The art director has brought the period of the 19th century alive on the screen. Within a few minutes, the narrative envelops the viewer and makes him a part of the unusual story of the protagonist being told to him. It's a journey made by the spectator alongwith the courtesan known as Umrao Jaan. It stirs, moves, pinches and brings tears to eyes. Umrao Jaan can be termed as pain-filled poetry written on celluloid.
Anybody who has watched this movie on the big screen must have left the theatre with a throbbing in his / her heart. It's an example of sheer brilliance on the part of the filmmaker who conveys the permanent sense of loneliness in the courtesan to the audience leaving the theatre without any spoon-feeding. The ending scene is just superb in which Umrao Jaan wipes the mirror to see her face in that. The audience is not only kept engaged in the narrative and glued to the screen for more than two hours but also made to feel the pain, the feelings and the stuffiness of the pivotal character. The narrative with the gloom and loneliness of the principal character prevalent in every moment of it, moves at a reasonable pace without allowing any laxity or boredom to creep in. This script has been written quite crisply without giving undue footage to anything and not allowing the focus to divert from the principal character and her woes. Taking the story from the said novel, producer-director Muzaffar Ali himself has written the screenplay and dialogs of this movie in association with Shama Zaidi and Jaaved Siddiqui. Certain males enter her life and raise false hopes in her heart for being able to live a normal married life containing a loving husband, social acceptance and motherhood but finally, she finds that loneliness only is her destiny. However she finds almost everybody around him as greedy for her earnings and she continue to move through her journey of life with a sense of complete loneliness within her. After getting kidnapped and sold to a Kotha(brothel) in Lucknow, she grows up and becomes famous among the rich and the elite because of her Shaayari(Urdu poetry) sung in her melodious voice and coupled with her enchanting dances. The story belongs to the Tawaayaf(courtesan) Umrao Jaan who was born at Faizabaad as Ameeran. And undoubtedly, director Muzaffar Ali's cinematic version of the story originally written in the nineteenth century and said to be the true story of a true character, is better than the written work which I am reviewing now. I happened to watch the movie first and read the novel later. This was the first time in the history of Hindi cinema that a music director won both the National Film Award for Best Music Direction (Songs) and the Filmfare Award for Best Music Director for the same film.Umrao Jaan(1981) is based on the novel - 'Umrao Jaan Ada' of Mirza Mohammad Haadi Ruswa.While some, like the writer of this film Javed Siddiqui, believed that she was a fictional character created by Mirza Hadi Ruswa, others, like the film's director Muzaffar Ali, believed that she must have existed. Opinion has always been divided on the antecedents of Umrao Jaan's character.Shooting for this film had been temporarily stopped when the granddaughter of Mirza Hadi Ruswa had filed a court case against the filmmakers claiming that "the film would be irksome for the peace of his soul".The role of Khanum Jaan portrayed by Shaukat Kaifi in this film was played by her daughter Shabana Azmi in the 2006 film of the same title.Two other Hindi films have also been based on the same novel - "Mehndi" (1958) and "Umrao Jaan" (2006). This film was based on the novel "Umrao Jaan Ada" (1904) by Mirza Hadi Ruswa.She ended up winning the National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer for this film. Asha Bhosle was sceptical to start with but was very happy when she heard the end result. A lot of credit for her success in this film is attributed to music director Khayyam who asked Asha Bhosle to sing the songs at a scale lower than her normal. This film helped singer Asha Bhosle take her career to a new high.
If this change had not happened, it would have been Lata Mangeshkar singing for Rekha in this film, not Asha Bhosle. It was then that Muzaffar Ali brought Khayyam on board. In fact, Jaidev had already composed a few songs for the film, when differences, ostensibly money-related, developed between the two.
0 kommentar(er)
