After watching Anand, I think I have witnessed the template for half the movies Robin Williams made in his career.
That's an exaggeration, of course. It also makes it sound like I didn't like Anand, which I did.
In June, I purposefully went back in time in Bollywood's history after a string of 21st century movies, which was also an intentional choice to see how much the things we today associate with Bollywood -- singing and dancing -- were present closer to its origins. Anand, a 1971 film about a man with a terminal illness, seemed to be a perfect test case for that.
At first it looked like I might have finally found a movie with no singing and dancing. But that proved to be only half right. There were no dance numbers and nothing that even really resembled syncopated physical movement during the songs, but eventually there were indeed songs, some of them quite catchy.
As you might be able to tell from the poster, the title character -- played by Rajesh Khanna -- is a man with an easy smile who doesn't let a terminal diagnosis get him down. He's got the very rare lymphosarcoma of the intestine, and it means he only has six months to live. Anand Sehgal's got a contagious personality type and is always trying to make everyone around him laugh, partly because that's his nature, and partly because he doesn't himself want to be the cause of their sadness. If he only has a short time to live, seeing everyone else around him in grief is certainly no way to spend it.
Can't you see how Robin Williams would have played this role in the American remake?
The other main character is his doctor, who can't do much for him, and who takes on a larger role as his friend. That's Dr. Bhaskar Banerjee (Amitabh Bachchan), a dour sort who gets irritated at being asked to cure the fantasy maladies of the rich, when he wants to save the poor but can do nothing for them. He's let his sense of hopelessness color his whole personality. His interactions with Anand transform him, so much so that he writes a book about them -- in fact, the events of this movie are essentially him recounting his experiences with Anand while accepting an award for his book in the film's opening minutes.
There are side characters -- a doctor friend who has taken a different path than Bhaskar, and love interests for both of them. That's right, Anand is still trying to find someone to fall in love with, an optimist to the end.
It's not an intricate movie plotwise, which makes it a real departure from most of the other Bollywood movies I've seen this year. But it has a pretty strong cumulative effect and works the sentimental angle pretty hard, though usually well. There are a few moments that prompt involuntary sniggers, as they are pitched a bit more dramatically than the scene may call for. But these are relatively few, and overall it's a really nice portrait of triumph over despair.
I wanted to take a moment to mention one of the funny little differences between these and Hollywood movies that I've been observing, few of which I've mentioned so far. One is that many of them have a legal document that appears on screen before the film, that I believe is the government's approval to screen the film. I've found that funny but gotten used to it, and I've been forgetting to bring it up.
The one I noticed during Anand was related to the opening credits themselves. I've never liked the phrase "guest appearance by" -- how can you be a guest on a one-off project? -- but they do it a little differently in Bollywood, or at least back in the Bollywood of 1971. In this case the two actors singled out were listed as "friendly appearances." I thought that was cute.
I feel like I should have more to say about Anand, but as you know, I've gotten a bit behind in my writing, and nothing else is really jumping out at me. It's a nice movie that has nice things to say about the human spirit. I'm glad I watched it.
Now that we're halfway done with this series, I have to start carving out time for a few movies I've singled out that I feel like are a must-watch. The problem is, some of them are more than three hours long. Will I have time for this in July? Doubtful, though stretching it out over two nights worked last month, so maybe that's the way to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment