Two Yash Chopra favorites at IFFLA 2013
KABHI KABHIE, A COMPELLING MELODRAMA and CHANDNI, A BELOVED SOAP OPERA
by ALEX DELEON
One of the highlights of this year's LA Indian Film Festival was a three film tribute to iconic director of extravagant
Bollywood Romances, Yash Chopa, who passed away last year at age 80. SILSILA (1981) I had already seen on DVD but
this was a rare opportunity to catch two other Chopra landmarks on the big screen with an audience as originally intended.
"CHANDNI" ('Moonbeam', the name of the heroine) 1989 (186 mins) was above all a showcase for the energetic dancing talents of Actress SRIDEVI, who was at the time the most popular actress in Bollywood with a gigantic following. The story involving two overlapping love affairs with by then over the hill leading men (Rishi Kapoor and Vinod Khanna) is pure soap opera of the soppiest kind but SRIDEVIs many extended dance numbers, in and out of the rain (twice), and duets with Rishi in Swiss mountain settings (he is a bit clumsy compared to her, but who cares?) are so spectacular they are alone worth the price of admission. The story is worse than forgettable -- it is so contrived and soppy that a woman behind me (obviously not Indian) was giggling audibly at many scenes meant to be taken as tragic.
Basically the story is this: At the very beginning Sridevi is hounded and stalked with a camera by a rather overweight and slovenly Rishi ( no longer the sleek young guy he was in BOBBY ,1973) and she incomprehensibly responds to his ponderous advances falling deliriously in love. But he is from an upper class Delhi family and she is considered too low class by the snooty parents of Rohit (Rishi). Going against tradition he is determined to marry her anyway and courts her from a helicopter showering her with rose petals from heaven. Pretty fancy move, but a problem crops up -- the helicopter crashes and he ends up in a wheelchair, paralyzed as the result of the accident on the eve of their wedding. But she really loves him as is determined to remain at his side. Rohit crushed and full of resentment says he will not be pitied and shoos her off in an incredibly cruel manner. The family of course is glad to get rid of her.
She is heart broken and goes to Bombay to look for a job and a new life. There, in ridiculously contrived circumstances, she lands a job as the secretary of a wealthy older man, handsome Lilat (Vinod Khanna) who owns a travel agency and lives with his beautiful mother (Waheeda Rehman). He is far more attractive than chubby Rohit was even before the wheelchair, but he too has a tragic past --a true love he has never forgotten who died young. Well, okay --they fall in love, and moreover Lalit's mother, the still lovely Waheeda, unlike the hateful mother of Rishi, highly approves of Sridevi and encourages son to propose. On a business trip to Switzerland he does so from a phone booth and she accepts. Looks pretty rosy now, except for one slight hitch. Switch back to Wheelchair Rishi (Aargh) and his brother-in-law sidekick (Anupam Kher with Hair!) who encourages him to admit he still loves Sridevi and must go to Switzerland for special paralysis treatments. In Switzerland a miracle cure quickly takes place and our wheelchair hero is back on his feet. Of course he happens to meet Lalit and they become fast friends exchanging tales of lost and found love. What they fail to realize is that they are talking about the very same woman!. Lalit insists that wheelchair Rishi should stop off in Bombay and meet his new fiance. Now the great confrontation, but she doesn't let on to Lilat that his new friend is her old lover. Rishi at Lilat's insistence agrees to attend their wedding but gets terribly soused on the way there after Sridevi vigourously berates him for heartlessly kicking her out of his life -- serves him right -- right? -- Not quite. At the wedding, as the vows are about to be exchanged, Rishi enters drunk and topples down a flight of stairs suffering a concussion. Sridevi instinctively runs to his side and Vinod realizes she still loves the creep, whereupon he graciously cancels their wedding and bows out. Well, at least he still has a beautiful mother, Waheeda Rehman, to console him. The end title tells us "Love is Forever". I leave the theater thinking this is the soppiest pictures I have ever seen and feeling that she should definitely have stayed with Vinod, but then it wouldn't be a true Indian film or a typical bitter-seet Yash Chopra romance, would it?
Like it or not from today's perspective, CHANDNI, has all the melodramatic elements that appeal to indian audiences where incredible coincidences are taken for granted, and it remains even today as a heart warming memory for most people who saw it. Most Chopra films have a strong sense of place and this one offers a vivid portrait of Delhi in the first part of the picture when Rishi takes Sridevi on a hair raising motorcycle ride around all the monuments of the capital city. CHANDNI kept the careers of a couple of aging stars afloat and more firmly than ever established Sridevi as the pure white sweetheart of India --the girl next door who every Indian mother would love to have her son marry. Her costumes in the film created a whole new fashion craze in India, the "Chandni Look". In the nineties Sridevi's star began to be eclipsed by the likes of Madhuri Dixit, another fantastic dancer, and other younger beauty queens. However, just last year Devi registered a surprising comeback after a fifteen year hiatus, at age 49, as a middle aged sari wearing mother in New York forced to learn English by her sassy Anglophile family. The name of the picture is "Engish-Vinglish" and for that performance Sridevi was nominated for numerous best actress awards.
Sridevi at the premiere of English Vinglish
"KABHI KABHIE" 1976, (RT 117 mins) was shot at the same time as Chopra's early masterpiece "DEEWAR" and employed some of the same stars, Amitabh Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor, and Neetu Singh, in an entirely different kind of film. In Deewar Amitabh was the archetypal Angry Young Man, a crime lord in a deep action drama ending in fratricide, whereas in Khabi Khabie Amitabh is poet (as was his father in real life), and later a legitimate high level entrepreneur in a colorful romance of the type that woud become Chopra's signature from then on. The name of the film is acually the title of one the Amit's poems recited, sung, and repeatedly referenced in the film. This is where Chopra changed gears from gritty action drama to glossy romantic melodrama set in the homes of the super rich with western style interiors and the latest western dress and hairstyles for the men. Above all this is a film with style and the men's styles, notably the perfect rock star hairdos and clothes horse changes in nearly every scene featuring bell bottom slax and dazzling ties, sharp suits, colorful shirts and, especially in the case of Shashi Kapoor, scintillating plaid sportcoats, is practically an inventory of the best and hippest Western menswear fashions of the time. The interiors are an inventory of the best in western furnishings, sofas, fireplaces, etcetera, and the walls of all rooms are decorated with tasteful up-to-date abstract paintings. All as if to show that India was right up there with swinging London and New York in matters of taste, style, and fashion. Unbelievable set decorations and fantastic dance sequences in the Swiss Alps complete the picture and would soon become the Chopra trademark. Oh yes there was a story too -- a typically complex Chopra plot.
In college Amit (Anitabh Bachchan, now more intellectual than angry) wins Pooja's undying love (the strikingly beautiful Raakhee) with his poetry, but she is already promised to a very mod and cool looking architect, Vijay (Shashi Kapoor), so Amit marries this other incredible beauty, Anjali (the incredibly beautiful actress Waheeda Rehman) and takes over the family construction empire. Meanwhile Pooja and Vijay raise a son, the incredibly oafish Vikram = "Vicky" (Rishi Kaoor, real life nephew of Shashi) who falls in love with Pinky (Neetu Singh) the adopted daughter of the family doctor. Problem --she's never been told she was adopted and the revelation if made could be traumatic --which, in fact, when made turns out to be just that. Traumatized Pinky leaves Vicky, son of cool daddy Vijay, in the lurch and sets off to find her true mother who turns out to be Anjali, wife of Amit. But Amit never knew that Anjali had a daughter out of wedlock before they were married and this leads to major complications. In a quick insert we see that the father of Pinky was an air force pilot and his plane went up in flames upon takeoff just before they were to get married. Their natural daughter, Sweetie, becomes jealous of Pinky who has settled into Amit's household pretending to be Anjali's long lost niece. Meanwhile Vicky who has come chasing after Pinky is hired by Amit to be his construction foreman on a vast building project whose architect is none other than his sharp dressing father Shashi. Vicky and Pinky are now both living on Amit's estate but Sweetie has gotten sweet on Vicky and his flirtation with her does not sit well with Pinky. There is an amusing courtship on horseback but Sweetie is unaware of the previous relationship between Vicky and Pinky and just assumes that Vicky is now her meat. To complicate matters Shashi brings his still beauteous wife (Rakhee) along to the construction site not realizing that she was Amit's college sweetheart -- or that they are still in love with each other after all these years -- (Love is Forever!) -- When Vijay realizes that his wife and Amit were once lovers he laughs it off, but when Anjali (Waheeda) confeses that Pinky is not her niece but her illegitimate daughter, (the second big secret of the story) Amit freaks out and is on the verge of calling their marriage quits. At this tense moment Sweetie, who has found out that the apple of her eye Vicky, daddy's new protrege, is actually involved with Pinky, she freaks out, jumps on her white horse and charges hell bent on suicide into the Construction area where big time blasting is going on.
This leads to a rousing flamboyant finale with everybody chasing after Sweetie through near miss explosions and flaming woods. Sweetie is saved and Amit rushes back to the house where Anjali is packing, but he now realizes that love is forever, the past is the past, and sweeping her up into his arms proclaims his need for her undying love. All loose ends are tied up neatly as endangered relationships are restored and Pinky marries Vicky with Sweetie as the bridesmaid. The last frame is filled with the words "LOVE IS LIFE"
While this plot may sound somewhat soapy what holds it all together and maintains dramatic interest throughout is simply the personalities and star presence of the main actors, especially the older couples, Amitabh and Waheeda, Shashi and Rakhee. Amitabh is particularly intriguing as a brooding pipe smoking older man while Shashi Kapoor does his cool swinger bit with spotless aplomb.
The interaction between Bachchan and Waheeda Rehman, both superstars now playing an older couple, is mesmerizing. His interaction with Rakhee is also quite compelling. Shashi Kapoor is probably the most debonair western looking actor in all of Indian cinema and indeed fared well in a number of non-Indian films, an actor in whom the twain does meet seamlessly. As for Rishi Kapoor, he was much less roly poly in this one than in the later Chandni, but I still fail to see where his audience appeal was supposed to be located back in those days. Yash Chopra went on to make many lush extravagant over-the-top romances with suffering star-crossed and uncrossed lovers for nearly four decades -- right up until his death last year upon completion of his final film "Jab Tak Hai Jaan", another multi-starrer with all the Chopra elements in place. To westerners some of his pictures may seem a bit on the shaky side story wise, but he knew his audience inside out and gave them what they wanted and plenty more. All of his productions are lavish on a Cecile B. DeMille scale and his title in India as The King of Romance is undisputed. Among his final eulogies a typical phrase was "He taught us how to Love". Seeing some of his landmark films on the big screen here was a major plus at IFFLA 2013.
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