And then there was Gumnaam ...

I watched 'Gumnaam' sometime in late 90s and for many years it was the quintessential Indian murder mystery for me. The thrilling plot of a group of people stranded on an island and getting killed one by one was in complete contrast with the Bollywood I was familiar with in those days. What added to its aura was the fact that the film was from 1960s, and not a modern thriller. For the first time I realized that even songs can be spooky. 'Gumnaam' title track played a substantial role in setting up the tone of the movie and bringing it back on the track whenever the script went awry.

I didn't know anything about Agatha Christie or the novel 'Gumnaam' was based upon.

I read 'And then there were none' in 2009, full eight years after I had read the first book of Christie. By then I knew that it was the bestselling mystery of all time and has been adapted across various media, right from movie to television to theater. Gumnaam was one of those films that had borrowed the plot from it (without giving any credit, of course). By then I had largely forgotten the film and so enjoyed the novel without any major spoilers. Few months later I caught Gumnaam on one of the TV channels and decided to watch it again now that I had read the novel as well.

And then my love for 'Gumnaam' was lost forever.

The biggest strength of the Christie novel, in my opinion, is the eerie atmosphere filled with intense suspicion. Initially it seems that someone has played a joke with those 10 people on that small island. When the first two murders take place within next few hours, a frantic manhunt begins for the unknown killer. However, the most dramatic, and powerful, sequence is one when one character concludes (something that even other characters had realized by then) that murderer is one of them. From thereon the novel grips you and never let you go. Gumnaam too works fairly well till this point, and then everything goes downhill.

Consider yourself in a situation where you're trapped with a group of people in a island disconnected from the mainland. People are getting killed one by one and you all know that killer is one of you. What will be your natural reaction to such situation? Will you wander alone even for a minute? Will you trust other person even a bit? Won't all the people in your group devise some strategy to stop killer from striking before any help comes from outside?

The characters in 'Gumnaam' don't give a shit to this dangerous situation they are in. All they do is accusing each other and seeing Helen dance on 'Gham chhod ke manao rang-reli'. That is absolute mockery of the situation where a person is dying every few minutes. I wasn't mature enough to ponder much about it when I had watched the movie for the first time. This second viewing gave me headache upon seeing characters behaving as complete idiots.

I don't expect a lot of logic from Bollywood films even in suspense thrillers. I have seen a lot of such Hindi films with glaring loopholes, illogical explanations and tame ends.  Songs and dances have been an important ingredient even in a horror film. Perhaps why 'Gumnaam' hurt me more because it is based on one of my most favourite books and that it gives a typical Bollywood treatment to the part I consider the novel's biggest strength.

The best thing in Gumnaam today, for me, is the title track and its picturization. Rest of the movie is just a sham.