Kaala Patthar

A film set in an Indian coal mine. Vijay was a sailor. He was a ship's captain. When the ship went down he got off first. Three hundred people died. The court did not convict him but he was struck off. He now works in the mine. He talks to nobody and has changed his name. There are others there. Ravi is an engineer. Newly arrived, educated, and he wants to change the arrangements. Mangal is a convict. He escaped from prison and is hiding there. The mine belongs to Seth Dhanraj. He disregards safety for profit. There is a warning. There is water behind the seam and it will burst if they go on. The engineer writes a report. The owner does not listen. From there the film takes place in the mine. Shifts, dust, darkness and crowds. The workers' lives are shown in detail. Huts, wages, debt and a doctor. Vijay and Mangal fight. Then they end up on the same side. What the narrative is interested in is not a mine but a debt: its idea is that all three men are there because of a crime or a shame, and that the mine offers them a place to settle it. Then the water comes. The pit floods. Hundreds are below. The last section is a rescue and is held long. The production draws on real events. A disaster at a coal mine in 1975 had made a great noise in India. The screenplay is by the Salim-Javed pair. The film did not do the business expected and its standing rose later. It was shot in real mining districts. Yash Chopra directed. Amitabh Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor, Shatrughan Sinha, Rakhee, Parveen Babi and Neetu Singh are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1970s Indian cinema and disaster narratives. Who it is not for: anyone looking for simplicity; the cast is large, there are three separate romantic lines, and the running time is long.