I’ve developed a policy for weekend movie-watching over the years: Fridays and Saturdays, anything goes, but Sunday evenings, no depressing films allowed. There’s nothing worse than going to sleep Sunday night after seeing Enemies: A Love Story or Pixote.
Under this criteria, Chandni Bar should be seen no later than Friday night; it’s a terribly bleak, though honest, portrayal.
Madhur Bhandarkar’s 2001 film opens with Mumtaz (Tabu) sitting at a train station in UP with tears streaming down her cheeks, waiting for a train to Bombay. It’s 1985 and she is fleeing with her uncle from communal violence in their small town that has just burned her parents to death and killed many others. Her fate just goes downhill from there.
Tabu narrates at the beginning and end of the film, telling us, in the voice of Mumtaz, how circumstances brought her to dance in a beer bar, and the effect that those experiences had on her life. She is perfect for this role, owing to a certain gravitas she has about her every time I’ve seen her onscreen.
Upon arriving in Bombay, the pair are lucky (depending on how you see it) to meet Iqbal (Rajpal Yadav), a fixer who lives in a poor Muslim neighborhood in Bombay and knows his way around. He finds a small place where the two can live, and he soon suggests to the uncle that Mumtaz could make some fast money dancing as a bar girl. Unworldly, small-town girl that she is, Mumtaz is horrified at the idea, though her uncle takes to it without batting an eye, telling her it’s just so they can survive until he finds a job. (Surprise, surprise, he doesn’t look that hard and quickly abandons his search altogether.)
At first, the girls are indifferent and/or snarky to Mumtaz, but eventually they warm to her and show her the ways, especially Deepa, whose husband drives an auto and is her pimp. There’s one brief scene where the girls go for a day out in Bombay, and as they stop to eat snacks on the seafront, they tell her “This is where Shakti was filmed!” After Mumtaz’s uncle rapes her one night, and she tells the girls at the bar, they hold her to soothe her, then they tell her to stop crying and all explain their own sad stories that they’ve endured.
The set for the Chandni Bar itself looks authentic, badly lit and scruffy around the edges (especially the girls’ waiting area/dressing room, complete with peeling movie star posters on the wall and a cracked window in the door, from where they peer out at the customers and other dancers).
Things seem to take a turn for the better when Mumtaz meets Pothia (played by the very excellent Atul Kulkarni), a criminal who falls in love with and marries her. On their wedding night he learns that she was raped and sets off to find her uncle and avenge the crime. In the years after, they have a daughter, Payal, and a son, Abhay. Mumtaz is able to stop working at the bar and resolves that her children will have better lives, but, her dreams are upset when Pothia is killed on the orders of his own mafia boss, in collusion with the police.
Mumtaz tries to recoup money from Pothia’s criminal partners, but they either shun her or suggest she goes to Dubai and prostitute herself for a couple of years, so she is forced to return to Chandni Bar, and juggle watching the children with dancing for the customers. She’s keeps her head above water for a few years, using all her strength to send the children to an English language school, when her son, then a teenager, is thrown in jail for something another kid has done, leading to a domino effect of tragic events that touches mother and children equally. There is no happy ending in this film. As Tabu narrates at the end in the voice of Mumtaz “I wanted to see my future in my children, but I saw only my past.”
To the director’s credit, the movie does not sensationalize the bar girls’ lives, and the supporting cast are flawless.
See it or skip it?
Skip it except if you’re a Tabu fan or jonesing for a serious, reality-based movie with no musical numbers. For me, the relentless catalogue of one tragedy after another was too much, and the pace of the film is very slow.
no blody bastard should say anything about that girls with sampathy and humble tune since no none on earth try to help such girls.
it is a briliant movie, its so refreshing to see the rare Indian movie that depicts the reality of Life and the poverty and degradation that goes on every day outside the comfort of our middle class lives. Young guys with money often visit girls like this never realising the situation that drove her to be a prostitute or the miseries she has suffered, its time we made more films like this and stop making cheap trash with stupid unrealistic dance sequences as I think as an audience we have moved on and should demand quality movies with quality actors. Chadni bar is a real gem
Welcome Gautham,
I was going to post a reply on your blog about the Air India crew and the booze, but it only allows Blogger…
so here it is: I was really disappointed in JW Blue. Knockando is a big favorite, and Cardhu.
On the subject of another beverage, have you ever ingested Old Monk? Ewwww, it’s like cough medicine, but worse!
Great review. This sounds like exactly my type of movie, and I love Tabu. Though the story sounds terrible, it actually rings very true with what I know of the beer bars and the girls that dance in them. They are generally poor, from impoverished villages and go to the city to “make it” but end up being abused and pimped more often than not.
As for Tamil films, being Tamil myself, I enjoy them without subtitles but understand that the official subtitled copies can cost a lot because they aren’t as in demand as Hindi films. My favorite Tamil film is actually Mouna Raagan, it is just a beautiful story with beautiful songs, and the relationships are some of the most authentic you will see in mainstream Indian cinema.
Also, IMO Jyothika sucks. It’s all about Trisha, who is both a family friend and extremely cute in person 🙂
JKM, I guess Doli Saja Ke Rakhna did so bad she never ventured into Hindi movies again (or was never asked). I think Jyothika’s a Tamil movie equivalent of Juhi Chawla, or at least an approximation. I haven’t seen many of her movies at all, but every time I’ve been to Madras, her face was on so many movie posters on so many hoardings.
Thanks for the link to Tamil movie site.
I’ve never even tried to see a Tamil film in the cinema, as they never have subtitles down here…Oh, that exempts the Mani Ratnam ones in the filmfest circuits, of course. I’ve seen KM, Alai Payuthey and Iruvar on big screens, all with subtitles. KM is SO great. Oddly, when I read the description, it was the filmfest offering I thought I would like the least, but I bought the ticket anyway as I was going to see all the Indian films on the schedule…Little did I know!
I was trying to remember if I had seen Jyothika in anything (only Doli Saja Ke Rakhna, one of the only Akshaye Khanna movies I will NEVER buy… awful, awful, “poundingly” awful) but I will give her another chance. But when I was going through the IMDb lists, I ran across a link to this review site for Tamil films. http://www.geocities.com/bbreviews/
I agree with a lot of what he says of the ones I’ve seen (except he likes Roja better than KM, which I can’t see. Velu Nayakan, maybe, but Roja?) and he also cross references his reviews by star ratings, so you can look up all the ones he’s given 3 1/2 and 4 star ratings for. I have already taken a recommendation from him and ordered a copy of Mani Ratnam’s Mouna Raagan which sounded great. We’ll see how Balaji fares as a reference guru.
I’ve gotten very leary about handing over $10 for a Tamil movie in the theater, let alone buying them. The last two I saw (Paramasivam and Priyasakhi) were real howlers, in spite of Ajith in the former, and Maddie in the latter.
I haven’t been able to sit through all of Ayitha Ezhuthu yet, maybe one day. MR wanted AB 2.0 to shave his hair for Yuva like Madhavan did and he refused. It’s funny because Maddie looks like a real thug in AE too. So far, the movie I love most is Kannathil Muthamittal. First time I ever saw it was in the darkness of a Sri Lankan airlines flight from Europe to Colombo, with a small row to myself so I could bawl my eyes out in private. I think it’s a near perfect film, though the ending is a bit too dragged out.
On Surya’s being hot property, his engagement to Jyothika has just been announced. I wonder will she work afterward; she’s been such a staple of Tamil movies.
I’d love to hear Michael’s recommendations, too. Tamil films are, on the whole so much more expensive, I don’t invest in them unless I know I will like them…Mani Ratnam films, AR Rehman scores, etc.
I liked Kandukondain, but the first copy had crappy subtitles in the second half. The CinemaIndia version I got later was good however. Of the Mani Ratnam films, I loved Kannathil Muthamittal, perhaps even better than Dil Se (ack, did I SAY that?). Have you seen the tamil version of Yuva? Ayitha Ezhuthu isn’t better, per se, but the compared performances of the leads are a bit different.
Madhavan does the same role that Abhishek played, very well…so beefed up, I hardly recognized him. His buddy from RDB, Siddarth, plays the Vivek role, even better than Vivek did…he’s someone to watch, and Surya Sivakumar, who plays the Ajay Devgan role has a completely different dynamic than Ajay did. I hear he’s quite the hot property down south these days, and I see why. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, though his performance wasn’t even over-the-top. More, quiet intensity.
Ah so, you like Tamil films. I’ve been tempted to watch Kandukondain again, and I have a copy of Dum Dum Dum I’ve never watched yet, but I’ve got too many others to see yet.
Did you see Pramasivam? Wasn’t it AWFUL? The only thing I liked was the Asai Dosai number.
What Tamil films have you seen recently that you’d recommend?
you didnt steer me away. you lead me to this film 🙂 (if i will any time end buying only tamilian movies 😉 )
Michael, Maja, I feel bad steering people away from what is a quality production, especially one in which Tabu is so good. It’s more about what I look for in a movie or why I watch, which is, in part at least, to escape.
And, like Sanket says, it does give us a glimpse into another side of Bombay life.
MW, I’d take your statement a step further and say that the film gives you despair about men and their treatment of women. The root of everything that was awful about Mumtaz’s life in the film was what the men around her did to her.
JKM, I agree complete, Atul Kulkarni is an amazing actor and he, with Tabu, are the two who make this film worth considering, if one accepts that it’s a sad 2+ hours. I loved him in RDB, and yeah, Page 3 was, to me, nothing to rave over.
It is depressing, but for Atul Kulkarni’s performance alone, it is worth seeing! He’s amazingly versatile…in this one he literally jumps off the screen, and I had just seen him in Khakee where he was that quietly anguished doctor that BigB was transporting. It set me off on a barrage of his films, he’s very good in Satta as a driven politician, in Kairee as a shy schoolteacher, in Hey Ram as a rather crazy leader of a political party, as a corrupt cop in Dum, and we all saw him as a disillusioned political party member in Rang De Basanti. So many faces! Skip 88 Antop Hill and Page 3, he’s wasted in them (acutally, Page 3 is okay for Konkona Sen Sharma, but he’s wasted in it…too small a part).
Depressing movie but very accurate in it’s portrayal of these so-called ‘Dance Bars’ in Bombay. Friends of mine that went to see for themselves said the movie gave a realistic view of what the clubs were really like. Like Filmi said – not a good movie for the weekend but worthwhile in seeing how the other side of Bombay lives…
How can one not have a poor opinion of humanity in general, after watching something like Chandni Bar. I like my films noirish but not this dark!
By the way, I did manage to see Omkara today!! I’ll let you know my thoughts about it via email.
Oh man, I’m definitely not watching this, got depressed just reading your review!
thanks for your thoughts, Chandni Bar is now on my next buying list 🙂