Satyam Shivam Sundaram

# Film: *Satyam Shivam Sundaram*

The film was produced and directed by [Raj Kapoor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raj_Kapoor) and written by [Jainendra Jain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainendra_Jain_(screenwriter)), starring [Shashi Kapoor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shashi_Kapoor) and [Zeenat Aman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeenat_Aman), [Padmini Kolhapure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padmini_Kolhapure) as Young Rupa, [Kanhaiyalal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanhaiyalal_(actor)) as Pandit Shyam Sunder, village priest,

- [A. K. Hangal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._K._Hangal) as Bansi, Rupa's uncle
- [Hari Shivdasani](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hari_Shivdasani) as Chief Engineer
- [David Abraham Cheulkar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Abraham_Cheulkar) as Bade Babu
- [Leela Chitnis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leela_Chitnis) as Bade Babu's wife
- Vishwa Mehra as Jai Singh
- Sheetal as Champa
- Monika as Rupa's friend
- Subroto Mahapatra as Shastry, Rupa's prospective father-in-law
- [Javed Khan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javed_Khan_Amrohi) as Shastry's son
- [Tun Tun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tun_Tun)

**Review by Dr Usman Latif Khawaja**

Raj Kapoor is a great director, with movies like *Sangam* and *Awara* under his rather hefty belt, so one would expect that when he envisions a theme portraying inner beauty versus physical disfigurement, he will make something uniquely spiritual. But alas, that is not true about this rather personal cinema, made in a very sexually exploitative mode, where the pastoral beauty of lush Indian landscape is wasted with a brilliant soundtrack by Laxmikant-Pyarelal and Lata Mangeshkar on a confounding, ludicrous script with flawed direction, which makes some scenes inadvertently hilarious.

Zeenat Aman plays Roopa, the unfortunate daughter of a village temple priest, who is blessed with the voice of an angel but has a semi-scarred face, which she sensibly covers with her sari. But Mr Kapoor forgets to cover the rest of Roopa with anything, so we have a holy man's daughter singing spiritual songs to gods in temples with her whole body on display in a loincloth, which even is less scanty than the gladiatorial uniform in Roman epics.

In the middle of this village, where women run around like Playboy bunnies, arrives an engineer who is addressed as Babuji, played in his worst performance by Shashi Kapoor. He immediately is enamoured by Roopa and allured by her voice and bust and proposes marriage to her without observing her semi-burnt face, after following her to a waterfall on a morning bathing ritual where Zeenat displays all her natural endowments except her scarred face.

Then follows the catastrophe, as after the wedding night and consummation, Babuji discovers his wife has a scarred face and accuses her of being a stranger who is masquerading as Roopa. The charade reaches inadvertent folly as Roopa visits him every night to do her conjugal duties and enjoy sexual pleasures, while he denies accepting her as his wife in daylight.

The travesty reaches a crescendo when Roopa gets pregnant and Babuji refuses to own the child, and a screaming, hysterical Roopa is cursed by the whole village as a whore or Kalankini.

Meanwhile, Roopa keeps singing one great bhajan after another, and yet Babuji cannot recognise and relate her voice, figure and face in a bizarrely surreal logic which only Raj Kapoor can understand, as Shashi Kapoor shouts at Roopa, accusing her of being an impostor.

Shashi here has given a performance where you can tell he knows his role is a big joke, as is the script, as he pouts and puffs and ogles in an orgy of overacting which is not to be missed.

Zeenat is better, but she has no wardrobe, and neither do the other women in the holy village based around a sacred temple devoted to Krishna.

The movie is a personal erotica which Raj Kapoor must have enjoyed making immensely, as Shashi too, as all women parade like local maidens on Tahiti beaches, and in one sequence, two women try to molest Shashi in a sugar cane field, but he escapes with his virginity intact.

The idea of spiritual beauty versus physical handicap is treated like a tasteless prank, and despite excellent cinematography and music and a convincing act by Zeenat in some sequences, the vision is totally flawed.

The ideology of divinity blessing a disfigured human being with an extraordinary talent in the form of a great voice is totally wasted by the physical display of redundant flesh and a man who cannot recognise a woman who is his wife and has conjugal relations with him for three months.

This is Raj Kapoor's least convincing movie and Shashi Kapoor in his most artificial role ever, with expressions that go haywire from the first to last scene, with totally inane dialogues.

It is a real shame, as the music and camerawork are excellent and the idea itself is about the purity of human spirit triumphing over physical beauty, but Kapoor has gone totally haywire in a mishmash of a screaming Babuji and a hysterically unclad Roopa.

Watch it to see why Hema Malini turned the role down despite being the first choice, and also to see how an aesthetically astute theme can be destroyed by a terribly flawed script.

Despite that, there are some brilliantly choreographed songs and a spectacular flooding sequence in the finale.

The movie has alternate endings with a happy and a tragic outcome, and both versions are extant, though the happy ending is more rampant.

It just proves how confused even Kapoor was at what he was creating, and may God bless him and Zeenat too, for she looks like Venus rather than a disfigured village belle, with an American Hindi accent too.

You will adore Zeenat if you are a heterosexual man, and all the women will love the soundtrack and envy Zeenat for her luscious physique, but this is art at its ludicrous worst.