Bollywood: Veer-Zaara

This movie addressed some very heated political issues between Pakistan and India in a theatrical way. India and Pakistan have been involved in several wars, and skirmishes over the years. They mainly stem from dispute over the mountainous region of Kashmir and in the manner in which its political alignment was decided by the two countries following partition in 1947. There is still much bad blood between the two nations. Pakistan has a ban on Bollywood movies, but some have recently been made exceptions and shown in theatres, while others appear on Pakistani cable television. India and Pakistan now have nuclear weapons, which concerns many countries around the world, but recently, both have remained cautious with there nuclear power. This made the movie interesting as an Indian and Pakistani fall in love, which is very taboo.

Much of the movie was in Hindi, but the parts that contained English seemed to be parts of the dialogue that were very important to the storyline. This shows the role of the British and how the English language was used to be understood in times of importance. Most of the movies from Bollywood today contain some English words or sentences in them.

The film depicts the parts of India and Pakistan around the boarders that are less populated areas. It showed the lush country side and small towns which contain fields and small homes. In a few scenes they ride on tractors through these fields from one place to another. In India the homes are much larger and remind me of the Taj Mahal. The only parts of the film with mountains during the time on the Indian side of the border. You could get a sense of the area when they were traveling on buses or trains that were over crowded with people, who were then forced to ride on the roof tops.

The movie was filmed in a very dramatic style. The intimate scenes were similar to a soup opera, but without much physical interaction, just looking deep into the eyes of the other. The dance scenes were wild, and you could tell that much of this movies production would have been taken up by the choreography of the dance sequences. The voices of the singers were also dubbed over the shots of the movie. The Bollywood movies would be considered less graphic than a children’s movie in America.

Dancing is a very important part of Indian culture. Most older Bollywood movies contained some sort of classic northern Indian folk dances. More recent films have elements of modern, western style of dancing. The dancing and singing scenes in the movie showed to be the most important shots of the film. From what I found online, most of the Bollywood actors are good dancers, but they do not sing. The singing is done in a studio and the actors lip sync the words during the movie.