Now and then and some in between
This could have been a post about Love Aaj Kal but it is not, I only know what I read on the Wiki and was disappointed when it said that the movie was inspired by another film….but that is another story.
This post is really about Movies Aaj Kal (Today yesterday/tomorrow). My view is very narrow and you might hear things like (which my friend claims he wrote in his master’s thesis) ” several observations ( namely, two) confirm our hypothesis!”
Every time someone mentions late 80’s cinema, one remembers the puffy frocks and huge earrings, AB’s actions movies with different actresses,
and mostly the ” ghar ka batwanra ” (splitting the household assets ) scene. Almost every third movie (and the second one which played on Doordarshan) were based on this plot. Parents working hard to build a nice home, wanting a joint family and then the khadus (mean) bahu’s (daughter in laws) corrupting their son’s mind to split their inheritance as soon as the father retires and becomes financially dependent on his sons! (It was almost impossible to summarize the plot in one sentence!)
The most famous movie of those times was Swarg, in which the adopted son is the only nice kid in the family. When everyone else disowns them, this good son takes care of his parents. There is always a lesson learning half of the story, when the bad sons finally learn to value their parents. This part of the movie can have different twists in different movies.
There was also a Mithun starrer with the same theme Pyar Ka Mandir and then of course recently they made Baghban. I sincerely do not understand why so many people like a movie about ghisa pita ( dilapidated ) storyline. But they did! I I am not sure how it did in the box office but it was a big hit with families. Other than the fact that AB and Hemamalini looked very good, I saw nothing new in this movie except the love song that Amitabh sings for Hema when they are apart.
Now contrast this with this 50s movie, which I think (and please correct me if I am wrong) called Bahurani. I believe this had Lalita Pawar as the mother in law and again it was a movie about a joint family with three brothers and their wives. Guess what the story might have been? No, wait..there was a batwanra (spilt) but the premise of the movie was quite different. The brothers are very proud of themselves for keeping their joint family intact, and take the credit for it. The wives, believe that if they were not the peacemakers, the brothers would have fought amongst themselves long ago. Anyway, the rest of the movie is about the wives trying to prove this fact and causing rift between the brothers.
Another famous subplot of movies is about how a heroine/character actor becomes a prostitute. Typically, somebody cheats her and gets her into the brothel or she gets raped, hence the social ridicule leaves her no choice but to become a prostitute. At about the second half of the movie this boy from a nice family falls in love with her, not knowing her past and then the rest of the movie is about social acceptance. Then came Laga Chunari mein daag, about 20 years after it should have been released. Apparently, the only way to make money for a 10th standard graduate is to become an escort. I am curious why nobody thinks of becoming a maid, a baby sitter etc. Even these professions can pay well.
But no! once you have slept with someone and that person cheats you, you have no choice but make this a profession! Justification being your family needs the money! Or compare to it to Julie ( I know I know..I should not..but what the heck 
) Neha dupia is shocked when her boyfriend expects her to sleep with his boss, so he gets promoted. On her way home from the tryst, in the state of shock, this woman explains to her that this is what all men want, so why not make it profitable…so there you have it..
Compare this to Patita: Devanand and Usha Kiran starrer. Devanand falls in love with Usha Kiran and is all set to marry her. He has to just convince his mother. Usha kiran gets raped by her evil landlord and and leaves the city without telling Devanand. A waif helps her and she gives birth to a child and raises the child, supporting the child best as she can. Devanand finally finds her and then convinces her that he still loves her and that she should marry him.
Tags: doordarshan, Ghar ka batwara, Love Aaj Kal, Pyar Ka Mandir, Swarg
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
What do you think of Chanda’s character in Dev D?
I wanted to include her in…but her character seemed to me that she accepted that this will let her be on her own somehow. It didnt quite have the same ” i had other option feel”. More like, this was a option i had and I took it..
what say you?