Ensemble kitsch

MARQUEE

, with others due to follow.

Last year I saw Naseeruddin Shah's directorial debut Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota, with converging narratives about a number of people travelling to the US on the same day. It wasn't bad; the stories were nicely juggled and most of the characters were well-delineated, something that's always difficult in this genre.

But this new trend of films made up of several interlocking tales isn't Bollywood's first tryst with the ensemble movie (what's changed is that it's now sophisticated enough to use that term). The typical mainstream Hindi film is episodic by its very nature, requiring pre-formatted doses of comedy, drama, romance and action, neatly measured and sprinkled together like the garnishings on a Burmese dish.

So any Bollywood film with a large star-cast becomes an ensemble movie by default: if there are three heroes, you know the film will divide time equally between them, measure out the songs and fight sequences accordingly. When I was growing up in that magnificently kitschy decade, the 1980s, such films used to be referred to, much more naively, as multi-starrers. Here are some old favourites I've recently rediscovered on TV.

Nagin
Rajkumar Kohli was a master of the genre. This classic begins with Jeetendra, dressed in a short skirt (he's an ichadaari naag and that's just how they dress), performing a complicated snake-dance with his beloved. A group of friends, played by heavyweights such as Sunil Dutt and Feroz Khan, kill the male snake, which leads his bereaved spouse on a revenge-trail. The s-s-sinuous leading ladies include Reena Roy, Rekha and Mumtaz.

Jaani Dushman
Another Kohli epic, billed as India's first big-budget horror film. A werewolf (we think; it's too hard to tell under the excessive makeup) goes on a killing spree every time he sees a young bride (dressed in those knee-length frocks that village belles always wore in the 1980s).

Since the village people don't have enough sense to stop holding large weddings, a series of murders takes place "" until Sunil Dutt, Shatrughan Sinha and others take on the beast in his own backyard. Don't miss the opening scene with Amrish Puri reading a book of "supernatural stories" before abruptly sprouting hair on his back, and the title card that says "And above all, Jeetendra".

The Burning Train (or, as I like to call it, The Turning Brain)
Dharmendra and Vinod Khanna are childhood buddies on a mission to rescue an imperiled train that may or may not be a symbol for Indian secularity. (Onboard are a Hindu priest and a Muslim maulvi, a genial sardarji and a Catholic schoolteacher.) Jeetendra, wouldn't you know it, shows up midway; he teams up with Dharam and Vinod, they change into silver-foil costumes and save the day by doing complicated things in the boiler room, and by kicking Danny Denzongpa off the roof. Secularity is thus preserved.

Kranti Manoj Kumar's florid tribute to the patriotic men and women who fought against the evil British Empire in the early 1800s (never mind that the idea of nationalism didn't even exist back then in the way it does today). Kumar plays the anarchist Bharat; his waggling eyebrows, twitching lower lip, and the way he keeps smearing soil all over his face, all indicate his readiness to die for the country. Dilip Kumar is his father, Hema Malini contributes her bit to the cause by writhing about the deck of a boat during a rain-storm, and Shashi Kapoor is a dashing prince who switches allegiance.

Just when you think the British Raj couldn't possibly deal with any more star power, in struts the ubiquitous Shatrughan Sinha as a brave Pathan. Then they all sing patriotic songs and die heroically ever after. Surprisingly, Jeetendra is nowhere to be seen.

Now what does modern-day Bollywood have to compare with these gems?

(jaiarjun@gmail.com )