The Gorilla’s Lament

Saawariya (2007) is loosely based on a short story by Dostoevsky, but if you didn’t already know that, it probably doesn’t matter; the basic plot is incredibly filmi, the kind of thing you see in Bollywood over and over and over again. The difference lies in the presentation.

The movie takes place in the red light district of . . . somewhere. The setting is hugely stylized and almost dreamlike, and incorporates bits and pieces of various real world cities, most notably the canals of Venice. It’s also home to our narrator, a prostitute named Gulabji (Rani Mukherji), who promises a story of true love “from one who trades in false romance.”

The story is about Raj (Ranbir Kapoor), an aspiring musician who wanders into the neighborhood. When Gulabji offers her professional services, Raj politely declines. Gulabji is both surprised and charmed, and the pair quickly become friends. She points the homeless Raj to a boardinghouse run by Lillian (Zohra Sehgal). Raj charms Lilian, as well, and soon he has a home and a job singing at a nearby bar.

Wandering the streets late at night, Raj sees a mysterious woman (Sonam Kapoor) crying alone on a bridge, umbrella in hand. For Raj, it’s love at first sight, but at first the woman wants nothing to do with him. Raj is persistent, though, and finally manages to charm her, too. Her name is Sakina, and she agrees to meet him the next night.

Raj thinks it’s love, but it’s not; Sakina has her own problems. She lives with her blind, overprotective grandmother (Begum Para.) A year ago, the family took in a lodger, a sullen, silent, brooding loner named Imaan (Salman Khan.) They fell in love, for no particular reason, and then he suddenly announced that he was going away for a year, and would marry her when he got back. He promised to meet her on the bridge during the next Eid. Sakina has been waiting ever since, without any word from him. It’s finally Eid again, though, and she’s heard a rumor that Imaan is staying in a hotel across town. She couldn’t possibly go there herself, of course, but perhaps Raj could deliver a letter?

While introducing the story, Gulabji talks a lot about how wonderful Raj is, going so far as to call him a “rock star angel.” The trouble is, he really isn’t. He’s very charming, he adapts quickly to different social situations, and he forms a genuine and loving bond with Lilian, but every single time he has to choose, he puts his own happiness ahead of Sakina’s. He feels bad about being selfish, and he does the right thing eventually, but only after Lilian and Gulabji talk him into it.

Neither of the central relationships in Saawariya quite work; Raj is selfish and possessive of a woman he met four days ago, while Sakina is so obsessively devoted to the man who abandoned her that she can’t focus on anyone or anything else. The tangential relationships are the ones that feel genuinely noble; Raj and Lilian give each other a sense of belonging and family, and Gulabji loves Raj so much that she’s willing to turn him away when a discouraged Raj knocks at her door, looking for someone, anyone, else to love.

While the love story isn’t nearly as true as it pretends to be, but the cinematography alone is worth the price of admission. This movie is gorgeous, and the city itself is one of the more compelling characters. I would love to live in Surreal Indian Venice Where it’s Always Night and Usually Raining if I could, but I’m just not sure I’d like the neighbors.

In the movies, Dubai is often presented as, essentially, Bollywood Hell. It’s a place where bad people go, where innocent young men hoping to make their fortunes are corrupted, and where Nice Indian Girls are sent to suffer a fate Worse than Death. Fool N Final (2007) presents a slightly more nuanced view of the city, as a kind of cross between Omaha and Thunderdome; it’s a nice little city where ordinary people lead ordinary lives, but crime lords seem to run everything, and there’s no sign of a police presence at all.

Fool N Final’s plot is a little complicated; at the beginning the film follows three loosely related groups of characters, all of whom dabble in various crimes. Lucky (Vivek Oberoi) is an arcade owner who, along with his sidekick Bob (Suresh Menon), moonlights as a fight promoter and talent scout for the fighting ring run by the sadistic JD (Zakir Hussain). Unfortunately, Lucky isn’t; his fighters have a tendency to lose, so rather than making quick money to support his disabled kid brother, Lucky is deeply in debt and forced to work for a man he despises.

Munna (Sunny Deol), on the other hand, is a mechanic working for the Honest car Company, run by his not particularly honest brother (Om Puri). Munna is a spectacular fighter, so when he happens across JD’s thugs chasing Payal (Sameera Reddy) in the market place, he makes short work of them. His sister in law Laywanti (Sharmila tagore) insists on bringing Payal to their home in the Indian district. They arrive just in tme for a visit from Laywanti’s beloved and very responsible and law abiding son Rahul (Shahid Kapur).

Rahul is not actually law abiding, responsible, or Laywanti’s son. He’s not even Rahul, he’s Raja, a bicycle riding petty thief hired by Munna to impersonate Laywanti’s son and thus spare her the pain of Rahul’s death, presumably because it’s cheaper than therapy. Raja steals in order to help Chobey (Paresh Rawal), uncle of his girlfriend Tina (Ayesha Taklia); Chobey owes a great deal of money to Moscow Chikna (Arbaaz Khan), a psychotic arms dealer and all around goon. (Chobey actually owes money to pretty much everybody, but Chikna is both short-tempered and well-armed.) The trio occasionally have to call on the services of crack driver Kittu Pilot (Johny Lever) to help with their schemes.

If your movie has a lage ensemble cast all engaged in assoerted extralegal activities, you’re going to need a MacGuffin to draw them all together. In this case it’s a diamond, stolen from a bank in India by Rocky (Chunkey Pandey), on the orders of his uncle, London based crime lord Chokshi (Gulshan Grover). Rocky travels to Dubai to fence the diamond, but since he has all the self-discipline and attention span of a hyperactive hummingbird, things don’t quite go according to plan, and Chokshi recruits the dreaded Gunmaster G9 (Jackie Schroff) to get the diamond back.

I don’t really have much to say about Fool N Final. It’s the kind of movie that does exactly what it says on the tin; it’s a wacky comedy starring Paresh Rawal and Johny Lever, and interspersed with scenes of Sunny Deol punching people, and it plays out exactly as you’d expect; the humor is very broad, the action scenes are spectacularly implausible, and the hip hop tinged songs are probably okay if you like that sort of thing. The most surprising aspect of the film is the cinematography. The film is shot very much like a live action comic book, complete with comic panels in the scene transitions. Ang Lee’s Hulk used the same technique, but that was a cinematic graphic novel, and this is something from the back issue racks.

Bhoothnath (2008) is an “imaginary friend” movie. You know the genre; a lonely child is befriended by a magical creature that only he can see, wacky misunderstandings ensue, pranks are pulled, and everybody learns a valuable lesson in the end. The magical creature in question can be nearly anything. I’ve seen aliens, angels, dragons, ghosts, genies, fairies, and, as in this case, Amitabh Bachchan.

Bachchan plays the ghost of Kailash Nath, who has been haunting his mansion in Goa for years. Nath is very, very good at haunting, so everybody knows to stay away from the mansion, apart from the occasional stupid teenagers looking for a place to make out. Since said stupid teenagers are easy to deal with, Nath is certain to be left alone, unless a plucky young family from out of town movie in.

And then the Sharmas, a plucky young family from out of town, move in. Aditya (Shahrukh Khan) is the Chief Engineer on a cruise ship, and wants a place where his wife Anjali (Juhi Chawla) and son Banku (Aman Siddiqui) can be safe. The cruise line rents Nath Villa for them, and nobody thinks to ask about ghosts until the local taxi drivers are refusing to go anywhere near the place. Still, the Sharmas are modern people and ain’t afraid of no ghosts, so they move in anyway.

Before the family can even unpack, Aditya has to leave again. Banku is enrolled in school, and he . . . fights right in, surprisingly. Unlike most of the child protagonists in imaginary friend movies, he’s cheerful, mischievous, and outgoing rather than shy and withdrawn. The only problem Banku has at school is a boy named Jojo, who sees the newcomer as a threat.

Things aren’t quite so easy for Anjali. The house is huge, and hasn’t been lived in for years, but because of the ghost she can’t find any servants willing to help her clean the place or even unpack. She’s so overwhelmed that she seriously considers hiring Anthony (Rajpal Yadav), the alcoholic homeless man she caught stealing food from her kitchen, to help out.

And then, late at night, boy finally meets ghost. Nath pulls out all the scary stops, but Banku is completely unmoved; his mother told him that ghosts don’t exist, but angels to, so Nath must be an angel sent to watch over him, whether he wants to admit it or not. The two engage in a nightly battle of wills, and Banku wins quite handily, even tricking the ghost (whom he renames “Bhoothnath”) into cleaning up the house so Anjali will want to stay.

The best that Bhoothnanth can manage is to startle the boy while he’s playing at the top of the stairs. The boys fall, and Bhoothnath is horrified; he’s not a friendly ghost, by any measure, but he never wanted to actually hurt anybody. When Banku recovers, a relieved Bhoothnath decides to literally clean up his act, and becomes the friendly protective spirit Banku thinks he is.

Bhoothnath reverses the traditional character roles for an imaginary friend movie. Banku is not shy, doesn’t need to come out of his shell, and certainly doesn’t need to learn confidence. Aditya and Anjali take the eventual revelation that their son has been playing with a dead man with surprising good grace. And Bhoothnath, while stubborn and occasionally capricious, is easily the most sensible and mature character in the film; when Banku asks him to use his magical powers during the school’s Sports Day, Bhoothnath flatly refuses, instead encouraging the boy to try harder. It’s almost a “Calvin and Hobbes” dynamic, if Calvin had more social skills and Hobbes were a grandfatherly baritone. I like that.

Bollywood doesn’t really do rigid genre boundaries. Even within the space of a single film, styles will twist, turn,change, mutate, abd occasionally become something new, as in Jewel Thief (1967), possible the greatest Cotton Candy Noir film ever made.

As the film opens, the titular jewel thief has been making a name for himself by . . . stealing jewelry, mostly. The police have so far failed to capture him, and as increasingly hysterical newspaper headlines spin on screen, the police commissioner vows to resign if he fails to capture the thief before January 26th.

Meanwhile, the commissioner’s son, amateur gemologist Vinay (Dev Anand), wanders into the offices of successful jeweler Vishambar Nath (DK Sapru) and offers his services. Nath has him tossed out, but when he realizes just how good the young man is, he tracks him down and offers him a job at double the salary. Suddenly, Vinay has his dream job, plenty of money, his parents’ approval, and the chance to flirt with Vishambar’s absolutely adorable daughter Anjali (Tanuja). Life is good.

The only problem is that strangers keep mistaking Vinay for someone named Amar, culminating in aparty where the tearful Shalini (Vyjayanthimala) accuses him of being her long lost fiance Amar. The only way he can prove his identity to Shalini and her angry brother Arjun (Ashok Kumar) is by taking of his shoe and showing that he has only has five toes rather than Amar’s six.

Shalini is humiliated, and quickly sinks into depression. Vinay, being a reasonably nice guy, decides to befriend her, and even agrees to wear Amar’s old clothing in an effort to cheer her up. As Vinay grows closer and closer to Shalini, he learns more and more about Amar, and it soon becomes clear that Amar is the mysterious jewel thief, is in town, and is impersonating Vinay. Turn about is fair play, and Vinay already has the clothes, so he sets out to meet Amar’s dancer girlfriend (Helen) at a local nightclub, hoping to infiltrate the gang.

The plot of Jewel Thief follows Noir conventions; it’s a story of an ordinary man drawn into a seedy underworld of crime by a mysterious woman, after all, and of all the characters I’ve mentioned so far, exactly three are what they appear. The presentation, on the other hand, is anything but noir; there’s nothing dark about the movie. It’s all bright colors and blaring trumpets and people dancing in the background for no particular reason. Vinay himself is certainly not a noir protagonist, because ordinary man or not, he’s never out of his depth. Looking at his face, it’s clear he’s having a marvelous time. I had a marvelous time, too. Jewel Thief is not a serious or dark movie, it’s silly, smart, sexy fun.

I’ve mentioned my friend Marie before. She’s smart, she’s funny, and she has a new blog called Bounce.

Sooner or later, any story of star crossed lovers and feuding families will be compared to Romeo and Juliet. The people making these comparisons really need to watch more South Indian cinema; Romeo and Juliet is okay, but unlike, say, Indra: The Tiger (2002), there’s only one pair of star crossed lovers, the families are barely feuding at all anymore, and nobody gets decapitated at a wedding.

Indra’s plot is complicated. Really, really complicated. I will try and sum up. Pallavi (Sonali Bendre), daughter of Chenna Kesava Reddy (Prakash Raj), the Governor of Uttar Pradesh, doesn’t like the groom her parents have picked out, so when bathing in the Ganges she prays for a good looking man. Instead the river gives her Shankar (Chiranjeevi), a taxi driver who happens to bathing downstream when Pallavi’s pearl necklace slips unseen off of her neck and floats onto his, with neither of the bathers the wiser.

Pallavi is in Kashi studying music. One of her classmates, Nandini, happens to be Shankar’s niece, and when Nandini freezes on stage and is saved by an impromptu duet witgh her uncle, who happens to be wearing the necklace, Pallavi realizes that this burly middle aged man is the handsome youth she’s been dreaming of, so she leaves school, poses as an orphan, and manages to install herself in Shankar’s household. Shankar, of course, never notices that she’s interested in him, despite a never ending string of compromising positions.

Shankar has more to worry about than comic misunderstandings and light bedroom farce, though. His nephew has fallen in love with the daughter of the powerful, honorable, and very very stern Shaukhat Ali Khan (Puneet Issar.) Neither of the young lovers have the courage to admit their relationship to Khan, he reacts very, very badly when he discovers half the truth. Through overwhelming virtue and sheer damned manliness Shankar defuses the situation, unites the lovers, and turns Khan into a fast friend rather then an enemy.

And then. (This is a movie with a lot of “and thens.”) And then the Governor discovers that is daughter is not at school after all, and is instead living with a taxi driver. Rather than talk to people and find out what’s actually going on, the Governor decides (based on terrible advice from his staff, all of whom should be fired) to send thugs to kidnap Shankar’s family. Shankar beats up an entire train full of thugs single-handed, and rescues his family.

The Governor tries again, bringing a large group of armed policemen to Shankar’s house with orders to kill everybody. As soon as he sees Shankar’s face, though, he immediately apologizes and says that if Shankar wants to marry his daughter, that would be super. (Very mysterious, yes?) Shankar politely refuses, saying that he only just found out about Pallavi’s feelings, and anyway he needs to arrange Nandini’s marriage before thinking about his own. At that moment, Ganesh, a plucky orphan raised by Shankar and who hasn’t done anything important enough for me to mention before now, speaks up and announces that he and Nandini are in love, so Shankar arranges a wedding.

And then. And then, and then, and then. The wedding is crashed by Snehalata (Aarti Agarwal) and her brother Veer Shankar (Mukesh Rishi), along with assorted goons. The wedding ends badly, and we get an extended flashback which explains just what is going on. Shankar is actually Indra, patriarch of a powerful family in his native village. Indra’s and Veer Shankar’s families had been killing one another for generations. Snehalata, freshly returned from America, is impressed by Indra’s honor, dignity, and general kickassedness, and since she’s not as invested in the feud as her brothers, so she has no problem with setting her romantic sights on Indra despite his total lack of interest.

When Indra discovers that the villagers need water, he promises to build them a reservoir. The local Controller, Chenna Kesava Reddy, explains that the only suitable land is owned by Veer Shankar’s family. Indra promises to pay them any price. It starts with a lemon orchard, but as each member of Veer Shankar’s family adds his own clause, the price becomes everything Indra owns, his exile from the village, and, finally, agreeing to marry Snehalata. The reservoir is built, and Snehalata manages to convince Indra of her sincerity, despite her brothers’ continued and deliberate insults. And then it all goes horribly wrong, leaving Indra in exile, and Snehalata and her family plotting the super, duper, deadly vengeance of ultimate revenge.

Despite the complex plot, Indra is a very simple and straightforward movie. It has fighting and brightly colored musical numbers and singing and dancing and comedy a whole lot of angst and a happy ending. Of course, simple and straightforward movies are not hard to find. I really liked Indra for two reasons. First, Chiranjeevi turns in a remarkable performance. Indra is unbelievably macho, and he communicates mostly by glaring at people, but Chiranjeevi is charismatic enough to make it work. He’s taciturn, but charming when he needs to be, and when he glares you believe that somebody’s about to get beaten.

Second, and more importantly, despite the violence, the movie talks about revenge being pointless and self defeating, and it actually means it. Indra is very good at beating up large groups of people, but his first impulse is always to try and make peace, and in the end he’s proven right; everywhere he goes Indra turns enemies into friends. That’s a surprising show of wisdom for a movie about star crossed lovers, family feuds, and punching people.

Before the opening credits of Return of Hanuman (2007), there’s a notice saying that the film is in no way a sequel to any other film, despite sharing a production house and several character designs with 2005’s Hanuman, and despite the fact that everyone in the “Making Of” feature included on the DVD consistently refers to the film as “Hanuman II.” Whether or not it’s a sequel, though, it certainly represents a jump in genre. Hanuman was a cute devotional cartoon retelling of Hanuman’s early life and subsequent achievements, while Return is a cute fantasy adventure cartoon about an undercover monkey god in the modern world, battling bullies, gangsters, demons, and pollution - Hanuman as super hero, in other words.

The film opens with an ancient battle between the gods, led by Agnidev, and the demons, led by the fearsome Rahu-Ketu. Rahu-Ketu turns out to be so fearsome, in fact, that Agnidev is in serious danger, so Vishnu steps in, scatters the opposing army, and slices Rahu-Ketu in half. Unfortunately, all the fighting disturbed the sage Shukracharya, who was meditating underground. Shukracharya does not like to be disturbed, so using his serpent staff, he reanimates the dead demons, and uses the remains of Rahu-Ketu with parts of a similarly bisected snake, thus forming two new demons named Rahu and Ketu. After a brief tussle with Vishnu, he prophecies that humans will one day become worse than demons and destroy themselves, and then he becomes the planet Venus, and all the demons go to live on him. (I have no idea how much of this is accurate; I’ve read the Ramayana, but most of my knowledge of Hindu theology comes from God Only Knows.)

Millions of years later, Hanuman is in heaven, bored. He takes a quick trip to Earth, but it doesn’t really help; it’s fun to play prank and thwart terrorists, but in his incorporeal divine form he can’t really interact with anyone. Worse, an attempt to help a bullied boy named Minku backfires, leaving the child even more lonely and isolated than before. Hanuman goes to Lord Brahma and asks for permission to take mortal birth. Brahma agrees, but with several conditions, most notably that Hanuman will still have his tail, and he will have to give up his divine powers.

Hanuman is born into the house of a poor priest and his wife, and given the name Maruti. It’s quickly clear that Brahma’s using a slightly different definition of divine power than I am, because Maruti is not quite normal. He’s superhumanly strong, with an appetite to match. He’s also advancing very quickly; he’s walking at one month, and by three months old, he’s ready for school. And the school in question just happens to be the school attended by Minku, who just happens to really need a new friend.

Meanwhile, there are three separate groups of villains doing villainous things. The local goons, led by a one eyed man and a shadowy figure who is pretty clearly Gabbar Singh from Sholay, have been zealously guarding a mango orchard and occasionally kidnapping people and tossing them in the nearby volcano. Inside the volcano, the collected mass of humanity’s sin and pollution is bubbling and boiling away. And Ketu (or is is Rahu? The snake headed one.) tossed the serpent staff down to Earth in a fit of pique, and the demons need to retrieve it or they will all die for no adequately explained reason. Fortunately, Maruti has the help of his friends, as well as a literal army of monkeys.

And there’s not much more to say about Return of Hanuman. This is a simple, straightforward cartoon movie intended for children, with several Bollywood and Hollywood references to amuse the adults. The army of monkeys, in particular, includes Shahrukh Khan, King Kong, several Curious Georges, and Jai and Veeru from Sholay, among others. (No, the monkey Jai and Veeru never interact with shadowy Gabbar Singh.) The animation is probably the best I’ve seen in an Indian cartoon, though Maruti’s character design is a little more stylized than the other characters, and the effect is occasionally jarring. Overall, the film is simple, lighthearted fun, and apart from a passing reference to standing up for yourself, we’re spared any obvious moral.

Inteqam: The Perfect Game (2004) is yet another thinly disguised remake of a Hollywood movie I have not seen, in this case Basic Instinct. So called “erotic thrillers” are always hard to adapt to Bollywood sensibilities; because the Indian film industry has an active censorship board, there are limits to the amount of sexy sexy sex sex a film can rely on, so filmmakers have to fall back on things like plot and characterization (and dance numbers!) to fill out their running time. In this case, the results are mixed.

Police officer Uday Thakur (Manoj Bajpai) really likes killing people. He’s made a career out of “encounters,” gunning down suspects in cold blood and then claiming self defense. After an innocent bystander dies during one of his operations, Uday is in trouble, but police psychiatrist (and Uday’s secret lover) Doctor Mehak (Nethra Raghuraman) pulls some strings, and rather than lose his job he’s transferred to the Detective Branch (from, presumably, the Killing People Branch.) Uday is horrified by the demotion, but, as Mahek points out, it’s better than being fired.

Meanwhile, best selling author Avantika Suryavansh (Isha Koppikar) returns to India to work on her new book, an expose of brutality and corruption in the Indian police force. She’s warmly welcomed, both by the press and by Mrs. Lobo (Sushmita Mukherjee), her creepy childhood governess. Before Avantika can get much writing done, though, her publisher is brutally murdered at a party. Avantika was the last person to see her publisher alive, and the murder is uncannily similar to a scene from her book, so Uday and his new partner Pandey (Sharat Saxena) make her their prime suspect.

As the investigation continues, Avantika is deliberately coy, mysterious, and more intimate with the investigating officer than a suspect really should be. Uday is intrigued, but he’s also convinced that she’s the murderer, especially as the bodies start piling up.

Inteqam really isn’t much of a mystery, because there are so few characters; discount the obvious suspect, and there aren’t many choices left. The characters are also, by and large, very unpleasant people. Uday is a murderous thug, Mahek displays a serious lack of professional judgment, Avantika is chilly, callous, and manipulative, and Mrs. Lobo is devoted but creepy and obsessive. The best thing about the movie is Sharat Saxena’s performance as Pandey; as the sidekick, he has no obligation to be sexy or mysterious or sinister, so he’s free to concentrate on being a big, goofy, and oddly charming guy.

No review tonight, but we’ll be back in business next week.

Amitabh Bachchan has a blog. How cool is that?