Let's talk about Bollywood!

Roja is an excellent little movie made by Mani Ratnam back in 1992, starring Arvind Swami and Madhoo (Raghunath); it was a real pleasure to watch another of Mani Ratnam’s works. His intelligence, his realism, his careful balance of private and public issues which are typical of his works, all this provides a cinematographic pleasure that makes you feel clever and informed.

This is the story: After an opening scene where soldiers, in the misty half-light of a mountainous forest, encircle and catch a man whom we later come to recognize as a Kashmiri separatist, the scene changes to the Indian countryside, full of splendour and worthy of Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s shots in his film “Home”. We then follow the arrival of an educated young man, Rishi Kumar, who comes  to visit a family where he hopes to find a wife (he's no less than as a local hero - very funny and touching scenes of welcome). He wishes to marry a “village belle”, he says, even though he’s always lived in the city. But when he arrives in front of her, she has a secret: she cannot marry him, could he please choose another girl?  But, guess what? Upon arriving in the village, the visitor had been spotted by the younger sister, Roja.

The spectator has already noticed her, this fiery, brown-eyed beauty, during the bucolic opening. And while the young man was coming, she had spied on him, they had exchanged looks (those knowing looks that lovers the world over recognize immediately, but know as well how to reject because of social realities). But when Rishi Kumar’s decision has to be made public, when they all ask him whether he’s made up his mind, he points to Roja: “she’s the one I want”. Of course this is a minor scandal, and for Roja most of all, but she doesn’t have the choice, and must marry the nice-looking stranger. During the wedding ceremonies and the song Rukmani rukmani which captures its joy and expresses its social meaning, Mani Ratnam uses a remarkable background: a rushing floodlit waterfall, symbol of the impetuousness of love perhaps, and makes old women dance with the young, in a vibrant celebration of life. But Roja leaves her home without her sister having explained the quandary she put her in. This is nevertheless only momentary, and the valiant little sister will soon have her heart filled beyond her dreams.

Then drama occurs; this newly found treasure of a hubbie is kidnapped, and taken into hiding; the horrid battle of waiting, hoping, doubting, despairing takes place, all too familiar in our modern world. Those who know Mani Ratnam know he’s capable of great and efficient suspense there. But I won’t tell you how the film’s story continues, only that it’s packed with action and feeling, against a backdrop of breathtaking natural beauty.

That is what the film will be, in fact, a magnificent celebration of beauty, life and love, in the best Bollywoodian tradition, the one that doesn’t base its appeal on the star-system. Of course it’s Mani Ratnam, so there’s the political purpose (see below), but first the film is simply a classic and perfect Bollywood production, with all the necessary and well-balanced, well seasoned ingredients: we have the intense love affair, the danger-filled and malevolent obstacles to love, the charming and witty humour, which comes from the situations themselves, and does not require a comedian’s antiques; the superb songs (AR Rahman, needless to say), which emerge from the intensity of the action, or the passion; and there are all the great emotions: generosity, hatred, courage, determination, indignation, resistance, pity, silent love, and the magical climax where the two lovers reunite and tears gush out.

Madhoo/Roja is the soul of the movie: her willpower, fuelled by a love which never fails, her faith that Rishi Kumar, her adored husband, is alive in spite of all odds: these feelings are so poignantly presented that it works, we forget the little inconsistencies and the exaggerated story elements. She appears to have forgotten herself, and becomes the fighting wife, the astoundingly daring lover, whose youth serves as experience and aplomb. Her self-confidence sweeps aside, not only all resistance, but all disbelief that we are watching a movie. We are absorbed in the anguish of her quest, in the fearlessness of her pursuit, and we fear with her, we hope with her, we cry with her. Such is the strength of acting!

Arvind Swami’s character and personality touches also, because of his restraint and solidity. He doesn’t emote a lot, perhaps, but I found I liked his acting, which is at times almost expressionless: this lack of intensity struck me in fact as a kind of strength, and the sign of a maturity which complements Roja’s youthful and domineering character. Reviews on Imdb have noted the patriotism of the scene where beaten and humiliated, Rishi Kumar manages to repeat his “jai hind” to the face of the separatists, knowing full well he will incur the consequence of their rage, and one of the movie’s weaknesses is apparent there, in this vibrant and somewhat naïve nationalism. But then again, perhaps this is a westerner’s view. Or it’s because the film was done back in 1992, when certain illusions about the resolution of the Kashmir conflict could still be nurtured.

So: what is Roja, then? A brilliantly made entertainer? A political movie using the swallow-down virtue of boy meets girl? If we notice the two aspects deal with separation and reunion, perhaps we could call it a hymn rooted in the love of the land: its overall purpose is the refusal of separation, and the assertion that love must and will reunite those who are separated. Separatists are wrong, violent, and counter-nature. Roja fights for reunification with her husband, just as Mani Ratnam films for Kashmir to remain united to India. Two reunifications, and this, even if Roja is repeatedly criticised  in the film for her naïve and selfish intentions: doesn’t she know, the general tells her, that the exchange of her husband against the terrorist Wasim Khan has cost the lives of many soldiers, who were certainly husbands and fathers too? How dare she demand her husband to be exchanged, when so many mothers and wives have silently accepted their sacrifices? But the fact that the minister accepts her request shows that these two apparently antagonistic realities can combine, and that unification should be also inspired by human values such as love, and not only through the hard facts of negotiation and politics.

One last word from imdb reviewer Reachrajdream, who I think has a good point: This movie is inspired from Italian movie De Sica's I Girasoli (1970), neverthless no complaints because I don't believe in originality. The movie is worth watching because of good story and flow of the story. (…) Even Vittoria De Sica might have been happy watching this movie because such a solid, positive enhancement of his work.

Basant (1960) is a loony movie where what you see is more important than what you understand. There is a story, sort of, (tolerably interesting in the first half but totally zany in the second!) but you must forget about it, because the chief interest of this golden Bollywood of yore is the main actors’ charm, the very pleasant humour (thanks Johnny Walker!), the magic of the sets and of course, the music and dances!  

So after having only said this much, I’m just going to celebrate Nutan’s charms. I’ll leave Memsaab tell you the story, and rave about Shammi Kapoor, whom I find rather stilted and even pompous at times (but hey, I’m nothing but a man), and most of all, who cannot really transcend his scowling and grumpy role. He looks like Elvis all right (and even for us French people, like Eddie Mitchell!), but that doesn’t change things a lot… On the other hand, even I’m biased in favour of Nutan, I find she plays much better, there’s a natural charm, a quick intelligence, an understanding of nuances in her acting which makes her beauty resplendent and engaging. You just want to step into the screen and speak to her!

This time, on the other hand (I’m comparing to Bandini, and even Dilli ka thug) the camera dwells on her much more, as if the cameraman had fallen in love with her, as well he might), and we have numerous free close-ups of her eyes, her mouth, her profile; there’s a shot of her under a veil, when she’s in the bus, and that shot is clearly worked on, because before and after a different lighting occurs. A Leonardo da Vinci sfumato haloes her and softens her features, like the master does with his paintings of virgins and angels.

Here’s a gallery!

 

I recently heard a journalist ask the question « Is Bollywood nothing more than a cinema made for India, or is there something universal about it?” – and I thought this question deserved a little post. Every one knows for a fact that the Indian cinema is the most productive one in the world, because of the amount of movies a year (is it still 800?) and of course the sheer size of the audiences. I say audiences because the crowds in the South, East and Centre are almost as huge as in the North, and from what I’m told, the penetration of US movies as yet cannot rival. So this raises the question of its local dimension, its adaptation to a public who needs a certain type of entertainment, and the question of the exportability of Bollywood.

In fact I’m not interested here in the figures of the industry’s success in other parts of the world than India. But is Indian cinema universal? Or rather, does it contain enough universal characteristics? Er… and what is “universality”?!  Is it the same thing as worldwide fame? Or does it refer to general recognition? Gone with the wind? Or Titanic? But these are surely typically American, no? What makes them also universal? Probably, something we could recognize in them which appeals to all of us, no? Well at least, most of us. In the two above examples, the beauty of the love-story, because love is a universal emotion. So, if a film deals with that sort of basic human feelings, it would have a chance of being universal: anger, fear, ambition, lust, hate… Yes, but it would need something else too, something like representativity, which would enable people in Japan, Belgium and Chile to feel it refers to them in spite of their irreconcilable cultural differences. What is this artistic quality which enables a culturally defined movie (work of art) to belong to humanity as a whole? Is it not “style”? So (next question…) what’s style?

We’re a little far away from Indian cinema, perhaps? Well, perhaps not: who knows if we couldn’t find that ingredient, style, in some Indian films. Style means personality, doesn’t it? And so we’d have to go in the direction of great directors with that element too. If by watching a film, you were able to say: that’s Satyajit Ray’s style, or that Guru Dutt’s way of filming, and of course if the movie contained a story which everybody would relate to, wouldn’t we have something universal there?

Well, I know of many such universal works – in fact, that’s what I’ve been pursuing in this blog! (Not a surprise, is it?) For example Shree 420, whose universality comes from its profoundly human portrait of man and society, of hope and despair. Or Teesri Kasam, that simple story of love and loss. Bimal Roy’s Bandini, watched recently, would certainly fit in the category, too, for its daring excursion in the mind of an unconventional young woman, whose beauty and purity, rooted in her Indianness, transcends it.  For that is the key element: a universal work of art is not universal because it is so general that all nations could appropriate it (if such a work of art exists), but it’s universal in so far as all other nations see (for example) an Indian film that deals with a collective issue which has found a new and well defined expression thanks to Indian culture. One country’s art forms enable a facet of our human nature to be revealed or dramatized in such a way as we can all recognize it as familiar.

It’s logical that the examples of movies I have provided are from the fifties and the sixties. Up to a certain extent, you need the test of time to say whether great contemporary movies can be called universal: here it’s a little bit like “classic” films. Time does two things to works of art: it elevates them (above the rest of the other works of art of the same period, which become secondary or are forgotten), and it classifies them (the way people refer to them put them in categories where it wasn’t necessarily so clear they belonged when they came out – it’s perhaps easier for movies). Because with time passing, history has been described, and taught. We would now refer to Mother India as a tragic epic with the mother-figure of Indian society held up high for everyone to recognize; but who knows if back in 1957, it wasn’t as much the leftist political message that was clear, because of the specific situation of post-independence.

Success does have a certain relationship with universality, nevertheless. Even if critics could decide, in their beautiful isolation that such and such a movie was a universal one, it would be difficult to accept without a certain element of success. People might throng to see a well-advertised film, and enjoy it because it corresponds to the spirit of the moment, but if the success is lasting (time is a much better judge than space because today even pigmies in the centre of Africa can watch Rambo dubbed in their own language), then the movie belongs perhaps to the list.

The problem today is that we rarely have the opportunity to need to see an “old” film again: there are so many enticing new ones all the time! So I wonder about the spectator’s notion of universality, and I half suspect it to be tainted by Hollywoodian marketing tricks. I wouldn’t be surprised, for example, if someone told me that a universal movie must be packed with action and emotion, possess a clear and suspenseful story, and, all in all, be a good commercial success. If an American audience can be talked into watching a film from anywhere else in the world, it must surely be a universal film! Well, enough said for now. But feel free to leave your impressions and reactions on that subject.

I remember feeling annoyed when, a few years ago, somebody to whom I was voicing my pleasure at recently discovered Bollywood movies, bluntly told me: “oh yes, but Indian movies now… you want to see those from the 60s and the 70s!” Whether he was right or not is probably more a question of taste, but certainly, if he’d had such films as Bimal Roy’s Bandini (1963) in mind, I understand now why he would have said that. Having fallen for Nutan’s charm when watching Dilli ka thug, I wanted to see others of her films, and landed on this.

“This” is a rare little jewel. Like Teesri Kasam, like, like… hum, I’m finding it rather hard to liken it to many other films I’ve seen. Unless… there is a theme which brings it close to Deewar, in fact: that of voluntary punishment, or expiation. Kalyani (Nutan, who plays the role of the “bandini”, or imprisoned heroine) needs her punishment to compensate for what she knows is her guilt, just as Vijay (Amitabh, in Deewar) broods in the mine over a crime he can’t shake off. And both value their life at such a low price now that they are ready to endanger it if it can save that of others. This in turn draws the attention on the reason why such “generosity” is performed. There is a romantic (perhaps even soppy) side to such an attitude, with the theme of fighting against love because of a moral duty (“for his own sake, I cannot accept his love”, says Kalyani to her Jailor), but also the theme has a real power. It touches the question of sacrifice and redemption, which, when it is well dealt with, naturally is one of the most profound human motives.

Bandini pleases for many other reasons. The simplicity and originality of the story, first; the fact that 1. a woman is the heroine, and 2. she isn’t mistakenly, but really guilty (when so many other pastime movies would uncover a saving clause which clears the hero or the heroine); the realistically delicate balance of feelings which make her sway between the two men, neither of whom are caricatures; the wonderful encapsulation of the movie’s songs, that accompany the action in a masterful way (cf. the percussions springing from the repetitive movements of the women prisoners’ gestures); its rich and satisfying symbolism; its careful construction (cf. the famous flashback within the flashback), and of course the actors’ and actresses’ talent: Nutan of course, with her restraint and her vast emotional scale, but also a young and charming Dharmendra, and a sober Ashok Kumar (only once does he let himself go, and we hear his tinkling laugh), not forgetting the Prison Jailor and the woman inmates, filmed with a care and almost a tenderness which I loved.

Here’s the story, as told by upperstall.com :

“Kalyani (Nutan), an inmate of a women's ward of a prison in pre-independent India, appears determined to serve out her full term, resisting the kind overtures of the prison doctor, Deven (Dharmendra), who wishes to marry her, fearing her past will catch up with her. Her past is told in flashback. In Bengal in the 1930s, the daughter of the postmaster (Raja Paranjpe) of the village, she had become involved with the anarchist Bikash Ghosh (Ashok Kumar). Bikash and Kalyani become close to one another and fall in love and in a difficult situation she is passed off as Bikash's wife in order to save his life. Bikash proposes to her and her father agrees to the marriage. Bikash leaves the village promising to come back. He never does and Kalyani learns he has married someone else. The family becomes the butt of ridicule in the village causing Kalyani to leave the village to avoid her father's dishonour. She starts working in a hospital taking care of a particular shrewish and obnoxious woman patient. Her father comes to the city in search of her but is killed in an accident. The same day she discovers the woman she is taking care of is Bikash's wife. Believing the woman to be the cause of all her troubles, Kalyani poisons her. Deven is still willing to marry her and after reading her story, his mother too accepts her. As she leaves for Deven's house where happiness awaits her, she runs into Bikash again. He is now terminally ill. She learns the real circumstances of Bikash's unhappy marriage, done for the freedom cause, and decides to go with him.”

Let me begin with one the movie’s most powerful symbol, which is of course in the title: that of the bars which separate people and shut them in their own world. Kalyani represents this prisoner even when she hasn’t yet committed the crime that will shut her behind real bars. When she first meets Bikash, it is through some bars:

In the hospital where she has found work away from the slanderous tongues of her village, she is already a sort of prisoner, as the bars through which she can see the welders at work:

This vision, by the way, is reminiscent of a blacksmith’s workshop, and we know that such an activity was the one performed by Hephaestus, the Greek god of metalwork who presided over the Inferno. The clever play with light and darkness during that powerful scene mirrors the hammering that goes on in Kalyani’s mind at that sombre moment. Then of course you have our heroine behind the woman’s prison bars, notably when she watches the freedom fighter go by her cell:

Imprisonment, for Bimal Roy, seems to be an existential reality, for even the spring is seen behind bars.

Now these bars first represent Kalyani’s pent-up seclusion in her guilt and self-humiliation. As Deven tells her rightly, she is fixed on her past, and cannot open her heart to live in the present. She does begin to love him (believing that Bikash, her husband, is dead or has disappeared), but refuses to let go of her cherished guilt. What’s moving in this fixation is that Kalyani knows what innocence means: she is the figure of purity, and it’s because she has, imprinted on her soul, the value of purity, that she weighs her guilt so heavily. She wishes for no extenuating circumstances. On the contrary, for her, punishment is the only way out of her sad distraught state. Without punishment, without this loss of freedom, she is lost. And she can only find herself if she loses who she would have been. Such is the frame of mind of the guilty pure: nothing can come in between their purity and their punishment: they are both their judges and their convicts. One can say that, as she is her own Judge, she is also her own redeemer.

Another conflicting element compounds this one: if Kalyani suffers from her purity, she also is the victim of her beauty (which is another form of purity, by the way). From the start, her good looks are constantly part of what happens to her. During her wood-bound love-songs, for example, she laments the fact that she’s fair and that she would rather exchange this fairness of skin with Bikash’s darker one.

In the prison, her beauty is the target of the sub-jailor’s interest and scheming, as well as the cause of her fellow’s inmates’ jeers. And naturally the two “official” suitors notice it straightaway. Her destiny is thus tied up with men’s desire of her outward appearance.

There is a moral aspect to this conundrum: Kalyani, the bright angel, the lovely bird-like creature whose wings have been wasted, and who’s attracted to dark creatures to the point that she will voluntarily deny, darken and debase herself, is a feminine Christ-like figure: her vocation is to suffer, and to redeem, to befriend fellow-prisoners, and become a prisoner herself, out of devotion for them. It doesn’t matter here that she’s guilty, whereas Christ wasn’t. Her saintliness is both admired and derided, like all imitators of Christ. And this Christ-motif is given additional strength in the movie, by the way, thanks to that strangely stressed (and hauntingly evocative) Via Dolorosa walk performed by the condemned freedom fighter.

One might wonder why has Bimal Roy chosen to include this long scene, which doesn’t connect to the rest of the story. Let us not forget the film contains other examples of selflessness, such as that of Kalyani’s brother, who dies trying to save a girl in a flood. And of course Bikash sacrifices his love for Kalyani on the altar of the higher imperative of his country’s freedom.  Right at the end, too, whereas one might expect him to try and get her back, he accepts once more to sacrifice himself and leave her to her destiny without his unworthy self, and probably it is precisely this noble and disinterested attitude which convinces Kalyani to choose him, ill and aged, over the younger but blander doctor.

Sacrifice belongs to love stories, of course; it is also part of the purification process which all moral stories exemplify. The theme runs deep in the Hindu religion, with famous woman-figures seen positively when and if sacrificing themselves; yet Kalyani is also modern, in so far as she leaves her house, her father, works for a salary and decides alone which partner she will live with. So the sacrifices she performs are her own, they’re not imposed by society or traditions: they’re authentic acts of selflessness and purification; in fact she is as much a freedom fighter as the ones she watches pass her cell towards the gallows. One realises that, doing so, she understands something in her own destiny.

Bandini indeed tells us that destiny and time shape our lives – a banal statement of course, but whose moving and truthful strength is very convincing. The lyrical tone given to Kalyani’s life before her prison time, the poetic evocations of her intimacy at home (her sad and strict father, the little nephew who’s frightened of Bikash’s “bombs”), and perhaps most of all the beautifully empty (almost purified) views of the riversides where she used to live: all this points to a life, with its promises and potential which has not been hers, and yet she owns all of its beauty. Her person carries all this rich simplicity, this truthfulness, with her. Kalyani’s yearning for justice is the soul of this landscape and of this life. Broken as it might seem, her destiny shares with all that beauty and truth a harmony which she cannot lose, and which flows from her.

Chance in life.

Kalyani’s life had potential for another life, for many other lives, perhaps. But our life is shaped by events and chance happenings which come from far back before our birth, and direct it where we know not. We think sometimes we can change that: “I’m not interested in your past, but in your present” says the doctor, in an apparently more human, more respectful way of not wanting to shut someone in his or her failures, and opening the person to the newness of the future. But Kalyani knows that the past must be reckoned with, that it is sometimes wiser to settle for the reality of has happened to us in the past, even if it’s alienating, than want to erase it and pretend to start with a fresh slate. Humanity is never a fresh slate. There will always be past sins to be reckoned with, and atonement to be carried out. Joy and happiness depend on that realism, harsh as it may seem. Children are born into a world where crime and suffering have raged since the beginning, and it will take all their innocence, all their purity, and all their love to come to grips with it. And if they don’t, if they leave it to others to do it, then they will deepen the indifference which allows evil to continue to wreak its ageless havoc. The problem is that life doesn’t deal its missions fairly; some young have more to do than others; the weight on their shoulders is heavier. Some have a dirge to sing, some a hymn of joy. But even if the dirge is heavy, the joy must be sung in this earthly prison: some of us have this mission, while the others have a heavier task. The suffering has to be borne, and fighting against suffering or working towards its eradication will never exonerate those whose mission it is to shoulder the weight of sin and crime from performing their sacred mission.

Let’s finish with the evocation of Nutan. One marvels at her humanity and grace, her charm and strength, her seriousness, her sobriety, her truthfulness. She’s got that rare gift of never pandering to the camera, almost. The fact of being in front of it means that you’re accepting some of the conventions of the cinema, among which the identification process and, with it, the hero-worship and the offering of an image of yourself in lieu of a real person made of flesh and blood. But, even if no actress is immune to such impalpable calculations, where some degree of vanity can always find its satisfaction, Nutan’s performance here is really stunning. Even in passages where her beauty is clearly the main reason for the shot, something of Heaven is present, and one almost forgets the lust, the possessiveness, and one is plunged into her truth. The clarity of her typical (not universal) beauty echoes that of the tranquil river banks of her youth, where fishing boats wait for the tide to take them back to their work.

(Apart from upperstall.com’s review, I would also like to mention the one on rediff.com well worth reading. And there's a very well written and thoughtful review on Planet Bollywood, perhaps the best!)

Again, Bollywood blogs don’t seem to be very interested by such ageless treasures!)

PS/ I've corrected this last line in the answer to Shweta's comment. And there's an interesting debate about the ending here (Bollywhat)

You can also go check Shweta's blog: link