Chhalia (1960) :
Brief Review -
Manmohan Desai's overly complex attempt at Fyodor Dostoevsky's "White Nights" with Ramayana and India-Pak Partition conflicts. Dostoevsky's short story is about a lonely man who falls in love with a woman who is missing her lover. The woman finally reunites with her lover, leaving the lonely man all alone but with a lot of inner happiness. Chhalia takes the same story and extends it to a whole new level by adding the Ramayana's reference to Lord Ram not accepting Sita after she returns from Lanka. Here, the husband denies his wife and child after they return from Pakistan after 5 years of partition. The woman is abandoned by her own family and goes to commit suicide. She is saved by a lonely man, who eventually falls in love with her. She can't marry him or love him. He then decides to reunite her with her husband and child and live alone with eternal happiness. He is a small-time criminal, but he turns out to be the most noble character in the entire film. There are some things that don't make sense. The husband denies his child because he introduces himself with a Muslim name. So, he has seen the child's face and yet behaves sweetly toward him in the school. Why didn't he do it before? How did that boy get to school? The woman, abandoned by her husband and parents, is still spineless and isn't ready to break the abla naari image. She confronts her husband in the climax, and he rejects her again in front of the crowd. She cries, nothing else. Not even for a moment did she think of fighting, replying to him. I would have loved to see her rejecting the husband after all. Maa Sita chose to go inside the earth. Why didn't the writer use that reference from the Ramayana? Nevertheless, Chhalia still has enough drama to keep you engaged for two hours. But it could've been much better.
RATING - 6/10*
By - #samthebestest.
