Apaharan

I feel sorry for my Indian store guy. He's a decent quiet fellow probably Gujju, originally from Bombay. Everytime I borrow a movie from him, he tells me to bring it back in two days because its very "hot-selling". The last movie that I borrowed from him was Bunty aur Babli which stayed with me for 3 weeks. When I went back to return it, I said to him, "Sorry sir, thoda late ho gaya". He smiled and jokingly replied, "Yes, I will take from you a thousand days rental", and laughed. But you could see in his eyes when he laughed that if given the choice, if he weren't such a nice guy, he would really have taken a thousand days rental from me and kicked me out of his store. But he's a nice guy and nice people get taken advantage of by pricks like me.

So last saturday I borrowed Apaharan. This time my conscience gave me a hard time so by tuesday I was ready to watch it so I could return the movie today in just 4 days, a record of sorts. I liked the movie. It had a good storyline and no songs for the first hour and a half, which is always good. And when finally the only song in the movie made its appearance, it did so with appropriate warnings in the form of pre-song psychedelic lights, partial nudity and bar entry of hero, sidekicks and villain which gave me ample time to fast forward to the next scene and not see any part of it.

Ajay Devgan was awesome and did a good job without engaging in undue histrionics. Nana Patekar was scarily calm and didn't overact. There was very little gratuitous violence and when there was violence, it was short and to the point with very little generation of fake punching noises. Bipasha Basu appeared early in the film but left suddenly, probably because she had a date with John Abraham. She then reappeared very late in the film for a brief period of time, because I guess she had forgotten to collect her salary check and then left again not to return.

The story was very believable and Ajay Devgan's character had real pathos where you actually identified and commiserated with him. Also, I liked the moral ambiguity in the film. No snap judgements were made about the morality of characters by not painting them in black or white. Except for Nana Patekar, who was pure evil but didn't showcase his evilness explicitly by raping anyone. I think the three most powerful scenes in the movie were one, where Nana Patekar walks around his car raging about the police stopping him, then opens the trunk of the car almost casually to show a guy in the fetal position inside, then closes it so fast that you are left asking your wife, did he just show the police that he had a body in his trunk? What fucking gall, you say. The casualness of his demeanour was kind of creepy. The second scene was just before the end of the movie when father and son enjoy a moment of reunification. That was touching without being verbose. In fact the lack of verbosity, the ability to put the point across in an understated, subtle manner was one of the main reasons why I liked this film. The third scene was when Ajay Devgan realizes the ways of the world, gets hit by a car and begins to cry on the street. He cries well. I think more heroes should cry in Hindi movies, with the only caveat that they do so in a manner reminiscent of Ajay Devgan in that scene.

I think another characteristic of this movie was that the evil guy wasn't being deliberately evil for the sake of it. The movie depicted the breakdown of normal life in Bihar to such an extent that being evil has become necessary in order to survive, and has attained a kind of morality about it. Because morality is always relative. For example, killing someone in self-defense is moral.

And finally, the background music was stellar. I don't know who was behind it but buddy, you did a good job.

Ok now to things I found irritating in this movie. One was the relentless plugging of Ajtak, the hindi news channel. Enough already. Secondly, too many cellphone conversations in the movie. That was probably a plug for some cellphone company although I wasn't able to make out which one. Then, Bipasha Basu. She might as well have been a picture pinned up on the wall. I don't know why she had to open her own blog to plug this movie. She's in the movie for barely 5 minutes. You know, if the plot doesn't call for a female lead, then just do away with her entirely instead of having a token pretty face to plaster on the movie posters. And Bipasha looks kind of weird in decent clothes.

Ajay Devgan does a bad impression of a South Indian anna. And coloring one's face silver black is not the correct way to pretend to be a South Indian. I haven't seen any silver black colored South Indians.

The movie was also a bit depressing. The all-consuming corruptness of the system is depicted so realistically that it leaves one with no hope about the future of India. And in one way, the message of the movie appears to be that there is no way of fighting this corruption. There is no silver lining. But then again, this might actually be the case in Bihar. Who the fuck knows.

My wife had her own views about the movie. Women are strange. They watch the entire movie with rapt attention, asking you to pause it when they want to leave the room even for a few seconds, then when the movie ends, they look at you in disgust, saying "What a horrible movie, why did you get it, there's so much violence." So an argument ensued between the wife and me after the movie where bad things were said about this movie by my wife, and I, not to be left behind, said bad things about Bunty aur Babli just out of spite.

So, to conclude, good movie, good acting, very watchable. But I'm sure most of you have already seen it so this review is essentially a waste of space. But a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.