Friday, November 27, 2020

Girl Week 2020: Salaam Bombay!

Wendell Ottley over at Dell on Movies runs an annual blogathon called Girl Week. The premise fairly simple: pick a movie that celebrates women, usually either with a strong female lead or directed by women. With that in mind, I decided to look through my DVR and see which movies I'd recorded from TCM's Women Make Film spotlight to use one of those for the blogathon.

Now, I have to admit that I haven't recorded all that many of them, mostly because I'm chronically running out of space on the DVR (and DirecTV has another free preview this weekend over Thanksgiving, so I have to figure out what to delete, or watch as many movies as possible), but there were several candidates. Eventually, I decided on Salaam Bombay!, directed by Mira Nair, whch TCM lists as being available on a DVD from Kino Classics.

Krishna (Shafiq Syed) is a young boy in a rural part of India who's separated from his family. Dad apparently died and Krishna destroyed his older brother's motorbike, so Mom left him to join the circus to earn the 500 Rs needed to pay for the bike. One day at the circus, the manager sends Krishna into the village to pick up on chicken masala. But when Krishna returns, the circus has already packed up and left!

Being left with no opportunities, Krishna decides to take what little money he has and ask for a train ticket to the big city, which happens to be Bombay. When he gets their, his cans of masala are stolen, leading Krishna into the world of street children and the people who exploit them. One of the closest people Krishna has as a friend is Chillum, who deals drugs for Baba and is also addicted to the drugs Baba distributes. Chillum gets Krishna a job with Chacha selling tea from a snack bar.

Krishna also meets the older Sola and develops a crush on her, although she's destined for prostitution as that's about the only thing girls can do once they reach a certain age. Baba's wife Rekha is also in prostitution even though the couple have a daughter Manju. Chillum's drug habit causes him to turn to crime to pay for it, stealing the money that Krishna was trying to save up to get home; Chillum was the one who showed Krishna the hiding place. But Chillum's drug habit eventually kills him.

Another job that Krishna and his friends take is as busboys at a wedding of a rich couple. That lasts late into the evening, and walking home from the wedding, Krishna and Manju are picked up by the police and taken to a children's "home" that's really more of a prison for homeless children, with all the attendant pathologies you'd find in a prison. Rekha tries to regain custody of Manju, but the social worker at the children's home points out that Rekha, being a prostitute, is not a suitable parent. (In the social worker's defense, we see an earlier scene in which Rekha takes Manju along to a job because the alternative is leaving Manju at home alone.) Krishna escapes from the home, but will he ever be able to get back to his real home?

Director Mira Nair decided to make this movie after learning about the plight of Bombay's street children. She and her collaborator, Sooni Taraporevala, hired a bunch of street children and gave them rudimentary acting lessons, learning of their stories during these workshops and turning those stories into the movie we see. The movie was successful enough that it enabled Nair to fund a charity to help the street children which, as I understand it, still exists to this day, thanks in no small part to the financial success of the movie.

And to be fair, Salaam Bombay! deserves to be a success. I can't imagine how tough it must have been to film in the crowded conditions of Bombay's slums. The kids, having been through much of what was depicted in the movie in their real lives, are surprisingly good, never really crossing the line into too mawkish the way that Hollywood child stars had a tendency to do. I found myself interested not only in Krishna's story, but those of everybody around him; even Baba, the nominal villain here, doesn't have very many options in life.

If you get the chance to see Salaam Bombay!, I highly recommend it.

4 comments:

thevoid99 said...

I saw this film a few years ago and was blown away by it. It was a big surprise and I really enjoyed it a lot that I showed it to my mother and she thought it was great.

Dell said...

I'm feeling a bit embarrassed because I haven't even heard of this film. It definitely sounds like one to seek out. Thanks so much for participating!

Ted S. (Just a Cineast) said...

I think I had heard of the title (but of course had never seen it), having read the New York Times when I was in high school and college. The title seemed familiar when I saw it on the TCM schedule, which is one of the reasons why I picked it for putting on my DVR.

joel65913 said...

I've been loving that Women Make Film series on TCM, it's been a great help seeing films I'd heard of but never had the chance to track down or discover new titles.

Salaam Bombay! was one of those I'd heard of for years but never got around to seeing. It was great that they were able to have the director there to speak about how the film came about, even if it was remotely. Added a lot of context to the movie. I thought it was a fine film and I'm glad I had a chance to see it but I think that one viewing was enough for me. There were several others in the series I've liked much more.

It's a great pick for this week!