Yaarana (1981)

Kishan/Krishna/Krishen (Amitabh Bachchan) and Bishan/Bhutan/Bishen (Amjad Khan) have been special friends since they were wee little ones (badly) played by child actors. While Bishan is the son of a rich family, Kishan is the embodiment of the poor uneducated and stupid on the borderline of retarded but upright peasant. Some long-term money-stealing plans of Bishan's uncle (Jeevan) and the uncle's son Jaggu (Ranjeet) lead to Bishan being carted off (and I quote here) "aboard". At first I thought the slightly problematic subtitles here just had trouble discerning between "abroad" and "aboard" - later parts of the movie suggest to me that they actually put Bishan on a ship to get his higher education in a kind of swimming school of doom. Bishan, being as terribly in love with Kishan as he is, wants to take his friend with him, but proud Kishan thinks the son of a peasant should stay the son of a peasant and not get any education. Also, he promised his father something about the family farm that's neither explained nor makes sense in context.

Years later, when the two have grown into Amitabh and Amjad, Bishan finally succeeds to talk his friend into coming to the Big City with him. Bishan's plan is to use his money to make Kishan the biggest singing sensation of them all. After loads of the sort of wacky hijinx that wouldn't be out of place in a film with (please insert comedy actor even worse than Will Ferrell at your discretion), Kishan first annoying then totally charming the pants off his star teacher Komal (Neetu Singh), and other stuff too dire to mention, Bishan finally learns that he isn't all that rich anymore thanks to his uncle and co. making off with the family money. Of course, this is supposed to be an ode to friendship (on the borderline to slash), so Bishan takes out a mortgage on his house and his ship to finance Kishan's education, royally pissing off his wife who seems to think that he should try to take care of his son and her first (silly woman!).

As I may have mentioned before, Kishan is a complete idiot and only learns of his friend's own idiocy after his first big show in a gigantic stadium (that to me looked like a rather small gym like most schools should have), but makes up for that with more stupid melodrama than should be allowed, leading into even more melodrama, Mental Asylums, child kidnappings, amnesia, minor cries of "Nahiiiiiin!", fiendish plans that make neither sense nor are fun until the film finally, finally ends.

Don't let the decent IMDb rating fool you: this might very well be one of the worst Bollywood films you'll ever get to see. It's not that, say, the typical Ramsay Brothers film is so much higher in worthiness or technical accomplishment than Yaarana (although, really, it is), the problem is that those films are working hard at being fun, while Yaarana looks as if it was made during the shooting breaks of other, better films, for no discernible reason other than to trap the innocent viewer with the promise of Amitabh! Neetu! Amitabh ass-shaking like an idiot in a light-up suit! Dishoom Dishoom! Random appearances of other Bolly-favorites! etc while crushing her/his spirit under a bootheel of evil.

But it is a trap. The movie may contain these promising elements (yes, I find being crushed by a bootheel of evil promising; sue me), it might even be made by Rakesh Kumar who (as my co-watcher/co-torturee Beth assured me) has made much better films, but it slaughters all our hopes of any form of entertainment with a painful mixture of total randomness (in costume, choreography, music etc), unfunny humor that made me remember Dance of the Dead wistfully and a quite transcendent and quite surprising lack of any kind of charm.

I couldn't even begin to imagine what went wrong here during the production, I can only warn each and every potential viewer who might be drawn to Amitabh's light-up suit off: this is one of the least interesting, most annoying and dire pieces of crap I have ever seen.

And no, friends of the Z-movie, that's honestly not a recommendation this time.

 

Technorati-Tags: indian movies,bollywood,reviews,amitabh bachchan,amjad khan,neetu singh,rakesh kumar,comedy,melodrama,utter crap

Ajooba (1991)

The oriental state of Bahrujistan has it all: Barren landscapes, brownish towns, a virtuous Sultan (Shammi Kapoor) and Amrish Puri as the prime minister. It is of course possible that the prime minister has something to do with the high mortality rate of potential heirs to the throne, but really, who could mistrust such an honest face?

The newest heir seems to be doing just fine, anyway, thanks to to the intervention of a bunch of gods (I suppose) we'll never see again.

So Amrish starts a little palace revolution, starting with the disposal of a friendly magician (Saeed Jaffrey) who knows of his evil ways and is all to willing to explain the source of his magical powers to someone he himself calls a devil anyway. Amrish is as grateful as one would expect, steals the wise man's amulet and throws him into the deepest, darkest dungeon. Afterwards he attacks the royal family's escape boat on the flying carpet he also stole from the magician, seemingly killing them all, but actually doing his worst job ever.

The baby heir is rescued by a helpful dolphin (whom the grown-up boy will call his mother) and adopted by a smith who starts to train the boy early to become a bad-ass-by-way-of-a-terrible costume revolutionary, who will be known as Ajooba (Amitabh Bachchan). Besides his superior fighting skills (like catching flying arrows and throwing them back at his enemies with deadly force; also, compelling his enemies to never shoot more than two arrows at once), Ajooba also develops the ability to always appear where his name is spoken and make us listen to his cheesy synthesizer theme whenever he heroically rides to the rescue.

On the way to the Happy End, our extremely heroic hero and his cross-dressing side-kick Hassan (Rishi Kapoor) will rescue old, blind women who certainly won't turn out to be someone's mother, rescue amnesiac saints gifted with healing powers who certainly won't turn out to be someone's father, fall in love with Amrish's daughter (Hassan) or the magician's daughter (Ajooba), shrink to the rescue, ride a flying boat, go all King Arthur on us, get rescued by a giant crab and fight an authentic Bollywood kaiju. I have probably missed a few things here, but you get the gist, I think.

But, as awesome as all that may sound, a part of the film is marred by Shashi Kapoor's (or his Russian co-director's Gennadi Vasilyev's) problems with setting scenes up properly. The first hour of the film is just puzzling - important characters aren't set up, but just appear somehow sometime (Ajooba has to wait quite some time until he gets a little more character than "absurdly costumed guy on white horse"), sensible ways of transition are eschewed for, well no transitions, and so on. The later two thirds of the film are a lot better though, at least I wasn't in doubt anymore that there was a professional editor available.

The mad ideas that didn't want to stop anymore also did a lot to alleviate my irritation. Still, some directorial decisions just bug me. Why use boring brown and gray locations when you could have color-coordinated sets? Why film many scenes in such a way that everything has to look so incredibly cheap and tacky?

Less irritating and a lot more fun are Ajooba's very special effects. Seldom, if ever has the screen seen less detailed models than in the flying carpet sequences which really let you appreciate the good old Thief of Baghdad. Let's not start talking about the kaiju or the giant crab, creatures of singular and beautiful ineptness that nearly made me weep for joy.

Finally, the acting...There are in fact actors on screen, some of which sometimes decide to do some acting, but even Amitabh (who at least is able to wear his costume with some kind of dignity) is overshadowed by the greatness of Amrish Puri's bug-eyed stare and his repeated utterance of my new catch-phrase "Praised be the devil!". I even have a theory to explain this performance - after his many years as the evilest of the evil of Indian evilness, Amrish Puri set out on a journey to the west to find new ways of being, well, evil. Sadly, his quest was cut short by an unscrupulous German film merchant who sold him Bela Lugosi's collected poverty row films as the apotheosis of Western evilness acting. Amrish Puri, being kind-hearted and perhaps a little naive in the ways of evil German film merchants, of course believed him and used Ajooba to do his best to rise up to Bela's challenge. We all should love him for that.

 

Technorati-Tags: indian movies,bollywood,reviews,amitabh bachchan,amrish puri,shashi kapoor,shammi kapoor,rishi kapoor,fantasy

Ganga Ki Saugand (1978)

Or The Terrible Tale of the Atrocities Committed By Thakur Jashwant Singh (Amjat Khan) in and around a village near Mother Ganges.

When my imaginary children will ask me some day what evil is, I will show them this list of the deeds of Jashwant Singh (who, as Indian villains seem to like, often wears clothes with a big JS monogram, preferably on his breast or collar), man of EVIL:

• Giving poor old men a job just to rape their daughters, who subsequently commit suicide. Afterwards, throwing said daughter's dead bodies into the Ganges and letting poor old men loose their minds over disappeared daughters
• Killing one's own father when he hears of one's daughter killing habit by sheer force of one's evilness
• After one's father's death raising his percentage of the products of the poor farmer's work to seventy-five percent
• Having a village's moneylender and corrupt priest as one's henchpeople
• Hitting on Jeeva's (Amitabh Bachchan) beloved Dhaniya (ridiculously stunning Rekha), when she refuses trying to rape her (don't fear, Jeeva is conveniently close)
• Hitting and kicking Jeeva's mother
• Disrespecting one's own mother when she doesn't approve of one's wicked, evil ways Subsequently "sending her on a pilgrimage" to have her out of one's way
• Hitting one's sister. Also one's henchmen
• Burning down Jeeva's house and trying to kill him and his mother
• Later, burning down a lot more houses, to drive the wise Untouchable Kalu (Pran), father of Dhaniya and his people out of the village
• Interpreting the word charity as "sending masked and armed men into the house of a friend of one's father's to steal all his money"
• Letting one's evil priest guy frame Jeeva for a cow killing to ostracize Jeeva from the village
• Being responsible for the death of Jeeva's mother!

And that is just the shortened version of the list, which shows the main problem of Ganga Ki Saugand very well. The film is so in love with letting its villain commit evilness after atrocity after misdeed and its heroes enduring those acts faithfully and peacefully that it doesn't give itself enough time to let the supposed heroes act. Even by the time Amitabh finally transforms from the not very bright villager into an morally upright and awesome dacoit, there's not all that much interest in showing much of what he does for his fame, since there are still more evil things that have to be done to the rest of the cast. I didn't understand what Amitabh was waiting for anyway, except for the Thakur to kidnap Rekha a second time.

All this doesn't mean that Ganga Ki Saugand is a bad movie. It's a very professional film made by very professional people. It just isn't the slightest bit more.

 

Technorati-Tags: indian movies,reviews,bollywood,action,drama,amitabh bachchan,rekha,pran,amjat khan

Sholay (1975)

Thakur Baldev Singh (Sanjeev Kumar), a former police inspector asks an old friend in the police force for help. He wants him to locate two crooks who always work together and are like brothers, Veeru (Dharmendra) and Jai (Amitabh Bachchan). He seems to need them for a dangerous mission. Asked why he wants some criminals for his job, the Thakur tells of his previous meeting with the two.

They were his prisoners then, bound to be taken on a freight train to the next city (and jail) by him and a few guards. Alas bandits attacked the train for its freight and slaughtered the Thakur's guards. He took his chances and trusted in Veeru's and Jai's promise of helping him and not trying to escape if he freed them. Together they eradicated the bandits in a very professional, if not neat manner. The Thakur was badly hurt in the fight, so Veeru and Jai had the choice of either getting him into a hospital or fleeing. They obviously chose to help him. So the Thakur knows the two are capable fighters who may do bad things, but aren't evil or inhuman. He doesn't even mind that they threw a coin to come to their decision.

Since we're spending the next forty minutes in the company of our really quite loveable rogues, we very soon catch on to the fact that Veeru and Jai tend to let this coin make many of their more difficult moral decisions for them, usually to the benefit of their better natures. After some (funny!) comedy, stints in and out of jail, song and dance with slight homosexual undertones (as it befits male bonding in movies), the Thakur's friend finally finds the two. Since the Thakur is willing to pay any price they ask for his job, they agree to follow him to his village. After he has paid them a nice advance and they have tossed their coin, of course.

On their way to the village they meet Veeru's future love interest, the cart driver Basanti (Hema Malini), who not only is a woman doing a typical men's job in rural India with absolute self-confidence, but also the first of a mutant species that can talk for hours without ever having to take a single breath. Dharmendra is charmed anyway (and who can blame him?).

When Jai and Veeru finally arrive at the Thakur's home, he is at last willing to explain what he wants them to do. They have to deliver the mad and sadistic bandit chief Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan), who is the kind of man local mothers use to frighten their children with, to the Thakur. Although the Thakur still does not want to explain to them why he wants the guy so badly (and alive), they agree.

Following this we will witness many amazing fights between Gabbar Singh and his men (who work more like the country version of a protection money racket or the bandits in The Magnificent Seven than like Dennis Moore) and our heroes, Jai's meeting with his own love interest, the widow Radha (Jaya Badhuri), torture, tragedy, moments of incredible coolness (in a Fuck Yeah! sense), the vilest bandit chief this way of Il Grande Silencio, and really anything anyone could ask for in this type of film. There may even be a death scene as heartbreaking as Chow Yun-Fat's death in A Better Tomorrow.

Sholay belongs to the sort of movie you don't do any favors with giving a detailed plot synopsis. Some of the later scenes will sound surprisingly silly if only written about and not experienced at the level of intensity ("Sholay" doesn't mean fire for nothing) the film achieves in its later stages. It actually reaches the point where the comedic subplots and the songs are needed breathers in all that is happening. It of course helps that the humor and the songs are perfectly intertwined with the dramatic parts, only the first act of the film plays them relatively loose.

I can not find a single bit I can criticize about the film, every aspect deserves a mention stuffed with superlatives, starting from the brilliant direction, to the incredible acting, the awesome script, the breathtaking action, the wonderful music, and so on and so on. It is probably for the best if you just keep Sholay in mind as an absolute masterpiece of cinema, the kind of film absolutely everyone should see at least once in their lives.

As the plot synopsis suggests, Sholay is heavily influenced by the Western genre, visually and in the nature of its heroes and villains more by the Spaghetti Western, morally more by the kind of American Western people like Bud Boetticher and John Sturges made. The obvious theme of the ability of people to change even when they never have been perfect and can't change their pasts would have resonated a lot with both Americans, I think.

I have learned from the blogs of people who know a lot more about Indian cinema than I do that Sholay actually is one of the defining texts of a Bollywood genre called the "Curry Western", whose films often tell of city people of dubious moral coming to the country, killing bad guys and getting cleansed by the country's purity, a sentiment very close to the (conservative) heart of the traditional Western. Sholay at least is a little more complex in this regard. The change for the better the country starts in its heroes is mirrored by changes for the better in the country itself.

Boy, I am glad I am not seeing perfect films every day, I really have trouble writing about them.

 

Technorati-Tags: ramesh sippy,amitabh bachchan,indian movies,reviews,bollywood,dharmendra,action,curry western,amjad khan,ranjeev kumar,hema malini

Shaan (1980)

The Kumar brothers are a strange lot. While Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) and Ravi (Shashi Kapoor) live their life as loveable rogues and confidence men in Bombay, their older brother Shiv (Sunil Dutt) is probably the most dutiful cop in the country, sometimes to the irritation of his wife Sheetal (Rakhee Gulzar).

But if the lifestyle of Vijay and Ravi may be a little suspect, one cannot deny their charm, so they soon find their respective love interests Sunita (Parveen Babi) and Renu (Binidya Goswami) who both work in the same line of business.

Their happy, greedy life is ruined when big brother Shiv is transferred to Bombay. The first thing he does on his arrival is to arrest his brothers for fraud. Both are surprisingly understanding on the matter and, on the day of their release, promise to live a better life from now on.

All would be well, if their incorruptible brother hadn't crossed paths with the most dangerous group of gangsters in Bombay, some smugglers lead by Shakal (Kulbhushan Kharbanda). Several attempts by Shakal's men on Shiv's life fail, until they finally manage to trap him and transport him to Shakal's home - a classical underground/island lair designed by specifications obviously stolen from the trash can of Victor Blofeld, complete with death traps, a pet crocodile under the movable conference room floor and many other neat and useful things.

Since Shiv doesn't accept an offer by Shakal (who wears a wonderful little uniform and really, really likes being evil) to work for him, he is murdered.

His brothers vow to revenge him, but aren't really sure who the culprit may be, until a man named Rakesh (Shatrughan Sinha), who also is the man who repeatedly tried to kill Shiv visits them and tells them how Shakal blackmailed him into his service with the life of his wife. I must admit that makes a lot of sense. If you want to kill someone, try to get the best carnival marksman in all of India. Shakal wasn't happy with Rakesh's purposefully bad job performance and murdered his wife in the most sadistic and complicated way he could think of.

Rakesh and the two brothers start to interfere with the smugglers' business with all the finesse of a bulldozer. At least they are effective enough in disrupting Shakal's business to have his men more than once try to kill the terrific three and/or their brother's wife and her young daughter.

After many wonderful feats of violence, Mrs. Kumar is finally kidnapped, and the brothers sneak into Shakal's lair in the disguise of a dancing troupe.

What could possibly go wrong?

Compared to Mard, Shaan (directed by Ramesh Sippy, who is also the director of the classic Sholay) is a prime example of logic and coherence - by many people's standards it must still be utterly bizarre.

If I even have standards, they luckily aren't many people's, so I am able to enjoy the ability of Shaan to throw things together because they are fun and not because they are usually used together in Western cinema.

And how could I complain about a film that permanently achieves what it sets out to do? The romance plots are slight but sweet, the comedy good-natured and fun, the action fast and as violent as one could wish for, the evil villain as EVIL! and VILLAINOUS! as they come (and having fun with it), the set design silly-but-sumptuous, the music good, the actors always believable, and the direction absurdly tight for a film that is three hours long.

 

Technorati-Tags: indian movies. reviews,bollywood,amitabh bachchan,ramesh sippy,sunil dutt,shashi kapoor,action,comedy

Mard (1985)

Sometimes I really regret not being a better writer. Today's reason for such realism/self-doubt is called Mard, a movie that defies most of my power of description. Although it is possibly that Mard's awesomeness cannot be contained in puny little words.

I learned quite a lot from the movie. Never before have I been aware of the utter evilness of all things British (excluding a certain Lady Helena, played by Helena, whose function here is of course to sacrifice herself to save one our hero's fathers). Did you know that in the time of the Raj, British tanks regularly shot Indian slums to pieces, English soldiers (many of them dressed in black leather and wearing capes with a Union Jack motif) were throwing helpless women into flames, and that, as soon as an Indian slave couldn't work anymore, all of his blood was filled into cute bottles to save the life of British soldiers (who of course didn't need cooled blood). I didn't, either.

But Mard shows us these terrible truths and more.

I am not quite sure when the film is supposed to take place, so I'll say it's the year in which many people wore Victorian garb, other people interesting leather outfits and others looked like they stepped out of Miami Vice while those people who didn't use horses, rode in cars (good for killing Indians) or tanks (even better for killing Indians). After British evil-doers steal some works of art to send them to Britain and massacre the Indian people who protest against this theft, Raja Azaad Singh (Dara Singh) can't control his rage any longer. So he single-handedly kills many of the perpetrators with his trusty machine gun. Knowing that a man has to do what a man has to de, he prevents a plane carrying even more evil-doers from starting, using only a rope, his strength and a handy tree. Afterwards, on with the killing.

After this small lesson in justice, the evil Brits are of course hunting him, but only with the help of the treasonous half British, half Indian, doubly evil doctor Harry (Prem Chopra) are they able to actually catch him. Because they are incredibly evil (as I may have mentioned already), her Majesty's best also try to kill the Raja's wife (Nirupa Roy) and his newborn son, whom he called Mard (which means man) by carving the word into the baby's chest. In the ensuing chase, mother and child are seperated and only the timely intervention of the Raja's horse saves the baby from the British.

But the shock of terror and seperation is too much for the Rani - she loses her voice and will spend the next years of her life wandering depressedly through India. Even the knowledge that kind Lady Helena was able to change her man's sentence from death to imprisonment obviously can't cheer her up.

A few years later, the little one has grown up to be the most manliest man of Indian maleness, Raju (Amitabh Bachchan). Besides being manly, a loving son to his adoptive parents, a true patriot, a badass and kind-hearted as Jesus Christ himself, he works as a cart driver, utilizing his true father's old horse Badal (who obviously hasn't aged a day, and will be rewarded at the end of the movie by the marriage to a statue come to life). His other partner is his dog Moti (played by Wonder Dog Moti), the dog Lassie always tried to be. In the course of the film we will witness Moti use Molotov cocktails, drive a cart, whistle, rescue Raju by imitating Solid Snake himself and boldly doing many other heroic deeds no other dog has ever done. That Raju  most of the time (except in those moments when the script needs him not to understand them) understands what his friends have to tell him is obvious.

Soon the young man will meet the love of his life Ruby (Amrita Singh), who is also the daughter of the former doctor, now mayor Sir, Harry (still as evil as a full-blooded Brit). After a few early misunderstandings that lead to her putting on her snazziest leather outfit and whipping him and him kidnapping her and literally rubbing salt in her wounds, the two soon discover their true feelings for each other.

Of course the lovers can't truly unite before a lot of evil British and their henchpeople have been killed, Raju's two pairs of parents have either been tortured, kidnapped, killed, buried, rescued or some of these things at once, false beards and absolutely convincing masks have been used, and many songs have been sung (personal favorite: the piece about a "tentpole" a man sticks into "the sand").

And this is actually just a small sample of all the glories this trip into the realm of alternative history holds. Should I mention evil Brit Danny (Dan Dhanoa), him of the even more outrageous outfits and the greatest sense of sadism even someone from Britain can have? Or the glorious things you can do with a horse cart?

Mard is definitely one of the most mind-blowing pieces of weirdness/art I have ever encountered, and I urge every thinking and unthinking woman, man, hermaphrodite, neutrum etc. to run out, buy and watch it at once. It will surely produce a better world.

 

Technorati-Tags: indian movies,bollywood,action,comedy,amitabh bachchan,manmohan desai,amrita singh,reviews