Lights Camera Masala: Making Movies in Mumbai by Naman Ramachandran, Sheena Sippy, and Divya Thakur

(Note: my pictures in this post are awful. I can't find the cable that connects my camera to the laptop, so I had to use the computer's built-in camera. Sorry!)

Mumbai: India Book House Pvt Ltd, 2006.

Hot pink! Prismatic silver text! Arty black and white photo of Abhishek! When I saw this beautiful hardback at Gangarams Book Bureau in Bangalore (fantastic shop!) back in 2006, I was immediately enchanted based on the cover alone and gleefully added it to my stack of books at the cashier's desk. But once I got it home, I kept picking it up only to thumb through the photos and then put it back on the shelf, drawn to things with more enticing-looking text. Now that I've read it, that proved to be a sensible reaction. This book looks fantastic and has some clever visual and tactile tricks up its sleeves, but its words are overall unremarkable.

But let me back up. Somebody on the team of this project came up with a clever and lovable idea for organizing what feels like a fairly standard overview of the elements of making popular Hindi cinema: the structure follows two aspiring filmmakers, Vijay and Ravi, as they try to get their script idea turned into a movie! VIJAY AND RAVI. I'm actually glad I didn't read this book in the summer of 2006 because I hadn't seen any Shashitabh films yet (and hardly any 70s masala) and wouldn't have understood why this is such a funny and perfect concept. Each chapter begins with a few pages of dialogue between Vijay and Ravi before they go off to talk to writers, cinematographers, stars, directors, editors, etc. Even better, these dialogues take the physical form of a movie script glued on to a page, complete with location and bits of blocking.

You can just hear Shashi and Amitabh saying all this, miraculously transported from 1978 to 2005 and starring in a new film about filmmaking, sort of a cameo Greek chorus for Luck by Chance.* Vijay voices more of the doubt and wry observations, while Ravi is more chipper. Sometimes they bicker, but they're always funny. Towards the end of the book, they try to figure out what they've just been through. When Vijay proclaims that money is the root of progress in filmmaking, Ravi asks "Such cynicism. Where did it come from?" "You know my story well," Vijay responds. "I was lost in a fairground when I was five. I had to struggle on the wrong side of the law for years, till I made a lot of money." (insert on p. 207) (And lest you worry that our heroes part on crabby terms, rest assured their story ends with everybody's favorite 70s masala eureka: "BHAI?!?!?!?!")

You can't see it well in this photo, but the stars are shiny silver.

After these introductions, each chapter is basically a compilation of quotes of varying length from big names in the business, following the narrative device that Vijay and Ravi are traipsing around Mumbai to ask a range of experts for their advice. Even if I wasn't familiar with the name of, say, a production designer, if I just kept reading I realized I had seen some of his work. Note: I say "his" deliberately. There are very few women featured in this book, with Aishwarya being the most prominent, and no women are in the list of "young turk" directors. Nor is there any discussion of the disparity. Boooo!

Apart from quotes (which again are not cited!), the text describes and contextualizes the films discussed, which vary nicely from the very famous - Sholay, Lagaan, Karan Johar films - to things I hadn't heard of and have no desire to see, like Kaal, and gives background on the featured interviewees. It occasionally reintroduces Vijay and Ravi to comment on common features of films or filmmaking related to the chapter's theme, like Ravi chatting up a gori backup dancer in one of the chapters about shooting. (p. 86) The author did a good job at choosing which quotes to use, and it seems that the book team found some subjects who were willing to think a little bit and say something interesting. (Or maybe they were just sucking up? Hard to tell!) That in itself sets this book apart from countless interviews with stars about their latest releases or their thoughts on celebrity.

There are funny turns from KJo and thoughtful reflections from Javed Akhtar, but then there are doozy little one-offs, like Mallika Sherawat talking about the supreme importance of the script (p. 16) or the unfairness of film censorship when other art in India is not subjected to such control (p. 113), Anu Malik being furious that his music was used uncredited in Moulin Rouge (oh the irony!) (p. 67), or Abhishek Bachchan being embarrassed to shoot a glitzy song in the vicinity of his former school in Switzerland and hoping he wouldn't be recognized.** There's a touching reflection from Aamir Khan about Lagaan's Oscar nomination in 2001: "For me it was a victory, in a sense. It was very satisfying to know that the world audience looked at a mainstream film from India that was made exclusively for an Indian audience and just loved it. It was a moment of great pride and happiness that a film with songs, with our form of telling a story, has really gone down well with an international audience. That was a great joy!" (p. 232) Masala zindabad!

Not all of the quotes are enlightening, but enough of them are that I wanted to keep reading. However, there is very little analysis or synthesis of what Vijay and Ravi learn. This is more of an assortment of observations with backing information than it is any kind of monograph. To be fair, I think that's about what was intended; in the author's note, Ramachandran says the book's primary photographer had been commissioned to produce a coffee table book on the film industry (p. 244), and indeed that's what they made. Given that it is mostly a collection of quotes from important and/or knowledgeable people, an index would be really useful so you could go reference a particular person's thoughts easily or look for a range of names on certain topics. It's easy enough to guess where Farah Khan will appear, but Shahrukh and the like are spread throughout.

What makes Lights Camera Masala special is its look. It's really, really cool. Ravi and Vijay's adventure is backed up with a slew of thoughtfully used photographs, mostly the work of Sheena Sippy (daughter of Ramesh Sippy). There are pictures of theaters, of shoots, of stars in their dressing rooms, of production sketches by art directors, of dance routines in rehearsal. There's a nice balance of glossy photos of the beautiful people and the more interesting documentary shots of how and why movies actually work, including a few of people we rarely see in front of a camera. As good as these are, they would be only half as powerful if it were not for the book's spectacularly creative design by Divya Thakur. It's bright, energetic, engaging, and fun - it's a really snazzy song sequence. It also includes unexpected treats (like the Vijay/Ravi scripts) in the form of attachments, cut-outs, inserts,

A fan's cry to Abhishek - the stamp is a separate piece of paper applied to the envelope, the cancellation mark reads "LCM: Masala Postal Service," and there's a very realistically reproduced hand-written letter inside! (p. 246-7)
and geegaws, like an arrow emblazoned with Preity, Saif, and Hrithik shooting out of a heart labeled "objects of desire" or, below, a spinner that helps you select a big name in the chapter on stars.

I chose Boman Irani.
Some of them are just for fun, like the above, but some of them make very important points. In the chapter on scripts and writing, there is a a print of a hand-painted poster of Deewaar.

It's folded up inside a regular page, so it takes two steps to get to it. You start with a pictue of Javed Akhtar on a regular page of text, and, as you unfold, the next thing you see is this striking image.

I love how the designer has abstracted and boiled down such a heavy film (and one of its common images), whose fuller cast and some action episodes are jumbled together in the full poster inside, into this one moment, the two brothers not relating to each other in any way and so large they spill off the page, with tiny little Maa between them, sort of stunned and quiet-looking. The action, the accessories, and the friends have all fallen away. Brilliant.

What I like most about the design is it's fun, just like watching movies is fun. The look of the book perfectly supports its celebratory tone - and in fact, I'd say the look is more enthusiastic and more expressive than the words. Lights Camera Masala is a spirited, cheerful romp around the film industry, full of people you know sharing observations about their work. I don't recommend this book to people who are new to Bollywood - there are too many names of films, stars, and crew to make sense of, and such readers probably wouldn't get much of the humor of the textual and visual references. For the rest of us, it's an entertaining and engaging reflection on who and what puts the life, sweat, and heart in Mumbai's movies.

* In one especially funny blurring of reality and narrative, Vijay and Ravi watch the shooting of "Kajra Re." (p. 166)
** I found this story endearing, so here's part of it: "As professionals, we bare our soul to the camera every day, but there are times when it really gets to you. You actually can't do it.... [But] after the first shot, you are like 'Dude, I am having a blast!' That's it. You could not care less after that." (p. 111) Cute! And dude, we are having a blast too!

about as subtle as a brick bat - and equally painful, too: In Custody/Muhafiz

This is a seriously depressing film. The Urdu language (at least as it exists in contemporary India) is dying, embodied by the decaying frame of the great poet Nur (Shashi Kapoor), and nobody is saving it.* Even the people who try - professor Deven (Om Puri), practitioners Nur and aspiring poet and second wife Imtiaz Begum (Shabana Azmi), Urdu publisher Murad (Tinnu Anand) - are not up to the challenge. Deven cannot figure out the pragmatics of recording Nur's poems, nor does he seem to ask the big questions about what they mean.

As a museum person, I think about these issues a lot - you can't save everything, so how do you choose? What stories can those things tell and what can we learn from them? Why do they matter? Nur is too lazy, too debauched, too distracted by his woes and the tatters of his implied former glory to adapt or save himself.

Imtiaz Begum is too angry to let go of Nur and all the weighty obstacles he entails to have much energy left for her own voice.

Sushma Seth is also fantastic as Safiya Begum, Nur's first wife, who is furious at Imtiaz's presence (and son).

It also seems that Nur's general way of life (including a crew of smarmy hangers-on), the arts that accompany Urdu poetry or that it refers to, and the refinement of thought and expression these arts convey are at risk as well. The two wives are both more practical than Nur, worrying about money to support the fan club who is in some way Nur's only real lifeblood, but they're ready to destroy each other. His household is hanging by a thread. The house itself is a bit rough around the edges. Deven predicts, the only thing from Nur's world that seems like it has a chance of lasting is a book of poems, but as PPCC points out, it's unclear whether anyone other than Deven will ever read it.

While looking around to see what else has been written about In Custody, I found a post at the blog Kafkaesque that made an important point about the female characters. The movie is predominantly populated by male characters - much like Nur's intellectual/public life and Deven's university administration and classrooms - and the very few women in it are trapped and sequestered. You don't see any women outside of their homes at all (assuming the prostitutes Nur and his boys visit live at their brothel). Safiya Begum seems to have resigned herself to this, finding ways to maintain and grab power within the home, but Imtiaz Begum is beginning to crack. Marrying Nur was a way out of the brothel and into an intellectual environment, but she's unable to flourish under his demands and in his shadow.

I wish the film had done more with her creative struggles. She has one great outburst at Deven when he refuses to read any of her poetry, accusing him of being unwilling to accept the idea that women are as artistically capable as men. Unfortunately, the little of her poetry the movie shows us was in fact not solely her own work. (I think - Nur is telling the truth when he says she's reciting his work as her own, right? Or is he being a slimy old thief?) Her fire is as much wishful thinking as talent, and in practice she may not be able to be all that she dreams. Her struggle to be as great a poet as she is convinced she is capable of being is a mirror for Deven's failure to rescue Nur and his works. Here she flings Nur's pigeons out of their coop, maybe trying to clear out his shadow and his winged poems so that she too can soar.


In Custody's story is straightforward, the characters are engaging (though far from likable), and the overall tone palpable. It's beautifully shot, with rich textures and quiet colors. The performances are excellent, as you would expect. Om Puri is impressively dim as the well-meaning but incompetent Deven. Shabana Azmi's fierceness and desperation are so distressing. And Shashi's pathetic unhappiness made me shrink from the screen. As I said about his performance in Side Streets and have felt in other Merchant Ivory projects, qopwommrphaiusdflasjk (for new readers, this is a head-to-keyboard expression that means something like "my sense of reality, objective critical detachment, dil-squishability, tendencies to mother-hen depressed men, and love of movie self-references have all collapsed in on each other and then got whirled around in the blender of Shashi-pyaar"). In Custody didn't hurt as much as Side Streets or Heat and Dust, but it offers far less hope and future than either of those - down, down, down.

My issue with In Custody is how blatant most of its symbolism is. The embodiment of Urdu poetry is ill, bloated, addicted, hardly able to move. (Is it too undignified to compare Nur to Jabba the Hut? At least Nur can walk and isn't so overt a monster, but still.) Deven cleans up Nur's vomit with manuscripts of poems. The poems themselves have few readers/listeners. The man whos' trying to save this art himself is trained and teaches in the language and literature that are replacing it. A fine old building owned by a backer of Deven's project to interview Nur is destroyed by a developer to make way for shops and a cinema. Somehow obviousness paired with a really depressing story is harder to swallow than a heavy-handed approach to a story that has at least some redeeming features or positive things to say.

In the interview in the DVD's special features, it is a huge relief to see Shashi looking so much healthier and livelier than he does in the film.

This segment is entirely in English, so I could enjoy his telling of Merchant and others trying to convince to do the role. It's endearing to hear such an accomplished actor talk about being nervous about taking on a project that felt so foreign to him - he was worried about being able to speak Urdu properly for the character and whether he could relate to someone so different from himself.

Also: masala meister Prayag Raj!

All hail!

Side note: the film doesn't really discuss whether or not Urdu poetry has much to offer that is relevant to contemporary society (and thus "worth" saving) (though I'm uncomfortable with the idea of "worth" being applied to human creativity and expression). As I was thinking this over on my own, the latest piece I've encountered on the issue of dying languages came to mind. Fortunately for my mood, the latest piece I've encountered on this topic is David Mitchell (PYAAAAR!)'s Soapbox on saving Scottish Gaelic.** His argument is not very relevant to the questions in In Custody, but it's really funny, and he has some good points about evolving and artificial interference - and he talks about Hindi!

Other posts about In Custody can be found at Indie Quill, Paint It Pink!, Post-Punk Cinema Club, and Passion for Cinema (briefly).

On a happier note: whatever my next Shashi Kapoor-related post may be, according to my dubious record-keeping system, it will be the 100th. (Which means roughly 15% of this blog is about Shashi. The first step is to admit you have a problem.) Celebration seems in order, so tell me, what should I do to note this celebrate? Should a certain film be (re)visited? A particular performance? Some sort of type or trope or tendency investigated? I'll take suggestions over the next few days and choose the one that I think will yield the most interesting and/or fun post for you to read.

* Note: I wouldn't know if good poetry if it walked up and bit me (and am generally not motivated to try) - even if it bit me in English - so apart from enjoying The Voice washing over me, I don't think I can say much about the actual poems. I suspect this may significantly diminish my ability to appreciate some of the film's most beautiful features, as well as some of its messages. Sigh.

** I'm amazed how my brain jumbles together all the things I love and occasionally combines them in really useful ways. Project Runway and Shashi's wardrobe in Bombay Talkie! Doctor Who on the eruption of Vesuvius and my repeated viewings of Taal! Merchant Ivory films and David Mitchell! Thanks, brain!

twenty reasons Chori Mera Kaam might just be the comic masala masterpiece of 1975

1. It has just enough groovy style to let you know that 70s-y good times lie ahead but not so much that the room starts spinning.

Neon reminders that the thief's way of life might get them snared in a web! Or maybe out-maneuvered by ever-shifting strategies!
2. Pran!*

Side note: Pran shares a birthday with three fly fellas from my home state: Abraham Lincoln, Ray Manzarek, and Ajay Naidu (aka Samir from Office Space). Plus Judy Blume, Franco Zeffirelli, and Charles Darwin! Dang!
Inspector Kumar outsmarts bad guys by pretending to take a bribe and then clamping the handcuffs down on them as they try to shake his hand. He's upstanding. He's patriotic. He takes self-sacrifice to almost as extreme a cost as a masala character could possibly do - giving up a son surely could only be topped by giving up one's Maa.

He's unjustly framed while on a high-stakes mission!

And is proud of his own son for arresting him even though he's innocent: duty before family, after all!

He even mutton-chops his way into the villain's HQ in hot pursuit.

3. Speaking of the villain's HQ: its multi-colored doubled-decker formality

makes space for twice the usual distribution of weapons and posse.

Wild sweater and neckerchief combo=good. Belted tunic top=good. Striped jackets=good.
There's something Cake Wrecks about this place (most 60s and 70s filmi interiors that are supposed to read as impressive in some way or other remind me of cakes, actually), perhaps because none of its elements really coordinate with each other. And doesn't that stairway look really narrow? How can you carry crates of smuggled goods on that thing?
4. Scooby Doo-style un-Pran-masking!

I wish I had that for Halloween tomorrow.
5. Dadamoni in a silly wig as a drunk, literary master chor (Shankar) with a heart of gold!

He enters the story by being in the right place - a hammock, as it happens - at the right time.

As you do.
6. A heroine who does stuff (Zeenat Aman as petty thief Sharmili) and is funny!

While rocking a piece of rickrack! Her useful activities include stealing, reading (the hero is illiterate), melodramatically pretending to get hit by a car and die, and making ghost noises.
7. A mysterious high-stakes burglar who leaves a calling card even more enigmatic than Dhoom 2's letter A: 7. Just 7.

If Prince were a thief, this is what he would do.
8. Oh yeah, and this guy as another good-natured pickpocket (Bholanath).

Shashi really isn't the star of this movie - the other major characters (and performances) are equally strong - but he probably has the biggest range of acting tasks, including milking The Voice, being a total goofball,

Hate to break it to you, but I don't think you're going to be able to get any tickets for the gun show, Shashi.
and playing his patented emotional attyaachaar both straight and overblown in one of the crooks' schemes.





Yes, alllll of these pictures are completely necessary to my point.
Of particular joy to Shashi fans is the high-energy stretch of about eight minutes from Sharmili's car accident through her burial, when his constant wailing, flailing, chattering, and on-the-fly scheming never slow down and are absolutely priceless. This is probably not the kind of performance that was remembered when he won his lifetime achievement award at the Mumbai Film Festival yesterday, but it should be.
9. Numbers 5, 6, and 8 combine to make an unexpectedly hilarious comic team. Equally good is the combination of Zeenat, Shashi, and Deven Verma (Parveen Chandra Shah) as the man whom they trick into thinking he hit Sharmili with his car. I don't know where this magic comes from; the Zeenat/Shashi pairing in Satyam Shivam Sundaram and Roti Kapada aur Makaan certainly didn't hint at comic genius.

But Chori Mera Kaam is a good ol' masala romp, and everyone (with the possible exception of Raza Murad as Pran's police officer son) seems to be in it for that precise purpose and accordingly has a grand time.

Shashi Kapoor as Keith Moon helping Ashok Kumar as Colonel Sanders (disguise titles courtesy of Post-Punk Cinema Club) with his fake mustache? Comedy gold!
10. A brief but jaw-dropping pairing of literal and as-filmi-as-they-come tumbles into an already funny romantic spat duet. As Bhola Nath and Sharmili sing about their hearts, he presents her with his.

Yes. An actual (or very realistic, anyway) piece of flesh that beats in her hand. She chucks it into the ocean and he runs into the surf to retrieve it, then tucks it back inside his shirt. Bwahaha! In all the zillions of songs we've heard about heroines and heroes and their dils, have we ever seen that? Yeah yeah, Kal Ho Na Ho has its weepy heart patient who won't risk love, but this is so much crisper and funnier. How droll! And it just gets better! In the next verse, Sharmili shows Bhola Nath her heart, a gleeful hand-made valentine drenched in glitter.

Remember when we gave each other hearts like this? Awwww.
But she throws it into the air before he can take it from her, and as he runs after it, blinking into the sky, exactly as you would a pop fly, the villains run up, put a coat over his head, and bundle him into a car! Nahiiiiin! In the next scene, their collaborator Shankar mutters worries about his heart's health in order to gather essential information from the villains. Commentary, perhaps, that the only heart - that is, love - that is truly useful is the one that comes from within you, and if you're using your heart/love as a prop or a toy or a joke, it has no actual use or value? A masala-appropriate message, to be sure. Dil, dil, everywhere a dil! And one of them even squishes - literally!
11. Another clever segue: mourning parents mark the (freakishly manic-looking) photo of the aforementioned sacrificed son, then the camera shows that son, all grown up but still not able to read and write, using his thumb to sign his name.

Gah! My dil!
12. While I would not recommend anyone rent this just to see what the wardrobe department got up to (as I grudgingly might for, say, Khoon Pasina), there are some noteworthy items. As usual for the 70s, Shashi reinforces his candidacy for king of the superfly button-up shirt, Zeenat has some humongous bell bottoms, and a tiny side character reporter has intricately braided hair that previously I've only seen on Helen.


I hope you recognize this shirt. I know SRK, Priyanka, and Amitabh do.

And this

is Sharmili's outfit while she pretends to be a high-price prostitute. That red thing is for arranging Christmas presents on under the tree (and note the rickrack again! what's with the rickrack?), not for seduction. The song itself ("Main Kachi Angoor ki Ber") is a hoot in a "Kajra Re" sort of way, the dancing bombshell tripping around with the drunken father/son-like pair, although in this case everyone is in on the joke, and sadly it must be said that Zeenat's dancing is nowhere near as good as Aishwarya's (though at least Shashi and Ashok's is probably better than the Bachchan boys'). (Also, all three leads do a poor job at lip-synching accurately, which is notable only because I see this problem so seldom in Hindi films.)
13. Underestimation of the year, even if she is wearing a 1950s Christmas tree drum majorette outfit.

14. The all-hands-on-deck brawl in the climax - of course there's an all-hands-on-deck brawl in the climax! - takes place in so much mud that all the characters end up covered in it. I don't know if this was intended to be funny, but that's how it played out to me.

In addition to sheets of rain, charging horses, a tiger, torches, and heaps of barrels, Bholanath and Shankar join forces to knock down bad guys with the classic one-two combination of detective work - throwing a bucket of water on people's faces to see whether they're villains or good guys - and punch in the gut (if they're villains). Shankar then puts the empty bucket on his head, and when a bad guy pulls it off to see who he is, Shankar clocks him in the face.

Bholanath also gets in a good trick against the head villain. He bends down to touch bad guy's feet, then grabs his hand and lower legs and slings him into a puddle. Hee! Delicious in its irreverent spin on the respected elder/feisty young man interaction we've seen so many times. Just one of several little topsy-turvies in Chori Mera Kaam.
15. A brief and superfluous scene of an injured Shetty being kept on ice is probably just an excuse for someone in the set crew to see if they could replicate a giant block of ice.

Well done! Part of me hopes that this was part of a slightly larger or more significant story arc that was cut, but part of me is delighted to think of it as a one-off giant icy coffin bed for Shetty.
16. Medical miracle: blood flows starting about a centimeter away from the wound.

17. I'm sure many of you experience 70s masala déjà vu (déjà dekh?), not just with plot elements or character actors like Yunus Parvez but with places as well. Chori Mera Kaam reminded me of Shankar Dada a few times: the graphics during the titles, Pran as an honest police officer suffering serious injustice to his own character and career and who gets a song while he's in disguise as someone else, Shashi as a less than sterling character with a cute relationship with Ashok Kumar...and my favorite staircase!

I must find out where this is! The villain's HQ was familiar to me too.
18. All sorts of cool movie posters and advertisements in the cityscape backgrounds.

19. The arc of the entanglement of Bholanath, Sharmili, Shankar, and Parveen Chandra Singh hinges on the first three blackmailing the latter based on an evil deed he thinks he did (but in fact they set up in one of their cons).

The deed in question is conjured up repeatedly by various characters having great fun with dramatic and threatening re-statement of its key components. "Borivali...ruins...girl...hanging!"

Nahiiiiiiin!
20. Even with all of these things - and more! - to contend with, the movie never loses its way. The pacing varies a bit, but it keeps chugging right along through its almost three hours. With only four songs, that's no small feat, and I spent a significant portion of that time giggling. The fact that Shashi doesn't appear until #8 on my list should tell you how good all the other aspects of this film are. Chori Mera Kaam is not as message-heavy as other 70s fare - it has some family reunion, redemption of small-scale criminals, and subtle(-ish) commentary on life's challenges for those who grow up under-resourced - but I didn't miss that aspect of the classic formula. With so much humor, five strong lead performances, two great songs, and touches of unexpected cleverness, it's a treat just the way it is.

* I watched Dharam Veer with my parents last week and taught my mom to say "Pran!" when Pran enters a film. You'll be happy to know that she has thoroughly embraced the practice

the funkiest Kapoor

Well. This is brilliant, obviously: a mix of the visuals of "Dilbar Dilbar Kehte" from Haseena Maan Jayegi with James Brown's "My Thang."


The same user has also condensed my beloved Parvarish into just one song, Neetu and Amitabh's loopy hotel room romp in disguises. Wednesday just keeps getting better and better!

much-needed mid-week giggle

From Indie Quill:
"That’s right. A photograph in which Mithun is the most restrained person."

Mother of Mimoh, those are some jackets!

some scattered thoughts on Luck by Chance

Lesson learned: do not watch a movie, especially a complex and nuanced one like Luck by Chance, and then immediately go on vacation with no time to write it up for ten days. Sigh. What's left in my head is just a list of what this movie made me think about it - but that could be quite a list. Overall I thought this was very well done. I loved its strong women, both good and bad. I loved its celebration of and dose of harsh morning light for the film industry. I loved that it ends with a refreshing breeze of realism that's low on overt judgment of the characters: real happiness lies in knowing and being yourself, whether that's being true to your values

or true to your desires (which in some cases override any normal sense of "values" altogether, so much so that they become your values).*


There were only two things that bothered me about this film. First, it sometimes felt that the pins that flew at the Bollywood balloon were just too sharp and inexhaustible. Zoya Akhtar skewered the film world so gut-wrenchingly and left such bleak tatters behind that I felt like a chump for liking any of its products. Thank goodness it ends with such a confident, useful idea. The more lasting issue for me was what the story said about film world nepotism. I don't feel I got a tidy statement from the filmmakers about the incredible power of family connections, unlike its statement about sucking up, which I thought was clear as day. This issue is muddled further by the real-life connections of so many of the major players in this project. Maybe the writer/director was simply observing this tendency rather than stating a strong opinion on it. (The actual biographies of cat and crew also made some of the narrative about struggle and paying dues a bit hard to swallow, but I assume that was a purposeful juxtaposition designed to depict how film life really is rather than a choice to ignore their reality to create a rosier world for the film.)

To start, I want to jump up and down shouting praises for this fantastic, frustrating, fraudulent, fierce older generation of characters!

After this, Delhi-6, and Love Aaj Kal, I'm finally on the Rishi Kapoor train. I don't know what's taken me so long. He was wonderfully nervous, weaselly, and vulnerable. All of these people were so interesting! All of their performances were so knowledgeable! I just wish they got to do even more!

I loved Sona's ultimate diss of jackass Vikram.

Living well - your own definition of "well," at that! - is the best revenge. Along her path to freedom was this great bit with the fridge.

To me, the fridge was Vikram himself: resource-gobbling; too big for the space it has reasonably been allotted; deliberately tough, shiny exterior; very cool on the inside. Its whole point is to be cool. It isn't even absolutely necessary, but everybody wants one, is supposed to want one - so much so that it's endorsed by Vikram's predecessor Zaffar.


There was something really pleasing to me about some of the cameos. Of course I loved Akshaye getting to do as much as he did, especially because he actually doesn't seem to be terribly sought-after these days. After sitting through some of the crap he's signed up for in the last few years, the idea of him turning something down had me guffawing out loud.

Sorry A. You know I love you, but you sure don't know how to pick 'em.
Similarly, the side characters were very well written and performed. They felt like people you sort of know or run into off and on throughout life.


And the tribute to all the faces in the film industry that we don't see except in Farah Khan credit sequences. Lovely!


How badly do I want to see Pyaar Hua Tumse? Please, somebody, make this film!


Rani + Akshaye = MUST HAPPEN, even if the result is just their painfully bland assessment that each other was great to work with. I'd also queue up for A Fistful of Rupees or The Good, the Bad, and the Worst, which somehow sounds an awful lot like a Govinda film, doesn't it?

Sanjay Kapoor was great in this film. The first time I ever noticed him was in the adorable "Akhiyan Milau" from Raja on a Madhuri song DVD, and based on those two performances alone I say "More, please!" - he seems to have the ability to project slime, vulnerability, and impish cheer like his bro but is far less manic about it (sorry PPCC). (I realize this might be a minority opinion.)

Speaking of "More, please!": KJo and SRK as wise elders!

Vah!

Last: visuals. This movie is packed with interesting things to look at that add context and characterization, comment silently on the action of the scene, and make jokes. Of course megalomaniac yesteryear glamazon Neena has a Birkin bag.

Of course she decorates her house with her own image.

Loved this extreme of the ubiquitous filmi oversized self-portraits in most hero/heroine living rooms!

A more artsy-fartsy version too.
Her films from the 80s would look exactly like this.

Sona's apartment is a wonderful contrast to Neena's: she loves bags too, but hers are giant and gaudy. Her jumble of cosmetics and jewelry would never fly in the more spacious and organized (though absolutely not more tasteful) Walia home.

Speaking of not tasteful: loved the sartorial riff on "Ek Pal Ka Jeena"

and the silver Hammer pants.

And Zaffar's party ensemble is dreadfully tacky.

Fabulous in its dreadful tackiness, of course, but still. And Ranjit's self-styled table !

And the fake magazine covers!

For those of you who have never read magazines aimed at teen girls, 1) count yourselves lucky and 2) this is totally accurate. "Is school secretly making you fat?" Heehee!
The fictional but totally true-to-life content-free film magazine stories!

The golden cage of the lush life, of a successful past that you can't live up to!

Loooove! There's so much to see in this movie - just in case your brain had any spare power left over from thinking about all the ideas from the text!

* I think it's really interesting that the only truly likable major character in this film had to choose between ambition and her values, and she ultimately chose her values. I kept thinking of Naach while I watched this. It presents a happier picture, since there our heroine's eventual level of success matched her level of commitment to her own values. I think Sona was ultimately satisfied with what she was doing, and certainly how she was doing it, but from an observer's perspective, she was much less successful in any obvious kind of way than the flattering, betraying user Vikram.

Mere Apne

Mere Apne is a depressing picture of society's many failures in urban India (circa 1970), and the male leads - Vinod Khanna (Shyam) and Shatrughan Sinha (Chaino) as warring street thugs, as well as a big cast as their gang members (Asrani and Danny Denzongpa among them) - express both pitiable futility and small-scale joys among the rubble of their youthful dreams. Unfortunately, the first 45 minutes or so focus instead on Anandi (Meena Kumari), an almost unfathomably naive villager who finds her world turned upside down by the trials of the contemporary city.

Woooop! Woooop! Moral brick bat alert!

Anandi is confounded and distressed by what she sees as the horrors of the big, bad world - including trouser-wearing women who work outside the home and don't bother to braid their hair -

The end of the world as she knows it.
and her mumble-mouthed "hey Ram!"s seem to punctuate everything she encounters in her new home with her young relative Arun and his wife and child. Anandi's criticisms of their lifestyle fall on deaf ears, and she is often left at home to care for the toddler as the grownups are at work and [shock! horror!] eating at restaurants, but their servant (Leela Mishra) finally gives her the confidence boost she needs to move on.

She takes advantage of an offer from another young family who agrees to actually pay her for being their nanny. At this point in her adventures, she gets to know Shyam and his crew, and the movie gets much more interesting. They're basically good boys (you can tell because they befriend an elderly widow), but in addition to unemployment and frustrated educations, they lack moral guidance. This pairing of the sweet, lost boys with the sweet, lost grandmother is a nice, gently filmi story, punctuated with economic troubles, political corruption, and gang violence.

Thanks, dadima hotline!

The symbolism in Mere Apne is overt. One suffers for duty, as Anandi's husband (Deven Verma) implied her role to her on their wedding night.

Life in the city is hard. Anandi, a.k.a. Mother India, is initially overwhelmed by the modern and urban, but she finds her way and has plenty of advice and model behavior. Look how she's depicted on her arrival to the city: in a simple white sari in front of an upturned bike that looks an awful lot like the spinning wheel, carrying the future (in the form of a child), no less.

She also repeatedly offers a way out - "Beta, come back with me to my mango grove" she begs Shyam - but of course the youth aren't quite ready to accept. See what has happened to the bicycles at the end of the film, when a corrupt election ignites the gangs into a brawl.

The movie's overtly bleak message and vaguely "the past is better!" tone of Anandi kept me from really getting on board, even though the film makes it almost impossible to argue with its main point that contemporary life has a lot of problems. I don't want to say anything else about how the story finishes, but it's sad and basically hopeless: the elements of society are fragmented and the future is left abandoned to fend for itself.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I was much more engaged with Mere Apne when the story and camera were focused on Shyam and Chaino than on Anandi. Her truth-wielding bumpkin routine was so taxing, especially in its association with a downtrodden, mistreated, poorly educated woman. I'm not sure whether the movie wants viewers to laud Anandi, but it does seem obvious that we're supposed to grieve for her, and I just can't. As an individual, her struggle is sympathetic (and it was even in her flashbacks with a berating, abusive, restrictive husband), but what she represents seems neither admirable nor workable to me (granted my eyes are 21st-century American). I'm also not sure what Meena Kumari was doing with this performance; I gather from her biography that she was probably quite ill while filming this, and her mumbling and shuffling gave Anandi a jarring childishness.

However, the swagger and barely contained, dangerous despair exuded by Vinod and Shatrugan and their gangs were fun to watch and effectively communicate the potential of the generation on the brink of participating in the nation.


Everything about the stories of the young men is sad: they're good, smart, resourceful people, but circumstances have thwarted them and they feel forced into sketchy, and sometimes illegal, methods of making their way through an unfair, largely insensitive world. They know what they do is wrong, but they don't know what other options they have. They are confronted with the failure of all of society's systems.

Like many good 70s films, Mere Apne offers a hodgepodge of other small pleasures for the viewers. For example, one of the requisite flashbacks shows us the tale of Shyam and Chaino's enmity. They were once friends,

but Shyam didn't like the way Chaino talked to his girlfriend Urmi (Yogeeta Bali) and the two got in a horrible fight that cemented them as the enemies we see at the start of the movie.

This is the first time I've seen Yogeeta Bali, so of course I had to look her up, and I gotta say, her personal history made me cry out "Mother of Mimoh!" in disbelief. My brain does not compute someone being married to both Kishore Kumar and Mithun Chakraborty.
This flashback offers the only real romance in the film and one of the very few female characters with more than two lines of dialogue, plus a hearty serving of mournful Vinod for all you emo sadists.

In "Haal Chaal Thik Thaak Hai," one of only two songs, Shyam's gang sings cheerfully sarcastically about the atmosphere of the country. This is a great, biting song.


Mehmood has a short, funny turn as the idiotic politician who employs Chainu to scare up votes. My own state's politicians are also idiotic and corrupt, and I loved this line about vote-garnering: "This is a list of all the dead people, but their ration cards are still alive.'


Apparently this is Danny Denzongpa's first role, and he's great as the chipper but violent Sanju in Shyam's gang.

Not sure what was up with the puppet. If I ever watch this movie again, I'll make a list of all the things it says to see whether it's voicing a particular line of thought or assessment of events.

Cheerful-looking movie posters on the street contrast with the frequent scene of violence.


I think I've claimed this for other films, but this scene is certainly a candidate for most absurdly fake blood.


Is it wrong that Asrani is really growing on me? He's really good in this as a hopeful Romeo who is bullied for pursuing a girl who lives in the other gang's territory.


The dozen or so gang members gave me some new faces and names to learn. Can anyone identify these two actors?



In this outdoor political rally, there appear to be no women present.

There aren't many women in this film at all, which I'd like to think is the filmmakers' way of commenting on gender discrepancies as one of contemporary India's problems.

One of the most fab shirts ever.

And some great sunglasses and hairstyles too.

70s zindabad!

For a more impressed take on Mere Apne, see this essay at Passion for Cinema.

lunchtime poll #9: regrettable Shashi pictures

This week, alert reader and beloved fellow Shashizen Temple and I have been discussing which of the following images from the vast, impressive collection of Karen is the most...shall we say "unfortunate." In honor of Temple, a mild beverage warning is issued (that is, if you're drinking something, put it down before proceeding, just to be on the safe side). These are not the most outrageous 70s publicity photos you'll find in Karen's awesome stash - so far, I'd give that award to this one - but they are amusingly outside the Shashi Kapoor versions of refined gentleman/charming bourgeois smoothie/upright cop or army officer/nawab/lovable bumpkin we tend to see in films.

• eau de banjo player in the Lawrence Welk band
  
  The right and left sides of his hair seem to be doing totally different things; granted, sometimes this is the way of things for those of us with naturally curly or wavy hair. Far more jarring - and easily controlled - are the collar and bow tie. Whatever year this may be, they are too big, yet somehow the tie manages to obscure his right collar almost entirely. Asymmetrical badness! (Note I am not claiming this to be the worst ever picture of Shashi Kapoor - the bow tie caught my eye as totally ridiculous, and the more I looked at the photo, the weirder it all seemed.) (Aside: while googling around for an image of a banjo player on The Lawrence Welk Show, I encountered a blog post titled "Turkish Star Wars, Lawrence Welk, and other strangely wonderful things," which is a combination of concepts I never expected to encounter and is too great not to share.)
• beery leery
  
  Just too, too cheesecake for words. Stylistically acceptable for Ranjeet, perhaps, but not for Shashi.
• Sarong? So wrong.
  
  So many questions: What is that book about and why is it a thing that makes him go hmmmm? Is that the hand-on-mouth gesture you make when you're going hmmm? Is that a casting couch? Why the batik bottoms? Don't you wish they had put this outfit in the previous setting (if indeed this outfit was necessary at all)?
  

Temple says: "The beery poolside one is far worse - I'm not sure I have the words in place to articulate my instincts but it is just...worse." I responded: "This [last] one is at least fake-pretend far-eastern Orient...um...I was going to say 'chic,' but I'm not sure that's applicable. Note that the pictures on the wall are not even lined up right. Also, whose house is this? HIS house? Why the batik sarong? Why the book? Why the thumb just so? SO FREAK. I agree, the beery one is worse, partly because we know what alcohol did to him later in life, but mostly because it could just as easily be Eric Estrada, and Shashi and Eric Estrada should NOT BE INTERCHANGEABLE EVER."

What say you, readers? Which glamor shot should be the last one to be ordered in wallet size for all his friends?

Update (October 14, 2009)! I can't believe I forgot this one!

In my opinion, this is by far the least cheezoid - clothing is both present and normal - but it's still so...hey baby. Perhaps it's stage 0 of the semi-scandalous sequence of which the batik sarong photo is stage 5.

ignorance is bliss: Anari (the Shashi version)

[Contains spoilers if you try hard or if you've read other bloggers' reviews.]

Let's get something perfectly clear: if you are female, drink, smoke, and have sex before you get married, you will die. If, however, you are male and plan a murder, agree to kill someone, run an illegal gambling den, kidnap people, beat people up, or have sex before marriage, you will, at worst, be arrested or have your plot thread dropped. If I thought about Anari too hard - by which I mean "almost at all" - I would hate it. Fortunately my DVD was unsubtitled and stopped working in the final ten minutes, so I could skate through it happily soaking up its ishtyle, canoodling, and music. Apni East India Company helped me out with some of the dialogue and the loose ends at the end; between her writeup and Bollyviewer's, I think I can relatively safely say that I've got the sketch of this film enough to be confident in my assessment that the characters are sort of dim, they don't feel they have a lot of options open to them, the film leaves a lot of plot threads unresolved, I need to find more films pairing Shashi/Sharmila and Shashi/Moushumi Chatterjee because each is just so darn pretty, and, perhaps most importantly, more films should contain 70s studmuffin-offs.

Who's the choicest one of all?

In this corner, the medallion-toting, bearded bad-boy, the heavyweight champion Kabir Bedi (Vikram).


And in this corner, multi-round champion Shashi Kapoor (Raja/Amit), floating like a lovebird, stinging like a supafly.


Winner? The audience.


Like Khoon Pasina and Ram Balram, Anari has some good masala elements, and the writers put the characters in some compelling pickles; unfortunately, and perhaps in their best efforts to make things tense and complex, they also make it impossible for the film to resolve the way I usually want my masala to go. It is not fluffy, it is not heart-warming, and and it smacks down its heroine. Boooooo!

The first half hour is really good, right from the opening titles, which you see from the point of view of an angry, scheming Arjun (Utpal Dutt) driving through the streets of Bombay.


The role of good-hearted laze-about Raja gives Shashi a chance to be cheery and sweet, goofing around with paan-wallah Mehmood

and making eyes at neighbor Poonam (Sharmila).

The happiness is quickly over, as three blows of family trouble cause Raja great distress at home and he's forced to find some money fast. Not so fast that we get any great moments of patented Shashi emotional attyaachaar, but still.




I love when characters are so upset that actors feel compelled to clutch furniture - or, in Shashi's case, also the wall.

There are only four songs, but I really enjoyed three of them. Shashi and Mehmood have a cute little "even though we're not rich, we're so happy here" sort of song (no idea what the actual words are, though I think paan is involved). Poonam and Raja have one of the more unique and somehow very natural cementing-as-a-couple songs I've seen ("Hum To Jis Rah Pe Jaate Hain"). Failing to find some privacy in a park, they resign themselves to a seat on the sidewalk and watch another couple,

and then each one imagines them in place of the couple they're spying on.

It's worth noting, as Bollyviewer does, the difference in their fantasies. Her version is above - glamorous, snuggly - and his puts them in plainer, more traditional clothes as he covers her head with her pallu. Once both are out of the reverie, they do manage to share a moment as Raja shyly extends his hand and Poonam takes it - and the opportunity to get a little closer.


Everybody now: awwwww.
Building on the theme of their different aspirations, Poonam has a fantasy song drenched in material riches. The opening segment of "Thandi Pawan Hai Deewani" captures exactly how I feel when I stare at beautiful saris, wishing I could run through a forest of them and touch each and every one.


On the topic of music, I can't not include pictures of some background dancers in Vikram's gambling den. I'm not sure I've ever seen a lone male dancer dressed quite so much like he raided Helen's closet.

Somehow if there were a full fleet of him, like we might see in late 90s songs, I wouldn't think a thing of it. But on his own, he looks decidedly odd.

I don't have anything else to say about Anari that Bollyviewer and Apni East India Company haven't already said. From what I understood and have learned by reading, it doesn't seem to be a very strong film despite a solidly engaging start and some plot complications that reflect the economic realities of mid-70s India in a not-over-the-top sort of way. I hate its final message about women, and I'm not sure it says much heroic about Raja's character (that is, his moral fiber, etc.) either. I think the characters were written into a tight corner and there was no good way out for the leads, and for some reason no energy was put into tidying up the side plots. But I don't want to end on such a blah note, so let's look at some pictures.

The bridge where Raja makes his deal with the devil appears in one of my favorite songs in Parvarish, "Aji Thahero Zara Dekho."

Very, very humorously (though perhaps not deliberately so), Raja is unable to dishoom this particular member of Arjun's crew.

No contest.
More groovy clothes and other style!




When this scene came up, I said "I WANT THAT HAT. RIGHT NOW. GIVE ME THE HAT, MOUSHUMI. GIMME." Apparently I feel strongly about this.
And to end, such pretty, pretty Shashi in this film.

1975 is such a good vintage.

And yes, for real this time, I promise, the superb Chori Mera Kaam from this same year is up next. I think I just miiiiight need to watch it again before posting....

next up: Chori Mera Kaam

I've had the DVD over a year but just hadn't gotten around to watching it yet.

A grave oversight, clearly.