Aadmi (1968)
aka The Man
Article 5585 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-18-2018
Directed by A. Bhimsingh
Featuring Dilip Kumar, Waheeda Rehman, Manoj Kumar
Country: India
What it is: Drama

A rich young man falls in love with a woman, but the relationship is threatened due to a secret from his past.

I originally started watching this in a version without English subtitles, so I decided to go hunting around for a plot description to help me. When I found a fairly elaborate one to help me, I couldn’t help notice that the screen shots seemed to indicate that there was a version of the movie that bore English subtitles, so I looked a little further and managed to find it. It’s a good thing, too; had I not had the subtitles, the movie would have been impenetrable to me. It’s primarily a drama (in soap opera mode) rather than a genre movie, but it has a few fantastic touches; there is a miraculous occurrence near the end of the movie, and throughout certain characters seem to be taunted by disembodied voices; this is as described in the Walt Lee guide. However, the most impressive moment of fantastic content has the hatred of the protagonist manifesting itself as a giant doppelganger who tries to talk his real self into committing murder; it’s an impressive effect. As a whole, the movie is fairly good, but I didn’t really care much for the musical sequences, and its length (two and three quarter hours) becomes a bit oppressive.