Friday, February 4, 2022

Fifty years of Pakeezah: Meena Kumari's swansong endures as visually stunning and poetically devastating

There are usually two ways in which a film earns a cult status. Most often, they set a trend, launching a thousand imitations with everyone trying to cash in on a proven formula and laugh their way to bank. Films like Sholay, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, and Satya first come to mind in this category.

However, there is also another rare kind — and every generation has one of these films — that attains its cult status solely because no one else dared to even attempt anything similar. The '60s had Mughal-E-Azam, '80s had Mr. India. 2000s had Devdas. For the '70s, Kamal Amrohi’s Pakeezah was possibly that film that inspired awe but not many replicas.

Amrohi, who was coincidentally also associated with Mughal-E-Azam as its dialogue writer, had begun shooting Pakeezah in 1958 when Mughal-E-Azam was going through production struggles of its own (In a strange twist of fate, Amrohi went through similar agonies later in his pursuit of completing Pakeezah. But as time proved it eventually, it was all for the better.) However, even after watching Pakeezah after all these years, it is still not difficult to place it in the context of how different it would have felt to the viewers of those times, who were used to a certain kind of melodrama and escapism. 

While Hindi cinema was moving towards multi-starrer action dramas in the early '70s, Pakeezah possibly stood out in ways more than one. For starters, it had a story that barely had any action sequences or a villain-figure. On paper, Pakeezah had a barebones plot, revolving around Sahibjaan (Meena Kumari), a courtesan who struggles with her desire for acceptance and freedom while being metaphorically locked up in Lucknow’s red-light district as its most coveted nautch-girl. However, Pakeezah is driven not so much by its text or twists as its visual elegance and sheer magnificence of its aesthetics. With his debut film Mahal [1949], which also catapulted Madhubala to superstardom, Amrohi had displayed his flair for mounting and a grand canvas. However, with Pakeezah, Amrohi achieved a scale and granduer that very few films had previously done so.

At a time when a squarish aspect ratio was the norm, Pakeezah was suitably shot on 2.35:1 cinemascope, that truly did justice to its rich canvas. Every frame of Pakeezah looks painstakingly designed, which really was a rare feat for popular cinema of its times. In what has to be one of the most memorable establishing shots of Hindi cinema, as Shahbuddin [Ashok Kumar] arrives at the red-light district to take his daughter Sahibjaan, Amrohi establishes the overwhelming ambience of a colourful-yet-disreputed street in one single shot, where one can see nautch-girls and mehfils at the farthest corners of the screen. We never lose sight of what world Sahibjaan belongs to, and what a daunting feat it would be for Shahbuddin to take her away from there. It took six months to build that set, and every bit of that feels worth it for that one establishing shot. 

There are not many events that strongly steer the narrative in one direction, nor are there any major twists.

Pakeezah derives its melodrama from its atmospheric quality and the visuals that come out of it

 — like the long shot of a spurned lover asking to be taken to a graveyard, image of a withering letter that is found and delivered 18 years later to its rightful address. That effect of being in a haunted, surreal landscape appears many times — every time Sahibjaan runs to look at a passing train and remembers the chance meeting she almost had on one of those train journeys.

Amrohi treated many small moments as scenes within themselves, and we remain engaged with those colourful mansion-like Kothas and their various facets. Amrohi also makes sparse but memorable use of silences, most notably in the ‘Thade Rahiyo’ sequence, where a lot of intrigue is held around appearance and movements of other people around Sahibjaan as she gears up for her act.  Every sequence becomes a set-piece in its own right — and that is something not many films accomplished back then. Pakeezah goes for beauty full-throttle, and it shows.

That is not to say Pakeezah was devoid of emotional depth. Bollywood has frequently employed the ‘golden-hearted prostitute’ trope, but Pakeezah is where it was explored at the center of a narrative, possibly for the first time. All the wide spaces and glitz only go to ironically underline Sahibjaan’s caged-up existence, as we see her struggle to repeatedly break away from her fate. 

The contrast of Sahibjaan’s seemingly desired existence in those colourful confinement comes alive, thanks to the marvelous soundtrack by Ghulam Mohammed. There is a different mood to each of the songs, even though many of them have a similar backdrop. When Sahibjaan finds herself stranded after her boat is attacked by a herd of elephants, Amrohi stages an exquisite sequence set to ‘Mausam Hai Aashiqana,’ with Meena Kumari strolling through the lush fields and succumbing to the romance that nature offers her, awaiting Salim’s [Raaj Kumar] return. Every song is marked with that one iconic imagery, be it ‘Chalte Chalte’ with the near-perfect symmetry of the two dancers in the back against a moonlit sky, or ‘Teer-e-Nazar,’ where Sahibjaan dances on broken glass at her lover’s wedding, smearing the celebratory moment with her blood stains all over.

But this is where the making of Pakeezah acquires even more of a legend-like quality — it was not Meena Kumari at all in the master shots of this climactic dance performance, but Padma Khanna, who had already made a mark with her dance performances in films like Johnny Mera Naam. This is because Kumari, despite her commitment to finish the film, was going through serious ailments, and was struggling to act, let alone dance. There are many sequences where Amrohi maneuvered around the limitations of his ailing lead actress, which led to some amazing results, like the song ‘Chalo Dildar Chalo,’ which is built around the visuals of two lovers on a boat on a moonlit night — Amrohi shot the entire song keeping the sky and the boat in focus, which lends an abstract charm to the song.

Meena Kumari in Pakeezah

In fact, how the film came into being is an equally fascinating legend — as much as its eventual success and gradual occupying of cult status over the years. Amrohi had begun working on the film back in 1956 when black-and-white was still the convention. However, Amrohi decided to start all over when Eastman Color took over, before deciding for yet another overhaul when the lenses he imported from MGM did not produce the desired results.

However, the ultimate hurdle arrived in the form of a personal blow when things soured between Amrohi and his wife Meena Kumari — and the film was abandoned altogether in 1964. It was not until 1968 when Kumari’s close friend Nargis and her husband Sunil Dutt happened to watch some of the film’s footage, and took it upon themselves to goad the estranged couple to finish the film at any cost. By the time Amrohi and Kumari decided to put their differences away for the sake of this film and Amrohi came close to finishing the project, Kumari’s health had seriously deteriorated.

Our reading of the film assumes a whole new level of melancholy when we realise how a character like Sahibjaan ended up as Meena Kumari’s final onscreen image, acting as the most appropriate swansong for a glorious career built on searing portrayals of a strong yet suffering woman who struggled to find true acceptance despite having all the love in the world to give — and a life that had tragically come to resemble her reel image in her final years, and ended way too soon. Even the climax has Sahibjaan leaving in a palanquin after her wedding, while mourning her father’s death at the same time. There is life and death in the same frame, and we are left puzzled over which sentiment to let us carry away.

Pakeezah was devastatingly poetic in more ways that we would care to admit.

BH Harsh is a film critic who spends most of his time watching movies and making notes, hoping to create, as Peggy Olsen put it, something of lasting value.



from Firstpost Bollywood Latest News https://ift.tt/cWHC5Uq

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