Subhash K Jha Revisits Honey Irani’s Armaan As it Completes 22 Years

The aged but agile doctor swoops up the dying child in his arms and runs  through the jungle to the hospital. In the process he loses his own life. The most memorable moment in Honey Irani’s  noble but finally unsuccessful large-screen soap opera reminds you of Dilip  Kumar trying to stop vehicles on the road to take his dying wife to  the hospital in Yash Chopra’s Mashaal. 

 Coincidentally Mashaal too starred Anil Kapoor As Dr  Aakash Sinha, Kapoor puts in an earnest performance. His sequences with his father,played with sophisticated wisdom by the inimitable Amitabh Bachchan, are the muted highlights of the film. The interaction between the two lacks passion. The father-son relationship here is forcefully formal. No hugging and kissing, no tearful  declarations of filial passion. Just two dedicated doctors who happen to be father  and son , expressing their mutually inclusive nobility in  Javed Akhtar’s dialogues with such naturalism, you want to hug the film tight to your heart, give it bonus marks for simply tampering with mainstream conventions.

There’s a lot of  gently fluid movement in the first-half where Anil Kapoor serenades  Gracy Singh under  the benvolently watchful eyes of his father. The second -half with its coiling twisting love triangle, reminiscent of  Raj Kumar , Nadira and Meena Kumari’s delicately drawn love triangle in Kamal Amrohi’s Dil Apna  Aur Preet Parayi, sounds like  an opera sung at a  symphony concert.

 From the time when the headstrong spoilt rich heiress Sonia Kapoor(Preity Zinta) enters the good –hearted neurosurgeon Aakash Sinha’s life, Honey Irani’s storytelling begins to get progressively inflamed, as though the heart in the first part has been substituted by a sassy all-knowing  swagger  in the second-half.  The let’s-give-the-audience-what-it-expects mood created in the  post-interval half after, spoiler alert,  the Bachchan character’s abrupt death, signals a strange sort of moral ambivalence in the narration.

  Zinta’s out-of-control petulance is weighed against Anil Kapoor and his silently supportive sweetheart-colleague Neha’s subdued wisdom and mature silences. Somehow Sonia’s screams smother the film’s graceful energy, so beautifully contained in the father-son scenes.

   In trying to give more, Honey Irani achieves much less  than she had set out to. And yet this effectively scripted but  incorrectly executed large-screen soap has several vital virtues. For one it  has the guts to smile at its own silliness whenever the quality shows up  willy nilly.    There’s a  scene between  the jealous bickering wife Sonia and  the boringly noble sweetheart  Neha where  the former asks the latter to leave town.

 “I thought such scenes only happened in  Hindi films,” smirks Neha.  Though the film has the moral courage to put conventional formulas on  its head, it finally rolls  back  to the position from where  the debutante director seemed to  recoil.Armaan is  finally felled by too  many stereotypical characters all clamouring to be noticed by the nebulous  strength of their conformity. The intellectualization of age-old formulas  doesn’t really work. As the  film  moves ahead Honey Irani’s vision gets visibly diluted and compromised.

In Preity Zinta’s seduction song , she starts off  by mimicking the Celluloid Seductress. But is   she different in spirit(not to mention, body) from the creature that she pantomines? Is Armaan really an  inverted  take on the  formulistic baggage of commercial Hindi cinema? That’s the question with which we leave  this film which posesses some charm and some annoying qualities.

   On the  plus side, there are  the  anguished-filled moments between  Akaash who marries money to fulfil his father’s dreams, and the jilted Neha.One particular sequence where the silently recriminating girl sees him at her doorstep after her mother’s sudden death is remarkably implosive. With a  more mature experienced and graceful  actress than Gracy Singh playing Neha, the  triangle would have been more fulfilling.  The other performances are far more accomplished. Anil Kapoor uses his   artless charms to portray a man  who  suffers for his nobility.

Preity Zinta is a surprise. Her role would have been played by one of the notorious   vamps in the 1960s and 70s. She plays the hyper-strung woman with spunk and her   farewell , “Sorry” to the man she wronged by marrying him, wrenches your heart.But you wish Zinta would avoid her habitual  giggle and eye-rolling mannerisms.

And it’s good to see Randhir Kapoor back ,playing the uni-dimensional vulgar-rich tycoon. He should  do this more often.

As  usual the film finally belongs to the mighty Bachchan. As the father of the  pride, he brings a tender affection into his fairly-humdrum role. Whether  teasing or agonizing he’s a pleasure to watch. This,alas holds true of the film partially only. Armaan could have been a far  better film if it wasn’t so fixated on being a proper mainstream entertainer.Honey Irani needed to loosen up her vision, and to open up the theme. In the absence of an unfettered spirit Armaan  oscillates uncomfortably between a large-screen soap opera and  an affectionate tribute to the dedication and  devotion associated with the medical profession, not to mention the  cinematic Eternal Love Triangle.

 Amitabh  Bachchan was  hung-ho about Armaan. “It’s a very gracious film. It  conveys very dignified feelings. There aren’t exorbitant histrionics and other  loud ingredients from  commercial cinema.  Even  though Armaan   is  a  complete entertainer it’s done in a dignified  manner. The situations aren’t exaggerated. The characters are quite real. We were all given the opportunity to work in the realm of  reality.  That, and the fact that a  lady, Honey Irani directed the project made it  so exciting. There were so many young ladies working on the sets. Just watching  them work in a such a  professional atmosphere was a wonderful experience. Honey’s production unit is exemplary.This is the way to make a film.”

Everyone was  talking about the mega-star’s  silver-haired look in Armaan. “The director wanted it. I do what I’m told. I was pretty comfortable with  any look. For  Raj Santoshi’s Khakee I shaved off my beard.It’s okay. Not a  big deal.Anil Kapoor and I worked together for the first time. We have some wonderful scenes together.Very soft and endearing moments…All of us had a great time bonding on the sets.”

  AB was all praise for the first woman director in his career. “Honey  Irani came so  well prepared. Everything Was well worked out in advance. Being a woman director does make a difference.You won’t find a  blood- curdling action  scene in Armaan.  Obviously the  temperament of the film is commensurate with the feminine gaze. That apart the whole working atmosphere—the sync sound, a hardbound script , dates, even shot divisions worked out well in advance—was outstanding. The actor didn’t have to worry about ringing mobiles and other distractions on the sets.I just had to act. Everything from  rehearsal to continuity was  taken care  of. I just had to come on the sets and deliver the dialogues.I can’t tell you  how gratifying this experience was for me. If there’s any reason to work in an international film it’s to experience the professionalism that I did during Armaan. Do you know, every schedule of mine finished ahead of time?  The producer saved so much time energy and  money. We finished Armaan in four months. That’s how movies must be made.”