Joined: Wed Dec 05, 2001 9:07 pm
Posts: 1114
|
dhonnobad bhaskarda!
dont want to embarrass myself, so i have stolen the following review of RTGM from http://www.rkfilms.com
Narendra Sahay (Rajiv Kapoor), the young hero of the film, his rich, ruthless, domineering father (Kulbhushan Kharbanda), his incomprehensible robot of a mother (Geeta Kak), even his wheelchair-propelled grandmother (Sushma Seth), and a whole lot of other characters look so devoid of spontaneity and so full of puppet dynamics that it is hard to suspend disbelief in their favour. It is only an uncle of Narendra, Kunj Bihari (Saeed Jaffrey), who seems to have a life and will of his own. times.
In this day and age Narendra is supposed to lead such a cloistered and shackled life under the harsh glare of his father that he ends up looking like some prisoner from feudal When he gets permission to join his college mates on a trip to some place up in the Himalayas by the side of the Ganga, it is like he had been allowed to go up in spaceship. And there in the Himalayas there is this young girl called Ganga (Mandakini) just waiting to throw herself at Narendra. Even a huge cash prize and extensive search would not lead to the discovery of a single real life duplicate of Ganga, the innocent, so untouched by self-preservative instincts and so unaware of the evil that dwells in lusty men's hearts. Her meeting and falling in love with Narendra, the babuji from the shehar, is so archaic, absurd and juvenile a piece of make-believe that it is hard to imagine its presence in a contemporary film by somebody like Raj Kapoor. The way Ganga, with Narendra's child in her arms, sets out for Calcutta to trace her missing lover is just one more unswallowable thing in the story. Predictably, Ganga walks into one trouble after another, the jarring thing being that she seems bent on courting trouble and almost enjoys it.
Outdoor at Gangotri
It was the outdoor shooting of the film, for which Raj Kapoor if he was to be true to the spirit of his theme would simply have to go to Gangotri, to the source of the River Gangas in the high Himalayas. It is the fact that Radhu Karmakar (Cinematographer) fell victim to the difficulty in breathing engendered by the lack of oxygen at those heights. He started bleeding from the nose and had to e rushed miles below to base camp and put under medical care. And it is also fact that Raj Kapoor captured some of his most splendid outdoor visuals during this location-shooting. He shot love-scenes with Mandakini and his son. He shot song sequences and fights and the bulk of the footage of Ram Teri Ganga Maili during the outdoors.
Three endings
In the script, as originally written by K.A. Abbas and V.P. Sathe , Mandakini dies at the end. It was the sort of classic ending which was perfect for the story and pleasing to the intellectual and aesthetic sense. It was also the ending with which Raj Kapoor was in general agreement-at its script stage. Vakil Singh (distributor) asked Raj about how the story proceeded from gangotri sequence on to the end. Before Raj Kapoor could say a word, Mr. Sathe (writer) dropped the bombshell. "Mandakini dies in the end",She has to". Vakil Singh and his colleagues objected very strongly. They were very cut up that a girl who had suffered so much throughout the film should be cheated of eventual happiness, for God alone knew what reason!
Reuben discussed this issue with all three of Raj Kapoor's sons. All of them felt that the girl should not die at the end, and that the film should have a happy ending.
The new generation worked up by the writers in consultation with Raj Kapoor visualised the rich girl played by Divya Rana who is married to the hero in the end taking the bullet shot by her own father meant for Mandakini, and dying in sacrifice to save the heroine.
Raj Kapoor shot this end, put it in and called the team to have a look at it. Nobody liked it. A couple of week later Raj Kapoor himself came up with the ending that eventually remained in the film, got his writers to write it his way, and shot it.
And everybody knows what a world of difference it made in the phenomenal box-office success of the film.
|
|
Login 
Register
FAQ
Search
:
