Anand Ashram (1977)

I pushed back watching this Shakti Samanta movie for quite some time, expecting it to be one of those moralistic tale laced with melodrama and strung together by a few good songs. Another big reason for my lack of enthusiasm was that this movie, unlike most other Shakti Samanta movies of that time, does not star Rajesh Khanna, and instead features Uttam Kumar, an actor I am not particularly fond of. As it turned out, as I finally got around to watching it, I was somewhat right about my pre-conceived notions. But having said that, the movie pleasantly surprised me on many counts, and in fact turned out to be quite a good watch. Also, as the narrative unfolded and moved towards the climax, similarities between its story and that of big ticket Karan Johar magnum opus Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham became quite apparent, which were rather interesting to discern. The coincidence that Rakesh Roshan plays the role that would be parallel to what his son Hrithik Roshan performs in the modern day magnum opus, was what triggered the connection in my mind.

A young doctor marries his childhood companion without his father’s consent. The father, a rich and respected landlord with a legacy he is very proud of, is terribly disappointed by his son’s decision to marry a girl from a different religious background. The confrontation leads to the son abandoning his father’s house and giving up on all his inherited wealth. He, along with his wife, then proceeds to fulfil his life’s objective of providing medical services to the underprivileged villages, which lack healthcare infrastructure. A chance encounter with a wannabe do-gooder enables him to open a village dispensary, which he starts to run with his wife supporting him wholeheartedly. Then in a curious turn of fate, his allegiance to the oath of selfless service is put to test. He passes the test but suffers a great personal loss when he is unable to be at his wife’s side as she is delivering their first child. The story from there briskly changes character and soon takes a time leap. With the drama set, the next part is quite entertaining to watch.

Despite the serious theme, a feel-good factor is maintained throughout, thanks to the well defined characters essayed by Ashok Kumar, Utpal Dutt, and Asit Sen. In the second part of the movie the romance angle between Rakesh Roshan and Moushumi Chatterjee also lightens the proceedings. Towards the end, the culmination too is convincing and ties up the drama satisfactorily.

It would not be completely off the mark to say that the basic skeletal of Anand Ashram and K3G is alike. What is most different is the objective and treatment. While Anand Ashram has the theme of selfless service to humanity as its backbone, K3G has no such pretentions and was quite unequivocal in its fidelity to the candyfloss. As a result the characters in the older film are less caricaturish and have more shades to their personalities. And that is strength of Anand Ashram as a more ‘moving’ motion picture. The lead hero, Uttam Kumar, is not very convincing in the initial portions of the story where he plays the rebel lover lip-syncing to songs and romancing a stunning beauty like Sharmila Tagore. But in the later part of the movie he appears in a bearded look and is generally more assured. But Ashok Kumar as the ‘kabhi garam kabhi naram’ granddad (and dad) gives the most heart-warming performance from the lot.

Almost all the songs are nice and don’t really act as speed-breakers. ‘Sara pyaar tumhara’ and ‘Rahee naye naye’ and the most melodious and must have been quite popular in their time.

Parting Note: Anand Ashram has a good original story to tell in a breezy run-time. Also, the message it propagates is universal and quite relevant even in the current times.

Kanoon (1960)

Capital Punishment has a marked prominence in the annals of all recorded history. There has been no civilization where this form of punishment has not been practiced. Be it the Greeks, or the Romans, or the Chinese- all had strict stipulations on human execution as a part of their code of law. Even major religions like Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism have permitted capital punishment for certain offenses. But despite all this, there has always been a serious debate on whether human execution is justified. It has always been argued whether justice is always just; most certainly there have been many recorded instances where apparently innocent have been executed. BR Chopra’s 1960 movie Kanoon essentially debates and discusses this very pertinent issue of whether a human has got the right to take the life of another human, even if it is a means of enforcing punishment. Starring Ashok Kumar, Rajendra Kumar, and Nanda in principal roles along with some splendid lesser known actors essaying crucial roles, Kanoon is a resounding statement on the fallacies of human court of justice and on the inadequacies of the written law.

The movie starts off with a cold blooded murder like many of the other thrillers of the time. However this regularity is just a smokescreen for this apparently routine murder hides an uncomfortable truth behind it and exposes the ineffectual nature of our law. The case is adjudged by Justice Badri Prasad (Ashok Kumar) who is set thinking by the completely unexpected things that it throws up. This sets the ball rolling for a gripping tale that interweaves a poignant family drama into a courtroom battle. Another cold blooded murder takes place; that of a wealthy and manipulative city moneylender. The setting of the murder witnesses an unusual turn of events. Advocate Kailash Khanna (Rajendra Kumar) visits the moneylender to obtain some crucial papers that could put his girlfriend Meena’s (Nanda) family into great financial trouble. His girlfriend is the daughter of none other than Justice Badri Prasad, making the renowned judge his to be father-in-law. While at the moneylender’s place, Kailash spots Badri Prasad from a window, making his way towards the house. To avoid meeting his father-in-law and spilling the beans on his brother-in-law’s carelessness, he goes and hides in the other room. What happens next truly shakes the daylights out of him. Badri Prasad takes out a knife, rams it into the moneylender’s chest, and leaves the place smoothly. Completely shaken and not knowing what to do next, Kailash too runs away from the scene of the murder. Once the place is deserted save for the corpse of the moneylender lying on the floor, an aged thief enters the house with the intention of pilferage. However in the dark of the night he steps onto the corpse, leaves his fingerprints on the knife, and while escaping from the window gets caught by two policemen patrolling the area. Expectedly the poor thief gets embroiled in the case and gets implicated for the murder, with all the evidences pointing towards him. Not wanting to give his father-in-law away, Kailash decides to fight the case for the falsely accused thief and embarks on a battle to save him, while making all the efforts to spur the conscience of his father-in-law. What follows next is a riveting courtroom drama and a completely unexpected climax that throws up a host of questions, while answering a few too along the way.

Kanoon is completely a director’s film. It is an explosive subject and each and every scene shows the kind of efforts that would have gone in writing it. The dialogues are emphatic, the silences even more so. Most of the movies have one or two memorable scenes, but this one boasts of a series of such spectacular scenes that create a tremendous impact- right from the first scene, to the culmination of the drama. If one has to choose the most dramatic scenes, surprisingly a lot of them also come outside the court of law- behind the scenes of all the true drama. My vote would go to the interactions between the father and son in law post the murder, when Badri Prasad finds Kailash peeping into his private diary. Also the dialogue between the accused thief and his defendant Kailash is remarkably handled. There is also a superbly done slight side track when Meena starts suspecting Kailash of the murder, having absolutely just reasons for doing so. This delicate interplay of emotions between the protagonists is a delight to watch. The highpoint, though, as expected is the jaw-dropping climax, complete with the tense buildup and replete with an efficient disrobing of facts post the suspense is revealed.

The actors do more than a fine job, and show great dexterity despite the help they receive from the remarkable written material. I haven’t seen much of Rajendra Kumar, but still can safely assume that this would be one of his best performances (most of the others I believe are in the sappy romantic space where he excelled and thus got knighted as the Jubilee Kumar). Ashok Kumar is truly amazing in his highly sinuous role. His effortless ease is hard to miss. Meena is slightly more than a typical Hindi movie heroine and gets good scope to leave a mark. There are no songs in the narrative, though it does boast of a finely choreographed ballet dance performance that blends seamlessly with the story.

Parting Note: Kanoon is simply a MUST WATCH for the people who love their court-room dramas, and also for those who like watching thrillers (though this is not a thriller in the conventional sense). What elevates it from being just an excellent film is its thought, and its purpose which it conveys in the most effective manner possible- through the route of a highly entertaining story. 

Satyakaam (1969)

Many great men have exhorted the importance of following the path of truth, however arduous, in amazingly simple words (almost nonchalantly in many cases). Our holy relics, our Upanishads, and our two most significant historical texts- the Ramayana and the Mahabharata- too have averred vehemently that there is nothing greater than reveling in the knowledge and the spreading of truth. Hrishikesh Mukherjee, in his 1969 feature Satyakaam, pays homage to these thoughts by means of depicting the journey of a man who never wavers from this formidable path of truth.

Satyakaam is the story of Satyapriya ‘Sath’ Acharya (Dharmendra in what’s as per his own admission the best performance of his career), a young man born in a family that’s boasts on an illustrious lineage- all great men who spent their lives in the worship of truth and banished all thoughts of giving in to worldly pleasures that might have caused them to compromise on their ideals. His early education came from his grandfather Satyasharan Acharya (Ashok Kumar in a look that was used by Hrishikesh Mukherjee in another film with the actor at around the same time- Aashirwaad), who continued to remain the ultimate source of enlightenment and inspiration to him. The story is narrated through the eyes of Satyapriya’s best friend Naren (Sanjeev Kumar) and begins with both of them coming to the end of their engineering days in the year 1947, just months prior to India gaining independence.

Satyapriya and Naren pass their final exams and await their encounter with the real world where they would have to use the wealth of knowledge they had gained in the four years of their engineering (The story is set sixty years before our times so the engineers of today might not identify with their earnestness- even I don’t). Just fresh out of college they and their colleagues embark on a fun trip to celebrate their success, but on the way their bus meets with a terrible accident in which they lose one of their classmates. This incident is not touched upon later in the film, but it seems like the director wanted to make a statement on life and its unpredictability through this misfortune that strikes the young Satyapriya and his friends. Soon after this mishap Satyapriya applies for and secures a job with a rich industrial estate as project engineer. In his first assignment he is sent to a remote Central Indian region to make a survey and appraise a huge land holding for the company. There he discovers that his bosses are in alliance with the prince of the particular riyasat and were least concerned by the actual project at hand. They instead had some ulterior motives for which they needed Satyapriya’s assistance. Also, during his assignment he meets with and strikes a companionship with Ranjanaa (Sharmila Tagore) who becomes a victim of the prince’s sexual assault on her. But despite this Satyapriya decides to marry her being fully aware that his grandfather would refuse to accept this match. But he makes a decision that goes with his ideals and his dharma. It is one chapter of his life that is given a lot of emphasis, but moving on the proceedings become rather less hurried and the story takes a lot of time leaps (though with not much time interval passing between them).

Three years subsequent to their marriage Satyapriya and Ranjanaa are living happily, though their only son (who is not Satyapriya’s own but instead a result of the Prince sexual assault) acts like an uncomfortable reminder of their past. Satyapriya keeps on taking up a lot of jobs but everywhere he finds it difficult to make peace with the corrupt ways of his colleagues and the society in general. With every such job he becomes more and more steadfast and life becomes a tough battle for him and his family. He takes to smoking and becomes quite irritable and discontent. Naren meets him more than once at various junctures of his life, and ultimately in a curious turn of fate Satyapriya gains employment as a junior engineer below him in a Government set-up. Even in his new role Satyapriya refuses to even pay heed to Naren’s slight requests for slowing down a bit and taking things easy. He even picks up a fight with his best friend over a difference of opinion in how to deal with a contract. Things in fact become worse that what they look on the surface- Satyapriya becomes so finicky about honesty and doing the right things that he even refuses to leave his office a few minutes before the official closing time of five in the evening. It is here that Naren makes a telling remark that excess of everything is bad, even the excess of ideals. Soon, in a tragic turn of fate, Satyapriya develops lung cancer and the last few minutes of the film deal with the last few days of his life.

Hrishikesh Mukherjee chooses a very complex subject and treats it in an unconventional manner. The movie is definitely a critique on our society and how we tend to ignore a lot of things while leading our lives. Through the ordeals of Satyapriya he makes a defining statement on how difficult it is for an honest man to live with his head high in today’s materialistic and insensitive set-up. But at the same time through the dissonance and irritability of Satyapriya, he makes the point that it is futile to stop appreciating the life around us by becoming a cynic and seeing the worst in each and every thing. By the end of his life, Satyapriya becomes so obsessed by his ideals that he even started ignoring the interests of his own family. In a way God decided to end his trials and tribulations by giving him the lung cancer, after having given him enough time to fall in love with life. So Satyapriya can be seen as both a loser and as a winner. In my view he was more of a loser than winner, but I am sure people will form quite diverse impressions if they decide to watch this movie.

Because of my above view, I see don’t see this movie as a perfect film. Although the narrative and story as such is unique and the intentions are definitely quite honest, I didn’t like Satyapriya’s character and was left disappointed by him- and it was his story. Of course it was how Hrishikesh Mukherjee must have intended it to be, but because of the way the story was treated, the movie failed to either inspire or educate or educate. It is lengthy and has many unnecessary sequences that don’t really add up to the central theme. Also, Satyasharan’s (Ashok Kumar) character is shown as caught between his Dharma and his traditions. He is neither here nor there- and so is the film in its entirety. The performances by the lead cast otherwise are indeed praiseworthy- Dharmendra especially more because he was Satyapriya- and he was the entire film.

Parting Note: More than a film, Satyakaam is a comment on the society in the form of a biopic of a fictional character. It is most certainly an important film and showcases the range of Hrishikesh Mukherjee as a director. But overall the film is not the classic that it promises it to be. 

Bandini (1963)

Now, this is celebrated as one of the classics from the black and white era. Of course, it is not spoken in the same breath as Pyaasa/Mother India/Devdas/Mughl-e-Azam, but those conversant with the cinema from that era do recall this Bimal Roy film as one of the finest to have been made in India. I had not heard about this one at all, and I believe it would be the same case with most others of my age. And now that I have seen it for myself, there is a case for me to include this on my blog about lesser known cinema (By calling it lesser known, I don’t mean to disrespect the movie in any manner. This disclaimer is the result of some feedback I had received when I had written about ‘Do Bhiga Zameen’ as a part of this series of posts)

Bandini is one of those rare female-centric Hindi movies that have a strong story to tell. When we look at some of the movies of today that have central female characters like Fashion or Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, they have had extremely predictable contexts (This is not a comment on the quality of these movies). But Bandini has a story that cannot be expressed in two sentences. It is thoroughly engaging not just because of the way the narrative plays out, but also because it evokes a lot of interest through the suspense route it takes to bring out the facts in front of the viewers.

Kalyani (Nutan in an award winning role) is a convict who is serving her sentence in a women’s jail, after admitting to having killed someone. Dr. Devender (Dharmendra in one of the earliest roles of his career), is a young and debonair man who has recently been appointed the post of the prison-doctor. Devender meets Kalyani, and they strike a companionship while tending to a sick co-inmate of Kalyani for whom she acts as a nurse. Rumors start to go about all over the jail about their love affair, and Devender admits to being in love Kalyani. He offers to marry her but she refuses to accept his generous gesture, citing the terrible past she has had and the terrible sin she had committed. Unable to digest the disappointment, Devender resigns from his job and leaves the prison complex. Meanwhile Kalyani goes on to reveal everything about her past to the kind prison-master (who is also Devender’s close relative). What all had happened in her life, and what had forced her to commit the grave crime, is what the movie is all about from that point in time.

The movie is set in pre-independence era when young revolutionary men were making huge sacrifices for the cause of their motherland. Kalyani had become romantically involved with one such man Bikash Ghosh (played by Ashok Kumar) and how their love story had panned out is what the story looks at. Apart from this story of course, what is extremely interesting to note is the way the revolutionaries were handled by the British Raj at that point in time. Bimal Roy brings to the proceedings a sense of authenticity which is extremely rare and refreshing. The jingoism is kept out completely; the focus never deviates from the central theme i.e. the journey of the central character Kalyani.

What is really remarkable is that Bimal Roy chose to create very real characters. One trapping of Hindi cinema has been that the bad people are always terribly bad, and the good guys are angels on earth. There is something between black and white, and it is a good reflection on the grey matter of the maker of the movie, that he did not choose to ignore grey. So while the young doctor falls so hopelessly in love that he ignores all his roles and responsibilities; on the other hand Kalyani does not hesitate to kill someone out of her anguish and anger. Even Bikash Ghosh betrays the trust of his love, though he has a very good reason to do so. All this gets summed up in a brilliantly shot climax sequence. It would be a disservice to write about it in detail, but one this is sure that it is one of the most thought provoking and emotional end to a movie. Also, there is a song that plays in the background while Kalyani is forced to make the biggest decision of her life- the lyrics of the same are amazing in the manner in which they bring out the dilemma of the central characters.

I admit I haven’t seen much of Nutan’s early work (My best memory of her is her portrayal of Anil Kapoor’s mother in Meri Jung), but Bandini gives a fair idea of her amazing acting prowess. She truly is brilliant in an author backed role. Ashok Kumar is his usual efficient self (But it is strange to see that even in a 1963 film he did not look much different to how he looked in his 1970s films). Dharmendra has a supporting role, in which he looks great and performs ably. The music of the film is very nice and the songs complement the story beautifully. The story is adapted from a novel by a noted Bengali author Jarasandha (who incidently was a former jail superintendent and wrote fictional accounts of his experiences- Source Wikipedia)

Parting Note- Bandini is a remarkable movie that is different from anything else that has been seen in Hindi cinema. It is one of Bimal Roy’s most noted works and most certainly deserves the tag of a ‘classic’.