Mother India

This film had me in tears at least three times; and not tears of sadness, but because it was just so beautiful. Don't expect anything near Hollywood slickness; if you want to find errors and things to laugh at, there are dozens. But the whole spirit of the piece is very poetic. In Hollywood movies, the musical numbers are when I take a break and go out. But in Indian movies, the musical numbers are spellbinding! And in this one, perhaps the best. The lyrics, the melodies, the staging (even with noticeable lip-sync) are just wonderful. Take the best songs from Broadway musicals and compare them to these, they've met their match. The passion in the lead female voice matches Callas. Superb!

Nargis stars as a suffering woman, Radha, experiencing tragedy after tragedy, surviving it all. The first half of the film doesn't promise anything overly special. A poor community falls under the weight of a moneylender, Sukhilala. When Radha marries, her mother-in-law mortgages her farm to pay for the wedding and Radha's jewlery. Since the mother-in-law has no education whatsoever, Sukhilala, probably the only educated man in the village, is able to take advantage of her. When she challenges Sukhilala's claim, she can't do much to disprove their deal. This part of the story is pretty cliché, rather predictable and very questionable. Sukhilala is a fairly standard villain, very cartoonish and simplistic. The audience is programmed to hiss at his every appearance. The conflict is compelling, but I was hoping for something more complex. It is nice, I suppose, to see the system challenged, but the fact that the system is challenged does not necessarily mean that the film challenges the system in an insightful manner. In reality, the film's solutions to the problems are all melodramatics.

Luckily, something else is brewing in the film at this point. Radha has two sons, Ramu and Birju. The story starts to focus in on Birju, who is very obnoxious. His mother loves him dearly, spoils him, and he becomes simply evil. I should say at this point that the little kid who plays him as a child, Master Sajid, is very, very annoying, not to mention a terrible little actor. As an adult, Birju is a devil. Sukhilala still runs the place, and now Birju is big enough to do something about it. Thankfully, Birju is not made a hero. Well, perhaps an anti-hero, but at least we're spared him becoming an Indian Robin Hood as I expected. Complexities begin to develop in the way Sukhilala is depicted, and, while he's still the villain, the audience is no longer programmed to despise him on site. Radha has to both protect her son and stand up for what is right. The climax is so extremely impressive that I was almost convinced that the film was great.

Yet the film is not what I would call great as a whole. There were dozens of scenes that I loved, but, as the film goes on for three hours, there was plenty to dislike, as well. The fat and gristle detract. Did I mention there are great songs? Great indeed! I love Hindi music myself. The cinematography is also often exceptional. 8/10.

This was a movie about a strong woman of honor, Radha (Nargis) and her family, a usurious man, and the poor village they live in. The lender breaks villagers' backs by charging interest at such a high rate that they give something like 3/4 of their laborious harvest to the lender just to cover interest, keeping the debt in perpetuity. Almost nobody around can read, so the terms of the original contract are never clear. Though the situation keeps the woman's family downtrodden financially, she staunchly preserves her pride and dignity.

One of her sons, Birju (Sunil Dutt), is portrayed as always being a "problem" right from childhood, and while I could understand his rage against the moneylender, I found his vengeance hard to believe, especially the self-destruction that pitted him against his own family members. I like the ending and really laud Radha, who realized that one's dignity and honor is priceless and shouldn't be bartered away.

I found the film to be too long (it lasted around 3 hours); the story could have been just as compelling if it were an hour shorter. I would recommend the film and would rate it 6 on a scale of 10. I saw it as part of an Indian film festival, where it was projected on a movie screen from DVD and had English subtitles.

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.

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.