Bombay Talkie

Merchant Ivory, 1970, 97m, English/Hindi, script by Ruth Prawer Jhabwala

This is a Bollywood movie in the Hollywood mold or vice versa if you prefer. It belongs to the sparsely populated genre of Anglo-Indian films, films in which Indians speak in English, in this case with a liberal mixture of Hindi.

It is a four cornered romance set in the ambiance of the Indian film industry and with an entirely Indian cast including Jennifer, Shashi Kapoor'e Indian born English wife. It is a spoof about the Indian film industry and the life of it's matinée idols. The flavor is authentically Indian and the inanities generally found in Western movies about India are entirely missing, presumably thanks to the presence of Ismail Merchant. It is a reasonably good movie, a spoof which might as well have been made by an Indian.

There is a scene in which Lucia, the American novelist, and her paramour the film-star Vikram, ride through the streets of Mumbai on a carriage, both sozzled as they celebrate the birthday of Lucia. They are buried in a pile of balloons which bob up and down as the carriage moves. This is an image which well symbolizes this light, foamy, air bag of a romance, signifying little in its blare and flurry. It's unusual genaeology is justification enough to see it, at least for us Indians, starved for even passable movies about our own surroundings.

Kanchenjungha

Satyajit Ray, 1966, 100m

The film is set in sometime around the fifties as the wealthy and influential Indranath Chowdhary holidays in Darjeeling with his family. This comprises his wife Labanya, his married elder daughter Anima and her husband, and Manisha, the unmarried younger daughter. Also in the environs are Manisha's suitor Pranab, and Ashok, an unemployed young man. The film is in real time, in the sense that the length of the film (hundred minutes) is also the span over which the dramatic events take place. The camera flits between the three couples making a composition of three intertwining melodies culminating in the appearance of the peak of Kanchenjungha which remains elusively behind the clouds till the end.

Ray is a chronicler of his times and here we have yet another achingly authentic slice of Indian society. Ray is a universal genius and he encompasses a knowledge and understanding of the social spectrum. There is something almost Shakespearean in his range and scope of sympathies.Here he sketches the anglophile crust of haute society who even after independence flaunt their admiration of the departed British and cherish the titles conferred by the erstwhile rulers. Everybody is waiting for Manisha's future husband to propose to her. Anima is unsure about the match since her own marriage enforced by the domineering father is under great strain. Roy's own marriage is a fossilised relationship hiding much sadness on the part of Labanya, who has hidden depths of sensitivity beneath her submissive exterior.

The film is set in the misty Himalayan landscapes and a former retreat of the British. The drama which rises to a pitch of gentle and refined intensity is set on the walks of fir lined walks of this beautiful town. The figures move with a slow and even statuesque dignity and their characters are etched with marvellous authenticity of detail and subtle touches of humor as when a flock of passing sheep interrupts the long delayed marriage proposal.

The film is about three unhappy women living under the shadow of the smug patriarch. It is a musical composition with deep undercurrents of feeling which culminates in a triumphant and joyful resolution. The colourful unfolding Himalayan vistas infused with Ray's score (including a wondrous Tagore song pictured trough Labanya) make this a magical experience.

To quote Ray himself:

"The idea was to have the film starting with sunlight. Then clouds coming, then mist rising, and then mist disappearing, the cloud disappearing, and then the sun shining on the snow-peaks. There is an independent progression to Nature itself, and the story reflects this." 
Rabindrasangeet from the film

Shakespeare Wallah (The Shakespeare Vendor)

James Ivory, 1965, English, 122m

This is a film with the delicacy of a gauze of muslin. In the guise o a sensitive love triangle, it chronicles the transition from the British culture to the Indian, from Shakespeare to Bollywood. The Buckhinghams--the father Tony (Geoffrey Kendal), mother Carla and daughter Lizzie (Felicity Kendal) are a troup of travelling actors who travel all over the subcontinent giving performances of Shakespeare plays. After independance, they choose to remain behind instead of returning to England, but find the audience for their considerable talents dwindling. They have a hard time making ends meet. During a performanceof Othello, as the performers strain every nerve during the murder episode, the play is interrupted by whistling and catcalls and a riot breaks out. This is the heartbreaking climactic scene, though it is located in the middle. Not least among the delights of the flm are some vignette Shakespeare performances, mostly performed i the Gaiety Theater, Shimla.

The British in spite of centuries of presence remained aliens in India. They cultivated the difference and remained a small island that emphasized their perceived cultural, educational an economic superiority, insulated from the masses by a thick layer of brown sahibs with all shades and gradations of English affectation. They were the most exclusive of the castes, cultivating a unique brand of semi-apartheid. Knowledge of English language and ways was by and large the determinant of status among the Indians.

The film is an improbable but perfect concoction, a genre of one. The cast is English and Indian, the director is James Ivory, an American and the musical score is by Satyajit Ray. The film is set in the misty nostalgic heights of Shimla, the summer capital and mountain retreat of the British. Felicity Kendal and Shashi Kapur as the romantic pair give a marvellously nuanced performance in their brief, torrid and doomed affair. Madhur Jaffrey plays a Bollywood starlet and the remaining vertex of the triangle, a role which fetched her an Oscar. The parents, Geoffrey Kendal and Laura Lidell portray the sadness of their situation in a few deft and bold strokes. Encased in this very human story are vistas of Indian history like distant mountains enshrouded in mist.

The film is based on a script by the Booker Prize novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabwala, a German who acquired British citizenship, married an Indian and lived in India for many years..She is quoted to have said that her books about Indiawere less about India than about herself in India. At one level, the movie is a touching picture of the experience of being a lone alien.

Bosley Crowther

The wind will carry us

Abbas Kiarostami 1999

After seeing an excellent film, it is perhaps natural to feel, at least for a while that this was the director's best. None of Kiarostami's were disappointing. But since there are many who find his films to be monotonous and empty, I may have at times had second thoughts about my own evaluation. This film reconfirms my immense liking for his movies.

He has been called painfully slow, repetetive, and plain boring. I find his description of everyday events set in a mountain village to be hypnotic, a leisured meditation on the wonder of  event-less daily existence. It is no more repetitive than a refrain that re-occurs in a song. I found this movie, in it's series of cameos of details of the ordinary--a tortoise succeeds in uprighting itself after being upturned by the sullen protagonist, a robust mother of ten shyly withdraws behind a curtain on being asked how many more the factory could produce, village folk refuse to accept payment for a jar of milk, an insect dragging it's loot--no less absorbing than a courtroom drama, or a horror film, with the difference that it gently draws you in, rather than assaulting your senses.

The present film is a sketch of life in a remote Iranian village. The camera surveys the fascinating structure of mud dwellings placed against a hillock one atop the other like a house of cards. The corn fields stretch out between the bald mountains like the Van Gogh painting. Kiarostami vision is reverential, and whether he is looking at objects or people, seeing his films is like a voyage of discovery in a territory familiar in it's humanity. His camera is as though intoxicated by the things of this world and there is an almost biblical simplicity about his observation of people. Others say his characters lack psychological depth. They certainly are not obsessed with individualism.

Kiarostami more than individuals is portraying society. The community portrayed in this film might seem idyllic, specially if one has become used to the gangster movies as a norm of human behaviour. The villagers, perhaps due to their interdependance, cherish the virtues of neighbourliness and brotherhood. Kiarostami, often criticised and banned in his own country, is hardly one to glorify religion, but the simplicity of these pastoral and agricultural hill-folk, brings out the essence of the Islamic ethos, and indeed, of any religion worth the name.
A,O.Scott

Sadgati (Deliverance)

Ray, 1981, 51m, Hindi, starring Smita Patil and Om Puri

Bestial cruelty and exploitation is inherent in social stratification and in India it has been deeply ingrained in the name of caste. So despised were the so called lower castes that the the distinction between man and beast was obliterated. Munshi Premchand is the Balzac of his milieu and his novels and short stories are an eternal chronicle of the ageless misery of the poor. Satyajit Ray here gives us a film of brutal social realism based on a short story of the great writer. This is not the usual Ray, whose sensibilities are closer to the shimmering  gentle lyricism of Tagore than to the more earthy and anguished style of Munshi Premchand.

Dukhia (Om Puri) is a low caste laborer and he leaves for the village priest's house to request his presence at the betrothal ceremony of his daughter. He has been sick but the priest has to be met today for astrological reasons. The priest treats him with the scorn due to a low caste and sets him to back breaking labor in return for his expected services. Dukhia is on an empty stomach and the chores succeed one another. Finally a log of stone hard wood he is asked to chop proves too much and he falls down---dead. There is some hue and cry in the village, even a few impotent and smothered voices of indignation against priestly hypocrisy and no one is willing to remove the dead body. Finally the priest decides to do it himself and drags the body by means of a rope to a place littered with the remains of dead cattle.

Om Puri as Dukhia gives a powerful portrayal, at one point breaking into helpless sobs. The late dusky and alluring Smita Patil as his wife powerfully complements him.

The film lacks the gentle subtleties for which the director is known. This is a film of raw power which vividly portrays one aspect of the realities of Indian society. It can hardly be accused of melodrama.

The movie is available in very clear download on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sadgati&aq=f