Notes on Pankaj Kapur and Dharm
I’ve been amazed by the quality of Pankaj Kapur’s performances in two very different roles – in Vishal Bhardwaj’s The Blue Umbrella (a post about that film here) and Bhavna Talwar’s Dharm. In both films, he achieves something that very few actors can aspire towards: when he’s on screen, it’s almost impossible to take your eyes off him. The characters he plays are about as varied as it’s possible for two people to be. In The Blue Umbrella, he’s a covetous, wheedling Himachali shopkeeper who becomes obsessed with a little girl’s pretty umbrella; in Dharm he’s an orthodox Hindu pandit, the head priest of a temple in Benaras, who lives by the strictest interpretation of his faith, and who finds that faith severely tested when it turns out that the little boy he has raised is Muslim by birth.
The one thing Nandkishor and Pandit Chaturvedi do have in common is that it’s difficult as a viewer to take either of them to one’s heart. (It’s possible to admire Pandit Chaturvedi – to respect the fact that he’s a sincere man, not someone who uses religion for his own cynical ends, and that he is dismissive of the jingoistic local Hindutva organisation – but it’s hard to like him. Even if you’re sold on the virtues of the caste system, you might be discomfited by scenes like the one where the pandit’s devotees beat up a lower-caste man for accidentally brushing against him and he quietly goes off to cleanse himself in the Ganga without intervening.) And yet the measure of Kapur’s performance is that he humanises both these characters brilliantly, which is something that not many other actors – working with the same script – would have been able to do. By the end of The Blue Umbrella, Nandkishor is a sympathetic figure, easier to care about than the villagers who have ostracized him. And in Dharm, when we see the hint of a knowing (almost worldly) smile on Pandit Chaturvedi’s face during a conversation with his wife (Supriya Pathak) and daughter, we see the human side of a man who can be unflinchingly harsh, even inhuman, in his role as an authority figure (such as when he refuses to bless a disconsolate girl who has fallen out of favour with her family because of her association with a tourist).
The character of the pandit, and many other things about Dharm, reminded me of one of the best films I saw last year – David Volach’s My Father, My Lord, about an orthodox Rabbi who sacrifices his son at the altar of literalist faith. Like that film, Dharm is a quietly powerful work. It’s beautifully shot (by Nalla Muthu) and manages, for most of its running time, to be thought-provoking without being strident. However, I had a problem with the ending where a rampaging mob driven by religious fervour is stopped in its tracks by the force of one man’s righteousness (complete with the annoying cliché of the righteous man taking the chief assailant’s hand in his iron grip). It’s possible that this scene was meant to be seen metaphorically rather than literally (Dharm as humanity trumping it over fanaticism; or, how it should be in a perfect world), but if that was the intention, the scene was too closely aligned to the realist narrative, and it didn’t work for me. It also caused an abrupt shift in the film’s tone, which up to this point seemed to be leading to tragedy.
I also thought the scenes between the pandit and the little boy could have been expanded a little - and simultaneously, the subplot about the girl and the tourist could have been shortened. But Dharm is still strongly recommended, especially if you’re in the mood for a gentle, slow-paced film powered by a superb lead performance. Or if you need a reminder about the dangers of unquestioning faith.
on Saturday, February 2nd, 2008, 8:12 am in Film, Religion › 
Email this
› 
Facebook this
› 
Reddit this
› Link
› Reader links
Thanks for the review jabberwock..I like pankaj kapoor as a actor. I find stories of both dharm and the blue umbrella very interesting and would love to watch them..I wonder if these movies are out in theatres in US…hope dvds are available to watch these movies..
another good movie in the same line is telugu movie sankarabharanam…it won national award..about a brahmin elderly musician who brings a lower case vaishya woman into his house who happens to be an admirer of his music..and how the entire music community outcasts him for that..very interesting movie with great songs, great acting…
I think I saw a couple of tamil telugu movies in those lines..a gemini ganesan chiranjeevi movie, and a couple of other movies in these lines…hope I can watch Dharam and blue umbrella here in US…I think religion caste are still big issues in traditional indian families now a days..
Jabberwock,
Dharm should have been admitted for India’s Oscar entry, would you agree? Well, that controversy is really dead and gone.
Given the communal sensitivities in India it may have been possible the censor board (Central Board of Film Certification) had a hand in influencing Talwar’s movie ending. After seeing this movie I kept asking why religion (any religion) makes a man forget to be a human being?
Bollywood seems to have finally stopped sleeping on Pankaj Kapoor’s acting skills and are giving him some praise. Pankaj gives a great performance in Halla Bol as well. You should check it out.
Thanks for the reviews.
And he’s one actor who totally shines in full-on masala stuff too. Remember the carrot munching Karamchand :-D.
Dharm should have been admitted for India’s Oscar entry, would you agree?
Kali Billi: if you mean “is it the sort of film that the Oscars might be inclined to reward?”, I really can’t say. I’m not sure there’s much practical value in all the theorising about what kind of foreign film would appeal to the Oscars - contrary to what many people think, there are no trends, it’s really just a question of whim. (Check out the foreign-language film winners over the years and you won’t see anything like a pattern.) Depending on the publicity machinery and the personal inclinations of the voters in a particular year, a well-made Bollywood potboiler could stand just as much of a chance as a gritty, “realistic”, non-Bollywoodish film.
Jabberwock,
Dharm was an amazing movie
Add Pankaj Kapur’s performance in the highly flawed Halla Bol to the list of amazing performances from this actor. Maqbool is another film where he did great work.Kapur is one of the few actors who can take command of the screen despite being physically small.
I am so annoyed with Manhattan and Boston’s dearth of Hindi movie theaters. In Manhattan currently you get one movie every 2-4 weeks at the Imaginasian, and maybe one badly-written blockbuster in Times Square. In Boston, one movie a month, if that.
You need a car-centric lifestyle and the desire to live within an hour of a heavily desi area to see any of these. And watching them on my PC pales after a day of computing.
Oh, how I gorged on PVR Juhu.
Atleast in Boston and Manhattan, you can take a T/Subway and go to see a movie. In Boston, they used to play some movies in the Bombay Cinema on Comm Ave. (Allston) long ago , but apparently no longer! That was super-convenient as one could practically walk to that place from Brookline.
In Los Angeles, the only desi movies that ever played in West LA/Westwood area are “Provoked” and “Namesake”.And public transport to Valley or Artesia is next to nothing…..so enjoy what you have :-D.
I used to miss being in NY everytime Manish would blog about offbeat independent indian movies..
finally now I dont miss being in NY that much..
surprisingly though indianapolis is small , now we have indian movies played through out the month in a couple of theatres which are 15 minutes drive from downtown Indy.. I even wrote to them with a request to screen a offbeat artsy telugu movie and they obliged.
Iam planning to place a request for dharm and the other pankaj kapoor movie..
finally in Indy we are getting to see regional award winning as well as commercial telugu, tamil, bengali movies too in addition to hindi movies. thanks to the guys at manoranjan..
http://www.manoranjaninc.com/index.asp