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nadjacs
Reviews
Chaudhvin Ka Chand (1960)
pretty, but looks aren't everything
It's lovely, the music is excellent, and it is probably worth watching if you enjoy classic black-and-white movies, but I found it far from satisfying.
I can see that it was meant to be a tragic ode to brotherly love and friendship, the audience is pretty much beaten over the head with this. But in actual fact this is a thin veneer over an embarrassing objectification of physical beauty above all else. It seems to use love, but just superficial infatuation, pretty much just lust if you come down to it, as an excuse for completely childish and selfish behavior and the director seems to want us to see this as tragic and I can only assume we are supposed to feel compassion for Pyare and even more for Aslam, but it's really hard.
I'll leave the dated male-female relationships alone; they were the ideals of the time and the place and that's all that needs to be said about it.
But Pyare and Aslam confuse me. It seems that a man who spurns his mothers wishes (her only two wishes out of life, at that) and breaks taboos by sneakily watching his sister's friends when they think they are in private is not someone who would inspire the love that Aslam offers Pyare. It seems that Aslam should be chastising his friend and trying to get him to honor his mother and his obligations, but instead he just supports Pyare in his path to self-destruction. And in the end, when Pyare realizes exactly what has been going on this whole time and just what an idiot he has been, he doesn't actually try to fix anything, he doesn't learn and grow, he doesn't deal with the results of his stupidity. No, of course not, he just gives up and kills himself, leaving his ill mother devastated and his friend's cousin a spurned bride. Tragic? Maybe, but not the way I think it was meant to be.
Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959)
art ahead of its time
Reading some of the reviews makes me think that this film needs more context for an American audience and may not be fully appreciated if it is the first classic Bollywood movie one watches, but if you are interested in classic cinema (not just classic Bollywood) it really must be seen.
Yes, Sinha's wife and her family are caricatures, yes Rocky's character is ridiculous, yes the beginning and end are melodramatic (no more so than many other classics, though), but everything else is artistry. Sinha and Shanti both have excellent, minimalist dialogue and express themselves well through body language and facial expression without becoming caricatures themselves. Maybe I'm reading too much into it but I think perhaps the contrast between the flat portrayal of the anti-film characters and the realistic portrayal of the main characters is more than just an attempt to please the audience and is rather an attempt to focus on the true drama. As if to say, yes, the protagonists are suffering because of these problems, but it is their suffering that we want you to look at, not the situation that caused it.
The technical quality of the prints available (both picture and audio) are somewhat poor at times but for me this did not detract from my experience.
I can see why it was a failure in the box office at the time. It wasn't the type of story the mass market generally wants, and especially not at the time it was made, but it is also clear why it is now considered a masterwork.
Kurbaan (2009)
just another terrorist movie...
There was a bit of good acting scattered throughout and the music was decent, but the plot holes were large enough to drive a bus through, and I found the handling of Muslim characters extremely one-sided. Yes, there were a few moderate voices, but they got very little attention, making this seem pretty much 95% anti-Islamic.
The story following the FBI investigators was extremely choppy and that investigation was not believable. Leads such as fingerprints that should have been on the murder weapon in the club, or such as the license plates on the burned car were completely ignored as these supposedly-trained detectives stumbled around in the dark and waited for a reporter to solve all their problems.
The idea that a terrorist cell would not do even a cursory investigation of a new member right before an attack is also ridiculous.
I was however very impressed by the Hindi spoken by random New York Caucasians in the night classes. Shabash! Maybe mine would have improved faster if I'd attended more lectures on religion.