AMAR PREM : Juxtaposing legend and contemporary subtext
The fact that this film was one of the most path breaking and successful movies starring India’s greatest romantic icon Rajesh Khanna , is probably why Amar Prem is remembered as a love story only. In retrospect the immortal love (Amar Prem) it speaks about is but a miniscule part of the entire canvas. The filmmaker succeeds in weaving a tale which is classical and at once contemporary in its subtexts. And music and prose blend to create a cinema which is at once magical and disturbing.
The 70’s decade of Amar Prem was still grappling with the erosion of human values as seen in the 1950’s Amit Mitra – Shambhu Mitra film Jaagtey Raho. And the existence of a woman was still a Rule Book in the hands of a man – that whatever he had written and thought about her would be the final word on it.
The notion of love in Amar Prem has its roots in the legends of Krishna & Yashoda , Meera & Krishna. And it finds its way into a society wherein these notions were gradually losing their meaning, their relevance. The songs are the romantic ideal and the concerns of the film break it completely.
Shakti Samanta’s compassionate ode to unfulfilled passion is ably complemented by its timeless music …so as the characters go about living their lives, music steps in as a friendly bystander cum sutradhar …at times spelling out the essence of the scene and at times exploring the hidden depths of the characters.
In that regard Amar Prem is quite a Bold Film as it reflects very realistically this decadence. The decline of the Pastoral Ideal , the disillusionment of post industrialization , the pre cursor to the angry young man….the players in Amar Prem wonder what went wrong and where.
The first sync song in the film ”Raina beeti jaaye…Shyam na aaye”…. is a Bhajan in which Radha sings her woes following Krishna’s absence. Juxtapose it with Pushpa’s situation in the film and you have some beautiful analogies. While the first antara …”kis sauten ne roki dagariya..kis bairan se laagi najariya” sums up her sense of defeat as a Woman , the second antara reflects her unfulfilled desires … “birah ki maari prem diwaani tan man pyaasa ankhiyon me paani”….
And even as she acknowledges this lacuna in her sub conscious using the Radha – Krishna metaphor, Anand Babu enters her life.
Anand Bakshi’s poetry and the pleasant yet melancholic mood of the morning raga Lalit blend to form an amazing union between love and separation. Radha & Krishna ; Pushpa & Anand Babu …the analogies merge to create memorable celluloid relationships.
The song raises the scene to a sublime level as the opening strains hold back Anand Babu’s fumbling steps and lead him in to Pushpa’s Kotha…which, despite its debauch surroundings, is actually the only complete home shown in the film – it offers refuge to a lost man and to a wounded child…. It is also the Brindavan where Pushpa discovers motherhood (though briefly) and that the woman in her can be loved (though not necessarily acknowledged) .
But at the same time it becomes a weak film as you never hear a single voice of protest. In fact there are no icons of resistance in the film.
Pushpa’s husband brings a second wife into the house and she lives with it. He eventually throws her out and she returns to her village without a protest. Back home the entire village talks ill of her and her own mother listens to the loose talk and actually questions her morality and asks her to leave. Here too Pushpa leaves quietly to kill herself in the village pond . Even death betrays her as she is saved by the man who finally brings her to Kolkata , betraying her trust and depositing her in a Kotha.
No protest yet.
Predictably she has enough slander thrown on her here as well and she , as usual, doesn’t rise against it.
The man who had brought her from the village cheats her yet again when he keeps all the money that she had been sending for her mother for himself. She comes to know…she doesn’t react. He doesn’t tell her that her mother has been dead all this while…she has only shock and tears in answer. She lands up cleaning utensils in a boarding home for men where she is mistreated yet again by the old grouchy incharge…and she is still quiet.
Why is Pushpa so quiet? Why doesn’t she raise her voice?
And its not just her. Sujit Kumar doesn’t question his wife for ill treating his son from his first wife who he himself loves so much. Anand Babu, despite being of the stature that he is, doesn’t question the lovelessness of his marriage. In fact he actually is the biggest escapist as he goes to Pushpa to fill in the vacuums in his marriage…if this be love then it is pretty inadequate….and it surely is NOT a protest .
One of the most metaphorically evolved songs in the film , “chingari koi bhadke” . is Anand Babu’s expression of love for Pushpa. It’s a memorable composition by SD Burman set in Raag Bhairavi but in the Bhatiyaar tradition. And it’s picturised on them taking a boat ride across the Hoogly waters under the Howrah Bridge. So do they bridge the social distance between them? Does she acknowledge his expression and accept it? Or does she comply because submission is all that she understands now? …We don’t know. Because it’s not her song really. She merely smiles through it with her soulful eyes.
Yet she is his companion in life. ..As the refrain fades in across the waters …“ saawan jo agan lagaaye use kaun bujhaaye..” the irony of their lives and the times they live in hits you…that a companion who is the elixir of your life is actually the one whose desire will consume you even as you aspire… and then you are doomed to lose. That the ideal that you aspire for is a system which is lost in the drudgery of politics and social propaganda…and might not be visible in a long long while.
They love each other but they do not have the strength to rise against the world , snatch away their rights and LIVE their loves.
Pushpa is deprived all her life of the basic joys…her one love is way beyond her and remains outside her world till the very end. He cries with her as he drowns his own sorrows in drink and empathises with her. But he doesn’t have it in him to come hold her hand. Except in the confines of her home..when he is offering her solace. …
“Kucch to log kahengey… Anand Bakshi pens the most simple yet the most revolutionary lines in this song….when he says for a prostitute and her environs that …” kuchh reet jagte ki aisi hai jar ek subah ki shaam hui..tu kaun hai tera naam hai kya seeta bhi yahan badnaam hui”.. when he is able to bring in the similarities between Pushpa and Seeta – that if they live with subservience , they die despite the Agni Pariksha and if they protest then they will be scarred for life.
It’s a song with attitude but then that’s all that it is.
Anand Babu is unable to voice his dissent and breathe life into his Radha…neither does he succeed in giving a new life to Nandu…he is unable to try and build a home out of this ‘Amar Prem’ .
And that’s the sense of desolation that stays on with us even after the film.
The ‘immortal’ love in Amar Prem between its lead players doesn’t have the strength to rise above all these wrongs, all these atrocities. On the contrary the unfair world around it continues to go on unaffected.
Amar prem”… mein prem to amar hai lekin uske paas shakti nahi….wo samaaj ki ek dahaad par ek kamre me ghut ghut kar marne waala prem hai. (In Amar Prem the ‘Prem’ might be ‘Amar’ but it has no strength – it is the kind of love that lies in one corner of a dark, suffocating room to grovel and die.)
The only resistance comes from Nandu – a little boy. He braves his stepmother’s beatings to go to Pushpa to put medicine on her wounds. In the end the grown up Nandu brings her home …acknowledging her as his mother.
The love that is so beautifully encapsulated in the song Bada Natkhat hai re…again in the Krishna motif…this time with his surrogate mother Yashoda. Juxtapose it with Pushpa’s unfulfilled motherhood in the film and you have the complete canvas of her relationship with Nandu in this one song.
Shakti Samanta’s Amar Prem protests against the decadence of human values and relationships through the voice of a child. All other characters are barely living their lives of compromise. In a larger perspective Nandu is the one hope, the fresh thought that will break away from the narrow confines of smallness in human behavior and bring about constructive social change.
(Translated from hindi and inputs by Anupama Bose)
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Thanks to get the Classic on the forum ,your article was a nostalgic trip down memory lane !!!
GK
One of my all time favourites.Even though the film was not a huge blockbuster like Aradhana when it was released,it has stood the test of time and today is considered a classic.One of the best performances from Rajesh Khanna and specially Sharmila.The last 10 minutes are very moving and I cannot hold back my tears in the last scene everytime I watch it.Music is mindblowing.It heartening to see how Shakti Samanta avoided the typical commercial elements like putting a mujra song even though major part of the film revolves around a brothel and substituting it with a classical bhajan!!!!According to me it was the best film made by him.Sometimes I really feel bad that Shakti Samanta productions which gave us a series of blockbusters like Kati Patang,Aradhana,Amanush,An evening in Paris,Kashmir ki Kali is now almost non-existent.The last I heard they made a film with Mithun last year called Don Muthuswami.They will always be remembered as one of the biggest money spinners in the 60’s and 70’s.
Amar Prem is one of the true gems of the 1970’s.I rate this as one of the best movies of Rajesh Khanna & Sharmila Tagore.The songs were lovely & I still hear them fondly.A great write-up, truly fitting a classic movie.
Dipankar: Nice post! The one serious issue that I have with this film is the reason Anand Babu is disappointed with his own marriage. It was a really lame way of escaping reality.
“Pushpa, I hate tears!!” – Classic!
@Dipankar,
Nice language is used in writing about Amar Prem.
For me Amar Prem has always been a good film where you can not think about why director has utilized Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore or Sujit Kumar’s characters in that way.
If we have to strictly search a personified main character in the film then it’s Pushpa, Sharmila Tagore’s character and Rajesh Khanna, Vinod Mehra, Sujit Kumar are fillers filling space around her and coming into her life at different times. Same way Manmohan enters her life for sometime.
LOVE is even a bigger character in the film. It could be a love between Anand and Pushpa, which is too platonic and they respect more each other than exhibiting love in words and falling into a well defined relationship or love between Pushpa and Nandu.
LOVE is in centre stage.
Dont we see people around us who try to avoid quarrel in a relationship and keep mum when other person fights and shouts. Why to be so harsh on Anand or Pushpa or Sujit Kumar?
Moreover story has similarities with a set up shown in bengali literature and especially Sharat Babu’s literature and we dont know if it was a contemporary story of 1970s or a period film as a defined period is not shown in the film, as far as I can recall.
In period films, characters may follow different definitions than a modern time.
Mahila morcha’s members of today’s time could not be member of Amar Prem in early 70s.
Cast was superb. music may easily make a century or even double century.
Thanks for a nice post on a nice film.