ABOUT me

100 Years, 100 Movies – Action Cinema

100 Years, 100 Movies – Action Cinema

Archive, Cinema

The Indian action film is more than just the underworld genre and freely explores a combination of action/crime subgenre like heists, revenge sagas and spy thrillers, some with astounding authenticity.

SHOLAY (1975) – Hindi – Thakur Baldev Singh, a former police officer, hires two petty thieves, Jay and Veeru, to capture alive the dreaded dacoit, Gabbar Singh so he can exact revenge for the massacre of his family.

DEEWAR (1975) – Hindi – When their father, branded a criminal, deserts them, Vijay and Ravi are raised by their righteous mother. While Vijay works at the docks to support the family, and eventually becomes a gangster, in a twist of fate, his brother becomes a cop.

PARINDA (1989) – Hindi – Kishan wants to shield his brother Karan from the underworld but when a friend is murdered, Karan plots revenge by setting off one gang against another. When Karan and his new bride are brutally murdered, it becomes Kishan’s cause to bring down Anna, who is responsible for all the mayhem.

DON (1978, 2006, 2011) – Hindi – Remade in 2006 with a sequel in 2011, the original story is about Rita joining the gang headed by the notorious criminal, Don, in order to avenge her sister’s death. She discovers that in reality, Don is already dead and at the police’s behest Vijay is masquerading as amnesiac Don to infiltrate the gang to get Don’s diary.

SHIVA (1989/1990) – Telugu/Hindi – Shiva, a new student in college, becomes a threat to JD, a powerful Student Union Leader with political connections. Shiva ultimately ends up antagonising JD’s boss, Bhavani who sets out to annihilate him and those close to him.

SATYA (1998) – Hindi – Satya arrives in Mumbai to make an honest living. When he is sent to prison on false charges, he meets Bhiku and joins his gang. As Satya slips deeper into the world of crime, his chances of having a normal life seem increasingly distant.

BLACK FRIDAY (2004) – Hindi – The film pieces together the motives, the planning, execution and investigations surrounding the 1993 serial blasts that ripped through Mumbai.

MAGADHEERA (2009) – Telugu – Harsha, implicated in the murder of his lover’s father, tries to remind her that in a previous lifetime, he was a warrior who fell in love with her, a princess, and their life was brutally cut short by the man reborn as Indu’s evil cousin in this lifetime.

ARANYA KANDAM (2011) – Tamil – A little boy and his guileless father come upon a bag of cocaine and get caught in the midst of a gang war triggered by the presumed double-crossing of Pasupathi for whom the cocaine becomes ransom to free his kidnapped wife.

VISWAROOPAM (2013) – Tamil – Nirupama, a nuclear oncologist, hires a detective to trail her effete Kathak-dancer husband Viz who seems to be harbouring some secrets. This inadvertently triggers off a series of happenings that reveal the truth about Viz to be more complex than she imagined.

An edited version of the article was published in Culturama’s May 2013 Issue.

100 Years, 100 Movies – Romance

100 Years, 100 Movies – Romance

Archive, Cinema

It’s not all song and dance when it comes to Indian romance movies – there are many impediments in the path of love, like the rich-poor divide, caste, religion, jealousy and even death!

AWARA (1951) – Hindi – Rita meets her childhood friend, Raj after many years, and they fall in love. However, Raj happens to be a petty criminal thanks to Jagga who was wronged many years ago, by Raj’s estranged father. Of course, love triumphs against social divides in the end.

MADHUMATI (1958) – Hindi – A classic Indian tale of rebirth and memories of other lifetimes, Madhumati is about an engineer who visits an old house whose objects trigger memories of a previous lifetime, when his relationship with a winsome tribal girl was violently thwarted by his employer.

CHEMMEEN (1965)– Malayalam – Set in the fishing community of Kerala’s sea coast, this story is of a fisherwoman who sacrifices her love and marries another. When she meets her old lover again, little does she know that the sea would claim its toll for her infidelity.

CHATTAKARI (1974)/JULIE (1975) – Malayalam/Hindi – An Anglo-Indian Christian girl falls in love with her Hindu best friend’s brother and has his child out of wedlock. When her lover’s mother refuses to accept her, she is all set to migrate to England.

MOONDRAM PIRAI (1982) – Tamil – Cheenu rescues a young woman with regressive amnesia from a brothel and takes her away to pristine Ooty where he becomes part-parent, part-friend to this child-woman. He struggles to keep intact this near-perfect life, but the world begins to intrude.

QAYAMAT SE QAYAMAT TAK (1988) – Hindi – Cast in the classic Romeo & Juliet mould, QSQT, as it is lovingly called, is the story of the tender romance that blossoms between a young man and young woman from two feuding families, leading to the inevitable tragic end.

GEETHANJALI (1989) – Telugu – When Prakash moves to his holiday home in Ooty to come to terms with the news of his terminal illness, he meets and falls in love with a gregarious young prankster who changes his perspective on life.

KANDUKONDAIN KANDUKONDAIN (2000) – Tamil – Adapted from Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, this is the story of reticent Sowmya and hopeless romantic Meenu who end up supporting their family when they lose their inheritance. The sisters go through much heartbreak and learn to discern between romance and love.

RAINCOAT (2004) – Hindi – Manu travels to Kolkata to drum up funds for a business. He meets his old love, Neeru, and over one rainy afternoon, the two reminisce about days past, each trying to hide one’s real economical condition from the other. Adapted from O’Henry’s The Gift of the Magi.

JODHAA AKBAR (2008)- Hindi/Urdu – The movie recasts the tal of Mughal emperor Akbar and his Rajput Hindu wife, Jodhaa Bai as a love story, portraying them as individualistic personalities whose marriage starts out as a strategic alliance but turns into a relationship between equals.

An edited version of the article was published in Culturama’s May 2013 Issue.
100 Years, 100 Movies – Comedies

100 Years, 100 Movies – Comedies

Archive, Cinema

Indian comedies are replete with stories of mistaken identities, fake identities, assumed identities, being at the wrong place at the wrong time and ingenious ploys by ordinary people. That’s not to say they don’t have place for all the ‘masala’ elements – romance, fights, high drama and songs. 

CHUPKE CHUPKE (1975) – Hindi – A Wodehouseian plot where a newly married man plays a prank on his wife’s unsuspecting family, by masquerading as her car driver and asking a friend to assume his identity as the husband.

THILLU MULLU (1981)– Tamil – In order to land a job, Chandran assumes a serious demeanour and a fake moustache. When his deception is almost discovered by his boss, he ends up having to create a fake identity – that of an irresponsible, moustache-less, twin brother, Indran.

ANGOOR (1982)– Hindi – Based on Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors, Angoor is about two sets of twins – each child is separated from his own twin, but grows up with a child from the other twin set. To add to the confusion, each set has identical names – twin Ashoks and twin Bahadurs!

PUSHPAK / PESUM PADAM(1987) – Silent– An unemployed youth assumes the identity of a millionnaire to get a taste of the good life. The movie reinterprets the silent film genre using expression, body language, music and symbolism in the absence of dialogue in this dark comedy.

CHITHRAM (1988) – Malayalam – Kalyani hires Vishnu to act as her husband, projecting the picture of a happy marriage to her visiting father. Although they bicker constantly, Kalyani soon falls in love with Vishnu, who hides a tragic secret.

HYDERABAD BLUES (1998) – English – A low budget realistic comedy about a young NRI who visits his hometown, Hyderabad, on vacation, and resists relentless pressure from his parents to get him ‘arrange-married’ in a hurry.

KHOSLA KA GHOSLA (2006) – When all efforts by legal means fail, a beleaguered Khosla and his middle-class family set a trap for Khurana, the land-shark, to beat him at his own game and retrieve their piece of land from him.

SA-RO-JA (2008) – Tamil – In this comic thriller, four young men, en route to Hyderabad to watch a cricket match, take a detour off the highway. They reach an abandoned factory which they discover is a kidnapper’s den where a schoolgirl is being held captive.

3 IDIOTS (2009) – Hindi – Raju and Farhan uncover the fascinating story of their best friend from college, the ingenious Rancho, who believed in learning for its own sake and had thereby invited the wrath of the placement-focussed principal.

EEGA (2012) – Telugu – When a wealthy industrialist discovers that the young girl he’s smitten by is already in love with a young man, he has him murdered. The young man is reborn as an animated housefly and sets about wreaking havoc in the industrialist’s life.

An edited version of the article was published in Culturama’s May 2013 Issue.
English Vinglish (Hindi)

English Vinglish (Hindi)

Cinema, Indian Cinema

What is the movie about?
Shashi Godbole runs a successful home-based traditional sweets business but yearns to be respected by her husband and their teenage daughter who believe she is not good enough because she is not fluent in English. When Shashi visits her sister in the US, she enrols herself in a ‘Learn English in 4 weeks’ course so deal with what she perceives to be a harsh, English-speaking world. Through the course and with the support of people she meets, Shashi learns to love herself a little more and also reclaims the respect she deserves.
 
Who is it by?
Gauri Shinde is an advertising film maker and this is her debut feature film.
 
Why should I watch it?
In India, the derogatory, ‘vernac’ is often used to denote those who are more comfortable in their own vernacular language and not quite fluent in English. The movie captures with great sensitivity, the feelings of inferiority and inadequacy that such labelling evokes even within a family.
An edited version of the article was published in Culturama’s December 2012 Issue.
Khamosh Paani (Punjabi)

Khamosh Paani (Punjabi)

Cinema, Indian Cinema

What is the movie about?
Set in Pakistan of the 1979, Khamosh Paani tells the story of a Muslim widow, Ayesha being deeply troubled about her son’s transformation from a mild, affectionate teenager to a violent activist for an Islamist group that is instigating the youth of the village to join the jihad or holy war. A visiting Indian Sikh pilgrim discovers that Ayesha is his sister, who was separated from their family in the riots during the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. Ayesha’s non-Islamic past becomes inconvenient for her son, but for Ayesha herself, this truth has tragic social consequences. For her refusal to make a declaration of her true faith, Ayesha is ostracised by the village and country she has learnt to call her own.  
 
Who is it by?
Khamosh Pani was written and directed by Sabiha Sumar.
 
Why should I watch it?
The movie has won numerous accolades, including five awards at the 2003 Locarno International Film Festival for its depiction through one lifetime, of a woman’s choicelessness not only in the politically charged period of the partition of India and Pakistan but also in a later period of radical fundamentalism.
 
An edited version of the article was published in Culturama’s November 2012 Issue.
Parzania (English, Gujarati, Hindi)

Parzania (English, Gujarati, Hindi)

Cinema, Indian Cinema

What is the movie about?
Cyrus Pithawala (Nasseruddin Shah), a Parsi film projectionist befriends Allan (Corin Nemec) an American on a downward spiral, who is in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, to complete his PhD on Gandhi. Allan becomes witness to the disintegration of the Pithawala family, when Hindu mobs go on a premeditated rampage to kill Muslims in the city. Cyrus’ wife, Shernaz (Sarika) escapes with their daughter Dilshad, but gets separated in the melee, from their 10-year old son, Parzan. Cyrus searches futilely for him and finally takes solace in spirituality. Shernaz testifies at the Human Rights Commission hearing, voicing the helpless of being pitted against a blood-thirsty mob even as the police plays mute spectator. She laments not knowing what happened to Parzan and the tragedy of Dilshad being forever emotionally scarred by the violence.
Who is it by?
Parzania was directed by Rahul Dholakia who went on to win the Golden Lotus National Award for Best Director in 2005 for Parzania. Dholakia has been accused of being anti-Hindu, choosing to depict only the carnage by the Hindu mobs, without depicting the violence that the Muslim mobs unleashed. Dholakia went on to face immense difficulties in having the film released in Gujarat.
Sarika, who plays Shernaz Pithawala won the Silver Lotus Best Actress award 2005.
Why should I watch it?
Parzania depicts the psyche of terror. It is based on the true story of a boy called Azhar who has been missing from his Gulbarg Society residence, after a massacre on February 28, 2002, much like what is depicted in the film. The scenes before the carnage are of an idyllic cocooned life. The scenes of the carnage and after focus on the fear, nausea and ultimately, the courage of the victims to carry on. 
An edited version of the article was published in Culturama’s July 2012 Issue.

Sign Up For Updates

Join Saritha's mailing list to get updates on her latest writing.

You have signed up for updates. Have a good day!