Filmiholic

For the past month, this city’s been in my head almost every day.  The days I spent there earlier this year just reinforced my initial impression that it’s so thick with striving people and quirky architectural details, and moments of beauty exist cheek by jowl with ugliness.  On the train to and from work, I’ve been reading Pinky Virani’s Once was Bombay, her 1999 book that’s a regret-tinged collection of profiles of people from different walks of life who live there.  Regret because it laments what the city has become, and, Pinky says, we’ve only ourselves to blame, look at the people we elect and what we tolerate.  Interestingly, she devotes several pages to the trains, and the crowded slums that have grown to the point of encroachment on the rail lines, complete with children pelting stones with formidable accuracy at the commuters.

Next, I discovered the amazing Bombay photographs of Chirodeep Chaudhuri, photo editor at TimeOut Mumbai.

And a fortnight ago Bombay Addict tossed me the invite to drop in on his blog to chat about the city of his birth and its portrayal on screen.  I happily agreed and hit the local DVD rental place, carrying home a stack of movies set in the city formerly known as Bom Bahia that I’d not seen yet. 

Last weekend I watched Mani Sir’s 1995 opus Bombay.  It’s a beautifully photographed (by Rajiv Menon) story of personal and urban conflict when Hindu and Muslim encounter each other.  On the small scale, Arvind Swamy (the most un-herolike hero I’ve ever seen) plays Shekar, the journalist son of a conservative Hindu father, who falls in love at first sighting of Shaila Bano, a Muslim girl who lives in the same TamilNad town, and has an equally staunch father.  Manisha is gorgeous in this movie and the lengths her suitor goes to are perfectly understandable.

Facing parental opposition, the two flee to Bombay so they can marry and live in peace.  Things go fine for a few years, though there are hints of what’s to come when Shaila is buying vegetables one day and a group of saffron-robed men pass by, chanting slogans.  Shekar works as a journalist while Shaila tends to their twin sons, then Ayodya happens, and the city is torn apart by two spurts of rioting between Hindus and Muslims, in December and then January. 

During the first riot, the boys are terrorized by a group of men who douse them in gasoline and keep asking “Are you Hindu or Muslim?  Answer!” while fumbling to light a match.  The sons narrowly escape, but the effects are profound.  In a brief and wrenching scene, one twin, Kamal, riding on his grandfather’s shoulders as they head home from a temple visit, reacts instinctively when seeing another small mob, reaching down with a small hand to wipe the ash off the older man’s forehead while doing the same to his own.  In the January riots, as the family flees a burning home, the boys are separated from their parents and then from each other.  One is taken in by a hijra, the other by a Muslim woman.  The two boys (Master Harsha and Master Hriday) are solid little actors, and as in Kannathil Muthamittal, Mani Ratnam has succeeded in getting a natural performance from his child stars.

As the story builds to the tense climax, Arvind Swamy, searching frantically for his sons, is confronted by someone who asks him “Are you Hindus or Muslims?”  and he bellows in response “Hum sirf Indian hain!”  (We are just Indian!)  His furor is matched by other typical, average citizens (a chubby housewife, an aging shopkeeper) who turn on the rioters.

And now July 11 has happened.

So much of what’s in this movie must resemble what people have lived through yesterday - the flames, the scattered belongings lost to their owners, the hospital and its mortuary floor covered with so many corpses that there’s no place to step - yet so far, thankfully, it seems that no one is giving in to any temptation of anti-Other behaviour.  Instead, Mumbaikars are doing what they’re known for: carrying on and getting back to business, regardless.  People came forward to offer cell phones and samosas to the survivors, and to give blood or a lift to strangers.

Never was it truer, yeh hai Mumbai, meri jaan. 

As fond as I am of many Hindi movies, I’ll also willingly admit that some of them have faults.  Fight sequences may be cartoonish, plot points might be incredibly frail, some song picturizations could be deemed too sweet and self-indulgent and way too long, but nonetheless, even if the movies suffer from these or other problems, they are (sometimes) guilty pleasures and favorites. 

At the same time, after seeing a mainstream Hindi movie, at some point the question will cross my mind: “Could this be well received outside of India?”  99% of the time, my answer is “Not for most audiences, other than foreigners who enjoy these type of films already.”  And that’s fine.  I’m not particularly concerned about whether Bollywood can take over the remaining population of the world that’s not captivated by it already, it’s just a passing thought.  

To me, Ram Gopal Verma’s Company is perfect and this 2002 film could also be screened, say, in Chicago, at a typical suburban multiplex, and audiences would be rapt enough to sit through the English subtitles and stay to the end to see what happens.  For a story about two underworld dons and their environment, it could have suffered from exaggerated, drag-on fight scenes with garishly red liquid gushing forth from everyone’s wounds, but RGV went instead for a spare approach, conveying the violence between men in the shortest of shots and quick cuts from one to the next.  Thank you, Mr. Verma.  As a woman who’s not terribly into action movies, one of the worst things I find myself sitting through in mainstream Indian movies is these prolonged dishum scenes and the inevitable accompanying shot of an exploding car shooting straight up into the air, and the not-at-all-well-hidden gas jet that has just propelled it upwards.  Thank you for sparing us all of that.

Company is the story of the relationship between Malik (Ajay Devgan), a high-level underworld don who takes over the Aslambhai gang, and Chandu (Vivek Oberoi, in his first film), the small-time thief he hires and takes under his wing, and what happens as Chandu grows in ability and power.

One of the strengths of this movie is Verma’s realistic portrayal of the small details of the characters lives.  In the beginning of the movie we see Chandu living with his mother (Seema Biswas) in a cramped, dark, small home down narrow lanes, surrounded by other poor people.  He ferries her on the crossbar of his bicycle to buy food, and he rides home late one night with his gang on an almost deserted Bombay train.  Ajay Devgan as Malik is a man of few words and tightly controlled movement who wears chains and smokes all the time.  Later, when the group relocates to Hong Kong, they take up residence in high-rise, tastefully decorated terrace apartments.

The story takes place in Bombay, then Hong Kong, the Nairobi and Mombasa, and back to Bombay for the conclusion.  The early Bombay period marks the introduction of Chandru to Malik’s world and the growth of both their careers.  As they are close to being arrested by Police Inspector Sreenivasan (Mohanlal), they flee with their respective women and gangs to Hong Kong, where they grow even more powerful, but where conflicts arise, with tragic consequences, and Chandru flees to Nairobi.

The Bombay segment is the longest and the most atmospheric.  The aging don Aslambhai lives in a sprawling, shadow-filled apartment at the top of an abandoned waterfront building, a politician departs in the ubiquitous white Ambassador from his Peddar Road residence, the gang parties as Isha Koppikar writhes to the chart-busting Khallas in a crowded disco, and Chandu saves Malik’s life at a shootout during a Bollywood movie mahurat (as RGV points to the links between the underworld and film world).  One of the simplest and most perfect shots of the city comes when the gang is living in Hong Kong and a narrator remarks that the telephone is the biggest weapon of the underworld.  The news of some recent incident is shown traveling all over Bombay by a dizzying series of quick shots of phones ringing, until the last shot of the sequence has a telephone alone on a table next to a window on a high floor of an apartment building and the background we see through the window is the Bombay skyline.

While never an Ajay Devgan fan before (he never seems right in hero roles), he does the whole strong, silent type well here, and I appreciated that the part was not scripted to portray him as a totally evil man.  It’s plain to see that he really does love Saroja, the woman he lives with, and the most telling detail is that even when he learns that one of her actions has inadvertently contributed to the death of one of his men, he doesn’t pull out his gun and kill her, something that lesser movies on this subject would have had him do.

Vivek Oberoi makes an strong first impression as the newcomer on the scene who has a real fire in his belly to succeed.  He is natural in the role, and genuine.  The only thing I found a bit off was in the “making of” feature on the DVD, when he talked about his character, he pointed out that he had to spend hours in makeup as they covered him from head to toe in something to make him “about eight shades darker”, which I would think could been interpreted by some viewers as the young Oberoi suggesting that the darker you are, the more likely you are to have criminal tendencies.

The best casting of the film is Manisha Koirala as Saroja.  Never married in real life, yet with a colorful romantic history behind her (Nana Patekar is one former love interest), she comfortably inhabits the skin of a character I’d bet some other actresses would have balked at taking.  Saroja has a sleepy-eyed, laid back, been-there-done-that air about her and she has no qualms about “just” living with Malik.  She smokes, drinks and wears rather hip pant suits with a string of small silver cuffs up the curve of her ear.  It helps that she also has a cool shag haircut that would make Jane Fonda jealous.  I liked that the couple are shown snuggled up together, half asleep and not talking about anything in particular while it rains outside, and not as most movies would do, making her the slutty bimbo moll who is just part of the background to be tossed around by the gangster.   

The supporting cast - Mohanlal, Rajpal Yadav, Vijay Raaz, Antara Mali and Akash Khurana - are all solid in their roles, to the point that they don’t seem to be acting.  Unlike in Sarkar, the music in Company actually helps the story along.  A lone flute plays menacingly when bad things are happening and orchestral music rises to heighten the tension.  Verma’s only concession to the push to have some picturized musical scenes in the movie are the opening credits, with his muse Urmila doing a slinky dance in a proto-Bond sequence, and then Khallas, which meshes perfectly with the picture, since the gang have gone for a night out to a club.

See it or skip it?

Don’t miss it.  This movie is tight, well written and has a flawless cast.

This 1973 Prakash Mehra movie is often cited as the launch of the Amitabh Bachchan angry-young-man role that was a turning point in the actor’s career as well as mainstream Hindi cinema, and coincided with a growing dissatisfaction with post-Independence government.  It’s a story of one man’s revenge for the wrongs done to his family. 

But never mind all that; Zanjeer is packed with funky 70s fashions, w-i-d-e sideburns and a fantastic getting-even story.

As with Amar Akbar Anthony, the film opens with a father just released from prison after taking the fall for his rich and powerful boss.   In this case, it’s Ranjit, who works for a company that sold poisonous calcium pills, that he soon learns upon arriving home, have killed one of his own children.  In his fury, he confronts the main bad guy denouncing what he’s been doing.  Realizing that Ranjit is a danger, he dispatches one of his thugs to take care of him.  It’s Diwali and as firecrackers go off, Ranjit and his wife are shot dead, as their son Vijay hides in a cupboard.  From a partially open door, the terrified boy sees the arm of the assassin, and the chain bracelet and white horse charm that he wears.

The orphan Vijay is taken in by a police officer (again, reminiscent of one of the three boys in Amar, Akbar, Anthony) and lives in a caring home, but the child is still thwarted by dreams of a white horse, ridden by a masked figure clad in black, surrounded by mist.

Cut to the opening credits and Vijay, now an adult, awakes sweating and with his heart racing from the same dream.

As he leaves his bedroom to get ready for work, we see the uniform hanging on the back of the door.  Vijay is now a police officer, one who has had 11 transfers during his five years on the force.  His chief tells him that his weakness is he sees each criminal as his enemy.

In the next scene we meet the real-life Mrs. Amitabh Bachchan, the then Jaya Badhuri, in the role of Mala, the knife sharpener girl.  She wears long braids and a gypsy scarf and earrings, and when confronted with a rude guy she is well able to defend herself, before Vijay arrives to take the ruffian away.

Shortly after, we meet the other important character in the film, Sher Khan of Badshah Lane, played, in flame-haired glory, by Pran.  Sher Khan is a good-hearted Muslim who runs illegal card games.  He crosses paths with Officer Vijay, first in the police station, but then at a market, where Vijay comes to fight with him on equal terms.  Aside from some comic elements (the panwallah’s eyes spinning as he watches the fight), it was interesting to note that some shots during the fight scene were solely of Amitabh’s eyes and the bridge of his nose.  The men realize that their fight is a tie and, acknowledging each other’s prowess, become friends, with Sher Khan giving up his illegal business endeavours.

Local crime boss Teja invites Vijay to a party at his house, thinking he can get him under his thumb.  Vijay shows up in his party duds: a double-breasted red blazer, with a white shirt and topped off with a cravat, and we get treated to the spectacle of a vampy number by Bindu.  She shimmies suggestively around the guests in a long sleeveless yellow dress with slits up the sides and fabric cutouts at the waist, and, best of all, a floral arrangement in her hair.

Mala witnesses one of Teja’s bootlegging drivers run over some children, and is convinced by Vijay to identify the man and testify against him.  One night she is chased by Teja’s goons and she makes it to safety at Vijay’s house, where she spends the night.  No hanky panky.  (This is the early 70s!)  But next morning a group of street performers outside the house sing as the two are separated, standing in two different windows side-by-side, and it becomes apparent that they have feelings for each other.

Vijay is later falsely accused of corruption and is rescued by Sher Khan, more than once.  Mala wisely sees that his anger over his parents death and his desire for revenge is consuming him, and she releases him to seek vengence for once and for all so that they can be together in peace.  Vijay meets the man (D’Silva) who’s been giving him tips to where Teja’s men will be moving goods, and learns that Teja has been responsible for the deaths of his three sons from some bad liquor one Christmas.  Vijay sets off for the big showdown with Teja.  Sher Khan drives him there, smoothing his voluminous read hair as he drives (er ??), and once at Teja’s pad, does away with one of the thugs with just the pink silk hankie he carries. 

The big fight scene has a few surprises, including some pretty darn good knife work by Mala.  Jaya was indeed an adorable young woman before she became the Uber Indi-Mom she is today.  It was cool to see her in a role - even over 30 years ago - where she wasn’t just the squealing damsel in distress, and actually had something to contribute, other than her good looks.

See it or skip it? 

This one is a must see!  Amitabh Bachchan is at his smouldering best, this is a landmark in the history of Hindi movies as well as his career, and the story and characters have more depth than so many other mainstream films.

Look at those two.  Don’t they look perfect? 

When this movie came out in 2003, I remember reading stories that said the picture had been exceedingly well received by Indian overseas audiences, especially in the U.S., whereas response was tepid, at best, in India.  They went on to say that the storyline seemed to have struck a chord with NRIs and older American-born people of Indian origin.

Having seen Ravi Chopra’s movie now, if those reports were indeed accurate, I’d guess that it’s for two reasons: first, because there are fewer large joint families here than in India, and one of the main themes touched on in Baghban - abandonment of aging parents by their adult children - is a secret fear that more people would likely harbor in the U.S., and second, because it represents an idealized image of middle class Indian culture that seems locked in amber in an earlier time.

The movie begins with an idyllic set-up.  Amitabh Bachchan and Hema Malini (as Raj and Pooja Malhotra) have it all: a flawless, happy marriage, a beautifully appointed home, and five seemingly perfect sons, some who have married and had children.  Raj heads out every morning to walk the two family dogs, looking very spiffy in his designer track suit.  He returns home to be greeted by his beautiful, dutiful wife who has his Tata tea waiting for him, and who ties his tie for him when he dons a sleek suit to head off to his job at ICICI Bank.  (Two more big product placements coming up after the Interval.)  The first song - Meri Makna, Meri Soniye - happens shortly after, for the occasion of Raj and Pooja’s wedding anniversary.  It’s a lovely number, and it’s pleasing to see a long-married couple portrayed as having such an affectionate and devoted relationship, though the translation of the title, repeated often throughout the song, is hilarious:  “My butterball, my beautiful lady”!  (For anyone reading who may not have lived through one or more Thankgiving seasons in the USA, Butterball is a brand of frozen turkey here.) 

We see Raj hit up for a Rs. 50,000 downpayment for a car by one of his sons, and we also see him take out a loan at work in order to get the money for him.  Raj’s boss at the bank cautions him to take care of his financial affairs, lest he run into difficulty after retirement, and Raj gently waves him off, saying, in essence, “I have no need to worry.  I’ve invested everything in my children and I know they will pay me back in kind when the time comes.”

One more happy song for Holi, and the children all receive a letter from Raj asking them to be sure to be present for Diwali.  After a dinner wherein Amitabh, at the head of the table, has explained to his grandson that the family dining table is like a tree - the grandmother is the root, the grandfather is the trunk, and the grandchildren are the sweet fruit - he and Hema sit down with the children and give them the news: Raj is retiring and the couple will give up their home and go live with whichever of the four sons want them.  (The fifth son, adopted, played by Salman Khan, is off earning big money in Europe somewhere and not in on the surprise.)  The happy couple then excuse themselves so the children can discuss and make their decision.  They imagine that the children are fighting over who gets to have them, when in reality the ungrateful offspring react as if they’ve just been handed a vial of the Ebola virus and told to drink up.

They devise a plan to split the parents up (one son and d-i-l will take the mother, the other son and d-i-l will take the father, and after 6 months each will send that parent on to the next two brothers).  They are sure, knowing how attached the parents are, that they will never agree to such a plan and the kids will all be off the hook, but, to their surprise, that’s not the case.  AB and Hema spend one sad final night together before a long and tearful goodbye.  At this point, as I was watching the movie, I jotted down in my notebook: “What a ridiculous premise!”

It’s outrageous to believe that four adult children (with no prior hint of this earlier in the movie) would turn on their parents and behave this way, and it’s even more preposterous to believe that a couple who love each other as much as Raj and Pooja do, would agree to leave each other.  I know that each movie requires some degree of letting go and saying “Ok, this is unlikely, but it might happen”, but this plot point is just beyond any filmi suspension of disbelief.

Did I stop the DVD player, remove the disc and put it back in its case?  No. 

Partially because I was curious to see how the story had been written to be resolved, and partially because the fantasyland that Raj and Pooja live in so lulls you into believing that this sort of love between a man and his wife is actually possible (as much as you really suspect it’s not).

Raj and Pooja drive off in different directions and it just gets worse from there.  At his new home, no one helps Raj carry his luggage up, he is chased away from the seat at the head of the dining table by his bahu, and when his eyeglasses break, the son makes him wait ’til the next payday to have them repaired.  Pooja fares no better: her teenage granddaughter refuses to share her bedroom, so she is placed in the maid’s room, causing the maid to promptly quit.  Raj and Pooja write letters back and forth, expressing how much they miss each other, and soon, we the audience have to sit through a toe-curlingly dweeby picturization of the song Main Yahan Tu Wahan with AB crooning into a phone in a telephone booth.  (By the way, have a dekko at this picture: is he actually wearing four rings??)

The only bit of consolation for Raj (and us) during this period is when Raj meets Hemantbhai (Paresh Rawal) and his wife Shanti (Lilette Dubey), who own and run an Archies card shop and cafe.  At the urging of the kids hanging out at the caf, who appreciate him more than his own, Raj starts typing his memoirs.  For the celebration of Valentine’s Day, a party at Archies gives way to the song Chali Chali.  Again, it’s lovely to see that the second of the big numbers from this film are acted out by two people both past age 50.  My only complaint is the lame dialogue leading up to it.  Raj arrives at Archies and sees the kids with the red, heart-shaped balloons, exchanging cards and terms of endearment, and when told what the occasion is, he asks “Valentine’s Day?  What’s that?”

At that point, I think I actually shouted “Oh, come on!  What nonsense!” at the TV.  I mean, really, here we have this urbane gentleman who has been out and about, worked in a bank in a big metropolis, and he’s never heard of Valentines Day?  Even if, as Shiv Sena maintains, the holiday is a Vestern one and foreign to Indian culture, in any big city a gent like AB would know what the day is about, just as surely as he’d know that Cafe Coffee Day and Barista are in competition with each other.   

Raj and Pooja meet up at the time of the six-month switch (where else but at a train station ) where they’re supposed to transfer to their next destinations, when Raj decides they should make a break for it and run off together, like two teens eloping.  During their escapade, at a moment when Raj is being abused by a car salesman after a test drive, Salman the adopted son (called Alok), materializes, with his shaadi shuda wife (Mahima Chaudhry) in tow, and brings the parents home to live with them, where they can bask in the glow of his adoration.  Yes, really.  He recites lines like “You are God who has come into my life as a father” and falls asleep on the floor at the side of the parents’ bed, like a puppy dog.  (You’d think after six months apart, Mum and Dad might want some alone time, if you know what I mean.  Hai hai!  Becharam!  Who would suggest such a thing?)

In the meantime, Hemantbhai gets Raj’s memoirs turned into a book, which becomes a huge hit, has to be reprinted and wins - ahem - the Booker.  At a ceremony to celebrate the author, the four bad children show up, the money-grubbing little brats.  But don’t worry, Amitabh delivers a powerful speech about parents and children

“… our drooping shoulders on which our children once sat to see the world…..our trembling hands which held our childrens’ for them to see the world….our parched lips that once sang lullabyes…” 

and gives them what for.

I love the fact that Raj and Pooja sleep in the same bed, embracing each other, that they are shown - tastefully - actually being physical with each other.  But the atmosphere of the movie, the sets, are too perfect.  The home that Raj and Pooja live in is gorgeous, but it looks like a movie set home, an oversized chalet, like something for sale in Aamby Valley.  It detracts from the possible emotional impact of the film, because it lessens how believable we find it.

The troop of actors playing the various children were all forgettable.  The movie could have benefitted from better writing and better actors to play the sons, so they might have been halfway convincing rather than cardboard.

See it or skip it?

If you’re excited at the prospect of Amitabh and Hema together again on screen, or the idea of a mushy love story between two attractive, older people appeals to you, go for it.  Everyone else, walk on by. 

I don’t regret having seen it.  I love Amitabh Bachchan, especially in this phase of his career, plus he and Hema played their roles so gracefully and beautifully, in a far-from-perfect film, but this movie is definitely not everyone’s cup of chai.  Tata, or otherwise.

Amar, Akbar, Anthony, Manmohan Desai’s 1977 movie takes the separated-at-birth, double role device prevalent in many Hindi movies over the years and puts a twist on it. 

The set-up is this:  driver Kishenlal (played by Pran), just home from having taken the fall for his boss, Robert, and gone to jail, finds his three small sons starving and his wife, Bharti, ill with TB.  Enfuriated that Robert has not kept his word to support the family financially, the father sets off to confront him.

While he’s gone, the long-suffering Bharati (Nirupa Roy, who else?), pens a suicide note, leaves it with the boys, and runs off to do herself in, so as not to be a burden to the family.  Over at Robert’s palatial home, he and Kishenlal have a showdown and a shootout, and Kishenlal escapes in a car that, unbeknownst to him, contains gold bricks (albeit some very light ones).  Upon finding his baby sons and the note, he piles the kids into the car, and zooms off, Robert’s men in pursuit, to look for the missus.  He stops briefly to deposit them at the foot of a statue of Gandhi, telling them to stay put.  The baddies find and chase him.  He crashes, police and crooks think he’s dead, but, he’s actually escaped with a box of those ultra-lite gold briquettes.  Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, Bharati runs to her designated suicide spot, but before she can reach wherever it is, a tree branch falls on her, and PLAF! she’s suddenly rendered blind.

(You with me so far?)

So, we have one father - Kishenlal - in hiding, one mother - Bharati - blind and home to an empty house, and the three babies, what happens to them?  One wanders to the road in search of food and is hit by a car and injured, and rescued by the police.  He is raised as Amar.    Another lands up at the door of a church and is taken in by a priest.  He is raised as Anthony.  The smallest is found alone and crying by the Gandhi statue, and taken home by a Muslim tailor.  This is Akbar.

Fast forward to the present.  Akbar (Rishi Kapoor) is a qawwali singer and friend of Anthony (Amitabh Bachchan), who’s a bit of a chancer, running a small bar and giving 50% of his earnings to the poor.  Amar (Vinod Khanna) has become a police officer.  By a series of circumstances, before the opening credits have yet to roll, Bharati is in the hospital in need of a tranfusion for her rare blood type, and lo and behold, the 3 guys just happen to be there and match, but of course, no one realizes that they’re all related.

As with Deewar and Zanjeer, Amitabh Bachchan’s wardrobe is fantastically trendy in this film.  In one scene, he appears in a red leather jacket, and bell-bottom jeans with a patch, the ubiquitous ’70s decoration, two fingers making a peace sign in the red, white and blue stars and stripes of the American flag, topped off with a floppy newsboy cap.  He dons a different color cap in another scene, and also rotates his jewelry between an oversize ankh (how Valley of the Dolls!) on a silver chain around his neck, or a cross large enough to belong to a bishop. 

Not to be outdone, Rishi Kapoor, the Qawwali King, shows up in one scene for his concert wearing purple trousers, a mesh wife beater (or cut banyan, depending on from whence you hail) topped off by a see-thru green shirt, lavender scarf and oversize sunglasses.

For the sold-out qawwali concert (where we hear the song Pardah Hai Pardah), upon bumping into the blind and ticketless Bharati who’s come to hear Akbar and give him a flower, Anthony behaves like the perfect son and tells her that he has a special pass to get them in, and once in the hall “You sit on my seat and I’ll sit at your feet.”  Hai rabba.  With celluloid sons like this, Indian kids in real life have got a lot to live up to.

The three brothers find three equally cute girlfriends.  Akbar’s is Salma, a fetching Muslim doctor (played by Neetu Singh) whose father disapproves of his daughter’s choice of suitor, though he’s eventually won over, not by the hijras who serenade him, but after Akbar saves him and Salma from a fire.  Amar falls for Laxmi, a woman suspect (played by Shabana Azmi) who he’s been sent undercover to tail, as she’s been implicated in some hitchhikings-cum-robberies.  When we first catch a glimpse of her, she’s poised by the roadside, looking very comely in oversize yellow flares and a matching green, yellow and black blouse.  It turns out Laxmi has been committing the crimes, but only because she was forced to.

The relationship that gets the most screen time is that of Anthony and Jenny (played by Parveen Babi), and the reason for that is because, just to add more twists to the plot, Jenny is actually the daughter of Robert, but she was kidnapped as a baby by Kishenlal, for revenge of the loss of his sons, and raised by him.  Anthony sees her for the first time at St. Mary’s church in Bandra, where she has come to attend Mass, beautifully groomed in a pale yellow, tiered dress and black lace mantilla (this was back when women used to still cover their heads inside a church).  She has returned from overseas for a visit and Kishenlal has assigned her a leering, beefy goofball of a bodyguard named Zebesko, who soon decides he’d like to guard Jenny’s body full-time as her husband.  Perhaps because of the atrocious poncho he wears in one scene, or because of his eerie resemblance to Son of Sam killer David Berkowitz, Jenny is repelled and rebuffs him.

One of the best scenes and songs in Amar, Akbar, Anthony takes place at the Easter Dance Jenny attends with Zebesko in tow, where a giant egg is rolled onto the dance floor and Amitabh Bachchan pops out, wearing a squishy stovepipe hat and tuxedo, and procedes to sing the almost totally nonsensical, but catchy, mambo: My Name is Anthony Gonsalves.  In between the lyrics (sung by Kishore Kumar) he spouts phrases like “Wait, wait, WAIT!  You see the whole country of the system is juxtapositioned by the hemoglobin in the atmosphere because you are a sophisticated rhetorician intoxicated by the exuberence of your own verbosity!”  For days after watching this movie, I couldn’t get that song out of my head.

There are many other memorable scenes, including the drunk scene AB does, talking to his mirror twin after a brawl, dabbing medicine on the other guy’s wounds, and another where he shows up at the church in a three-piece white suit and pink tie ready to get married only to find the priest who raised him murdered, and he angrily addresses a statue of Jesus (much like Vijay in Deewar at the temple as he was dying) saying “Tell me the name of who did this or I’ll become so bad” (of course, just then a locket - containing the clue - drops from the dead priest’s hand).

Invariably, the various strands of the story criss-cross each other, with a miraculous religious eyesight healing (hey, I guess this precedent is why the makers of Fanaa figured they could get away with it) ending up with the Big Climactic Scene with all three brothers (in costume, and singing), all three girlfriends, one villian, one wronged father, and a score of bad guys, out at Robert’s house, which looks like Hernando’s Hideaway, or a hotel I stayed at once in Puerto Vallarta. 

See it or skip it? 

You must see it!  In addition to the sweet notion of the film, that inspite of religious beliefs we are all brothers and should all get along, the movie just has a terrific, happy-go-lucky feel to it, and between the songs, the crazy storyline, the fab costumes and the attractive triumvirate of heros and their accompanying heroines, what’s not to like?

Black and white, and visually precious.  This 1959 film is often cited as an example of the golden age of Hindi cinema.

Directed by and starring Guru Dutt, who committed suicide in 1964 at the age of 39, the film is considered by many to be at least partially autobiographical.

The movie opens with an old man in tattered clothes making his way through the gates of Ajanta Pictures.  He enters a set and slowly climbs two levels up.  He sits in semi-darkness and watches as the crew get ready for a shot.  Flashback, and we see the same man, the filmmaker Suresh Sinha (Guru Dutt), in a three-piece suit, smoking a pipe in the same studio, surrounded by women asking for his autograph.  We learn that in the past he was married and separated from his wife and daughter, and while filming Devdas, he discovers an unknown, Shanti (played by Waheeda Rehman) who he enlists to be Paro in the film, and who he soon falls in love with, much to the distress of his adolescent daughter, Pammi.  It is Suresh’s daughter, not his wife, Bina, who confronts Shanti and persuades her to break off any sentimental entanglement with her father.  Shanti gives in, quits her acting career and moves away to be a teacher in a small village, and from there, Suresh’s life falls apart.  His movie is a failure, he loses a custody battle for his daughter, and he descends into a circle of drinking and neglecting his work that soon has him broke and living in a shack.

Though not containing a Rosebud mystery that is revealed only toward the end, I still was reminded of Citizen Kane as I watched Kaagaz ke Phool.  Both tell the story of a man who had, seemingly, everything and lost it.  Both men were captains in their own industry, both characters fell for younger, unpolished women while they were already married, and became undone by their loves.  Interestingly, both possess totemic items that have great significance to the protagonists; Charles Foster Kane has Rosebud, Suresh has his daughter’s doll and Shanti’s knitting that he keeps in a cupboard in the sitting room.  The movie’s title appears in the haunting line of the song that plays as Shanti tries to chase after Suresh on the studio lot, only to be intercepted by autographs seekers, and she loses him: no nectar in paper blossoms.

S.D. Burman’s music and Kaifi Azmi’s lyrics are haunting, especially the most famous song from the film, the mournful Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Haseem Sitam.

There are some lighter moments - in the scenes with Bina’s rich and stuffy Anglophile parents and Johnny Walker as the rakish brother-in-law - but they are few, and sometimes feel forced.  The one genuinely funny scene is where the soon-to-be-replaced actress portraying Paro as she argues with Suresh that she thinks her character should be “fancier” and wear a side part in her.  Her ideas are vetoed, as is she.

One terrific extra on the DVD is a three-part Channel 4 documentary on Guru Dutt by Nasreen Munni Kabir, who more recently produced a hit biography of Shahrukh Khan.  It’s an extensive examination of his movies and his life away from the camera.  In addition to family members sharing their thoughts, Kabir has also gotten his peers and collaborators - such as V.K. Murthy and Kaifi Azmi - to talk about their work together.  Murthy explains how he came up with a way to shoot two beams of light in a particular shot in Kaagaz ke Phool, and Kaifi Azmi (famous poet and lyricist, as well as father to Shabana) recites a poem about Guru Dutt (translated on screen as):

No one comes to this world to live forever

But no one leaves the world in quite your manner

For once, death, too, must have been disconcerted

For no one has embraced death in quite your manner

I fear lest the ocean may be blotted up

For no one sprinkles their ashes in quite your manner

You bore a grudge against the tavern-keeper

For no one slakes their thirst with poison, in quite your manner

I accept that you were saved by the light

But no one extinguishes the lamp in quite your manner

No one comes to this world to live forever

But no one leaves the world in quite your manner

See it or skip it?

See it.  Though the pace is slower than in most movies today, the use of light and shadows is something to see, and the tale of unrequited love is classic.

I’ve no one to blame but myself. 

I took this 2002 Sridevi Productions movie home because I like Nana Patekar, one of the three lead actors, and had read, several times over, back when the movie was first released that, surprisingly, Karisma Kapoor had done a good turn in it. 

What a sorry waste of $2.

Good Lord, if this movie were made by white people, they’d be accused of being anti-Indian, it contains such an amazing array of clichés (smelly peasants, uncultured rough chauvinist natives, and on and on).

Karisma Kapoor plays the part of Nandini, an Indian girl based in Canada, possibly born there (this already is a stretch of the imagination).  Her parents are both dead and her uncles are hoping to find a good husband for her.  They set sights on her buddy, Shekhar, played by Sanjay Kapoor.  The two marry and have a baby boy, Raja, when suddenly some violence back in India prompts Shekhar to rush back home, his wife and child in tow.  I could have sworn that the faux TV news clips mentioned Bihar, though the scenery where the movie is filmed in India is obviously Rajasthan.  Nandini learns that her husband has quite an extensive family, though he seems to have let on to her that he was alone in the world.

Once they touch down in rural India, Nandini turns into the perfect Memsaab, fanning the air in front of her and wrinkling her nose at the smells around her, clutching her precious son and shrieking every time a local gets too close for comfort.  The small family is almost attacked on the bus ride home by warlords hostile to Shekhar’s father, Narasimha (Nana Patekar), but, lucky for the trio, Nana’s men show up just in the nick of time, guns blazing.  The prodigal son is welcomed home with a slaughtered goat, whose blood he and Nandini are expected to walk through.  Poor Nandini turns five shades paler and plotzes at the prospect.

Enter Nana.  The mighty patriarch, clad in the same white dhoti and tee with pale coral scarf throughout the whole movie, first appears crouched in the huge, crumbling fort, surrounded by dozens of pigeons.  We soon learn that the eye-for-an-eye battles between his guys and the ones who attacked the bus have been going on for a long time. 

What a head of the family Narasimha is: he insults his son repeatedly for being a wimp, growls at Nandini to dress modestly (her arms are exposed) and is tickled to see his grandson, who he declares he will make into a lion.

There is also a long suffering Mrs. Narasimha and some sisters, but they, for the most part, stick to type in the background.  The mother cries that she’s missed her son all the years he’s been away and the sisters fawn over their new bhabhiji, telling her how pretty she is.

Shekhar and Nandini grow increasingly disturbed by the violence that surrounds them and plan their return home, until Shekhar is killed by the opposing warlords and Narasimha refuses to allow his grandson to leave with Nandini (who he taunts frequently by addressing as Madam).  Since there is no question of calling the cops to intervene, we now have the set-up of the struggle that takes us through to the end of the movie.

I’m pretty easygoing when it comes to most movies and with Bollywood flics I can usually find something to like, even if it’s just the music or the locales or the clothes, but even I’m pretty much stuck here!  The only thing I can say is, Nana plays the flinty codger Grandad to a T, cackling out a HEE HEE HEE every so often, in between angry rants.  In one of the most puzzling scenes, after he orders the beheading of a rival in a threshing machine, the southern Astaire Prabhu Deva appears for a song and dance number in tribute to Narasimha’s leadership, joined by dozens of village men.

Oh yes, and then there’s the much touted Ishq Kameena number, inserted jarringly in the second half of the movie.  It’s only purpose is to introduce Shahrukh Khan’s chatty character, Jaisingh, and give us the chance to see Aishwarya Rai in a wet costume with a tramp stamp just above her tailbone.  Turns out SRK will be present in a lot of the last quarter of the movie, and he gets the funniest line of the entire film (spoken in the midst of an action scene): “If the camel gets hurt, Maneka Gandhi will kill you.”

See it or skip it?

Skip it!  Don’t even think of watching this movie, unless you are blinded by an undying love for Lolo or Nana and will sit through anything in order to see them.  (Sanjay doesn’t even register.)

Even 30 years since its release, Yash Chopra’s Deewar still has a lot going for it: classic Amitabh Bachchan as Vijay, leggy and brooding, in full angry-young-man mode, the breathy voice and soft eyes of Shashi Kapoor as Ravi, the Dudley Doright brother of the family, compelled to pursue his bad boy brother.

The story revolves around the love triangle of the two boys and their mother, the long-suffering Nirupa Roy, as the three struggle to survive in 1970s Bombay (and wow, does it look tidy and uncrowded).  They find themselves in this situation after the father, a coal miner and would-be union organizer, is forced to betray the striking workers because the mine’s owner has taken his family hostage.  After cutting a deal and securing their release, he runs away in disgrace, riding around endlessly on trains.  His son Vijay is caught by some angry villagers and forcibly tattooed with the words “My father is a thief”. 

Having made their way to Bombay, mother and sons live under a bridge with many other poor people.  Their mother tries to eke out a living as a construction worker.  Ravi, ever the good boy, dreams of returning to school, and so Vijay turns shoeshine boy to earn the school fees for him.  In a telling moment, two obviously well off men stop to have their shoes, and when one of them throws money to Vijay, the boy tells him “I polish shoes, I don’t beg.  Pick up that coin and hand it to me.”  The other man comments to his associate “That boy will go far.  He’s a long distance runner.”  Vijay’s pride flares to anger when the boss at the construction site where his mother works insults her, and he throws a brick, hitting the boss in the head.

Flash forward and the boys are now adults.  Ravi is dating a police chief’s daughter and looking for work (unsuccessfully), eventually deciding to become a policeman himself, since he has no influential contacts to get him in through the door for an interview.  Vijay works on the docks as a coolie, sauntering around confidently, with his rope (that the coolies use to haul boxes) casually tossed around his neck like a scarf.  His badge number is 786, which he learns from an older Muslim man he befriends, is lucky and will bring him prosperity.  After standing up to a mafia thug who takes a portion of every coolie’s wages, Vijay catches the eye of the thug’s well-dressed mafia boss and soon has a job himself, eventually becoming so successful that he buys a huge house for his mother and brother to live in with him, and he even buys the apartment building that his mother had been working on when Vijay through the brick at her boss.

But, given that Ravi has now become a policeman, of course their stories dovetail and Ravi confronts Vijay, asking him to give up the life of crime.  When Vijay refuses, Ravi and their mother move out, determined to return to a lower standard of living, rather than live under the roof of a mobster, even if he’s family.  Shortly after, Ravi finds himself obliged to hunt down his own brother, to the conclusion of the film.

One aspect of the movie that surprised me, given that it was released in 1975, is how open the portrayal is of Vijay’s relationship with the prostitute, Anita (played by the recently deceased Parveen Babi, whose latter years and end of life were sad, when not tragic, compared to how it was at the time Deewar).  The two meet at a very mod, carousel-themed (yes, really) hotel bar, where he has come on business.  She is seated at the bar, in a shiny, long red dress with two thigh-high slits, drinking by herself.  When she gets talking to Vijay and their mutual attraction is apparent, she blows smoke at him, which he inhales with pleasure, in a brief moment of sensuality.  Her clothes and the drinking and smoking indicate outwardly that she’s not the good girl you’d bring home to Maa because she’s good bahu material, but we learn later that she aspires to the same as all women were assumed to hope for then: marriage and children.  

One scene shows a shirtless, post-coital Amitabh sitting up in bed, shoulder-to-shoulder with Parveen, as she lights a cigarette and passes it to him.  I think I actually gasped out loud at the sight of the Big B’s nipples peeking out over the top of the folded sheet, not because of his near nudity (though, come to think of it, in how many other films has he appeared so scantily clad?), but rather because today, we rarely, if ever, see a man and woman (hero or heroine, or both) together in bed in a Hindi movie, except if they’re married or it’s a dream sequence, or it’s a sex farce like Masti or Kya Kool Hai Hum.

At a particularly dramatic moment in the film, there’s a fantastic scene where Vijay, who always refused to enter the temple any time he accompanied his mother and Ravi, now does go in to the temple, and looking upward, angry and hurt, addresses God, opening with “You must be very happy today.”  Amitabh has a similar - though much shorter and less angry - scene in Amar, Akbar, Anthony.

One of the treats of seeing an older movie, especially one from the ’70s or ’80s, is the opportunity to consider what was the peak of fashion at that time, and boy, this movie does not disappoint.  More so than the women, it’s the men’s clothes that leave a lasting impression.  There’s the poster classic shot of Amitabh in the godown, blue shirt, long beige-clad legs stretched out before him, cigarette in mouth.  In another scene, he arrives to meet with his fellow mafiosi at a Bombay hotel pool and bar, in a turtleneck, blazer and bellbottom pants.  Though the clothes are certainly dated, given Amitabh’s height and smoldering good looks, he’s able to pull almost all ensembles off successfully, with one exception.  There is a laugh out loud moment when we see him at the bar where he meets Anita, all done out in (I kid you not) a black and white polka dot vest and bow tie, together with a black shirt and suit.  This excruciating fashion violation is balanced out later when, at their father’s funeral, Ravi is dressed in the traditional plain white kurta pajama, but Vijay shows up a bit late, and, cool man of style that he is, wearing a pair of white flared trousers and white mod shirt, several buttons open from the neck down.

The baddies are memorable too, as they usually are in Hindi movies, for their atrocious bad taste in all things design-related, as they revel in their polyester safari suits, Qiana shirts, fat velvet lapels and swollen bow ties.  We may be poorer, but we can comfort ourselves with thoughts like “Even if I had his kind of money, I’d still never have a taxidermied jaguar in a glass case sitting in my dining room” or “If that guy’s lapels were any wider, they’d wrap around his shoulders and be continued on his back.”  The exception is Davar, an Oleg Cassini-looking man, the original Dapper Don, chauffeured around Bombay in a huge American boat of a car, always impeccably turned out.

The music, though a suitable accompaniment to the film, contains nothing so exuberant or melodic to have me looking to see where I could get myself a copy of the soundtrack.

 See it or skip it?

See it!  This is one of the movies that made Amitabh Bachchan and it is a classic.  And, as Rachel Dwyer points out in her 100 Bollywood Films, it marks an interesting time in Hindi cinema where the hero is actually an anti-hero.