kunalsen_7684
Dil Dhoondta Hai. The heart yearns. One day when we'll look back upon these days of leisure and carelessness with a great sense of nostalgia, we would find these days hazy, hidden, buried and long gone and what'd be left for us but the remains of these days. I'm getting ahead of myself but how else can I describe Mausam for what is it but an eclectic mosaic of sweet, sad, vengeful, insightful, melancholic memories, the colors of which are brought forth masterfully on the canvas, by the master painter and poet, Gulzar, who with the sweep of his magical brush, paints a kaleidoscopic landscape of lost love Now, there are many kinds of memories. Some memories are hauntingly pertinent and indelible. Funny how they keep lying- dormant, unused, in a hidden cavity inside our cache like conscience, waiting to flash psychedelic impulses of Deja- Vu into our brain, triggered by an obscure thought; the whole process reminiscent of the obsolete Oracle 8i software, marvelously retrieving data from its enigmatic records. And just reliving them makes one feel alive again. One wants to be deluged by those memories, to be drowned in them and wallow in the sweet anguish they bring along Then, some memories are unpleasant and one wishes to obliterate them but is such a thing possible? They invariably come back periodically like wind bouncing off the abandoned water facing lighthouses, to haunt us again and again and remind us of our fallibility. Then, disorientation beckons and insomnia reigns. Many nights in a row. Isn't there a thing called consecutive dreaming? It is these memories that the film in question deals with.We meet Dr. Amarnath Gill. Though ostensibly, Dr. Gill is on a vacation to Darjeeling to take a break from his hectic schedule, his visit has a more subliminal motive too, one that is not known to his frenzied city life but is only known to his other self, which has long since become lost like an unknown face in the mirror that he doesn't recognize anymore. Dr. Gill has a past. Something he had done years ago has left his conscience pecked with a deeply embedded guilt. He tries to pick up the broken pieces and tie up the loose ends. His immaculate questions about a woman he had known many years ago, sheds ample light on the cause of his restlessness.Then, we embark upon a journey with him along the woolen clouds and the and through a series of flashbacks, we meet our second main character- the object of Dr. Gill's affection in the past and his culpability in the present. Theirs was a fairytale story. Young, city bred, urban urbane man comes to a small hill station to study Medicine and falls in love with a local damsel. But he has to go back to the city for his exams. He promises to come back and marry her. But he doesn't. She keeps waiting, keeps his memories and a gift as an embodiment of hope- and she clings on to that hope like a flimsy rope knowing very well that if it snaps, it could also act as as a noose. What happens next? He doesn't come. Her illusion is shattered. Her innocence lost. There are even other clues that point to the fact that she may have borne his love child before her ultimate abandonment by him.We cut back to the present where suddenly, our protagonist finds himself face to face with a stranger whose countenance has an uncanny similarity to that of his lost love. Who is this enigmatic stranger, who happens to be a prostitute, to whom he feels so mysteriously attracted? Is she the reincarnation of his lost love or could it be that....yes that must be it! He pays her pimp to take her to his guest house. There, the revelation takes place and mournful at the news that this man had walked out on her desolate mother and thereby subjecting herself and her mother to years of destituteness, she walks out on him.In the last scene, he seeks forgiveness and she grants him that by agreeing to go with him to the city (just like her mother would've and should've many moons ago) and we leave them like that, unsure of the future facing them but sure of their intentions of facing it togetherThe story of the movie is fairly simple. The doctor goes back to his past that he had left behind and once there, he remembers his lost love, discovers himself and meets a mysterious stranger who would eventually change the course of his life. The pace of the movie is like the doctor's vacation- unhurried, laid back and luxurious. The camera smacks of poignant poetry in every frame, metaphorical interludes amidst the sophisticated narrative. 'Dil Dhoondta Hai' probably has some of the best use of photography- bringing together the two ends of the continuum- the past and the present, the start and the end. That one song is enough to grant this film a permanent place in my heart's graveyard. Bhupinder's vocal builds an emotional bridge between the viewer and the protagonist. You feel as if you are Dr. Gill and that you can almost touch Kajli by extending your arm through the confetti- like mist. Sanjeev Kumar is magical. Sharmila probably gives the performance of a lifetime. But with a role like hers, in a film like this, it would've been hard to falter.But ultimately, the film belongs to its creator. Gulzar weaves a tale like a rich, exotic, Pashmina Shawl. A tale of lost love- a favorite subject with Gulzar, is probably told in three parts- Mausam, Aandhi and Ijaazat. Mausam, released in 1975, forms one installment in this wonderful trilogy. Its memory is one to cherish for a long long time just like Dali's surreal masterpiece
VirginiaK_NYC
I got hold of this movie in order to start seeing more of Sanjeev Kumar, whom I admired so much in Silsila, where he plays a husband who probably knows his wife (Rekha) does not love him the way he loves her - the performance was so subtle and intelligent He is wonderful in this one too, but probably it's the performance of Sharmila Tagore I'll remember more keenly.When I went looking around the Internet for comments on Mausam I came across a message board note from someone who said she knew she could feel all right if she could hear Dil Dhoondta Hai every day of her life. I understand why someone could fall in love with this song, played at the very beginning of this movie and again in a scene of love from the past of Kumar's character, whom we first meet in his middle age.Translation on screen: The heart lies in searchOnce again for those daysAnd nights of leisure . . . .We're right away in the world of the longing and search for long-gone sweet memories, recalled with melancholy.Dr Gill (Kumar), an unmarried gray-haired man who has become successful through discovering a useful medicine, is spending a holiday at Darjeeling alone. Over twenty years before he had visited the same place, and fallen in love with the daughter of a local Ayurvedic doctor. He did not keep a promise to return for her, and he has come back to see what he can find out about her. He learns that she never recovered emotionally from his abandonment of her; she had married subsequently, lived in poverty, and had a daughter, who is now a prostitute The movie is the story of his efforts to deal with all of this, including his "buying" several weeks of the girl's time from the brothel where she works.Sharmila Tagore (the mother of Saif Ali Khan, for fans who know present stars better than earlier ones) plays both the girl Kumar falls in love with and her daughter, the young prostitute. She is a magical creature in both roles - as the brash mountain girl who helps her father get customers (she rounds Kumar up fast when he slips on some steps and gets him to her dad's herbal dispensary), and as the seen-it-all and still enchantingly innocent prostitute girl. We also have a glimpse of her as a gray-haired "old" woman in a sad scene where her decline into madness is dramatized.She doesn't know what Kumar wants when he takes her to his house, and is emphatic about being paid for her services - he insists on getting her dressed up in a ladylike way, once he's dealt with her insistence that the cost not be taken from her wages. My favorite scene in the movie possibly, besides the car and the song at the beginning, is the scene where she decides she knows what kind of customer he is: not the kind who wants to "have fun" with a girl, but the romantic kind who wants to "roam" and see dancing. If I recall correctly, she insists on dancing for him, though with a warning that she is not good at it - and she isn't, instead she is entirely lovable. She seems to be about 14.It's the kind of story Bollywood excels at - there is such artistry involved (the movie is written and directed by Gulzar, so the script is basically perfect) in containing the powerful emotions of a man who abandoned the only person he ever loved, and has returned too late to do anything to benefit her directly. He is a taciturn, grim-ish character when we meet him, tenderer but also somewhat self-involved in the flashbacks to his "days and nights of leisure."The antic aspects of both the girl he loves and of her tough little daughter keep the movie far away from being a dreary guilt-and-sob-fest. Kumar is a wonderful actor, as noted, but this movie is from the days when the hero didn't have to be in fit physical shape; he isn't, so when he is supposed to be young and handsome, his face is fine but the body detracts from my ability to experience the "young love" thing. But Dil Dhoondta Hai just about makes up for it.I think the movie also allows some play to the question of whether there is a Lolita-like element to the relationship developing between Dr Gill and the girl - it lets us think about that, I'd say.
Magic Lamp
This movie is a slow-paced drama about broken hearts. The first half an hour can be entirely skipped. The movie takes off when the doctor first sets sight on Kajli. Early in his life, he had ended his love due to shame of professional failure. His lover agonizes about it all her life and dies a lonely death. Her daughter, Kajli, is the product of poverty and a dysfunctional family. She takes to being a prostitute and harbors grudges against her mom's unrequited love, the doctor's betrayal and the society in general. The movie is all about the doctor's efforts to make amends for his past by offering Kajli a family. Kajli's conflicted emotions range from her mocking his fatherly behavior to actually forgiving and accepting him. Her fatalism and near-addiction to her prostitute lifestyle is very well portrayed.The high point of the movie is the song - Dil dhoonta hai. It never fails to bring back images of lost love from bygone years.
