Well, I suppose it's official: I am a Manoj Kumar fan.



(I'm making this face right now.)

While watching Roti Kapada aur Makaan, I had such sympathy for Manoj Kumar, beyond sympathy for his character, who was quite nice and broody. Seeing the effort and detail that goes into a Manoj Kumar production, I was overcome with a sense of outrage that Farah Khan would mock him so meanly in Om Shanti Om. That was when I knew I was an official Fan (tm). Where are the earnest young (handsome) men making films like this today? Politics, romance, melodrama, action, and some wonderful songs all wrapped into one package. Rang de Basanti comes close to a Manoj Kumar production. I need to rewatch that, I think.

Roti Kapada aur Makaan is a wonderfully intricate story of a guy named Bharat (natch!) who can't get a job in 1974. The story spreads out to encompass Bharat's brothers and his sister and his lady friends, but leaving out the parents in a very modern way.




The main thrust of the film is the romance between Bharat and his lady-friend Zeenat Aman - who is looking very lush throughout the entire film, although I can't get used to those pencil thin eyebrows. They've been dating for 4 years, but Bharat cannot find a job and so can't marry her because he has no income with which to support a household. She's frustrated with his lack of drive and he is just frustrated with life.



Zeenat takes a job as a secretary with The Shash, who wears a series of extremely excellent suits. He falls in love with her and she begins to wear Western clothes. Zeenat gives up on Bharat, who remains poor but he does become gainfully employed. The allure of wealth (and The Shash) is just too much and she agrees to marry him.



It's at Bharat's low class and low paying job on a constructin site that he meets Tulsi. Tulsi is unbelievably cute and very hard working. She doesn't seem to let life get her too down, despite being poor and .... a single mother!!!!



With the special unsubtlety reserved for Manoj Kumar, Tusli reveals that she was gang raped by the Grocer (Roti), Tailor (Kapada), and the Landlord (Makaan). The three greedy men take her body in exchange for the necessities of life.

And here is the underlying theme - we all need food, clothing, and shelter. It's when we try to take more that we run into problems. Bharat has only sympathy for Tulsi's plight, which was the culmination of her being unfairly denied these things.

Her rape scene, while depicted in a very stylized manner, is still very shocking. Manoj cuts to a picture of Draupadi being stripped in front of the court just to emphasize that she is not at fault for her treatment at the hands of these men.

Meanwhile, Bharat loses his poor, but dignified job, when the genius of the 'planned' economy halts construction on the building he's working on.



Instead of practicing what he preaches and being a poor but good citizen, Bharat clings to middle class life by entering into a life of crime. Part of his need for money was to pay off his younger sister's groom. This really sickened me. Bharat doesn't want Tulsi to sell her body to buy medicine, but he's prepared to enter into a life of crime to pay for a groom for his sister?! No wonder things begin to go horribly wrong for our young hero.



Although he does get to wear snappier suits.



Bharat is obviously unhappy with his choice, although it takes two things to shake him out of his stupor:



The EVIL machinations of his gang boss to start buying food to sell back to the populace at an inflated price and



Amitabh, the war hero!

There follows a hugely entertaining fight sequence involving a train, motorcycles, grenades, and all sorts of other things and everything ends for the best for Bharat, who learns the difference between need and greed.

It really was a very satisfying story and was only made better by excellent performances by all involved.



Manoj Kumar spends most of the film either brooding or being angry or sometimes both at the same time. He does it well, though. I understood why he was like this even if I wanted to slap him out of it, much like Zeenat Aman does.



Zeenat's Sheetal is a very sympathetic gold digger. You do get her frustration with Bharat and his inability to find a job when she just wants to get on with her life. And to have somebody like Shashi paying attention to you is certainly very flattering and not easy to ignore.







Aruan Irani puts in a great performance as the drunken, unhappy paramour of Bharat's gang boss. We see just how empty the life he's offered really is, although Bharat can't see it.



She gets her own drunken item number later on that is both funny and sad and full of tension! It's a masala film in an item number!



Amitabh doesn't have much to do until he shows up to kick some gangster ass late in the film, but he does that well.



And I have to give a shout out to Premnath, who plays a Sikh working on Bharat's construction site. He befriends both Bharat and Tulsi and gets to kick some major greedy bastard ass!