry given its leads. If he is culpable for his condescension, what about Mr and Mrs Kapoor? Did Ismail Noormohamed Abdul Rehman point a gun at themand force them to act out a contemptuous and condescending take on their own world?

Back to the late Mr Rehaman/Merchant, though. Perhaps the condescension you saw was genuinely felt. This was guy whose primary passion in his artistic and cultural life was the preservation and promotion of Urdu language and literature. Maybe the condescension came, not from some "West is Best" mentality, but a simpler, "Bollywoood (pardon the anachronism) is bakvaas". As for any condescension toward Indian spirituality, that could well be the result of the then VERy pronounced conflict between traditional Indian spirituality and his own personal sexual orientation. That alone might make him inclined to view the West's more welcoming and accepting approach as preferable and more enlightened than the strictures of the India he grew up in.

[Sastimasti.wordpress.com]

i think you are spot on about the representation of indian spirituality - it's certainly looked down upon. as are the rest of the characters and situations - it's a very cynical movie in one sense. i don't think hari's character is at all one you can feel sympathy for - he's vindictive, jealous, snide and ultimately a false lover - he suffers the ultimate humiliation when his "love" tells him to fetch another lover, and yet what actually drives him off the edge is the other man calling her a good lay. he's too obsessed with vikram to know what love really is. the only let down is mala, whose character is dealt with in a criminal manner.

but the tragedy of films, and literature, is that they are often viewed through content only. the form is forgotten. i kind of agree with maxgnz vis-a-vis the bollywood is bakvas theory - the filmmaker is, in hari's words, tired of making films as vehicles for actors to get famous; and he goes onto show how the weird and wonderful of the escapist bollywood style can really be done in the brilliant typewriter song scene. that is both a reference to the industry he is from and filming, as well as a personal artistic interpretation of the particular filming aesthetic.

but the film's triumph is its sound design. the motif of the opening credits returns repeatedly in grim, foreboding forms, as well as light, uplifting ones. there is always music in the scenes, yet it is always diagetic - i.e. not like how music is done in traditional musical films. the scene where the three of them are dancing is filled with music and dance, yet not like how its done in traditional bollywood. the best is the final scene, where we don't see how the servant acts, only hear how his coffee table begins to shake with his shivers, is brilliant. this is not to say that song-and-dance is bad, its just that this is a very radical way of envisioning it, while still keeping it as an integral part of the film.

the film is very ambitious in its straddling of both worlds, and is replete with references to both. i think an interesting contrast to your review can be found in the 1970 review of the film in the new york times, where the reviewer enjoyed all the parts you didn't and hated all the ones you liked.

if we can drop aside our political feelings about how the film portrays a society or a country, and try to enjoy the fictional universe it creates, we can really learn to love such films.

diagetic sound: sound that emanates from the scene and is not extraneous to it, such as the music that is not being played within the scene or a voice-over

the nytimes link: http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9403E7DB1F3EE034BC4152DFB767838B669EDE