Amar Akbar Anthony

Posted by Sari

Today is time for another Bollywood evening with Tarja, so I thought I better empty some of my back-log in this respect also. Last time we watched ummm… something? Obviously something that the total awesomeness of Amar Akbar Anthony has totally wiped from my memory. Maybe Tarja remembers.

But Amar Akbar Anthony, maybe the best movie evah! See, the poor chauffeur of a rich slime ball takes a blame for a traffic accident when he is promised that the slime ball will look after his family when he is in gaol. After release, he finds his wife ill with tuberculosis and his three small sons starving. Full of rage he goes after the slime ball tries to shoot him (unfortunately, like all smart rich people, the slime ball is wearing chain mail under his shirt.) The father takes his children along in the getaway car, but they all become separated in the hassle.

At the same time his tuberculous wife does not want to be a burden and wanders of to kill herself, is hit over the head with a tree branch in a thunderstorm, becomes blind, and takes the accident and a timely arrival of saviour as a sign against suicide. With great tragic Irony, that saviour is a Muslim tailor with a tiny crying tyke on tow: one of her now missing sons and she does not realize it. The tailor adopts the boy, raises him as Muslim and calls him Akbar. The oldest, Amar, is found by a Hindu policeman who adopts him, and the Middle son was left at the gardens of Catholic Church, so the priests there raises him up as a Christian: Anthony. All others think that our poor chauffeurs progeny perished when his getaway car went off a cliff. In reality, the chauffeur survives the crash with a box full of gold, and when he is unable to find his kids, he retires to plan a revenge.

Amar follows his stepfathers footsteps in the police, Akbar becomes a popular qawwali singer and Anthony ends up as bit of a crook, making deals not that legit. But he does it with twinkle in his eye and a song in his heart, so he is not bad, really more like mischievous. They all meet accidentally at a hospital and end up giving blood to a blind woman who has been in accident. And then the movies starts. All this was in the teaser before opening titles!

Amar Akbar Anthony has everything: twists and turns, missing persons and mistaken identities, chases, fights, romance x 3, miracles, revenge, tragedy, friendship, humour, prevention of a marriage at the nick of time, great music, and an absolutely surreal easter celebration with Anthony bursting out of a giant easter egg and singing something about “hemoglobin in the atmosphere”. I think that this and Main Hoon Na are now my favourite gateway drugs to Bollywood

Comments

[Tarja]

The other movie was Shahrukh's Chak De! India - and I had to check my LJ to remember that as well....

[jukkahoo]

As someone who has also seen this masterpiece of a motion picture, I am forced to acknowledge that it is indeed one of the most brilliant movies ever! One cannot but admire the mind of the people responsible for producing, acting, directing and especially _writing_ this one. I'm willing to bet several billion rupees, that no one is able to foresee the plot twist at around 1,39 hrs into the movie. That would require inhuman cababilities of being able to understand the mindset of a Bollywood scriptwriter. To the power of ten and then some.

I've seen movies with surprises and plot twists and turns, but Amar Akbar Anthony pretty much takes the cake! Not only is the whole teaser bit (Sari so vividly explaines on the original post) far effing out of this world experience, but the whole movie is a rollercoaster of emotions, momentary lapses of reason and positively some really weird steam of consciousness. And I mean steam. This is no stream that slowenly dribbles aroud the countryside, this is a positively mistifying STEAM of weirdness galore. Bollywood City par excellence!

[Tarja]

AAA is just great :).

BTW, I now have the utter cheeze classic, Mr. India, on DVD - interested in borrowing it? :D Amrish Puri as a baddie with blond hair! A ring that makes the wearer invisible (now where have I seen that before? :D), orphans, chaplinesque dance numbers, etc.