Sujata (1959)

On the night of their daughter's first birthday, Upendranath Chowdhary (Tarun Bose) and his wife, Charu (Sulochana Latkar), are persuaded to give temporary shelter to an untouchable baby girl, with the understanding that the arrangement is temporary and that their maid will take care of her. They are Brahmin, and taking care of her themselves is out of the question.

 

The baby is cute and lovable, and both parents grow fond of her, which convinces them even more that they need to get rid of her soon. But it never seems to work out. The men who originally brought the baby return with a man of the baby's caste, but both Chowdharys object to him.

They keep looking, but in the meantime, they name the child Sujata (a name that ironically means "of good caste"), and start to raise her alongside their own daughter, Rama. Rama calls her parents Mom and Dad, and Sujata is taught to call them Mother and Father.

As Sujata grows, their kindness and their Brahmin rules frequently conflict. Mr. Chowdhury shrugs it off, but it greatly bothers Mrs. Chowdhury.

Eventually they give up on finding a good place for her within her caste and simply try to find another good place for her. They look into an orphanage and plan to send her there, with directions to provide generously for her, but they can't face taking her themselves. They ask Rama's tutor to do it, and not to tell her what's happening.

 

The tutor lures Sujata with fanciful tales of a magical place, and she agrees to go. When it comes time, however, she realizes she doesn't want to go anywhere without her parents, and the tutor has to lie and say that they are already there waiting for her. Upendra has pled lots of work and is absent, but Charu is home and steals a last look out the window. Sujata sees her and runs back in, where she finds Mrs. Chowdhary crying and gripping the bed frame, trying to fight her feelings.

It takes a moment, with her heart clearly struggling against something she has always been brought up with, but at last Mrs. Chowdhury relents and gives Sujata a hesitant caress. Yay!

Upendra is not-so-secretly delighted, and that night the Chowdhurys decide to give up for then and look for a solution when the girls are older.

The Chowdhurys move frequently, and about the time the two girls are grown they end up living near their favorite relative, Aunt (Lalita Pawar), who has raised a grandson. The aunt is old-fashioned and religious, and very antagonistic to Sujata's presence in the family.

At the Aunt's advice they begin looking for a groom for Sujata. The results are rather discouraging.

 At the same time, the grandson, Adhir (Sunil Dutt), a handsome and gentle scholar, somehow manages to be unaware of Sujata's position and falls in love with her.

Sujata (Nutan) herself has also never really understood how she fit into the family. Moving near the aunt has changed family dynamics, and she eventually begs an explanation.

Her Mother's answer is not gentle, so Sujata escapes into the rainy night to cry, beginning to contemplate suicide. A placard with a Gandhi quote gives her courage somehow, and she comes home to make the best of it. (Which is good; I was worried for a minute.) "The best of it" includes her growing romance with Adhir. She sings a sweet song, in which she asks, "Whom can it bother?"

Hmm, any guesses on that one? Here's a hint:

But that's not all the trouble!

But that's as much as I'm going to say. (Watch the movie to find out the rest!)

One of the things I appreciated about this film was its handling of caste. I feel like sometimes caste is shown as a prejudice mainly held by the really nasty or crotchety characters, but this movie shows a nice, normal couple struggling with a social construct that they've always accepted. This context helped me understand it better than before, but also to dislike it more. How awful is it to have barriers on kindness? There's not enough of that to go around, in any case.

So, if you like films about social inequality, or if you just like sweet films with good acting and really lovely songs, give this one a shot. I'll add a sample song: Charu sings this lullaby to baby Rama, and a little bit to Sujata.

I recommend it! (Thanks, Cindy!)

 

Hum Dono (1961)

(I wrote most of this review about a year ago, right after I had seen the movie. It's been a while now, and I no longer have access to it, so I'm sorry about the paragraph I'm a bit fuzzy on.)

Things I love:

• the way they don't speak in the beginning, going from acting sans dialogue to song

• jolly Major Verma! His moustasche, his big booming laugh, his ridiculous (and wonderful!) British accent

The movie:
A young man (Dev Anand) sits on the edge of a pond. A tinkling melody announces the arrival of his sweetheart (Sadhana Shivdasani), who has come to meet him and also to give him the cigarette lighter that made the melody. He has apparently been waiting some time, and is a little miffed, but she placates him. This entire scene is sans dialogue, and the effect is really lovely. It goes straight into a song without either of them having said a word.

The young man, Anand, and the young woman, Mita, decide as they part to talk to their parents about getting married. Anand's mother (Leela Chitnis) has been expecting this, it seems, but Mita's rich and doting father is unpleasantly surprised. At Mita's confident urging, he reluctantly agrees to meet the poor and unemployed Anand, in spite of his misgivings.

Throughout their interview he becomes increasingly agitated at the thought of giving his beloved daughter, for whom he acquired his great wealth, to someone as poor and unproven as Anand.

At last, he buries his head in his hands and sobs out his consent for them to marry, but Anand is too offended to stay, and also, I think, too afraid that her father is right, and he immediately leaves, joining the army on his way home. His mother is pretty unhappy about this, to say the least.

Before long Mita, who was out of the room getting tea while Anand met with her father and still who doesn't know why he left or what he's done, comes to look for him. She finds Anand's mother, who seems to be trying to both go mad and die with sorrow on the spot, and who throws Mita out summarily, leaving her sobbing by the door. She hears her outside crying later, and seeming not to remember her, asks her who she is.

(Okay, this is the paragraph I'm summarizing from memory.) Mita moves in with her "mother-in-law," Anand's mother, who is not well. Meanwhile, Anand is moving up the ranks in the army, still in love with Mita but ignorant of everything back home. One day he finds a wallet on the road and tries to find the owner. The owner, it turns out, is Major Verma, a man physically identical to Anand, but who has a different hairstyle and a very silly English accent.

It turns out that Anand and Major Verma are from the same town but have never met before (and no one in their social circles at home or in the army knows both of them, either, apparently). They sit down and drink together and discuss love and war. Major Verma speaks eloquently on both, and Anand sings a beautiful song. Clearly this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Major Verma invites Anand back to his tent to stay, where they entertain themselves by scaring the living daylights out of Verma's servant by pretending to be Major Verma and his "ghost."

Major Verma shows Anand pictures of his wife, mother, and house, helpfully including all the information that should be necessary should the plot require Anand to impersonate him in the future (Nahiiin!).

Also, I can't but think it is very weird (and hilarious) that two women would not only fall in love with identical men, but pick out identical handbags as well.

At any rate, a year has passed since Anand signed up, and he and Major Verma have become best friends. Verma writes to his wife, Ruma (Nanda), to tell her and his mother (Lalita Palwar) that the war will shortly be over, and he will be bringing home a friend whom he'd like her to meet. Anand writes the same message to his mother, still unaware that Mita is living in his house and taking care of his increasingly frail ma. Both fail to mention the uncanny resemblance between themselves and their new friend. Before they head home, Major Verma and Captain Anand must participate in one last skirmish, led by Capatin Anand under radio direction from Major Verma.

In Anand's perilous and outnumbered position, the enemy seems to come like a never-ending horde, constantly mown down but always coming. And yet, the camera also takes a few short surprising breaks to focus on enemy soldiers who have just fallen, not on the blood or the wounds, but just on their still forms and faces, as if to say, "Here were men, too, with mothers at home."

In the middle of this battle, and right in the middle of the movie, I had to go to bed. No! So many unanswered questions! I went to bed thinking, clearly both friends can't make it out of this unscathed. Will it be capture? Death? Amnesia? Incapacitating wounds? In the inevitable identity mix-up, will both be confused for the other, or will one of them be beyond mix-ups? What of Anand's dying mother? Will some heartbreak caused by this confusion cause Mita's lonely and unhappy father to do something desperate? (Actually, her father's role in the second half of this film surprised me a bit.) Is Major Verma's mother actually evil (I had trouble believing Lalita Palwar could be playing a nice mother)? Are they somehow lost brothers (they're always lost brothers, right?)? What was going to happen?

Along with all my questions, I thought about all the things I liked in the movie: the chemistry between the stars, the sweet tone and pace of the movie, the songs, and everything about Major Verma. And now that I've finished it, (with some yelling at the screen), I'm still a fan. I liked Sadhana's performance particularly, and Dev Anand also did a very good job. Nanda looks lovely. You should see it!

Action Replayy (2010)

I enjoyed the music in Action Replayy (although none of it seems very 70s inspired), I liked the newcomer Aditya Roy Kapoor, one or two of the lines, and um, that's about it.

It's not that I always insist on intelligent plots; it could have been a blast to return to the 1970s (a GREAT era of nonsense Bollywood fun), but if the plot is dumb, something needs to be engaging. And in this case, there's something mildly painful about, well, everything. If this picture doesn't look super awkward to you, this movie might be just your thing.

Before you make your decision, though, let me add a few more pictures of Akshay's wig.

I don't think this really does justice to it. By the way, all of the above pictures are from one song. I think the song is pretty, but in order to enjoy it Mom and I pretended that they were actually an older couple escaping from their five kids for a day out. Mom later changed the number to ten kids, which was better.

The plot starts out with Bunty (Aditya Roy Kapoor) refusing to marry his girlfriend because his parents' bad marriage makes him believe that marriage doesn't work. His girlfriend's grandpa (Randhir Kapoor) is an inventor of a time machine, and after a particularly bad night of fights, Bunty hyjacks the machine in the hope that he can get his parents, who never did love each other, to fall in love.

Here's Randhir Kapoor posing in front of his time machine:

And Bunty's parents (Akshay Kumar and Aishwarya Rai) looking much more age appropriate.

You can make people look older than they are, but it's not easy to make people look younger. Aish looks very beautiful in this movie

but she looks her age.

Well, the story moves along with about as little speed and as much awkwardness as possible. Until we end up with this:

Oh, for those of you who are still considering watching this, I think I should also add a picture of Akshay's fake overbite which he has for much of the movie.

Enjoy!

 

Achhut Kanya (1936)

 
If my records are right, this was the 150th Hindi film I've seen!

The earliest film I'd seen before was from 1951, so this is much earlier, and my knowledge of India and of the film industry from that time are pretty slim. Still, here are my impressions.

The film is set up as a flashback, with only a few minutes in the present day (as in, 1936-ish) and most of the film in the distant past.  The frame story starts with a troubled couple driving up to a railway crossing. They are told they will have to wait an hour to cross because ghosts wander at this time. They get out and end up standing in front of a memorial which says, "She gave her life that others might live." A sage appears out of thin air and offers to tell them the story. Learning that hearing the story can give peace of mind, the woman readily requests it, and the story begins.

Kasturi (Devika Rani) is an untouchable girl who spends her time roaming with the Brahmin boy Pratap (Ashok Kumar). The fathers of the two are close friends in spite of their difference in caste because Kasturi's father, Dukhia, had saved Pratap's father, Mohan, from a snake bite when Kasturi and Pratap were small children. Unfortunately, the friendship between the families gives Mohan's business enemy, Babulal, a chance to stir up the village against him.

At the same time, Pratap's mom begins suggesting that it is no longer right for Kasturi and Pratap to see so much of each other, as they are now of marriageable age. They are told to stop seeing each other, and the parents set out to arrange marriages for them, which apparently was supposed to help them forget each other.

The film progresses steadily from there, without big twists or miracles. I was struck by the even pacing of the film and by the submissive acceptance of Pratap and Kasturi, with none of the heart-wrenching sob scenes, farewells, or dramatic music I've come to expect in later Bollywood films. The frame story has made it clear that the ending will be sad, and the whole tone is pretty melancholy, but the engaging side characters keep the story moving. The cast of side characters is excellent, especially the family members.

I really enjoyed the music, which reminded me oddly of traditional English ballads, in spite of the very Indian sound; perhaps it was the beauty and simplicity of the melodies. I found it interesting that Devika Rani and Ashok Kumar sang their parts themselves, and did a very good job, too! (If you follow the link to this video to youtube, this song has captions available, and they're pretty cute!)

It was great to see Ashok Kumar so young! According to Wikipedia, this was his first film, in which he was cast as a last minute replacement by the director due to a scandal involving the original hero. Ashok Kumar had been the laboratory assistant. A comment on Memsaab's review of the film (which she had seen without subtitles -- several of the details are a little mixed up) mentioned that one of the side characters, Mannu, was also the assistant in charge of continuity. I wonder if that was more common back then?

Thanks to Memsaab for the link to this film!

Lakshyam (2007)

I'm not sure what to say about this film, except that I enjoyed it and that I would hesitate to recommend it to most people.

Gopichand's character manages to be both mischievous and likable. His chemistry with Anushka is good, and their scenes together are adorable and very funny. The songs are also very good, with very fun picturizations, including one where Spiderman shows up as a backup dancer.

On the other hand, the film is quite violent, and I fast-forwarded some good chunks where the machetes were out meaning business. The plot was somewhat scattered, although on the whole not a bad version of a typical Telugu action storyline. Here is how the film opens:

In the midst of wedding preparations, Anushka is shown happily getting ready to be the bride. When she is dressed she wanders out and sweetly greets her groom, who seems a bit of a goober. She tricks him into helping her over the wall, and she gaily escapes on her scooty. A police officer recognizes her as they wait at a light and chases her out onto a lonely road, where Gopichand stands waiting for him. Gopichand blows up the policeman, hops on her scooty, and they ride off into the sunset. And then the movie goes back a few months and starts at the beginning, before Anushka and Gopichand have met.

As I said, I liked it, but I think I would only recommend it to those already familiar with Telugu action films.

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008)

Surinder (Shahrukh Khan) is a mousy middle-aged man who attends the wedding of his professor's daughter, the much younger Taani (Anushka Sharma), and is immediately smitten by her beauty and vivaciousness. Surinder had been a favorite pupil of his teacher, so when Taani's fiance dies in an accident on the way to the wedding and the professor suffers a heart attack, the professor asks Surinder and Taani on his deathbed to marry so that he can die in peace. They promise, and after their subdued marriage ceremony Surinder brings his grieving new bride to his home in Amritsar, giving her her own room and plenty of space. As their relationship remains formal and distant, Surinder turns to his flamboyant friend Bobby (Vinay Pathak) for advice.

From here the plot takes a turn for the worse. Surinder ends up adopting an alter ego, Raj, to spend time with Taani and to try to make her happy. The Raj persona is developed from film heroes Taani has admired and is Surinder's perception of a cool, uninhibited stud. Raj becomes Taani's partner in dance class, and his totally different personality begins to confuse himself as his flirting begins to confuse Taani. Surinder wants Taani to fall for his Surinder self, not his Raj ruse, but he doesn't do much to sway her in that direction.

And this is where the film really starts to fall apart, in my opinion. Frankly, although Taani's relationship with Raj is a little problematic, I actually prefer it to her one with Surinder. They have almost no scenes together with him as Surinder, and in those few scenes, both of them seem so awkward and uncomfortable that it's rather painful. She seems stifled and unnaturally silent, and his body posture makes him look like an abused puppy. They never seem to talk or connect in any way. Raj, on the other hand, gradually loses most of his bluster and aggression and becomes a confident expression of Surinder's inner sweetness. Also, Taani is much more herself when she's with Raj. Unfortunately, Raj is really Surinder inside-out, with his discomfort suppressed instead of his love, so Surinder's issues don't really leave Taani with any good options.

I ended up not really disliking this film, but not really liking it either. It basically only has three important characters, and perhaps that along with the rather hopeless and bleak storyline was what made the whole film end up seeming a little empty. But in the middle of all that emptiness there was a little tiny romance that you'd have to have a hard heart not to pity.

Vinod Khanna

Vinod Khanna has an enigmatic element to him that makes him difficult to characterize. This enigmatic quality is heightened by his incredible amount of charisma and his wonderful acting. His facial expressions are so subtle, yet so expressive, that he can barely move a muscle and emote radically different moods.


My first Vinod Khanna movie was one of my first Bollywood 1970s movies, Amar Akbar Anthony, and I love him in that kind of role. On the other hand, I adored his portrayal of a light-hearted simpleton in Jail Yatra, and I have really liked everything else he's been in, too (except The Burning Train--that one was kind of a wreck). His total believability in all of his roles is impressive.


I have trouble describing exactly what it is about him that makes him so magnetic and appealing, (as I said, he's enigmatic), so I've compiled a list of a few of the things other people have said about him. I am pretty much in agreement with all of them.


Beth's comment: The Khanna men, I swear, they have some sort of freaky pull on me. I'll watch any of them do anything.


Pessimisissimo's comment: As for my favorite 70s hero, I have a fondness for Vinod Khanna: a lover and a fighter who somehow never seems to get the girl.


Todd's comment: Also, I think that Vinod definitely deserves to be in the top tier of 70's men, though he's a little harder to stereotype than the others, as he comprises equal parts AYM, badass, and sensitive Shashi-type.


bollyviewer's comment: And nobody has the kind of sex-appeal that a Vinod Khanna or a Feroze Khan or a Kabir Bedi had back then.


Vinod Khanna fan site: The most handsome actor of the Hindi film Industry with an enviable physique and dimpled face.


veracious: The man is tall and handsome and intense and yeah, guh. . . . Not sure who coined the term "thinking angry young man" to describe his work in the 70's but I like it a lot.


Bollywood501: There is a kind of beautiful sadness connected with a Vinod Khanna performance. Khanna exudes an existential melancholy that one could mistake for quiet resignation if not for the very evident fire smoldering behind his smoky eyes. Introspection is a true part of his characters, the searching gaze, the million questions behind the face that barely conceals the pathos within.


Anonymous comment: For me, no one (Amitab Bachan et al.) could touch Vinod's capacity for pathos as an actor (to say nothing of looks!). Shashi is cute as a button, but that may also be what makes it difficult for him to communicate suffering to an audience or to elicit such strong feelings of sympathy for his character. Vinod is strong, vulnerable, and good looking. What more could one want?


Daddy's Girl: I like to call him sexy Vinod. Because that’s what he is! To be honest, when I watch his 70s films, the young Vinod Khanna doesn’t actually have to say or do anything to make me happy. Just looking at him – from those dark, intense, heavy-lidded, beautifully-framed, brown eyes, to the dimple in his chin, to his beautiful physique – that’s enough for me. When he doesn’t smile, he’s scorching hot. When he smiles, everything in his face lights up. He’s a gorgeous man, and as you can probably tell, I could talk about how hot he is for ages, but I’ll spare you… partly because I’ve probably embarrassed myself enough already, and partly because he’s a lot more than a pretty face. He was a really good actor too in his heyday – from the learned and anguished friend of ‘Muqaddar ka Sikandar’; to the serious policeman of ‘Amar Akbar Anthony'; to the intensely, evil-but-hot bandit of ‘Mera Gaon Mera Desh’; to the stylish young stud of ‘Mere Tulsi Aangan Ki’, he just… gave all his roles that special touch… you know what, I give up - the truth is, I obviously can’t talk about this guy ‘seriously’. He just makes me melt. Sadly, I don't have many screencaps of sexy Vinod, and the pictures I've come across on the net don't do him justice.