Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara

I like the films of Jahnu Barua. I find him to be an honest filmmaker. He has made some very interesting movies--the best of which I consider to be "Papori," made in 1986. Any director would like to aspire to make a bigger budget film, with bigger names in Indian cinema. I guess this was the genesis of Barua's well-meaning effort called "Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara." Forget the melodrama of a senior member of the family suffering from a serious disease (why do so many Indian films need to have this ingredient in the plot?) the viewer will be able to see the honest Barua at work: the modern India forgetful of the values of individuals who gave birth to the world's largest surviving democracy, the dishonest lover who is scared of annoying his parents, the university students who treat a demented teacher with respect and courtesy, and the love and affection of grown-up adults for their parents. These are social values that exist in India today that Yash Chopra and other producers bank on to make a film successful. These are the "feel good" social credentials of Indian cinema.

In this film, the real Jahnu stands up as he succeeds in extracting a marvelous controlled performance from Urmila Matondkar, while Anupam Kher does his usual over-the-top melodrama playing to the gallery as he did in "Saaransh." Yet Jahnu, who usually is careful with his script mixes up Alzheimer's disease (first half of the movie) with delusion and psychological after-effects of a childhood incident (later half of the film) and the cure for it. I am not a medical expert but the two disorders seem to be strange bedfellows to manifest itself in the same individual.

The film, though well-intentioned, lacks the intensity of "Papori" comparatively a small budget film because it plays to the gallery. We love this film because it is more honest than the Bollywood kitsch and has some fine performances. This was evident at its screening at the recent Dubai Film Festival. For many in the audience it was the first film of Barua they had seen. And they liked it. If you loved this film (which is technically superior to his previous films, thanks to the bigger budget) do see Barua's "Papori" or even the less impressive "Aparoopa" where the real talent of Jahnu Barua emerges and impresses you even more.

I've never seen Mr. Bahru movie before, neither Mr kher's saanrch. but one thing that really struck me is that if u combine the finest people from Bellwood you definitely something spellbinding. this movie is surely one of the best in performances/story/screenplay and even background music. kher is disturbingly fantastic and we cud compare him with amitabh's performance in black. he played his character with utmost perfection leaving us shocked and shattered in the end. Urmila, on the other hand, is the most underrated actress of Bellwood. i don't want to describe how amazingly she performed because we all know that her performance is always 10 by 10 right from Pinjar, bhoot or Ek hasina thi. this year i sincerely hope she gets her long delayed national award as she acted on the level of shabana azmi & smita Patel. MGKNM succeeds in capturing father/daughter relationship which an over hyped movie called YAADEIN miserably failed to do so. even the kavita is like satisfying your soul.

This is Uttam Chaudhry's (played by Anupam Kher) home. An acclaimed scholar of Hindi and now a retired professor, Chaudhry is a man of principles and values. Professor Chaudhry suffers from frequent bouts of forgetfulness. What looked like a case of absent-mindedness before appears to be turning into a serious illness.He forgets that he has retired, and reaches college only to discover it's a chemistry lecture. He has a hard time coming to terms with the fact that it has been one and a half years since he lost his dear wife. He loses it altogether when Trisha's potential father-in-law places an ashtray and used teacup on a newspaper issue, which has Mahatma Gandhi's photograph. The professor's condition completely deteriorates and he starts blaming himself for being the man accidentally responsible for Gandhi's assassination. So what is his condition? Alzheimer's? Dementia? Schizophrenia? Scientific definitions offered are plenty, but the root cause of this sickness is much more deep-rooted than it appears. That's what makes Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara such a superbly multilayered presentation

When I say disappointment, I mean by Jahnu Barua's standard, and not by Bollywood 'standard', if there is any such thing as standard in Bollywood! Undoubtedly, by the yardsticks of Bollywood, Jahnua Barua's "Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara" is a masterpiece, but....

...by Jahnu Barua's standard, this movie is sub par. Jahnu Barua had won awards in Fribourg, Locarno and other places for his movies, he had been one of the pioneers of serious cinema in Assam (after Dr. Bhabendra Nath Saikia,and also, to some extent, Padum Barua, Deuti Duwara and a handful of others) probably the best known Assamese name to the moviegoers outside Assam (after Bhupen Hazarika and maybe, just maybe, Begum Parbeen Sultana); he showed that someone like Indra Bania, otherwise known only as a comedic actor, could deliver serious performance, he has used the talents of Bishnu Kharghoria, the best Assamese actor of all time (in my subjective opinion), in all his movies, he used theater personalities such as Dulal Roy, and has made many Assamese persons think (and to appreciate serious movies).

Of course, the pitfall of making serious movies in a society plagued by cheap Bombay formula movies is that Jahnua Barua had real problems arranging even Rs. 15 Lakhs (that is, Rs. 1.5 Million, or equivalent of USD 35,000), the minimum amount he needed to make a movie in Assamese. I read this in an interview, where he said that, he would give up making movies in Assamese, as it was too much waste of his time and effort to keep struggling to arrange the money. I also read a letter to the editor by someone in Guwahati, who said that when he arrived to watch a Jahnu Barua movie, the manager of the cinema hall declined to run it, not because he was an idiot, but because even after 30 minutes of the scheduled time, there were only 2 (yes, two!) patrons at the box office!

And as a result, someone as dedicated as Jahnu Barua has to make a movie in Hindi in Bollywood style, where a retired college professor gets to live in a huge mansion (in Bombay, of all places!), and the movie has to end with an absurd courtroom drama!

I do not mean that this is a bad movie; this is not. This movie is yards above the usual Bollywood stuff, 99% of which is stolen from Hollywood (and now also European Cinema: a case in point being Bheja Fry). This movie contains the same sincerity of Barua, that made his movies in Assamese excellent. But this movie does not belong to Jahnu Barua; it was obviously handicapped by the terms of the producers, who made it have some of the tell-tale elements of Bollywood escapism.

So, in a nut-shell, between mutation of the Assamese brain and Bollywood, Jahnu Barua is the casualty.

Subtlety is rarely seen in Hindi movies. Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara has plenty of it. The humor, the score, the acting and the story, all come together to make this wonderfully understated film. Yet this movie shows so much depth and understanding of human nature that its able to elicit from the viewer, genuine regard for its characters.

A lot of other reviewers have already talked about how excellent this is. So I will only urge you to watch it. The highlight is certainly Anupam Kher's performance which is layered and brilliant. The day that the Indian audience and critics are able to recognize performances and films like these is the day India can once again be proud of its cinematic history.