Beth Loves Bollywood

[Spoilers, the biggest of which will be marked in situ. Also, I don't know why the images are different tones—they're from the same DVD played on the same laptop.] It's 50-odd years old, but  Saat Pake Bandha  resonantes with realness. From its meet-ordinary (crankily, on a bus) and passive-agressive glaring over newspapers to its dissolution contained in a small apartment, lives are changed and ruined without any hint of spectacle or grandeur. The story suggests that, as in our world of non-scripted people and situations, the responsibility for its sadness is widely distributed. The central character, Archana (Suchitra Sen), is a bright student who marries teacher* Sukhendu (Soumitra Chatterjee) despite seeming to have reservations about him. I say "seeming" because I don't think there's any actual dialogue from her about her feelings for him before their marriage, and when her father picks up on their budding romance, her face does not exhib

Dipti Naval's face says more than I ever could about Farooq Shaikh (though I will give it a try over the weekend).  From The Indian Express  (photo by Amit Chakrvarty). And like so many of the great Hindi film actors, just when I thought I understood his filmography, I stumbled across Peechha Karo , in which he disco-dances in a glittering jumpsuit.  Not the quintessential Farooq Shaikh imagery, to be sure, but for right now, my dil needs some balloons.