140: The Wall (a.k.a Deewaar)

I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen anything quite like Yash Chopra’s The Wall (1975).  It has the scope of Shakespeare and the production of bad blaxploitation.  Its retrospective pitch would go something like “it’s Scarface (1983) meets Fiddler on the Roof (1971).  From an acclaimed script by Javed Akhtar & Salim Khan based on the classic Indian film Mother India (1957: a review of which should be forthcoming on this blog), Chopra creates what is considered a Bollywood masterpiece using several mid-seventies movie trends.  There’s even a scene of Kung Fu in this Musical Drama.  Disjointed though it may be, I can’t say that I had a bad time watching this film.

            Vijay and Ravi are the young sons of a labor organizer in a mining community.  When they are kidnapped their father is coerced into signing an unfair labor agreement.  Unaware of the blackmail for his sons’ lives, the workers harass and torment his family for his betrayal, going as far as to tattoo Vijay’s arm “my father is a thief.”  Disgraced, the father abandons his family and they are forced to leave the community for the city of Mumbai.  Homeless, Vijay and Ravi are forced to live under a bridge as their mother makes a meager wage hauling bricks.  Though they are poor, Vijay, the elder brother, vows to help his mother send Ravi to school, managing to maintain a sense of dignity even as he shines shoes.  In a brilliant scene, he demands that a wiseguy bend over to pick up the coin he’s tossed him for his shine.  “I don’t beg.  I earned that money.  Pick it up and hand it to me.”  He shows the same indignation when a foreman curses his mother when she faints on the job.

            Vijay and Ravi literally and figuratively take different paths in life.  Though they both join their mother at temple Vijay refuses to enter, not willing to bow to a god he views as unfair and cruel.  After a flash forward this trend continues, and though the adult brothers both love their mother, Ravi, with his education, has chosen a path which honors her.  As he searches for a job with his newly acquired degree, Vijay quickly rises in the Mumbai criminal circuit.  A fight over dock worker’s wage percentages garnered to a local crime boss sets Vijay up as both a man of his father’s principles and a streetwise tough.  As he works his way into the syndicate, he makes more and more enemies.

            Meanwhile, Ravi has fallen in love with the daughter of a local police captain.  After not finding work elsewhere he is coerced to join the force at her urging.  He believes in justice and in the law, but never thinks that his profession will put him at odds with his brother.  He learns early on that Vijay is not on the up and up, and when he confronts him about his burgeoning wealth his mother turns his back on her oldest boy.  The wall of the film’s title refers to the emotional and principled split between the two men, who both want to provide for their aging matriarch.  The script can be a bit obvious with its metaphors as this fact displays, but overall is powerful and occasionally moving.  A scene which mirrors the coin tossed at the young Vijay’s feet brings his criminal career full circle.

            Likewise the film ends where the brothers first split.  On the steps of the temple is Vijay’s final confrontation with Ravi and their mother.  His world has come apart at the seams just as he was preparing to leave his life of crime.  Overall, The Wall might be a bit much for any viewer not familiar with Bollywood.  As always there are a few musical numbers that seem to come out of nowhere, but they are few and far between in this film compared to other Hindi film classics.  Despite being a bit different than just about anything else, It might be the place to start for a moviegoer not yet familiar with films from the subcontinent.

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off