Mother India

I hate bollywood. But this isn't bollywood. This is epic, moving important filmmaking. The story is heartbreaking, the imagery is fabulous, even in Technicolor, and the music is, for once, really rather good. The songs do actually seem to signal major changes in the plot, rather than being tacked-on, globetrotting, multicostume sex-substitutes. Sadly for me, the DVD version I saw had subtitles for everything apart from the song lyrics, but the physical acting was so strong that it didn't matter. Yes, there are amateurish moments, and in the middle of the film, it takes some time off from the serious tone for an unnecessary extended piece about teasing girls. But that really is the only complaint I can make about this film. Essential viewing.

In this melodrama, a poverty-stricken woman raises her sons through many trials and tribulations. But no matter the struggles, always sticks to her own moral code.

"All Hindi films come from Mother India," said Javed Akhtar, the Hindi cinema poet, lyricist and scriptwriter. And of that I have no doubt. It does seem to be a very strong touchstone of Indian cinema, and one of the earliest films from India to get an international audience fawning.

But this is, perhaps paradoxically, the reason I do not care for the film. It is nothing that the Indian cinema has done ,but for some reason I just never care for Indian films, this one included. The grand, over-the-top nature of them, the singing where singing should not be by people who should not singing... the trend has gotten worse today, but I can see the germ here.

This Indian Hindi-language epic is considered one of the greatest films ever made in that country. A new wife (Nargis) tries her best to be the best possible woman to her husband and her village. The newlyweds struggle to survive as subsistence farmers in debt to a venal landowner, and their lives become even tougher as they begin having children. Various disasters, including family deaths and injuries, as well as flooding, threaten to doom the family and their village, but the bride/mother always perseveres in the face of hardship.

This nearly 3-hour family melodrama is also a musical, with nearly half of the running time spent in song. The version I watched had excellent English subtitles during the dialogue scenes, but none for the songs, so the meaning of them was lost. However, after a while I began to enjoy them a bit just for their tonal quality, like listening to an opera. The film was meant as a repudiation of an English book of the same title that harshly criticized Indian culture.

The wife/mother character is crafted to be an exemplar of Hindu womanhood. As such the film has a didactic quality that oftem overwhelms the attempts at real human drama. It was an interesting movie in many regards (it makes no concessions to non-Hindu Indian viewers, and one has to figure out the culture as one is watching the movie), but not one I'll likely revisit. In its native land, it is said to have played theaters continuously from its release in 1957 into the 1990s.

Turner Classic Movies just played this nearly three-hour Indian epic and I decided to give it a try, despite TCM host Robert Osborne's caveat that its length might seem a daunting viewing challenge, but one that would prove rewarding by its eventual conclusion. Alas! I failed to make it past the midway point. My capacity for submitting to movie masochism had reached the full-to-satiation level. In fact it had long since overflowed, much like the farms after a terrific monsoon during one of the film's earlier episodes.

The video transfer of the original Gevacolor negative (apparently an unstable single-strip process), with prints by Technicolor, looked pretty good on Turner's presentation, with some ravishing shots during the opening wedding sequence and the occasional insert of glowing sunsets, etc. But, oh! the tedium of the endless travails of the central protagonists, bedevilled by the almost cartoonish evil of Sukhilala (played by an energetic actor named Kanhaiyalal), a villain so heartless he makes Simon Legree look like the endlessly compassionate Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

The actress Nargis, playing Radha, the matriarch around whom this mostly sad tale revolves, is a standout in a cast most of whom seem to have been encouraged to overact to an almost absurd histrionic intensity. With some contrasting subtlety, she more than holds her own and appears to have been subjected to some extraordinarily difficult torments in order to realistically depict her character's many agonies.

But this early example of what has become known as the Bollywood school of international cinema is definitely an acquired taste. If you like screen exotica, liberally spiced with production numbers sung in Hindi that frequently seem to exceed the length of an entire Hollywood film from the Golden Age of Movie Musicals, then this just may be your dish of curry. But for this viewer it seems less a "classic" and more a prime example of how Indian audiences have been traditionally willing to submit to films that are routinely as long as those blockbusters that bombarded our roadshow houses back in the late Fifties through the 1960s. I can still watch one of those English-language spectacles with a degree of satisfaction, but I confess, this epic from the Indian subcontinent was more than I could digest.

In present day India, elderly mother Nargis (as Radha) is reluctant to attend the ceremony opening a new water canal for her village. Eventually agreeing, the old woman recalls her life… We begin with Ms. Nargis' marriage to Raaj Kumar (as Shamu). The very attractive young couple are blissfully in love. Farmers by trade, they have three children. But, all is not well. The couple have borrowed from greedy money-lender Kanhaiyalal (as Sukhilala). They do not seem to be aware of the fact, but Mr. Kanhaiyalal has cheated them out of land and future profits...

Dealing with the money-lender meant Nargis and her family work harder and harder, for less and less. Adding to the tragedy is a faming accident. Then, the children are threatened with starvation. At one point, Nargis considers prostituting herself to Kanhaiyalal, who desires the woman as well as her money. She resorts to begging, and saves son Sajid Khan (as Birju) with a few grams of food. "Master Sajid" is the son you should be watching, by the way. And, you won't have any trouble finding him - young Khan takes over the screen for a good portion of the movie...

Khan grows up to be Sunil Dutt (as the adult Birju). Rajendra Kumar is "Ramu" the more stable son. Mr. Dutt continues to be the "bad boy" of the village. You'll notice "Birju" the young man is very reminiscent of "Birju" the boy. As a boy, he didn't like the money-lender. As a man, Mr. Dutt holds Kanhaiyalal responsible for his family's misfortunes. Dutt decides to take matters into his own hands. Nargis loves and protects her son, but wants to honor the community's decisions regarding the old loan and "interest" agreed upon. This leads to a conflict between "Mother India" and son...

This classic film was an huge critical and commercial success; it almost won the "Academy Award" for best foreign language film of 1957. "Mother India" isn't easy to watch, however, even if you like foreign films. It startles with traditional musical interludes, makes unaccustomed cultural connections, and runs almost three hours. If bravely enduring a second viewing, you could get engrossed in Nargis. There is fascinating symbolism and story-telling herein. Near the end, Nargis makes a decision regarding her son which is thought-provoking - does it contradict her earlier emotions and stated beliefs?

******* Mother India (2/14/57) Mehboob Khan ~ Nargis, Sunil Dutt, Sajid Khan, Rajendra Kumar