50 Films I Love: Pradip Krishen’s In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones

How can I persuade you to see a film called In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones? Let me start by explaining the title. Annie isn’t a woman. It’s a man named Anand who has spent four years in fifth year at an architecture school in Delhi. The year is 1974. And ‘those ones’ refers to Annie’s outlandish schemes to use his education to benefit society – like planting trees alongside railway lines which would then be fertilized by all the good folks taking a shit on the train. I’m not making this up. This is a National Award-winning film directed by Pradip Krishen, written by Arundhati Roy and produced by – believe it or not – Doordarshan in 1989. The dialogue is a mix of Hindi and English with a smattering of Punjabi. Characters smoke up a storm. There is a kissing scene and the film is firmly on the side of the students. The villain of the…