Bekaraar

Bekaraar is a very early Sanjay Dutt movie, one which he apparently dislikes a lot, though personally I think it is one of the better early ones, mainly because it has a fairly unusual but very realistic story (minus all the dancing around in desolate places which goes on, obviously), which does involve college love, relatives disapproving, people caving in to family pressure, heroic sacrifice, and, *gasp* pre-marital sex. Mind you, it is very tastefully done and not much can be seen, also it is perfectly obvious what is going on. It all happens at the end of a song, to much of which one would not want to apply the word tasteful:

There are some other odd fashion choices:

Mohnish Bhel plays the part of the upright and devoted college friend, and he is surprisingly believable at portraying a genuinely nice human being, even when he has grown what I term "the moustache of responsibility":



Padmini Kolhapuri is an actress I like very much. She is very beautiful:




and good at suffering in a dignified manner, at which she can excel in this movie:










It also has a song which is a good illustration of "Telling signs that this marriage is going to be an uphill struggle":



Mind you, as the following scene shows, there were indications earlier on that he might be just not keen on the relationship:


It is a VCD, so the quality isn't great and there are no subtitles, but I found it still entertaining; and no subtitles probably made the comic relief less painfull.

Deedar (1951)

Now, having said that I like trashy movies, this is not one of them at all. There is a trashy movie of the same name starring Akshay Kumar, who you now must be the hero, as the national anthem is played every time he beats up people (who are smuggling drugs, so they deserve being beaten up); I own it, I have seen it, it is fun to watch.

This Deedar stars Dilip Kumar, and Nargis, and I have fallen in love with it. It is in black and white, quite short (just over two hours), has twelve songs, and the story isn't exactly unpredictable (I realised to main twist at the end, thank you Jodi No. 1 for making the reference) , but it is very nicely made, the songs enhance the story, rather than being placed at random moments (it helps that the main character is a singer), there is much symbolism and dramatic shots of bare trees etc., and you really start to feel for everybody involved.

The story is mainly a love quadrangle: Poor boy loves rich girl, poor boy gets thrown out of house by rich girl's father, he is blinded by lightning or possibly a dust storm and grows up with a foster-sister who loves him, while he still pines for his childhood sweetheart. When they meet again years later, she doesn't now who he is and is engaged to an eye-specialist she is very clearly in love with. Much soul-searching on the part of the two males follows and it doesn't exactly have a happy ending.

This was not my first Dilip Kumar movie (I have seen Vidhaata, and he also has a part in Izaat ki Rooti where he confronts a villain with a piece of bread) but the first one where he is definetly the star, exuding waves of melancholy the minute he is seen on screen, and I think I have found another actor whose work I am going to explore. Nargis also impressed me, even though her part is largely confined to looking stunning and slightly puzzled.

Introduction

This is mainly a place for my ravings and rantings about Bollywood movies (or commercial Hindi cinema, if you prefer a more convoluted term). I have been a fan for a while, well, since 2004, and I have a weakness for trashy movies.

You know, the ones where you know that a person is evil right from the start because they are played by Gulshan Grover or by Amrish Puri in yet another has to be seen to be believed wig, which have the brilliant kawooooosh sound effects, and the hero easily takes out 20 heavily armed villains on horses just because he is the hero; and the half a dozen story lines, half of which disappear somewhere around the middle.

This is somewhat of an experiment. Past experience has shown that I am not that great with creating long reviews, but I like pictures and find it easier to comment on them, so the posts are likely to involve quite a bit of visual material. And I like Sanjay Dutt and Akshay Kumar, so there is going to be a lot of their movies as well.