Arjun Singh has been brought up by his grandfather, and as a result is totally dependent on his grandfather, and could not even think of leaving him. Years past, Arjun has grown up, and his grandfather wants him to be independent and stand on his own two feet. Arjun reluctantly agrees, and re-locates to Bombay - a big city. He gets a job as a singer/dancer in a hotel and is very loyal to the owner, Raja. He also looks up to Savitridevi who manages the hotel, until he finds out that Savitridevi is his biological mother, and that the Raja believes that she is involved in a plot to kill him. Brought up by his grandfather, Arjun Singh moves to the city in search of a new job and life. While in the city he meets Bhairon who helps him find a job as a singer in a 5-star hotel owned by Raja. This movie will tell you why Amitabh Bacchan is a one man industry. This movie will also tell you why Indian movie-goers are astute buyers.<br/><br/>Amitabh was at the peak of his domination of Bollywood when his one-time godfather Prakash Mehra decided to use his image yet again. Prakash has the habit of picking themes and building stories out of it, adding liberal doses of Bollywood sensibilities and clichés to it. Zanzeer saw the making of Angry Young Man. Lawaris was about being a bastard and Namak Halal was about the master-servant loyalties. <br/><br/>But then, the theme was limited to move the screenplay through the regulation three hours of song, dance and drama. What comprised of the movie is a caricature of a Haryanavi who goes to Mumbai and turns into a regulation hero. Amitabh's vocal skills and diction saw this movie earn its big bucks, thanks to his flawless stock Haryanvi accent. To me, this alone is the biggest pull in the movie. The rest all is typical Bollywood screen writing.<br/><br/>Amitabh, by now, had to have some typical comedy scenes in each of his movies. Thanks to Manmohan Desai. This movie had a good dose of them. The shoe caper in the party, the monologue over Vijay Merchant and Vijay Hazare's considerations, The mosquito challenge in the boardroom and the usual drunkard scene that by now has become a standard Amitabh fare.<br/><br/>Shashi Kapoor added an extra mile to the movie with his moody, finicky character (Remember him asking Ranjeet to "Shaaadaaaap" after the poisoned cake incident"). His was the all important role of the master while Amitabh was his loyal servant. But Prakash Mehra knew the Indian mind…and so Shashi had to carry along his act with the rest of the movie. It was one character that could have been more developed to make a serious movie. But this is a caper, remember? And as long as it stayed that way, the people came and saw Amitabh wearing a new hat and went back home happy. The end is always predictable, and the good guys get the gal and the bad ones go to the gaol, the age-old theme of loyalty is once again emphasized and all is well that ends well.<br/><br/>So what is it that makes this movie a near classic? Amitabh Bacchan as the Haryanvi. Prakash Mehra created yet another icon in the name of a story. Chuck the story, the characters and the plot. My marks are for Amitabh alone. Despite my great admiration for Indian cinema, Namak Halaal represents for me all that is unfortunate about the Bachchan phenomenon and the tendency to grotesque overacting and ridiculous plots that it spawned and which has done so much to cheapen Hindi cinema since. Do not get me wrong. Amitabh Bachchan is in my view a fine and multi-talented performer but this does not alter the fact that his period as a superstar has had a very detrimental effect on Bollywood films. Interestingly Amitabh's introduction to cinema owed much to his undoubtedly beautiful speaking voice (doing the commentary for a Hindi film by the Bengali director Mrinal Sen in 1968 and later also for a Hindi film by an even greater Bengali director, Satyajit Ray's Shatranj Ke Khilari). He turned in a beautifully understated performance as the rather uptight young doctor in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Anand (1970) - a sort of thinking man's Love Story about a man dying of cancer - for which he very deservedly won an award as best supporting actor (to then-superstar Rajesh Khannah's performance in the title role). In Namak Haram (1973), he was again teamed with Khanah but this time distinctly upstaged the star. Zanjeer in the same year gave him famously the image of 'an angry young man' and the period of his superstardom began.<br/><br/>By the time of Namak Halaal, an Amitabh film revolves entirely round Amitabh. The camera contrives to make him look even taller than he really is, dwarfing the other characters and allows him to upstage even those scenes where he is not the principal. The totally incredible plot is entirely subordinated to the set-piece scenes of slapstick comedy or elaborate dance-routines at which Amitabh excelled.<br/><br/>The film has a star-studded cast but even an actor of the calibre of Saashi Kapoor is relegated to a rather embarrassed and embarrassing support-role. More tragic still is the case of Smita Patil, an actress hitherto known for her hugely important contribution to serious realistic cinema (and 'regional' or non-Hindi cinema), here acting for the first time in a popular blockbuster and given nothing to do but cast loving looks at the superstar. The moment where one sees her love-struck face reflected in Amitabh's chest-hair may be thought of as comic but seems to me to be one of the most distasteful images in any Hindi film.<br/><br/>Patil looks embarrassed a good deal of the time and legend has it that she burst into tears after the famous dance in the rain with the big B. Hardly surprisingly since the dance, like other Bachchan routines, is anything but two-way and simply involves Bachchan tossing Patil to and fro like a sort of doll.<br/><br/>Namak Halaal is certainly a clever showpiece for the superstar but it is nevertheless a very unhealthy piece of cinema and marks all too certainly the end of the period of the Indian new wave (which had made a star of Smita Patil)but also of the socio-political elements that (however sentimentalised) had previously characterised even much popular Hindi film-making. It ushers in the dominance of an essentially caricatural Bollywood style which is still the hallmark of the great majority of mainstream films.
Gethibarra replied
370 weeks ago