A (Hindi) Movie Nearly Every Night: Seeta Aur Geeta

Seeta Aur Geeta (1972)
Director: Ramesh Sippy
Starring: Hema Malini, Dharmendra, Sanjeev Kumar, Manorama

Geeta (Hema Malini) being cute as a button

The quality isn't always great and they sometimes lack the basics of film scholar-aesthetics, but the more I watch of Hindi cinema the more I'm starting to really love the essence of it. Unlike Hollywood, which seems to want to distance itself from its core beginnings of fiction and fun, Bollywood has captured and maintained one of the most basic functions of film: Escapism. Rather than drop $8 and sit down to watch what I can see outside for free, I like seeing something completely outside of reality. Hollywood, since the 1950s, and maybe in small, independent productions before then, has been pushing itself away from that tradition with the idea that film is a mirror on society. Honestly, it's as though we've gone back to the morality plays of the dark ages. Here is what we are and what we should/could/would be.

Just as an example, there are these movies out now (usually with Emma Thompson, but in the case of Dan in Real Life, with Steve Carell), which have single people of a certain age finding that Special Someone usually by luck (good or bad) and realizing that this person is their soul-mate. My mom likes these movies because it gives her hope that I won't be single my entire life. I don't like these movies because I think they're a Disney-fication of hope. Dan in Real Life is not a bad movie, but essentially it's a message-movie: There's someone out there, middle-age people. You'll find them. What if I don't? Then you've lied to me. Or maybe I just not a good enough person -- psychological play from entertainment? Why? Hindi cinema, on the other hand, doesn't preach, doesn't promise and therefore doesn't lie.

Solid Bollywood spectacle cinema doesn't give you expectations outside of its reality (Satyajit Ray ... well, that's a whole other topic.). You walk out of the world and into the movie, and for 3 hours you are somewhere else entirely, I don't care what's happening on screen. The characters could be mafia dons and there's still time for a song and dance. Bad things happen and good things sometimes come of it, sometimes not, but it's total, complete, 100% fiction. I don't know what it's like where you live, but in my town (and my town is weird) people don't stop in the street and sing about their feelings. I don't know that it really happens all that often in Mumbai, but it does in the movies. But it's not going to preach to you. You can be a good person or a bad person, you can be violent and shoot down the bad guys or you can be the bad guy, it doesn't matter. This isn't really happening. It's a shadow-show on the wall. It's a book with pretty pictures that entertains you for a few hours.

Seeta Aur Geeta, by Hollywood standards, is a silly movie, but by Bollywood standards is a big box of wonderful. Twins separated at birth -- one grows up wealthy but unhappy in this nightmare Cinderella-esque house; one is a gypsy street dancer. They switch places and many adventures and situations follow. I won't say I loved every minute of it, because Seeta's wealthy household is brutal at the beginning, but it's worth sticking it out because gypsy Geeta balances the accounts later (hand, belt, boot and ping-pong paddle, that's all I'm sayin'). But for 2-1/2 hours it made me forget about my horrible week at work and living in a nation of narrow-minded jerks barking down healthcare reform.

Friends, sometimes a lie told to combat injustice is worth a thousand truths and here's how we sing it.

And, yes, there is plenty of singing and dancing. They sing about love, they sing about alcohol, they sing about their love of alcohol because it's not real life, thank you. It's the movies.