Being Bollywood: Filmi Perspectives on Indianness

Here is my list of Top 10 most romantic Bollywood moments and my reasons why, in no particular order. Contains spoilers for: Mission Kashmir, DDLJ, KKHH, Devdas (2002), Asoka, Refugee, Mili, Hum Tum, Parineeta, and Veer-Zaara.

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1. Mission Kashmir, a movie with Hrithik Roshan and Preity Zinta.

It’s not really a romance movie, as it deals with terrorism in the Kashmir region and follows Hrithik who plays Altaaf, a messed up Muslim boy whose family is innocent bystanders who become collateral damage during a terrorist-elimination mission. Anyway, on to the scene. Preity, a tele-journalist, has just found out that Hrithik, her childhood best friend, used her to get access to the studio as he is a terrorist. As she sits in her darkened house, there is pounding on the door. She opens the door and there is Hrithik, standing in the pouring rain, devouring her with his eyes (because of course, mission or not, he fell in love with her). She looks at him and then closes the door on him as he remains on the thereshhold. I must say, at that moment, I would have been tempted to let him in.

2. Hum Tum, a movie with Saif Ali Khan and Rani Mukherji.

There are a number of wonderful scenes in this movie. There is the scene where Rani tells Saif (who is her long-time friend) about what a pain it would be to interview prospective husbands (she is a widow). So to help her, he offers a rehearsal and they conduct a mock interview and at some point the pretense becomes reality and neither of them realize it. Or the scene at the end, where he turns around and it starts to sprinkle and he sees her and the look in his eyes… But actually I have to go with the scene of him on the plane, flying to find Rani, and ordering coffee, with sugar and a little cream (which is what she always gets) “because she loves me.” Just his tone of voice. Guuuuh.

3. Refugee, a movie with Abhishek Bachchan and Kareena Kapoor. Refugee (Abhishek) is smuggling Kareena and her family across the border into Pakistan. Water is scarce and he already told off Kareena (who didn’t realize it) for washing her face. It’s night in the desert and they are taking a break. Kareena pours out some water and forgets his admonishion. When she sees him look at her and remembers, she looks at him with a defiant, mischievous and brazen look and splashes it on her face, never taking her eyes off him. The camera pans to his face and you see the moment he falls for her hook, line, and sinker.

4. Mili, with Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bhaduri.

Amitabh’s suicidal character has just slit his wrists and Mili (Jaya) is trying to bandage his hands and jokingly offers to read him his fortune as he keeps telling her he is not a nice man. Guuuh, it pushes all my hurt/comfort buttons.

5. Veer-Zaara, with Shahrukh Khan and Preity Zinta.

This is probably my favorite Bollywood movie ever and one I should do a separate post on (and will do soon). It's a gorgeous, emotional, color-saturated look at an impossible love affair between Veer (SRK), an Indian Air Force officer and Zaara (Preity), a Pakistani aristocrat. If you don't cry during the movie, at least once, there is something wrong with you. The movie is chock full of romantic scenes (it could fill out my Top 10 list by itself), and I almost picked the scene where Veer first becomes mesmerized by Zaara, and slowly sweeps her hair out of her eyes (as his voice over says, almost puzzled "it's not that I've never seen a more beautiful girl..."), or the scene when he picks her up after she's fallen on the bridge and twisted her ankle and carries her. I almost went with the scene (where I gulped like a puppy with a steak too big, and a mustucchioed man next to me was crying) when Veer sees Zaara again, after all that time. But I went with the scene in the shrine, where she is praying with her whole family, and the hypnotic quawali is playing and the camera pans to Veer, standing utterly alone and determined with a set look on his face, waiting for her to turn around and then she does and she stands still for a moment and then she runs to him, and he makes no move until she throws her arms around him because the choice must be utterly hers and he would never expose her to her family. Guuuuuuh.

6. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, with Shahrukh Khan and Kajol.

This one has my second all-time favorite romantic scene. Rahul (SRK) and Anjali (Kajol) are people who were best friends in college. They haven't seen each other in over a decade, and there are all sorts of lingering feelings (on her side, he is the boy she fell in love with and couldn't have, on his side, he feels she abandoned him and he lost something he couldn't replace. He loved her, even though he didn't realize it at the time). And now they are quite different than the harum-scarum boy and a tomboy girl. He is a rather muted widower with an 8-year old daughter and she's grown up into a self-possessed, gorgeous woman. And when they meet again (in a scene that would totally be in the running for the best in any other movie: he bursts in yelling "Anjali" (he named his daughter that) and the grown-up Anjali turns and he stops dead and drops his briefcase and the look on their faces and then they walk towards each other and they try to hug or shake hands and aren't sure what to do in their awkwardness and can't stop looking...), all these feelings come up. My favorite scene is when it's raining and they are both sopping wet and they run into a pavillion to hide from the rain. He is wearing black and she is wearing deep red and there is no light outside the pavillion. And then he kneels, and stretches his hand out with this irresistable grin and she mouths "no music" and he plays his fingers in the air like an invisible piano and she puts her hand in his and they start dancing and I forget to breathe. Because she is looking at him as if all her dreams had just come true and he is looking at her as if he'd just woken up from a decade-long sleep and nothing exists outside her. And then...

7. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, with Shahrukh Khan and Kajol.

And this one is my favorite romantic Bollywood scene. I've seen over 200 Bollywood movies since I've seen the phenom that is DDLJ and nothing has displaced it. Raj (SRK) and Simran (Kajol) are London-born Indians who fell in love during a trip in Europe. He is Western and devil-may-care. She is from a very traditional family and a bit set in her ways. When they parted, they didn't know how the other felt about them because Simran? That's her last moment of freedom, begged off from her father. On coming back, she is going back to India to marry a man arranged for her whom she's never seen. The scene in question? During the festivities, desperately alone (even her mother counsels her to forget "him" as women have no rights despite all the PC talk), she can't take it any longer. She keeps hearing the mandolin Raj carted with him everywhere. So she gets out of bed, wearing an all-white outfit and runs as hard as she can and collapses in the middle of a Punjabi field. And then she hears the tinkling of a bell and sees it's a cow that is wearing the bell she left in London (long story). She walks around, frantically, and she is in the middle of a sarsaon field, with gorgeous yellow flowers higher than her waist. And then she sees Raj, standing there in his battered leather jacket, having flown all the way to India without knowing how she feels. And she starts to run and he opens up his arms and goes on his knees and my favorite Bollywood song ever "Tujhe Dekha" starts and I am a sobby mess.

8. Parineeta, with Saif Ali Khan and Vidya Balan.

This is a story set in 1960s Calcutta, of a neighborhood girl and a richer boy who only realize their feelings when strangers materialize and almost get doomed by parental greed and their own flaws. This was by far my favorite Bolly movie last year and my favorite romantic scene is the sexy beyond words scene where Lalita (Vidya) has come up to bring Shekhar (SAK) down for a wedding and he is sulking because he is jealous. She ends up crying and his horrified and boyish "shhhh, I am sorry" as he slowly hugs her makes me into a puddle of goo. So does their impromptu wedding ceremony and resultant wedding night which is deeply private and one of the sexiest things I've ever seen.

9. Devdas, with Shahrukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai.

This is a very famous story of a doomed love. And this is an eye-popping version of it, where the couple in question (Devdas and Paro) are destroyed as much by their flaws and weakenesses as by any outside influences (yup, it's written by the same novelist as Parineeta). My favorite romantic scene? Devdas realizing that the "noble" letter he's written to Paro, renouncing his claim on her, was a stupid mistake and running to her house just as her marriage is about to begin. She refuses his explanation and proceeds to go through with the marriage to hurt him back and he hits her forehead with a pearl necklace, symbolically marking her forehead (told you these people were screwed-up) and then as a horrified atonement (and a masochistic punishment for himself) walks her out to her wedding and her groom, trying to keep his face still but in such a daze he almost walks by the right place.

10. Asoka, with Shahrukh Khan and Kareena Kapoor.

This is one of my all time favorite movies, a story of an Indian emperor who ended up conquering huge chunks of territory and then renouncing it all for a way of peace. Sounds dull, at least to me, but the movie itself is an unbelievably gorgeous (this has to be one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen) meditation on passion and love and loss. And at the heart of it is the love story between SRK's Asoka and KK's Kaurwaki, a neighboring princess in hiding. She is a strong, fierce character unlike most women in Bolly films and SRK and KK sizzle on screen as a Shakespeareanly (yes, I know it's not a word) star-crossed pair. I must admit that my heart melts every time Asoka calls her Kshatrani (my warrior), and there are plenty of romantic scenes (the scene where he imagines her after her loss is haunting and one of the most beautiful picturizations in Bollywood (only to be compared with the one where she is searching for him and for a time, the women on the raft she is travelling on take up a magnetic beat), or the scene where he teaches her the use of the sword is one of the most sizzling scenes that is just...guuuuh, or their post-wedding hijinks), but my favorite scene is the very last between them, as he stumbles through a battlefield in once-immaculately white clothing that has become soaked with grime and blood of the battlefield he created, falling apart as he percieves the horrors he's wrought, searching for Kaurwaki and finds her by the white horse he left her so long ago. And he looks at her like a man who's just been restored to life and she looks at him with hate and despair and defiance and love and she tells him that to win he'll have to go through her and all he can do is whisper "Kaurwaki" and as he goes on his knees in front of her, the monster he's slowly been becoming leaves forever and he is transformed back into sanity and such is the magic of SRK that I started chanting at the screen "take him back" and she breaks down and cries out "How I've searched for you! I've searched for you everywhere..." And this isn't my favorite scene in the movie! Asoka's grief on finding her dead is my favorite scene in any Bolly movie bar none, and there are few scenes as dramatic as Kaurwaki stilling in the middle of a fight, seeing Asoka go by, berserk in the heat of battle, not even knowing that his blood-lust (which is really, a form of oblivion and lashing out for him) is destroying the one thing he loves. It's an amazing movie and one of the most pacifist ones I've ever seen and you should seriously seek it out.

I've been neglecting the blog shamefully. My apologies. I promise to have something soon.

I have closed comments both on this post and all the other posts. This means visitors cannot leave comments. I am sorry as I love reading feedback, but two of my entries got horrendously spammed with the kind of stuff that makes me sick. I don't think anyone wants to click on the blog and see ads for incest porn or seriously illegal drugs (I've deleted all those comments).

Apologies.

This year hasn't been the greatest for Bollywood movies. There has been only two movies I've loved unreservedly, and not that many I plain out liked. But then, last year was spectacular, and we can't have everything. Better luck next year or two, when we have a new Karan Johar movie, a new Farhan Akhtar movie, a Jodha-Akbar movie with Hrithik and Aishwarya and another Sanjay Leela Bhansali film. Plus, a whole bunch of other movies I am really looking forward to. And of course, there is always a cornucopia of movies in November. But here is my ranking of this year's movies I've seen so far. I've stayed away from some pretty big ones: No Entry or MPKK? because I am not a fan of raunchy comedies. Unfortuntely, it seems the new genre du jour. Oh well.

I am open for more movie recommendations.

LOVE:

1. Parineeta: This is what Bollywood does when it's really really REALLY good: gives you moments of such breathtaking intensity and beauty and romance, it feels as if goes straight to your veins. Plus intellegient and passionate performances, great soundtrack, and understated elegance.

2. Karam: The visuals would get this movie this high into my list, alone. But I love the angst and the beauty of this really dark movie about a hitman who has to do a series of hits or else his wife dies.

3. Bunty aur Babli: If you are in a bad mood, pop this in. This story about two lovable (and in love) crooks is funny and charming and romantic.

LIKE:

4. Paheli: it's colorful, it's feminist, it's period. Not to mention well-acted. And it has Shahrukh Khan. Just not enough drama for me.

5. Kisna: delightful, if a touch on the Orientalist side, period melodrama romance.

6. Black: visually stunning and excellently acted, but it's a Miracle Worker remake, so won't go higher on the list, especially since I found it more admirable than moving.

7. Lucky: School girl and roue hook up in Russia, Bollywood style.

AVERAGE

8. The Rising: Epic about 1857 uprising in India. Ambitious but wildly uneven.

9. Elaan: fun Bolly actioner, notable mainly for my overwhelming desire to drag former mob hitman (portrayed by John Abraham) to a very private corner for a get-to-know-you session.

10. Bride and Prejudice: Cute and sweet, but Bollywood-lite.

11. Dus: routine but slick action flick. Less explosions, more characters?

BELOW AVERAGE

12. Waqt: made me laugh in the wrong places.

13. Bewafa: Should have been renamed "snore."

HATED

14. Salaam Namaste: It had such promise, but it threw away everything that was good about Bollywood and replaced it with...nothing. It was worse than a random, played out HW romcom. Ugh.

Dil Chahta Hai is the movie that got me obsessed with Bollywood.

It is not the first Bolly movie I've ever seen. That honor goes to a badly dull movie from 1980s which I saw when I was around 10. The theater next to my house was small and dim and very empty. There were only about ten other people, all of them women. I thought the end would never come. When it did, I bolted out of there and promply decided that watching interminable singing with ludicrous plot and abundant mustaches ranked somewhere below brushing my teeth and washing the dishes as entertainment.

More than a decade later I came across Bombay, some of the scenes of which I saw when TCM Channel had a Bollywood festival. I took one long look at pudgy and hirsute Armind Swamy and was reminded of my earlier opinion, both on unattractiveness of mustaches and boringness of Bollywood (I rewatched and loved it tremendously later, but no, this is not the movie that got me into Bollywood).

I did watch TCM's other entries Rangeela and Amar, Akbar, Anthony both of which I enjoyed but neither of which made me interested in seeking further Bollywood movies, any more than watching a French movie I like would make me look out for more French films.

No, the movie that made me sit up at take a second look at Bollywood was Dil Chahta Hai.

I came into it about halfway through. I did not know who the actors were. I did not know that Aamir Khan (Akash) was one of the most famous Bollywood actors of his generation, or that Preity Zinta (Shalini) was just starting her climb as one of the most popular actresses. Or that Akshaye Khanna (Sid) was the son of Vinod Khanna, a huge yesteryear superstar. Or that Dimple Kapadia, who played the tragic divorcee, once drove entire country crazy as "Bobby," the star-crossed teenager in a blockbuster with Rishi Kapoor. Nope, I neither knew nor cared about any of it, and it was up to the movie to stand or fall on its own merits. In fact, when I started watching, the only thing I noticed was that "Sameer" was hot and I wished he was playing Aamir's role. I was aeons away from discovering that his name was Saif Ali Khan, an actor largely known for his comic timing, and someone who was going to steal my heart completely as not-comic-in-the-least hero of Parineeta a few years later.

And yet, I was instantly hooked. I liked the colors, the music, the emotion, the characters. And, despite my earlier grumpiness of not finding Akash cute enough, by the end of the movie I was completely won over by him. And by the time the movie ended, I found myself thinking that Hollywood had forgotten how to make a truly romantic movie but these people apparently haven't.

The plot: Akash, Sameer, and Sid are three best friends who have just graduated. Sameer is a charming flibbertygibbet who falls for every pretty girl he sees, and when it doesn't work out, falls just as strongly in love with the next one. That is until he falls in love for real with the girl his parents want him to marry but who has a boyfriend of her own. Sid is a sensitive artist who falls hopelessly in love with a bitter, alcoholic divorcee. His feelings for her and Akash's incomprehension of said feelings lead to a rift between Sid and Akash. And Akash is a cynical playboy who does not believe in romantic entanglements of any sort. That is until he becomes friends with Shalini, a girl he spends time with in Australia, and who is already engaged to a childhood friend. And he is left completely bereft of defenses and shattered by his falling in love with someone he can't have.

The scene at the Opera, where he finally realizes his feelings is worth the price of the DVD alone.

So yeah, go watch if you haven't already.

The random movie recommendation of the day is Chalte Chalte, a movie about love at first sight, and what happens to that love once the happy couple ties the knot.

The first half is a breezy fairy tale, as we meet Raj and Priya. He is an owner of a small trucking company, she is a Greek expat fashion designer from an upperclass family. He loses her phone number, and she is engaged to someone else. He is incredibly impulsive and she is entirely too level headed. Love triumphs, of course. In fact, if the movie stopped after the first hour and a half, it would still be one of the most fairy-talish delightful confections I've seen come out of Bollywood.

But here comes the twist. These people who fell in love after a whirlwind courtship are married. And now the fact that they are opposites doesn't seem so romantic after all. He ignores her and watches TV. She yells at him to pick up his shoes. They argue and bicker and drive each other crazy, and make up passionately and love each other. And then money troubles come in, and the fact that her family has never liked him, and... Basically watch for yourself to find out. All I will say is that I find the ending one of the most realistic and yet sweetest in all of Bollywood.

What does this have to do with this blog, you might ask? Other than the fact that it stars Shahrukh Khan in whom Dangermousie has an unhealthy degree of interest, I found this movie to really work well on a universal level.

In some ways, it is much more accessible to an "outsider" than something like Devdas or DDLJ or some other really classic Bollywood movie that I actually like better.

Maybe because the themes are universal. There is a notable lack of many classic Bollywood tropes: a scheming villain (which is something I love in its echo of Victorian melodrama), a close and exaggerated reliance on family as both a source of conflict and the highest good. A person who is not very familiar with Bollywood conventions does not have to get past the fact that family approval and control is a lot more crucial in a Bollywood movie than it's likely to be in the viewer's life. I adore DDLJ much more than Chalte Chalte, but the belief that family cohesion trumps romantic love as a value system is not something I could comfortably share. My first reaction was, predictably "your father is ruining your life. Run away" which something neither Simran nor Raj could live with. They have a different (and equally worthy) value system and that is fine. But Chalte Chalte requires no such adjustment from me.

These people could be a young couple anywhere. Two different people who fell in love and married too quickly and now have to adjust to each other's quirks. Their problems are universal: money troubles, different lifestyles and priorities, the fact that her family isn't so keen on him, the fact that he can't help but be jealous of the handsome wealthy former boyfriend. And yet, this movie does not feel Westernized in a sense of bastardization of all I love about Bollywood: there is still plenty of color, emotion, and trademark melodrama and angst that is the main reason for my love of Bollywood. It's just this time it's about something everyday, something I could share. But it's no less moving for all that.

Pointless fights, and a business debt, and towers on the bed. Who'd have thought this could be as angst-filled and moving and rife with conflict as soulmates forbidden to see each other?