Another world, a different time

Lok Parlok (T. Rama Rao, 1979) 

 

Oh, where do I even begin with Lok Parlok?

On the one hand, Lok Parlok is precisely what it looks like: a mildly insane crackfest starring Jeetendra in his prime.

Yes. Let's start with that.

The film begins with neighbours Amar (Jeetendra) and Kalincharan (Madan Puri) at war. Kalicharan, the current head of the village panchyat, a greedy, self-serving and apparently quite corrupt man, HATES Amar, because Amar is committed to justice, educates the local farmers on their rights and generally seems like a pretty good guy to have in your corner.

 It took me a while to figure out he means "nightingale" 

The two start out pettily killing each others pets (Kalicharan shoots one of Amar's pigeons; Amar retaliates by eating Kalicharan's prize rooster and sending him a box of feathers) but their enmity soon escalates when Amar announces that he will be running against Kalicharan in the upcoming village elections.

And obviously, because Amar is kind to the locals, and gives them information that actually SERVES them, instead of taking advantage and abusing them (ahem, KALICHARAN), Amar is the favourite to win, by A MILLION MILES. And so it goes. So the obvious thing for Kalicharan to do, faced with the Threat Of Amar, is to have him killed.

Oh yeah, Jaya Prada's in it. Also, that bandage Jeetu's sporting? He got it cracktastically wrasslin' a buffalo!

Enter my beloved Amjad Khan as a contract killer, who (reminiscent of that OTHER crackfest, Badle Ki Aag) goes by MANY names, and who has perfected some kind of...acupressure karate chop that kills instantly. 

 Oh yeah, the subtitles on my copy are TERRIBLE (adding to the hilarity). What Amjad my darling is actually saying is that "Overseas, I was known as the Boston Strangler"

Sure enough, Amar, foolishly wandering home alone in the dark one night, gets deftly karate chopped, and the next thing you know, his lifeless body is lying in Kalicharan's lounge, and Amar's spirit is ascending, accompanied by two slightly sinister otherworldly watchmen, up to Heaven.

Like so.

And that's where things get a little bit more nutso.

I mean, up until this point, the film has been a fairly ordinary – if somewhat heavily political (and trust me, WE'LL GET TO THIS) – example of old being gold. It's got freshfaced Jeetendra being even MORE freshfaced than usual, a wisecracking, idealistic good guy in the face of a clearly defined corrupt and greedy villain. It has one of my favourite things ever, a trope that seems to have died out: lovely, lingering, saturated colour shots of a variety of flowers, standing in for...well, WE ALL KNOW WHAT THE FLOWERS MEAN, RIGHT?

Sex. They mean SEX, people.

It has shots like this:

- look at the glorious rainbow! How much more wholesome and beautiful and just heartwarming can you GET?

Also, it has Jeetendra kicking ASS in a mad, gravity defying, totally ridiculously awesome brawl against a bunch of Kalicharan's hired goons and totally owning them.

My point is, up until Amar dies, Lok Parlok is basically fairly interchangeable with any 70s Bollywood film.

But then Amar ends up in Heaven, where he's told he'll only stay for a matter of hours, because his sins outweigh his virtues: he's due in Hell any minute.

One of the BEST things about Lok Parlok's depiction of Heaven is that you are greeted by a disembodied voice, not unlike that of an Arrivals announcer at an airport.

And the madness this ushers in is more than just some deliciously shonky special effects.

Ever the rebel, Amar takes being dead remarkably well: in fact, his first action in Heaven, where a dance recital is being performed, is to jump in and show the dancing goddesses just how out of date theirdance steps have become over the eons. Seriously. Amar is all about the butt wiggle and channelling part Elvis, part Shammi Kapoor, delighting in pissing off the tiny population of Heaven, before he gets sent to Hell, where he is apparently supposed to be.

Because he DANCES LIKE A DEMON.

And that is where Amar really gets to work. Ever the public defender, Amar becomes concerned with the conditions that the...I guess you call them demons?...are working under: Hell is understaffed, the demons don't get overtime, no-one has ever arranged proper shifts in the centuries the demons have been working, punishing the sinners. Amar takes it upon himself to unionise the demons, who – once they grasp the idea of strikes and unions – enthusiastically elect Amar their leader and march to Yamaraj (the God of Hell) to demand better conditions.

And then Amar pulls his next trick. When the Yamaraj and his assistant, Chitragupta, are confronted with the disgruntled demons en masse, Amar convinces them that it would be totally justified to just lock the gate to Hell for a while and go on holiday...but of course, Amar needs to go back to Earth for a while too, if that's okay with them? And that's what happens. Yamaraja and Chitragupta, the two characters least prepared for a sojourn on Earth, head off for an Earthly vacation (with predictable comic consequences). Amar heads back to Earth to take his revenge on Kalicharan (and IT'S AWESOME and more than a little cracked out – not least the part where Jeetendra DIGS HIMSELF OUT OF HIS OWN GRAVE). And with the doors to Hell locked, the striking demons shut inside, all over Earth, dead bodies COME BACK TO LIFE when the souls intended for Hell can't get in.

As a glitzy, special effects laden star vehicle alone, Lok Parlok succeeds in being extremely enjoyable. It's a lot funnier than you'd expect a film heavily focussed on death and politics to be; a lot of that has to do with the fish out of water antics of the Yamraja and Chitragupta as they play tourist on Earth, and in Amar's sneaky revenge tactics against Kalicharan and vice versa (Slight spoiler: it involves another of my favourite Bollywood tropes: DOUBLE ROLE! As well as playing the righteous, middle class Amar, Jeetu takes on the role of an hilarious illiterate chaiwalla named Ram Gupta, who Kalicharan employs to impersonate Amar to convince everyone that he didn't in fact murder Amar in cold blood...)

But the REALLY interesting thing is that this seemingly fluffy, silly, most cracktastic of films is actually operating on a whole other level as well.

First of all, it IS hard to ignore that the film, for a fluffy screwball comedy, does contain quite a heavy emphasis on politics. Even before Amar dies, unionises the demons in hell, and demonstrates to Yamaraj HOW HE CAN USE THE EXISTING CONSTITUTION (the book of Dharma) to justify a lockout, there's a strong focus on the political battle between Kalicharan and Amar for panchyat leader, and on the tactics employed by both sides to influence voting.

There are a lot of seemingly throwaway snide little comments too, that have not a lot to do with the plot onscreen, but obviously have SOME agenda behind them.

Which is, errr, pretty much what Indira Gandhi did when she declared Emergency. Giving herself absolute power and stripping the people of their basic civil rights.

It's worth remembering that India's Emergency only ended a couple of years before this film released. The Emergency was widely decried as “The Death Of Democracy” in India, and an argument can definitely be made that Amar symbolises “Democracy” in Lok Parlok.

There are so many sneaky, suspiciously on the nose references that with a bit of background reading (The Emergency is a bit more complicated than I can go into here, plus, like any historical event, perspectives vary) it becomes fairly obvious that Lok Parlok is a political satire, digging at the various, and (at the time of its release) very recent injustices and crimes of the government during the Emergency period.

Seriously. Jeetendra as political crusader. IT HAPPENED.