If you don’t stand for anything, you don’t stand for anything!
— The Great Dubya, George W. Bush.
I just read a fabulous review on Chandni Bar and almost gave upwriting this review. However, I couldn.t resist writing one. This has been one of the best films I have seen; However given that I also felt that that somewhere along the line the movie left too many questions un-answered. Whether it was intentional, I don.t know however they remain.
Brilliant Film
I won.t waste much time here, because everyone must know the story by now. However to make it short, here is what is all about. Chandni Bar tells the story of Mumtaz, a simple girl, who comes down to Mumbai with her relative. Once in Mumbai, her poverty and her uncle.s force take her to .Chandni Bar., a Beer Bar (Night-Club for the benefit of Non-Indian readers). The story chronicles nearly 20 years of her life and how she is exploited all along. She tries to improve her life, yet is never able to. She marries a goon, has kids and then loses her husband too. She raises her kids to the best she can, however, despite that, she is not able to change their fate when time comes. Her daughter enters the same profession, while her son follows his father.s footsteps to become a goon.
Madhur Bhandarkar who assisted Ram Gopal Vermal for a long time made this movie. His first movie was Trishakti, which no one even heard about, let alone see. His brilliance in directing is seen every frame of the movie. He maintains the tempo of the movie throughout and gives supreme importance to each scene in the movie. His master Ram Gopal Verma touch is there with him as well. The camera angles following from the ground to the roof in the supremely shot rape scene is simply mind blowing. He shows that gory scenes are not needed to make an impact. You can make an impact with just your camera. He is well supported by his writers and music directors who do well to maintain the look of the movie complete. The supporting star-cast is superb too, especially the beer bar girls whom Mumtaz interacts. Each of them have acted superbly.
But the movie wholesomely belongs to Tabu who plays the role of Mumtaz. Right from the first scene where she is an innocent girl to her transformation into a beer bar girl is played with great confidence and convincement. Never ever do you feel in the movie that someone is enacting a role in the movie. She is Mumtaz in the movie. The best scene where she improvises is un-arguably the scene where she decides to enter the profession to bail out her child from prison. The mere twitching of phone wires in the scene indicating her nervousness indicate how deeply she had read the character and how amazingly she carried forward the movie. Simply put, its her best performance to date. She is worth every bit of the movie to be watched.
Un-answered Questions
The movie was brilliant in all respects, no doubt. However, towards the end I couldn.t help thinking that the director did leave lot of questions un-answered. For example, we are never shown Mumtaz to be a person who could do anything on her own. She agrees rather too meekly to her uncle to become a prostitute and sleep with other men. Even when she is molested by her own uncle, she doesn.t really do anything at all to make her life better. She just accepts it as a bitter part of life and goes on. Similarly, she never really knows why she married the goon. She simply lets her life dominated in all ways possible by every person around her.
I kind of also felt surprised because the same woman who was so meek and has given up on life tries in every way possible to make her children lead a better life. I found it rather strange that she had the nerve to do it, when in the first place if she had little guts she could have had a slightly better life. Even towards the end, when we realize that she is not able to change the fate of her children, all that she does is join the bar again for the rest of her life.
Finally
I kind of thought at the end . Is this life? Was this what the director wanted to convey? That people who went through this business never really made it out in the good part of life? I came across his interview few days ago on the web, and I was surprised to read his answers that what he managed to show in this movie is just 20% of what goes on there. He didn.t have the courage to show more. Thank god.
The best part of course is the director doesn.t take sides. He neither glorifies Mumtaz.s life, nor does he despise her life. He shows it as it is, and that.s what makes this film brilliant. Don.t miss this film for anything in this world.
It.s a brilliant film. Period.
….more and more of our imports are coming from overseas..
-- The Dubyaman, Bush, On NPR's Morning Edition (9/26) (<i>Where else do imports come from?!</i>)