Feng Shui and Kanti-lal shah (loha review)

Ever tried buying a Kanti-lal shah movie ? EVER ??.. well tell you what how difficult it can be


i remember asking the VCD parlour guy whether he has "mithun movie" the look in his eyes explained it all, i bet in his mind he was thinking "the guy is dressed ok, looks decent, what can be possibly wrong with him ??"


well to people surprise instead of giving me mithuns movie he gave me "loha" (an epic by kanti-lal shah) although i had other options to choose from like "charnonki saughand", "Wardaat" , "gunmaster G-9" btw do learn these words it can help you with your GRE, OK, now off to LOHA review, There are Mithun movies, and then there are distillates of a parallel universe. What you are about to read, is about a glowing, incandescent and steaming example of precisely that. This movie is beyond the capabilities of mortal description, and the written word would not do any justice to capture the sheer giddy feeling I get after I’ve seen this. Beats any rush in the world, hands and feet down.

The opening sequences set the tone for what is to follow, with street toughs talking in hushed, awe-drenched voices about the King of the Mumbai crime scene, LukkaBhai (Mohan Joshi). His ‘entry’ filmed against the crusty environs of good old Mukesh Mills is one of the grittiest (verbally speaking) sequences ever shot in Bollywood. He has a verbal duel with TandyaBhai (Deepak Shirke, in a powerful cameo), his erstwhile mentor, who has been overthrown by him. The dueling is not unlike the stuff you would have seen in 8 Mile. Only, this movie came much before it, kinda like a precursor. The dialogue is so powerful, it makes your eyes and nose water.

Samples –

Lukka : “Kya hua? Kyon chilla raha hai?”

Tandya : “Arre hona kya tha? Kauwe ne cheel ka chumma liya aur cheel nechoohe ka bachcha paida kiya!”

(This is the first of the many ‘WTF’ moments that you are guaranteed…)

Tandya : “Bhool gaya kya woh din, jab tu din ko boot polish, aur raat ko tel maalish kiya karta tha? Mawaali log tereko chikna chikna bulaake terepichchwaade pe haath ghumaate the…”

Tandya : "Abbe chal be, main dhobi ghaat pe, tooteli khaat pe lita lita kemaaronga"

Lukka : "Main tera woh bura haalat karoonga, jo deemag lakdi ka, aur chhipkalimakdi ka karta hai"


Incensed by Tandya’s insouciance, Lukka has Tandya’s sister’s ‘advantage taken’, post which a broken, hollow Tandya comes to Lukka, and begs for mercy and a job.

Lukka : “Tune mujhe bhadwaa bola, bahut kadwaa bola. Abbe o kadwe karele, teri behen marne ke baad, teri haalat us AIDS lagi randi ki tarah ho gayi hai, jiske paas kabhi koi giraik nahi jaata…”

Tandya : “Ab main woh cinema (ke ticket ka) ka aadha tukdaa hoon, jiski keematkhatam hone ke baad do kaudi ki bhi nahi hai”

Tandya (totally breaking down) : "Ab maar daal mujhe, main bina petrol ki gaadiaur bin nashe ki taadi hoon, main woh fateli saadi hoon, jise koi hijdaa bhi nahi show pehenta… "

Then it’s time for Shankar (Dharmendra), who plays a clean but disgraced cop, out to fight the system. Dharam papaji is at his rugged best, both attire, voice, and dialogue delivery wise.

After a while, God makes an entry with that ethereal ‘Dikhne mein bevda, bhaagne mein ghoda, aur maarne mein hathoda’ sequence, post which when the rape victim does the mandatory, bashful thank you, he mournfully laments

“Aapka yeh kanoon, aur bhagwaan, jab bhi kisi ko deta hai, to chappar faadkedeta hai, aur jab leta hai, to thappad maarke leta hai…”

Arjun (God) is an ex-Military man (who obviously is entitled to shoulder length hair even while in the services – it’s HIM we are talking about) who has a run-in in with a baddie played by Rolling-eyes Rajesh Vivek (for quality movie folks, he’s Guran from Lagaan, and a B-Movie (B for Bhoot) legend in his own right…). He loses his lady love, and his military post, as a result of which he hits the bottle with a vengeance.

After a chance meeting outside Hotel Monarch (what are the odds?), Shankar saves Arjun’s life after he collapses and gets him a miraculous, bloodless operation.
Lukka gets Shankar’s sis ‘taken advantage of’ and killed. The two team up to fight the baddies along with Mustafabhai (Shakti Kapoor playing a baddie turned good) who has a score to settle with handlessLukka for chopping his hands off.

Shankar gets wrongly imprisoned, and Lukka comes to crow –

“Dekha Shankar, mujhse dosti karne waale ko Himalayki pahad ki choti par bithaata hoon, aur mujhse dushmani karne waale ko main hari mirch ki chutney par bithaata hoon”

“Jahaan angoor na ghus sake, wahan tumne nariyal ghusane ko dekha…”

(Another juicy one which Lukka lets rip earlier on to one of his cohorts goes thus

"Phone sunte hi tumhara chehra kisi garbhavati billi ki pet ki tarah kyon gir gaya?!"

Potent stuff this...)

Shankar gets out of jail and then on it’s all about how the triumvirate systematically go about breaking Lukka’s stranglehold, and ultimately good triumphs over evil. Will not give the gory details away anymore, go and watch it.

There is also a very Quentin Tarantino-esque side plot/story with Govinda, Manisha Koirala and Dinesh Hingoo, which is a fine example of that school of movie making.

I have just one thing to say to you people. The USP of the whole movie, is the dialogue and the characterization. Period. Watch it and prepare to be amazed. I used to recite this stuff on popular demand while I was a student, and everybody thought I was making them up…till I actually showed them the movie. No one emotes while watching it, they just are too engrossed and zapped to react. Post movie, they confide that they were so, so wrong to have ever doubted me. I modestly brush it aside, saying that their reaction mechanism (or the lack of it) was worth it. One of my unquestioned, unchallenged and unilaterally favourite movies.

It's the time to "Disco" (dancer) !!

The year 1983 was the year of epilogues, it was the year of revelation and as i've written somewhere that the art of movie making is an inherent dichotomy,
yes my friends, 1983. India was on the verge of something big(beside cricket world cup and some illogical movies like 'ardh satya'). Something really big. What big? What big? Disco Dance fever which burst upon the national consciousness like a gumboil. Thanks in no small measure to this movie
 
prabhu-ji again in his flamboyant appearance swayed the crowd and Good old Kaka wrapped in designer polyester, plays his uncle. They dance and sing on the mean grotty streets of Mumbai for a living, with technology waaaaay ahead of their times, what with all their analog instruments capable of producing those electro-robotic-digital sounds (pewwww.... pewwwwww) in between verses and choruses. Divinity evidently has a way around the most mundane of limitations. (How could you think otherwise? How could you?!)
prabhu-ji in one of these songs challenges the theory of bourgeoisie and proletariat by cavorting rich little girl (who in after some frames in this movie only wins the filmfare award for "Best actor/actress to deliver 1 expression for 1000 dialogues" ) now some we cut direct to the scene when prabhu ji and his mom r in "Goa" (because watever has happen before this were some unusual movie scene and for that i want people to check out the DVD/VCD of this movie)

They leave Bombay for Goa. Not a bad trade-off that. Prabhuji grows up in a flash amongst the party happy Goans. (Must have been all that protein rich sea food, and fresh air). To be a dancer on the not-so-mean and not-so-grotty streets of Goa. What were the odds of that, honestly?Meanwhile, the lovable rattlesnake's kids have grown up too, his son Sam(Karan Razdan) being a Disco Dancer, and his daughter Kim (well... Kim) well, just grown up. Now Sam is supposed to be the 'national disco craze'. A song (Usha Uthup going at "Koi Yahaan Nache Nache"
does full justice to his primary talent, which is making Sunny Deol look like a ballerina. Drunk with success and shady looking booze in shadier looking bottles, he insults his manager (Om Puri - called David Brown. Which I think is the coolest character name ever in Bollywood) and on a whim, refuses to perform on a sultry night in Goa. Good Ol' Dave quits in a fit of apoplexy, and vows to create another Sam.

Cut to Prabuji's lotus feet. You know it's him, when you see those dapper legs, scissoring across your senses like 100 cc bike riders on the dirt tracks of Andheri East. The Goan authorities evidently were really pushing hard to ameliorate his life, and thoughtfully made street lights blink in shiny disco ball fashion at midnight, just so that Prabhuji could hone his chops. And we say we've never had good governance in India. Pah. But we digress. David Brown likes what he sees, and immediately takes Prabhuji under his scrawny wings.

Somewhere along the way, Prabhuji falls in love with Kim, taunts Snake thereby extracting his emotional pound of flesh for his mommy's insults at the various parties he meets, and emerges as a challenger to Sam's throne all of which give Fangsy great heartburn. So he tries to get Prabhuji bashed up and fails (cos in that fateful scene, Prabhuji snaps his fingers generating reverb and echo effects which scare the pants off the goons. He barely needed to whack them after that). At the end of his tether, Snake re-wires Prabhuji's electric guitar at a show making it 'live'. The mother of God comes to know, and reaches for it just before he does. And croaks heartwrenchingly, leaving Prabhuji with a lot of misfiring neurons and a general phobia of electric guitars in general.
 
Thus in one fateful stroke, he forgets how to (gasp!) sing and (asphyxiate!) dance. The world is drenched in gloom, and somewhere in Scandinavia, this catastrophic event single handedly led to the birth of black/doom/death metal (source uncredited). (Why Scandinavia? Because, metal history aside, a look at my measly traffic distribution reveals a search for "Gunmaster G9" from at least one country in that region EVERY ****ING DAY)Till the day of the International Disco Competition dawns. Countries like Africa and Paris send their teams to win here. One look at their moves, and you start to get that inevitable itch to see Him dance again. All he has to do is wiggle his pinkies to win this baby, you say. Really. The other dancers are *that* good.
Just when you are about to yell out your encouragement along with Kim who tries her damnedest best to get Prabhuji's feet twinkling again by yowling "Jimmy Jimmy aaja aaja aaja" till your fingernails shrivel, Kaka suddenly perforates your haze, with an awe inspiring "Gaa Jimmy Gaaa!!!!!" war cry on his fevered lips, designer polyester on his body and electric guitar in his hand.Prabhuji's neuron blocks snap, and dance he does. Hoo boy. And how. Prabhuji gets his mojo back, the crowd goes apeshit, Kim is happy, Kaka can't stop gloating, and just when everything looks to be all right with the world, the cold blooded reptile resurfaces and tries to plug Prabhuji. Kaka plays the bullet affinity card, and dies bleeding in Jimmy's arms.
"Vengeance is mine!" screams Prabhuji. And dispatches the evil snake to hell. No prizes for guessing how. It's quite shocking actually (lousy pun intended).

Thus, all karmic debits and credits being suitably balanced out in the cosmic account
book, the Lord goes back to doing what he does best. Like providing gristle for severely blocked blogger mills for instance...

The END .. !!

The Interview part -- II

As i promised following are the extract from the interview between a logically deprived journalist and obviously nature's biggest catastrophe mr. kanti lal shah

then the interviewer ask so is it like mahabharat and ramayan ?


Kanti Lal Shah:- Exactly. And like Mahabharata, Gunda is not just about conflict. I will go so far as to say that the conflict is secondary to the human drama. In the best traditions of a Greek tragedy, noone comes unscathed from the Gunda experience. While ostensibly the story of a man who loses his father, sister and wife to the evils of society, it is also the cautionary tale of an evil man (Bulla) who swept away in a malestorm of revenge and violence (as he once tells Shankar: “Tujhe jalta bhunta dekhkar hum is tarah khush hote hain jis tarah koi shaitani-type ke bacchen aapne guriya ke haath payer todkar talee marte hainnnnnnn”) is consumed by the flames of his own rage.

He first sees his darling sister made “lamba” by arch-rival Lambu Atta following which Bulla laments, in an epic scene, “Munni meri behen munni, munni meri behen munni, to tu mar gyee? Lambu ne tujhe lamba kar diya? Maachis ki tili ko khamba kar diya?“. And then the pain he experiences everyday in seeing his mentally challenged younger brother trying to become a “mard” is gut-wrenching. Bulla feeds him sex pills from London and like a kind elder brother provides him girls to rape (and I should add, Chutiya doesnt even know it’s a crime to forcibly fornicate as he keeps asking Bullah: “Bhaiyya bhaiyya, rape karna kya buree baat hain?“). Till one day Chutiya emerges a man —an occasion he marks by disco-dancing with eunuchs to the tune of “Haye haye mere bhai jawaan ho gya, toota hua teer kaman ho gya“.


Ok ok, but what exactly about shankar aka Mithun who is the protagonist of this movie ?


Kanti Lal Shah:- I also created as their dramatic adversary (Main hoon jurm se nafrat karne waala, shareefon ke liye jyoti, goondon ke liye jwaala) the character of Shankar, (played by Prabhuji Mithun Chakraborty) a coolie in a airport . He represents the typical hard-working Indian man forced to balance time between an overweight girl friend, an even fatter sister, an overacting father, alcoholic friends and a pet monkey who can drive a car. It is Shankar and his family that is crushed underneath the “system” of the 90s—a system that Shankar rises against through the inspirational “Do chaar chaaye aat dus. Bus” reciting of even numbers and concomitant retributory cleansing violence.

Thus being a depiction of the eternal conflict between good and evil with each character being an anthropomorphization of historical forces, Gunda transcends all cinematic formulae. Even after this if people want to call Gunda trite, well all I can say, paraphrasing a line from Loha, that their intellects “kisi garbabhati billi ki latakti hui pet ki tarah latak raha hain”


Interviewer: Now back to the questions. What do you think is the legacy of Gunda?


Kanti Lal Shah:- Gunda is on IMDB at 8.9. It is uniformly accepted as a masterpiece. It holds the world record for being screened in almost all men’s hostels in India. Often in a loop. There are orkut communities for it. There is even a fan site. It is now a popular baby-name. There is a city in the republic of Buryatia named after the movie. A Gunda-themed apparel line exists. There is “Gunda pickle” which on consumption makes you scream like Lambu Atta after he sees his chikna bhai Kundan murdered. An Aussie band has named themselves Gunda Guys to honor their love for the classics. The Zulus have named a “cottol reel car” Gunda Gunda.
Gunda dialogues have passed into popular lingo. “Tere behen ko kar doonga khullam khullah” is an accepted form of greeting between men in college campuses in India. The idea of Lucky Chikna’s sex garden (”latakta circus”) where people fornicated on hanging khatiyas has been adopted by discerning brothels all over the world. Many children born accidentally due to defective contraceptives are being named “Nirodh Kumar” in many parts of India, in honour of a character of the same name in “Gunda”.


Note:- the part 3 and the last part of the gunda philosphy will be coming soon with lots of FAQ so stay tuned !





 

Hum Baiji Chi: The Gunda Philosphy

Hum Baiji Chi: The Gunda Philosphy: "i've been watching gunda scenes up and down for last couple of hours to understand the exact psyche of the director 'Kanti lal Shah',film ..."

The Gunda Philosphy

i've been watching gunda scenes up and down for last couple of hours to understand the exact psyche of the director "Kanti lal Shah",film makers as a rule have to tread a very fine line between the aesthetic and the downright blasphemous, when trying to accurately profile the darker sides of human nature. Every once in a while, there comes a defining moment in cinematic history
a forgettable guy once said about "Gunda"

“There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who have seen “Gunda”. And those who shall see it.” ——Roger Abhert

(sorry i don't know who is Roger Abhert)

The movie 'Gunda' Actually opens with few real 'Bad Goons' introducing themselves

Lambu Atta – “Deta hoon maut ka chaanta”

Bulla – “Sab karta hoon khullam khulla”

Chutiya – (just so that you know… chutiya as in tuft of hair; also, this character is probably the most evil hermaphrodite portrayed in Bollywood. Ever.) – “Acche acchon ki khadi karta hoon khatiya”

Pote – “Jo apne baap ke bhi nahi hote”

Ibu Hatela – “Maa meri chudail ki beti, Baap shaitan ka chela, Kyon? Khaayega Kela?” 


Lambu Atta starts a bloody gang war by murdering one of Bulla’s henchmen. This triggers a wave of fraternal and sisterly retaliation by either party, which culminates in Lambu’s tragic demise.

Next, Bulla’s Brother, Kala Shetty kills a minister, and it’s time for God to make his entry. Prabhuji plays a coolie, and is seen in an airport in the movie, which is a revelation in itself. Weird as this may seem, this scene makes a very powerful case for class empowerment, and is a prophetic indication of how cheap airfares would be in 21st century India. It takes amazing vision, and a deep understanding of aviation economics to be able to portray something that would have been totally ridiculous back then (really… what’s a coolie doing at an airport? This movie came out in the late 90s.) and makes perfect sense now.

The final showdown is strongly reminiscent of the big battle scenes in the the Lord Of the Rings epics, with Bulla looking really malevolent as he gets his army to the arena in auto rickshaws. It reminded me of the charge of the dark forces of Sauron, it is every bit as chilling.

Prabhuji restores some semblance of sanity to this world (and thereby to you), by killing Bulla. His parting shot?

“Tera naam hai Bulla. Maut ke baad bhi reh jaayega tera mooh khulla. Yaaeeeessh.”

True. True. 

The actual connection of this movie with political scenario and crime in india

interpreting this word by word as per "Kanti Lal Shah's" psyche

when "Kanti lal shah" was asked that this movie is one of the worst movie ever made as said by crictics "Kanti Lal Shah" in his brilliant manner replies
Kanti Lal Shah:- These critics are unfortunately literalists. And while they applaud the surreal appeal of Fellini’s La Strada, they are unwilling to put away their neorealist sensibilities while evaluating Gunda. My movie, intentionally confined by the grammar of popular cinema so as to make the message accessible to the hoi polloi, is actually an allegory where each villain represents something larger than just himself. More specifically, each villain here is a metaphor for the challenges facing India in the 90s.

First there is Bulla, the main evil man. His motto is “Mera naam hain Bulla, rakhta hoon main khullaaaaaa“. While the literalists interpret this as a declaration that this man does not wear underwear,most right-thinking viewers will immediately realize that Bulla represents the “open” economy—that instrument of the capitalist West to suck out the life blood from the unwashed masses.Yes Bulla’s malignancy represents the depredations wrought by the “khullam-khulla capitalist system” with its removal of protection for farmers and small industries: in short the principal villain of the 90s.

More on the question to  Kanti Lal Shah will be coming soon hook to "humbaiji chi"