09 June 2006

bollywood 101

woozy and i hit the imaginasian on monday to see fanaa, a movie set in kashmir and delhi. i heart bollywood for many reasons, but one of the more important ones is their blatant disregard for realism of any kind in their plots...observe:

blind girl from kashmir goes to delhi with her dance troupe and meets the suave (?), sexy (?), rougueish-yet-charming womanizing tour guide who pulls out his heavy artillery of horrid, on-the-spot poetry to cajole her into hanging out with him. he gives her a tour of the city and she touches his face a lot. all her friends, of course, are split between "stay away from that slime ball" and "oh, he's so dreamy!"

eventually, she caves and they have a big dance scene (nb: i missed this b/c i got a call from the maj in prague which i figured i should go ahead and take, woozy says it was pretty good). the last day she is in town, tourguide fails to show up for whatever they're supossed to do. so she, in all her blindness, tracks him down and yells at him and they do it (nb again: i have NEVER seen such a racy bollywood movie, normally they don't even kiss, but this time they were clearly doin' it). she leaves the next day to get on a train and of course he shows up on the train and, get ready, carries her down the tracks back to delhi after they pull the fucking emergency brake.

they decide to get married and she finally goes for the eye check up her mom's been nagging her about. lo and behold! there is a new surgery "silly girl, you should have come to the doctor long ago, there have been such advancements!" that can, you guessed it, restore her sight.

she comes out of surgery, mom & dad are there, but rehan (tourguide) is nowhere to be seen. then we find out that someone has blown up something in delhi and she is called in to identify the remains. she clings to the horrid sweatervest she knitted him and remembers when he said "to be a piece of wool wrapped around that finger" (hello shakespeare!) and it's all very emotional.

then we see the like, center for anti-terrorism or something and they're talking about this uncatchable mastermind behind all these recent bombings, etc. of course, we now know it's rehan, who has cut his ridiculous hair, finally stopped wearing scarves all the time and is acting all james bond at the airport. turns out he's fighting for the IKF to create an independent kashmir.

he goes back to his snowy training camp where the boys are all playing footie and his grandfather is all "i'm so proud of you". eventually the indian gov't find out he's stolen a trigger for a nuclear bomb and they chase him around for a while. he ends up in the middle of the night at the door of like the only house for 1000 miles.

guess who lives there?? what's-her-face and her son, rehan (ahhh, that's why they had the sex scene!) and her dad (mom's died). of course, she was blind when they were together, but now she's not, and can't recognize him (i guess his voice didn't tip her off, plus she thinks he's dead). anyway, they bring him inside and nurse him back and eventually everyone figures everything out and rehan the elder says he just needs this one mission and then he'll come back to them forever and they get married at her house.

however, she ends up shooting him because he refuses to give up the trigger to the indian gov't.

the end.

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