Pyaasa - Movie Review
Published: March 26, 2010
Starring Guru Dutt, Waheeda Rehman, Mala Sinha
Guru Dutt—an Indian actor, director, and producer from the golden age of Hindi cinema in the 1950s—was a matinee idol who became one of the greatest filmmakers in history. A luminary artist in the commercial industry of Bollywood, he’s often called “the Orson Welles of India.” He’s revered in his home country and has a huge cult following among film buffs around the world. His masterpiece, Pyaasa, which he directed and starred in, was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 best films of all time.
The title means “thirst,” and it’s one of many allusions in the film to the crucifixion of Christ—the story’s overarching metaphor—a dramatically grandiose one and certainly unusual in a Hindi film. Dutt’s character, Vijay, a starving poet, is the persecuted martyr, and art is his religion. He’s tormented by his detractors—the lover who dumped him, the publisher who rejects him, his brothers who resent him, the husband who’s jealous of him—but he’s the source of his greatest anguish as he capitulates to an existential crisis so profound there’s no recovering from it. The character is enigmatically complex—a sensitive genius whose suffering is noble, but also a self-pitying, misogynistic narcissist.
The two women who love him—Meena (Mala Sinha) and Gulabo (Waheeda Rehman)—agonize over him. Through them, Dutt the filmmaker reveals his feminist understanding of the psychic pain caused by male sexism, even as his character is the one inflicting it. Meena is Vijay’s first love. She’s enthralled with him for the man he is, but he adores her only as an abstraction of love. In one telling musical number, he daydreams about her instead of paying attention to her while she’s sitting right next to him. Understandably hurt and sick of being ignored, she leaves him, and perhaps believing no man is capable of meeting her emotional needs, she settles for marrying a wealthy man. Vijay later lashes out at her for “selling love for comfort.” He stops short of calling her a whore, but her husband says it for him when he discovers her alone with Vijay. In the very next scene, Vijay saves the actual prostitute in his life, Gulabo, from being arrested by tenderly embracing her and telling the cop she’s his wife. Gulabo understands and appreciates his talent, and unlike Meena, she asks nothing of him (because she doesn’t have a shred of self-respect). That makes her, in his eyes, virtuous. All three yearn for their humanity to be recognized, but Vijay is the only one incapable of reciprocating.
Dutt was a troubled artist himself, but he made this tribute to the tortured poet in his soul after a successful commercial career, and Pyaasa likewise was a box-office hit. For Dutt, ignominious failure came later, with his next film, the ominously autobiographical Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959)—a flop and a creative achievement second only to Pyaasa.
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