Hindi Film Himmatwala
Jonathan Garcia
Master Dharam Murti witnesses Sher Singh Bandookwala murdering a man. Bandookwala manages to get exonerated by using his money and influence. He wants to get revenge on Murti, and falsely accuses him of sexually assaulting a female teacher named Menaka. Murti becomes very demoralized by this incident and leaves the village abandoning his wife and children lest they also face the stigma of being related to him.
His wife, Savitri, toils to make her son, Ravi, an engineer. Ravi grows up and returns to the village as the chief engineer for the village's new dam building project. Meanwhile, Bandookwala has been terrorizing the villagers. His daughter Rekha has been following in his footsteps and harasses people. Ravi's sister Padma gets involved with Munimji's son Shakti and becomes pregnant. Bandookwala wants to use this situation to torment Ravi.
Shakti marries Padma according to Bandookwala's plan and starts torturing her. Rekha eventually understands how cruel her father is and falls in love with Ravi seeing his honesty and goodness. She pretends to be pregnant so that Bandookwala faces the same situation as Ravi had with his sister. Ravi suddenly finds his father among the workers of the dam and brings him back to prove his innocence in front of the village panchayat. Bandookwala is held responsible for all of his evil doings and is set to be punished by the panchayat, but Dharam Murti asks everyone to forgive him, on the condition that he mends his ways. Bandookwala promises to become a better person and his daughter Rekha is married to Ravi.
A remake of the film starring Ajay Devgn and Tamannaah and directed by Sajid Khan, released under the same title on 29 March 2013. The movie opened to negative reviews and became a Box-office bomb.[4][5]
Can someone check director Sajid Khan to make sure his brain is still functioning? Lack of neural activity is the only way I can explain why someone would be so unaware of current events as to make a film as out of touch as Himmatwala.
Why would a presumably sane man invest so much of his time and resources to make a film like this? There can only be one reason: he loves such films. And that is the reason Khan has been giving to a sceptical media: he loves the idiotic 1980s entertainer so much that he decided to make one.
Himmatwala is not a spoof of the 1980s potboiler. Humour is not its objective. Nor is it a straight remake. It is simply a playful remake of a bad movie. It is an act of love (seriously but playfully). It needs to be judged on two counts: its playfulness, and its love for, and faithfulness to, the 1980s cinematic ethos.
A friend of mine had introduced me to Sridevi, who had just done one Hindi film called Solva Saawan. There was something unique about her and, instantly, I decided to approach her regarding Himmatwala. Since Sridevi wasn't doing any Hiudi film and had the required dates, she agreed.
Jaya Prada was upset with me for taking her [Sridevi] as the female lead in Himmatwala. Eventually, we sorted out the misunderstanding and patched up. I was also very friendly with Rekha since I had worked with her in several films. I remember, when Sri and I were shooting for Himmatwala down South, Rekha too happened to be shooting in the same studio. Each time I'd run into Rekha, during the breaks and intervals, she would rag me by saying, "Don't waste your time talking to me. Jaaeye aapki heroine aapka intezaar kar rahi hogi." [Go your leading lady is waiting for you!] She was so sarcastic. But then, Rekha has always been a prankster, who never means malice.
Himmatwala was mostly shot in Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh. I enjoyed working down South. Unlike our directors, the South Indian filmmakers are so organised. They don't waste time catering to the inflated egos of their artistes. They are absolute professionals. They start shooting early and wind up at sharp six in the evening. They stick to their schedules. During the making of Himmatwala, I'd insist on extending the shoot by an hour or so, but he'd just refuse.
Despite doing one shift a day, he finished the entire shooting of Himmatwala within four months. That was the whole beauty and excitement of working with such people. I'd got along with the entire team and my association with them continued for years. I've done more than fourteen films with Raghavendra Rao I'd describe a professional rapport as all about know each other's temperament and the style of working.
Lots of people tell me that Sridevi and I looked good on-screen. She is an amazing dancer and an astounding actress. I've lost count on the number of films that we did together. Sri is a professional when it comes to work and that's the reason she survived for so many years. She broke the myth that a Hindi film actress has a short career. Himmatwala was not exactly a romantic film, and the songs also weren't mushy. Himmatwala started the trend of the foot-tapping masala numbers.
Ghosh attributes the birth and rise of parallel cinema to this gap created by the failure of the formula film. Directors like Govind Nihalani, Saeed Mirza, ShyamBenegal, Ketan Mehta, Mrinal Sen and Sai Paranjpye, aided by technology that helped make films at low cost by shooting in 16mm and enlarging it to 35mm for the big screen, experimented with a new range of low-budget films. Films that stepped away from the usual masala and explored real themes with social messages, like Ardh Satya, Aakrosh, Mirch Masala, Holi, Katha, Sparsh, and Arth ran to packed houses.
Ghosh highlights an interesting difference between the South and Bollywood producers. The South producers were strong on finances and negotiated bulk dates, making people work days and nights instead of shifts. Bombay producers, meanwhile, struggled to finish their films and pay them on time. Unlike the Bombay way of doing things, where the star was the centre of the universe, in the southern films, the producer was king. Their projects, from start to finish, had far shorter gestation periods than Hindi films. I am not sure if this difference still exists.
The plots of south films, Ghosh, says could only be experienced not explained, with a focus on newness of content and presentation rather than chasing a formula. Even Veeru Devgan was under pressure to design fight scenes with a different intensity than the ones in Hindi films.
After Ek Duuje Ke Liye hit box office glory, a large amount of South capital driven by K. Raghavendra Rao, T Rama Rao and K. Bapaiah entered Hindi cinema and by the end of 1984, a remarkable 27 Hindi films were made by South producers, many of them blockbusters.
Through anecdotes, Ghosh vividly describes the launch of star sons of that era, including Sunny Deol, Sanjay Dutt, Kumar Gaurav, Suneil Anand, Rajiv Kapoor, Kunal Kapoor and Kunal Goswami and why barely a few of them survived.
While Ghosh gives a good outside view by mixing film history with the major political developments in that decade, he misses bringing first-person accounts of how the industry survived the perfect storm to tell its tale.
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The only thing I learned from my experience, and other reviewers will probably tell you more or less the same thing, is that if you have to sit through this movie for reasons best left unexplained, know that you, sir/madam, are the real himmatwala. And if you see if even after reading this review, remember I just said no.
It was a time of furious change beyond the silver screen, too: video cassettes brought cinema to drawing rooms and bedrooms; television and one-day cricket emerged as fierce competition to films; piracy put movie theatres in crisis; film stars were elected to the Indian Parliament in surprising numbers.
In this thoroughly researched and entertaining book, Avijit Ghosh, author of the acclaimed bestsellers Cinema Bhojpuri and 40 Retakes, narrates the fascinating story of perhaps the most eventful, disruptive and transformative decade of Hindi cinema.
Wronged mother, Savitri raises her son, Ravi to be strong enough to avenge the brutalities they have faced. Added with a Shakespearean sprinkle of Romeo and Juliet, enemies Ravi and Rekha fall for each other giving the film a love angle.
Personally, the film made me miss the intense and passionate actor Ajay Devgn was, before mindless comedies got the better of him! He is obviously way more Himmatwala than Jeetendra was and performs his stunts with inexplicable exhibition of power and strength. Often you might chance glimpses of the serious actor he was, but the script with its dim witted dialogues and spoofy gags kills those moments unceremoniously. The film will be a sad cue for Rajinikanth however, because our leading man won against a tiger, fought off enemies with mandir ke ghante and with such ease picks up carts. All that was left for Khan to make Devgn do was climb Mount Everest without oxygen or feet!
It is Paresh Rawal who once again brings on screen sheer brilliance. As Narayan Das, he easily surpasses Kader Khan who played the loyalist in the original flick. With a perfect sense of acting timing, he towers over his co-actors who have meatier roles in the film.
Technically, he has given a more lustrous look to the original Himmatwala, which is good. But still one would wonder if it is worth it, since it is surely no masterpiece and definitely no one really asked for a remake of it!
Himmatwala demands excessive himmat from the audiences to sustain it through all its exasperating buffoonery laced with dim witted stupidity. Walk out of hall and queue up for the refund Sajid Khan promised you. See you there!
Sajid prefers to call Himmatwala a rewrite rather than a remake, but it really isn't much of that. The plot is the same, with only a few unimportant scenes and details thrown in. With some nonsensical humour, clumsy production values, over-the-top melodrama and loud dialogues, the film just keeps on dragging for 150 minutes.
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