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Nayak (1966), the distant star
1966: The same year that she was shooting Anupama, Sharmila Tagore played in Satyajit Ray’s Nayak (The hero). Her character is quite different of course, but not without certain similarities: in both movies, she plays a sensitive, quiet and very feminine...
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Memories of rain
Memories of rain, by Sunetra Gupta (1993) is a dark jewel of a book, a sombre and dense memorial stone made of darkness and yearning, frustration and anger. We are inside a sort of cenotaph: a young Bengali woman’s stream of consciousness and we never...
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Sex and Bollywood
I have already slightly touched upon this question (see article “What I like about Bollywood”), but I would like to come back to it because it is in fact quite an important question, and I think I now have a somewhat different perspective. The other day,...
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Aag (1948): Raj Kapoor's burning idealism
Aag: fire. In this Early Raj Kapoor Movie, fire is a symbol of love, naturally, but also creation and destruction. It is fit that this film stands at the beginning of Raj Kapoor’s career (his first movie as an adult was in 1943), since there is a strong...
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Their hands can see: Sparsh
In the Mahābhārata, Gandhar i voluntarily blindfolded herself throughout her married life. Her husband Dhritarashtra was born blind, and on meeting him and realizing this, she decided to protest silently by blindfolding herself. (source: Wikipedia – Jatland.com...
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The cloud-capped star: Heaven and earth's glory
One cloud-capped day, somewhere along the bank of a Bengali river where waterfowl chirp their little bedeep, bedeep, a young woman clad in white walks out of the canopy of some century-old oaks that spread their gigantic branches all the way to the river...
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Sahib bibi aur ghulam, an Initiation to Desire
While I was reading about Satyajit Ray’s Charulata (1964), and thinking of Pakeezah (1972), critics mentioned Abrar Alvi's (or Guru Dutt’s - he apparently was almost as much behind the camera) Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam (1962) as a paradigmatic sort of film....
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Om Shanti Omy Gawd!
I decided I would follow Astia’s remark, expressed in a recent commentary on Love aaj kal , which suggested I should review some more recent BW issues than Nutan and Bimal Roy. So as I’m of an obliging nature, I dutifully pored again in that cardboard...
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The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini is not an Indian writer, but an Afghan-American writer. But having read The kite runner (2003), I wanted to include my review of it here, because it’s a book about the region, and I know that a lot of people have read it in and around...
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Kondura, religious power is stronger than men
Shyam Benegal generally explores the forces which can endanger or wreak human communities, and what happens to individuals in the process. The result is often pitiless. Hopes are crushed, and ties bruised. Instincts are hypocritically presented as virtues...
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Ram teri Ganga maili, RK's last opus
I have read so often about Raj Kapoor’s last movie, Ram teri Ganga maili (1985, Ram, your Ganga is sullied), that I wanted to have a personal opinion about it. The movie has itself been sullied as obsessively concerned with Mandakini’s nakedness and the...
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Who's afraid of Mira Nair?
Those who have read this blog for some time know that I had loved Monsoon wedding , that little gem of a film, and well, I’ve recently watched Salaam Bombay and The Namesake, along with Mira Nair’s 1985 documentary on women strippers, Indian Cabaret:...
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Teesri kasam, melancholic delight!
The critical fame of Teesri Kasam, the 1966 film by Basu Bhattacharya, starring Raj Kapoor and Waheeda Rehman, is absolutely justified; it’s a tale of love and sadness, of beauty and melancholy; it enchants you, it pulls you along, it arrests you: in...
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Solva saal, a tale of stolen pleasure!
My quest into Bollywood classical beauties makes me stumble on great stuff sometimes. Sometimes not: for example, I recently watched Ram aur Shyam and found it a letdown: the famed “best film that cannot be made again” (according to one IMDb user) was...
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Abhijan, a remarkable moral fable
Abhijan (the Expedition, Satyajit Ray, 1962) is the story of Narsingh (dependable Soumitra Chatterjee), a Kshatriya taxi-driver, who after having had his professional license taken away from him for imprudent overtaking, becomes jobless, and heads towards...
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Bazaar (1982), or how to buy women
Sagar Sarhadi has only directed one movie, and otherwise is known for having worked as Yash Chopra’s screenplay writer. This movie, Bazaar, (1982) supposedly belongs to “New Indian Cinema”, and it feels like it wanted to belong. It isn’t a bad film, but...
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Is Bollywood opium for the masses? ("Dharavi")
For those who are keen on a socially-oriented cinema, Dharavi, city of dreams, by Sudhir Mishra, gives a great insight in the life of those "Backward class" workers who fend it off in the Mumbai slum. It focuses on Rajkaran, a taxi-driver who decides...
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Leave 'em kids alone: Main hoon na & Koi mil gaya
I regret to say - I do have a limit in what I like about Bollywood. It recently took the shape of two rather sickening shows, Main hoon na by Farah Khan, and Koi mil gaya, by Rakesh Roshan (of the Krrish fame). I’m half sorry and perplexed to have to...
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Juhi Chawla: what's behind that smile?
What attracts one to Juhi Chawla is her absolutely irresistible smile. Okay, she was “only” a Miss India (1984), but frankly, Yash Chopra’s idea to cast her as Shahruhk Khan’s idol in Darr is not a bad one, far from it. I believe one can really fall passionately,...
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Pather Panchali, Satyajit Ray's little Song
Satyajit Ray’s 1955 “Song of the little road” is a quiet picture of little big events within a rural Bengali family, where the little happenings of childhood occur, and form that most profound event of any life: growing up. The film is part of a trilogy,...
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Sone ki chidiya, pure gold does not fear the smelter
Watching Sone ki chidiya (the golden bird, Shaheed Latif, 1958) has been a bit of an adventure, because even though I knew it was good, it doesn’t exist with subtitles, and some time has passed before I could get round to understanding everything. And...
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Ankur: Shyam Benegal's + Shabana Azmi's manifesto
Here’s another beginner – after Aag – Shyam Benegal ’s first long feature film shot in 1973, after he had finally got enough appraisal for his work shooting advertisements (apparently more than 900 !) and documentaries. Ankur means “seedling”: some people...
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Facing the mirror: Chameli
After having watched the film, I asked myself what it had been trying to do... It's a filmed play about these two people - modern-India businessman Rahul Bose and eternal India prostitute Kareena Kapoor - which explores their confrontation: and the immediate...
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Kabhie Kabhie, clumsy classic
Yash Chopra ’s “Kabhie kabhie” (1976) was for me like a distant reference, a movie many people had seen and loved back in the exotic seventies, and so, I knew I would have to see it one day. And now that I have, and have both enjoyed it and been disappointed...
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Anupama, where the dream-fairies slumber
Anupama , by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, centres around the character of Uma (Sharmila Tagore), a shy and silent girl, sole daughter of a cruel father (Tarun Bose) who lost this beloved wife when she gave birth to this daughter. He blamed her for the death...