Sunday, January 09, 2005

Movie Review: Ijaazat

Ijaazat is a movie from 1986 made by Gulzar. The movie starts with a man reaching a station one evening in pouring rain, where he has to wait for his connecting train the following morning. In the waiting room is a lady who is also waiting for a morning train. They are a divorced couple, who have not seen each other for 5 years, when she had left him an empty house. The movie is told mainly as a flashback. The man is Mahinder (Naseeruddin Shah), a photographer and the woman is Sudha (Rekha), a school teacher.

Mahinder was engaged to marry Sudha for 5 years, the whole engagement arranged by his grandfather. However, a few years after his engagement he meets Maya (Anuradha Patel) in the city where he lives. They fall in love with each other and soon they are living together. When Mahinder goes to visit his grandfather (Shammi Kapoor), Sudha's mother (Sulbha Deshpande) expresses her concern about their remaining unmarried for so long and while his grandfather does ask him if he is in love with someone else, he does not mention Maya and his marriage to Sudha is set for the next week. Sudha is a school teacher in Panchgani and he goes to talk to her to explain about Maya and that he does not want to get married to her. Sudha's suggestion is for him to take Maya to his grandfather and explain the situation before his marriage date. When Mahinder goes back to the city, Maya has disappeared, as she does frequently. In one of those Indian customs of maintaining his Grandfather's honor he gets married to Sudha.

Maya's presence is felt in their marriage from the things of hers which habit the house to the frequent phone calls from her. Maya is portrayed to be very impulsive, poetic, moody and very emotional to the point of suffering from depression at Mahinder's marriage. On his birthday she tries to kill herself which leads him to start visiting her, without telling Sudha. When she confronts him about the visits he says he wants them to meet and she refuses saying Maya cannot come to her house. He calls Maya (on the phone) to come to their house that very evening, she overhears Sudha's 'disinvitation' and she runs away from her house. Sudha sees the invitation & the unopeness in her marriage about Mahinder's visits & herself as being between the two of them and she leaves him and goes away.

Cut to the present and the station to yet another flashback to discover what happened to Mahinder, Sudha & Maya after their seperation.

The acting done by the 3 main characters is simply real. No review I do can really describe the emotion of helplessness and poignancy which comes up throughout the movie. The style of mixing the past and present is done excellently and keeps one very engrossed to the lives of the three main characters. The songs used in moderation, having only 4 songs, one used for the opening credits are superlative. The music of RD Burman and the lyrics of Gulzar are simply superb. The music and the utilization of urdu words & couplets add a distinctive flavor to the movie.The only negative about the movie which runs throughout the whole movie is the dominant chauvnism, down to the title (or portrayal of it). It does not put women down and does portray Sudha to be very independent and might not seem entirely negative, but it is definitely a male centered movie (as was the society in which the movie is set). However compared to the mainstream releases in 86-87, mainly potboilers like Janbaaz, Mr. India, Aakhree Rasta, Karma, Nagina, this movie stands far and above everything else and does not even really deem comparision.

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