a review by Muffy St. Bernard also featuring the "Gallery of Despair!"

    Occasionally, a film so relentlessly downbeat and depressing will come along that -- after you've finished watching it -- you'll need to decide whether life is worth living anymore. I'm no stranger to these situations, and one particular incident comes vividly to mind: I was sitting on the couch in my robe, watching "Perfect Strangers" and eating ice cream, when Balki accidentally switched Jennifer's wedding ring with one made out of glass.

    I couldn't help it, I started weeping uncontrollably. "Poor Balki!" I cried. "He's such a lovable fool, and he didn't mean to cause all this trouble!  Things will go terribly now!  Jennifer's wedding will be ruined and she'll blame Balki and he'll get deported!"  I can only assume that I had other more serious things affecting my judgment at the time because I don't usually respond this way to situation comedies.   A close personal friend of mine told me that feeling pathos while watching "Perfect Strangers" is -- no pun intended -- pathetic.  I had to agree with him.

    I've tried to cultivate a harder exterior from then on, but "Muqaddar Ka Sikandar" has managed to arouse more pathos in me than the exploits of Balki ever did.  This is a film where people start crying in the first five minutes -- simply because they've been given a slice of toast for God's sake -- and rarely stop crying until the end of the movie...and when they do stop crying we know that their happy reprieve will be short lived.  In fact, we're certain that the reprieve is only there to make the characters -- and the audience -- feel even worse when things go bad again.  And believe me, they do.

    Typical of many Bollywood films, this is a movie about people doing awful things to each other, but not because they're awful people...they do these things because of their troubled pasts, their social strictures, and because they misunderstand the motives of others. One message Bollywood writers seem to be sending out in their movies is "if people want to get along, they need to talk more, stop hiding their feelings, and actually explain why they're doing things." Another common message -- one highly applicable to "Muqaddar Ka Sikandar" -- is "you can't repent for your sins until you die.  And when you do die your death will be a horrible one."  It's a tough life in films...and this stuff is supposed to be escapist!

    It would be difficult to say who suffers most from these Bollywood tenets, but my vote goes to Zohra, a doomed, unhappy nautch girl played by Rekha. She's a wonderful person stuck in a disreputable profession (because it's her fate, is the implication), destined to be maligned by all and unable to escape her circumstances.  Rekha is -- as usual -- wonderful playing the strong, capable, resigned character who spends every minute wishing to be more than she is...but is realistic enough to know that her situation is hopeless.  She falls in love with Sikandar (the terminally morose toast-recipient Amitabh Bachchan) and seems to see him as her last chance of starting a new life.  Her only other option seems to be Dilawar (Amjad Khan, in mid-bloat), a curiously upright thug who brutally beats his opponents...but always turns himself over to the police afterwards.  And though he doesn't show it in a very acceptable way, he's absolutely devoted to Zohra and isn't such a bad guy.  Too bad she can't stand him.

    As for Sikandar...why is he sad? Well, he's got reason to be. He was orphaned as a child and is similar to Zohra in that he also wants to transcend his destiny: he wants to escape poverty and the stigma of being an orphan.  When he meets Kamna -- a little rich girl with a stunningly furry hat -- and briefly serves her and her father Ramnath in the chilly town of Shimla (where it's so cold people wear parkas when they eat breakfast), his devotion to her quickly becomes love as she (innocently) treats him with kindness and respect.

    His love is doomed from the start, however.  Despite their difference in class -- which would be enough to keep the two of them apart in a less sadistic movie --  it turns out that Ramnath's wife was killed by a wayward orphan, and he manages to convince Kamna that all orphans -- especially the noble Sikandar -- are murderous criminals.  Sikander is run out of the house, his best intentions dashed, his hopes broken like the fantastic Indian doll he bought Kamna for her birthday (a Christmas hint to those reading: I love that doll).

    (Surprisingly, the orphan who killed Ramnath's wife doesn't turn out to be any of the thugs that appear later in the film, and I can't help thinking this is an oversight on the part of the filmmakers.  Things would have been even more complicated if this particular wrinkle had been thrown in, and lord knows these films rarely shy away from complexity.)

    Kamna's dramatic rejection of Sikandar comes during her birthday party in Bombay.  The most notable thing about this party -- and something that sort of overshadows Sikandar's anguish and his new mother's death -- is that it's attended by a large number of zombie children.  You can tell they're zombies because they stand perfectly still and sing the same two lines of "Happy Birthday To You" over and over again, even when the birthday girl has left the room.

     Please excuse me while I point this out: it's a curious phenomenon that people in Bollywood films are unable to sing "Happy Birthday To You" in tune.  I have never, ever, EVER seen a SINGLE Indian film where this song was sung properly...not even close to properly.  In order to find out more I contacted a professional in such matters: VijayaKumar, a man who makes a living playing keyboard at Indian birthday parties.  He seemed astonished by my email inquiries and admitted that -- yes indeed -- Indians can't sing this song on or off camera, even when presented with handy instructions that he wrote himself.  For South Asians who are planning on attending a birthday party -- or to anyone out there who just wants to be sure they know the tune, consult VijayaKumar's instructions, reproduced here, and try to get it right.

    Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.  Anyway, overflowing with despair over his recent losses, Sikandar meets the Darvesh, a sort of ghoulish guru in a graveyard who gives him dubious advice about embracing misery and laughing regardless of his troubles.  This is an inspirational moment for the young Amitabh, and using this revolutionary form of emotional control (and also by ratting on a local crook ominously known as "Paul" and collecting lots of reward money), Sikandar becomes a rich and successful businessman, though we never get a close look at what he does (we don't see his office either, but it's likely that he's got a forest mural in there somewhere).  Sikandar, after all that he's been through, has remained heroic and upstanding... and he still carries a torch for little Kamna. 

    What's more incredible is that he isn't even bitter about what her father did to him (public humiliation, a nasty arm-shaking, and the indirect death of his second mother Nirupa Roy).  He's not a happy guy by any standards, but he still manages a chuckle now and then thanks to his poetic comic-relief sidekick.  They go out drinking and engage in Laurel and Hardy routines.  Sikandar manages to maintain a curious character duality: both morose and cheerful at the same time.  It's not surprising that he'd be morose -- he was excluded from a party that even the zombie children were invited to -- but it's amazing that he's retained such a positive outlook. This outlook he attributes to his love for Kamna and his respect for her father (who did, after all, hire him for a few days and showed him a slightly better life).

    Perhaps paying for their past selfishness, Kamna and her dad are now more-or-less destitute...in fact, they've become so poor that they've needed to sell their wallpaper from the looks of it.  Ramnath is sick with a non-specific disease and his prestige as a famous lawyer has declined with his health.  Sikandar secretly pays for Ramnath's hospital treatment, but what can he do to help Ramnath's career?

    Meet Vishal, the incredible fighting lawyer!  This guy kicks ass both in the courtroom and in the barroom, and after he and Sikandar become indebted to each other (thanks to a timebomb and a long-lost mother), Sikandar continues his campaign of selflessness by convincing Vishal to work with Kamna's father. This restores the old man's pride and begins to heal the 20-year wounds between the two; mellowed and humbled by old age and poverty, Ramnath recognizes the goodness in Sikandar, and Kamna begins to thaw out as well...she starts to like Sikandar again. 

    This should be good, right? You should breathe a sigh of relief and look for a happy ending, shouldn't you?  No, you shouldn't, because a cardinal rule of 80's Bollywood is being broken here, and the filmmakers are not about to let Amitabh get away with it: he's a lowly orphan, she's a rich man's daughter.  The only natural match for her must be...

    ...(put your irony helmets on, this one is going to hurt)...

    ...Vishal, of course. It's doubly ironic that Vishal and Amitabh are best friends. It's triply ironic that Amitabh basically FORCED Vishal and Kamna together.  And the level of irony soars to Hanumanian heights when you involve a love letter -- dictated by the illiterate Sikandar and written down by Vishal, using a distinctive pen and an even more distinctive handwriting.  In essence Vishal, by helping Sikandar, dooms him to even more heartbreak.  And it is Sikandar's own fault for trying to evade his fate and forgetting the Darvesh's advice: expect the worst from life, embrace misery, and keep on laughing.  This sort of situation is Essence of Bollywood, my friends, distilled into it's purest and most damaging form.

    Well, from this point on, nobody's laughing, believe me.  Not the Darvesh, who died all alone in his graveyard. Or Zohra, who has realized that Sikandar doesn't love her -- that NOBODY is allowed to love her except thugs and useless men. Or Dilawar, who has enacted vengeance on Sikandar before realizing -- when it's too late for both of them -- that Sikandar never loved Zohra to begin with.

    And Sikandar?  Sikandar doesn't laugh either. There's a pile of bodies lying around (none of whom were his enemies) and that isn't very funny. (Though what IS sort of funny is the Pyar Zindagi Hai dance number in a swanky hotel that looks like an airplane hanger papered with cardboard and alarming flashing valentines).

    Now just imagine the potential for melodrama in this plotline. Next, give every character who dies a heartbreaking, extended death speech complete with noble intentions and beautiful, soaring music. Then multiply this amount of melodrama by the highest number you can think of, and rub acid in your eyes at the same time. This still does not approach the agony you'll feel in the final half hour of the film.  And if you need more proof, visit the gallery of despair, lovingly compiled for those who like to see bad things happen to good people.

 

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