Ashdoc's off beat films thread

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Kaun kitne paani mein ( 2015 )



I was attracted to this film due to the presence of the seductive Radhika Apte , who was in the flower of her youth when this film was being made . Also I was intrigued by the film's setting---Odisha , a state I have once visited years ago but which rarely makes it's appearance in hindi films . The rustic setting of the film attracted me too . After all , it is the real India that I was seeing .

The only fear was the film going down the familiar path of vilifying my religion in the name of political correctness , and taking an increasingly dark tone as it approaches it's topic . Fortunately that was not the case . The film does show caste differences , but it tries to showcase the whole thing in a light hearted manner that partly succeeds in reducing the tension in some situations .

The film begins with the king of a former kingdom in Odisha still lording over the lower castes even after the loss of his power . Lower caste people have to bend their back for him to climb on their bodies in order to seat in his vehicle . But his daughter does the grave perfidy of falling in love with a lower caste man and the king kills them both , also banishing the lower castes to a village at a lower level in altitude .

Decades pass and the king is gone and his son is now king ( Saurabh Shukla ) . All his former grandeur is gone and he even has to put on false mustaches to show false bravado . Reason---due to climate change his village has no water and is parched . In frustration he tries to sell it but there are no takers for a parched village . And the tables are turned and the lower castes have plenty of water in their village due to far sighted building of a lake where water collects easily due to lower altitude of the village . The leader of the village is Kharu pehelwan ( Gulshan Grover ) who royally hates the king but has an enticing daughter---Paro ( Radhika Apte ) , the reason I was watching the film .

And I was waiting for Paro to fall in love with the king's son ; he had to have one to get the story moving….And the prince duly makes his appearance being played by Kunal Kapoor . His father encourages the romance to get water pipeline from the lower village , but tells his son to fool Paro and dump her after getting the pipeline with promises of marriage .

But best laid plans do go awry don't they....especially in films where the passion called romance exists . The prince really falls in love with the character of Paro played by Radhika Apte , invoking jealousy within my heart for I wanted to possess myself of her in vain . And all hell breaks loose with both castes once more on the warpath .

So is it 'Qayamat se Qayamat tak' redux ? Watch the movie for the answer . There are some other funny characters in the film , like the prostitute who takes her fees in bags of water ( such is scarcity of water ) and the priest who grows marijuana in his backyard and the weaver who is secretly building his own tunnel to bring much need water and the village goddess whose temple becomes the centre of attention in the climax .

Amidst all this , what gave me enormous satisfaction was the fact that the lower castes never gave up on their religion even in moments of humiliation ; that they continued to follow hindu traditions to the fullest . Colours photography acting background music and songs are all okay . Also okay is the film , taking on an art topic in a light hearted manner .

Verdict---Okay .

Two and a half stars out of five .

[AshdocAdmin]

Directed by Chetan Anand who was the doyen of war movies in Bollywood , this black and white movie is set in the himalayan region of Ladakh during the Indo-Chinese war of 1962. For a war movie made at a time when soldiers were exclusively men , the movie focuses inordinately on women . For the thoughts of the soldiers guarding the inhospitable wastes of the Himalayas invariably turned towards their women in these remote regions where there was nothing else to occupy the mind .

So one soldier is waiting for a letter from the woman whom he was to marry , but who rejected him when she realised that he would be off on duty for a long time after marriage with no chance to remain with her . Another soldier dreams of his wife in her bridal dress . Another is unmarried but remembers his sisters in law , who are waiting for their husbands who are also in the army . Another waits for gifts from his wife and gets a gift of soil from her to plant flowers in the region where no blade of grass grows---the description of the region they are guarding in PM Nehru's words .

But the hero of the film Captain Bahadur Singh ( Dharmendra ) has found love in Ladakh itself ; he is in a relationship with a ladakhi girl named Angmo ( Priya Rajvansh ) and gets permission from his mother to marry her . He is son of the commanding officer of the soldiers stationed there . His immediate superior Major Ranjit Singh is played by Balraj Sahni . Director Chetan Anand's brother Vijay Anand plays Major Pratap Singh .

But war clouds are on the horizon as chinese soldiers daily berate them from their side by loudspeakers that the territory they are standing on is chinese territory and since Indians and chinese are brothers , the Indians should vacate it !! The commanding Indian major has to convince his own soldiers that it is their own land that they are protecting . That because India has no tradition of invading other country's lands , it would scarcely guard a land where not a blade of grass grows if it was not it's own . Ladakhi civilians including Angmo however are co operative and willingly take training in firing rifles from Indian soldiers to protect their region from the chinese . Angmo's small brother dreams of joining the army when he grows up and Bahadur personally gives him training , using the opportunity to meet Angmo .

One day real war begins as chinese troops begin bombarding Indian positions . Intelligence is that the chinese vastly outnumber the Indians and the commanding brigadier ( Bahadur's father ) orders a retreat . But the soldiers flatly refuse . Retreat would be loss of honour for them and they would not be able to show their faces to the very women they dream of when they return home . So they stay put in their positions and fight .

Soon the chinese attack using human wave tactics , but the Indian soldiers vow to kill 20 for each Indian killed . They pour machine gun fire onto the onrushing chinese and make good their vow . However they run out of bullets and the chinese are endless . So they are forced to retreat . Major Ranjit Singh then hatches a plan . They vacate the post behind them also and allow the chinese to come to take it too . But what the chinese do not know is that the post is surrounded by Indians at vantage points and that they are walking in a trap . They are mown down .

Ranjit plans to now take back the lost Indian position but brigadier warns him on radio that intelligence reports say that a vast chinese force is now coming to take revenge . Orders a retreat . This even though it would mean abandoning his son Bahadur who is at another nearby post and cannot be contacted . So reluctantly Ranjit and his soldiers start to come back but in the himalayas distances are vast . The soldiers almost get lost in the icy wastes and only Ranjit's determination brings them to another army camp . Here he meets Angmo , and believing her lover Bahadur to be dead Ranjit asks to marry her . She refuses as she loves only one man---Bahadur.

Meanwhile the Brigadier contacts Ranjit with both good and bad news . Bahadur is alive at his post with only one soldier with him , and he is the only hope of trying to stop a huge chinese force coming to invade the camp where Ranjit and his soldiers are lying in half wounded condition . Angmo and her brother decide to go to fight alongside Bahadur but Angmo gets caught by chinese soldiers on the way . Her brother reaches Bahadur with the orders to fight the oncoming chinese . Bahadur and his aide get ready with their light machine guns to fight one last battle .

However Angmo who has been captured by the chinese is tortured and violated by them as she refuses to spy for them . She is then abandoned by them as they prepare to attack Bahadur's position . She treks upto that position and takes the gun of Bahadur's comrade who has been killed in the fighting to help Bahadur fight his final battle . They both die fighting but their gallant rearguard action has delayed the chinese sufficiently so that the Indian soldiers can be evacuated from their camp to safety .

The final scene and the song after it 'now the nation is in your ( soldiers' ) hands' brought me to tears and is certainly the high point of the film . Reportedly PM Nehru cried too when the song's singer Lata Mangeshkar sang it live in front of him . But there are other good scenes in the film like the Major saying to his soldiers who are lost in the snowy himalayas during their retreat and given up for dead by their superiors , that retreating alive after all their bullets are finished is not loss of honour but rather signals a will to live to fight the enemy another day .

Music is a strong point of the film and even better are dialogues which are full of the rationale for bravery and patriotism . Acting is good too , and some scenes are full of pathos like soldiers dying remembering their women and their widowed women collecting their now useless jewellery ( traditional hindu widows do not wear gold or jewels ) to donate for the war effort . However a scene of a soldier's skin coming out with his socks on removing them after days of continuous marching makes for some unseemingly if realistic viewing . Ladakh looks bleak in black and white and even bleaker with the bodies of dead Indian soldiers . The film is a brutal reminder that arms are the mainstay of peace and if a nation fails to plan for it's defense then it is planning to fail in protecting itself .

Verdict---Good .

Four stars out of five .