Baradwaj Rangan
2003-10-09 02:42:59 UTC
Baghban
Baradwaj Rangan
(C) The Economic Times, Madras Plus - Oct. 9, 2003
'Baghban' opens with shots of Amitabh Bachchan, silhouetted against a
golden sunlight, playing with his grandchild while his reassuring
baritone does a voice-over about how the rearing of a family is like a
gardener's tending to his plants. Taking this metaphor further, you
see that his own garden has yielded four apple-of-the-eye sons and
that he gazes with contented delight at his most beautiful of blooms
-- wife Hema Malini, who makes his tea, knots his tie as he leaves for
work, and greets him with a megawatt smile when he returns, saying,
"Aapke kadmon ki aahat se mere dil ki ghanti bajti hai."
After taking a nationwide drubbing for sullying his image with 'Boom'
-- an actor wanting to stretch... whoever heard of such a thing! --
Bachchan almost appears to be saying via these early events, "Sorry
about 'Boom', but here I am - once again a patriarch, once again
upholding Indian values. Please take me back into your hearts." And
your heart goes out to this demigod of Indian cinema, who now seems as
straitjacketed in Mellow Old Dad roles as he was in Angry Young Man
roles earlier.
But he does play these parts magnificently, and this time he's got the
age-defying Hema Malini by his side. Beautiful people in beautiful
houses doing beautiful things -- the first half-hour of 'Baghban',
save some grating product placements, is everything you go to the
movies for. The sheer enjoyment of seeing the leads back together on
screen after decades compensates for the sheer absence of anything
fresh or original.
Soon, Bachchan retires from work and the couple plans on staying, in
turns, with their sons. Only problem -- each son is willing to host
either the father or the mother, not both. Hema agrees to this
arrangement -- the following scene, where a miffed Amitabh refuses to
look her in the eye, then steals an aching glance as she leaves the
room, is quite moving -- and the rest of the film is about the
disappointed parents suffering at the hands of their sons (each one an
insensitive clod) and daughters-in-law (each one a pale,
passive-aggressive variant of Bindu).
It's easy to imagine, say, AK Hangal and Durga Khote undergoing these
miseries, but it's tough to see why people as self-possessed and
sophisticated as Amitabh and Hema would end up this way. And therein
lies the rub in 'Baghban' -- the casting of the leads and the
high-gloss setting of their lives just do not make the subsequent
events convincing. That these events are straight out of a
screaming-sixties' melodrama -- Hema is housed in a maidservant's
room, a son shells out money for his kid's expensive shoes but not for
Amitabh's broken spectacles, and so on -- makes things worse.
The latter portions are spiked intermittently by the lively Paresh
Rawal and Lilette Dubey (as friends of Amitabh's) and by the
occasionally-touching Amitabh-Hema love story (that's now carried on
through letters and phone calls), but it's otherwise a slow slog to an
inevitable end.
You don't mind being reminded of older films -- the 'Silsila'-style
Holi song, the 'Mahaan'-style over-the-telephone number, Salman Khan's
brief role as the faithful 'Avtaar'-style Sachin -- but you do wish
the older melodramatic staples had been weeded out. (As Amitabh and
Hema walk towards separate taxicabs to begin their separate lives,
their pet dogs are taken in by a son who can't bear the thought of
keeping these canines apart. 'Tch-tch', we're meant to exclaim, he
cares about the dogs but not about his parents.) Preaching
old-fashioned family values is all very nice, but did the film itself
have to be so toothlessly old-fashioned?
Baradwaj Rangan
(C) The Economic Times, Madras Plus - Oct. 9, 2003
'Baghban' opens with shots of Amitabh Bachchan, silhouetted against a
golden sunlight, playing with his grandchild while his reassuring
baritone does a voice-over about how the rearing of a family is like a
gardener's tending to his plants. Taking this metaphor further, you
see that his own garden has yielded four apple-of-the-eye sons and
that he gazes with contented delight at his most beautiful of blooms
-- wife Hema Malini, who makes his tea, knots his tie as he leaves for
work, and greets him with a megawatt smile when he returns, saying,
"Aapke kadmon ki aahat se mere dil ki ghanti bajti hai."
After taking a nationwide drubbing for sullying his image with 'Boom'
-- an actor wanting to stretch... whoever heard of such a thing! --
Bachchan almost appears to be saying via these early events, "Sorry
about 'Boom', but here I am - once again a patriarch, once again
upholding Indian values. Please take me back into your hearts." And
your heart goes out to this demigod of Indian cinema, who now seems as
straitjacketed in Mellow Old Dad roles as he was in Angry Young Man
roles earlier.
But he does play these parts magnificently, and this time he's got the
age-defying Hema Malini by his side. Beautiful people in beautiful
houses doing beautiful things -- the first half-hour of 'Baghban',
save some grating product placements, is everything you go to the
movies for. The sheer enjoyment of seeing the leads back together on
screen after decades compensates for the sheer absence of anything
fresh or original.
Soon, Bachchan retires from work and the couple plans on staying, in
turns, with their sons. Only problem -- each son is willing to host
either the father or the mother, not both. Hema agrees to this
arrangement -- the following scene, where a miffed Amitabh refuses to
look her in the eye, then steals an aching glance as she leaves the
room, is quite moving -- and the rest of the film is about the
disappointed parents suffering at the hands of their sons (each one an
insensitive clod) and daughters-in-law (each one a pale,
passive-aggressive variant of Bindu).
It's easy to imagine, say, AK Hangal and Durga Khote undergoing these
miseries, but it's tough to see why people as self-possessed and
sophisticated as Amitabh and Hema would end up this way. And therein
lies the rub in 'Baghban' -- the casting of the leads and the
high-gloss setting of their lives just do not make the subsequent
events convincing. That these events are straight out of a
screaming-sixties' melodrama -- Hema is housed in a maidservant's
room, a son shells out money for his kid's expensive shoes but not for
Amitabh's broken spectacles, and so on -- makes things worse.
The latter portions are spiked intermittently by the lively Paresh
Rawal and Lilette Dubey (as friends of Amitabh's) and by the
occasionally-touching Amitabh-Hema love story (that's now carried on
through letters and phone calls), but it's otherwise a slow slog to an
inevitable end.
You don't mind being reminded of older films -- the 'Silsila'-style
Holi song, the 'Mahaan'-style over-the-telephone number, Salman Khan's
brief role as the faithful 'Avtaar'-style Sachin -- but you do wish
the older melodramatic staples had been weeded out. (As Amitabh and
Hema walk towards separate taxicabs to begin their separate lives,
their pet dogs are taken in by a son who can't bear the thought of
keeping these canines apart. 'Tch-tch', we're meant to exclaim, he
cares about the dogs but not about his parents.) Preaching
old-fashioned family values is all very nice, but did the film itself
have to be so toothlessly old-fashioned?