MOVIE REVIEW : ‘God Is My Witness’: Why Over the Top Works

“Khuda Gawah”--or “God Is My Witness”--is must-viewing for audiences who prize the grand-scale nuttiness of Bombay epics at their most redolently romantic. If you’ve never seen one of these Indian extravaganzas--a distinct possibility since the Four Star theater stopped showing them locally several years back--you may not be prepared for the monumental impasto of Hindu folklore and Hollywood hyper-kitsch. (And the current crop is actually far tamer than the epics of several decades past.)

Subtle is not the first--or even the 16th--word to spring to mind in thinking about the acting. Or the directing, the score, the musical numbers. The numbers are the best: They erupt out of nowhere and knock your socks clean off. They’re a welcome entry in the annals of the musical--Busby Beserkeley.

“God Is My Witness” (at the Monica 4-Plex) probably makes more sense if you’re Indian, but maybe not. Clearly making sense is not Job One here. The delirium sets in early and never lets up. The action begins in Afghanistan between two rival clans with a race to the finish between competing horsemen carting a goat hide--or something like that. The game is called “Buzkashi,” and it’s like a cross between Olympic field hockey and the chariot race scene from “Ben-Hur.” When our hero Badshah Khan, played by Indian superstar Amitabh Bachchan, makes it to the finish line toting his half of the hide, he’s in for a shock; his chief rival for the goat turns out to be a woman --the sultry, veiled Benazir (Sridevi, another Bombay superstar). No one in Hollywood ever met this cute.

Badshah Khan would like to marry Benazir but first he must avenge her father’s death by journeying to India and bringing back the cranium of his killer. This section of the film (Times-rated Mature for violence) might be subtitled “Bring Me the Head of Habibullah.” Just to make sure Khan’s blood lust is properly stoked, Benazir engages her paramour in an elaborate dance that owes more than a little something to hoochie-coochie. She scratches him on the cheek in mid-cooch, and he laps the trickle of blood like it was holy water, while all around them turbaned minions shimmy and shake their silken rumps. By the time he recoups Habibullah’s head--his whole carcass, actually--Badshah Khan has run into the kind of trouble that only a 3-hour (not including intermission) movie can resolve.

The largely poor and illiterate Indian audiences for whom movies like “God Is My Witness” are made are as demanding (or, pejoratively, undemanding) as the denizens of our own multiplexes. The impossibly romantic scenarios, with their paeans to sacrifice and blood revenge, are both crass and elating; the escapism on display is unabashed. No kissing is allowed in these movies, no piquant show of flesh. And yet the whole shebang is sensual; life is presented as a series of pageants inspired by desire.

Bachchan and Sridevi (who plays two roles) are a combustible pair even though--or maybe because--their acting range seems limited to various degrees of smolder. Sridevi looks a bit like a darker Morgan Fairchild while Bachchan, particularly as he grows more bearish and hirsute, resembles Topol in “Fiddler on the Roof,” though his guttural rant--his normal speaking voice--sounds more like Al Pacino in “Dick Tracy.” He has the heroic presence of a true matinee idol. He’s impassioned by his own grandiosity and so is this movie. It’s deliriously beyond camp, beyond kitsch.

‘God Is My Witness’

Amitabh Bachchan: Badshah Khan

Sridevi: Bazir/Menhdi

Nagarjuna: Raja

Shilpa Shirodkar: Henna

Dale Gasteiger & Gregory Hatanaka in association with Lal Dadlaney present a Glamour Films production of a Headliner Productions Inc. release. Director Mukul S. Anand. Producers Manoj Desai & Nazir Ahmed. Screenplay by Santosh Saroj. Cinematographer W.B. Rao. Editor R. Rajendran. Costumes Kachins. Music Laxmikant Pyarelal. Production design Ashok Gangadhar. Art director Suresh Sawant. Sound J. Choudhary. Running time: 3 hours.

Times-rated Mature (for violence).