Beta
Director:
Indra Kumar
Year: 1992
Music: Anand-Miland Chitragupth
Duration: 171 minutes
Rating: 7.5
Aka - Son
I read an article about Madhuri Dixit being
in a Netflix series (The Fame Game about a Bollywood actress) and it put
me in the mood to see her. She is always great. One of the best dancers in
BollywoodFound this one on YouTube.
This film won pretty much every award that
came out in 1992 - Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress
and won at the box office as well. So you might expect this to be a sophisticated
serious film with layers of subtlety. Show their best face like the Oscars
do. Nominate films that hardly anyone has seen. Only in a parallel universe.
This film is insanely over the top in every respect. A Big Fat B film dressed
in A film ornaments. Big emotions that feel jet propelled, action that is
so absurd you don't know whether to laugh or cheer, acting that is on a roller
coaster ride of ups and downs and a plot so wickedly nutty and idiotic that
if you take a few steps back you will think the filmmakers were having a
joke at our expense. But in its way this film is rather wonderful and as
bad as it is on so many levels it will drag you in kicking and screaming.
But you have to get by the first ten minutes that are so treacly bad that
you might want to hold your breath in fear of catching something.
Hindi films are filled to the top with
Mother Worship films in which the mother has to be treated God like by her
children. Mom can do no wrong. And if you mess with her or insult her you
have no choice but to pull a Will Smith x 10. Here Dear Mother is insulted
by a townsperson and her son literally takes offense, his eyes bulge like
a bull seeing red and he drags the fellow beating up on him all over the
town, finally putting his head down on the track of an oncoming train. A
little extreme. I loved my mother but if she had tried to kill my wife I
might have been a little annoyed with her. Not our guy. He instead signs
all his wealth over to her. But that only touches on how loony this film
is.
It begins with Raju as a young motherless
boy who wants to talk to his dead mother after the teacher brutalizes his
hand with a stick for not writing an essay on his mother. And the teacher
isn't even a nun. So he calls the telephone operator and asks to talk to
his mother in heaven. The operator pretends to be mom and tells him how much
she loves him but she is in heaven. Ok - probably against protocol but sweet.
Then he says come to my birthday, if you don't I will kill myself, so she
promises to come. And she does. She is played by Aruna Irani, one of the
better vamps in the 1960s and a fabulous dancer as well. The dancing is gone
but not the vamp. Instead of making a guest appearance and going back to
heaven, she sticks around for days giving Raju the love he so needs. How
sweet you might think. Noooo. She marries Raju's father and brings her crazy
brother (Anupam Kher who usually is a loving father in films but not here)
and his wife to live there. And help with her long-term plot to take all
the money. I forget to mention the father is as rich as Midas on a bad day.
And she is wicked. Oh, so wicked and devious.
But the dead mother left a proviso in the
will - it is her money - that it goes to Raju but he can only sign it over
when he is 25 and has the approval of his then wife who ever that turns out
to be. In the meantime Mom refuses to allow Raju to have an education and
puts him to work in the fields. He can't read or write. But he just loves
mom. By now he has become a man played by Anil Kapoor at his most wonderful
and deranged. The father you might ask. Why hasn't he intervened? Because
mom gave him drugs, had him certified as insane and locked him in a room
in the house for 20 years feeding him scraps. Does Raju say anything about
this? Nope. Mother love is too strong.
But then another love emerges. In the loins.
At a wedding he sees Sara and is literally frozen in place. I don't blame
him. She is Madhuri Dixit at her most beautiful in this film. At times I
felt frozen in place as well. He becomes your typical romantic stalker which
in India seems ok to be - as long as it is for love. In an amazing 30 minute
film run that is emotionally combustible it begins with some great comedy
as he or his servant Pandu (Laxmikant Berde) offers a 5,000 rupee reward
for the person who can find her at this fair and it turns into chaos with
every creepy guy chasing her. Funny though. Then a guy says to the crowd,
I will rape her (no one objects), catches her and takes her into a rice storage
room with a funnel coming down. Again no one objects. Raju is tied underneath
to a Ferris Wheel going around but every time it gets to the ground he puts
his hands with the ropes down and eventually they break - while Sara is fending
off the brute. His hands loose, he leaps down, beats up some minions and
jumps a motorcycle from a building into the funnel and drives down in circles
till he beats up the bad guy. It is fabulous.
That is just the beginning of this craziness.
He takes her home but on the way it begins to pour and they find shelter.
He confesses his love. She goes - errrr - I am engaged. Not for long. When
they get to her home after the rain has stopped the entire village has turned
out to see what her excuse was for staying out all night. With another man.
The village has gone mad. "No one will marry one of our daughters. You have
brought shame on all of us." She is condemned even by her father and definitely
by her fiancé and then the village beats the hell out of Raju until
she intervenes with a scythe. She then goes into a small temple and comes
back with henna and asks him to marry her. And they are married. And mom
is not pleased. Not all all. What the hell just happened. Aruna is pure evil
in this film. Deliciously so with a white streak of hair parting her head
and making her look like a cobra. She is. The household is - her other son,
her brother and his wife. All snakes.
It takes Sara about 2 days to figure out
how evil the mother is and what a hold she has on Raja. They have a bad habit
of discussing their plans in the open where others can hear them. The two
women begin a terrific game of chess - move, counter move. At one point Sara
tells Raju that mom is a witch and he literally smacks her hard and often.
Holy shit. I mean beats the hell out of her. Ummm. Damn Raju. He later apologizes
and she says I am sorry I didn't know you loved her so much. I am still not
sure if he thinks she is his mother from heaven. He isn't too bright. Or
educated. The film is all over the place plot wise and emotionally. It brings
in some dreadful humor at times such as Pandu pretending to be a doctor and
taking Mom's health measurements - with a tape measure. You want to hide
your head at times but it is infectious and Madhuri is magical. She steals
this film from Anil and that is not an easy thing to do. Easier to break
into Fort Knox. But Madhuri can do it with a raised eye-brow or her million
dollar smile. And then at the end. No, I can't give that away but it is bonkers
and I kept telling myself. they aren't really going there are they? Yup.
Most of the music from Anand-Milind didn't
do much for me - love ballads as they dance in the woods. But there is one
incredibly good number Saiyya Jee Se Chupke in which Madhuri who is a fantastic
dancer comes out after clearly having had sex with Raju and losing her virginity
(we assume) and looking like she won the lottery. The farm girls notice this
and break into a wonderful teasing song - why is your dress messed up, why
are there bite marks on your lip, why are your tresses undone, why is your
dress on backwards - and she has to come up with excuses to explain it.
One of the best songs and visualizations ever.