Majboor

So yesterday I had the kind of day where you want to shoot puppies and then curl up into a corner and cry. But I have recently stolen my PP’s tablet with a Spuul connection, so I decided to vent my frustration by watching a movie instead. And boy oh boy did I strike gold. Majboor, starring Amitabh, Parveen Babi and the criminally underutilised Pran, is brilliant. Has an innovative plot, intelligent dialogues (and Social Commentary!), a Maa who doesn’t keep weeping in a corner, and of course, ‘morning walk’ outfits like this:

Ravi Khanna is an intelligent, urbane travel agent, with a peppy girlfriend, a loving family, and token apahij behen, who is full of sunshine and light. But then he finds out he has a brain tumour (!), which if operated on could paralyse him or turn him mentally unstable.

Here you have the brain tumour face:

Realising his responsibilities, he does what anyone would do. Implicates himself in the crime in which he was a witness so that he can get the reward money. Mind you, he could have implicated ANYONE ELSE, but he chose to implicate himself. He strews clues around, which are analysed by this Platonic Ideal of a detective:

 

He confesses, goes to jail (I don’t quite know what happened to the 5L reward money), has a brain tumour ka daura, is operated on and is healed! Now he must extricate himself from this mess. So he escapes tight police security (by being towed away on a stretcher!), goes to his girlfriend’s house to mull over a plan of action. They decide…to run away to Khandala! Where they run into a man who knows Ravi – who is also a henpecked man who married his wife for her money and now gets beaten up by her at parties), and who is wearing  THE DEAD MAN’S RING!

 

Cool shenanigans lead them to Michael (who sings the plaintive song, “Daaru ki botal mein, Sahib paani bharta hai, phir kehta hai ki Michael, peeke danga karta hai”. What pathos), who for no real reason whatsoever, swears on Christ to help out the stricken Khanna family. He also has a takiyakalaam/memory device:

The show-down happens, and includes a ridiculous plot point where Michael must point his gun at the villain to stop him from escaping, and the heroine helps him – by throwing water on him to keep him awake. Instead of, you know, taking the gun to point it at the villain.

I’d give this movie all the stars in the world, were it not for two imperfections:

1. Michael gets killed off for like, no discernible reason! They got the doctor to him, they could totes have saved him, but they just had to ruin a random but great story arc.
2. The apahij behen belied my expectations and did not, in fact, miraculously get up from the wheelchair and start walking. But Farida Jalal was delightful, so I’ll let it pass.

Ultimately, though you see it coming a mile away, you still end up loving this film. Because really, what’s not to love.