Nagina

A wealthy Indian matron has arranged a suitable marriage for her handsome son.  The young man, Rajeev, educated in London, has returned to the family estate after fifteen years abroad.  His mother plans to marry him to the plump and beautiful Vijaya, the daughter of the businessman who has managed the family enterprises (farming and a sugar factory) after the woman was widowed.  (In the palatial mansion, a huge photograph is displayed of the deceased Rajah, resplendent in his turban and with his foot planted on a tiger that he has shot; a swag of flowers garlands the life-size photograph.)  Everything is well-planned and Rajeev seems delighted by Vijaya.  But, then,  strange events ensue and the eligible bachelor marries a snake.  This turns out to have calamitous consequences worked out over the two-hours and 18 minute length of this 1986 movie.  The picture, Nagina, was India's number one box-office hit in 1986 and remains acclaimed as one of the best "snake-fantasy" pictures ever made.  (Yes, Bollywood has a genre that is identified as "snake-fantasy".)  You can watch the picture on Amazon Prime.  Like many celebrated Bollywood movies, it's astonishingly bad -- so terrible that it's often quite funny.  The movie features a commanding performance by the astonishing Svidevi as the snake-wife and Amrish Puri as her nemesis, the Snake-Charmer who is also some sort of holy man -- but these performances aren't tailored to human dimensions; they are grotesquely larger-than-life:  the actors strike poses and move like figures in a silent movie. The special effects are primitive:  the snake-wife, Rajni, is sometimes shown with a cobra superimposed over her face, but there are no attempts to show the woman turning into a serpent -- indeed, the "money-shot" of the beautiful Svidevi becoming a huge scaly venomous snake seems beyond the capabilities (and budget) of the director, Hamesh Malholtra.  The screenplay is over-emphatic and very broad --  it was written by someone with the snaky name of Dr. Achala Nagar (snakes are naag in Hindi).  The plot is slow to develop and the climax involves elements rushed into the picture that don't make any sense.  And the movie is very, very long.   

Senses of Cinema is an Australian on-line journal about movies.  It publishes academic articles, frequently very badly written in impenetrable lit-crit jargon.  But the publication is a mixed-bag and it's a good guide to Asian cinema, a subject in which the Australians take a keen interest.  Volume 101 of the journal features eight or nine articles about Bollywood that make claims for the artistic integrity of some of the products of that industry -- the largest film factory in the world.  Critics writing for Senses of Cinema condemn Western critics for neglecting Bollywood movies -- Indian cinema in Europe and America is limited to Satjayit Ray's arthouse picture and, perhaps, a handful of other similar movies.  The innumerable films made by Bollywood are, by and large, ignored although there are now many of these movies available to anyone who cares to watch them on Netflix and Amazon Prime.  The editorial staff at Senses of Cinema implies that Western racism is the cause for critics neglecting Bollywood pictures; Europeans are contemptuous, it is suggested, of the movies made by a former British colony.  Although there may be some element of truth to this characterization, it is, by and large, unfair.  First, until recently, these movies were very hard to see.  There are only a few theaters that show first-run Indian popular films and, although Indian immigrants may know about these screenings, no one else does.  (There's a theater in a remote suburb of Minneapolis that often shows Hindi films but at strange hours of the day, usually on Sunday mornings -- and these screenings aren't well-advertised.)  Second, Indian films aren't reasonably conserved.  As in Mexico, film classics are treated casually and, often, released on pirated DVDs that are unwatchable -- there's no Indian (or Mexican) equivalent of Criterion or Janus Films protecting these movies which are, apparently, allowed to decay into illegibility.  Third, it's unclear what exactly constitutes Indian film -- the industry produces movies in Telugu, Kannada, Hindi and about a half-dozen other languages.  (Nagina exists in Telugu and Hindi versions.)  The movies are badly dubbed and often have tinny sound -- this is because they have to be shown commercially to people within India who don't speak the language in which the film was made.  But the soundtracks are off-putting.  Even a prestige picture like Nagina sounds like it was recorded over a dictaphone.  But the main reason that Indian popular cinema hasn't been extensively studied is that the movies are all very, very long -- most of the classics made in Bollywood are between three and four hours long.  (By contrast, Ingmar Bergman's movies, for instance, and Ray's as well, are usually about ninety minutes long.)  Therefore, anyone interested in Indian popular cinema must commit to watching a three to four hour film often involving very unfamiliar cultural premises with poorly dubbed sound and erratic subtitles written in a form of English spoken in Mumbai but only tangentially similar to standard English.  These are all formidable obstacles to overcome.  Further, Indian popular films don't curry Western favor -- they have a billion viewers in India and its diaspora and the industry is self-contained:  it doesn't really care what I think about it.  Fortunes are made and lost in the industry every year without anyone outside of India knowing anything about it.  I don't think that any of these factors have much to do with bigotry.  And, then, there's the daunting question:  where to begin? 

I've seen a few Bollywood movies and concede I don't really understand them very well.  Clearly they are based on popular esthetic principles in which I am illiterate.  Some of these movies are very entertaining, but it's hard to claim the mantle of "art" for them.  I watched Nagina because it's relatively short (only two-hours and 18 minutes long) and features the famous Svidevi, one of Bollywood's leading actresses between the late seventies and first decade of the 21stcentury.  Like some of the most iconic screen stars, Svidevi is fantastically beautiful but her beauty is also a bit imperfect, even somewhat odd -- from some angles, she looks a little bit strange, an appropriate effect for a woman who is, in this film, actually a snake.  Svidevi has huge eyes with an asymmetrical aspect; she sometimes seems cock-eyed.  She has a slight double-chin and sometimes looks a little bit squat -- I don't think that she's very tall.  Svidevi doesn't have the lissome, willowy appearance of American and English film actresses -- who are all, more or less, built on the lines of Tilda Swinton but more attractive and with bigger breasts. Svidevi is capable of exuding an aspect of raw sensuality but she is treated as a movie star in Nagina and never portrayed in a way that is undignified.  Even when she is dancing by sliding her rump over the ground like a caterpillar inching forward, she remains, somehow, remote, an aloof goddess.  Her antagonist in the movie, Amrish Puri, playing the snake-charmer has grandiose villainous features and seems to be very tall -- he glares in an impressive manner and is often shot standing in front of cultic swastikas (clearly an intentional effect).  The climactic battle between the snake-wife and the snake-charmer is a tremendous spectacle, but like everything in the movie it goes on way too long.  

The film's plot is simple in outline, but complex in exposition.  Rajeev was a sickly child and had to be raised in London for his health.  (It turns out that he was bit by snake when he was six but revived from the dead by the Snake-Charmer; the snake that bit him was a gem-bestowing snake, whatever this means, and very late in the picture we learn that there is an unseen jewel somewhere that will bestow power to control the world on its possessor -- this seems like a poorly contrived after-thought to motivate the fight to the death between the snake-wife and the snake-charmer).  Returning to his family estate, Rajeev attempts to take his  arranged-marriage fiancee on an outing.  But the horse and buggy in which they are riding is spooked by some snakes haunting an old, decrepit and ruined temple.  The snake-maiden lives in the temple and appears during a song-and-dance number when Rajeev explores the place.  He courts the snake-maiden, who says she is an orphan.  At last, he begs his mother to allow him to marry the snake -- of course, no one knows that Rajni, the snake girl, is really a big cobra.  After his mother's objections, Rajni wins the woman over and the marriage takes place.  Mr. Thukar has been managing the estate for the family in the hopes that his daughter would become Rajeev's wife.  When Rajeev marries the snake, Mr. Thukar becomes an outright villain and tries to kill Rajeev.  He sends thugs to murder Rajeev (as well as Rajni) but snakes intervene and the bad guys get bit.  Finally, Mr. Thukar shoots Rajeev from a distance, although apparently a cobra kills him after he fires the shot.  While Rajeev is recuperating, there is dissension in the snake world and the Snake-Charmer sends a malevolent King Cobra to attack the comatose hero.  This leads to a bloody battle between Rajni as Queen Cobra and the sinister King Cobra -- Rajni wins the fight.  After some more complications, the Snake Charmer with his six flute players (all dressed in saffron yellow) enter the family's mansion and try to destroy Rajni.  Rajni does an astonish snake-dance writhing all over the floor and knocking over the flute-players -- she seems both defiant and, somehow, enthralled by the Snake Charmer's repetitive flute riffs.  (The guy and his assistants are playing what looks like gourds stuck on tubes.)  Rajeev now recovered appears and fights a duel using magical tridents with the Snake Charmer.  A great tempest ensues and we see lightning represented as white bolts in the sky in interpolated shots -- it looks like the lightning shown in Ed Wood movies.  Finally, Rajeev with the help of his snake-wife wins the duel.  The snake-charmer is defeated  Rajeev's mother, who has never been given a name in the movie, is collateral damage and dies.  Rajni vows to never become a snake again.  A title says AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY THERAFTER (sic).

The film's last forty-five minutes are impressive in a grotesque and alienating way.  It's impossible to figure out who is supposed to be the hero of the film.  Rajeev looks like Wayne Newton; he's plump with a spectacular black pompadour.  He seems pretty much clueless throughout the movie although he rises to the occasion in a couple of big fight scenes.  The Snake-Charmer is apparently supposed to be the villain but, in  effect, he's exorcizing the house from the supernatural threat posed by the snake-maiden and, so, his motives seem to be pure (until the end when we learn that he's really just trying to seize the jewel from the deceased gem-bestowing snake.)  The difficult factor for a western audience has to do with the multiple meanings associated with serpents in Indian culture:  sinister and dangerous creatures, snakes are also perceived, somehow, to be benign household guardians and were, in fact, the protectors of Hindu and Buddhist scripture.  So the snake is neither good nor evil.  Apparently, snakes are embodiments of the power of Shiva and devotees to that god sometimes worship serpents.  The snake-wife is, therefore, a monster who is both good and evil.  Indian cinema is very conservative and, at the end of the movie, the snake-wife is perceived to be battling to protect her family -- that is, her husband and her mother-in-law.  The movie is shot in a primitive but effective way.  It has enormous sets with balustraded galleries and huge curving staircases.  Lighting supplies hysterical accents to the action -- it's not unusual for a character to move through four or five brilliantly colored lighting schemes in a single shot.  Every effective shot is repeated at least three times -- sequences go on and on without any regard to proportion.  As is the manner in Indian popular cinema, the movie is also a musical with about six song-and-dance numbers including the tremendous snake-dance at the end of the movie (worth the price of admission) and a love duet that takes place among cascading waterfalls.  People are posed against impressive backgrounds without regard for logical topography.  There are innumerable inserts of people glaring at one another, particularly Svidevi and the Snake-Charmer.  

A final bizarre element in the film deserves mention.   Like Shakespeare, this drama is made for both high- and low-brows.  The movie features a comical servant in a sort of Indian Stepin Fetchit role.  This guy tells incredibly offensive jokes -- he compares his wife to an elephant who is crushing the life out of him.  In one scene, he has hired an urchin to take a family portrait but the little kid can't fit all the fat women into the frame and makes fun of them.  Somehow, the little boy ends up embraced by the fat woman who calls the emaciated urchin a "mosquito" and, then, accuses him attempting to rape her.  She picks up the kid and, like a professional wrestler, hurls him off-screen.  It's comedy of a sort that is truly cringe-worthy and the film exploits these scenes for all they are worth.  Then, when the tone turns darker, the comical subaltern, like Shakespearean fool in King Lear, just vanishes from the picture.