love

Poll

What's your favorite film by Raj Kapoor?

Aag (Fire)
1 (6.7%)
Barsaat (Rain)
1 (6.7%)
Awaara (The Vagabond)
2 (13.3%)
Shree 420 (Mr. 420)
1 (6.7%)
Sangam (A Meeting of Souls)
0 (0%)
Mera Naam Joker (My Name is Joker)
0 (0%)
Bobby
0 (0%)
Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram (Love Sublime)
0 (0%)
Prem Rog (Love Sickness)
0 (0%)
Ram Teri Ganga Maili (Your Ganges is Tainted)
0 (0%)
Haven't Seen Any
10 (66.7%)
Don't Like Any
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 15

Author Topic: Kapoor, Raj  (Read 3413 times)

worm@work

  • Godfather
  • *****
  • Posts: 7445
Kapoor, Raj
« on: May 29, 2012, 12:05:20 AM »
Aag for me. But am hoping to revisit a lot of them this summer. You've inspired me, fliegs!

Also, this...esp. when he grabs her hair to lift her face up to him. *Sigh*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uGixLBdGGI
« Last Edit: April 28, 2021, 12:38:55 AM by 1SO »

1SO

  • Moderator
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 36128
  • Marathon Man
Re: Kapoor, Raj - Director's Best
« Reply #1 on: May 29, 2012, 12:50:05 AM »
The choice that will win this poll is not up there. It's "haven't seen any" .

roujin

  • Moderator
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 15508
  • it's all research
Re: Kapoor, Raj - Director's Best
« Reply #2 on: May 29, 2012, 07:31:24 AM »
Only seen Awaara but it's genius.

worm@work

  • Godfather
  • *****
  • Posts: 7445
Re: Kapoor, Raj - Director's Best
« Reply #3 on: May 29, 2012, 08:51:27 AM »

Bobby (Kapoor, 1973)

I much prefer his earlier B&W films in general but if there's one film that makes a really compelling case for his transition to color, it's got to be this one. Plus, it has Dimple Kapadia and Rishi Kapoor being all super young and wearing mod outfits and overly large sunglasses and sharing so much sexual chemistry. The whole social critique with class and religion standing in the way of lovers getting together is pretty trite and boring but luckily all of that plays second fiddle to Kapoor's ireppresibly romantic spirit and one can't help but be carried away by the film's 'love conquers all' attitude. Also, best song sequences and Rishi Kapoor's wardrobe alone deserves a very special mention (he's credited as having been his own costumes guy too)!

roujin

  • Moderator
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 15508
  • it's all research
Re: Kapoor, Raj - Director's Best
« Reply #4 on: June 02, 2012, 04:22:22 PM »

Aag Raj Kapoor, 1948

This is Kapoor's debut and also his first collaboration with the lovely Nargis. Kapoor is all fiery youth, full of passion, dreams and ideals. The film employs a flashback structure that takes us back to three different times in the main character's life. The first section details how his obsession with the theater began and how his dream of putting on plays with a neighborhood girl is crushed. But the past isn't truly past for this character. Each section has him sorta reliving the same situation. Nargis is magnificent in this. She's all beaten down by life and looking for work when she's discovered by Kapoor. She gets a bunch of songs to perform on stage - casually sitting on the rail of a bridge, so incredible. Meanwhile Kapoor inhabits random imagined spaces full of small flames (the sets including metaphorical palm trees!), to remind you of the passion of youth. His character at one point says that he wishes to gaze into the soul through his work in the theater - which is to say the cinema. Man, don't even get me started with the film's plethora of wonderfully beautiful moments - my favorite that musical number that starts with a dissolve into the sea, which then continues to a pan up to the setting sun. The film's denounment is incredible - Kapoor's character feels things far too deply (or thinks he does) and thanks to his narcissism tries to make everyone pay (sort of). That darn metaphorical fire! An act of hubris coming from a man who is mistaken about it all. The self-sacrifice of a deluded soul. The film's ending then is deeply troubling, for he's rewarded with what he's always wanted. Or this is some A.I.-level shit, where the happiness is fake? The Terius Nash is over.

worm@work

  • Godfather
  • *****
  • Posts: 7445
Re: Kapoor, Raj - Director's Best
« Reply #5 on: January 07, 2013, 04:47:33 PM »

Aag | Kapoor | 1948
For years now, I've been declaring this my favorite Raj Kapoor film and it's mostly based on my recollections from having my mind blown the first time I watched it when I was 10 or 11 years old and then again 3-4 years later. Basically, I hadn't seen it properly for at least a decade and I've been meaning to revisit all these for a really long time now. So thus it begins.

That opening sequence is just so stunning and somehow I'd forgotten that the film works almost entirely in flashback mode. So I was all the more shocked by the whole thing. And I guess I have to admit that those first two flashback installments (childhood and college) are both predictable and marred by some terrible acting, especially the former. That said, tiny Shashi Kapoor is soooo adorable. The thing is I remembered none of that stuff and rightly so. The film really begins only once Raj Kapoor's character leaves home to pursue his theater dreams. That's really what the film is all about and from that point on, it's just one great scene after another. I'd also forgotten just how long it takes before Nargis finally shows up and I was pretty restless throughout the first half of the film as a result. Oh, but what an entrance she makes. When she lifts up her head and her curls part to reveal her eyes, it's almost too painful to even look at her gorgeous emotion-laden face.

And then it's all these gorgeous close-ups of their faces dripping with passion and longing. And then comes the scene that i've probably re-watched the most from this film over the past few years. Raj Kapoor in an attempt to push Nargis away and into the arms of his best friend and benefactor asks her what it is she sees in him that his friend doesn't have. And in a move that's totally uncharacteristic for Bollywood, then and now, she lists not his virtues or his good heart or his talents but instead his physical traits .. his eyes and his hair .. and she keeps repeating these clearly articulating her desire for him and it just makes me go :O :O! Everything after that scene pretty much makes me think men are scum until the actual play within the film wherein the camera zooms in on Raj Kapoor's face and suddenly, I want to weep for her and for him and the world at large and the impossibility of happiness in that situation and I'm turned into a puddle of tears.

I intend to watch Awaara (and a couple of others by him) soon and it's entirely possible that this is not the most accomplished or perfect of his films. But that last hour is all about art versus real life and how we tend not to see what is right before us because we are too blinded by the ideal notion of romance that film/theater/literature/fading memories have instilled in us and that stuff is just so incredibly moving to me. I don't know how I feel about the denouement. On the one hand, it feels like a somewhat tacked-on happy ending but at the same time, I love that the veracity of the coincidence at the end is ambiguous. And there definitely is a part of me that rejoices at that hopeful ending. Real life offers me none.. so I'll take what I can get from the movies.

MartinTeller

  • FAB
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 17864
  • martinteller.wordpress.com
    • my movie blog
Re: Kapoor, Raj - Director's Best
« Reply #6 on: January 07, 2013, 04:51:15 PM »
That looks pretty.

1. Awaara

worm@work

  • Godfather
  • *****
  • Posts: 7445
Re: Kapoor, Raj - Director's Best
« Reply #7 on: February 14, 2013, 05:29:03 PM »

Barsaat | Kapoor | 1949

So many reasons why this film shouldn't work at all. That rather simplistic dichotomy that's set up (initially) between the idealist Raj Kapoor and the caddish Prem Nath, the way Kapoor and Nargis seem to fall in love instantaneously (all thanks to a melancholy tune played on a violin) and with such harmony despite their rather disparate backgrounds, the overtly melodramatic plot points that keep the lovers apart for a bulk of the film and some rather banal pontification on love and what it means and such.
And yet, it works and how. I still maintain that Awaara is more seminal and I still prefer it perhaps because the central romance in that film is so intertwined with the other stuff on the role of art and artistry in life and so on. But as far as romance goes, this one's so utterly perfect. I've gushed several times already about the chemistry between Kapoor and Nargis but this might just be the pinnacle of that even. There's a good reason that one of the images from this film ended up being the logo for RK Studios. The camera just caresses Nargis here and she just looks utterly resplendent. I also love that the film doesn't at all shortchange Prem Nath and Nimmi's characters. Prem Nath's character arc feels completely earned to me and theirs is ultimately the more complex love story here.
This film also features some of the greatest Bollywood music from that era and is full of really beautiful evocative lyrics that are probably at least somewhat lost in translation. What happened to you later in life, RK?

worm@work

  • Godfather
  • *****
  • Posts: 7445
Re: Kapoor, Raj - Director's Best
« Reply #8 on: February 18, 2013, 07:15:00 PM »

Shree 420 | Kapoor | 1955

Raj Kapoor at his most Chaplinesque as well as his most cynical probably. While in most other Bollywood films, the hero ultimately finds some kind of way out of his socioeconomic trappings, all Raj Kapoor's character is able to do here is to walk away and leave the city. It's almost prescient in its indictment not just of the high level of unemployment that the country would continue to face for years but also Nehru's utopian idea of planned cities with affordable housing for all, the hypocrisy of politicians in a still relatively newly independent India and just this idea of a society that's attempting (and failing) to mix capitalism with socialist values. And all this packaged into a totally mainstream film with gorgeous songs and beautiful sets and menacing villains et al.

But what I always end up swooning over while watching this is yet again, the magic between Nargis and Raj Kapoor. The scene where they are sharing an umbrella in the rain is immortal, of course.. but I love some of the more surreal dreamlike touches here as well. The way Nargis splits into two when she breaks up with Raj. Her mortal self pushing him away while her spirit follows him begging him to turn back. I always find Nargis irresistible but there's something about her character in this film that just really breaks my heart.

Sandy

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 12075
  • "The life we build, we never stop creating.”
    • Sandy's Cinematic Musings
Re: Kapoor, Raj - Director's Best
« Reply #9 on: July 30, 2013, 11:58:57 PM »