Movie Review: Pyaasa (1957)

May 13, 2021

“Ye duniya agar mil bhi jaye to kya hai”

Existentialism and poetry have always been best friends, meeting at the common juncture of falsafa (philosophy), Pyaasa (thirsty, or wistful) is a musical transposition of the poetry, philosophy and life of Sahir Ludhianvi, the poignant lyricist of the film’s soundtrack.

Source: IMDb

Helmed by Guru Dutt, the depressed yet charismatic filmmaker, there is something antithetical to serendipity in his pitiable portrayal of Vijay, an educated unemployed youth in the India of the 50s, as nascent and vulnerable as the protagonist’s slowly corroding optimism.

Vijay inhabits a world revolving around a coin. Money makes the world go round; what sells, is bred, what does not, is discarded at the drop of a hat. Among the discarded bunch of ambitions, lie the poems of Vijay—rejected by the press, thrifted by his brothers. The scheming brother formula is still ripe for the time.

As Vijay and his miseries form the crux of the film, it dollies on the peripheral characters, generously on the men albeit miserly on the women.

Men like Johnny Walker, the masseur friend of Vijay is mostly a comic relief, trying his hand at wooing women with his playful antics, minus the chivalry and gravitas of his grave poet friend.

The women, on the other hand are reduced to being melodramatic residues of affect, bawling their screen time away. Even Mala Sinha in her only negative role cannot help but shed a few consolatory tears on her part as a heartbreaker queen listening to her former lover’s poetry. Let alone the jilted, Vijay and her damsel and future muse Gulabo (Waheeda Rahman), they have their own share of grief. In tandem with the melodramatic woman, comes the fat girl trope of Tun Tun, the bulky laughing stock of the college.

Although against the milieu of prostitution, the film does not explore the red light area through a voyeuristic lens. Rather, associating itself with names like Abrar Alvi, Guru Dutt and Sahir Ludhianvi, the film dons a poetic lens to prostitution. The prostitutes are not flattered for their beauty in any verse, Sahir’s falsafa points to the helplessness of the Chakla. Sahir’s eponymous poem proclaims a pertinent post-Independence clarion call, “Jinhe naaz hai hind par wo kahan hain?”.

A Hindi film is incomplete without a soundtrack. And S. D. Burman’s haunting score, from the existential “Ye duniya agar mil bhi jaye to kya hai” to the romantic “Hum aapki aankhon mein”, merits full credits for versatility. The songs and the lyrics are poignant, but what adds flourish to the screen is the exposure intensive black and white cinematography accompanying them. The whimsical camera angles experimenting with shadows and light focussing on a holier than thou Christ figure of Guru Dutt in the climax leaves one in wonder. Why is Guru Dutt, a pyaasa, willing to set the world on fire? Possibly because he has a thirst for life, in a world that celebrates the dead.