Commentaires de l'article: Pakeezah, Meena Kumari's romantic Swan Song

Commentaire de yves

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 22:55:17 +0200

Hello Irna,

Thanks for visiting! I'd be quite willing to go along with your interpretations; I like especially the one concerning the dirge for old Lucknow and its urdu culture, but I don't have enough information to substantiate it right now. And as soon as I have a little more time, I want to investigate more the story of Meena Kumari's life. I'm sure there's plenty to say about it.

cheers

Commentaire de Irna Qureshi

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 13:52:16 +0200

I discovered Pakeezah as a Pakistani teenager in the 1980s when I was feeling lost amid British culture - the film ignited my love affairs with classic Indian films. The backstory came to me years later.

I throughly enjoyed your eloquent hypothesis about Kamal Amrohi's intentions, i.e. that he was perhaps mourning his lost lover. Don't you think the sumptuous nature of the sets (Arabian Nights, I think you said?) suggests the director is also mourning a lost Islamic culture - I mean, he is making reference to the decline of the Muslim courtly culture of Lucknow? Anyway, I'll certainly keep your lost lover theory in mind when I next watch Pakeezah.

Also, I see Meena's character here as a romantic figure because despite her situation, she craves love, marriage and respectability. The irony of course is that men want her for everything BUT a respectable marriage.

Commentaire de yves

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 22:21:50 +0100

Dear Sanket,
Thanks for that nice comment. You're right about moods: it also works the other way round: the film's atmosphere colours the period of your life when you wartched it (and / or rewatched it). Our expectation of a movie also plays a role: and of course knowing the songs well in advance is magical: you vibrate so much when the scene in which the song you love is finally sung, in accordance with the story, comes up on the screen!
All the best
yves

Commentaire de sanket

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:15:56 +0100

Wonderful review of one of my favorite movies. My parents were still in India when this movie was released and said the songs were released years ahead of the movie and were played endlessly on the radio. I myself had heard the songs for years before I had the opportunity to see the movie for myself on DVD.

I think the backstory of this movie is one of the reasons it has remained with me for so long. To see someone suffer for their art as much as Amrohi & Kumari did just makes that art so much more beautiful & meaningful. I also believe the mood/setting in which you see this movie in will make all the difference in how you feel about it. My wife & I saw it on a rainy Friday night after a long week of work and we were just enchanted. The scene where Raj Kumar leaves a note thanking Meena Kumari for her mere presence on the train is still one of my favorite movie scenes of all time.

Commentaire de memsaab

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:18:05 +0200

I think both, actually. I couldn't bear (can't bear) weepy self-pitying Meena; and the film was just too...suffocating is a good way to put it, thanks! :-)

Commentaire de yves

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:21:58 +0200

Yes, well you'll agree with me that it's easier said than done, especially when you're in the middle of the crisis!
cheers

Commentaire de yves

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:20:58 +0200

Hi Greta,
Why couldn't you watch Pakeezah past the first half-hour? Because of the spectacle of Meena Kumari's fall from glory? Or because of something in the film itself? I suppose it's more the second answer: I wouldn't be surprised you found the film too suffocating...
As for drinking, I don't know whether you can blame somebody who falls into that trap, I mean if it's something that you do because you can't face reality, it's hard to blame the person who is the victim... But then again, as my mother says, a couple is always made of two people!

Commentaire de shweta

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:03:33 +0200

That makes sense- she was an adult and could hardly b an unwilling participant... when she really should have just kicked him real hard and NOT taken to drink :D

Commentaire de memsaab

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:17:45 +0200

I couldn't watch this past the first half hour...seeing Meena like she is here just depressed me so. I can't help but compare her to herself in the 1950s---she was so pretty and carefree. I just wrote about one of those films, actually. I don't necessarily blame Amrohi, although there seems little doubt he was a bastard, but Meena's the one who took to drinking. Seeing what it did to her makes me actually consider never having a drink again (okay, it doesn't really).

Commentaire de yves

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:30:05 +0200

Thanks Shweta, all this is very banal, in fact, and we wouldn't be talking about it if the film wasn't there! OK for Amrohi's reponsibility, but let's not forget that Meena must have at least half-willingly cooprerated to what she must have felt was a masterpiece. Or at any rate her last chance of leaving a trace in the history of cinema.
have a good day.

Commentaire de shweta

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:01:36 +0200

Your analysis is profound, as always.
I am a bit of a feminist in that I somehow feel there is a lot of blme to be laid at Amrohi's door. Maybe I feel so because she died and he lived on (yeah I know they say she lived via her ever fab movies but she was dead, nevertheless). And HE broke his marriage to wed her in the 1st place! eegh!

Commentaire de yves

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:36:21 +0200

I had been thinking of Burton and Taylor myself, but of course without any other information than association of ideas.
As for the fact that he was the one who abused her, I'm not surprised at all, and what I suggested makes perfect sense precisely in this perspective (it would be quite different if she was the cause of the separation - women more rarely are anyway). That's why I said the film was like a manipulation, a reconstruction, and Amrohi emerges like a voyeur, who has lost something (through his frustration, his infantilism, who knows?) and focuses on his lost "object" of pleasure like a child who has lost his bottle under his bed.
I'll have to try and find a translation of those poems. Do you of a website?
cheers

Commentaire de bollyviewer

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:50:53 +0200

Yes, I did read your interpretation of the movie and if its true it certainly makes sense of the whole movie. But, from what I remember of gossip and from what I gather from her poetry written after her divorce - it was he who left her (after making her life hell with physical abuse). She took to drinking to compensate for losing her love and also to put up with his brutality. Or maybe they were like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor - not happy together and not happy apart!

Commentaire de yves

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:42:01 +0200

Hi Bollyviewer,
Well, Have you read my idea about Kamal Amrohi, the reason why I think he shot the film? Because it's true that if you don't have that in mind, there is not much left in the film apart from the songs and the the gorgeous sets. Very cheesy all in all, yes.
But if you understand the movie as a voyeur's fascinated reconstruction, then I think it becomes an extraordinary work of art, a sort of Taj Mahal, in fact, where the king/artist has buried (alive) his beloved, and has adorned her with all the beauty imaginable!
Does this make sense for you?
yves

Commentaire de yves

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:35:46 +0200

Hi Shweta,
You're right, and the TWO Umrao Jans at that!
What do you think of my hypothesis concerning Kamal Amrohi's special intentions filming his lost lover?
It's real fun you should use that quote about the feet in actual life!
cheers
yves

Commentaire de shweta

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:07:23 +0200

I had no idea it was quoted at imdb- but it had to be- its a pretty famous quote. I also had other reasons for loving it- it is supposedly set in the city of Lucknow, where I was born, and and close to where I lived through my teens. Plus it was Mina's last movie, and one of few of the sub-genre of "Nawabs of Lucknow." Of course, later "Umrao Jaan" came and blew 'em all away.

Commentaire de bollyviewer

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:54:20 +0200

Hmm... sounds like you really liked the movie. For my part, I tend to agree with the imdb critic you quote (no idea whether "western" critics admire it or not but a lot of Indians I know do.) - the movie is seriously cheesy and over-the-top. Its worst fault though is not its cheesiness (I usually love cheesy and over-the-top) but its pretentious self-importance, the way it takes its masala ingredients so seriously. I kept expecting the actors to suddenly replace their super serious expressions with cheeky laughter and wink to show that they didnt mean any of it... Sigh! Pakeezah is one of a terribly long line of similar tawayafi dramas down the ages. Most of the others though, at least had the advantage of lead actresses who looked more like the 'girl' they were protraying!

Commentaire de shweta

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:27:28 +0200

I really love this movie! I first saw it with my mom when I was maybe 8, and to this day, we have a running joke- we quote Rajkumar's comment to Mina KUmari "Your feet are v beautiful- do not put them on the ground- they will get dirty"- whenever we see each other barefoot :D heeh
But seriously, this one is fantastic, even though it smells of chauvanism here and there. The songs in themselves are amazing. And this is possibly the only Raj Kumar movie I love- prob because of Mina and Ashok Kumar