Seeta Aur Geeta

I started watching Seeta Aur Geeta a few days back about 5 minutes into the movie. After both of them have grown old and have found their respective homes. Seeta in her father’s home and Geeta in her foster home. I think I may have missed out one song as well I am not sure. But with nothing else playing on TV on a lazy Sunday morning in Goa, we decided to indulge in some good old 1972 Salim-Javed masala movie which can easily come into any of these top 100 list of all time and definitely one of the best movies made in that year.

Ramesh Sippy follows his hit debut Andaz (1970) with a formula based movie of twins separated at birth. Seeta (Hema Malini) Aur Geeta (Hema Malini again). One not so fine day a couple expecting their child finds themselves trapped in severe rain and use the services of a way side home for the delivery. Seeing twins, the lady of the house who cannot have children decides to keep one of the kids unbeknownst to the parents. Seeta grows up in her biological parents home only to find herself ill treated by an evil aunt (Manorama) and her brother Ranjit (Roopesh Kumar). Geeta on the other hand grows up in a poor family into an electric street smart young woman. Along with Raka (Dharmendra) she makes a living with tight rope walking – Raka of course picks pockets while all this is happening. Fate gets the sisters swapped and the fun begins.

Seeta Aur Geeta is an absolute formula movie from the 1970s. This was when “separated at birth” was totally in fad and there were a dime a dozen movies released around the theme. Some with twins. Others with just siblings. Salim-Javed has only capitalized on the trend and added another such movie to their repertoire.

The movie is replete with some really good performances by the lead cast with Hema Malini shuttling between the demure and scary Seeta to the complete pataka (firecracker) Geeta. A true compliment to her talent. Dharam Paaji and Sanjeev Kumar are as calm and composed on the screen. But the outstanding performances come from Manorama and Roopesh Kumar who play the negative roles so well that your blood curls when they come on screen and essay their dialogues.

It seems Dibakar Banerjee is remaking Seeta Aur Geeta and that too with Katrina in the lead. Dibakar is definitely one of the better movie makers of our time. But will he be able to do justice to this classic? Time will tell I guess.

I Could not find the trailers on line and therefore I have given the link for the movie itself. Watch it!!! http://www.videosurf.com/seeta-aur-geeta-87197. 7 on 10.

Ekk Deewana Tha

There is something too arty farty about most Gautham Menon movies or is it just my imagination playing tricks on me. Something that tells me that the man is one of those eccentric, unpredictable directors who makes movies really slow under the pretext of calling them good art. Something to the extent of saying that each frame should tell a story and therefore the audience should be given time to absorb it and so on and so forth.

Arre bhai – agreed but that doesn’t mean that words should have space bars between them even when you are speaking… or does it? Gautham could save at least 30% of screen time if he just stops asking his actors to put an emphasis on a pregnant pause after each word that they speak. Ekk Deewana Tha is no different from his other attempts to date. In fairness, the pauses are required in some of his movies but EDT does not fall into that category at all.

Ekk Deewana Tha is a remake of the Tamil movie Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa (Will you cross the skies for me?) which Gautham himself made a couple of years back. It tracks the story of Sachin (Pratiek – who prefers not to use his father’s family name anymore – not that it is getting him to act any better) who falls head over heels for Jessie Joseph (Amy “look how gorgeous I look in a saree” Jackson) at first sight.

But there are several problems on the way. 1. She is a Christian and Sachin’s family are Maharashtrian Brahmins. 2. She is a year older. 3. She has a brother who looks and behaves like a goon. 4. She has a father who is 6’ 3” tall and thinks going to the movies is a sin. 5. She has seen only 5 movies in her life and Sachin wants to make a career in the movies. 6. Sachin himself is the biggest problem of all with all of 22 years under his belt and little or no experience in matters of the heart.

EDT should have released on the Friday before Valentine’s Day and not after. It would have guaranteed full houses. I wonder why there was a delay. Gautham Sir could have been laughing his way to the bank by now. From what I understand, the younger generation had a lot of expectations from the movie. And that Pratiek has a big following. This author however believes that Pratiek is as constipated as ever. No signs of genes there. If Amy Jackson has dubbed herself, then it is a fantastic first time effort. The rest of the cast doesn’t really have much of a role to play.

On one hand, Gautham Menon uses great camera angles and has done justice to the Malayalam aspect by retaining the Mallu dialogues. On the other hand there are gross consistency errors with no attention to detail – like soft spoken dialogues on a bike or absolutely no cuts and bruises after a fight scene. And then there is the aspect of the movie being terribly slow. Rahman’s music also seems to be one of his lesser works. But despite all of that, probably the best Bollywood movie released over 2 weekends. Worth a dekko I say 5.5 on 10.

Watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6b462zkgJA&feature=fvst