Lajja

Rating:
Summary: More Subtitles, Please!!
Review: I'm not sure if it was simply my edition of this DVD, but the subtitles in it were quite sparsely placed. There were whole sections of the movie in which there were no subtitles at all, which only made me feel excluded from what I thought was a truly wonderful movie. So many great actors and such a valuable social commentary--from what I could understand, this movie really moved me. I understood the essentials; I just wish I could have had more subtitles, so that I could have been admitted further into the tragic, but ultimately heroic world of these Indian women.

Rating:
Summary: So many famous Bollywood stars in one 3 1/2 hour film.
Review: The story is about a typical traditional Indian girl (Manisha Koirala) who marries a wealthy Westernized Indian guy (Jackie Shroff), who takes her to america to start a new life. Her husband begins right away, to show her that their marriage has very little integrity as he flaunts casually with other women and expects her to be just as loose as he. She is totally disgusted with her husband and leaves him to go back to India. He doesn't care. He tells her she can go back. Later, he (Jackie Shroff) has a car accident and is recovering slowly. But, as a result of the accident, he is now totally incapable of having a child, and his father expects him to have a son to be an heir to the family wealth. Later, he discovers that his wife who has left him, IS pregnant with his baby. He has no interest in saving his marriage, however, his father encourages him to send some of his hired goons to search for her in India, and kill her after the baby is born, and bring the baby back to him.

The movie really begins to take off from here as his wife is constantly on the run from her husband and his hired goons. She encounters other people throughout the film. So, basically you will get about three more little sub-stories within this film, all leaning on the subject of women and abuse from the men in their lives. There is a lesson to be learned from all of this, as you can see the dark side of their warped male-dominant religion, as if women were second-class people or less.

Also, many Bollywood favorites are all over this film. Manisha Koirala, Jackie Shroff, Mahima Chaudhary, Madhuri Dixit, Anil Kapoor, Ajay Devgan, Rekha, and Johnny Lever just to name a few. This movie also has three great music videos, which star Urmila Matondkar, Sonali Bendre, and Madhuri Dixit.

This is a beautiful, and yet terrifying film. I highly recommend it. If you enjoyed "The Joy Luck Club", this movie will move you as well. And I'm sure you can find this movie alot cheaper if you just go to an Indian goods store and ask them to order it for you. Or you can order on-line (I like to order Indian DVD's from Nehaflix). You can go to IndiaFM.com and check them out as well. I go there to download wallpapers and pix of my favorite Bollywood stars from India.

Check it out.