The Plaid Adder
plaidder@mindspring.com
They say that a little learning is a dangerous thing. Having taken a course on Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, I knew just enough about Bollywood, and about Mr. 420 in particular, to be excited when the Gene Siskel Film Center announced it was showing a Raj Kapur retrospective, and to drag Liza and two of our friends down there on a Sunday afternoon to see a three-hour black and white movie musical starring people we'd never heard of singing in a language none of us speak. And yet, the gods were merciful to us, and we had a fabulous time.
So about Bollywood. During the 1950s, apparently-due in large part to the exertions of the abovereferenced Raj Kapur-Bombay became the center of a thriving Indian film industry, churning out lavish and enormous productions which became popular in the Soviet Union as well as on the subcontinent. Raj Kapur produced, directed, and starred in his own films; and although that so often leads to disaster (witness Kevin Costner in this country, and poor Kenneth Branagh across the pond), for Raj-with the exception of one apparently execrable autobiographical selfindulgencefest called My Name Is Joker--this system seems to have worked out very well. It certainly works for Mr. 420, a film which must have made enormous demands on him as a performer as well as a director. Raj plays Raj, (usually a bad sign, I know...) a lovable tramp of the Charlie Chaplin stripe who journeys to Bombay to seek his fortune and discovers that, in the words of Brecht translated by Eric Bentley, "the world is poor, and man's a shit." Woman, on the other hand, has a heart of gold-figuratively, if you're Ganga Ma (the kindly and generous matriarch of a large family of homeless Bombayites) or Vidya (the purehearted schoolteacher who ultimately falls for Raj), or literally, if you're Maya, a mercenary and cold-blooded virago who could teach Cruella DeVille a thing or two about the proper use of a cigarette holder. Raj arrives in Bombay poor as dirt and about as savvy; but when his natural talent for fraud comes to the attention of a local cotton magnate, Raj is rocketed up from poverty and obscurity to the glittering heights of corruption and wealth. Once there, of course, Raj has to decide whether the money and fame are really worth becoming a capitalist sleazeball despised by every decent person. As long as Raj is defrauding the rich, this moment of truth is postponed; but when he discovers that his employer has put his face and name on a scheme designed to defraud the homeless poor who initially welcomed him on his arrival in Bombay, he has to make a choice that will determine his salvation or redemption (as well as the length and comfort of his mortal existence).
What's impressive about Mr. 420 is that it combines the ideological content of The Threepenny Opera with the epic sweep of Gone With The Wind and a musical score whose catchiness is positively diabolical. It's no small achievement to get a bunch of white-bread Americans singing your tunes in the street outside when your songs are all in Hindi. Artistically speaking, by most standards, the film is a melodramatic, romanticized, chaotic mess, I'm sure; but none of us cared. Three hours flew by as if winged, while we sat in our chairs going, "Oh my God, Raj, RUN AWAY! Can't you see she's nothing but trouble? What about poor Vidya, sitting at home crying into her sari?" Perhaps the best illustration of this movie working in spite of itself was the scene in which, after Vidya tells the newly affluent and newly corrupt Raj to take a hike, she appears to send out a transparent and ghostly emanation who then sings a very heartrending love song imploring Raj to look back just once before he leaves her forever while the 'real' Vidya stands immobile and stony-faced. It is true that I laughed out loud when Vidya's soft-hearted double sprang to life; but it is also true that her song made me very sad, and wish ardently for Raj to stop being an idiot and go back to her.
The movie is sold by its stars-Raj Kapur himself, who makes Raj's metamorphosis from honest and generous clown into handsome but tortured con artist both credible and disturbing; Nargis, who bites her knuckle a little too frequently but brings real passion and conviction to Vidya's character; and Nadira, who is absolutely TERRIFYING as Maya, the embodiment of greed. Both women are beautiful-and both, we were all gratified to see, are real-looking women with some meat on their bones-but it's quite clear from Nadira's face and the way she carries her body that she is nothing but hell on wheels, and even when Raj seems most fascinated by her it's clear that this fascination is born almost entirely of terror. All three approach their parts without any qualms about pulling out all the stops and charging over the top, and it's delightful to watch. At the same time, the real plot is not so much the love triangle as the age-old struggle to stay honest in a corrupt world; and that's what distinguishes this film from your standard Hollywood musical. "420" is the number of the statute in the Indian penal code pertaining to fraud; "Mr. 420" is the epithet applied to the industrial magnate who corrupts and uses Raj. Made not even a decade after India achieved independence, Mr. 420 is among other things about postcolonial disillusionment. Mr. 420 poses as a committed Indian nationalist working to shore up the Indian economy; in actual fact he is typical of a new generation of opportunists seeking to seize control of the exploitative machinery set up by colonialism and turn it to their own advantage. The message first introduced through a slapstick parable about a banana peel (moral: when people don't care about how their actions affect others, the result is that everyone falls on their asses) is sustained through the "420" motif for the entire film, culminating in another slapstick routine in which members of the new Indian elite chase a briefcase filled with cash through Mr. 420's palatial mansion. No wonder this film was so popular in the Soviet Union. Marxism has never been this much fun.
It is unlikely, if you do not inhabit a major urban center with a sizeable Asian-American population, that your local cinema will ever do a Raj Kapur retrospective. But if the opportunity ever does come to see Mr. 420, I urge you to avail yourself. In addition to seeing a great flick and being indoctrinated into the ways of socialism, you'll have a whole new perspective on The Satanic Verses, particularly Gibreel's character. After all, remember that the plane from which Gibreel and Saladin plummet on the first page of Satanic Verses was Flight 420.