roti kapda aur makaan

and to think that for the first fifteen minutes or so i thought i had come across one of the unsung geniuses of hindi cinema.. like when a shadow on a wall speaks of the all pervasive disillusionment of the educated unemployed youth of the country, or when zeenat aman makes her very watery, very sultry entry into the film with ‘haye haye yeh majboori’, or even the other beaten to death song that makes its first appearance as a overcooked multiple imaged, glittery and surreal dream ‘ main na bhoolunga’; or when notes are thrown into water in front of the india gate only to dissolve into flowers; or the long shot love scenes when a restless camera moves from face to arm to face to wrist..

until the point that is when the story takes over and it all devolves into a tacky melodrama with a bad brother becoming good soldier (amitabh) and a good brother becoming bad by dealing in diamonds with aruna irani; and becoming good again after hearing indira gandhi in the year before the emergency give her republic day speech (in fact the pro congress rhetoric even made him scrawl ‘vote for congress’ on a slum wall in a fight scene ). then there is the ubiquitous love triangle between poor boy, good business man and sacrificing woman punctuated by one terrible song dripping in self pity and cunning emotional blackmail. as if that were not enough even the over the top tricks that had me at ‘hello’ made me cringe at ‘how are you?’- the rape scene for example when the underage belle , moushami chatterjee, is raped by leering dealers in roti, kapda aur makaans in a multiple imaged atta covered scene with echoing voices going “roti…..” “kapda….” “makaan…”; or the end when the icons of the honest labourer, honest cop, honest business man and honest soldier are about to be run over by a speeding train on a bridge when bharat saves them from being chopped up.

ugh for all of this and ugh for especially the ham handed bombastic idiotic patriotic nonsense that i assume made his films so popular and so unbearable.

and its not over… at home are ‘shor’, upkar’, kranti’ and ‘purab aur paschim’ that mukul got vcds of and we are going to watch soon. but that will be after i return from bangalore. out for 7 days from tomorrow.