Kaalia
 
    
Director: Tinnu Anand
Year:  1981
Music: R.D. Burman
Duration: 157 minutes
Rating: 7.5
I came across a quote from Amitabh Bachchan who stars in this film that goes "One of the most difficult things to do is make something stupid look convincing" and nowhere is that more true than this film. It is one of the more ridiculous films I have come across and yet it is wonderful on so many levels. Not film quality levels mind you but levels you didn't even know you had. All my giddy pleasure nodes went into overload. Just when you think it can't get more demented, it does. And then does again. There is so much to love about this film but probably only for those well-schooled in Bollywood action films from this period when nothing was going too far to entertain the masses in the back rows. The fans who revered Amitabh as a real-life hero. Who prayed for him when he was near death. He isn't capable of making a bad film - even the ones that are - and this would certainly qualify for most people - his presence and sincerity raises it out of the garbage to an art form. A very bent one but still art. The art of making audiences cheer and leave the theater with a big grin plastered over their mug.






The big lesson to come out of this film is going to prison is a positive thing. The lessons you can learn. The man it can make you. The fashion sense it breeds in you. Not to mention becoming a kung-fu jumping master. I regret I never took this important step to better myself. Kallu (Amitabh) is close to the village idiot. You can see the dullness in his eyes. He plays with children, runs from dogs and makes up stories of standing up to big thugs. He lives with his brother (Kader Khan) and his brother's wife (Asha Parekh - in her one and only appearance with Amitabh). They treat him as the child he is. The brother gets into an accident at work thanks to the negligence of the owner Shahani (Amjad Khan - the villain in Sholay) and loses both arms. Shahani uses the factory as a cover for his illegal activities.  The brother gets a job pulling loads on a cart and Kallu still plays with the children. The brother needs more surgery and Kallu begs Shahani for 500 rupees who instead picks it out and gives it to a dancing girl. Kallu steals it but is easily tracked back to his home where his brother has just died. He is sentenced to prison for nine months. Enough for re-birth one man says. And then the film really jumps into the straight-jacket.






When he gets out he has learned a lot of skills inside - how to bend steel, how to fight, how to jump up on walls, how to dance (don't want to know how), how to be super cool and give pithy speeches. The dullness in his eyes is gone. Replaced with a need for revenge. He steals gold from Shahani and then burns down the factory and turns himself in. Time to go back to school. He comes out rich from the gold but no less bitter. He pledges to destroy Shahani and when Amitabh says that you can place money on it. He now calls himself Kaalia and every time he says it a female chorus echoes it - Kaalia, Kaalia. He and Shahani compete for a diamond - to steal it from a Princess at a dance. Kaalia wins by singing a song. Shahani sends in his secret weapon to get it - in the form of Parveen Babi a dancer in bars - in other words a bad girl - but she decides to keep the diamond and give it to dear old mom who is sick and dies right after telling Parveen that she isn't really her daughter but was kidnapped as a child and given to her to keep. So maybe a good girl gone bad.






Hell, I could go on forever - it is 165 minutes of quirky plot changes and coincidences. Pran enters the film as a warden who has Amitabh in his custody for a while - he tells a friend that he has been a sad man ever since his daughter was kidnapped many years ago. It couldn't be could it? What are the chances? Some highlights - Kaalia learning his niece has been kidnapped by Shahani and he breaks his chains and tries to escape on the top of the guards heads or when he walks into a car dealership and sees the car that some men used the night before to wreck his apartment. "Who was it?". "I can not say" and Kallia drives his car through the window, under a truck to take off the roof, then the car doors, then the trunk and then the engine. "Now will you tell me?". A few funny bits as well - Amitabh trying to teach Parveen how to wear a sari or her trying to cook an omelet. But the best is saved for last when he gets into Shahani's totally tacky lair and gets trapped on a giant chess board in which if he takes the wrong move the walls will crush the sister-in-law and the niece to death in their cells. Then Pran shows up to help and does a double somersault over the guards. It is fabulous. I could have watched this all day.  Well, at three hours I almost did!






By the way, the white guy that Amitabh has a fight with in prison is Bob Christo, a fascinating figure in Indian films. He was an engineer from Australia who stopped over in India on his way elsewhere and he met Parveen Babi who introduced him to film people. He was a perfect roughneck villain and appeared in about 200 films - rarely for longer than a good brawl but he is impossible to miss. He is also credited with building the jungle palace in Apocalypse Now. He and Amitabh mixed it up a few times in films. He married an Indian woman and had two children. A great stopover.






Songs from R.D. Burman with Play back singing provided by Asha Bhosle, Kishore Kumar and M. Rafi. A few nifty picturizations - not sure which was my favorite - Amitabh's song at the party, a couple nightclub dances or when the entire prison population breaks into song when he is trying to escape.