Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Deewaar: They just don't make them like this anymore

I mean, I’m not one to rant about The Dismal State of Cinema Today, but this is such a classic. Yash Chopra just got it right. I keep trying to write this review, and instead going back and rewatching all those iconic scenes. (Also the Aruna Irani song.) Deewar is about right and wrong and the line in between, and what happens when that line is drawn through a family.

The filmmakers did kind of take the idea and run with it.
Ravi and Vijay are brothers who with their mother (Nirupa Roy) are forced into poverty in Mumbai, after their father leaves town in disgrace due to being blackmailed in a labor dispute. Vijay, the elder, works so that Ravi can be educated and despite their circumstances, they grow up into very different men. Ravi becomes a polite Shashi Kapoor, with a B.A., a police inspector job, and a nice girlfriend (Neetu Singh). Vijay is Amitabh Bachchan, a dock worker who is forced to pay protection money to a local gang. He grew up working on the street, defending his mother, and literally carrying the sins of his father tattooed on his skin, so it’s not hard to see why he seeks a more secure life. He moves into the more lucrative world of smuggling, and buys his mother a new house and all the comforts he can give her.
Religious discord in the family.
But do you see that Vijay's badge is number 786? Do you think there might be some religious symbolism going on? I think there might be some religious symbolism going on.

Monday, March 23, 2015

And now I am hungry


Basically, I will watch anything if Parineeti Chopra’s in it, but I haaated Aditya Roy Kapur in YJHD. So I resisted seeing Daawat-e-Ishq for a while, but it turns out it’s pretty cute. Gullu (Parineeti) is a young women in Hyderabad, and her father (Anupam Kher) is looking for a husband for her. Unfortunately, the families of the educated men she considers her equals ask for a much higher dowry than her father can afford. After being humiliated when her boyfriend’s family asks her father for 80 lakhs of “help”, she cooks up a plan to catch a rich family asking her father for dowry, then threaten them with a case of dowry harassment and use the money she extorts to go learn fashion design in America.