Today I
succumbed to boredom and watched a Hindi movie. Why don't I watch Hindi movies?
Before you Hindi speakers start commanding that not only should I know Hindi
but I should watch plenty of Hindi movies here are a few reasons (in bullet
points):
As you can
see I have my reasons for not watching Hindi films. However, today I went out
of tedium and my love of Paresh Rawal.
- I cannot comprehend Hindi completely. I need a friend to translate some of the more difficult (shudh Hindi) words. I am from West Bengal. We speak Bengali there. You know, one of the other 18 official languages of India.
- Hindi films are just not as good as international cinema. Notice here that I said international cinema and not Hollywood. There are many great Hindi films out there. But I found out that it takes me a larger amount of time researching the quality of a newly released Hindi film than to actually watch the film.
- Even films with different concepts and/or new ideas have the same formulaic crowd pleasing shit shovelled into the script.
- Too much plagiarism.
- Too many songs.
- Overall corniness.
The film begins
like a generic comedy. It generates chuckles from the juxtaposition of a
religious background, devout wife and a holy idol and stature shop, against the
atheist shop owner Kanji Bhai (Paresh Rawal). I was prepared to walk out of the
movie when I heard the Prabhudeva-led item number "Go Govinda". I believed
that was the movie subtly telling me and my godly friend Govinda (a.k.a.
Krishna) to get the hell out of there as it was going to get painful.
A few
minutes later I was thankful that I'd not left as the movie had swiftly descended
into one of my favourites, religious satire. Kanji Bhai disrupts a religious
festival and is cursed by a Hindu priest. His shop is destroyed and the
insurance company refuses to reimburse him for his losses as the earthquake
that destroyed his shop was an "act of God".
It is here
that Paresh Rawal gives a marvellous performance as a non-believer. And Mithun
Chakraborty proves that he's still got it as he lampoons religious cult leaders
with all their quirks and vanities. This film had me hook, line and sinker, the
dialogue was funny, thoughtful and logical.
Suddenly a wild Akshay Kumar
appears!
And I felt that the film had lost me. What could have been a ground
breaking film descended into the murky waters of "this is India, so no
atheism allowed". You see, in a film that challenged the very existence of
God the filmmakers decided to introduce God.
Overall I
have to say that I liked the film. It put forward some well written arguments. It
challenged Big Religion and all the scams, rackets and insanity that went along
with it. But I kept thinking that this film could have been much better without
God making an appearance. It could have been a spectacular struggle of man
against society and his eventual hard won triumph. It was the struggle of man
against society and his eventual hard won triumph. The spectacle was cheapened by
God's arrival. This film asks the right questions but it falls short. This is
the sort of film that should teach a person to question their beliefs. To think
and question instead of blindly following. To offer a different point of view. What
it does is question our rituals and our inane practices. It tells us to not fear but love God. It does a good job of
that.
I'd hoped that it would question God too.
IMDB Rating: 8.9/10 (sometimes you shouldn't trust IMDB, this is one of those times)
My Rating: 6.5/10
Should you watch it: Yeah, why not? It is funny. And for the atheists/agnostics who like me had hoped for more, here's a George Carlin routine that never gets old:
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