Filmi Geek

Naseeb (1981)

नसीब

Dir. Manmohan Desai

Manmohan Desai's masala films are the richest, most symbolically laden, most delightfully creative of their time.  His stories are packed with archetypes for good and evil, god and godlessness, creation, nurture, and destruction.  They are masterful concoctions, with equal parts allegory and entertainment value bursting out of every frame.  Naseeb is no exception to this - indeed, it's a superb exemplar, offering big themes, fun songs, more henchmen than you can shake a stick at, and a top-notch climax. 

If you took Amar Akbar Anthony, pureed it in a blender, and passed it through a sieve into a parallel universe, you might end up with something like Naseeb.  The syncretic spirit of that older film, joining Hindu, Muslim, and Christian to muster the strength of the nation itself in triumph over evil, is captured here right from the very beginning in the three rings worn by Namdev (Pran) - a cross, an ॐ , and the name of Allah.  Namdev is the victim of a grave injustice; like Pran's character in Amar Akbar Anthony, he is framed for a crime, wins a fortune, and has it stolen from him all within the first 20 minutes of the film.  And like that character - like most anyone seeking justice in India - he must wait many years to see justice served.  

Where Amar Akbar Anthony distributed the three gods across three brothers, Naseeb jelly-rolls them into one John Jaani Janardhan (Amitabh Bachchan), who introduces himself to the world in song much the Anthony Gonsalves did.  

Speaking of Anthony Gonsalves, where he leapt out of an Easter egg, here Asha (Hema Malini), "India's most famous singer," steps out of an Easter basket to perform her signature song.  And just like Amar Akbar Anthony, Naseeb's climax begins with a fantastically-costumed number in which all three principals and their romantic partners distract the bad guys. 

   

But Naseeb ups the ante. This climax doesn't just offer silly costumes and acrobatic fistfights; it sets them in a revolving skyscraper-top restaurant which it then sets on fire. 

Bottom line, Naseeb is as good and rich and satisfying as any masala movie you'll ever see, including Desai's other bests, Amar Akbar Anthony and Parvarish.  Naseeb's cadre of villains includes Amjad Khan, Kader Khan, Shakti Kapoor, Prem Chopra, Yusuf Khan, and Amrish Puri – Pran, as noted above, is a good guy in this one, much as he is in Amar Akbar Anthony.  With that crew, plus Amitabh, Rishi Kapoor, and Shatrugan Sinha on the side of light, Desai does skimp a little on the heroines. Hema Malini brings first-class star power, her gorgeous smile, and not a small helping of guts and ass-kickery.

But the other female leads are somewhat lesser lights – Rishi Kapoor and Shatrugan Sinha end up with Kim and Reena Roy, respectively.  These two are certainly up to the tasks they are given, even if they aren't in the same league as Parveen Babi, Shabana Azmi, or Neetu Singh. But each gets a song – Kim's is a terrific boys-against-girls kabbadi sequence with Rishi.   

The Farah Khan antecedents are as strong in Naseeb as her explicit quotations from Karz and Masoom. The college sequence in which Rishi Kapoor rabble-rouses from the roof and attempts to save Kim from a burning dormitory obviously provided a profound influence on Main hoon na.  And the parade of star cameos in the picturization of John Jaani Janardhan's self-laudatory song – which is set at the golden jubilee celebration of Dharam-Veer – anticipates Om shanti om's "Deewanagi deewanagi" by almost three decades, and maybe does an even better job at capturing the glitter and reverence of a Bollywood star-party.

And get a load of the adorable pixie on Sharmila Tagore. Yum!

But wait - there's more.  There is a delightful drunken buddy song between Rishi and Amitabh (Beth points out that there is something depressingly meta about Rishi Kapoor's character observing that since his family is full of alcoholics, he may as well drink too.) Shatrugan Sinha plays one of his trademark morally grey characters, like in Desai's Aa gale lag jaa, who seems like a creep but actually never does anything wrong and turns out to be a pretty good guy. If that's not all, there is sabre fencing – sabre fencing! - between Pran and a gloriously blond-wigged-and-bearded Amrish Puri. There is Lalita Pawar in perfect masala-maa form.  And to punctuate Desai's syncretic message, Pran's rings get distributed among the three principals, who each take a turn making an “impression” on Yusuf Khan …

 

… before using the rings to support their weight as they zipline to safety out the towering windows of the burning restaurant. Wah ji wah.

In short, if you like masala – and let me tell you, I like masala – there is really no reason not to watch this movie over and over again. I'll be right there with you.  Mere naseeb mein hai. 

Geraftaar (1985)

गिरफ़्तार

Dir. Prayag Raj

I have written before about how difficult it can be to overlook certain types of filmi misogyny, even when attempting to allow for the cultural milieu and era of the movie. It's one thing when a villain rapes or hits a woman; it is quite another when the hero engages in unconscionable conduct and yet remains unassailably heroic.  A rape threat and some violent manhandling of Mumtaz by Shashi Kapoor ruined the otherwise top-notch masala of Chor machaye shor for me; likewise Geraftaar, a delightfully satisfying masala meal turned rancid when the hero, this time cutey-patootie Kamal Haasan, throttles a woman until she falls in love with him. 

I want so much to love this movie. It has so much masala goodness going for it:  A Prayag Raj story, Kader Khan dialogues, a Bappi Lahiri score; a cast full of masala stalwarts like Nirupa Roy, Ranjit, Shakti Kapoor, Jeevan, and Kader Khan himself; a guest appearance by one of my favorite parallel-mainstream straddlers, Kulbhushan Kharbanda; a brief but utterly thrilling cameo by Rajnikanth, and "above all":

A very special role. 

Indeed, the first hour of this film just plain delivers. It begins with one of the more creative filmi murders you'll ever see, one involving large earth-moving machinery. A pair of young brothers are separated, setting the stage for masala goodness to come. One of these grows up to be Kamal Haasan, who has an absolutely wonderful cowboy-leatherman-spy disco medley and some beautifully choreographed and executed melees.  

 

The movie as a whole is available on YouTube (with subtitles!).  The song isn't. So here is the movie cued up to the beginning of the song.  

I am normally not that interested in dishoom-dishoom, except when it has comical elements, like the climax of Seeta aur Geeta or Ashanti.   But Kamal Haasan's fight scenes are special.   He brings an athleticism and even grace that is not common among Hindi film heroes.   There is a melee in which he uses a small wooden bench as a weapon and shield, and it is almost beautiful to watch.  (Skip to 31:17 in the above video to see it.)  There is some use of a double but for the most part Haasan does his own footwork, and the result is truly entertaining.  

Anyway, as if all of that Kamal Haasan goodness isn't already fantastic, when Kader Khan turns up, he is sporting a positively epic wig-and-moustache combo. Also he consults a glowing-eyed plastic skull for advice, something like a magic 8-ball, except it opens up and dispenses fortunes on folded-up pieces of paper. It seems like it can't get any better, and Rajnikanth hasn't even turned up yet.

I really want one.  The skull, not the moustache.

Then something absolutely dreadful happens.

I should have been prepared for it. I'm watching a 1980s masala film, after all; there is a reason I've seen relatively few of those. I should have known to expect the film to go all rapey and misogynistic on me. And yet, I feel bitten by Geraftaar and its utter betrayal of first-hour awesomeness.

What happens is Kishen (Kamal Haasan) pushes Anuradha (Poonam Dhillon) around; forces her into marriage, holding her by a twisted clump of hair while smearing blood in the place of sindoor; smacks her and throttles her for trifling with his affections.  These actions are presented with no moral complexity at all; Kishen is the hero, and the forced marriage and physical abuse are justified and upstanding because Anuradha is a spoiled rich girl who was mean to him.  After Geraftaar's glorious first hour I was stunned by this turn, and my stomach sank as I anticipated the inevitable consequence:  Anuradha is moved, whether by the beating or by Kishen's accompanying chastisement, to love him, to accept him as her husband, to shun her miniskirts, calf boots, and sports cars in favor of sarees and domesticity.

“Feh” doesn't even begin to cover it.

Once this atrocity has passed, astonishingly, Geraftaar picks up again.  There are more excellent songs, including a terrific disco buddy song between Rajnikanth and Amitabh. There is the female police inspector (Madhavi) who kicks serious ass in her own right – such a treat. The climax brings back the earth-moving machinery of the early scenes, nicely bookending the story. Kamal Haasan, when he isn't busy biffing on Poonam Dhillon, is adorable. There's really everything one could want in a masala film.

And there is Rajnikanth, who deserves a paragraph of his own.  When Rajnikanth makes his appearance, famously lighting his cigarette with a mid-air pistol shot, something transformative happens. He is an incredible star, a massive personality, and riveting to watch.  He's not an especially good-looking guy, but his charisma is powerful.  The stylized staccato of his melee moves is thrilling.  

But the decidedly unheroic actions of this film's hero are too much even for Rajnikanth to redeem, and sour the delights of what could have been a surprise instant favorite. When I tweeted my reactions to Kamal Haasan's physical abuse of his heroine, a few folks reacted with what were essentially verbal shrugs:  What do you expect from 80s entertainers?  Some had forgotten this aspect of the movie altogether; it was so much a part of the landscape of Hindi films at that time that it wasn't even noteworthy to them. But others did remember it. “Geraftaar is one abusive relationship after another,” one tweeter commented.

And I really can't look past it either. I'm not an Indian kid in the 1980s seeing Rajnikanth for the first time, blown away by his manifest coolness, or inspired by Madhavi's fierce ass-kicking to practice my own spin-kicks. I am 2014 Carla, and for better or worse there's a limit to how much of my sensibilities I can check at the door. I'd like to watch Geraftaar again sometime, for everything that is terrific about it: for Kamal Haasan, for the thrill of Rajnikanth, for the fantastic songs, for the pure fun of the villainous scheming combo of Kader Khan, Ranjit, Shakti Kapoor, and Kulbhushan Kharbanda. But if I do, I'll have to skip the middle third. I just don't want this movie ruined for me a second time.  

 

Trishul (1978)

त्रिशूल

Dir. Yash Chopra

Salim-Javed movies nearly always hang their dense weave of masala entertainment on a sturdy frame of social issues.  Trishul's truss includes social class and social mobility, common themes of the era and still of tremendous relevance.  More particular to Trishul is its industrial backdrop.  Where Kaala patthar set its social commentary in the allegorical depths of a coal mine, Trishul points its lens at the high-stakes, high-class battleground of Delhi real-estate development.

While watching Trishul, I kept being reminded of Vijay Anand's Tere ghar ke samne, another film that uses the construction of rich, modern New Delhi as its canvas.  In both films, the totemic sights of Delhi can be spotted in the background even of indoor scenes, framed in office windows. And while Trishul does not offer as delightful a Delhi tourism advertisment as Dev Anand and Nutan's jaunt up and down Qutub Minar in "Dil ka bhanwar kare pukar", it does give us young lovers romping past the Sultanate tombs of Lodhi Garden in "Gapuchi gapuchi gum gum."

Anand's film has some social resonance, too, but remains light and playful in tone all the way through, while Trishul resounds with all the gravity of any Salim-Javed script with a Vijay at its heart.  In Tere ghar ke samne, the glamour of New Delhi and of the wealthy people who build homes in it provides escapist shine, alluring to most of its audience precisely because of its remove from their own experience. But in Trishul there is something more primal at play.  Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan; does that even need to be said?) enters the development business not out of a desire for wealth or social prominence, but purely for revenge, to exact the everyman's price for being screwed over by the rich and powerful.   

Vijay is the illegitimate child of construction magnate R.K. Gupta (Sanjeev Kumar).  As a young man, Gupta was to marry his love, Shanti (Waheeda Rehman).  But Gupta's boss offered him a feudal sort of quid pro quo that he could not refuse:  Marry my daughter, become a full partner in our firm.  Gupta makes the mercenary choice.  As he signs the papers that make him a very rich man, Shanti offers him her sad congratulations and the startling news, famously delivered, that "main tumhare bacche ki maa bannewali hoon." Gupta offers Shanti some money, but Shanti, ever proud, refuses.  She gives birth to Vijay and moves away. 

Years later Vijay returns to Delhi with both the expertise and the backing to enter the competitive market for lucrative construction tenders.  It would seem that his whole life has been spent preparing for this particular form of revenge against Gupta; hit him squarely on the one thing valued more than Shanti, his business.  Vijay is still the classic masala hero who does bad things for good reaasons, but the trail of his moral reasoning is too convoluted for anyone who is not a masala hero to follow.  He is not above bribing Gupta's employees to commit corporate espionage, but he uses the insider info to beat Gupta's bids on multi-crore construction projects by a single rupee; this Vijay is not motivated by profit, but by a slow burn, long-view brand of revenge.  When Gupta wrongly accuses his loyal assistant, Geeta (Rakhee) of being the mole, Vijay's sense of justice won't stand for it.  He will cheat to advance his own agenda, but he won't let an innocent take the fall.  He helps Gupta's young daughter Kusum (Poonam Dhillon), Vijay's own half-sister, elope with her love - maybe because Vijay believes in the truth of love, and maybe also because he knows it will get up Gupta's nose.  Vijay's belief in love and brotherhood is less evident when he attempts to sabotage the relationship between Gupta's other son, Shekhar (Shashi Kapoor) with Sheetal (Hema Malini).  If there is a method to Vijay's moral madness, it is not as easy to discern as that of, say, Deewaar's Vijay.

Fortunately for us, Trishul's masala feast is as rich as Vijay's logic is complicated.  Shekhar and Sheetal's romance is satisfying and sweet; one of the best comic moments in the film comes when Shekhar, in full-throttle flirt mode, learns that Sheetal is the business manager of a large construction firm.  He sputters and regroups and tries to look nonchalant and progressive; he's adorable as he tries to adjust to the information.  And if it's a little weird for Shashi Kapoor to play Amitabh's younger brother, or Waheeda Rehman to play Amitabh's mother, at least the latter affords an opportunity for the lovely "Tu mere saath rahega munne".  And if you like masala, how can you help but love a movie in which Amitabh makes first appearance emerging from an explosion in white pants?

Hum kisise kum naheen (1977)

हम किसीसे कम नहीं 

Dir. Nasir Hussain

A certain kind of moral ambiguity can make for a very entertaining filmi hero.  In Deewaar, Amitabh Bachchan's character runs a vast criminal enterprise, but his heart is so torqued and so palpably in the right place that he remains likable and sympathetic. In lighter movies, too, a roguish hero can have a strong appeal, like Vinod Khanna's thieving character in Parvarish.  Some kinds of bad acts, though, push a character into irredeemability, even if the film doesn't mean to.  In a post called "Shashi Gone Bad" I wrote about the horrible Shashi Kapoor hero of Chor machaye shor who throttles and threatens to rape his girlfriend and yet seems meant to maintain the sanctimonious high ground of the film. 

 

It is similarly weird and questionable behavior from a nominally charming hero that tarnishes Hum kisise kum naheen ("we are no less than anyone"), an otherwise quite enjoyable masala entertainer by Nasir Hussain. After Rajesh (Rishi Kapoor) learns that a travel belt full of diamonds was stolen from his father while the poor man lay dying on the floor of a men's room, Rajesh hatches a plot to recover his purloined treasure.  Rather than just steal the diamonds back, he schemes to kidnap the culprit's daughter and demand them in ransom.  Being kidnapped is evidently insufficient trauma for Kajal (Kajal Kiran), who is of course completely ignorant and innocent of her father's crime.  To get close enough to Kajal to nab her, Rajesh lies about his identity, pretends to love her, and seduces her into falling for him.  In short, this hero is a narcissistic jerk who doesn't much consider whose heart he breaks or whose trust he betrays, as long as he gets his diamonds.

 

Kajal takes it coming and going, too. Before she rebounds to the deceiving Rajesh, Kajal first falls for Sanjay (Tariq), who, unbeknownst to Kajal, is the long-lost childhood sweetheart she has been pining for.  (More precisely, Sanjay is her childhood fiancé; another less-than-ideal aspect of Hum kisise kum naheen is its glorification of a creepy child marriage.)  Sanjay knows full well who Kajal is, but he forgoes several opportunities to reveal his identity to her.  This affords the film a few more angry misunderstandings and fisticuffs than are strictly necessary.  I lose sympathy for Sanjay when he grabs Kajal by both arms and roughs her up, shouting something like "sun le Kajal! Mujhe kuch kehna hai!"  He could instead have perhaps not manhandled her at all, and just said something simple and straightforward, like "main hoon Sanjay."

 

But that is an awful lot of words of complaint about the storyline of a movie that is at its heart a vehicle for fabulous R.D. Burman songs and Rishi Kapoor in a spectacular array of wackadoodle outfits.  The feathered (or is it furred? it's hard to tell which, but it sure is muppety) jumpsuit of "Bachna ae haseeno" is especially terrific.

 

 

This is the sort of thing we watch 70s Hindi films for.

 

Both Rajesh and Sanjay just happen to be professional performers, which allows for the bounty of this song medley, set at the "All-India Pop Competition," the title of which event Rishi Kapoor delivers with a delightful pop! indeed.  Beth and I agreed we want front-row tickets to the All-India Pop! Competition.

 

 

Wakow!

 

And what Rishi Kapoor movie would be complete without a qawwali? The title song of Hum kisise kum naheen is as great a filmi qawwali as any, with bonus Zeenat Aman. 

 

 

Bonus Ajit, too.

 

Zeenat Aman's character appears to have dropped in here from the next movie over, one in which she is spirited off to London by her family, engaged against her will, and makes a dramatic eleventh-hour escape on the eve of her marriage to return to her true love, Rajesh.  It sounds like a pretty good story, doesn't it?  In Hum kisise kum naheen, though, it is told in hasty exposition, tacked on so Rajesh can have a girl that he doesn't have to borrow from Sanjay. No matter; whatever narrative expedience it takes to cram Zeenat and that qawwali into a movie is well worth it.

 

There is also a little bit of pretty good comedy (more, if you like diarrhea jokes), including a masterfully-timed entrance by Tariq that breaks a tense early sequence in which a gloriously wigged-and-beared Amjad Khan (you know it's him because of that voice) stashes the purloined diamonds. Kajal's bodyguards are a hoot too, in a bizarre way, four identically-dressed bald men whom I compared to Oompa Loompas, and Beth compared to Mom's idiot sons from Futurama. The Swimming Pool makes an appearance and so does a little gratuitous Tom Alter.  So even though Rajesh isn't the most lovable hero ever, and the child marriage stuff is hinky, these sins can be overlooked in the fun of the movie's rewarding individual moments.  The first two-thirds are better than the last third, for sure, but only a select few masala flicks never flag at any point.  A recent commenter to this blog noted that the combination of Nasir Hussain and RD Burman reliably yields decently fun masala with very groovy tunes. And if you like that sort of thing (which I do) then Hum kisise kum naheen does not disappoint. It pretty much delivers what it says on the package.

The Burning Train (1980)

Dir. Ravi Chopra

As the love child of the classic Hollywood disaster flick and uniquely Indian masala style, The Burning Train is even better than the sum of its parts. Pure entertainment, and thoroughly paisa vasool.

The great melodramatic Hollywood disaster movies of the 1970s, like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, are already so over-the-top that they approach the standards of larger-than-life unreality defined by masala. And so it is not surprising at all that The Burning Train, which invokes those disaster thrillers and salts them with additional masala elements, is as engaging and satisfying a masala offering as any other of its era.

The Burning Train adopts the conventions of these Hollywood disasters: a vast, all-star cast; a noteworthy but hubris-tinged event beset by a chain reaction of life-threatening catastrophes; a disparate group of victims each with his or her own miniature story. It transposes them to the railroad, India's circulatory system, a potent symbol of the republic's industriousness, strength, and potential. And it adds those singular spices that only masala can provide: a double romance, an angry, beaten man bent on revenge, dishum-dishum, Asrani swaggering in a military uniform. The result is nothing less than stellar masala.

Instead of Steve McQueen and Paul Newman, The Burning Train offers Vinod (Vinod Khanna) and Ashok (Dharmendra). These two childhood friends boost each other through parallel romances with Sheetal (Parveen Babi) and Seema (Hema Malini) respectively. These two are so tight that when they pair up with the girls for a tandem bicycle ride, they share a bike with each other.

Hema and Dharmendra on screen together are always a special kind of delicious.

But a masala film also needs a villain, and this The Burning Train delivers in no less tortured a form than Randhir (Danny Denzongpa), for his whole life always a bridesmaid and never a bride. When they were just boys, Vinod elbowed Randhir off the miniature train they both loved to ride. As a young man, Randhir loses Sheetal to Vinod's superior charisma. If that is not enough for Randhir to endure, Vinod wins a prestigious engineering contract that Randhir feels is rightly his: development of India's fastest train, the Super Express.

In the inconsolable humiliation of this last defeat Randhir finally snaps, in magnificent bug-eyed style worthy of any masala villain.  (Danny Denzongpa does raging agony better than almost anyone.)  Randhir sabotages the Super Express's inaugural journal, and sets in motion the chain of events that leads to the film's titular disaster:  The Super Express, loaded with hundreds of passengers, hurtling through the countryside without brakes, with flames exploding out of its carriage windows.  This is where The Burning Train takes off as an exemplar of the disaster movie genre.

The Burning Train offers 100% first-class Danny rage.

In the tradition of disaster classics, The Burning Train weaves much of its second half from miniature vignettes of its diverse passengers thrown together on their ill-fated journey.  And in classic masala tradition, these vignettes take on many tones.  Some are played for comedy, like my darling Rajendranath's broadly goofy pandit, or Keshto Mukherjee and Paintal hiding in the loo to avoid the ticket collector.  Some provide drama and dishoom-dishoom, like Ranjeet the jewel thief and Sujeet Kumar, the undercover detective hot on his trail.  Some provide pathos, like Simi Garewal the sad-faced schoolteacher leading a prayerful song to comfort her terrified charges.  Amd some add even more romance and heroism to the already rich mix provided by the lead couples:  Madhu (Neetu Singh), fleeing from an unwanted marriage, falls for a petty thief named Ravi (Jeetendra), who finds his nobler side in the challenge of love and disaster.

Jeetu and Neetu; a touching and sad moment from one of the many passenger vignettes.

That is an awful lot for one train to haul, but the Super Express has the capacity.  With an R.D. Burman soundtrack that hits all the requisite notes from jaunty romance to plaintive lament, a cast packed with more stars than the U.S. flag, and legitimately impressive footage of train carriages belching flames, The Burning Train delivers the cargo.  The relationships of the principals provide the kind of substantive themes that distinguish high-quality masala - the importance of honesty and honor in love, the need to cherish one's family and not lose the self in driving ambition.  Mix these masala goods with the tropes of the best Hollywood disaster tales - and throw in Vinod Khanna, Dharmendra, and Jeetendra in super-shiny foil fire-resistant alien space suits - and the result is indeed a truly super ride.