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Nov 29, 2007

From the father of formula films in Bollywood, Nasir Hussain, comes one of the biggest hits of the century - Yaadon Ki Baraat. This is probably the third or fourth time I am watching this 1973 classic. A vanguard in its own right Yaadon Ki Baraat was a nested product of formulas many of which Hindi filmdom has been recycling to this day. The important ones include son avenging the death of his parents, brothers torn away by circumstances reunited by a talisman(a song in the typical Bollywood fashion in this case), the utterly honest poor guy with incredible singing capacity wooing the rich girl, the high-tech villain in his seventies gadget-infested dungeon bent upon destroying the hero while wearing shoes of two different sizes(a dead giveaway!) and a Miss India(Zeenat Aman.)

The incredible soundtrack of the film composed by R.D.Burman is another selling point. The song 'Chura Liya' defined an entire generation and beyond, so did Ms.Aman. Vijay Arora stars opposite to her in the movie, as the second one of the three brothers. Dharmendra is the elder brother and the youngest is played by Tariq, a nephew of the director. Neetu Singh makes a guest appearance in one of the songs, so does the later Bollywood heart-throb Aamir Khan. This is his first movie(well, the director was his uncle) and he appears as a child artist - the youngest of the three brothers. Yaadon ki Baraat is your quintessential Bollywood movie of the swinging seventies. If you have to give someone an introduction to the proverbial Hindi masala movie, you can pick this one sans hesitation.

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