A man who lives in disguise, even at home with his mother! Another man who disguises himself to rob, steal and kill! Between them: a gorgeous but haughty woman whom they both want, one for love, one for money. Lurking on the sidelines: a weepy self-absorbed mother who makes every maternal blunder modern psychiatry could possibly dream up. This, my friends, is Munimji.
This is the story of a rich blind man who falls for a poor girl, regains his sight and is forced to marry a wealthy girl whom his father has chosen. It’s very similar in many ways to Deedar in that blindness is associated with joy and sight with sadness, but a much happier film overall, to my great joy and abiding relief. I was on a mission to see more of Nalini Jaywant (who was Shobhana Samarth’s sister, according to imdb, making her Nutan and Tanuja’s aunt). She was lovely in this, and I really liked her pairing with Ashok Kumar, who is also absolutely beautiful.
Let me begin by saying that I loved this film, although it did lose some momentum and direction towards the end. It is essentially a movie about faith (or the lack thereof: nastik = atheist), and unusually for a Hindi movie (at least in my limited experience), contains a fairly strong condemnation of the hypocrisy in organized religion. Comedian IS Johar both wrote and directed the film, and has a supporting role. A strikingly young and handsome Ajit stars alongside the beautiful Nalini Jaywant—who looks a lot like Nargis, and is absolutely wonderful as Rama, the moral center of the story. The real star of the show, though, is the sublime music by Chitalkar Ramchandra (a severely underrated music director in my opinion) with lyrics by the great lyricist and poet Kavi Pradeep.
MemsaabStory 