Himmatwala

First, a disclaimer:

So ironically, as soon as I posted something about feeling run-down and the health-giving benefits of turmeric milk, I got sicker than I have been in a long time. So sick, that today is the first day in ages that I have been able to even contemplate staying awake for longer than 2 hours at a stretch, let alone attempt watching a film and reading subtitles. I’m still amazingly ill but I feel like I’m neglecting my little piece of blogland so be gentle with me.

Himmatwala (K. Raghavendra Rao, 1983)

I’ve been wanting to get my hands on a copy of this movie since I figured out (with the help of Google) that the second song Govinda references in this (from Swarg):

Swarg - Filmon Ke Saare Hero www.bharatlover.com
Uploaded by desiguy36. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

     

is this:

which just happens to be one of the best songs in Himmatwala. You should know by now what a sucker I am for filmi references.

And then Sridevipalooza happened and a bunch of awesome people wrote some great posts convincing me of the necessity to get on the Sridevi train (well, that, and I finally watched Chandni, which, despite the WTF ending, Sridevi is amazing in) and Induna suddenly had a copy of the DVD available, when I’m pretty sure every other time I’d looked it was only available on VCD.

So clearly, the time was right for me to finally sit down – okay, lie down (what? I’m really sick) – and watch Himmatwala.

First thing you need to know: this isn’t really a Sridevi vehicle, so don’t go into it making that mistake. Her role here is pretty much as romantic interest for the lead – Jeetendra, and she doesn’t get a huge amount of screen time (compared to other movies she's in). The real stars of this film are Jeetendra (who I think I kind of love – and this is only the second film I have seen him in)

and…Amjad Khan. OH MY GOD, really, Amjad Khan is the man. I definitely love him. I missed him whenever he was offscreen, because he was by far the best thing in this movie.

Second thing you need to know: Shakti Kapoor and Kader Khan (aka my eternal arch-nemeses -if that's even a word) are also in this film, and while Shakti is actually quite young and not in comedy mode and thus, not really very irritating, so it was initially hard to recognize him;

 Was it that matching tracksuits are totally in?

this is one of the films where I was wishing Kader Khan would disappear or JUST SHUT UP every time he was onscreen. Which was WAY TOO OFTEN (I suspect because he had a hand in writing the film). I swear, just as I start to make peace with KK and think “You don’t annoy me so much anymore” I end up watching a film that makes me want to erase his memory from my brain. Actually, he’s not THAT bad in this, I’m just sick and less tolerant than usual.

I really don't know why I felt the need to post this pic. Blame the fever.

So anyway, Himmatwala means “the courageous one” according to my subtitles, and that’s exactly what the film is about.  Ravi (Jeetendra) is the courageous one who returns to his childhood village after 5 years away to find his mother and sister now living in poverty and the village being terrorized under the rule of the evil Thakur Sher Singh (Amjad Khan) and his spoilt and arrogant daughter Rekha (Sridevi).

Sher Singh is so pimp, he has a stuffed tiger in his house. RRRRRREEEOOOOOW.

Ravi, a moral and decent young man, discovers that Sher Singh is responsible for his mother’s humiliation, and vows vengeance.

And then, in true Bollywood fashion, A WHOLE BUNCH OF STUFF HAPPENS THAT I HAVE NO HOPE OF NEATLY SUMMARISING. There’s a cyclone, a fake pregnancy, a real pregnancy, torture, marriage, suicide, a whole subplot about building a big giant dam, long lost relatives…

…oh yeah, and Jeetendra, despite being a whippet thin dandy in super tight pants KICKS EVERYBODY’S ASS a whole lot of times. WHICH IS AWESOME. (He punches someone through a brick wall. COME ON!)

Oh, but the SONGS. THE SONGS, you guys! I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s the undeniable magic of Bappi Lahiri (like crack to me), and Jeetendra and Sridevi’s OMG CUTE chemistry (seriously, they are so Disney-wholesome I LOVE THEM) and the fact that I am probably still running a fever, but the songs in the film…PYAAR. I LOOWE THEM. All of them. The songs are totally the best part. Here, have another one:

The actual song starts about a minute in.

Jeetendra and Sridevi dancing together MAKES ME HAPPY. I need more of their movies. Amaluu, I’m coming to you for a list.

Basically – Himmatwala is by no stretch of the imagination the best film in the world. If there was a channel here in NZ that screened all Bollywood, all the time (omg I WISH), Himmatwala would be one of those films that everyone has seen because it seems to be on whenever you turn on the television – you know what I mean? It’s (mostly) got a wholesome, largely inoffensive vibe about it – Jeetendra and Sridevi together are adorably Disney – you can barely imagine them holding hands, let alone (gasp) KISSING!

Anyway, I liked this film. It was entertaining. And Jeetendra = AWESOME.

How can you not love a man in a shirt like this one?

A KIND OF Film related Experiment

You know how quite often in Bollywood movies, when someone is ill or under the weather, or just needs looking after, someone will make them Turmeric Milk?

I think the first time I ever saw this was in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, when Shah Rukh's character is staying in an attic room that looks all cobwebby and cold, and the monsoons have started, and his new wife has just begun to warm up to him. She brings him a glass of turmeric milk for his health, and it's actually quite a touching little moment.

Anyway, since then it's been one of those little details I always gleefully notice in films. TURMERIC MILK! Turmeric, as well as being a beautiful, beautiful colour, is one of those natural wonder foods, it turns out, with antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties. It's apparently long been used in Ayurvedic treatments for quite a range of things (seriously, Google it, it's quite interesting) and, as seen in Bollywood, is a widely used home remedy to ward off coughs, colds, chills, sore throats, and actually, is just quite a lovely drink.

So anyway: here in New Zealand we're at the tail end of winter, and everyone is a bit run-down, and I'm having one of those weeks where all I want to do is curl up with a good book (or, err, my Arrested Development DVDs) and a nice comforting hot drink and hibernate until spring finally gets here. And I'm not a fan of sweet things really, so hot chocolate doesn't really cut it. So I decided to experiment a little bit with what I had in the cupboard and am excited to present:

Vanessa's Turmeric Milk Experiment (it's DELICIOUS!)

Serves 1

Ingredients:

1 mug of skim milk

half a teaspoon of garam masala 

half a teaspoon of turmeric

a pinch of salt

2 teaspoons of sugar

a generous grinding of cracked black pepper  

Combine all the ingredients in a small saucepan, stirring over a high heat until the milk is just about boiling. 

Then pour it into a mug and drink it. DELICIOUS. 

Nagina

Nagina (Harmesh Malhotra, 1986)

The ‘nagin’ or snake film is a particular subgenre of supernatural films that doesn’t really exist outside of the Indian film industry as a genre in its own right.  We’re not talking films like Anaconda or Snakes on a Plane: a nagin film is one where a snake with magical powers impersonates a human being, with good or bad intent (from what I have read – generally bad). In the Hindi film industry, the nagin film has a long and rich tradition, as well as a keen audience.

A tiny bit of internet searching reveals that snakes have been worshipped as powerful genii for centuries in some parts of India; female snakes in particular are regarded in some areas as particularly vengeful, especially when it comes to protecting their families– to cross a nagina is to invite certain destruction into your household. There is also an association of snakes with jewels – the worshipped snakes are said to live surrounded with jewels and pearls and have great magical powers. All of this makes it into the nagin films in some form and also helps explain random references to snakes in other movies like Gangaa Jamunaa Saraswathi – where Amit-ji’s character prevents some rowdies from killing a snake and feeds it milk instead in worship, and is rewarded later when the snake helps to save his life.

Anyway, this is a kind of longwinded way of saying: I didn’t approach Nagina in the way it was sold to me (as a cracktastic see-the-lady-pretend-to-be-a-snake movie) which was good, because it isn’t. I like having a bit of context, and also knowing where nagin films fit in the spectrum of Hindi horror films helps too.

What Nagina IS, is a pretty solid supernatural drama.

We begin with the return home of Rajeev (Rishi Kapoor) the prodigal son, who has been absent from the family home for 15 years at his mother’s instruction.

Following her husband’s death, Maa (Sushma Seth) has been running the family business  - a sugar cane plantation - with the help of a family friend, Arjun Singh (Prem Chopra) but now that Rajeev is back, the plan is for him to take over. But why was he forced to leave his home for so long in the first place? And why does his mother allude to the mysterious night terrors he had as a child? Hmmmm. Intriguing…

On a ride around the area one day with Arjun Singh’s daughter, Rajeev discovers the ruins of the mansion where his family used to live, that still contain the temple of his family deity.

But before he can explore, a snake scares the horses pulling the carriage, and Arjun Singh’s daughter is injured.

But Rajeev is inexplicably drawn back to the old ruins, where he can hear the phantom chiming of anklets and someone singing.

And then he meets a mysterious and beautiful woman: Rajni (Sridevi) who cryptically claims to have known him before, only Rajeev can’t remember her.

It’s all very spooky and wonderful.

So then the inevitable complications arise: Maa and Arjun Singh want Rajeev to marry Arjun Singh’s daughter – but Rajeev is smitten with the mysterious Rajni who hangs out at the ruins.

Maa is not happy about this:

After seeing Prem Chopra in like A MILLION FILMS I finally got to see him play the villain, like he is famous for, when Rajeev spurns his daughter:

And, uhhh, there’s the small issue that Rajni isn’t actually human,

the fact which the All Knowing Freaky Sage played by Crazy Eyed Amrish Puri arrives at the mansion conveniently to point out.

Compared to Chandni, where her character  was super…well, normal, (and engaging, and funny and sweet), Sridevi does a pretty good job of embodying a snake woman in Nagina. She actually doesn’t have a lot to do for much of the film outside of shooting chilling snake-like glares at people

or telling Ranjeev just how long it is she waited for him to return…

…but then there are charming moments when you see her not as Snake Woman but as Ranjeev’s human wife, trying to entice him to stay with her and not go to work, and she exudes a warmth and likeability that shows just how versatile an actor Sridevi is, and just how hard she is working at her character. Plus, LOOK AT HOW CUTE SHE AND RISHI ARE TOGETHER:

The dance everyone remembers and loves is the snake dance at the end of the film, but my favourite part is actually this bit, when she is trying to stop Ranjeev from leaving her alone – I just think she and Rishi are so adorable:

SRIDEVIPALOOZA: So far, it’s jinxed.

Gair Kanooni was the obvious choice for my very first Sridevi film. Given my crazy love for Govinda, and the added bonus of Rajnikant, it meant that if I turned out to hate Sridevi for some weird reason, there was always gonna be the guaranteed lure of Govinda and Rajni-sir to get me through the film.

So, my copy of the film arrived. And didn’t work. It was okay, I had heaps of time for the replacement to arrive. And on the eve of Sridevipalooza, like it was MEANT TO BE or something, there in my mailbox, was my replacement copy of Gair Kanooni! Talk about amazing timing. Talk about excitement city!

Talk about crushing disappointment when, with extreme BAD LUCK, the replacement copy turned out to be even more faulty than the original.

So it was on to plan B.

It turned out that, despite having made it thus far and not having seen a single Sridevi film and actually knowing NOTHING about her, I had a few Sridevi dvds to choose from in my dvd collection that I could cover for Sridevipalooza. But which one to see first? From a choice of maybe 5 films, I narrowed it down to Chandni or Nagina, and opted for what I hoped was the less cracktastic choice first: Chandni.

Please note: this is not an actual review.

WELL. All I can say about Chandni was that I was forewarned about two key aspects of the film: Rishi’s horrific sweaters, and the fact that MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT FOR ANYONE WHO HASN’T SEEN IT Vinod Khanna gets his heart stomped all over in THE MOST INEXPLICABLE WAY EVER.

I will say this, because it’s Sridevi Week and technically, Chandni was the first experience I ever had of Sri Devi:

I LOVE HER. She is absolutely adorable, and instantly engaging, and such a joy to watch. She’s goofy and cute and pretty and sexy and funny and spunky and just…as much as I hate to use this word because it’s so often misused…authentic onscreen.

But, and I am sure I will do a proper review of Chandni when I have calmed down from the huge WHAT THE FUCK rage it has inspired in me, my major response to it at the moment is, unfortunately, summed up best like this:

OH MY GOD CHANDNI I LIKED YOU FOR 80% OF THE FILM UNTIL YOU TURNED INTO A COMPLETE IDIOT. I NEVER THOUGHT I COULD HATE ADORABLE CUDDLY RISHI KAPOOR BUT IN THIS FILM HE IS A TOTAL COCK, AND HOT PAPA KHANNA IS…NOT PERFECT BUT A WAY BETTER CHOICE…AND YOU’RE A FREAKING IDIOT CHANDNI. YOU KNOW WHO YOU SHOULD HAVE RUN AWAY WITH LIKE 10 MINUTES INTO THE FILM? ANUPAM KHER, BECAUSE HE WAS THE NICEST GUY IN THIS MOVIE FULL OF WEIRDO MESSAGES AND CONTROLLING FUCKED UP MEN.

Ahem.

Yeah. So that was Chandni, otherwise known as Actually The Most Emo Melodrama I Have Ever Seen, Thanks Yash Raj. I promise, I will properly review it one day when I have simmered down. Sridevi is LUMINOUS in the film though, and it really is heartbreaking when Rishi is so so horrible to her.

Coming up next: how I really enjoyed Nagina, until the disc stopped working in the last 10 minutes of the film, forcing me on to Youtube to find out WHAT HAPPENED AT THE END.

I swear, the Universe does not want me to watch Sridevi films for some reason. 

New Favourite Jodi!!

(I know, I have a New Favourite Jodi!! every five minutes. But seriously, watch the video, and just try and argue with the CHEMISTRY. It's SCIENCE guys. You can't argue with SCIENCE).

I don't really know how exactly I stumbled across this, but...it's GENIUS. And it fills me with so much joy. Whoever made it: YOU ARE MY NEW IDOL.

I generally usually hate and avoid these kind of videos. But this is a) unusually well done and b) made me laugh SO HARD, and c) features the cutest Bobby Deol dancing you will ever see, and d) ...oh, such chemistry between Akki and My Favourite Deol that I have this shameful urge to watch Dosti: Friends Forever again, which, if you've seen the film, is worrying.

 

  Akshay Kumar and Bobby Deol  "Evacuate the Dance Floor"

- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Raavan

Raavan (Mani Ratnam, 2010)

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS

Raavan is one of the most intricately constructed, challenging, puzzling and rewarding films I have ever encountered. It’s not a film you watch for light entertainment, or approach half-heartedly; it’s a film you need to choose to actively engage with: it raises questions for the viewer, on many different levels. It’s unrelentingly bleak, and harrowing, a journey deep into a timeless heart of darkness, with no specific geography other than the suggestive name “Lal Mati” (Red Earth) to situate us in any socio-political context. Raavan is, above all, unapologetically, purposefully obtuse, a jigsaw puzzle of a film that starts in media res and circles around and around, revealing the merest fragments of information in gasps and stutters, that we as an audience can then piece together into a meaningful whole.

In the days following Raavan’s cinema release, reviews inevitably ended up comparing it to its Tamil counterpart, Raavanan, and pitting Abhishek Bachchan’s controversial portrayal of Beera as a manic, brooding savage against the passionately angry yet more balanced and grounded Tamil film counterpart, Veeru, played by Vikram (who also appears in the Hindi film as Dev, the police inspector hunting Beera down). Abhishek has been widely slammed for his performance in Raavan, and unfairly so. The films are not carbon copies of each other, nor are they mirror images – there are enough striking differences: in characterization, in the dialogue, subtle changes in the editing, changes in the way scenes are played out – that suggests Mani Ratnam had a specific, unique vision for each film. Why make two otherwise?

Having seen Raavanan once, and Raavan three times now, I’m firmly of the opinion that the films are not made merely to be compared, but exist as extensions of each other. Two sides of a coin; light and dark; interlocking fragments of a coherent whole.  A little context, a little knowledge goes a long way – and I’m convinced that my initial impression of the Hindi film was incomplete and flawed, because I hadn’t yet seen the Tamil version that would give me a context, a position to view the Hindi film against; and I am certain my enjoyment of Raavanan was coloured through a lens of having already seen Raavan. My impression (and bear in mind, I HAVE only seen the Tamil film once, and am waiting desperately for a dvd copy) is that Raavanan is by far the more accessible film, with a more straightforward love-story and more clear-cut, understandable motivations for the central characters.

Raavan…well, Raavan is a little more difficult initially…but so, so satisfying. It’s very rare that a film is released that can continue to surprise and challenge and deeply affect me with repeated viewings, and Raavan, so far, is proving to be one of those precious films.

The story begins when Beera (Abhishek Bachchan), the leader of the Lal Mati region, kidnaps Ragini (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), the wife of the recently posted local police inspector, Dev (Vikram). Beera takes Ragini deep into the jungle as his captive, intending to kill her, but discovers he is incapable of doing it. At the same time, Dev assembles a team of police to search the jungle for Beera and Ragini, aided by forest ranger Sanjeevani (Govinda).

In question are each character’s motives: why has Beera kidnapped Ragini, and why can’t he kill her?

Why is Dev really searching the forest – to rescue Ragini, or to wreak vengeance on Beera?

And who is the real “Raavan” (villain) of the film’s title?

Ragini’s relationship with Beera is where Raavan differs quite markedly from Raavanan, and where the film has (I think quite undeservedly) received a lot of criticism.

Ragini is central to the story, as we see each character through her eyes, and our perceptions of Beera and Dev alter according to her interactions and experiences with them.

In the Tamil version, my impression is that there is near instant chemistry and attraction between Ragini and Veeru, and an interesting mention that her marriage to Dev was arranged (a plot point absent from Raavan). Ragini initially resists her kidnapper, but clearly succumbs to a physical, mutual attraction with Veeru, though neither party acts on it. The chemistry between Vikram and Aishwarya is palpable and delicious to watch, and certainly their roles were not accidentally played that way.

But in Raavan, I’ve read so many negative reviews declaiming the lack of sexual chemistry between Abhishek and Aishwarya. There is a connection between Beera and Ragini in Raavan, but it is harder to figure out, not so immediate, and for a long time, seems very one-sided. Beera feels something for Ragini, some kind of connection, while Ragini just wants Dev to come and find her.

What if it was supposed to be that way? What if it’s the other side of the coin? What if, in exploring dichotomies, Ratnam divides women into lovers/wives on one side, and sisters/mothers on the other?

Look:

Beera takes Ragini to the cliff top to kill her, and can’t do it, because she reminds him of his sister Jamuniya the last time her saw her, when she returned from the police station after being gang-raped by Dev’s officers.

Like Jamuniya, Ragini is traumatized, and she won’t stop talking: bak bak (it means chatter, or blabbering – Jamuniya had said to Beera “Tumhare bak bak nahi suni karegi”

which the subtitles translated as “I won’t have to listen to your nagging” before, gut wrenchingly, he placed his hand over her mouth

because he couldn’t stand to listen to any more of her harrowing story).

So Ragini, determined to have power over her own death, jumps off the cliff. And gets caught in a tree, before falling into the water.

And something about the sight stuns Beera – not just that it is shockingly beautiful. Something else, because later in the film, he imagines it again, and the memory traumatizes him, triggering his wild-eyed “bak bak” tic.

And I think it’s because it reminds him of this:

Jamuniya drowns herself, triggering Beera to kidnap Ragini as a twisted sort of revenge.

That’s not to say he literally regards Ragini as his sister – but I think he suddenly sees a powerful parallel between Ragini and Jamuniya, and realizes that the way he treats Ragini will define him in contrast with the policemen and how they treated Jamuniya. Beera has a moment of awareness, and awakening, and clearly delineates his moral code through his treatment of Ragini from this point on (though it does get a bit murky – though he refuses to hit her to make her behave when their photo is being taken, he grabs his brother Mangal’s hand and makes him do it instead…)

One of the most powerful moments of the film is the erotically charged moment when Ragini fights back against Beera, striking him and drawing blood, which apparently elates him. The entire fight, he only defends himself, never striking her; when the fight is over, he stands behind her (and she is terrified) as if to embrace her, and yet he still won’t even touch her.

This becomes all the more significant at the end of the film, when Dev casts aspersions on Ragini’s honour by claiming Beera bragged to him that he touched her with his ‘sullied hands”.

Once you figure out a framework for understanding Beera’s alienating tics and erratic behaviours – and I don’t believe Beera is a schizophrenic or suffering multiple personality disorder – Abhishek’s performance reveals itself as totally and utterly compelling.

I know I’m probably still firmly in the minority here, but I really do think that his Beera is an incredible, complex characterization of someone who is not crazy, but a fragile, volatile revolutionary made raw and vulnerable with grief.

Vikram,  playing Dev, Beera’s foe, is equally as complex a character, if not as overtly.
While he is openly singleminded in his pursuits – telling Ragini he can only be one thing at a time, a policeman, or a husband –

 some of his actions in the film position him firmly in a grey area, between ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Vikram plays it fairly straight – leaving us to interpret his actions through Ragini’s eyes, or our own moral filter.  Anyway, for his Hindi debut, the guy does a good job.

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is luminously beautiful – it’s even more apparent because she is scratched and bruised - throughout the film, and though she has never been one of my favourite actors, there are several moments in Raavan where her Ragini: alternately feisty, anguished, yearning, confused, and for an all too brief, wonderful moment, elated, is absolutely note-perfect.

Fun fact: Dev means God. So that's a pun, sort of, too. 

Many others have said it and I’ll echo it – Aish seems to benefit from a skilled, confident director, and there are several points in Raavan where she seems to rely less on looking pretty and more on actual subtleties of expression.
I do believe that it’s from her point of view that we see the other characters – so in Raavan, where Ragini is desperately yearning for Dev a lot longer and a lot more fervently than in Raavanan, the first part of the film  - Ragini isolated in the wilderness – seems very long and unsettling and bleak.

The supporting actors in Raavan are all outstanding, but three deserve special mention as being particular highlights of the film: Priyamani as Beera’s sister Jamuniya;

I was unaware on my initial viewing of the film that this is an explicit reference from the Ramayana, and one that is sometimes interpreted to be an allusion to... what later happens to to Jamuniya in Raavan.

Ravi Kissen as Beera’s older brother Mangal 

and my dulaara Govinda as the forest ranger, Sanjeevani.

While none of the aforementioned actors have a great deal of screen time, they each make a particularly strong impact – Priyamani in a short time establishes a convincing, touching sibling relationship with Beera, and the central motivation for Ragini’s kidnap; Ravi Kissen exhibits a controlled, frenetic energy in contrast to Abhishek’s wilder, looser Beera, and is generally just a magnet for the eye every time he is onscreen; and Govinda…do I even need to tell you that Govinda is one of the main reasons I even saw this film in the first place? His Sanjeevani (a reference to Hanuman the monkey god of the Ramayana, just one of several Ramayana references in the film, the title being another) is cheeky and playful when content; yet sullen and aggressive when crossed. He’s wonderful, and makes his meager time onscreen a joy to watch.

Some Thursday Akki Love

Well, given that my flatmate just texted me to say our television has apparently blown up (not entirely a huge surprise given that the last two weeks, the screen has had a constant fluorescent greeny yellow tinge that DID NOT BODE WELL) it seems I will not be able to indulge in my favourite after-work addiction of watching MasterChef Australia.

Oh my god... I love all the MasterChef shows! The  British one is the best one, and the Aussie one is currently screening here...and I can ONLY DREAM that we get this (we will never get this):