The movie is going on on TV right now, on the Zee Classic channel, which every now and then will be playing some long-forgotten film, lost practically in the sea of numerous vastly forgettable Bollywood films. But the most interesting aspect of this film is that it is some sort of Indo-Iranian collaboration from 1972, and so features Iranian women in fashionable Western outfits! Thus it's an interesting reminder of the Iran that Marjane Satrapi recalls in Persepolis. And there's a sudden shift in the film into documentary mode, with some footage of a stunning mosque and a voice over introducing it to audiences! Apart from that it's fairly insipid; it's also about the meeting of cultures and the problems of inter-community marriage (dealing with its impossibility) and the con man with the heart of gold (played by Sanjeev Kumar). I haven't seen the movie in its entirety, and quite frankly I'm not interested either; but it's got some good things going for it, if your thing is to sort through the mire of Hindi popular cinema history and seek the good things, because one isn't really sure if they themselves felt like part of a film-making culture that cared to focus their good aspects with a lot of self-reflection into coherent attempts at good stuff. Strangely enough, some of the cinematography is brilliant. The most remarkable thing of me writing this response to the film is that I cannot find absolutely anything about this film on the internet -- and hardly anything about its director Tapi Chanakya. I can only piece together from his filmography that he is Telugu, having done a lot of Telugu films. And that he died in 1973, but 1971 and '72 were remarkably good years for him. So it looks like he must've died around his peak. Pardon me, this is a highly uninformed opinion. The point however is how little there is of this film and so little of so many films in fact. And while this film isn't exactly remarkable, the fact that this film is so completely forgotten in today's era is remarkable too. It reminds me of how when Lagaan didn't win the Best Foreign Film Oscar, the following day's headlines read: "Lagaan fails to win at Oscars". And that you could still have a long conversation about how great a film like Sholay is. True true, but without the act of remembering, recalling and reflecting, the history of Bollywood is incomplete, and an incomplete history cannot produce complete masters. And on a more macrocosmic level, an Indo-Iranian joint collaboration from 1972, five years before the Cultural Revolution?! For that alone, this film is a remarkable document. Now I'm going to post this comment and turn off the TV, because I've gotta leave and do something, which is more important than me watching the rest of this film right now. Will I be able to get a DVD of this film easily? I heavily doubt it!!!
