 |
| Directed by: Sohrab Modi Music: Shankar-Jaikishan Lyrics: Hasrat Jaipuri, Shailendra Starring: Sohrab Modi, Madhubala, Pradeep Kumar, Ulhas, Murad, Kammo |
The film begins with the departure of the ‘teeka’ of the Princess of Jagmer. The procession, with many camels and a caparisoned elephant all laden with precious gems and jewellery, is headed by Rana Sangram Singh (Murad), the brother of the Daljit Singh, the King of Jagmer. The princess’s marriage has been arranged with the Prince of Satnapur, and the ‘teeka’ will formalize the proposal.
In Satnapur, King Bakhtawar (Ulhas) is eagerly awaiting the ‘teeka’, but not for the usual reasons. This proposal was merely a ploy to avenge a long-ago insult – years ago, Bakhtawar’s father had sent a proposal to Jagmer, seeking a match between his daughter, Bakhtawar’s sister, and Daljit Singh. The latter’s father had not only rejected the match, he had done so in a thoroughly reprehensible manner, publicly humiliating the late King of Satnapur. Bakhtawar had nursed thoughts of revenge these many years, and now, the time had come to shatter the pride of Jagmer!
And so, when Sangram Singh arrives with the teeka, Bakhtawar rudely rejects the proposal, much to Sangram Singh’s fury, especially when the Prince of Satnapur agrees with his father that it’s his duty to avenge his aunt’s honour.
Back in Jagmer, Raja Daljit Singh is furious. How dare they insult him and his daughter thus! Jagmer shall avenge this insult! From now on, Jagmer’s cloth factories shall manufacture only shrouds! The forges and smithies shall only manufacture cannon balls. (So there! I say to myself.) Ah, also, no one shall play any music either, nor celebrate anything until Satnapur is taught a lesson. (What an idiot! I wonder how people were to survive, but I suppose that’s not important.)
Meanwhile the maid, Juhi (Kammo), runs to her mistress – Satnapur has rejected her teeka! The princess (Madhubala) is deeply distressed.
[I have no patience for such a
milksop, who sings “Jisi maang rah gayi sooni, zehar hai uska jeena” because
her betrothal is broken!] Neither does her father who pulls her up for
weeping and wailing. “You’re a Rajputani”, he tells her. She should be gearing
herself up to avenge her humiliation. Thus brought back to her senses, the
princess swears she will never shed another tear. She will show those people how
strong she can be.
Meanwhile in Satnapur, Bakhtawar is confident that the impenetrable labyrinth that surrounds the fort of Satnapur will stop Daljit Singh’s army. And Satnapur’s spy returns to his kingdom with the news that Jagmer is preparing for battle. Bakhtawar is not very impressed. He knows Jagmer will attack, but does the spy know when? Or where? Or how many men are there in the contingent? No, says the spy, sheepishly. Well, go back and find out, orders Bakhtawar.
Back in Jagmer, Daljit Singh has also realised that the labyrinth will dash his hopes of conquering Satnapur. And Bakhtawar has already killed ten of his spies. But Kaushal, an old retainer, offers to find out the secret of the labyrinth. While the spy from Satnapur has landed up in Jagmer, disguised as a mendicant, selling cures for various ailments. But, since his ‘cure’ for bedbugs is a rather impudent exhortation to ‘Catch them and kill them’, and since the kotwal of Jagmer realises that the paper this is written on is manufactured in Satnapur, his stint as a spy is short-lived.
(Neither of these spies is very good. The latter, especially, thinks that the best way to get the news he seeks is to ask the people of Jagmer directly.)
Finally, hauled up before Daljit Singh, the man confesses that he is a spy. (Honest chap, what?) But, he says, he did it for his daughter’s sake. After all, the King of Jagmer is the father of a daughter; he would understand? Daljit Singh melts and sets the man free. Unfortunately, his impudence so angers the Kotwal that he has the spy sent back on a donkey, his face blackened.
In Satnapur, Kaushal has also been caught making a map of the labyrinth. Though he pretends to be mute, Bakhtawar orders him killed, his stomach cut open, and the map retrieved (I would assume the map would have had to be chewed?) before the corpse is sent back to Jagmer.
Daljit Singh and his daughter are heartbroken at Kaushal’s death. Their goal seems hopeless; if they don’t know how to enter the fort through the labyrinth – and exit it – they will never win! The royal priest reminds Daljit Singh how his father had routed the Satnapur army on the battlefield, but their men had been caught in the labyrinth. It had taken more than a week for them to find their way out, and many of the men were killed there. Daljit Singh wonders where they are going to find a man clever enough and cunning enough to get the map of the labyrinth.
The princess has a suggestion – he should announce a contest, and a huge reward to anyone who’s brave enough to do the job. (How? That she doesn’t say, and Daljit Singh doesn’t seem to care, even if he had just a moment earlier said that bravery wasn’t enough.) So, a proclamation goes out, and on the day, the hall is filled with young men who want to try their luck. Among them are the princess and Juhi, disguised as men. (I’m always amazed at how easy it is to fool people in Hindi films. The princess and Juhi look exactly like two young women disguised as men. But, hey…)
The princess, in a suitably deep voice, even challenges Sangram Singh, who insists that he should be the one to go. (Well, then, why didn’t he? Before all the ten spies were killed?) But Daljit Singh intervenes saying he needs Sangram to take charge of the army after they get the map. But there isn’t even a fight or test to check the young men’s suitability; just the fact that the ‘young man’ challenged Sangram Singh is enough for Daljit Singh to be impressed by their valour.
So off go the princess and Juhi, making their way to Satnapur in a series of disguises, fooling everyone along the way. [There’s a rather weird scene at an inn in Satnapur, where their machinations make no sense at all, and seems totally unnecessary in the larger scheme of things. But then, nothing so far has made much sense.] Eventually, dressed as dancers, the duo make their way to the Prince’s fort, where their song-and-dance routine catches the prince’s attention. Enthralled by her beauty and not recognising her as his ex-betrothed (he has never seen her before), he rewards the dancer with his signet ring. It’s not just a ring, he tells her, it’s a ‘piece of someone’s heart’. (Huh? Is he flirting with her?)
Upon the prince’s insistence that she also ask for a reward, the ‘dancer’, all coy and bashful, says they have heard a lot about the labyrinth of Satnapur. Could they see it? The prince, entranced by her beauty, promptly calls for a soldier to show the dancers around the fort and the maze. [The prince has been tasked with the protection of the fort; I’m sure he’s aware that the labyrinth is their best protection, and that Jagmer’s spies have been trying to get their hands on the map of the maze. Brain dead, that’s what he is!] So, the princess and Juhi get a good look around and triumphantly return to Jagmer, the map of the labyrinth in their possession. Daljit Singh is suitably proud of his daughter’s bravery and resourcefulness.
But before the attack on Satnapur can commence, Daljit Singh would like to see the blessings of Mahashankar, the family deity. The princess accompanies her father and the entourage makes their way through the desert to the temple. Little do they know that the Prince of Satnapur, aggrieved by the broken betrothal, spends all his time hunting. And that at that very moment, he’s camped in the desert. The stage is set for the princess, on her way back from watching a sunset, to run into him. He’s entranced by her beauty, though he doesn’t recognize her as the dancer to whom he had given his ring. [This man needs his eyesight checked! But then, so should many others.]
After a very puzzling conversation with this strange woman (that’s what he calls her), he sings a very lovely song, which the princess hears. But she’s not in love with him yet. In fact, she rides back to her camp, only pausing long enough to snatch a dagger, before riding back to kill him. Seeing the prince asleep [well, she had to ride 8 miles there and back, enough time for him to finish his song and go to sleep], she promptly wakes him up and asks him to pick up his sword. She can’t kill an unarmed man.
[Full marks for decency; a big zero for failing to realize that a dagger can’t do much against a sword.] But upon seeing his reaction, she changes her mind. He’s so brave, she gushes to Juhi later, that she has given her heart to him. But she cannot betray her country, her father…
[Whereupon she promptly does exactly that by confession to the prince who she is, when her father is going to attack… *head to desk*]
So now, the stage is set, with the two young people head over heels in love with each other, while their fathers are flexing their muscles over whose honour is greater and how best to avenge it.
Raj Hath is yet another of Sohrab Modi’s explorations of love vs. honour (or love vs. duty), but this is not one of his better films. For one, the plot is flimsy and so full of holes that one wonders if anyone knew what they were filming.
Now, subbing a film isn’t quite the same as watching a film for entertainment, and perhaps that is responsible for my rather jaundiced review. I did wonder at the very strong feelings this film evoked – I mean, it’s a run-of-the-mill film, with the usual tropes of duty and honour, and declamations of Rajput pride and talks of avenging insults. But there’s only so much that talk of ghuroor, izzat, zillat, etc., that I can take.
Discussing this film with my husband later was hilarious. For instance, the prince asking the princess her name is a running gag that had my better three-quarters sing “Kuch to bata arre kuch to bata/Phone ka number ghar ka pata” much to my detriment. Or when the Queen of Satnapur finally snaps at her husband saying, “Tumhari baat sunte sunte main boodhi ho gayi”, S remarked that ‘STFU’ might have been a more pithy dialogue for the scene. He even suggested writing this review as four quadrants, with titles such as 'WTF', 'STFU', 'Kuch to bata' and 'Random Musings'. [I wish I had! It might have been more fun!]
Not to mention the terrible character delineation: I am completely on board with people having contradictory thoughts or behaving in a contradictory manner. But it appears that the script of Raj Hath was written by multiple scriptwriters or, failing that, by one scriptwriter who was as high as a kite. [Story and screenplay are both by Shams Lucknowi. I want to know what he was smoking!] No sooner does one character declare s/he will not do something than they do precisely that in the very next scene.
For instance, the princess, who had promised her father she wouldn’t shed another tear, spends most of her time in the second half bemoaning her fate. She finally caps it all by consuming poison because her baraat has been sent back. Or the prince, who gives a dancer a signet ring and claims it's a piece of his heart, later tells the princess (who is also the dancing girl) that the dancer wasn't worthy enough to wash her feet.
The entire premise of ‘Daughters are equal to sons’ that is tom-tommed throughout the film flies out of the window at the climax when Daljit Singh declares that a man’s ghuroor is broken the day a daughter is born to him! [Actually, even that much vaunted equality takes a beating when he usually qualifies his statements with ‘she’s not my daughter, but my son’.]
Sohrab Modi and Ulhas declaim their dialogues very well, but truth be told, Ulhas’s Bakhtawar comes off as a rather more reasonable man than his nemesis, who merely comes off as obstinate. By the time Daljit Singh makes a vow in front of Lord Shiva, I knew exactly how the film was going to end. I also know I was supposed to feel a lot of respect for a man who would not break his oath, no matter that he may lose his life, [‘Pran jaaye par vachan na jaaye’ and all that hooey] but all I could think of was that this man was ready to sacrifice two kingdoms and thousands of lives to avenge an insult and keep his word. Talk about stupid!
Madhubala looks gorgeous as usual and has a bit more to do than be pretty, but she’s handicapped by a not-quite-well-written character that turns her into a wet dishrag by the end of the film. Pradeep Kumar, on the other hand, ends up being the regulation arm candy, and I must confess that he fits these faux-historicals and period films very well.
Shankar-Jaikishan seemed to be churning these tunes out in their sleep – apart from Aye bahaar banke lubhaakar chale gaye and Ye vaada karo chaand ke saamne, the other songs were not a patch on what the duo could compose.
I am sure that if I’d just watched the film as a film, I might have enjoyed it more. As it stands, the film is not one of Sohrab Modi’s better endeavours.But if you're in the mood for a 'historical' starring Madhubala, then do give it a try.
[Tom will clean it up for his channel soon, and I'll update the link then.]
No comments:
Post a Comment