Parakh

Parakh (1960) : Brief Review -

Bimal Roy's lesson on assaying the purity of humans in early electoral and political satire. A political satire, especially set in election battlefield was very rare in Bollywood during 50s and 60s. Post 70s there were some films made on it but it had some sort of sub-genre like either comedy or action and then in modern era after 2000s it has became a mainstream thing. Recently i saw a Tamil flick 'Madela' (2021) and just now when i was watching Parakh, i recalled few scenes from the film. Though, both the films are very different except for the main genre and the biggest difference is that Parakh is more like a human drama than just satire. An honest postmaster in a remote village recieves a letter from Mr. Roy with a Mysterious cheque of 5 Lakhs Rupees. He is directed to give this money to the most Honest and Loyal Guy of the village who will spent all the money for the development and benefits of poor people of the village. This leads to an election and then the poltical game begins. For its time this story was very unique and interesting. A regular going story suddenly delivers a surprising element before the intermission and that remains its most important part till the end. All the leading actors have done good job. It is big cast, it is a chaos and supporting cast is pretty good too. Screenplay, like I said had that one surprising Elements which keeps it interesting even after you know it. The songs are not like major hit numbers but decent. Maybe one or two songs less would have made the film more pacy. Bimal Roy's direction is very nice but i don't think it was that high to have won Filmfare over K Asif for Mughal-e-Azam. Overall, Parakh is a fantastic film and a new idealism for bollywood of that time. It misses the classic tag by small margin but still deserves your watch.

RATING - 7.5/10*

By - #samthebestest.