Filmi Geek

Tehzeeb (2003)

तहज़ीब

I suppose that people who make movies frequently find themselves inspired by the burdens of fame and its handmaiden, narcissism.  I often find such movies tedious; the self-indulgent laments of egotists feeling sorry for themselves do not make the most compelling tales.  Still, sometimes a film can explore such subjects with enough sensitivity and humanity to overcome the weakness inherent in the theme.  Tehzeeb ("culture" or "refinement;" also the name of a main character) is one such film. 

Rukhsana Jamal (Shabana Azmi) is a famous and revered singer.  Her whirlwind schedule keeps her out late nights, performing concerts, signing autographs, and attending swanky parties, while her husband Anwar (Rishi Kapoor) looks after their two small daughters.  Tensions grow between them, until one dark night finds Anwar dead and Rukhsana clutching the weapon that killed him.  She is tried for murder, acquitted, and - thanks to the public's short memory for scandal - picks up her career right where she left off.  Fast forward some twenty years or so.  Rukhsana is as famous and popular as ever, promoting a new album, performing on television, an A-list celebrity estranged from her children.  Her elder daughter Tehzeeb (Urmila Matondkar) is married to a sweet and loving writer named Salim (Arjun Rampal), and together they take tender care of Tehzeeb's mentally ill sister Nazo (Diya Mirza).  When, out of the blue, Rukhsana clears her busy schedule and shows up for an extended visit, one way or another she and Tehzeeb will finally hash out all the issues that have kept them apart over the years. 

I love Shabana Azmi - I adore her beyond all reason - but in some films where she is paired with younger actors, one has the sense of watching her teach a master class to performers whose skills don't quite measure up to her own (I'm looking at you, Morning Raga).  Here, though, the cast holds its own, especially Urmila, who shines in the tense confrontations between Rukhsana and Tehzeeb.  Indeed, both women excel in these scenes, flowing effortlessly and naturally between anger and sadness, sarcasm and tenderness, and they are the best scenes in the film.   Even the pretty-boy model-turned-movie star Arjun Rampal turns in a real acting performance here, not just in his scenes opposite Shabana, but in his scenes with Urmila and Diya Mirza as well, touchingly conveying the tenderness with which Salim looks after his two wounded birds.

Tehzeeb works as an exploration of maternal narcissism and filial bitterness in part because it pays respect to the messiness of these things in real life; it does not try to tie all of its threads too neatly.  The origin of Nazo's mental illness, for example, is never explained or even speculated about; it is simply there, and while the possibility hangs unspoken in the air that it was caused by the traumas of Nazo's early childhood, the audience is permitted to make its own judgments as to Rukhsana's culpability for it.   Even when the film appears to be moving toward a pat and tidy resolution, it throws the viewer - and the film's principals - a sucker punch; Tehzeeb is very cruel to this family, refusing to allow them more than a few short moments of peace.

Tehzeeb is not without its warts.  There is an irrelevant and directionless subplot about a vampish  publisher who tries to seduce Salim.  And the music straddles the line between forgettable and bad; the songs were composed by the brilliant A.R. Rahman, but he seems to have mailed in this score.  Ordinarily I am very frustrated with films about musicians that don't have good music (Morning Raga, I'm looking at you again), but here this was not a fatal flaw, since Tehzeeb was more about Rukhsana as narcissist and mother than it was about Rukhsana as musician.   Still, while they did not wreck the film, the songs did not add anything to it either, and the picturizations (apart from a tender song picturized as Rukhsana singing to her family) were jarringly avant garde, like scenes from a Laurie Anderson video compilation.   (Here is an example.)  So while I will certainly watch Tehzeeb again, I suspect I will skip most of the songs.

Finally, since I never seem content to post only a single screen capture from one of her films, here is a touch more Shabana Azmi, looking as gorgeous as ever.

Bandit Queen (1994)

When I like a film, I am usually happy to watch it over and over.  A good movie is like a good album that I listen to again and again; I want to watch it closely and repeatedly until I know every nuance, until I can recite the dialogues along with the characters.  Occasionally, though, even a great film can be so harrowing to watch that I am certain I never want to see it again.  Bandit Queen is such a film - a truly excellent piece of filmmaking, a compelling story, brilliantly acted.  But it hurt so much to watch that I don't think I could do it a second time.

Based on the life of Phoolan Devi, a famous dacoit (bandit) who terrorized upper-caste villagers in rural Uttar Pradesh in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Bandit Queen opens with Phoolan's marriage, at the age of 11, to a widower more than 20 years her senior.  After being raped and beaten by him, she flees back to her home village.  But as she grows into a young woman, Phoolan (Seema Biswas) is seen as a tramp and a fallen woman, harassed by upper-caste men, and eventually driven from the village.  She is kidnapped by a gang of bandits, whose second-in-command Vikram (Nirmal Pandey) takes a liking to her.  After an internecine power struggle, Vikram takes control of the gang, trains Phoolan in the dacoit's arts, and becomes her lover.  But Vikram's mutiny has earned them an enemy in the gang's former boss, SriRam (Govind Namdev), a member of the high-ranking Thakur caste.  The remainder of the film tracks Phoolan's war with SriRam, which quickly mutates from an arguably noble struggle for caste justice into a very personal vendetta.

The film accentuates the parched bleakness of its subject with breathtaking cinematography, sweeping a sun-baked desert landscape.  Ultimately, though, whether you can tolerate this bleak and grisly tale depends upon how many rapes you can stand to watch in one film.  Phoolan suffers unbearable abuse and degradation, and the camera lingers on all of it, bringing the viewer as close as a movie can to experiencing it right along with her.  Seema Biswas's outstanding performance (along with those of the first class supporting cast) magnifies the effect. 

The most interesting thing about Bandit Queen is that despite the outrageously hard life Phoolan has had, the film avoids glorifying her quest for vengeance.  She is not portrayed as any kind of Robin Hood crusading for the rights of the poor and downtrodden.  Vikram's motivations may be somewhat nobler, but Phoolan is shown to be an antisocial psychopath, too damaged to control her eruptive rage.  In one horrible sequence, Phoolan exacts revenge on the man who married her when she was a child, beating him savagely while he begs for his life.  At moments Phoolan appears on the verge of gaining control over her rage, only to be repeatedly overcome by a fresh surge of violent anger.  Phoolan's viciousness is a challenge to the viewer's sympathy for her hatred of her abusers. 

Ultimately, Bandit Queen is one of the best movies I've ever seen that I hated watching.  Though it's a compelling story and an impeccably made film, it is nevertheless a disturbing and difficult two hours. 

Parineeta (2005)

परिणीता

Set in a pair of grand manors in 1962 Calcutta, this period drama sets out to make a statement condemning the soul-sucking power of wealth and greed, and glorifying the value of placing true love ahead of the glitter of gold.  Because the movie was praised highly by my friends over at BollyWHAT?, I had upbeat expectations for it.  Unfortunately, with its weak story and poor characterization, Parineeta ("Bride") rather badly missed the mark. 

Shekhar (Saif Ali Khan), the son of a famous and wealthy industrialist, is more interested in making music than in making deals.  Lolita (Vidya Balan), the orphaned niece of a doddering retired businessman, lives next door with her uncle's family.  Shekhar and Lolita have been close friends since childhood; she comes freely to his home and writes music with him.  Trouble starts for this sensitive pair when Lolita learns that Shekhar's Machiavellian father is engineering a scheme to acquire title to her uncle's mansion and turn it into a posh hotel.  A rich brother-in-law  Girish (Sanjay Dutt) turns up and looks poised to save the day, but he's also taken a shine to Lolita.  Shekhar, addled by jealousy, allows his father to get the better of him, believing that Lolita has sold herself to Girish.  Heartbroken and angry, he joins his father's business and assents to an engagement to another girl.

This sounds like a serviceable, if predictable, Bollywood plotline.  Yet Parineeta's central love story falls flat, leaving the film to carry an overwrought and under-motivated setup into an unsatisfying climax.  A love story is a tough sell when the viewer is not shown why the principals make a terrific pair, why they belong together.  Here, Lolita is charming and delightful (and gorgeous!).  But Shekhar is a jerk of the first order, and his dramatic behavior at the film's climax is insufficient to redeem him.  For most of the first half of the film he is angry with Lolita, and instead of telling her what is bothering him, he sulks petulantly and scolds her without explanation.  Later on, he grows even more abusive, assuming the worst of her and refusing to listen when she ardently tries to explain her situation and her actions. 

Indeed, apart from Shekhar and Lolita's childhood friendship, there is little reason believe that they are soulmates or to root for them to sort things out and live happily ever after.  The childhood friendship motif didn't add up to a compelling love story in Devdas, and it does so no more in Parineeta.  (I was hardly surprised to learn that the Bengali novels upon which Devdas and Parineeta were based were both written by the same author.) 

The movie is not without redeeming features.  It was beautifully shot. Vidya Balan is a lovely woman whose classically Indian beauty is amplified by traditional Indian clothing.  Saif Ali Khan is a sharp-looking fellow as well.  The movie also featured a couple of deliciously sexy love scenes; indeed, these were naughty enough to make it a bit absurd that the film stuck to Bollywood's traditional rule against on-screen kissing.  The music was very good, though it could have used some more dancing; that was confined to a fascinating traditional performance by Sanjay Dutt and a slightly creepy special appearance by Rekha in a night club item number.  All of this, together with some occasional well-executed moments of sweetness, made the film pleasant enough while it was happening.  But there wasn't enough there to overcome the weak story and superficial characterizations and lift Parineeta beyond mere timepass and into the realm of the truly memorable.

Mr. and Mrs. Iyer (2002)

Aparna Sen, the filmmaker who wrote and directed Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, never seems to garner criticism for casting her own daughter in her films.  Perhaps that is because her daughter is the best young actress in India.  Konkona Sen Sharma was the shining star of her mother's 2005 film 15 Park Avenue.  Before that, she earned a National Film Award for her charged and real performance as the skittish Meenaxi Iyer in Mrs. and Mrs. Iyer.

The film opens on a bus traveling through an unspecified rural province, carrying a varied assortment of passengers who are a distillation of the diversity of India.  The chatter on the bus is a Babel of the nation's languages - Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali and Tamil are represented, as well as English, the lingua franca of the entire subcontinent.  Many of India's religions are represented as well - there are Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and even one of India's rare Jews.  Meenaxi Iyer (Konkona) is a sheltered, traditionally Hindu, Tamil Brahmin wife, en route with her infant son to Calcutta to meet her husband.  Raja (Rahul Bose) is a Bengali wildlife photographer also traveling to Calcutta.  When the bus is waylaid by a curfew imposed as a result of some local sectarian violence, the journey turns dark and treacherous, as riots and killings spring up all around.  Circumstances throw Raja and Meenaxi together - soon they are traveling as the titular Mr. and Mrs. Iyer - and what follows is a tense exploration of Hindu-Muslim relations, the interplay of traditionalist prejudices and modern biases, and the strange way that intimacy sometimes finds people even when they are not seeking it. 

During their ordeal, Meenaxi and Raja do not talk much about their real lives.  This lends a sense of unreality to the journey, as if it is bracketed and separated from real life.  There is an echo in that unreality of the characters' own mixed perception of their adventure.  By shutting out their reality they can take comfort in the shared illusion of being Mr. and Mrs. Iyer and in the closeness that develops between them within that illusion.  But it serves another purpose as well; if they think too much about reality, they will have to acknowledge that the journey and the violence and the danger is real as well.  In one of the film's most breathlessly chilling scenes, Meenaxi is jarred fitfully into that acknowledgment when she witnesses a sectarian killing.  Thanks to Konkona's brilliant work, Meenaxi's anguish leaps out of the screen.

I am coming to suspect, based in particular upon Mr. and Mrs. Iyer and 15 Park Avenue, that Aparna Sen is at her best with high drama and powerful emotion.  In her films, mundane, quotidian dialogue sometimes comes across as forced or stilted.  But when she lets her characters go, prepare to be shaken to the core.  The most charged scenes in Mr. and Mrs. Iyer left me breathless and stunned. 

Finally, in the allegorical language of Indian film, the interaction between Meenaxi and Raja may be mapped to the intersection of traditional and modern India, respectively.  Raja challenges Meenaxi to leave off the caste and religious prejudices with which she was raised; Meenaxi demands Raja's respect.  That they ultimately manage both to compromise and to bond with one another suggests that the film's message is not merely that the disparate elements of Indian culture learn to get along, but  that if they are willing, they can each be enriched in the process. 

Mr. and Mrs. Iyer is mostly in English; as Raja speaks no Tamil and Meenaxi no Hindi, the two must communicate in India's lingua franca.  (Indeed, any awkwardness in Aparna Sen's dialogue, both here and in 15 Park Avenue, may be attributable to a less-than-deft handling of English.) 

Yaadon ki baaraat (1973)

यादों की बारात

In my review of Hare Rama hare Krishna, I recounted the tale of my discovery of filmi music through the sparkling "Dum maro dum" on a Bollywood compilation CD.  My next favorite track on that disc was a pretty, melodic tune called "Chura liya hai tumne."  Like "Dum maro dum," "Chura liya" is an R.D. Burman tune, sung by Asha Bhosle.  It also turns out that like "Dum maro dum," "Chura liya" is picturized beautifully on Zeenat Aman - so it seems I was destined to become a Zeenat fan.

Unfortunately, "Chura liya" also turns out to be the one of the few aspects of Yaadon ki baaraat ("Procession of memories") that is above average.  The film is, in most respects, an unremarkable masala film.  Its plot is a standard Bollywood trope:  Three brothers are separated in childhood after their parents' vicious murder at the hands of some ruthless criminal.  The youngest brother Ratan (Tariq), raised by the family's nanny, grows up to be a rock-and-roll singer, performing a nightly cabaret show at a swanky hotel.  The middle brother, Vijay (Vijay Arora), was found and adopted by a kindly old widower who works as a valet for a wealthy man.   The eldest brother, Shankar (Dharmendra), grew up on the streets, to become a fairly accomplished crook. 

Like the lives of the separated boys, the story of Yaadon ki baaraat splits into separate tracks so different in tone - and in quality - that it almost seems to be two distinct movies.  One, is a perfectly enjoyable light romance: Vijay falls for a beautiful, mischeivous college girl named Sunita (Zeenat Aman) and poses as a wealthy, cultured gentleman to try to woo her, leading to an escalating prank war.  On the film's other track, Shankar is hell-bent on avenging his parents' death, but he is sidetracked when a high-tone criminal gang hires him for a heist.  Unbeknownst to Shankar, the leader of the gang - an absurd caricature in the mold of a Bond villain - is the man he is hunting for vengeance. 

Eventually, of course, Shankar figures out the truth about his new boss, Vijay gets his girl, and the three brothers are reunited, thanks to Ratan's nightly performance of the song their mother had sung to them when they were boys.  Unfortunately, the journey toward that stock Bollywood ending is not as fun a ride as it could have been, and the result is a film that is barely adequate as a timepass. 

The Vijay-Sunita romance was sweet enough, and the fun battle of practical jokes seems to be the antecedent to the college films of later decades like Dil.  The Shankar thread, though, is a pointless underworld drama with little to redeem it.  It is a shameful waste of Dharmendra, who exudes such charm in his ruffian-with-a-heart-of-gold roles in films like Sholay and Seeta aur Geeta.  Costuming didn't do as good a job concealing his paunch in Yaadon ki baaraat as in Sholay a few years later - or perhaps it's just that Veeru in Sholay was such an appealing character that it didn't matter that he had a little spare tire.  In Yaadon ki baaraat, though, Dharmendra is just a dour, wooden thug; he is so stiff that I wonder if that belly of his wasn't stuffed into a corset.  He has little to do in the film but scowl and punch people. 

Ultimately, I think, Yaadon ki baaraat is remembered more for its R.D. Burman soundtrack - especially the stellar "Chura liya hai tumne" - than for its story or performances.  The rest of the soundtrack is not bad, though none of it is as transcendent as that one beautiful song.   The title song has an added bonus - it features a delicious 6-year-old Aamir Khan:

Aww!  The soundtrack also features a classic Asha/R.D. rock and roll number, "Lekar hum diwana dil."  Unfortunately, this song's picturization may be the worst I have ever seen in a film not called Disco Dancer.  Among other things, it includes an awful, stompy, writhing performance by Neetu Singh, early in her career - later in the 70s she was a graceful and lovely heroine in such classics as Amar Akbar Anthony.  It's hard to believe that it's the same girl.