Mera Gaon Mera Desh
 
   
Director: Raj Khoshla
Year:  1971
Music: Laxmikant/Pyarelal
Duration: 151 minutes
Rating: 7.0
My Village, My Country

For the first 45 minutes of this Bollywood film I was wondering what I had walked into. It has a great cast but it was sinking slowly in the west. It had no zip and hardly any songs. A tepid romance was brewing. A city boy ends up in a rural backwards village to work for a man who has sort of taken him on. He is a bit of of a lout - spies on the girls bathing in the river, starts getting drunk at night, slacks off from work, disrespects the man who has taken him in and then falls in love with the village belle. And she inexplicably with him - other than the fact that all of the other men in the village are either idiot comic relief or the least attractive men that the filmmakers could find. But for that 45 minutes we have to watch him court her in cute Bollywood style and it is enough to turn you green. Then on a dime it starts slowly getting interesting and by the end it is Rambo then High Noon and then Seven Samurai. Except there is only one in this case. Yes, the city boy who decides to defend a village of cowards against a band of dacoits. And by the end it is kind of wonderful. This was a big hit back in 1971. My guess is that they liked the first part much more than I did. It is full of comedy corniness - even during the big fight at the end. They can't help themselves.





Ajit (Dharmendra) is a low-life pickpocket in the city who gets caught and sent to prison. But his farewell speech about being an orphan grabs the heart of the man who he stole from and when Ajit gets released after six months a job is waiting for him in Udaipur, Rajasthan way the hell away from civilization as we would define it. He decides to go and finds himself in this ramshackle dusty brick village that is one good shake from falling apart. After getting caught spying on the girls by Anju (Asha Parekh) and have mud dumped on him he falls for her. And starts to clean up his act. The beginning of a great romance.



But then the dacoits show up on horseback and start killing innocent people. People close to Ajit. He learns how to shoot. He gets beaten badly by the head of the gang, Jabbar Singh, and after they kill a few more he decides to kill them all. One by one. About 40 of them invade the village - no one will help - he is on his own except for two women - and like Gary Cooper he uses the village and its labyrinth of alleys and rooftops to fight back. The film is stolen from Dharmendra and Asha Parekh - two huge stars - by the villain and his nautch girlfriend Munnibai.






Jabbar is portrayed by Vinod Khanna and he is terrifying with his red-rimmed eyes and savagery. At the time Khanna mainly played villains but this film made him a star and he switched to playing heroes and had a terrific career until he dropped out to follow a spiritual leader and then went into politics. Some opine that his character was the blueprint that Gabbar Singh in Sholay used for his famous bad guy characterization. The nautch dancer is portrayed by Laxmi Chhaya who gets three dance numbers in the film. She is most famous for being the female dancer in the Jaan Pehchan Ho number from Gumnaam and shown in Ghost World. She is a fabulous dancer and very lovely. So it takes a while but there are some great scenes in here and director Raj Khosla (C.I.D., Solva Saal) knows how to squeeze every ounce of drama out of a scene.