This Sharmila Tagore home production took years to make and it shows, mostly in Rajesh Khanna’s hair. But it’s sort of fitting, actually, because the story itself takes place over years—as do all of the Sharmila-Rajesh movies, with lots and lots of suffering and noble sacrificing principles (tyaag!) along the way. This is full of all that, but still I enjoyed it: sometimes angst is not misplaced and human frailties can cause a lot of trouble. I will say that the subtitles leave a lot to be desired—they are patchy in places (long dialogues with short or no subs) and hard to read at best. My friend Suhan did her best to fill in the gaps but even so a lot of the dialogue went over my head, making the film much less meaningful for me I think than it might otherwise have been. The music by SD Burman (his last soundtrack) is also very pretty indeed (my favorite is the duet “Hum Tum Hain Tum Hum”).
October 4, 2008
Dushmun (1971)
First of all, many many thanks to Suhan for sending this to me! I love films with a village setting, and Mumtaz, and Rajesh Khanna, and this has all three. Plus, it has quite an interesting premise, Meena Kumari in one of her last roles and Kumari Naaz, and I really wanted to see it.
In the end though, I had mixed feelings about Dushmun. I genuinely enjoyed a lot (even most) of it, but some of it I found troubling (that was intentional on the part of the makers), and some aspects were just irritating (not intentional) (and not Meena! she was actually very good and not at all weepy despite playing a put-upon widow).
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