Khoon Bhari Maang (1988) is a Bollywood revenge
melodrama starring Rekha as a wronged and very angry woman. Unlike the
average ”avenging wife and mother” movie, though, the heroine’s family
is not completely destroyed; it’s harder to exact
bloody brutal vengeance when you have living people to worry about
rather than convenient corpses to avenge.
Rekha plays Aarti Saxena, widow of Vikram (Rakesh Roshan), mother of Kavita and Bobby (Baby Swetha and Master Gaurav), and only daughter and heir of wealthy industrialist Mr. Saxena (Saeed Jaffrey). Aarti is no great beauty or social butterfly, but she’s completely devoted to her children, and the small family is really, really happy. What could possibly go wrong?
Plenty, as it turns out. Mister Saxena has discovered that his friend Hiralal (Kader Khan) has cheated him. he’s about to break the news to Aarti when Hiralal smothers him. Then, in his capacity as kindly old friend of the family, he introduces Aarti to his nephew Sanjay (Kabir Bedi).
Aarti isn’t really interested in romance, but Sanjay quickly wins over her children – wins over everybody, really. When Sanjay suddenly declares his love and proposes, her best friend, supermodel Nandini (Sonu Walia), who is secretly Sanjay’s lover, urges her to accept for the sake of the children. She does, and after a quick civil service, Aarti, Sanjay, the kids, and Nandini all retire to the Saxena family farm. In the morning, Sanjay takes Nandini and Aarti out hunting, and when they come across some stock footage crocodiles . . .
Which turns out to be a mistake. Since no body was found, Aarti can’t be declared for seven years, so Sanjay can’t get his hands on the money until then. He also can’t remarry without losing out on the money entirely, and he’s not willing to work, so he doesn’t have much to do but leech off Nandini, drink, and terrorize the children.
Aarti, meanwhile, is pulled out of the river by a kindly fisherman (P. Jairaj), horribly scarred but alive. Fortunately, the earrings she was wearing are valuable enough to finance a trip overseas to have extensive cosmetic surgery. When she returns to India she has been transformed into an unrecognizable beauty. (And by unrecognizable I mean she looks basically the same, but with a more flattering hairstyle and clothing, and without the giant birthmark on her cheek.)
Aarti wants revenge, and the first step is obviously to become a major supermodel. With the help of fashion photographer JD (Shatrughan Sinha) she transforms herself into Jyothi, and arranges a meeting with Sanjay, who is immediately smitten. Jyothi plays hard to get while secretly spying on and longing for her children. Separation from them is the price she has to pay for the brutal revenge she’s chosen.
Rekha is one of the great legendary beauties of Bollywood. Even as the supposedly homely Aarti, she’s attractive, but when she’s transformed into the glamorous Jyothi, she looks absolutely ridiculous. Jyothi’s look is clearly supposed to Joan Collins and other nighttime soap stars, but the look isn’t just dated, it’s exaggerated to the point of parody, with pancake makeup, baroque hairstyles, and shoulder pads big enough to build a cathedral on. To be fair, I found the look silly during the eighties as well, so I may not be the target audience, but it certainly hasn’t aged well.
The film has a few other silly points, including one of the more blatant and bizarre bits of musical plagiarism I’ve heard, in which the theme from Chariots of Fire is transformed into a sultry poolside love song. On the whole, though, the film is put together well. Kabir Bedi is particularly noteworthy; rather than chew the scenery like a typical Bollywood villain, he gives a natural and restrained performance which somehow makes Sanjay appear even more despicable.
The story, while improbable, is fairly tight, and it’s nice to see the death of the beloved old family retainer is treated as something worth adding to the list of crimes to avenge, rather than treated as an afterthought or collateral damage. However, it does underline the problem of a revenge movie where the avenger has surviving family to worry about; if Aarti had gone directly to the police in the first place, she could have saved a few lives and spared her children a great deal of suffering, while still punishing Sanjay and Nandini. Ironic punishment may be satisfying, but it’s not an efficient problem solving technique.
Rekha plays Aarti Saxena, widow of Vikram (Rakesh Roshan), mother of Kavita and Bobby (Baby Swetha and Master Gaurav), and only daughter and heir of wealthy industrialist Mr. Saxena (Saeed Jaffrey). Aarti is no great beauty or social butterfly, but she’s completely devoted to her children, and the small family is really, really happy. What could possibly go wrong?
Plenty, as it turns out. Mister Saxena has discovered that his friend Hiralal (Kader Khan) has cheated him. he’s about to break the news to Aarti when Hiralal smothers him. Then, in his capacity as kindly old friend of the family, he introduces Aarti to his nephew Sanjay (Kabir Bedi).
Aarti isn’t really interested in romance, but Sanjay quickly wins over her children – wins over everybody, really. When Sanjay suddenly declares his love and proposes, her best friend, supermodel Nandini (Sonu Walia), who is secretly Sanjay’s lover, urges her to accept for the sake of the children. She does, and after a quick civil service, Aarti, Sanjay, the kids, and Nandini all retire to the Saxena family farm. In the morning, Sanjay takes Nandini and Aarti out hunting, and when they come across some stock footage crocodiles . . .
Which turns out to be a mistake. Since no body was found, Aarti can’t be declared for seven years, so Sanjay can’t get his hands on the money until then. He also can’t remarry without losing out on the money entirely, and he’s not willing to work, so he doesn’t have much to do but leech off Nandini, drink, and terrorize the children.
Aarti, meanwhile, is pulled out of the river by a kindly fisherman (P. Jairaj), horribly scarred but alive. Fortunately, the earrings she was wearing are valuable enough to finance a trip overseas to have extensive cosmetic surgery. When she returns to India she has been transformed into an unrecognizable beauty. (And by unrecognizable I mean she looks basically the same, but with a more flattering hairstyle and clothing, and without the giant birthmark on her cheek.)
Aarti wants revenge, and the first step is obviously to become a major supermodel. With the help of fashion photographer JD (Shatrughan Sinha) she transforms herself into Jyothi, and arranges a meeting with Sanjay, who is immediately smitten. Jyothi plays hard to get while secretly spying on and longing for her children. Separation from them is the price she has to pay for the brutal revenge she’s chosen.
Rekha is one of the great legendary beauties of Bollywood. Even as the supposedly homely Aarti, she’s attractive, but when she’s transformed into the glamorous Jyothi, she looks absolutely ridiculous. Jyothi’s look is clearly supposed to Joan Collins and other nighttime soap stars, but the look isn’t just dated, it’s exaggerated to the point of parody, with pancake makeup, baroque hairstyles, and shoulder pads big enough to build a cathedral on. To be fair, I found the look silly during the eighties as well, so I may not be the target audience, but it certainly hasn’t aged well.
The film has a few other silly points, including one of the more blatant and bizarre bits of musical plagiarism I’ve heard, in which the theme from Chariots of Fire is transformed into a sultry poolside love song. On the whole, though, the film is put together well. Kabir Bedi is particularly noteworthy; rather than chew the scenery like a typical Bollywood villain, he gives a natural and restrained performance which somehow makes Sanjay appear even more despicable.
The story, while improbable, is fairly tight, and it’s nice to see the death of the beloved old family retainer is treated as something worth adding to the list of crimes to avenge, rather than treated as an afterthought or collateral damage. However, it does underline the problem of a revenge movie where the avenger has surviving family to worry about; if Aarti had gone directly to the police in the first place, she could have saved a few lives and spared her children a great deal of suffering, while still punishing Sanjay and Nandini. Ironic punishment may be satisfying, but it’s not an efficient problem solving technique.
No comments:
Post a Comment