Sunday, 10 February 2008

Maidan-e-Jung (1995)

Maidan-e-Jung is a set in a village ruled over by an evile landlord (Amrish Puri). We know he is evil as he shoots an assortement of his rivals right after the opening credits. His family consists of his elderly widowed sister, his young widowed daughter-in-law (played by Jaya Prada; it isn't clear what happened to her husband, but there is a strong suggestion that he was killed by his father) and two sons, one played by Gulshan Grover and one by Akshay Kumar (guess who is the evil one).


There is also an upright villager, who has so far deflected some of the landlords wrath from the villagers, named Shankar and played by Dharmendra, who has a sister (Karisma Kapoor) who falls in love with the younger of the landlord's sons, Karan. Unfortunate events happen surrounding the schoolmaster, who is contending in the elections, and his sister, which lead to several confrontations between Shankar and the landlord, especially when Shankar tries to get the villagers to stand up for their rights, much fighting and further problems when Karan comes home from college and finds Shankar and his father fighting each other.

Two things stand out in the movie: It has a very strong theme of approving of widow re-marriage, stating repeatedly that it is no sin to be a widow and that it is better for a young widow to re-marry (not exactly subtle, but there you go). The other, less pleasant, is a comedy sub-plot involving Shakti Kapoor in drag wooing Kader Khan. This all culminates in a song which is really one of the songs the world doesn't need, however, I am still going to share it:

1 comment:

Souvik Chatterji said...

Jaya Prada is one of the most accomplished dancers of bollywood films. She was unique in her classical dance performances in the film Shankaravaranam, and carried on the brilliant work in the film Sargam, opposite Rishi Kapoor.