Filmi Geek

Silsila (1981)

सिलसिला

I'm not sure whether it reflects any particular cultural turning point in India - or just events in the lives of the people who make the movies - but whatever the reason, the early 80s produced a cluster of excellent films about adultery.  I've written before about two of these, Arth and Masoom.  Another is Silsila ("Connection"), a film which illuminates the interplay between duty and desire, and which was perhaps at the vanguard of the adultery-film phenomenon. 

Amit Malhotra (Amitabh Bachchan) has fallen madly in love with Chandni (Rekha) and plans to marry her.  He and his brother, fighter pilot Shekhar (Shashi Kapoor) plan a double wedding: Amit to Chandni, and Shekhar to his patient fiancee Shobha (Jaya Bachchan).  When Shekhar is killed in the line of duty, and Amit learns that Shobha is pregnant, Amit decides to marry Shobha out of a sense of love and duty toward his brother's memory.  Without explanation, Amit breaks off his relationship with Chandni and marries Shobha.  Circumstances conspire to reunite Amit and Chandni, though, and although she is married to a good, kind man (Sanjeev Kumar), the spark between her and Amit burns too brightly for them to resist.  They begin a steamy, clandestine affair, but both their marriages crumble as the secret becomes increasingly difficult to keep.

Silsila's resolution is abrupt, overwrought, and contrived, and arguably compromises the integrity of the story.  Nevertheless, the film up to the last 20 minutes or so is deliberately paced, tense, and believable.  Its realism and sensitivity is driven by the performances of its principals.  Before Shekhar's death, Amit is the brash, boisterous hero archetype that Amitabh played in so many of his films; afterwards, though, Amitabh transforms the character, as Amit bends and breaks under the weight of his grief and the sacrifices he feels he has to make.  Both Amitabh and Jaya convey a sense of people reluctantly doing their duty and willing themselves to be, if not happy, then at least stable and not miserable. 

The true star of Silsila, though, is Sanjeev Kumar, whose performance is amazingly nuanced.  His Dr. Anand carries in his face and in his body the fear that he is losing Chandni.  In one stunning scene, Chandni sees Anand off on a business trip; Anand hesitates to leave her and board his plane, and his anxiety that she may leave him before he returns is palpable.  Sanjeev Kumar is one of the era's most subtle actors, and his moving performance in Silsila shines. 

The weak link for me among the work of the four principals (five if Shashi is included) is Rekha.  I have never really warmed to Rekha, except in Umrao Jaan, a role I think she was born to play.  In Silsila, she is a little too breathless and ephemeral a match for the solid and earthy Amitabh.  This is clearly just my opinion, though, as the two actors were long rumored to have shared a steamy romance in real life, and many Bollywood fans consider them a perfect pair.  Indeed, Silsila's casting is rather remarkable, as the film portrays Amitabh married to his real-life wife Jaya, having an affair with his putative real-life mistress Rekha.  It is hard for me to imagine what this must have looked like at the time, to observers both within the industry and among the janta, the general movie-watching public at large.

At any rate, my cold response to Rekha, combined with some weaknesses in her character - Chandni seems driven entirely by Amit's wishes and takes no decisive actions of her own - left me somewhat emotionally detached from her part of the story.  She came to life only when she smiled - or danced, as in the sparkling "Ladki hai ya shola" ("Is she a girl or a flame?"), marking Chandni and Amit's first meeting.  Other memorable songs include the Holi festival number "Rang barse" - a pivotal moment in the story - and "Dekha ek khwab" ("I had a dream"); the latter is a great song, but the picturization is a little cloying, as Amitabh and Rekha roll around in Dutch tulip fields.

Guide (1965)

Even in his prime Dev Anand had something of a creepy dirty old man about him, and his films tend toward the preachy side.  But somehow I like them anyway.  They are well-crafted and interesting, and always feature delectable heroines and terrific song and dance.  Jewel Thief in particular is a delicious confection from beginning to end; Hare rama hare krishna, while more serious and less perfectly wrought, also has its strengths.  Guide is still weightier fare, but it delivers its heavy-handed spiritual message with a beautiful sense of style.

Raja (Dev Anand), freshly released from prison, decides to get a fresh start in a distant city.  On the way, he takes a nap in a temple; the villagers mistake him for a wandering holy man, and he goes along with the error, enjoying the free food and free shelter.  A flashback that lasts most of the film's length provides Raja's backstory.  He started out as a tour guide in a small town.  A visiting archaeologist and his wife Rosie (Waheeda Rehman) engage his services, and as he gets to know them he learns that their marriage is troubled.  Rosie only wants to dance, an activity that her husband forbids.  When the marriage finally implodes, Raja helps Rosie pursue her dream - falling in love with her in the process - and before long she is a world famous dancer.  Eventually things turn sour for Raja and Rosie as well, and a distance grows between them; a series of poor choices by both of them leads to their separation and Raja's incarceration.  Back in the story's present, Raja is drawn deeper into the spiritual needs of the villagers who have anointed him their swami.  Ultimately, Raja must make a decision: withdraw from the con-game that made him the villager's spiritual leader, or face his own spiritual journey head-on.    

Raja's spiritual journey is moving, but it is also a peculiar bookend to the meat of the story:  his relationship with Rosie, and Rosie's confusion about what she wants from her life.  There were no delicate parallels to be found between Rosie's arc and Raja's; the two stories are connected because Raja is involved in both of them, but it seems that Raja could have had any number of troubled relationships and still ended up in the same place. 

Still, while it isn't the most cohesive film ever, Guide is gripping, not least  because of the dramatic, alluring intensity of Waheeda Rehman.  She is stunningly beautiful, and she offers a performance of tightly wound, dark intensity punctuated by eye-popping, brilliant dance.  In her first number of the film, the famous "snake dance," she cuts loose with an intensity that palpably conveys the passion that Rosie's disapproving husband has forced her to suppress.  And the profound, emotional S.D. Burman soundtrack gives her many more moments to shine:  "Piya tose" tracks Rosie's meteoric rise from village entertainer to international superstar; within the course of the song she dances in ever larger production numbers on ever larger stages.  And in "Mose chal," Rosie dances out her anger at Raja when she thinks he has cheated and betrayed her.

All in all, Guide is an effective film, quite different from your stereotypical Bollywood love story, and quite sensitive, if somewhat preachy, in both its portrayal of the earthly concerns of a sad divorced woman and its ultimate discourse in Vedic philosophy and spirituality.

Filmi Geek metapost

Filmi Geek is now completely up-to-date; there is now a post for every Indian movie I have seen.  Since on average I only watch 3-4 new (to me) Hindi films in a month, there will be more time between posts from now on. 

But I'm still here, improving things behind the scenes.  I have expanded and revised some existing posts, and will continue to do so as I re-watch films I saw a relatively long time ago.  For example, I recently expanded my Fire review, which I never felt did justice to my deep, irrational love for that film.  And this week I watched Nishant again, with a much different perspective from the first time I saw it well over a year ago, so I completely overhauled its post as well.  I've also been adding new YouTube video links to some of my existing posts.  So there's stuff going on, even if it doesn't appear as new posts on the main page. 

I invite you all to suggest features you would like to see added to Filmi Geek, such as additional categories or different kinds of posts.  I am considering doing some posts about filmi music, separate from posts about the corresponding films; I welcome your thoughts on what else I can add to make Filmi Geek more useful and more fun. 

Finally, I'm getting over a hundred hits a day now and so I want to thank everyone who stops by for reading.  I hope you enjoy your stay and I am grateful for your visits and your comments.  Filmi Geek is a labor of love for me, an archive for me to remember what I've seen and how I felt about it, but if others can enjoy it too so much the better.  Thank you! 

<---- Shabana Azmi reading Filmi Geek.  Okay, probably not.  But a girl can dream, can't she? 

Masoom (1983)

मासूम

Masoom is a sweet, sad story about the repercussions of bad decisions made by basically good people. 

Indu (Shabana Azmi) and DK (Naseeruddin Shah) have a happy marriage.  They are partners and lovers, and their prosperous home is filled with the laughter of their two sunny, affectionate daughters.  One day, this joyful peace is shattered when DK receives word that he has a son - early in his marriage to Indu, he had a brief affair with another woman, who had his child and never told him.  Now the woman is dead, and the boy, Rahul (Jugal Hansraj), is in need of a father and a home.  Over the objections of Indu, who is heartbroken and devastated to learn of her husband's unfaithfulness, the boy comes to stay with them for a time.  Rahul bonds with Indu and DK's daughters - and with DK - but Indu can't bear to look at the boy, who is a physical, tangible reminder of DK's breach of her trust. 

The film's title, Masoom, means "innocent," and there are a number of innocent victims of DK's transgression, not least the boy Rahul himself, who only wants to be loved, to be part of the family, and to find his father.  In one particularly heartbreaking sequence, Rahul, puzzled by Indu's coldness to him, makes her a birthday gift;  she struggles palpably with tenderness toward him on the one hand, and horror and anger at what he represents on the other.  Indu herself is innocent as well, and the film puts her in a terrible position.  It is heartbreaking to watch her take out her pain and anger on the boy and grapple to come to terms with what she knows she has to do for him.

I've expressed this particular fan-girl gushiness before, but Masoom inspires it afresh:  one of the things I love best about Shabana Azmi is that she conveys so much in her silences.  She never needs a lot of dialogue to make plain the contents of her character's heart and mind. Her performance in Masoom is no exception; she makes Indu's struggle palpable, as she alternates between tenderness and coldness toward the boy, or toward her husband.  One of the most poignant such scenes occurs when DK and Rahul return from a few days away from the family.  Indu's daughters leap with excitement at their father's return, and for a moment Indu is joyful as well - a broad smile crosses Indu's face, and she rises and begins to fix her hair in the mirror.   Then she stops, suddenly, and her face changes, becoming cold and sad, her pain overtakes her momentary joy at DK's return.  The film is loaded with small, aching moments like this, and Shabana makes each one real and heartrending. 

Naseeruddin Shah, too, provides a nice, evocative performance as DK.  Naseer is always good at portraying deeply sad characters; here, he wears his pain in his droopy face and frail, weary body. 

I've been reminded by the comments below that I meant to remark on the outstanding work of the children in Masoom.  They were real as children; neither too angelic, nor simply miniature adults, and all three child actors performed well, especially young Jugal Hansraj as Rahul.  The elder daughter was played by Urmila Matondkar, who grew up to be an acclaimed actress as an adult.

Masoom also features a handful of pretty songs by R.D. Burman (including this lullaby picturized on Shabana); I understand that some of these are remembered as beloved evergreen hits, and while I admit that they did not make a strong impression on me on first viewing, they have grown on me in subsequent listenings.  All in all, a delicate, sensitive film, thoughtfully crafted and movingly executed.

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.