Anand (1971)

[**** stars/*****]

Babu Moshai, 

zindagi badi honi chahiye...

lambi nahi...

(My friend, 

life must be great...

not long...)

Anand continues to tug at my heart. 

Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Anand remains heart-wrenching, delicately beautiful like a crushed memory embedded between pages of poetry. 

Cancer specialist Bhaskar Banerjee (Amitabh Bachchan) is disillusioned with the illness, sadness and poverty he experiences every day. 

The tall doctor visits his friend Dr. Prakash Kulkarni (Ramesh Deo) at his clinic when Anand Sehgal (Rajesh Khanna) bursts into the room chattering cheerfully. It's like a cool breeze has flown in! 

Kulkarni has already informed Bhaskar about Anand - he has a rare lethal form of cancer and is expected to die in four-six months. 

When Bhaskar confronts Anand with this fact, he is taken aback that Anand is aware and unaffected. An unlikely friendship takes root.

Bhaskar gradually realizes Anand is a young man with a energetic, restless desire to live life to the fullest, despite his limited life span. 

Life and death poetry 
Anand (Happiness) is a lively brightly-lit (Eastmancolor blues) tale of a man facing death with courage and a tinge of sadness.

Mukherjee's wrote the story for his friend, the legendary Raj Kapoor. Kapoor fell ill once, Mukherjee feared for his life - and a classic film idea came into being. 

Kapoor used to call Mukherjee 'Babu Moshai', the name Anand opts for Bhaskar. 

The movie is dedicated to the city of Bombay and Raj Kapoor. 

The Anand-Bhaskar friendship is the core, the extrovert Anand and an anguished, gentle Bhaskar make good company. 

The scene where Bhaskar nudges Anand to share his grief is touching among many other moments. That Anand adamantly refuses and in return wishes to share only joy, establishes the two characters. 

How Anand sets Bhaskar up with his lady love Renu (Sumita Sanyal) is good entertainment. His spontaneous befriending of strangers, and finally meeting 'Murari Lal' (Johnny Walker) - a lovely story curve. 

Maut tu ek kavita hai, 

tujhse ek kavita ka wada hai,

milegi mujhko...

(Death, you are a poem, 

with you there is promise of a poem,

you shall meet me...)

The radiant life-affirming lightness leading up to the climatic final scenes makes Anand unforgettable despite the glitches. 

It's hard to forget the immortal last lines that sound abruptly in the death silence. 

Did I say glitches? 

Commercial Hindi film makers are infamous for avoiding realism and keeping everything beautiful for the heck of it. 

Why else does Anand looks unaffected, in the pink of health despite his worsening condition? 

Multiple imaginative frames, varied lighting and shades could have added more depth. 

Miraculously, the best Hrishikesh Mukherjee movies remain watchable, despite largely absent art direction and structured story-boarding. 

Anand stands out despite the bare set up. Why? 

It's in Gulzar's dialogues that the movie has its furious blood-pumping heart.   

Anand review
The lead actors compliment each other beautifully. 

Rajesh Khanna manages to tweak his trademark mannerisms to make Anand unforgettable. 

Amitabh Bachchan holds his own with a measured, intense performance.

The screenplay by Mukherjee, Gulzar, D.N. Mukherjee and Bimal Dutta touches on goodness, compassion, and an optimistic outlook. 

Salil Chowdhury's illuminating music is set to lyrics by Yogesh and Gulzar - the four beautiful songs continue to feature in popular retro playlists. 

Mukesh as Anand's playback voice is a masterstroke, as Kishore Kumar was the preferred voice for Khanna back then. The singer's melancholy voice brings out the necessary pain to the character's voice.  

Jaywant Pathare's cinematography makes good use of the predominantly indoor settings, scenes have a clean, washed up feel. 

Bombay (now Mumbai) appears fleetingly in the opening credits, some lovely outdoor shots are showcased in the famous Manna Dey song Zindagi Kaisi Yeh Paheli. 

Go watch Anand for a joyous lead character, the impermanence and celebration of life, lovely music, bright poetic sparkle and timeless good-hearted message. 

Pink (2016)

[***1/2 stars / *****] 

Three boys and three girls meet each other through a common friend at a rock show in Delhi. The girls are then persuaded by the guys to join them at a resort for dinner. 

Even these basic facts trickle into audience knowledge over a series of tense, gripping scenes. The film opens with one of the guys profusely bleeding with a deep cut in the skull, even as his panicky friends rush him to hospital. Meanwhile, the girls return to their rented apartment, stunned and disturbed. 

Deft Screenplay 

Pink kept me riveted thanks to a killer screenplay (Ritesh Shah) that tersely, harrowing reveals the details of 'the incident' in bits and pieces. 

A visual depiction of what actually happened unveils only at the end credits. By then, you are knocked out cold and numb, by the horror, starkness, and fierceness of it all.

Truth & Dare

The brutal truth of how women are perceived in Indian society at large, how stereotypes and the idea of male domination persist, down to a savage level, is expressed in balanced, original and searing storytelling. 

The emotionally draining experience of defending one's case in an Indian court is effectively depicted. Insensitivity and police indifference is craftily rendered into proceedings.  

Performances

Amitabh Bachchan's characterization as a retired lawyer begins in a mitigating, all-knowing Hindi film hero mold. This despite the bipolar disorder background and a bed-ridden wife. The court proceedings redeem Bachchan the actor to a great extent though.

Tapasee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari, and Andrea Tairang are the showstoppers here. Tapasee, her character the eye of the storm and story, deserves special mention. 

Piyush Mishra comes across as the stereotypical prosecution lawyer. Angad Bedi makes a believable, ominous antagonist. Dhritiman Chatterjee adds nuances to an otherwise mundane role of a judge, adding to his reputation as a legendary Bengali actor. 

Finally 

Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury's calculated, sensible direction and co-writers Ritesh Shah and Shoojit Sircar make Pink a triumph. A subject that could so easily be judgmental and dipped in rhetoric, escapes most overdone film-making pitfalls.  

Despite A Few Good Men (1992) inspired witness-provoking climax, leading to a propped-up and unconvincing happy ending, Pink is a story that is rarely told in a largely dream-selling Hindi film world and seldom, very seldom, told so well. 

Don't miss it on the big screen.  

Amar Akbar Anthony (1977)

[***1/2 stars / *****] 

Chauffeur-taking-the-blame father.Tuberculosis-ridden suicidal mother. Their three separated kids. Years later, three brothers, each adopted by Hindu, Muslim and Christian families respectively, donate blood that converges into a single bottle (medical atrocity!).

Unknown to them, the blood recipient is their ex-ill, ex-suicidal mother, now blind. 

Meanwhile, ex-chauffeur father is a mob boss raising his ex-boss's daughter (who he had kidnapped) as his niece. Father thinks his wife is dead and children, lost. Blind mother sells flowers. The sons are a policeman, a singer and a good hearted small-time thug.

This is just a glimpse of the anything-goes set up for Manmohan Desai's weirdly entertaining Amar Akbar Anthony. 

Pitched as a comedy/drama, full of strange situations, formulaic and catchy Laxmikant-Pyarelal /Anand Bakshi songs and great acting by the lead cast, especially Amitabh Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor and Vinod Khanna (in that order). 

Crazy stuff 
Meanwhile, blind mother regains her sight, thanks to a god-intervened miracle. 

In the film's climax, three brothers roam about in disguises that the whole audience can see through, singing a song featuring their real names, the dim-witted villains remain clueless.Yet there never is a dull moment in the three hour, five minute running time. 

Amar Akbar Anthony review 
Stereotypes, slick dialogue-making and maudlin emotions found screen space with this film, in many ways creating the degenerative Hindi potboiler genre. 

Something changed in Hindi films for the worse, starting with Amar Akbar Anthony. Yet this is the redundant genre's pinnacle film, still worth watching.

Wazir (2016)

[**1/2 stars / *****] 

Wazir is a quality thriller that works on the force of its tight performances (Amitabh Bachchan-Farhan Akhtar chemistry, primarily), has some loose filmy and predictable parts, the steady direction (Bejoy Nambiar) and wisely clipped running time (102 min) keep it sane.

Wazir story
Daanish (Farhan Akhtar, thick moustache, a first) is a dedicated officer of the anti-terrorist squad. He also adores his beautiful Kathak dancing wife Ruhana (Aditi Rao Hydari) and little daughter. But an offhand terrorist operation soon rips their life apart.

Post a cathartic filmy revenge, Daanish is sent on leave, when he ends up meeting the wheelchair-bound chess teacher, Pandit Omkar Nath Dhar (Amitabh Bachchan, apt casting).The two become close friends, even as the chess teacher views his daughter's seemingly accidental death as murder.

Wazir review 
Post a taut first half, the pace slackens a little in the second, the twist-in-the-tail climax saves it. You may well see the ending, if not for an explosion that acts as a good diversion, to an extent. Certainly a satisfying, convincing thriller, if not great.

High/Giveaway Point
A touch of poetry in Neil Nitin Mukesh's bit part, though for an attentive viewer, it acts as the film's giveaway point.