Sai and Shujath talk Cinema

Shakespeare’s play “The Comedy of Errors” was one of his earliest and shortest works but its impact (especially in cinema and televison) lasts even today. Comedy of errors is almost a genre in itself and you can see a whole bunch of filmmakers who thrive on it.

In Gulzar’s Angoor the plot is directly credited to the bard himself; this is a simple yet unusual story about a set of twins with the same names! - Ashok (Sanjeev Kumar in a double role) and his servant Bahadur (Deven Verma in a double role). During an incident in their childhood one set of master-servant are separated from another. As expected both the Ashok-Bahadur pairs end up in the same city and then begins the chaos as each of them gets entangled in numerous mistaken identity situations.

The premise offers ample scope for humour and Gulzar keeps it simple and effective. In such a setting, there is always a tendency to go overboard with the jokes (which become repititive after a certain period of time) but the movie thankfully comes to a conclusion before things start getting tedious.

There are wonderful performances from Sanjeev Kumar, Deven Verma, Moushmi Chatterjee and Deepthi Naval. A couple of songs seem unnecessary in the narrative…however, the song “Roz Roz Daali Daali” is really good. Gulzar’s writing is commendable. Unfortunately, these kind of movies which were quite prolific in the eighties don’t seem to exist today which is a pity. I definitely recommend you to watch this and have a good time.