Pyaasa

Pyaasa

            Pyaasa was a very depressing and realistically accurate depiction of poverty. Vijay is an interesting protagonist throughout the film and correlated properly with the theme of hypocrisy of views of a person based on their income or overall worth. This film brings on a wealth of emotions through Vijay’s troubling journey.  Many of the scenes in the movie accurately depict this, but three stood out to me. The two scenes I am speaking of are the scene where Vijay is being belittled by his brothers and the scene of Vijay talking at his funeral gathering.

            When Vijay is belittled by his brothers they are merciless. The script and acting was fantastic and ruthless with their assault on Vijay. Insulting his works, selling his livelihood as a joke, and even going as far to wish he was not born all within a quick span with no time for Vijay to react. What is interesting is the mother’s reaction throughout this. She is appalled not at Vijay for his lack of success, but her other two sons for their attack on Vijay. The mom is the voice of reason for this scene. She is what we would hope most people would act like, but in Vijay’s society she is a rare person.

It becomes even better in the later scene where Vijay is believed to be dead. The brothers lie and charm their way into winning his inheritance and are quickly shut down. They even go as far to disown their now rich brother thanks to Mr. Ghosh telling them to deny his freedom and they will receive some riches. The brothers quickly agree smiling in extreme eagerness to obtain wealth at the cost of a brother. Than when Vijay gets freed and Mr. Ghosh is screwed for his wrong doings the brothers quickly switch sides back to their brother acting like they loved and cherished him.

The funeral gathering scene was a place where the crowd came to adore and cherish the memory of Vijay. Even though when he was alive no one gave two annaas if he was starving or had a place to stay. Vijay then attempts to prove he is himself, but the crowd is quick to shut him down until people account to him being the real deal. Then when they do Vijay quickly throws it all away because he realizes it is basically nothing. These people that are in his society have no morals and could care less about the poor and only care about the rich. It is a sad conundrum that isn’t really solved, but through the movie it is shown as a real problem and hopefully people can reconsider the hypocrisy of their views and appreciate people for more than just money.

Shree 420

Shree 420

            This being my first post and one of the first movies on Bollywood I have ever watched, I was thrilled to see this. My sister has constantly held Bollywood Movies in high praise and it is not something I have had the leisure of time to be able to get into. I am not trying to come off as bashing on “Cinema! Cinema!” as in no way do I think it is a bad movie, but in comparison to Shree 420 I was much more enticed and excited to see how this one played out. There was a plot that I could follow cleanly and made sense to me. Maybe that is due to my inexperienced eye, but I am a sucker for a central character to root for as he grows and develops throughout the movie.

            The Central protagonist, Raj Kapoor, was an odd one at first. I never really knew what he was going to do. In the opening car scene his charismatic ways instantly got me hooked on his character. He was quick-witted and smart, yet still came off as compassionate. I knew he was good and had a moral conscious and that cause me to wonder how he would deal with his poverty. Especially with so many signs in the beginning of the only way to make it was to throw away whatever morals he had to succeed in a place like Bombay.

            The scene where Raj and Dharmanand are talking to the public as prominent figures was hilarious and I think a good representation of what the nation wanted at the time. Dharmanand spent his time preaching about people and their dedication to faith would lead to success as long as they kept working hard. On the other hand, Raj spent his time preaching about how people cannot work hard without food in their bellies and stole followers away from Dharmanand by just preaching about how everyone would do better with a full stomach, particularly some bread would be nice. I see this as a nice analogy for what people saw as necessary vs what the government saw as necessary with Raj representing people and Dharmanand representing the government. Relating to chapter one and the unrest India was going through at the time in the during the 1950's being freed of Britain's rule.

            On the topic of citizenship I see Raj’s opening song and repeat of that songs chorus, “My hats Russian, English pants, Indian heart”, as a good sign for the confusion that was on going at the time. Indians at the time had just come into independence from Britain so the Indian people were trying to find their place in the world. Raj does a very good job of saying no matter what you’re composed of as long as your heart beats for India you will be considered an Indian, or at least to Raj.