Review of Anand (1971) by Sanyam J — 21 Dec 2008

Bhaskar Banerjee is a frustrated doctor who has lost hope for people and their miseries. With this frame of mind he meets Anand Sehgal, a terminally ill patient. Anand has a dark past and literally no future but still he laughs at the face of death and keeps people around him in good humor. The film is about state of mind broadly.

I have seen this film may be more than a hundred times and if you ask me to watch it 5 times back to back right now I will do it. There are very few films as divine and at the same time as entertaining as Anand. This movie has been like 'Ramayan' for me eversince I watched it on doordarshan as may be a 6 years old. Dialogs by Gulzar is genius work, characterization is wonderful, music is excellent, acting is fantastic, editing is crisp, direction is definite, cinematography is minimal and message is divine. Last scene of the film, according to me, is one of the best scene ever written and enacted in the history of Cinema. "Batein karo mujhse" still makes my hair stand at its end even when I think about it. All my friends agree that if we were to chose one performance , out of all the films Bachchan's, we would chose Dr Bhaskar Banerjee. Still the interesting fact is that its not a Bachchan film and is a Rajesh Khanna film.