Laawaris

This is a Bollywood film titled "The Orphan". Thus the plot is a given: our hero will follow a winding road toward the ultimate discovery of his true father, and along the way he will discover his true nature. Alienation will be undone by solidarity. The poor and downtrodden will have their champion. One love interest will meet her untimely demise, and another will have her man.

Our first glimpse of our hero as an adult is as a walking trope of machismo: coveralls open to the waist revealing a chest of dark black hair. One of our final glances reveals a side of the big B that I surely did not expect. The penultimate musical number features Amitabh in drag, with five costume changes, and he's damned good at it. The film is worth the watch for this sequence alone.

It's one of best movie of Amitabh. His pain and anguish at being abandoned is depicted so well. He never came to terms with injustice meted to him. He longed for acceptance on the same time. This duality csn drive any viewer to tears. Masterpiece.

Years on after watching movie, I have yet to watch a movie which shows what an orphan feels.

The lovers Vidya (Rakhee) and Ranvir ( Amjad Khan) meet. Vidya becomes pregnant. While he insists on abortion Vidya insists that she will give birth to the child, bring him up and wait for his return into her life. Ranvir leaves her. Vidya dies with the impression that her child was still-born, but the child grows up into a man (Amitabh), without a family name, a man without education and without any values. As years roll by, Ranvir repents, becomes a saintly, generous and highly respected man in the legitimate society. Fate brings the father and his first son face to face, though they do not know how they are related.

1981 was, in my opinion, a golden year for Bollywood, a peak level where quality was coming out and a technical improvement was visible. It was also a year where Amitabh knocked out a line of hits, and Lawaaris is certainly one of them. A seriously solid drama with the usual masala ingredients, though the intensity comes from Amitabh, who is just so convincing as a man who doesn't know who his parents are. He is intense, angry yet is full of sorrow on occasion. His acting is superb, and matching him is Amjad Khan.

The rest of the cast is great, and the write-up is skilful with sharp dialogue and an engaging plot. It's definitely Amitabh's finest. An entertainer that has some meaning, and has Ranjeet donning some outrageous leather outfits and giving the women nightmares ( like usual).

Review By Kamal K

The acting of Amitabh ji was amazing and it was very powerful acting it is really hard to express a life of a unclaimed/orphan child (lawaaris) through a movie but he did it perfectly and to make it more happy ending there was a love story bewteen AB and Zeenat which was shown in such a manner which made the story more interesting and I would specially talk about the dialogues which were mind blowing.

Laawaris (1981) : Brief Review -

Amitabh Bachchan goes bonkers in Prakash Mehra's emotional rollercoaster that has come a long way amidst the mass cinema wave. Just imagine this is 1981; you enter the cinema hall to watch Laawaris with the mindset that Amitabh Bachchan is a big superstar and Prakash Mehra is one of the best directors in mainstream commercial cinema, and Manoj Kumar's Kranti has already taken the nation by storm, and you are seated for a mainstream Indian drama expecting all masala elements. You start with an evergreen song with evergreen lyrics, and Rakhee is dancing to it in a black saree. Amzad Khan, the Gabbar, is a bad light in the first 15 minutes and then is seen helpless throughout the film. Amitabh Bachchan enters in style, saying, "Yeh apna style hai." He is frustrated after knowing that he is an orphan, but he is speaking on behalf of every orphan who has been a victim of some rich people's sexual desires. Laawaris actually tries to speak a lot on this issue instead of trying to be a typical Indian masala flick. Bachchan can speak multiple languages in the film, and he also dons 5 fancy dress types in "Mere angne mein," including female ornaments and sarees, frocks, etc. In one action scene, he fights with 5-6 people who belong to different casts, and he speaks with them in their mother tongue. He takes Zeenat Aman to his hut and introduces himself as her childhood friend. The next they are in a hug, and "Kab Ke Bichde Hue" begins in Kishore Kumar and Asha Bhosle's voice. I was like, I want to freeze this moment. Believe me, a similar moment in today's films, and I'd use the fast forward button and skip the next 5-6 minutes to save my worthy time. I couldn't do that here despite having seen the same song and same scene multiple times on TV. That's magic. Mehra's commercial blockbuster refers to multiple serious issues and solutions that most 80s people wouldn't understand. They might, today, I guess.

RATING - 7/10*

By - #samthebestest.