Movie review: Bazaar, starring Farooque Shaikh, Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil

Bazaar Director: Sagar SarhadiStarring: Smita Patil, Bharat Kapoor, B.L. Chopra, Supriya Pathak, Farooque Shaikh, Naseeruddin ShahIll-fated lovers Farooque Shaikh and Supriya PathakOut of the murky bowels of Bombay's film industry there occasionally emerges a film which, without bending over backwards to prove its artistic content, makes remarkably good viewing. Transcending both the staid formula packages and the self-indulgent masturbation of most art films, Sagar Sarhadi'sBazaaris just such a film. A straight talking movie about real-life people.Bazaar makes only small concessions to melodrama and commercial cinema to keep the viewer glued to the screen.Like its name implies Bazaar is a film about the market-place. An Urdu playwright-turned-ideologue and a writer-turned-producer, Sarhadi has always had strong links with Hyderabad, the bastion of Urdu literature. His first feature film. Bazaar is about the decadence and moral corruption which has overtaken this nawabi but impoverished city forcing khandani parents to virtually sell their daughters to the highest bidder. Partly a passionate love play and partly a study in despair and futility, the movie effectively details the marital hardsell which is fast becoming a way of life for Hyderabad's Muslim population.Najma (Smita Patil) has lived for some years in a small Bombay flat as the mistress of Akhtar (Bharat Kapoor) whose promises of marriage remain unfulfilled for one reason or another. Shakar Ali Khan (B.L. Chopra), a middle-aged acquaintance of Akhtar's, comes into their lives after making his pile in Dubai. Desperate to find himself a young and virginal bride, Khan convinces the pair to take him to Hyderabad, all expenses paid, and help him find the girl of his dreams. Only a little arm-twisting by Akhtar is needed to convince Najma who capitulates when he tells her that Khan will make them rich enough to finally marry.Sensitive Eye: In Hyderabad, meanwhile, Shabnam (Supriya Pathak) and Najma's half-brother Sajid (Farooque Shaikh) are busy building up a torrid teenage love affair that manages to overcome the bounds of the burkha. The city's vast rocky expanses and exquisite mosques are used to advantage and Sarhadi builds up the Hyderabadi atmosphere brilliantly. Purdah nashin homes with bamboo curtains to separate the men from the girls, colourful bangle-sellers and the little details that go to make life in the city's middle class quarters are brought out by Sarhadi's sensitive eye. Most of all the degenerate almost debauched, life-style of Shakar Ali Khan and his cortege is established through brilliant sequences in which the group sits around mapping out its strategy, the players almost theatrical in their exposition of mood nuances.Predictably, Khan repeatedly rejects the preferred bridal candidates picking in their place the vivacious Shabnam who has come with Sajid to spend an evening with them. The haggling with her parents begins and finally a deal is struck leaving Sajid out in the cold. The film progresses rapidly with Najma and Sajid trying to put a spanner in the works and Supriya Pathak's Shabnam putting up a heart-rending but ineffectual protest. Bharat Kapoor and Smita Patil as the procurersBut, and this is no surprise to anybody concerned, money wins out in the end and Shabnam is finally married off to the lecherous old man from Dubai. In a dramatic Romeo and Juliet ending, Shabnam poisons herself on the night of her wedding putting an end to Khan's amorous aspirations and cheating him of the prize. Najma, disgusted both with the events themselves and her own active participation in bringing them about, throws it all up including her boy-friend and returns to Bombay with Naseeruddin Shah.Superb: Curiously enough Shah plays only the passive role of an observer in this film. A poet-journalist who is a friend of Najma and Akhtar, he is quite unnecessarily added onto the cast as a stage-style observer who merely comments on the goings on in a detached sort of way. About the only jarring character in an otherwise unblemished film, Shah is a reminder of Sarhadi's playwright status, a quaint theatrical character whose only job is to crystallise the tugs and pulls on the others and put them into words.The film's casting, possibly the major reason for its brilliance, is superb. Drawing heavily from the stage, Sarhadi has put together a team of masterful actors. B.L. Chopra and Bharat Kapoor play their debauched roles to perfection, Farooque Shaikh, never an outstanding actor, is nonetheless ideal for his part, and Smita Patil comes off with all that is expected of her. But the real show stopper is Supriya Pathak, Shyam Benegal's Kalyug girl. Switching beautifully from joyous lover to tragic child-bride, Pathak keeps the viewer enthralled with the aplomb and zest of her acting, leaving little doubt that hers is in fact the focal role. But Bazaar is, in the final analysis, a director's film, a movie with a strong central theme and a host of divergent undercurrents, all brought together through the meticulous story telling skill which Sarhadi injects into it.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Oct 23, 2013 12:10 IST--- ENDS ---

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Movie review: Bazaar, starring Farooque Shaikh, Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil

Out of the murky bowels of Bombay's film industry there occasionally emerges a film which, without bending over backwards to prove its artistic content, makes remarkably good viewing.

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