Haré Rama Haré Krishna

We do not come across movies on brother-sister relationship in Indian cinema, or any other language or medium. This relationship has several aspects which have not been exploited in movies or novels. Typically, a sister is depicted as a pile-on who can be used for ransom in the climax. This movie treats the subject in an entirely different light.

It is inspired by George Eliot's novel "The Mill on the Floss". The brother is very prosaic, all-good, the blue-eyed boy who is a conventionally good son and a favorite with his mother. The sister is romantic, wild and defiant of the unwritten rules of the society. In spite of this, the love of the brother-sister is the winner.

This movie is about the love of the two siblings who are separated in childhood and revival of the same feeling when they meet years later. It is also the quest of the subdued brother to reunite with his sister who has chosen to be wild to defy the world.

Although the movie and the novel are set about 3 centuries apart in two distant countries, yet the sentiments are the same and still hold true.

This one grew on me. I love the R.D. Burman music and in spite of the cruder elements of the story I found much to be moved by as I kept re-watching the movie. The brother-sister plot line is powerful, I thought; there's also more probably obligatory stuff, like bar fights, a loony crime story, etc. that are just distracting. (Though not unfunny from a certain point of view.) Also the English translation is definitely by someone for whom it was a bit of a stretch, and as loony as it is I am grateful to him for doing it.

Like many of the Bollywood movies I've seen, this one is melodramatic and opera-like, including here notably a song sung first by a little boy to cheer up his abused and unhappy sister, and then the same song sung 12 or so years later by the man who has travelled to Kathmandu seeking to re-connect with this girl, grown up and troubled (she had been told her brother and mother were dead), numbing her pain with drugs.

A super thing about this 1971 movie is that it is about the hippie movement, which brought hordes of seekers to India, from an Indian point of view, that sees them as people driven to India by a spiritual hunger aroused by the failings of their own societies, but nonetheless, in India, living only for the pleasures of the moment. The hippie singing-dancing-drugging scenes are truly wonderful, and accurate in their tone (I'm old enough to remember), and I feel pretty sure that the masses of young white zoned-out kids are actual hippie extras, as I remember hearing about kids on the caravan to the East getting this kind of work in Bollywood.

(It is not about the actual Hare Krishna movement, though the movie hippies sing a Krishna/Rama chant, as do a group of actual Indian devotees, unrelated to the hippies, in the opening scene of the movie.)

~Virginia

Evergreen Actor Dev Anand has acted a lots of movies.But Hare Rama Hare Krishna is one of the best of Dev Anand.Zeenat Aman also doing her excellent performance as a Nepali Girl.It was one of the biggest hits of all time.Evergreen Anand's direction is quite faulty(like in most of his directorial ventures).I never understood the purpose of the film apart from its innovative theme.Anand's willingness to break new ground.Specially i like the O Re Ghungroo Ka Bole Sung By Voice Of Asia Lata Mangeskar For Mumtaz & Dev Anand in Hare Rama Hare Krishna.This super hit movie was released in 1971 and the highest grosser of the year.It was starring Kishore Sahu,Achla Sachdev,Mumtaz,Dev Anand,Zeenat Aman,Prem Chopra and Rajendranath and all were doing their best.

Hare Rama Hare Krishna was the biggest hit movie of 1971. Filmed almost entirely in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, the movie depicts not only with the theme of a broken family, but also a relationship between a brother and a sister, as well as drugs and the hippie movement, which made many people think that it involved the ISKON - the movement for Krishna consciousness.

The movie begins with scenes of drugs and being informed that the woman dancing in front is the narrator's sister. Going back to the past the brother and sister are happily playing around the house only to hear their parents arguing. This soon leads to a split in the family. The brother goes with the mother and the sister with the father.

As years pass, the brother goes in search of his sister and is informed that she no longer lives with the father and that she has moved to Nepal. Here, Prashant, the brother not only finds love, but he also finds his sister, Janice. But he finds out that she is not only in the wrong company of friends but is also on drugs as she wants to block all memory of her past. With help of Shanti, his love, the brother tries to get his sister away from all this but has to overcome many obstacles, including people who stoop to all sorts of levels to stop him This is a multi cast movie and is led by the director and producer himself, Dev Anand and also stars Zeenat Aman (her first movie), Mumtaz, Rajendranath, Prem Chopra, Jnr Mehmood, A.K. Hangal and Achala Sachdev. The music is superbly provided by the late R.D. Burman, whose last score was "1942 - A Love Story." During the filming, Dev Anand asked Panchamda (R.D. Burman) to compose something special for this film. Days later Panchamda came back with the composition of "Dum Maro Dum." The song was an instant hit.

Dev Anand (or Prashant) and Zeenat Aman ( Jasbir/Janice) are siblings brought up in different countries. Because of poor parenting (crudely shown), Zeenat joins the hippie movement and also does drugs. Dev Anand after getting a letter from his father to locate Jasbir in Kathmandu visits that place, falls in love with Mumtaz( Shanti) and is also accused of stealing antiques.

Jasbir has blocked her painful childhood memories and Dev Anand sings the song which he used to sing when he was a kid to jog her memory.

Other than the great R.D.Burman music and Anand Bakshi lyrics and the footage shown about the ISKON movement and the beautiful stars and the Kathmandu location, the movie sucks big time. The story is extremely weak.