Insaf Ka Tarazu (1980)

Writing my first review after such a long time feels weird which makes me proclaim 'away from me writer's block and be gone, be gone I say'. Insaf ka Tarazu is a movie i had planned to review on Zeenat Aman's birthday last month on November 19th, but as time did not allow, i thought it'd be the first movie i review now that I'm back in the swing of things.

Directed by the master of socially relevant bollywood films 'B.R. Chopra', Insaf ka Tarazu (The scales of Justice) is notable for being the first bollywood film that dealt head on with the subject of rape, it's also widely considered by many as one of Zeenat Aman's landmark performances. The film has been observed by many as a remake of the 1976 hollywood film 'Lipstick', which I'm yet to see, hence i shall not be able to comment on how much it rips it off, but this bollywood adaptation is a great watch, and is very much a bold film for its time

Our movie starts at a beauty competition where the audience decides who gets crowned the winner

(bollywooddeewana's note: How very forward thinking isn't it, voting for the winner is all the rage these days on Television shows)

Fashion model extraordinaire Bharti (Zeenat Aman) raises temperatures so much that a fan in the audience scores her a whopping 200 out of a possible 100. Bharti wins the competition and

the fan in question turns out to be wealthy industrialist Ramesh (Raj Babbar). As a reward for his enthusiasm he's called to crown Bharti, which he feels very honoured to do

Ramesh falls for Bharti and despite knowing she has a boyfriend of her own called Ashok (Deepak Parashar), he's hell bent on wooing her. Part of his attempts include hosting a special V.I.P birthday bash for her

Bharti goes along to the party with her boyfriend and sister, but Ramesh notices all his advances are being shunned by a rather childish Bharti in favour of her boyfriend Ashok

While Ramesh is nursing his broken heart/ego, Ashok and Bharti's relationship moves onto the next level when he takes her to his parents, Bharti's in laws approve of her and plans are made for them to get married

Ramesh still bent on wooing Bharti, calls her requesting to bring pictures from the party he threw for her, he's given the go ahead by Bharti. Ramesh goes that extra bit further and gifts her a present which Bharti in a rather childish and rude manner ignores in favour of her boyfriends call. Ramesh is furious and proceeds on raping Bharti

Bharti's sister Neeta (Padmini Kolhapure) walks in on them & thinks the sexual act between her sister and Ramesh is consensual

(bollywooddeewana's note:surely she should have seen the bruises & scars on her sister's face as well as the fact that she's tied up,or did little Neeta probably think her sister was indulging in some S&M fun, i'd fear to think so)

Violated and shattered, Bharti is determined to get justice

(bollywooddeewana's note:I must admit that i do rather like this painting revealing Bharti's inner state of mind)

despite the lawyer's (Simi Garewal) warning of the emotional turmoil and humiliation the court case will very likely bring, Bharti insists on taking the case to court

(bollywooddeewana's note: I actually find the film quite feminist in this regard as she (Bharti) stood up and made her voice heard rather that fear being ridiculed and as a result keep schtum)

True to the lawyer's word Bharti is subjected to all sorts of humiliating questions from her attire she was wearing before the rape to providing proof she was raped and many other mundane questions, she's eventually accused of luring Ramesh to bed & attempting to cover up the whole incident with the intention of remaining angelic in the eyes of her younger sister

Bharti loses the case mostly in part to the dubious lawyer Mr Chandra (Sreeram lagoo) whom Ramesh had bought out plus various pictures which showed them enjoying each other's company was enough to convince the judge Bharti was lying

Devastated and humiliated at losing the case Bharti's world comes crumbling down, What will happen to Bharti, will she ever be able to get justice? What will society make of her now? What will happen to her career as well as her relationship with Ashok? Watch Insaf Ka Tarazu (scales of justice) to find out

On the whole Insaf ka tarazu is a taut and gripping drama/thriller, it had me engrossed right from the get go and the film only begins to falter in my opinion in the quite tedious court scenes, and as usual my complaint with many a bollywood film that includes a court scene rears its ugly head here once more (see previous complaints here and here). Why is it that the court is always a place of jesting and other hijinks, for example raucous laughter is allowed to go on numerous times in the court without the judge shouting 'order'

But my complaints are far and in between as this film is a major winner for me, mostly in terms of its feminist stance in the form of Bharti not being afraid to seek justice at the cost of what might become of her reputation in society , that along side the injustices in the judicial system regarding rape which was echoed in the much later and rather over the top Zakhmi Aurat, makes this film a must watch, i definitely recommend it and i recommend reading the magazine scans at the end of this post too.

Looking back and judging by the rape and Judicial system in modern day India in the magazine scans at the end of this post, it seems a lot of the things i was angry about while watching this film happens in real life like Bharti's sister being asked to come and stand trial and then being shouted at by the lawyer. All these points and arguments which the article at the end of this post raised made me like this film all the more and made it even more relevant to our present times. As for the flat/rushed ending many imdb commenters seem to be unhappy with, alas the director had to bridge the gap between making a socially relevant film and making money at the same time, not a bad thing in my opinion.

I'd recommend this film as a must watch for all Zeenat Aman fans, i found her portrayal of Bharti passionate albeit a bit uber melodramatic and without sounding shallow she looked utterly gorgeous

Raj Babbar whatever you think of him doesn't really matter, as i think this is one if not the best role he ever played, he brought a certain creepiness to his Ramesh character so much so that you can't help but hate him, infact I've come across numerous people who hate him because of his role in this, but i say well done Raj for a great performance

Deepak Parashar another actor who gets schtick for being wooden , i actually found quite cute in this and he and Zeenat made a lovely pair

And lest i forget Padmini Kolhapure, she was nothing but great as Bharti's chirpy little sister this young actress who i believe was only a wee teenager at the time showed she was capable of handling melodrama whilst showing some restraint while doing so

Honourable mentions to Simi Garewal, Ifthekar and Sreeram Lagoo as well

Garam Dharam makes a special guest appearance

Lovely music from Ravindra Jain on this, i simply love this soundtrack and i've included links to all the videos with English subtitles, from the restrained title track 'insaf ka tarazu' to the playful 'yeh ho gayi' , my two favourites though are 'Hazaar khwaab haqeeqat' a wonderful love song by Mahendra Kapoor and Asha Bhosle

and 'log aurat ko' is definitely amongst my top three Asha Bhosle songs of all time

Paisa Vasool rating: 7/10

Magazine scans on rape the state of Rape and Justice in India

Click on image to enlage

Click to enlarge


Article courtesy Femina Magazine

Border (1997)

Hmmm so i had heard lots about this movie plus after repeated hearings of one the most haunting film songs i've heard plus a rather sexy and fresh looking Akshay i thought i'd definitely check it out. When my rental service sent me an email that it was on its way to me i couldn't contain my excitement but all this fell a bit flat after watching the film

Border is based on the 'real life events' that happened during the Indo- Pakistani war of 1971also called The battle of Longewala which up until this movie i knew nothing about and still don't know much about but you can read about in on wikipedia

Overall i found Border quite an interesting but aggravating watch I'm not one to get involved in politics & i won't pretend to be an expert on the subject of the Partition but i PERSONALLY believe India & Pakistan are one.


Border had some 'Us' versus 'Them' approach as you can see from the subtitles in the slide below which i felt uncomfortable with, that the director later seemed to create a one India, Pakistan and Bangladesh after this film seemed somewhat phony as i noted in my previous review of his film Refugee (2000) which was 3 years after Border


Also added to my annoyance was some self righteous hindu/muslim hypocrisy in the scene where Sunil Shetty rescues a pakistani's man Quran from a burning house to which the muslim then exclaims to himself "and people say Hindu's are bad" which came across in a rather hypocritical and a desperate attempt to pander to the masses kind of way




'ahhhhhhhhh' very cringeworthy

Patrotism is a good thing but belligerent patrotism seems be the point of focus a lot in border, perhaps the director knew some audiences would play up to this as the film was the highest grosser of 1997


The film ended on the note of 'beginning a lasting peace' which i felt was rather corny after all the bashing that had gone previously


Poor Sunil Shetty i usually find him quite adoarble but he seems to have been given all the bigoted dialogues


Akshay Khanna was one of the reasons i watched this fim, he was so handsome and he gave a beautiful performance eeven though the film is a bit wishy washy with me, he won the Filmfare best male newcomer Award for his role as Dharamvir Bhan



The women have small roles in border as the weeping wives and left behind girlfriends

Sharbani Mukherjee one of the wives left behind, i'd never heard of her till this film and if you are getting some Rani vibes from looking at this picture, they are indeed real life cousins

Tabu as the teary wife

Pooja Bhatt as the left behind wife


And my beloved Raakhee was there as the mother of the ill fated army general

The music of this film is perhaps another reason that stopped me from hating it completely. Anu Malik was as always on top form with the beautiful strings and romantic sounds of 'hamen jab se mohabbat' (watch to see a super gorgeous Akshay) to the quiet soothing ballad sounds of 'To chalun' to my favourie 'sandese hate hain' which is the major reason or rather the first song i saw from the film that made me watch it, this was also the song that made Sonu Nigam a huge star and also got him the Filmfare best male playback singer award, now Sonu fans and lovers of good music hit the play button below


Total Score: 5/10 (extra points for the sake of Anu Malik's music)

Mahal (1949)

This is a very historic film in hindi cinema, as it's one of the first to deal with the story of reincarnation, Mahal (Mansion) is said to have been the inspiration for many later films based on Reincarnation usch as Madhumati, Kudrat etc. This movie is also said to have made Madhubala and Lata Mangeshkar superstars

The story begins about a haunted mansion where a tragic love story is said to have happened between the lord of the mansion and a woman. The woman is said to haunt the mansion with cries about her lover

ooohhhh haunted mansion
Hari Shankar buys the mansion and when he discovers a picture that looks strangely similar to him, he believes he is the owner of the mansion reincarnated with the purpose to find his love

he soon starts seeing a face, which he believes is that of his lover from his previous life Kamimi (Madhubala)

his friend Shivnath (Kanu Roy) thinks hes'c razy and tries to stop him from obsessing over Kamini in his bid to stop this he hires some prostitutes but this fails to work

Kamini reveals to him that they can both be together if he takes a liking to his veil wearing maid after which he can then kill, and then she would possess her body and they would be able to be reunited

Before Shankar can do this he's knocked out after a fall and his father takes him to Allahabad where he's married off to Ranjana (Vijayalaxmi)

Following his and Ranajana's marriage shekhar remembers Kamini and longs for her only. Ranjana becomes depressed over this and when she eventually catches Shankar declaring his love for Kamini, she's unable to bear it and plots her own suicide and then frames Shankar for it

Thus follows a court room drama where Shankar must try to prove his innocence

Will Shankar be able to prove his innocence? Was he really the incarnated owner of the mansion? Who is kamini? Is she real or are all these hallucinations

This is a well made film, its well thought out and it has an interesing story as well as great direction from Kamal Amrohi with a great twist which i wouldn't have guessed , many people refer to it as horror which it clearly isn't, i guess i would describe it more as supernatural suspense drama. The film has a quiet spooky feel about it and the cinematography and lighting is of a high standard. My only complain is that although the story and concept was great, it felt quite slow and it really could have been shorter.

Great performance here from Ashok Kumar as Shankar, so much poise, elegance and class, he's truly one of the great actors of Indian Cinema

And Madhubala what a great beauty she is, the camera clearly loves her gives a superbly convincing performance as Kamini, i really didn't see that end coming


The music by Khemchand Prakash is fantastic with well thought out beautiful lyrics, i really liked
'Mushkil bahut hai mushkil' the mellow 'yeh raat phir na aayegi', the subtle sounds of Dil ne phir but my favourite has to be aayega aanewal (oh my beloved will come back) which i would term as a subtle but undeniably catchy earworm, beautifully sang by Lata Mangeshkar



Total Score: 8/10 ( an entertaining suspense drama)