During my days as a substitute teacher, I was once cornered in the
hall by a first grader who proceeded to tell me a story about the time
he saw a snake, and the snake was going to bite his brother so he picked
up a rifle and shot the snake and the snake was a robot and also they
were in Nevada. If you spend a significant amount of time around small
children you will probably hear many similar stories; when telling a
story, a kid will generally toss in whatever comes to mind, without
worrying about such trivialities as structure and continuity and
causality.
Mard (1985) takes a similar approach. I don’t know anything about the production history of the film, but I’m willing to bet it started with one man saying, “You know, we’ve got a trunk full of period costumes, a trained dog and horse, a few tanks, and Bob Christo. Let’s make a movie! We can worry about the details later.” Of course there was a script - six people have assorted writing credits for the film - but Mard feels improvised. Toss in an appearance by Colin Mochrie and you would have the greatest episode of Whose Line is it Anyway? ever made.
Mard takes place at some point during the British occupation of India. It’s hard to pinpoint an exact time frame; the costumes, props, and sets are drawn from a period spanning at least a century, and that’s not considering the guy at the end who shows up dressed as Spartacus.
Our hero is Raju (Amitabh Bachchan). Secretly, Raju is the son of Raja Azaad Singh (Dara Singh), local king, who enraged the British authorities by constantly interfering with their EVIL plans. Azaad is betrayed by family friend Doctor Harry (Prem Chopra), but before being captured he has time to name his newborn son “Mard” and carve the name into the baby’s chest. (The whole “name-carved-into-the-chest” thing is one of my least favorite Bollywood tropes, but at least this time it isn’t someone carving himself to show his true love for a girl.) After taking Azaad into custody, the British attempt to capture his wife Durga (Nirupa Roy) and the baby, but Durga manages to run into town and hide the baby in a cradle in front of the orphanage, and then lead the British away. Before the British can approach the baby, he is carried away by the family horse, and deposited with a childless couple. Durga returns to find her baby gone, and is suddenly struck mute so that she can’t spoil the plot by asking sensible questions.
Doctor Harry, meanwhile, is rewarded for his treachery by being made the mayor. As mayor, he gets to hang out with such evil luminaries as General Dyer (Kamal Kapoor), Simon (Bob Christo), and the nefarious Goga (Goga Kapoor), who spends most of the movie dressed as Sherlock Holmes for no adequately explained reason. The gang are always thinking of evil things to do to the Indian people, but they never get to carry any of their atrocities out, since stuffy old Lady Helena (Helena), who dresses as a refugee from an Oscar Wilde play, always interferes. Lady Helena is apparently married to the Governor, or something; the subtitles aren’t really clear. What is clear is that she has precisely enough authority to stop Harry and his cronies form having a man drawn and quartered, but not enough authority to have them arrested or removed from power.
Harry has a daughter named Ruby (Amrita Singh.) Ruby is initially not a nice girl; when we first meet her, she is driving wildly through the village, and inadvertently dragging Durga behind her. Raju and his amazing horse (and equally talented dog) rescue Durga, and Raju beats up Ruby’s bodyguard and demands an apology on Durga’s behalf (because while he doesn’t know that Durga is his real mother, for a good Indian boy all elder women are treated as mothers). She refuses, but is intrigued by Raju’s height and unorthodox good looks, and so she invites him up to the big house and offers him a job as her new bodyguard. When he refuses, she shows her disappointment by dressing up as the Baroness, chaining him up, whipping him, and literally rubbing salt in his wounds. Raju is too manly to admit feeling pain, however, and he quickly escapes, dragging Ruby along with him.
Ruby gets a couple of minor nicks and scratches from the trees as they ride through the forest, and so Raju takes her to a nearby salt mine to rub some salt in her wounds. This makes her fall in love with him, and after a literal roll in the hay, she is completely dedicated to Indian freedom and the cause of good.
Raju continues to thwart Harry and his cronies by rescuing peasants and making time with Ruby. Harry decides that the best way to deal with his rebellious daughter is to marry her off to Dyers’s son Danny (Dan Dhanoa) , a sadistic cowboy who runs a slave labor camp where he drains the blood from exhausted workers “in order to keep British soldiers alive.” (He doesn’t refrigerate the blood, just collects it on the shelf, so I don’t know how the British soldiers are supposed to benefit. Still, it’s the thought that counts.)
Ruby is shipped off to Danny’s camp; after all, what better way to woo a woman with a new found commitment to human rights than to show her your torture chamber? Nearly every other character is also imprisoned in the camp, for one reason or another, and it falls to Raju to rescue everyone through guile and punching.
By any objective standard, Mard is a terrible, terrible movie. No one involved seems to care, though. Bachchan in particular is clearly slumming here, but he refuses to look embarrassed. He seems to be having a great time. I did too.
Mard (1985) takes a similar approach. I don’t know anything about the production history of the film, but I’m willing to bet it started with one man saying, “You know, we’ve got a trunk full of period costumes, a trained dog and horse, a few tanks, and Bob Christo. Let’s make a movie! We can worry about the details later.” Of course there was a script - six people have assorted writing credits for the film - but Mard feels improvised. Toss in an appearance by Colin Mochrie and you would have the greatest episode of Whose Line is it Anyway? ever made.
Mard takes place at some point during the British occupation of India. It’s hard to pinpoint an exact time frame; the costumes, props, and sets are drawn from a period spanning at least a century, and that’s not considering the guy at the end who shows up dressed as Spartacus.
Our hero is Raju (Amitabh Bachchan). Secretly, Raju is the son of Raja Azaad Singh (Dara Singh), local king, who enraged the British authorities by constantly interfering with their EVIL plans. Azaad is betrayed by family friend Doctor Harry (Prem Chopra), but before being captured he has time to name his newborn son “Mard” and carve the name into the baby’s chest. (The whole “name-carved-into-the-chest” thing is one of my least favorite Bollywood tropes, but at least this time it isn’t someone carving himself to show his true love for a girl.) After taking Azaad into custody, the British attempt to capture his wife Durga (Nirupa Roy) and the baby, but Durga manages to run into town and hide the baby in a cradle in front of the orphanage, and then lead the British away. Before the British can approach the baby, he is carried away by the family horse, and deposited with a childless couple. Durga returns to find her baby gone, and is suddenly struck mute so that she can’t spoil the plot by asking sensible questions.
Doctor Harry, meanwhile, is rewarded for his treachery by being made the mayor. As mayor, he gets to hang out with such evil luminaries as General Dyer (Kamal Kapoor), Simon (Bob Christo), and the nefarious Goga (Goga Kapoor), who spends most of the movie dressed as Sherlock Holmes for no adequately explained reason. The gang are always thinking of evil things to do to the Indian people, but they never get to carry any of their atrocities out, since stuffy old Lady Helena (Helena), who dresses as a refugee from an Oscar Wilde play, always interferes. Lady Helena is apparently married to the Governor, or something; the subtitles aren’t really clear. What is clear is that she has precisely enough authority to stop Harry and his cronies form having a man drawn and quartered, but not enough authority to have them arrested or removed from power.
Harry has a daughter named Ruby (Amrita Singh.) Ruby is initially not a nice girl; when we first meet her, she is driving wildly through the village, and inadvertently dragging Durga behind her. Raju and his amazing horse (and equally talented dog) rescue Durga, and Raju beats up Ruby’s bodyguard and demands an apology on Durga’s behalf (because while he doesn’t know that Durga is his real mother, for a good Indian boy all elder women are treated as mothers). She refuses, but is intrigued by Raju’s height and unorthodox good looks, and so she invites him up to the big house and offers him a job as her new bodyguard. When he refuses, she shows her disappointment by dressing up as the Baroness, chaining him up, whipping him, and literally rubbing salt in his wounds. Raju is too manly to admit feeling pain, however, and he quickly escapes, dragging Ruby along with him.
Ruby gets a couple of minor nicks and scratches from the trees as they ride through the forest, and so Raju takes her to a nearby salt mine to rub some salt in her wounds. This makes her fall in love with him, and after a literal roll in the hay, she is completely dedicated to Indian freedom and the cause of good.
Raju continues to thwart Harry and his cronies by rescuing peasants and making time with Ruby. Harry decides that the best way to deal with his rebellious daughter is to marry her off to Dyers’s son Danny (Dan Dhanoa) , a sadistic cowboy who runs a slave labor camp where he drains the blood from exhausted workers “in order to keep British soldiers alive.” (He doesn’t refrigerate the blood, just collects it on the shelf, so I don’t know how the British soldiers are supposed to benefit. Still, it’s the thought that counts.)
Ruby is shipped off to Danny’s camp; after all, what better way to woo a woman with a new found commitment to human rights than to show her your torture chamber? Nearly every other character is also imprisoned in the camp, for one reason or another, and it falls to Raju to rescue everyone through guile and punching.
By any objective standard, Mard is a terrible, terrible movie. No one involved seems to care, though. Bachchan in particular is clearly slumming here, but he refuses to look embarrassed. He seems to be having a great time. I did too.
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