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| April, 1999 Volume 5, Number 4 HOME EDITORIAL COVER STORY SPECIALS IMMIGRATION EVENTS CLASSIFIEDS HEALTH ARCHIVES |
Specials
MOVIE REVIEW: Zakhm (Hindi) Starring: Pooja Bhat, Nagarjuna, Ajay Devgan
This is a story about a Muslim woman falling in love with a Hindu South Indian Brahmin (Pooja Bhat and Nagarjuna). Set in the year 1960 (around) the two lovers struggle hard to keep the relationship going amidst a unrelenting superstitious Hindu mother and the still-not-so-understanding society. They both, however, are desperately in love. They start living together and give birth to Ajay. As a ten-year-old, Ajay struggles hard to understand the relation of his parents amidst his own misery as the society does not spare his feelings too. He's often called a bastard and is not treated well by the other parents. This main story comes as a flashback. The movie starts with Babri-Masjid destruction and the following Bombay riots. Pooja Bhat is burned alive by a muslim fanatic thinking that she's a Hindu. Ajay's brother (who believes he's a Hindu as Pooja doesn't reveal her religion to anybody except her elder son, Ajay) is into politics and the Hindu leader wants to make Pooja's situation a political game. The whole drama unwinds in the hospital where Pooja lies fighting death. Excellently directed by Mahesh Bhat, the film raises many issues adultery, religious bias, exploitation of religion by politicians without actually questioning the rationality. It doesn't even attempt to solve any ethical questions. All the director did is to narrate a story as best as he could leaving the final judgement on the viewers. This film really touched my heart. Excellent performance by Pooja, Ajay, and the kid who acted as boy Ajay. Nagarjuna too is fine and is very convincing as the Brahmin, struggling between his love and his religion. Deep inside, it seems, he too is scared of his religion, at least enough to be convinced by his mother about not marrying his lady love. Music is simply superb. Kreem did a very good job. Lyrics are very efficiently written. This is supposed to be an autobiography of Mahesh Bhat. Whether it's true or not, Bhat did a great job with Zakhm. As good as, if not better than, Arth. MOVIE REVIEW: Chudalani Vundi (Telegu) Starring: Chiranjeevi, Soundarya, Anjala Zaveri After a long time I must say, I've seen a reasonably good Telugu movie. Decent, well-directed and humorous. Chiranjeevi in his best form after a considerably long period of time. The story is about a young man coming to the city of Calcutta in search of his missing son. Here he meets Soundarya and other inmates of a huge rental building. The owners are Telugu speaking (Brahmanandam). Soundarya elopes to Calcutta with her boyfriend who in turn runs away with her gold jewelry. She meets Chiranjeevi and after learning about his background realizes that love is something more than mere physical attraction. She starts falling in love with him. Now coming to Chiranjeevi's flashback, he meets Anjala, falls in love with her. Anjala is the daughter of a mean industrialist and smuggler. She runs away with Chiranjeevi into a faraway jungle and starts living there happily with him. They get married and give birth to a boy. After the boy is around 3 or 4, the father tracks them down and kidnaps Anjala. He tries to get her married off to another rich fellow. Chiranjeevi comes, a ruffle follows, Anjala gets killed and the son loses his voice. He's taken away by the industrialist and Chiranjeevi remains abandoned. Once Chiranjeevi gets well he goes to Calcutta on a clue and tracks down the villain. In spite of the loose story, the screen play and direction are very well managed. Chiranjeevi has done extremely good. His performance is very low-keyed and he actually looked very smart. No blues, oranges and yellows! Telugu movies (at least a few) seem to be adopting new ideas though very slowly. For instance in this particular film we have a heroine who actually elopes with a bad guy and when the guy ditches, she instead of killing herself or wallowing in the misery (as is usually depicted) attempts at living on her own. She also quickly forgets the fool and falls in love with another (No, I don't mean a fool). This, I feel, is quite a daring step to take, and I highly appreciate the director for sending out the message that humans make mistakes and women are human too! ( I think a lot of times we tend to forget the fact). Music is good and one song especially is inspiring (Oh Maria). I wish we had more songs like this to inspire our youth into positive thinking. Anjala Zaveri is okay. Her dialogues never seem to coordinate with her actions, however. What can she do, poor thing? It's not her fault that she can hardly understand the language. Did you like this article ?
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Zakhm is a tightly packed, emotion-filled drama about a mother and a son. One
might not agree about the theme or the morals. But one cannot help aligning to the
feelings of the son and the mother as they deeply touch your very soul.