Kirathakudu (1986)

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If Kirathakudu didn’t have Chiru and Suhasini in the leads I am not sure I would have persisted. The first hour or so is very trying indeed. But then I would have missed out on an unexpected reworking of John Carpenter’s 1981 classic, “Escape From New York”. If I see Chiru plus subtitles, the DVD is an automatic purchase so I didn’t read anything about the film before I watched it. There is a voiceover about criminals and the government, but the concept wasn’t well translated in the subtitles. Imagine my delighted confusion when it started to seem somewhat familiar.

Chiranjeevi is Charan, a poor rich boy who just wants his father (Kongara Jaggaiah) to show him some affection. Charan spends his time winning every possible sporting and aeronautical trophy, beating people up, carousing and brooding in his room.

I enjoyed this sporting montage greatly, although it has prompted me to make a statement critical of Chiranjeevi.

His swimming style is splashy and inefficient and he would not have won a race against the under 9s in my swimming club. There – I’ve said it.

Maybe it’s not about winning the race, but about looking stylish on a lilo.

And making bad art.

He is a renaissance man, albeit one with questionable taste, a very bad temper and poor impulse control. He drinks heavily, and I think I was supposed to find this appearance a warning – but he looks so good!

Charan sees a quite unimpressive statue in a local emporium and runs afoul of Swetha (Suhasini) who has purchased the one of a kind piece. His reaction to finding out he can’t have it is extreme.

Swetha is a psychology student, and daughter of the local police chief. She is smart, self assured and is not intimidated by Charan. She is also a raging narcissist from the looks of her house – pictures of her adorn almost every wall.

It is interesting that Swetha is given career aspirations and a brain, and yet the dialogues are often very disparaging of women. Suhasini is such a graceful and intelligent actress that I was pleased to see her in a reasonably involved role. She is drawn to Charan both as an interesting psychological study and because he is Chiru – those eyes!

Charan goes off the rails due to the influence of vampy Hamsa (Silk Smitha). Only Chiru could make Charan watchable as he broods, rants and sooks over why his daddy doesn’t love him and then commits crimes as a cry for attention.  Showing that she is smarter than most people in the film, Swetha finds Charan’s hideout and dobs him in to the police. He kidnaps her in a dramatic getaway and their forced proximity accelerates the already budding love.

Having been ruined by a tramp, he feels that the love of a good woman will let him live like a decent person. Yes. Surely it would be unreasonable to expect him to take responsibility or just grow up. She then takes on the burden of reforming Charan and settles in for a lifetime of prison visits. I found their song fantasies quite amusing – Swetha was all flowers and pretty colours, while Charan was much more, um, hands on. One thing they did have in common was their terrible taste in art.

Silk Smitha is Hamsa.

Well, Silk’s arse does most of the work thanks to the constant upskirting camera, but she sneaks the rest of herself into shot occasionally. Hamsa is a Bad Girl who entraps Charan and forces him to turn smuggler (bad) and wear pleather (not so bad). Again, I had to growl a bit at Charan crawling out of her bed the morning after and treating Hamsa like dirt for giving him what he wanted.

Mothers in the film are sacred but women who have sex are evil  – so I wondered briefly about how these idiots thought babies were made. I am not exactly sure why sleeping with Hamsa would be enough to place Charan under Snake’s control, especially given his cavalier attitude to the law and society, but it seems he was besmirched and that was it. The bad girl is usually a thankless role, but Silk gets a few pithy lines and an excellent confrontational cheerleading dance.

The second half of the film took a sharp turn towards awesome. Maybe because Chiru changed into this outfit?

The police need Charan’s help to take on Snake and rescue his dad (and the Top Secret papers) as they could not get into the badlands themselves. When Charan stole a car ferry and chuffed off about 10 seconds ahead of the cops, he managed to hide the ferry within walking distance of a sari shop and judging by the number of Swetha’s outfit changes, remain undetected for days. The man is a genius and I can see why the police appealed to him.

Armed with an array of gadgets and with deadly time release microcapsules implanted in his neck, Charan sets off to save the day. He lands a glider on top of a skyscraper in the crime quadrant, on a mission to rescue his father and protect Indian national security. He had to take a glider as there was no way in by land. In a puzzling development, Swetha and Baby (the cab driver played by Nutan Prasad) decide they have to follow him, and drive in through the front gate in a taxi, sedately avoiding the bombs planted along the route. While the residents look like a left over mob from a B grade post apocalypse horror movie, Swetha is able to glide around in her pristine sari without being spotted. The scenes in this second half are more closely aligned to the original film and the mood is both darker and more absurd.

Snake (Kannada Prabhakar) is the kingpin in the sealed off criminal zone. While John Carpenter recreated Manhattan as his prison colony, Snake has to make do with a warehouse complex a few minutes from the downtown area. He has possibly the best DIY lair and henchmen I’ve seen to date, and I enjoyed deciphering the very random graffiti.

Snake is also a psycho killer on a very short fuse.

This guy is quite fascinating.

He plays his role of chief henchman with a blend of odd chicken inspired noises and statue postures, and walks with what I can only describe as a slow-mo mince. While wearing a dress (maybe toga).Who is he?

And the guy who would have been played by Bob Christo in a Hindi version of this is back! Last seen in Adavi Donga (the apple peeler Wolverine claws guy) here he is sporting a fake scar and some hideous trousers.

How does it end? Is there any doubt?

It’s a film by A Kodandarami Reddy so I expected crazy, and the second half delivers. I did have to chant the ‘it was made in 1985’ mantra a few times, but even allowing for that I was irritated by some of the dialogue relating to women and their evil powers. Grow up guys! Yandamoori Veerendranath gets a writing credit, but this is a reasonably faithful remake with the addition of loads of sentiment and a message about good family values.

Chiru and Suhasini inject a bit of class into their scenes, and the WTFery dial is set to 11. I’m totally biased due to Chiranjeevi but I’d give this a cautious 3 stars, for the curiosity value of the remake and for the dystopian second half.

Here is a snippet of Silk’s big song number – it is interspersed with the final action sequence so I won’t give away all the surprises!

Kalyana Parisu

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Kalyana Parisu (The Wedding Present) is the 1959 debut film by prominent director C.V. Sridhar. It features Gemini Ganesan, B. Saroja Devi and Vijaykumari in the lead roles but also has notable appearances from Akkineni Nageshwara Rao and K. A. Thangavelu amongst others. While at times the overly dramatic story tends to dip into farce, there is still much to enjoy in this love triangle about 2 sisters who both fall in love with the same man.

The film opens by introducing the two sisters and their mother who all live together. Vasanthi (B. Saroja Devi) is a successful college student and has a sunny and often mischievous disposition. Her elder sister Geeta (Vijaykumari) is more shy and reserved and is the breadwinner of the family through her work as a seamstress. To supplement their income the family decide to rent out the top floor of their house and end up with Bhaskar (Gemini Ganesan) as a lodger. Vasanthi and Bhaskar have some previous history as they were both at college together and the two indulge in some mild flirtation. This soon blossoms into romance and Vasanthi has dreams of marrying Bhaskar just as soon as she can get her elder sister married, that being the natural order of things.

However Bhaskar falls ill and in nursing him back to health, Geeta also falls in love with the handsome lodger. Once Vasanthi discovers her sister’s ambition she is thrown into confusion and has to weigh up her Geeta’s sacrifices to ensure Vasanthi could continue her studies against the dream of marrying Bhaskar.

After a lot of sighing, chest-heaving and general melodrama, Vasanthi decides to sacrifice her love for her sister and persuades Bhaskar that he should marry Geeta. Bhaskar also indulges in yet more sighing, chest heaving and melodrama before finally agreeing to the marriage. Geeta has no idea about her sister’s true feelings and Vasanthi manages to keep her tears under control until the deed is done and the married couple are on their way to Coimbatore.

However, as she would have realised if she’d stopped to think about it, all that Vasanthi has managed to do is make three people miserable instead of just one.  Geeta struggles to cope with a husband whose indifference she cannot understand while Vasanthi tells her suitor Raghu (ANR) that she cannot bring herself to love another man. The situation spirals even more out of control when Vasanthi ends up moving in with the couple and their young son after the death of her mother. Everything just gets more and more melodramatic as the tension between the two sisters’ increases and it becomes obvious that not everyone is going to make it to the end of the movie. Don’t expect a happy ending!

The very sweet love story which opens the story is lovely and shows exactly why Gemini Ganesan earned the titles of the King of Romance. Saroja Devi looks absolutely stunning and the two have plenty of on-screen chemistry. But as much as I love a good romance, what really appeals to me about this film is the totally over the top drama and good old fashioned histrionics that everyone indulges in. Once the two sisters are in conflict, every statement and every action have dramatic consequences all of which require much chest heaving and drama queen poses. When Vasanthi walks into a room where Bhaskar is sitting, he stands and moves to pound his head against the wall. When Vasanthi is reading a letter she reads a line and then pauses to grimace at the camera and clutch her chest in anguish! It’s wonderful and the three main leads make the most of the opportunity to chew the scenery as hard as they possibly can. Rather more unusually, the comedy track is notable for its comparable restraint and both K. A. Thangavelu as Sampath and M. Saroja as his wife Malini provide some quite welcome relief from all the drama.

Most of the film is concerned with the relationship between the two sisters and how this changes with the introduction of Bhaskar into the dynamic. Both Vasanthi and Geeta show great rapport in the early scenes and the gradual erosion of their bond is well portrayed. Although the idea of making such a sacrifice for your sister seems ludicrous to-day, director C. V. Sridhar does his best to show that Vasanthi felt she was making the right decision for a young girl at that time. Geeta’s jealousy and suspicion of her sister is nicely developed and her emotional rollercoaster is almost as wearing for the viewer as it seems to have been for Geeta. Bhaskar becomes less effective as the conflicted husband as the story goes on as his inability to put aside his feelings for Vasanthi and concentrate on his wife makes him seem rather weak. I do hope that the young child playing the role of Bhaskar and Geeta’s son managed to escape without any longstanding mental scars as he often seemed to be stuck in the middle between some quite realistic shaking and shouting.

The film is beautifully shot and it’s a shame that the print has deteriorated in quality making the image difficult to see at times, although that may just be my DVD. C. V. Sridhar uses the shadows and the various shapes made by screens and windows to good effect, often enhancing the oppressive feeling. There is also a significant plant which grows taller as romance blooms but withers away and dies when Bhaskar and Vasanthi break up. I do enjoy the way nature is a stand in for so much in Indian cinema.

The music by A.M Rajah is lovely and there are some beautiful songs. One of my favourites is this one which is part of the celebration of  Seemandham for Geeta when she goes home to have her baby.

Kalyana Parisu was a big hit on its release and certainly gave an indication that C.V. Sridhar would be a director to watch in the future. It was remade a number of times by C.V. Sridhar in other languages using a number of the same cast, and ANR took on the role of Bhaskar in the Telegu remake the following year. Nazrana, the Hindi remake starring Raj Kapoor and Vyjayanthimala also starred Gemini Ganesan playing the role of Vasanthi’s potential groom. It’s not a film I would watch again and again, but is one for those days when a slice of melodrama is required. All the lead actors are excellent, slightly excessive histrionics aside, but in particular Kalyana Parisu is worth watching for Saroja Devi who really shines. 4 stars.

Yari Dushmani

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Or:

Should you buy a DVD just because Sunil Dutt is wearing a hat on the cover?

 Yari Dushmani is a crazy masala bromance starring Sunil Dutt, Amjad Khan and Reena Roy among others. Directed at a cracking pace by Sikander Khanna, with an incident packed screenplay and zingy dialogue (Aziz Qaisi) and music by Laxmikant Pyarelal, it’s not really a film to analyse but there was loads to enjoy.

Apologies/warning: It’s Easter Sunday and I’ve been surrounded by a gaggle of toddlers under the influence of chocolate for the last few hours, so I’ll be taking the easy way out and relying heavily on pictures for this post.

I happened to start watching this at the same time that Beth was watching another Sunil Dutt film. The films were different but the reason for buying the DVDs was the same – the cover featured Sunil Dutt in a striking hat. I’ve bought a number of DVDs on the strength of the cover and have been bitterly disappointed to find that there were no giant parrots or women dressed as Cleopatra in the film. Naturally we were each curious to see if the movie lived up to the promise of headgear, and if the hats enhanced the film in any way. Oh, and was the film any good. Are hats a reliable indicator of entertainment in a film?

The story opens with two feisty and foul mouthed urchins (one is Master Bittoo but I’m not sure who the other kid is) living on the streets. They are resourceful, try to help people in need and they have a creative approach to finding paid opportunities.

They grow up into Shankar (Sunil Dutt) and Birju (Amjad Khan). Thugs, thieves, crims call them what you will. They have a significant cigarette lighter and a jaunty song (Hai Hum Galiyon Ke if you’re interested) which includes a fight, the hats on the DVD cover, and a flashback to their orphan days.

Pammi (Reena Roy) is also on the shady side of the law. She uses her charms to entrap men, and then threatens to cry rape unless they pay up. Her virtue is intact and she is a good bad girl, which is spelled out in the dialogue with her would be pimp Jumbo (Jankidas). She fleeces Shankar and Birju, but Shankar still comes to her aid when Jumbo threatens to sell her.

In an effort to make amends and help herself out of a tricky situation, she tells the chaps of a plan to rob a wealthy wedding and suggests they knock the place over first. This is a good idea as it includes Amjad Khan in bandleader get-up, and a qawwali featuring Reena Roy and Sunil Dutt (and more hats).

But Birju is in love with Komal (Daljit Kaur), a nightclub chanteuse. She sings about love, but only loves money. He cannot resist keeping the haul of diamonds to himself and he uses the loot to buy the discotheque Komal performs in, effectively buying her.

He gets a fancy house, flashy clothes, and a taste for the high life. His love for Komal seems to be tied to how much she is worth, and he expects her to entertain businessmen so he can win more contracts. His early Robin Hood ethic is nowhere in sight.

Shankar has no idea his friend betrayed him. He languishes in jail following the million dollar diamond heist, and obviously people are keen to know where he hid the gems. Doing time with him are murderer Peter Perera (Roopesh Kumar), thug Bhim Singh (Dev Kumar) and a little person. Bhim Singh is the brother of a notorious daku Darjan Singh (Shakti Kapoor). Peter killed his brother-in-law over 100 million dollars worth of diamonds.

Roopesh Kumar could not be accused of underplaying his flashback confession.

Shankar intervenes when Peter is beaten up. Now, I like to think I am not easily shocked or surprised but of all the things I fearfully anticipated happening when Shankar slung the dwarf over his shoulder, this was not one.

So added to the betrayal of friendship and the original theft, we now have a bigger stash of gems, a repentant murderer, a crazy and unrepentant daku, and a young mute boy who is the only living person who knows where the diamonds were hidden.

Shankar is released from jail, and thanks to Pammi he knows Birju has sold him out. Reena Roy gets some really entertaining scenes as Pammi outwits men who want to buy her, and uses the police to get rid of Jumbo. She is a smart girl in the midst of utter madness, and pretty handy in a fight. Reena Roy plays it to the hilt and I really enjoyed her presence in the film. Pammi moves into Birju’s house as his old friend. He suspects nothing, but she is working to protect Shankar from treachery. I will just digress again – what’s with the footprint motif on the bedhead?

Anyway. Birju makes several ill conceived attempts to kill Shankar as he cannot contemplate sharing his wealth.

He even sends a gang of Lego men (more headgear!) to beat up his old dost.

The two men journey into the hills, and things come to a head. Shankar leaves Birju with his neck in a noose and his feet precariously balanced on a handy wagon wheel. They go their separate ways. Or do they? Despite the silliness of the plot, they are both very good in their roles. I don’t think I’ve struck a Sunil Dutt film yet that hasn’t at least been interesting. And Amjad Khan gets to be more than a one dimensional baddie.

Everything and everyone converges on Girijapur, Peter Perera’s home, and the location of the priest (Bharat Bushan) who received his last confession. As with all secrets, everyone knows that the priest knows, and various parties set out to make him talk.

Shakti Kapoor and his gang raid the village in search of loot, interrupting a comedy wedding (Tun Tun and Rajendranath), and shoots the priest. And here is where I learned something never mentioned in my 12 years in a convent school.

So that’s how priests are made. My Jesuit friend will be gutted he wasted so many years studying. Whether for spiritual or other reasons, Sunil Dutt starts wearing a pith helmet.

Amjad Khan meanwhile decides to move into the village and impersonate the police, perhaps for the hat or maybe for the roomy uniform.

Reena Roy develops sharp shooting skills and has a nice line in 70s frocks and the occasional cap. She and Shankar are in love but I am not sure how that works with his being a priest and all. She is as active in defence of the village as he is, and she is also the caretaker for Komal who has turned up, pregnant and rejected by Birju. Pammi usually has a gun in her hand and the villagers accept her orders. And they develop some excellent defences including bombs and disguising themselves as haystacks.

Sunil gets to, well, joust in one fight with Shakti so I guess they felt the pressure to be really really macho.

The climax of the film involves gunfire, explosions, young Munna the no longer mute being tossed around like a rag doll, lots of punch ups and a moral dilemma. Will Birju finally value friendship over sparkly stones? Or will he take the money and run?

You’ll have to watch it to find out. But one thing I will share is a foolproof method for despatching Shakti Kapoor – the pointy end of a crucifix.

Happy Easter!

Oh I suppose I should make this a happy post. Here is how things look at the end:

And a little bit of advice next time you shop for DVDs.