Sholay

 "The greatest cast ever assembled in the greatest story ever told" -- this was the advertising for Ramash Sippy's dacoit ("Curry Western")  film released in stereophonic sound and 70 mm format in 1975.  The movie is frequently assigned iconic status and said to the one of "ten greatest Indian" films ever made.  It's 196 minutes long in the version I watched on Amazon Prime; the movie was re-released in a vivid 3D reconstruction in 2014 and in its renovated form, the picture features lots of firearms shot directly into the camera as well as explosions that hurl debris at the viewer -- these are annoying effects that were presumably imported into the picture when it was restored.  The movie is very entertaining but it's shockingly long.  It is also astonishingly derivative, imitating a number of Italian ("Spaghetti") Westerns, as well as Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and some of Peckinpah's films, including The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.  Almost every shot in the movie is extracted from some other better film to the extent that it's surprising to me that the picture wasn't embroiled in copyright litigation.  Gargantuan productions of this sort in Hindi cinema have a sort of Shakespearian flair in that the scenario incorporates all possible genres targeted to every possible audience demographic -- there quiet, quasi-philosophical dialogue scenes, Indiana Jones-influenced action sequences, romantic comedy with savage violence, and lavish song-and-dance numbers.  With the exception of the musical interludes, which are superb, the rest of the film is only almost good -- certainly, it exploits an audience that may not have seen Sergio Leone's Westerns or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, another picture that the film shamelessly imitates.  For someone who has seen the prototypes of the movies cited in Sholay, the film is just "almost good" -- it's fun to watch but absurdly formulaic and the mimicry of better films ends up being tiresome; Sippy doesn't do his picture any favors by repeatedly signaling that his picture is a mosaic of stand-out scenes from more memorable movies.  

The picture begins with a homage -- no a direct steal -- from Once upon a Time in the West (itself a pastiche of allusions to American Westerns).  An old steam-driven train, viewed from high angle, pulls into a barren frontier whistle-stop.  Two gunmen emerge from the train and ride cross-country through spectacular terrain to a tiny village in the shadow of huge fins and pyramids of naked granite.  (The landscape is filmed like Monument Valley in a Ford Western and has the same impact.)  The two handsome, roguish gunfighters (think Robert Redford and Paul Newman) are summoned to Thakur Singh's elaborate hacienda built improbably on a rocky pass among the giant slabs of stone.  Singh, a retired inspector (cop), swishes around in an elaborate shawl-like cape.  Thakur Singh contracts with the two gunfighters (they seem to be robbers) for them to capture "alive" a notorious local bandit named Gabbar.  The two lads are Jaidev and Veeru; they are best friends as shown in an engaging musical number in which the boys clown around on a motorcycle with side-car while singing a sort of love song to one another -- it's a bit like a musical scene from one Richard Lester's Beatles movies. (Indian musical numbers of this sort are infectious and spectacularly staged with all sorts of cartoonish acrobatics; generally, these song and dance interludes are best things in these movies.)  Several elaborate and exciting flashbacks follow:  we learn that Thakur had captured Veeru and Jaidev and was taking them to jail when bandits attacked their train, another steam locomotive right out of The Iron Horse, resulting in a Spielberg-style battle on the rails replete with all sorts of explosions, close-calls, and the picturesque slaughter of dozens of bad guys.  This fight has assured Thakur of the two men's prowess in battle.  The lads go to jail, triggering s fifteen minute comic episode, involving a fey prison warden with a Hitler moustache (he imitates Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator) and lots of pranks played by the mischievous protagonists on guards and their fellow inmates.  The lads escape and this brings us to their arrival in the village among the giant batholiths, a town that seems to be under the feudal protection of Thakur, the retired cop.  In scenes derived almost shot-by-shot from Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (and John Sturges Magnificent Seven) a horde of bandits led by the vicious Gabbar attacks the village.  A firefight ensues and, at a vital moment, Thakur seems to be paralyzed; a machine gun has been dropped in front of him but he won't stoop to pick it up.  This leads Veeru and Jaidev to accuse him of cowardice.  Veeru has fallen in love with the "chatterbox", Basanti, a beautiful girl who runs a sort of carriage service with a brightly decorated horse cart and a feisty pony named Dhanno.  (It's not clear when the movie is supposed to be taking place -- there's no electricity or phones in the village and the trains seem to date to about 1880, but Veeru and Jaidev tool around on motorcycle and there's dialogue about Veeru being the "grandson" of James Bond.)  A mysterious widow in white lives in Thakur's ranch-house and there are some pretty shots of her putting out the lanterns on the veranda at nightfall while Jaidev soulfully plays his harmonica -- like Charles Bronson in Once Upon a Time in the West. Jaidev has clearly fallen in love also with the widow-woman although local decorum requires that neither of them acknowledge the attraction -- this contrasts with the lusty romance between Veeru and the plucky carriage-driver, Basanti.  (Bollywood films feature astonishingly beautiful actors filmed in the most flattering way possible and the characters in the movie are all tremendously charismatic and glamorous.)  During the Holi festival, the so-called "Festival of Colors", girls run around blowing puffs of brilliantly colored powder at one another (and their lovers) and there's a carnival with hand-driven carousel and a little ferris wheels.  At the height of the festivities, in another scene cribbed from Kurosawa, the bandits attack and there's more fighting; again Thakur doesn't defend himself or his village.  When denounced by the gunfighters, Thakur's impairment is explained in a gruesome flashback:  the inspector captured Gabbar years before, gripping him in a choke-hold and proclaiming that his arms were "nooses in which he would hang" the villain.  Gabbar was sent to prison but escaped, lured Thakur to his encampment in the giant rocks and cut off both his arms -- hence, Thakur's mysterious cloak and shawl covering his torso.  Gabbar, then, sent his minions to Thakur's ranch where they murdered everyone in his family, including the cop's nine-year old grandson.  (These scenes exactly imitate the slaughter of the family by Henry Fonda and his gang in Once upon a Time in the West -- the mise-en-scene, down to the iconic scene of the leader of the gang gunning down a child, is shot-for-shot taken from Leone's film.)  This flashback explains Thakur's demand that the two protagonists capture Gabbar and deliver him to the retired inspector, presumably so he can inflict a horrible revenge on him.  At this point, we're at the middle of the movie and there's an intermission.  In the film's second half, the conflict between the bandits and the villagers escalates, the two love stories develop, and there are innumerable showdowns and gunfights and horse chases.  (Be warned:  there are some horrific horse-falls.)  As in The Seven Samurai, the two gunfighters reconnoiter Gabbar's encampment where he is enjoying a dance interlude with local gypsies (who like the Comancheros are supplying him with ammunition) -- this scene features the song "Mehbooba, Mehbooba" with a impressively lewd bump-and-grind belly dance.  ("Mehbooba, Mehbooba" was a huge international hit in Asia and the song is great with surreal imagery shot on a tight little set like one of the campfire scenes in a fifties Western.)  There's another big fight.  Basanti gets kidnapped and is forced to perform a lascivious dance on broken glass -- her feet are ripped up and she leaves footprints of bright blood in the sand  We get some more fighting, torture, and an impressive last stand scene with an army of villains and a scuffle to blow up a stick of dynamite on a rickety-looking bridge over a gorge.  Bad guys get shot off huge rocks and plunge howling to their deaths.  Of course, there's a final mano y mano fight between Thakur and Gabbar (Thakkar has to kick at, and head-bang, the bad guy who cut off his arms) and, then, some tragedy followed by more romance with a wedding in prospect for a happy ending.  

The movie is the definition of excessive and I suppose it's well-done.  But except for the musical numbers (I think there are about six), the picture left me entertained but curiously disengaged.  Sholay has some weird religious politics -- there's a blind Imam in the town who has a mosque up among the spires and pillars of rock.  His son, Achmed, has no future in the town which seems to have a mixed population of Hindus and Muslims -- Basanti, for instance, is a devotee to the god Shiva, although the religious scenes in her case are played for laughs (her suitor Veeru tries to court her by pretending to be the voice of the God.)  When Achmed is murdered by the bandits, the Imam gives a rousing speech, importuning the villages to take up arms to defend themselves.  What exactly this means in the fraught politics of modern India is unclear to me.  The best way to enjoy this film would be to get an anthology of its dance numbers, perhaps, with the train robbery scene and the last stand at the bridge and forego the rest of the three-hour plus version.  The film has such importance in India that the titles for the 3D restoration include a credit for "Travel and Tour Promotion" -- apparently, you can go to Ramanagara and the Closepet granite boulders where the movie was filmed and enjoy the spectacular landscapes there while indulging in a little nostalgia for the good old days when Sholay was released.  There's a powerful romantic chemistry in the love scenes -- the two heroes ended up both marrying their respective love-interests in the film.  The movie is the second highest grossing film in the history of Indian cinema and was, curiously enough, a huge hit in the Soviet Union.  Gabbar has been voted the greatest villain  of all time in Indian films.