Alternate Movies

Kalpana lajmi is another indian female director who has taken few good movies. Her well known movie is 'Rudaali' which won dimple kapadiya the best actress award and it was the official oscar nomination from india.

Lalitha lajmi

Kalpana Lajmi was born into the famous Guru Dutt family. She was the daughter of guru dutts younger sister Lalita Lajmi,a painter. She was shyam benegal's assistant director for a long time, before she took her first feature film "Ek Pal", starring Nasrudeen and shabana. The movie supposedly a trend setter brought her recognition. Her second movie Rudaali scaled even more heights.Since then she has made a few movies like Darmiyan, Daman, Kyon etc. Even though her latest movies have been insignificant ones, the first two movies have found a place for themselves in the history of indian cinema.



One common thing about Kaplana's movies where its subjects on women issues and the music of bhupen hazarikha.All her movies had the music of bhupen hazarikha, she even assisted him in few movies that he directed.

Rudaali

Daman

Links:
kalapana chat transcript

Lal salaam is one of the very few indian movies that dealt with naxalism.The movie is supposedly a loose story weaved around various real life incidents.

---------------Story----------
The movie is the story of oppressed tribals rising against their oppressors.Kanna (Sharad Kapoor) is a adivasi who is on the way of becoming a doctor.Rupi (Nandita Das) is his love. Ghisu (Vijay Raaz) his brother is intrested in the naxalite movement and dispite his warnings, he joins the naxalite movement after being humiliated by a Forest Ranger (Akhilesh Mishra).Rajjaiya (Makarand Deshpande) the naxalite leader takes him in and soon rupi also joins them after being humiliated by the police inspector Deshpandey (Sayaji Shinde).what happens to the naxals and what happens to khanna rupi love story is the movie
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The movie to a large extent is neutral and gives every view point on the problems of the adivasi's.It doesn't sensationalize anything and is very realistic.It also talks about the speedy and violent justice provided by the naxalites, which attracts the adivasi's to take up naxalism.But that is the only important thing that is conveyed.An open ended story & a neutral viewpoint that shows all the sides makes the whole movie purposeless.

In Aakrosh, govind nihlani hits us hard with the problems of the adivasi's & the failure of the govt & judicial system without much violence. But here even with repeated scenes of govt high handedness and oppression the movie hardly impresses.

The different movie which deals with naxalism but not a hard hitting one.

Credits:
The movie has an impressive cast though.

Nandita Das .... Rupi
Sharad Kapoor .... Kanna
Makrand Deshpande .... Rajayya
Vijay Raaz .... Ghisu
Rajpal Yadav .... Dhattu
Akhilendra Mishra .... Rathod (Forest Ranger)
Sayaji Shinde .... Inspector G.C. Deshpande


Music:
The other good thing about the movie is its music. Music is by hridayanth mangeshkhar and lyrics by Gulzar.All the female songs are by lata mangeshkar.
This big 3 came together for the movie after 10 years, their last one was lekhin.

Chand Gufa Mein,Hunkara Jage and Mitwa are good numbers.

usha,latha,hridayanth,asha and meena mangeshkar


Listen to the songs here

Links:

Naxalism in india
Lata and hridayanth mangeshkar

Step into the cinematic world of the mangeshkhar sisters.Sai parajpaye's saaz is supposedly the cinematic version of asha bhonsle's real life.

-------------------Story--------------------
Sisters Mansi (Aruna Irani) and Bansi (Shabana Azmi) are the daughters of Vrundavan(Raghuveer yadav) a marathi stage play artist.After the death of their father the elder sister mansi makes it big in cinema.Bansi also wants to acheive something in the music world.Mansi thwarts her moves, bansi breaks her relationship with her sister and becomes a famous singer.she is at the peak of popularity but she looses her voice, will she get her voice back, what happened to the sisters is the rest of the movie.

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Sai has taken life of one famous personality and explored that person as a star singer,a women in public life,mother,lover,wife,musician and a professional. As a women, bansi's life is an inspiring one.From a submissive house wife she become an independent woman, a professional singer and a well known star.The transformation, wasn't an easy one.She had to sacrifice so much, she had to stand up against her husband , sister and follow her heart to her destiny,her calling, the world of MUSIC. sai paranjpaye's idea of capturing the life of a famous star as an inspiring independent women was good. But i think she failed somewhere in the execution.

Because the movie is based on real life characters and a melodramic story line, sai looses her edge.There is no simplicity, humor and sweetness in the movie.The screenplay involves too many characters and is not clear, sometime it feels like it is just a sequence of events that doesnt connect to the central theme.You can see the vintage sai at the starting of the movie, when the movie is about the two little sisters growing up, later it become biographical.

There is an interesting scene where bansi talks with her psychiatrist in a restaurant. She tells him the sad story of her lover who dies in an accident.The already depressed singer is very sad at the end of the story, as soon as she finishes the server in the restaurant comes up to her and asks for her autograph. she is forced to switch the mask from a fragile women to a celebrity. she acknowledges him and signs for him.The down sides of being a celebrity.



Ayesha Dharker
Credits:
Good acting by zakir hussain.The maestro never shows a sign that he is an inexperienced actor.Yogita deshmukh of kairee plays the role of young Bansi and Ayesha dharkhar(Terrorist) comes as the daughter of bansi.



This movie is a makeup man's nightmare and i guess Abhay mohite tried did his best.The two veteran actress come as young sisters with eye bags.

Bupen hazarika

Music:

Music is by 4 music directors.Bhupen hazarika,Raj Kamal,Yeshwant Deo & Zakhir hussain and they do justice to the proverb "Too many cooks spoil the broth".All the songs have a different feel and as most of the songs are singers singing for some music director, the sai paranjpaye's trade mark of beautiful songs blooming out a nice situation is lost.The peppy western "kya thumney hai keh diya","jaya veera","raat dhalney lagi" stands out from the rest of the songs.



Songs
1)Jai Veera
2)Sunney waaley sun lete hain
3)Bhadal ghummad ghummad(1)
4)Phir bhor bhai jaana
5)Badal chandi barsaye
6)Raat dhalney lagi
7)Neediya hai sapna hai
8)Lehraye Tiranga
9)Kya thumney hai kehdiya
10)Bhadal ghummad ghummad(2)

Awards:
Javed Akthar bagged the 1996 National award for best lyrics.

winnie paranjpaye

Trivia:
#)Bhupen hazarika appears in a song as a music director
#)winnie paranjpaye appears for a few seconds in a party scene
#)The movie was the result of shabana azmi's casual question on why sai hasn't made a movie on the famous singer sisters.

Links:
Varsha bhosle on her mother asha
Shraddha pandit

WOW.what a movie. This is the boldest indian movie that i have ever seen.This movie is well constructed and makes a clear point about the society's attitude towards men and women. This movie might not go down well with lot of peoples as it breaks some important rules of the society.This movie is not for everyone and definitely not for the conservatives.

The movie elaborates on one issue that was mentioned in sai paranjpaye's disha. The needs of women left behind by the men who go to work in cities. The story is set in a remote village in gujarat.Men folk here, like many other villages in india got to the cities to work ,leaving behind there families. Here that syndrome is at the extreme, pretty much no man is there in the village. Aruna explore the problems that arise out of this migration and how the society in general is different when it comes to men and women.

---------------story------
Mansukh (Nasrudden shah) after working for a long time in dubai, returns to his native village. This is the village where all the men have gone to work in the cities. The lonely women of the village are all excited with the arrival of mansukh and many are after him.Especially sukhi(Neena gupta) and remma lagoo.Taku (Hema malini) wife of amarji(vinodh khanna) is a women with an attitude. She is an independent and strong women who is different from the group. Mansukh becomes interested in her and he goes after her. After his persistent attempts he succeeds they start having a relationship.

After a while mansukh leaves the village.The women sukhi and Taku later find out that they are both pregnant.How they deal with that pregnancy is the movie.
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This is a staggering movie that shakes some of the fundamental rules of a hindu society.It talks about equal opportunity to females on all aspects.Unlike many directors who advocate for equal opportunity without much alteration of the current social setup, aruna talks about giving those oppurtunity, even if it means changing the basic rules of the current social setup.

The movie starts almost like a soft porn. I was wondering how a women director like aruna raje has taken a movie like this, the movie turned around and became a strong women's liberation voice.

The movie starts with the introduction of the village characters through a postman(harish patel).Later,the movie targeting the men folks on there attitude towards women, hooks them with a common man's dream story. A man in a village filled with longing women. Then it slowly turns and constructs through various threads to tell how women is differentiated in the eyes of the society ,what a baby means to a women and what is real manliness.

The movie has many small threads and uses many characters. But none of the characters are unimportant, every small character deals with different issues to tell the plight of the women.Aruna's screenplay should be commended for the way it integrates all the issues with takku's problem as the central point.

Jhumkhu(Ila arun) for example looses her son in a fire accident and is forced to do the funeral without her husband, as he is not able to come to the village. she goes through that trauma all alone. She almost becomes insane on that loss, this character is later used to convey the message that whether it is an accident or an abortion, the trauma of loosing a child for a woman is the same.Like Jhumku there is a story behind every women character, and they have one problem or the other because of the fact that they are woman.

The movie clearly puts the double standard followed for men and women through various village characters.Mansukh's father in the panchayat blames the women of the village to be punished, without saying anything about his son who was responsible for everything. The movie also points out the hypocrisy of the society which says it is ok to hide the truth rather than reveal it openly.

Credits:
The movie has good cast. Mohan Agashe another great actor who is in all good movies, but never gets any significant role has got a cameo in this movie. He comes as the impulsive roopji.vinod khanna is ok and hema malini falters at lot of places.

Vinod Khanna .... Amarji
Hema Malini .... Taku
Naseeruddin Shah .... Mansukh
Neena Gupta .... Sukhi
Reema Lagoo .... Mother of 2 boys (as Rima Lagoo)
Ila Arun .... Jhumku
pallavi joshi .. bombay neighbour
Mohan Agashe .... Roopji
Harish Patel .... Narrator/Raojibhai (Mailman)
Achyut Potdar .... Ramji

Again aruna’s hand is everywhere in the movie.story, screenplay, costumes, editing, direction and production by Aruna Raje

Music:
Music director for the movie is sharang dev, son of Classical maestro Pandit Jasraj’s
1)Aaye raath pe savar
This is probably the decent song in the movie.The song is set in the back drop of a fair and gujarathi folk dance.
2)There mere bairan
3)Delhi mei dil naa laage

Trivia:
*)Aruna Raje supposedly made Rihaee, inspired by a real story of a woman who had the courage to refuse abortion of a child that did not belong to her husband.

*)I read somewhere that Aruna raje was planning to do a sequel of Rihaee, not sure what happened to that.

*)The movie opened with dedication to smitha patil.Rihaee was released in 1988.

A very daring and different story.

This is the first film of the Aruna vikas pair.It is a simple story told in a nice way.Good screenplay keeps you engaged all through out the movie.

---------story---------
Vinod Joshi(Vinod Khanna) and his wife Meena Joshi(Shabana Azmi) are living happily. Meena receives a letter from vinod's ex colleague mann singh(Utpal Dutt), accusing her husband for the murder and robbery that happened in there bank a few years ago. Meena starts doubting her husband, and that brings a rift and unhappiness in the family. whether her doubt turns out real or not is the story.
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Good acting by everyone. Vinodh khanna, shabana azmi were good in there respective roles, but the man who stole the show was utpal dutt. He is just awesome. As usual he does the role well without much effort .He has given a great performance as a slightly demented ex colleague of vinod.


The movie grips u from the word go.The credits role on a murder sceen.When the credits ended the scene was that of shabana with lots of makeup running on the beach in slow motion and there was a close up smiling shots(Oh my god, someone save me ). vinod khana was riding a horse on the beach, for a second i thought to myself whether i was seeing the old cinthol soap advertisement?. I started having my doubts about the movie. Thank god that was a dream and the movie took off right after that scene. The movie keeps you engaged right from there, within a couple of scene you come to know about the murder and the suspense is maintained all through out the movie.

The arunavika pair has to be mentioned for there pacey screenplay.Only thing that i didn't like about the movie was an item number song. They could have done without that.

Credits:
Arvind deshpande

The credits said introducing arvind deshpande and suhas bhalekhar. suhas bhalekhar is the same guy who comes as the servant in gehrayee.

Suhas bhalekhar

Arunavikas are everywhere in the making of the movie. From script, editing, direction art direction, costume, background music organization to the co-production of the movie.

Music:


Music is by Vasant Desai.The movie started with obituary messages to him. Guess he died in the middle of the movie. May be that is why aruna vikas name is in background music arrangement. Lyrics by gulzar.This song has one vaniji duet with rafi.

The movie had 5 songs.
1. Do Naino Ke Pank Laga Kar - Kumari Faiyaaz
2. Ek Dil Hai Ek Jaan Hai - Rafi, vani jairam
3. Meha Barasne Laga Hai - Asha
4. Ye Kahan Aa Gai Main - Asha
5. Abhi Na Parda Girao Thehro - J K Banerji

Aruna Raje is another women director who took some very different movies.Aruna raje joined with her husband vikas desai and took movies in the name of ArunaVikas (Shaque, Gehrayee, Sitam).They were initially an editing(giddh, masoom) pair who took to directing later.The arunavikas pair gave some realistic and different movies. But later when she started taking movies on her own, she made hard hitting feminist movies like rihaee.

Aruna was studying medicine at Grant Medical College when she quit and joined the FTII, Pune. Having passed out of FTII with a gold medal in 1969, she was the first trained woman technician in the industry. But despite her qualifications, being a woman in a male-dominated field was difficult. She confesses: “Though my ex-husband and I worked as a team, I had to work 10 times as hard as him to prove I knew my job.” But, after a while the cast and crew of the movies that she worked on, accepted her after realizing her expertise.more

My Reviews of Aruna Raje movies
Shaque
Gehrayee
Rihaee

Links
Aruna in hindu
aruna interview
Aruna Raje - A Tough Director

Saathsaath is a different love story. A love story that does not stop with lovers walking into sunset.It also talks about what happens after they walk into the sunset.

----story--------
Gitanjali Gupta(Deepti Naval) joins a new college.she comes across Avinash(Farooq Shaikh) a socialist and a part time writer.They both fall in love with each other.They get married against the wishes of there parents and start there own life. What happens to them, do they succeed or not is the rest of the story.
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A simple love story told in a beautiful way. It does not go through the usual route of depicting lot of drama about the couple's economic struggle. It is more from a personal level, the differences that creeps up between them and how two people who lived in a dream world face the real world. It is very realistic and to the point.

Cast:
The movie has the beautiful pair of farooq and deepthi naval. Apart from them there are other familiar faces. A.K. Hangal is deepthi's father and Sudha Chopra is a professor at college.Satish Shah,Rakesh Bedi,Kiran Vairale and Neena gupta are friends at college.

Music:
Music is another great highlight of the movie.Music director is jagjit singh.who has composed some very good songs for this movie, including the awesome "Thum ko dekha" by javed akhthar.

listen to the songs here



In 1980, Jagjit agreed to sing Javed Akhtar's poetry for a low-budget film, "Saath Saath", without bothering for financial rewards. Raman Kumar, the director, could not spend much at the recording studio, but Jagjit footed the bills. A similar movie venture, "Arth", in the same year saw Jagjit and Chitra Singh's popularity climb higher and higher. Even now, "Arth" and "Saath Saath" are one of HMV's highest selling combination cassettes ever.more



Links
javed akthar website
profile of javed akthar

Again another movie that comes with the sensitivity of sai paranjpaye.Disha carries a strong social message compared to her other movies. It deals with the problem of migration of villagers. It explores what makes the villagers to migrate to the cities ,the social implications of migration and how things could be changed in the villages through the life of two villagers, Vasant Mandre(Nana Patekar) and Soma(Raghuvir Yadav).

--------------story--------
Parshuram Sarpat(om puri) is soma's brother.who lives with his wife Hansa(Shabana Azmi) and his children's.He plays the role of this poor villager who is obsessed in digging a well in the rocky terrain.

Vasant and soma are from a drought ridden village. Vasant's father Dashrath Mandre(Nilu Phule) finds him a girl phulwanti(Rajshree Sawant) and arranges a lavish marriage for vasant.Debt and Drought driven both vasant and soma move to bombay. They live a hard life in bombay, sharing a single room with 20/30 guys and taking shift to sleep etc. At the same time many changes happen back home in the village. They are forced to take decisions on there stay in bombay. what decision they take is the climax.
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Every day big cities like bombay take 100's of immigrants. These immigrants step into a city that is already crowded and breaking at its seam. These immigrants are allured by money and the glamor portrayed in the regular movies. In a regular movie, when a villager migrates to the city there is always a heroine to make him rich or in a song he hard works and becomes a billionaire from a beggar. These kind of images makes the villagers think that immigrating to cities shouldn't be a problem at all. Sai on the other hand goes to give a true account of a immigrants life .The problems the villagers face after coming to a congested city like bombay and social impact of it in their village. A couple of movies like this which gives a true picture of the living and working conditions of immigrants will go a long way in changing the immigration idea of the villagers.

Sai in her own words tells what prompted her to write a story like this.

About fifteen years ago, I met a man in Naigaom in rural Maharashtra, branded a madcap by his village. He had been digging a well in his small patch of arid land, convinced that there was water down below. He had the last laugh. He struck water after sixteen years of digging. Over the years, I came in contact with man mill workers, immigrants all. Villagers come to Bombay in search of work. I visited their dingy dorms, galas- where men slept in shifts. Forty to one room. Their living conditions shocked me, but what evoked profound admiration was their cheerful spirit and valiant tenacity in the face of all odds. Their heroic struggle made a deep impression on me. The well digger and the Bombay mill-workers haunted me for a long time. Disha is the outcome of this long association. It is a film about the people who keep flooding into the `city of no return.

sai has nicely woven her own experience into the story and end the movie positively.

Good acting by everyone. The cast also includes Joy Sengupta, Sayaji Shinde and many other familiar faces. Achyut Potdar comes as the manager of a bidi factory.

We always hear stories where the good guy is tested but he wins at the end. Confirming our belief that good/truth will always triumph and the bad guy will be punished for his mistakes. But life is not a fable where truth triumphs and the slow and steady wins. Reality is harsh, reality is a place where dreams crash. In katha, Sai talks about reality in the lines of tortoise and hare story to point out how we ignore the unglamorous right choices and go after the glamorous wrong ones in our life.

---------story--------------
The tortoise of katha is Rajaram Purshotam Joshi(Naseeruddin Shah) and the hare, Bashudev bhattacharya aka bashu (Faroque Sheikh).Rajaram is a text book example of a good guy.He is a kind hearted, helping and introverted person. He has a steady job and lives in a flat where everyone takes advantage of his helping nature.In comes his college friend Bashudev aka bashu. Bashu is a thorough manipulator, who sweet talks people and uses his charisma to get things done.

Bashu races a head of rajaram in terms of his popularity at the flats, position at his work place and more importantly with sandhya, rajaram's secret love. where does this race end?. Whether the tortoise rajram beats the hare is the climax.
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Again sai parajpaye comes out with a brilliant screenplay. which is funny, realistic and different. You can pretty much write a book called "sai paranjpaye and the art of story telling" by just analyzing chashme buddoor and katha.

Her creativity is seen in many scenes in the movie. The movie actually starts with a grand mother telling the tortoise & rabbit story to her grand son. The credits are shown on the cartoon of the tortoise & rabbit story. The cartoon comes up at the end also, to figuratively convey the lifes of bashu and rajaram as hare and tortoise. Like her earlier movies there is a creative dream sequence in this movie also. There is a scene where rajaram dreams his office females as evil women who force him to eat the apple of sin and sandhya his loves comes as a savior. Another creative and interesting thing that she used in the movie was the photograph of rajaram's parents.




The movie has a good cast.Nasrudeen and farooque sheikh playing the role to perfection. The egoistic anirudh of sparsh becomes the kind hearted and introverted rajaram in katha. Nasrudeen is just awesome in this movie.Its a role where he is always manipulated and taken advantage off. He is one of those introverted characters who does not know how to express himself properly. He acts through untold words and subtle expressions conveying his inabilities to break his own soft nature. It is hard to imagine that he is the same guy who came as subeidhar in mirch masala. Fantastic performance by him.

Farooque sheikh who comes as the soft spoken good guy siddharth in chashme budoor comes as the manipulative bashu. He has also given a great performance. He is the easy going guy, who is always with a smile, a genuine warmth, sweetest of words and an easy feel to charm anyone he meets.

The movie is humorous and light hearted. It is light hearted to the level that it fails us to make us feel the pain of rajaram. I thought more emotional scenes for rajaram would have added so much to the movie. But sai has stayed away from the emotional scenes.The movie ends in a climax that will make many feel unjust.But who said life is fare.



Credits:
Sai parajpaye entire family is in the movie.Her husband Arun Joglekar, song gautam and daughter vinni are all in the movie.Sudha Chopra comes for a scene to sing Thum sundar song for farooque and mallika.Vinod doshi the premier chairman again comes in this movie.But only for a couple of scenes as a guest in a party.The credit said Tinnu Anand and sarika, i was not able to find them in the movie.

Music:
Music is by Raj Kamal and lyrics by indhu jain.Music again is great in the movie.It is sad that music director like rajkamal didn't get many movies.The songs in this movie are so simple and pleasing.It has four songs.And 3 of the songs start with simple repetitive words.

Kaun Aaya
This is the first of the two songs in the movie that involves everyone in the flat and uses one simple and common hook word.Basu has arrived.The flat is buzz with curiosity.who is this new guy??.They start singing kaun aaya(who has come?).The group song is sung by various tenents, and the beautiful voice of sandhya ends the song(with some beautiful expressions from deepthi naval).

listen to the sample here

Tum sundar hoo
Bashu acts in Padambhushan Vijay Tendulkar's play staged for the flat peoples.In the play he says thum sundar ho many times to sandhya the heroine .The scene later moves on to a song that starts with those same words.An enjoyable melody with the romantic and playful facial expressions of farooque sheikh and the ever pleasing smile of deepthi naval. The simple words Thum sundhar hoo(You are beautiful) becomes the catch words for this song.After the first paragraph it switches to a different music.A jazzy one with the same starting line sung by sudha chopra for a different pair and the degradation of the beautifully melody and the visuals are completed with the third version. This time a discoish techno version. The song which started so wonderfully comes to a pathetic end.The 3 different format where used to show tastes of 3 different peoples.Through the song Raj kamal shows us that his strength is in classical melodies and not in the hip modern musical version. Well the first version sticks and the rest are forgotten at the end of the song.




Kya hua
Another song with simple words. The song comes when the flat peoples comes to know about the marriage engagement of sandhya. There is again a buzz in the flat, everybody is curious. the simple word that one uses to enquire "kya hua"(what happened?) becomes the hook word for this one. The song which has the joyous occasion feel is decorated with chorus and shenai's. It cuts to a kind of techno and un syncing interludes to match the visuals.

listen to the sample here

Meiney
Rajaram is very disappointed. He is not able to sleep, he vents out his frustration in a melody. who else can sing a melancholy here. None other the greatest comes to deliver a wonderful melody. A la kishore kumar song. A beautiful melody from the golden voice.

Awards:
Best Regional Feature Film : Katha (Feature Film) 1982

Trivia:
On a earlier post zero told me that.Angered by the producer Mr.Basu bhattacharya's late release of Sparsh. Sai Paranjpye named the manipulative Farookh Sheikh character in Katha as Bashu.

Links
Mallika Sarabhai
Vijay Tendulkhar movies
Farooque sheikh
Basu Bhattacharya

The gory violent ones, the uncreative one, the story that is remade the millionth time, the highly melodramatic ones and many more types of movies have come in indian film scene. But this one is different. It is a beautiful flower in midst of those garbage’s. A movie which is realistic, clean , funny, sensitive and brimming with sweetness. I would say this is probably the most sweetest movie ever made in india. At least i for one haven’t seen such a clean and delightful movie filled with innocence and simplicity. This movie for me shows the amount of innocence that our movies have lost in the past 25 years.

------story----
CB tells the story of 3 roommates. Siddharth Parashar(Farooq sheikh), omi(Rakesh Bedi ) and Jai Lakhanpal (Ravi Vaswani).Enters Neha Rajan(Deepti Naval) in there life. Both omi and jai go behind her and fail. But they project as if they were successful in wooing her. But in reality neha falls in love with siddharth. When omi and jai come to know that, they try to sabotage their relationship, what happens to there plans is the end.
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Not much of a story isn't it. But the movie is sheer magic because of the screenplay. The characterization and the funny tone of the story makes it one sweet romantic movie. Our lives as such has so many funny moments that we don't have to make exaggerated slapstick comedy scenes to make peoples laugh. chashme buddoor points those funny moments. whether it is neha lost in her own world practices singing at the bus stop or omi and jai's lies to the others about how they impressed neha even though they failed to do so, or the usual problems of the room mates, these are scenes that can happen in our own lives.Those kind of realistic scenes and screenplay makes this movie more closer to us.You would have definitely encountered the characters of this movie in real life or probably you could be the one.



The movie is a show case of sai's creativity. The movie starts with credits on photographs of leaders like gandhi, nehru etc. That is the first still and the second still the great leaders are replaced with a still of semi nude girls representing the preference of different room mates. From the start of the movie itself you will know that this movie is going to be a different one.



Few of my favorite funny scenes in the movie are
#)scantly clad Omi and jai jumping from the roof seeing neha at there door steps.

#)omi attempts to impress neha,he goes to her house. After seeing him neha thinks that he is a plumber and asks him to repair the sink. After failing in his attempt, heartbroken omi comes and sits in a park. A pair comes and sits next to him. First the women sits near him, but the guys looks at omi and asks her to sit on the other corner and he sits next to omi.The heartbroken, visible dejected omi listens to them talk

Man:Darling
Women:yes darling
Man:kuch nahi bus,(Nothing, just like that) darling darling

omi at the height of frustration leaves the place.A simple scene made funny. When omi narrates how he impressed neha, he explains that he sat in the same chair and the original lover guy was sitting next to them alone and was looking at them dejectedly.



Sai paranjpaye brings her female sensitivity and sweetness to all the characters in the movie.I wish she had made more movies like this.

Music:

Music is by Rajkamal.



1)Is nadi ko mera -Shailendra Singh, Haimanti Sukla
Omi dreams about neha and sings a duet in the old kings and queens fashion.


2)Kaali ghodi dwar khadi -Yesudas, Haimanti Sukla

I have heard kahan se aaye baddra so many times in the KJY hindi hits, but i didn hear kale godhrey till i saw the movie.I was delighted to hear this song. what a wonderful song.Kali gode dhwar khadi(black horse is standing outside) is sung by deepthi naval at her music class.The song shows the funny scenes of how deepthi practices her songs at public places. She practices her song in the mind with hands going up and down with the swaras of the song.Singing Kali gode dhwar khadi at the bus stop, she utters "kali ghodi pe ghorey saiya chamukhe" there comes our hero Farooque sheik in black yezdi.


3)Kahan se aaye badra -Haimanti Sukla, Yesudas
The pick of the albumn is this song.A vintage KJY song.


Listen to the songs
#) Kahan Se Aaye Badra

the other songs are

4)Ansoo ki aarti -Haimanti Sukla
5)Pyar lagawat -Haimanti Sukla, Shailendra Singh


Unfortunately the full version of "khali ghodi" and "is nadhi ko" are not available anywhere on the net.Here is a sample of the songs

http://202.138.97.7/ramgen/~saregama/HF00920.rm

You can also hear the songs here at
http://www.karmadownload.com/artist/?14203 (works only in Internet Explorer)
http://www.hamaracd.com/hcdinternational/asp/vaGiftIdeas.asp?Giftid=G586

Cast:
The movie does not have a lot of characters.The cast also includes
Saeed Jaffrey .... Lalan Mian
Leela Mishra .... Neha's grandmother
Vinod Doshi .... Neha's Dad
Ranjan Grewal .... Neha's Brother
Amitabh Bachchan .... Guest Appearance
Rekha .... Guest Appearance


Awards:
Unfortunately chashme buddoor was released with some great movies.It was 1981, and the new wave cinema was at its full bloom. It lost most of the awards to worthy contenders.In filmfare it lost the best film to kalyug, best director to muzzafar ali(umrao jaan) and in the comedy section it lost the Best Performance in A Comic Role( Both Rakesh Bedi and Ravi Baswani were nominated) to Utpal Dutt's performance in hrishikesh mukherjee's (Naram Garam).


Trivia:
#)The movie had the credits saying introducing Ravi Vaswani.Ravi vaswani was the properties-in-charge in sai's earlier movie sparsh.

#)Vinod Doshi, Neha's dad in the movie is the chairman of Premier Automobiles Limited(Premier padmini).

For the mainstream cinema, a blind person is a never ending source of melodrama. They are a cornucopia of sadness, an instrument to extract as much tear as possible from the audience. The blindness is usually mixed with some more sad factors to double the tears. Like most of the time the blind person is a beggar or the hero/heroine who lost his/her eyes in an accident. In short a character you are forced to pity and feel sorry. So by the indian standards these pitiable characters cannot have feelings like ego, anger or pride. They are supposed to be sad and thankful towards everyone who feels pity and helps him. But sai for the first time took a movie which stood away from all these mainstream crap. Sparsh is a movie that is a cut apart, one of the kind movie, that takes you into the mind of blind peoples. It is a movie that does not want u to pity them, but to understand them and think them as one of us.


-----------------story-------------
Anirudh Parmar(Naseeruddin Shah) a blind school principal, is an egoistic, self confident person who doesn't want people to pity him on his blindness, but to understand him. He meets Kavita(Shabana Azmi) a window trying to recover from her husbands death. Kavitha finds a meaning for her life in helping the children’s of the blind school and joins the school as a teacher. Love blossoms between anirudh and kavitha. They decide to get married. But differences creep between anirudh and kavitha ,why and what happens to them is the rest of the movie.
---------------------------------

This is a very impressive movie. The question that i kept asking to myself was, what made sai paranjpaye take this movie. We all see blind peoples daily. At most we help them cross the roads.we don't think anything more than that. How sensitive she must have been to there needs, to take a movie like this. She seemed to have understood there emotions and paid attention to the minutest of the details that affect them.

The characters in this movie mainly anirudh's is a complex one. He is an introverted looser, who get's hurt easily and puts on a shield of assertiveness, he never lets his guard down. He is confident, kind and does not want anyone to pity him. He is some one who is blind both physically and mentally. Mentally blinded by his ego(not that different from us on this aspect).On the other hand Kavitha is a lonely widow, who is a giver, a lover. Everybody from anirudh to the small boys in the blind school is attracted to her, including the son of the canteen guy who is not blind. Well everybody needs love and care does not matter whether they are blind or not.

The blind school backdrop of the movie provides so many opportunities for sai to bring up the problems of the blind people. For example the fact that only text books are printed in braille and not many story books are available in braille for the blind children’s. She later through a dream story tells how this unavailability of story books in braille steals the blind children’s from the imaginary and happy world that normal children enjoy.

similarly shabana explains jagdish(Mohan Gokhale) the story that she is about to tell to the children’s in the blind school. The story is that of the lion jumping into the well trying to fight with its reflection in the well. Jagdish, anirudh's assistant stops her and says that she should not tell this story to them as they cannot understand the word reflection. He tells her that she has to tell the students stories where there is more sound related things and not stories like this where there are visual things.

Sai also points out the attitude of the society which thinks that a blind man is not a match for a normal women like kavitha.The sensitive love between anirudh and kavitha, the problems of the blind children’s, the attitude of the society and many other threads are wonderfully connected through a great screen play.

Sai's is a very creative person. In midst of all these serious stuff, she provides us a little escape from realism for the audience, no not through songs. But through the dream of a little boy.



The canteen mangers son is sick and shabana comes to know that he was angry with the blind guy because she didn't not pay any attention to him. she goes to see him at his house. He is bedridden; shabana reads a story for him. She tells this story of this rajkumar who saves a princess. The little boy dreams himself as the prince and the grown up shabana as the princess. Suddenly in midst of all these heavy stuff, you are transported into an innocent child's world. It was awesome, it was so sweet. The scene also serves the purpose to let us know, what stories mean to a child, this kid who has seen shabana can dream about her, unfortunately the blind child cannot, they first of all cannot even think about such a story cause there is no story book in Braille and it takes away a dream from them.


Nasrudeen is at his best in this movie. Through out the movie nasrudeen expresses his anger, his happiness, his disappointments, his ego, his hurt through subtle facial expression .He is a character who is strong as well as weak, his stronger sides ego, his confidence, his love everything comes out through his body language.



Cast:
cast also includes
Sudha Chopra .... Manju
Om Puri .... Dubey

Music:
The movie has 3 songs
1)khali pyaala
2)pyaala chalke
3)geethon ka dhuniya

Sparsh was sai's big movie that brought her into the lime light. Again i feel only a female director could have made a movie like this.The movie was Produced by basu bhattacharya.

Awards:
The movie got nasrudeen his first national award in 1979.Unfortunately that year sai has to compete with Mrinal sen's Ek Din Prati Din,Biplab Roy Chowdhari's Shodh and Durai's Pasi.The best direction, movie and actress went to mrinal, shodh and shobana for the respective films.

Think this movie was commercially released only in 83/84.It won the best film, director and dialogues awards at the 32nd film fare awards festival competing against Mahesh Bhatt's saaransh, Pravin Bhatt's bhavna & jaane bhi do yaaro.




Trivia:
Nasrudeen actually spent 1 week at Blinds school to learn the way they walk, see & feel things around. He almost irritated the principal by his observations.

Links
Nasrudeen shah

Indian film industry has produced so many great directors in main stream and in art movie categories. But very few of them did the middle of the road movies. Sai paranjpaye not only belongs to that list of selected few directors, she is pretty much the only female director who made some highly successful movies in that category.

Born in Lucknow into an illustrious family associated with social reform movements, Sai Paranjpye was educated in Australia, where her grandfather was High Commissioner. She published a collection of fairy tales in Marathi when 8 years old. She became well known for her Marathi plays, as a playwright and stage director, especially her plays for children. She started directing for television during the 60s and worked as a producer for doordarshan in the early 70s. She started with films during 1970s.more

As a director she could have done the usual, make a blockbuster movie earn money and fame for that time being and direct more junk movies and always be in the lime light, but she chose to do it the other way. she made very few movies which went on to become classics .

what makes her different from others is her unique sensitivity, creativity and her brilliance in screenplay writing. she can blend a realistic story with lots of humor and real life characters and give a wholesome movie. Like many great directors of india, she does not adapt a book into a movie. Most of the time her stories are from her personal experiences. Incidents that she encountered, personalities or fables everything becomes a beautiful story in her hands. That core is beautifully decorated with a good screenplay, songs ,comedy and realistic characters to create a great movie.

Sai entered a men dominated profession of film direction in the 70's itself. she took some sensible cinema and made a mark for herself.

check out my reviews on her movies

1)sparsh
2)chashme buddoor
3)katha
4)disha
5)saaz


Links

sai the chairperson of the Children's Film Society of India

sai interview

chakachak