I got hold of this movie in order to start seeing more of Sanjeev Kumar, whom I admired so much in Silsila, where he plays a husband who probably knows his wife (Rekha) does not love him the way he loves her - the performance was so subtle and intelligent He is wonderful in this one too, but probably it's the performance of Sharmila Tagore I'll remember more keenly.
When I went looking around the Internet for comments on Mausam I came across a message board note from someone who said she knew she could feel all right if she could hear Dil Dhoondta Hai every day of her life. I understand why someone could fall in love with this song, played at the very beginning of this movie and again in a scene of love from the past of Kumar's character, whom we first meet in his middle age.
Translation on screen:
The heart lies in search
Once again for those days
And nights of leisure . . . .
We're right away in the world of the longing and search for long-gone sweet memories, recalled with melancholy.
Dr Gill (Kumar), an unmarried gray-haired man who has become successful through discovering a useful medicine, is spending a holiday at Darjeeling alone. Over twenty years before he had visited the same place, and fallen in love with the daughter of a local Ayurvedic doctor. He did not keep a promise to return for her, and he has come back to see what he can find out about her.
He learns that she never recovered emotionally from his abandonment of her; she had married subsequently, lived in poverty, and had a daughter, who is now a prostitute The movie is the story of his efforts to deal with all of this, including his "buying" several weeks of the girl's time from the brothel where she works.
Sharmila Tagore (the mother of Saif Ali Khan, for fans who know present stars better than earlier ones) plays both the girl Kumar falls in love with and her daughter, the young prostitute. She is a magical creature in both roles - as the brash mountain girl who helps her father get customers (she rounds Kumar up fast when he slips on some steps and gets him to her dad's herbal dispensary), and as the seen-it-all and still enchantingly innocent prostitute girl. We also have a glimpse of her as a gray-haired "old" woman in a sad scene where her decline into madness is dramatized.
She doesn't know what Kumar wants when he takes her to his house, and is emphatic about being paid for her services - he insists on getting her dressed up in a ladylike way, once he's dealt with her insistence that the cost not be taken from her wages. My favorite scene in the movie possibly, besides the car and the song at the beginning, is the scene where she decides she knows what kind of customer he is: not the kind who wants to "have fun" with a girl, but the romantic kind who wants to "roam" and see dancing.
If I recall correctly, she insists on dancing for him, though with a warning that she is not good at it - and she isn't, instead she is entirely lovable. She seems to be about 14.
It's the kind of story Bollywood excels at - there is such artistry involved (the movie is written and directed by Gulzar, so the script is basically perfect) in containing the powerful emotions of a man who abandoned the only person he ever loved, and has returned too late to do anything to benefit her directly.
He is a taciturn, grim-ish character when we meet him, tenderer but also somewhat self-involved in the flashbacks to his "days and nights of leisure."The antic aspects of both the girl he loves and of her tough little daughter keep the movie far away from being a dreary guilt-and-sob-fest. Kumar is a wonderful actor, as noted, but this movie is from the days when the hero didn't have to be in fit physical shape; he isn't, so when he is supposed to be young and handsome, his face is fine but the body detracts from my ability to experience the "young love" thing. But Dil Dhoondta Hai just about makes up for it.
I think the movie also allows some play to the question of whether there is a Lolita-like element to the relationship developing between Dr Gill and the girl - it lets us think about that, I'd say.
When I went looking around the Internet for comments on Mausam I came across a message board note from someone who said she knew she could feel all right if she could hear Dil Dhoondta Hai every day of her life. I understand why someone could fall in love with this song, played at the very beginning of this movie and again in a scene of love from the past of Kumar's character, whom we first meet in his middle age.
Translation on screen:
The heart lies in search
Once again for those days
And nights of leisure . . . .
We're right away in the world of the longing and search for long-gone sweet memories, recalled with melancholy.
Dr Gill (Kumar), an unmarried gray-haired man who has become successful through discovering a useful medicine, is spending a holiday at Darjeeling alone. Over twenty years before he had visited the same place, and fallen in love with the daughter of a local Ayurvedic doctor. He did not keep a promise to return for her, and he has come back to see what he can find out about her.
He learns that she never recovered emotionally from his abandonment of her; she had married subsequently, lived in poverty, and had a daughter, who is now a prostitute The movie is the story of his efforts to deal with all of this, including his "buying" several weeks of the girl's time from the brothel where she works.
Sharmila Tagore (the mother of Saif Ali Khan, for fans who know present stars better than earlier ones) plays both the girl Kumar falls in love with and her daughter, the young prostitute. She is a magical creature in both roles - as the brash mountain girl who helps her father get customers (she rounds Kumar up fast when he slips on some steps and gets him to her dad's herbal dispensary), and as the seen-it-all and still enchantingly innocent prostitute girl. We also have a glimpse of her as a gray-haired "old" woman in a sad scene where her decline into madness is dramatized.
She doesn't know what Kumar wants when he takes her to his house, and is emphatic about being paid for her services - he insists on getting her dressed up in a ladylike way, once he's dealt with her insistence that the cost not be taken from her wages. My favorite scene in the movie possibly, besides the car and the song at the beginning, is the scene where she decides she knows what kind of customer he is: not the kind who wants to "have fun" with a girl, but the romantic kind who wants to "roam" and see dancing.
If I recall correctly, she insists on dancing for him, though with a warning that she is not good at it - and she isn't, instead she is entirely lovable. She seems to be about 14.
It's the kind of story Bollywood excels at - there is such artistry involved (the movie is written and directed by Gulzar, so the script is basically perfect) in containing the powerful emotions of a man who abandoned the only person he ever loved, and has returned too late to do anything to benefit her directly.
He is a taciturn, grim-ish character when we meet him, tenderer but also somewhat self-involved in the flashbacks to his "days and nights of leisure."The antic aspects of both the girl he loves and of her tough little daughter keep the movie far away from being a dreary guilt-and-sob-fest. Kumar is a wonderful actor, as noted, but this movie is from the days when the hero didn't have to be in fit physical shape; he isn't, so when he is supposed to be young and handsome, his face is fine but the body detracts from my ability to experience the "young love" thing. But Dil Dhoondta Hai just about makes up for it.
I think the movie also allows some play to the question of whether there is a Lolita-like element to the relationship developing between Dr Gill and the girl - it lets us think about that, I'd say.