About Avatar
To say that the movie Avatar is about an alien Jewish American Princess having a hissy fit is actually a fairly accurate assessment. But that wasn’t the only storyline it contained. It was as if the writers’ brainstorming session became the script. “What if the Indians weren’t decimated by smallpox and they united to fight against us?” suggests one writer. “I say we pit the military against the scientists”, insists another. “Don’t forget to plant the plot of boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl in there too, that’ll guarantee it to be a Academy Award nominee”.
That being said, you’d think this movie would be one I’d say pass on. But wait, underneath all the stereotypes and repetitious yawn provoking obvious storylines there truly were some thinking persons’ treasures.
To begin with, the alien planet’s animals are amalgams. Is that part dinosaur, dragon, hummingbird, dragonfly? Thank goodness for that boring plot line, as your brain is suddenly found busily scanning the creatures, performing a type of IQ test, analyzing and identifying which part of the animal comes from which earth animal.
While your brain is busy analyzing creatures and/or creating its own chimeras and asking questions such as, “how many creatures do we have on Earth that are colorfully feathered?” and your inner child begins shouting, “I want to fly on the back of one of those too!” in slips a current events issue. The hero of our movie has a spine injury and has lost the use of his legs. Note the subtle atrophy to them through the movie, so the question pops up, if medical technology exists to give a person back the ability to use their legs, should cost prevent them from getting such medical procedures? While you mull over whether you support healthcare reform in slides a thorn to prick you about your internet usage.
Today, more and more people are living two lives, one online and one IRL (in real life), and just as in the movie, one of our worlds goes limp and silent when the other is active. How IRL are we? Have we become slaves to our overactive overfed imaginations? Is it possible to regain a relationship with our planet, to have it as our playground, our kitchen, our medicine cabinet, our protector, our home once again? Or have we let cyberspace steal us away from our own place and kind? In Avatar choices are made, there is no playing for both teams. This is this lesson I think merited spending $100 million to make and hopefully will be a couple hours of joyful movie viewing for you.
- Mary McQueary
Sthaniya Sambaad : Something Bijjare This Way Comes
While we live in a country that makes the largest number of films in the world, unfortunately most of them are of the lowest quality. In fact, even the so-called ‘good’ films endorsed by cretins in the media are abominable. Most practitioners of the medium do not know even the basics, and the critics who write about them know even less. One enters halls screening most contemporary Indian [actually also most current Hollywood] films, with a sense of great terror at the idea of wasting a couple of hours of your pre-determined short life. It really curdles your blood when you are subjected to the bovine expressions and simian observations that critics, both in the press and more so on TV, pass off as ‘expert opinion’ on this so-called cinema. There is also a funny bunch of directors who say that if given a good budget they would make world-class films. My response to them has always been, “Bullshit man, learn the language and find your fucking idiom.” Yet another kind of mutt leans towards you and whispers, “I am making a film for the festival circuit.” I am tempted to vomit on this type. One thing our mediocre bunch should learn is to shut the fuck up and try to make films with a modicum of honesty. In the process, they may pick up intelligence and wit which most great filmmakers possess.
Despite my reservations mentioned above, I do not deny that on very very rare occasions, experiencing movies both within and outside the mainstream has been rewarding. Listing them here is not the intention of this piece, but to talk about one in particular.
I was privileged to see the Bengali film Sthaniya Sambaad [Springtime in the colony], the first feature co-directed by Arjun Gourisaria and Moinak Biswas. The film, besides being a delightful work, is also one of remarkable clarity and musicality. Though the narrative is quite simple and easy to follow, the joy is in the way the filmmakers have structured it.
Space and time, the two fundamental coordinates, are used with intelligence and grace. The film is set across three spaces. First, Deshbandhu Colony, where the protagonists live, many of them refugees who came from East Bengal (now Bangladesh) over a period of time, beginning with partition. The second is Park Street, referred to in the film as White Town (or Shaheb Para) and the third is New Town where, as the name suggests, new townships are being developed.
What makes the film special is the way the directors have used basic, almost seminal, tools of the medium to navigate between these spaces within the temporal context of the film. The first part of the story takes place in Deshbandhu Colony; it then splits the action between the colony and White Town. The third part fragments what happens between the first two spaces and New Town. After this we observe scenes unfolding between New Town and the colony, and finally, we come back to the colony in the concluding part of the film.
The film also has a certain musicality – the makers structure the film as variations on a theme. Here every sequence actually works as a minor variation of the major theme, which is never explicitly stated but constantly implied. In point of fact, the almost shocking opening sequence with the braid (or did someone say ‘bride’) works as an evocation, a variation and also a metaphor of the film’s theme. Unlike the ham-fisted Let’s Talk, a film made a few years ago with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, where the filmmaker kept insisting it was structured like a Thumri (hence variations on a theme), Sthaniya Sambaad actually travels this path with incredible sophistication and grace.
Besides the formal nature of the work, here is a film that states its geography, evokes its histories, exists on the cusp of a world that is changing. A young poet who is floundering, unrequited youthful love, misunderstandings regarding where the ‘nape’ is located, a chorus and life with all its joys, sorrows and endless other quotidian details emerge in this film.
The cast of Sthaniya Sambad seems handpicked for the job. Rarely has one seen such a bunch of talented actors in one film, all of them mercifully non-stars. To name a few – Anirban Dutta, Suman Mukhopadhyay, Anindya Banerjee, Suvankar Mitra, Sanat Sen, Sourya Deb, Thatagata Chowdhury, Shubam Roy Chowdhury, Aranya Chowdhury, Bratya Basu, Nayana Palit, Manali Dey, Kasturi Chatterji and the delightful duo Mrinal Ghosh and Dilip Sarkar. The list could go on but what is most important, more than the performances, is the way they understand and appropriate their roles. Recently, I watched on television an annoying TV-type with the expression of a computer-generated smiley interviewing Aishwariya Rai who actually referred to herself and some of her crones as artists. Talk about delusional. I suggest she watch this film, maybe she would realize that there is a craft in acting that is way beyond her.
One of the things that struck me after watching Sthaniya Sambad was whether this film (which was produced by the recently dissolved Black Magic Motion Pictures of which Goursaria was a partner) would have been given the thumbs-up by other corporatized production companies. I imagine those vacant employees hired by the companies to go through scripts wouldn’t know a good script if it became a projectile and fucked them in the ass. Most of them would not have the imagination or wit to know the poetics that exist beyond the script and within the process. For lovers of cinema who eternally hope that something worthwhile will happen in this part of the world, Sthaniya Sambaad is really a miracle.
While I always believe it’s the films that make the festival and not the other way round, I feel disappointed that Sthaniya Sambaad did not make it to the Cannes film festival. Not so much that it is the place to be, but that it would have given the film the international platform it deserves. I believe a film Udhaan from India has been selected in the Un Certain Regard category. I would not like to comment on it before seeing it. I honestly hope it is a good film and not something catering to the Slumdog Millionaire-type sensibility. I wish it success and if it is achieves 10 % of what Sthaniya Sambaad achieves, I shall consider myself a happy slob.
Finally, I have to say, as an aside to both Arjun and Moinak – “Man, or is it men, or just the usual friendly fuckers, the opening shot works.”
- Kiran David
Song for an Ancient Land … The Joys of Seeing and Listening…
Light and darkness both reveal and destroy images as does focus or the absence of it. These destroyed images then become images of great beauty and power. Similarly sound – in its clarity or lack of it – creates aural textures which, along with the images, evoke varied possibilities in Kabir Mohanty’s two-part Song for an ancient land.
Clocking just under two hours, this is one of the great audio-visual experiences I have had in a long time, and without doubt, the greatest Indian work of its kind in ages. It is indeed a relief that one can say good things about a film currently made in this part of the world without being patronizing or dishonest, to say the least.
Though technically video art, I would like to call this cinema in a purer sense, with some of the images reminding me of experimental work done in Europe in the ’20s, but totally different in nature, context and intent.
What is truly gratifying is that unlike many practitioners of video art, particularly in our country, many of whom are dilettantes or painters who seem to have no clue of the medium, often claiming to be doing something ‘different’ (a dubious word), Mohanty’s work reflects a complete understanding of the medium of his choice, and reflects the use of its inherent aspects.
While watching the work, the viewer feels the images, both audio and visual, revealing possibilities, and sees the dynamics change, as time, so key to it,unfolds.
Part One explores the histories of the artist’s immediate neighbourhood, Pali Mala in Bandra. Images of traders, roads, sea shores, take on different meanings through feelings that evoke their poetry…
…And then Mohanty announces the arrival of Diwali with images so astonishing that you watch and experience pure joy. There are images where light flashes reflect on buildings, revealing textures till then hidden. A dot of light, travelling within a frame where time seems to expand endlessly on the screen, yet seems to stop for the viewer.
Part Two deals with images that look at a post-Babri Masjid world, the camera traverses over photographs being illuminated by a spot light or possibly a torch that highlights textures on these still images and almost simultaneously destroys the details only to create other images.
Time opens out possibilities and resonances in the sequence shot at the Darga in Mahim built in the name of Makhdoom Baba.
In an interesting shift in space, the camera observes the nature of sameness in diversity as New Yorkers walk in a busy area. This was one of the few places I thought the voice narrating the idea was not needed as the image evoked it in horrifying detail.
One of the joys of viewing Mohanty’s work is that it demands your attention and engages you in its very being. It respects its audience by assuming they are intelligent and have the ability to make connections. It is an invitation to an intimate dialogue, not a call to consumption. Every time you view the film, it offers you more meanings and emotions that enrich you. The greatest triumph of Song for an ancient land is that it invites you to see and listen, unlike works that numb you to a point of indifference as you only watch and hear.
- Kiran David
Tapan Sinha (October 2, 1924 – January 15, 2009) : A Grossly Underrated Auteur
There are a few childhood memories which remain vivid even when you grow up; more or less this happens to everyone I guess. Like the first circus experience or the glimpse of the tiger in the zoo, it was Airabat, the giant white elephant for me when it comes to cinema.
It was a time when we didn’t have TV at home and our cinema viewing programmes were heavily censored by my parents – they ensured that me and my sister didn’t watch anything ‘adult’ at that time. So this is one of my first few films that I can recollect and I do remember I loved the climax of the film, which otherwise kept me and my sister sobbing almost the entire reel time. It was Safed Hathiand back in school we all were excited about it – enacting the different roles of the film. We never bothered over who directed the film; it was good and that’s what mattered. Over a period of time as I grew up under the over-encompassing virtual tutelage of Ritwik Ghatak’s films, I had almost forgotten one name – Tapan Sinha. Or maybe we chose to. Satyajit Ray was always dear and we probably couldn’t ignore Mrinal Sen for many a masterpiece of his, but definitely there was none apart from the trio in our radar.
This is the fate of Tapan Sinha, like Uttam Kumar, the central character of his second film Upahar (1955)- neither of them got their due from the serious film audience (read the film critics). But as life does such a balancing act, Tapan Sinha is loved by the educated, middle-class Bengali more than anyone else, probably second only to the towering Ray. Looking back, as Sinha passed away on the morning of January 15, I was rather reflective – what does his cinema mean to me? And I was not very sure. On the one hand, his staggering range and diversity would definitely have made Ray proud as well, and on the other hand, there is his debatable, yet unfailing belief in film being a 100% linear narrative medium. His range is so diverse that in the 40+ films that he made over more than 50 years, it is hard to find any one film a sequel of a predecessor, leave alone a trilogy! From classics like Kabuliwala, Kshudita Pashan, Hnasuli Bnaker Upakatha to the more urbane Jotugriho, Apanjan (remade in Hindi as Mere Apne by Gulzar), Ekhone and social awareness in Adalat O Ekti Meye, Ek Doctor ki Maut, Atanka, Antardhan he had ventured into almost every genre. And his rich repertoire of satirical offerings in Galpa Holeo Satti (whose sub-standard Hindi remake is Bawarchi), Ek Je Chhilo Desh, Bancharamer Bagan side-by-side with his eye for children’s films is worth appreciating.
The five Sinha films which are etched in my mind more than the others are - Kabuliwala, Jhinder Bandi, Jotugriho, Sagina Mahato and Ek Doctor ki Maut. The Bengali version of Kabuliwala (1957)played by none other than the inimitable Chhabi Biswas had been a delight to watch. Sinha was faithful to the original Tagore masterpiece though he inserted a number of subplots that carried along the main narrative.
An extremely goofed up makeup of Biswas along with a number of technical glitches couldn’t peg back this film which remains vivid in my heart for its sensitive rendition of the basic human emotions of love and longing. It remains a masterpiece of Indian cinema and justifies Sinha’s position as a natural story-teller who relied heavily on simplicity and the intrinsic goodness of individuals.
Jhinder Bandi (1961),based on a Bengali novel with the same name by Saradindu Bandyopadhyay is a successful ‘Indianized’ adaptation of Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda. This film is one of the oldest Bengali films that showcased drama and suspense in a way very few films of the time portrayed. Yet again, the length of the film induced by an inordinate expense of reel time to setup a love relationship between the two central characters along with some very naïve sword fight sequences might have held it back from being a classic. However, one important point to note is that this was the first time the two legendary Bengali actors appeared on-screen together. Uttam Kumar and Soumitra Chatterjee probably never looked so good together in any other film and this is the first time that Soumitra was cast as a villain. This is quite an event because with Soumitra’s marked aristocratic looks and refined personality he looked more at home with the Tagorean characters. Sinha brought out this rare aspect of the versatile actor, which remains one of Chatterjee’s finest characterisations as well.
Whereas Jhinder Bandi dealt with a near fantasy where kin-rivalry unfolded into a bitter drama of betrayal and killing, Jotugriho (1964)brings up the subject of marital discord with impeccable finesse at a time when the subject itself would have been perceived as daring by most Indian film-makers. Again adapted from a poignant short story Sinha deviated little but added interesting insights into the main narrative that made it look interesting. As always, in most of Tapan Sinha’s films (another trait that he shares with Satyajit Ray), this film is also studded with fine performances – this time Uttam Kumar coming out with a sterling exposition of an introvert engineer stung by life. What makes this film so unforgettable is the sense of void that is inflicted on the audience in the empty cul-de-sac called ‘life’. What went wrong, what was the problem? There were no villains, it’s just the way things turn out that puts the two endearing souls far apart, forever. This sense of helplessness is so prominent that we empathize with the characters – the one big difference from its Hindi remake Ijazatby Gulzar where we can feel that the marriage might have been saved in spite of the love triangle
Sagina Mahato (1970)and its remake in Hindi by Sinha himself is one of his overt political statements. Sagina was a coolie who fought against injustices meted towards them by the tea estate owners and soon rises to be their leader. And as he becomes too hot to handle, the management takes advantage of his innocence and ignorance, turning him into their puppet against the same men who chose him to be their leader. Dilip Kumar as Sagina was fantastic, quite different from his otherwise romantic roles, and this film raised questions about the success of the trade union movements at a time when Bengalwas burning over the Naxal issue. In most of Tapan Sinha’s films it was mostly the story of the struggles of the common man and how he triumphs over his situation. Sinha once said -
I have always believed in individual courage and effort. I think, collective system or life hardly allows an individual to discover the infinite strength within him. I like the individual who has the courage to face any untoward situation, which is why I have shown an individual as a relentless fighter against all hazards in Aadmi aur Aurat (1982), Atanka (1986) andEk Doctor ki Maut (1991). My protagonists in these films have practically done miracles by their own strength and self-confidence.
This belief in the individual made him sharply different in his philosophy from many of his colleagues who had strong Marxist leanings. And in this regard he probably is closer to Dr. Stockmann (of Henik Ibsen’s The Enemy of the People) who said, ‘…the strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone.’ Notably, even Satyajit Ray turned the end of his film Ganashatru (1989) based on the Ibsen play to include the ‘mass’ in an individual’s struggle for existence. This Ibsenian touch is found in Ek Doctor ki Maut where a doctor who invented a drug to cure leprosy is constantly harassed by his colleagues out of jealousy. In a claustrophobic society talent loses its battle against middle-class sense of animosity arising out of uncertainty and incompetence to acknowledge excellence. The doctor is devastated by his hostile environment that forces him to give up his research, but he finds a way to love his life.
But where did Tapan Sinha falter then? To me, Sinha’s greatest drawback is probably his simplistic solution to situations when he dealt with social or contemporary issues. His penchant for human victory at the end also exposes his weakness – the director coming out as too prophetic at times. In the earlier films where he played with classical stories, his narrative strength was probably more than many. But then again, his place in post-Renaissance Bengali culture alongside Ray ensured that his craft was always compared only with Ray (and never with Ghatak or Sen) – an unfortunate situation, which probably was difficult for him to shrug off. And it was probably unfair too. If Sinha would have happened now, probably he would have got more space than he got. Surely he deserved more. But then again, probably he wouldn’t have taken up films which made him an icon among his niche viewers who took pride in sporting a ‘Bangali-aana’ (the cultured Bengali persona) which is so rapidly disappearing these days. Sinha chose to remain humble, always reclusive and impeccably restrained, another trait of a bygone era. He chose to be a small man in this world. But his films ensured that he had always been big. It was us who never could give him his rightful place.
- Amitava Nag
( Another version of this article was first published by www.dearcinema.com on 18th January 2009)
Siddharth: The Prisoner … at Cross-purposes
I was the only person in the cinema hall watching Siddarth: The Prisoner, a scenario I have always fantasized about – an auditorium all to myself, the national anthem played only for me, an attendant taking an order for popcorn during the interval – all just for me, a truly fabulous experience. However, it is very unfortunate that any filmmaker must face this, especially someone who is trying to do something out of the box, that too within the purview of mainstream Indian cinema.
In a country where every second film director has delusions of being a genius doing something unique, ‘different’ being that half-assed buzz word, at least Pryas Gupta in his debut film has actually tried something interesting, even if there are, unfortunately, problems along the way.
What is interesting is Gupta’s willingness to begin the film from a point in the lead character’s life when he is released from jail, without giving us any back-story. Here is a tale unfolding completely in the present. The main reason I appreciate this effort is because the director has managed, unlike many others in our cinema, to achieve a kind of tonality, feel and mood needed for the way he is looking at his subject. In order to deal with and portray the monotony that the lead character Siddarth cannot escape, the filmmaker evokes that feeling both by his use of visuals, and the score by Sagar Desai.
I believe that, in cinema, faces tell their own story and Gupta has used both the main players Rajat Kapoor, playing Siddarth, a writer, and Sachin Nayak, playing Mohan, a cyber-café employee, to fine effect. The performances are not typical and will be problematic to many viewers but in my opinion they work just right for what the film is aiming at.
Unlike many directors who use grunge vacuously to be hip, the cinematography by Mrinal Desai helps make the squalor an integral part of the film and the life the characters are subjected to.
While not obsessed with the bourgeois need to experience technically pristine visuals, I think the HD (on which the film was shot) transfer to film is problematic. There seems to be a fair amount of jitter and some colour flashes. I hope true seekers will not be too upset by this.
The main problem however with the film is that the plot mechanics come in the way of making it a truly interesting cinematic experience. The narrative – which deals with the quest of the protagonist to be truly free by getting rid of all his needs, both financial and creative – seems to have some noir-inspired elements and keeps disturbing the tone which is so essential to the film. Especially towards the last third, it really destroys the purer aspects of the film.
Reviewers, both TV and print, seem to have dismissed the film for the oddest of reasons like wanting to know the back-story of the character or cribbing about the monotony of the proceedings that seem, according to them, to go nowhere, without even bothering to think about what the filmmaker was trying to do. If they had words of praise, it was limited to phrases like “visually good”, an easy escape route considering no one seemed to talk about the context of the photography.
I really think, with all its serious flaws, Siddharth is still worth a watch. One should encourage young filmmakers with honest intentions who try to make a difference instead of those humbugs that we have no dearth of. Maybe they will reward us one day.
- Kiran David
Dev. D …and Reflections on…
I often wondered if the time would come when I would have to write a piece on a film that I do not like, made by someone who I am friends with, and whose work I normally support. It really is scary as I know people who have lost friends. Anurag Kashyap is someone I place a lot of hope in as far as Indian Cinema goes and I also see him as a kindred spirit.
Having said that, I think the true allegiance of both filmmaker and viewer should be to the art in question, in this case Cinema.
A contemporary reworking of Devdas, a sort of Bengali potboiler by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay – this is a text that has been approached by Indian filmmakers many times over, in various languages, with the kind of reverence more appropriate to classics. The writer himself, as my learned Bengali friends tell me, seemed to have a low opinion of the book that has over time become most closely associated with him.
When adapting a book (whatever its merits – dubious or otherwise) for a film, I have always believed that just translating it slavishly into film is meaningless. A filmmaker should appropriate the text and make it his own, filtering it through his/her particular artistic sensibility. Apart from this, the adaptation should also expand the possibilities by which the viewer can experience the work. Films that readily come to mind are Godard’s Prenom Carmen that updates Carmen of Merimee’s story and Bizet’s opera to the 80s, but reworks and strips it to its essence to explore its themes. Another example is Rivette’s Hurlevent (Windswept), a film version of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, which goes beyond any other film adaptation of the same text in evoking the characters of Catherine and Heathcliff (called Roch in this film). Rivette changes the time and place in which the story was set, interestingly not to the 80s when the film was actually made, but to the early 1930s, and creates a masterpiece. Similarly, one of Rivette’s greatest works, the four-hour long La Belle Noiseuse, is based on Balzac’s Unknown Masterpiece, in which he explores the artistic process to its tiniest detail. Buñuel too adapted in the mid-50s Wuthering Heights – a favorite book among the surrealists – in his film Absimos de Passion. This was in his Mexican period. Using the existing story, he converted it into something unique and unmistakably Buñuelian despite a very meagre budget. Twenty years have passed since I saw this film, yet the memory of the experience lingers. Derek Jarman’s Tempest, based on Shakespeare’s play, is a wonderful evocation of the magical world contained within the original text, which allows the viewer to enter it from a completely different set of perspectives. The common thing about all the works I’ve mentioned is that the original texts have been adapted and changed in time, space and structure, sometimes even context, and in so doing have emerged as unique, original works each bearing the unmistakable stamp of the director, while extending and exemplifying the director’s body of work both thematically and stylistically.
With Anurag Kashyap’s Dev. D unfortunately we are left with nothing but a superficial reworking of Devdas. It does little to the source other than contemporize it in the most obvious of ways and make it hip to people with limited imaginations and a vocabulary that begins and ends with “IT ROCKS!” – which must be the most infantile figure of speech since the first Neanderthal belched.
Broken into three chapters based on the principals Paro, Chanda and Dev. D, the first is the only one that seems to work, if not entirely at least reasonably, thanks in large measure to Mahi Gill and the character of Paro that Kashyap has created.
As the film progresses it just meanders, using unnecessary devices that do not add anything to enrich the narrative. The whole MMS scandal, though borrowed from real life incidents, does nothing for the Chanda character – it just looks like a gimmick to justify her actions. Very often the film tends to go out of the way to explain and rationalize things, probably to cater to unthinking audiences and sham critics, something that No Smoking – Anurag’s best film to date – generally avoids. Unlike No Smoking, the reason Dev. D has been received well by its audience is because they have the plot to hang on to and the back-stories to give them comfort.
Despite being a passionate and attentive filmmaker, many of the scenes in this film do not seem to have been worked through well enough. The end, when Dev. D decides he loves Chanda, seems too pat and does not achieve the state of grace that such a realization should have come with. It seems to be a shallow posture that’s geared to please an easily-deceivable audience.
The other big problem with the film is that while lust is supposed to be the driving force of the film it curiously shies away and trivializes it and makes it comical. I’m not looking for the erotics of genitalia en regalia but the filmmaker should have explored this aspect seriously, considering it is one of the themes running through the film.
While what Chanda actually does in the brothel is probably of no concern to the narrative, if things like a BDSM scenario is being used, at least let it not be used like a pathetic joke just to entertain morons. I do not think even the people concerned with the film know anything about the aspect of The Theatre Of Pain, nor understand the fundamental need some people have for physical pain using basic and unsophisticated devices like cigarette burns and blades. If it was intended as a way to be vacuously cool and impressive, then things like Violet Wands or Waternberg’s Wheel could have been used to give it more edge and visual flair, rather than the tired whipping that Kalki Koechlin dispenses.
Similarly, the scenes of intoxication seem to lack any sort of imagination. Neither the alcohol nor cocaine usage has any differentiating quality. Using subjectivity for depicting intoxication is something that needs to be seriously worked on and it is very difficult. Here the easiest way out is taken. Gus Van Sant too falls prey to it in a couple of scenes in Drugstore Cowboy in which the really powerful moments are when he films Matt Dillon’s response to the various drugs he consumes, each moment exquisitely realized. In Dev. D, even if Abhay Deol has had these experiences in real life, they just do not show on screen.
Unlike Kashyap’s earlier film – where his references fuelled by anger, hurt, and an unfettered ego, work perfectly, each one connecting to something larger, creating interesting narrative arcs – sadly in this film they persistently fall flat.
As far as performances go, Mahi Gill fares the best and is convincing whenever she appears on screen. Kalki Koelchin, while an unusual presence, somehow does not seem to work at all beyond her physical being. Abhay Deol does give a sincere and technically good performance and is miles beyond Shahrukh Khan’s Devdas which looked like an attack of apoplexy. However the one problem Deol has is that he lacks the ability to hold an audience, something essential to cinema. Pauline Kael, once comparing the young Robert De Niro to another talented actor whose name I don’t remember said, when you see De Niro act you get the feeling that something is eating him, and when you see the other guy act you wonder if he is eating pizza.
The music by Amit Trivedi is quite refreshing and often funny and entertaining.
What I really loved about Dev D., though isolated from the body of the film, were the TWILIGHT PLAYERS – Messrs. Sinbad Phugra, Ammo ‘Too Sweet’ and Jimi ‘The Quiff’. I’d pay to see them again. They were amazing.
The funny thing is that Kashyap managed to make No Smoking from the bowels of mainstream Indian cinema, which to be honest is quite a feat. I’m sure the producer must still be trying to figure out what hit him. Yet with Dev. D he seems to have worked with a production house that appears – at least on paper – more educated, sophisticated and claims to respond to somewhat better cinema – but see the outcome.
While I hate Bhansali’s work with a passion – and while I also know that if I were told my life would be spared if I saw his Devdas instead of Dev D. I would without hesitation see Anurag’s film – still, in a curious way, I think Sanjay Leela has appropriated the novel within his aesthetic more successfully. Sad but true.
Like No Smoking, Dev D. too is personal in that it is a reflection of who the filmmaker is and what he is going through currently, but somehow the story and his personality seem to be at odds. And unfortunately, nothing unique seems to happen due to this dissonance. There are external elements, like the desperate need to please, that seems to have crept in and destroyed what may otherwise have worked. Probably Anurag was hurt by the response to his previous film and felt a need to be accepted. However, this is not justifiable when what is at stake is the quest to be an artist. The reason why over the centuries artists have been viewed as something special is because they are true to their art and the inner truth they possess, for which of course there is hell to pay. Today this does not matter. Anyone seen in the media seems to have arrived and is treated like a god by the public. There are a plethora of these kinds of ‘celebrities’ – from filmmakers to TV personalities to painters to mealy-mouthed RJs and wannabe-writers. There will always be people and false artists who justify creating works as consumer products, to appease audiences who consume like swine, without thinking. These people possess large reserves of energy with which they can wear down people of sensitivity and tell you how concerned they are for the common man and that challenging work is pretentious. But this does nothing but help create masses of unthinking consumers that will, over time, have serious repercussions. An unthinking people only benefits politician, dubious religious activity, television and mediocre dabblers. If works of art can make this mythical common man think it will be a beginning. It could even facilitate a ‘climate of thinking’ which would greatly enrich other aspects of our existence. I am not saying you need to only make art cinema, many great filmmakers have come out of commercial establishments like Hollywood and created cinematic landmarks, and to really appreciate their work one has to be attentive to more than just the obvious. In fact in Histoire du Cinema Jean Luc Godard says that Alfred Hitchcock is the only poet who made money. It is important for us to know and recognize that such poetry can exist beyond the apparent narratives.
Anurag will soon have to decide which path he needs to take or he stands in danger of becoming a part of that large amorphous mass that pats each other’s backs. I honestly hope he gets out of this zone and moves on to something significant. It is an artist’s duty above all else to make an audience think, whatever the idiom he works within.
In any case, for people who desperately respond only to hip rubbish, we have Danny Boyle, the latest Indian on the block with his Oscars, and Anil Kapoor with his Armani Suit.
- Kiran David
Slumdog Millionaire : Half-Boyled Cinema and Other Ruminations
Prologue for no particular reason:
Walking out of PVR Mulund down the stairway after watching Slumdog Millionaire I overheard a slob tell his family (who probably had their brains fried with watching too much television) that the film was great but would hurt Indian sentiments. If I had the balls I should have kicked him on his jelly bum and sent him flying down the stairs.
I do not remember the quote exactly, but Billy Wilder in an interview in his later years said he did not take shots that made middle class morons say wow. Unfortunately Mr. Danny Boyle has made a career doing exactly that.
While his first film Shallow Grave just about passes muster, thanks mostly to its cast, it was in no way unique. There are many better films dealing with similar themes, including A Simple Plan by Sam Raimi. By the time Boyle made the iconic hip Trainspotting he exposed his vacuity to any one with half a brain. This is not to say many did not consume it wholeheartedly and hail him as the MAN.
Like a handful of British filmmakers, particularly the ones who have come through advertising and TV, Boyle believes in glibness and over-producing a work which may seduce fools who consume but in truth do not experience cinema. Being glib works in the afore-mentioned idioms as they are communication tools which aim to deceive. However, in a more evocative medium like cinema, it just destroys. Unhappily, there is a vast audience who loves this kind of thing.
Coming to his latest mediocrity Slumdog Millionaire, a very tedious rags-to-riches tale of a slum kid who makes his millions on a TV Quiz show, the film is probably most closely related to Trainspotting replete with a shit-pot dive. The biggest problem is that it exists beneath any kind of debate. Audiences have been divided into people who think it’s a masterpiece and others who feel that Boyle exploits third world poverty. To be fair to the director, I do not think he is consciously exploiting poverty nor tarnishing India’s image despite Armond White (one of the few western critics who seem to have seen through the film) calling him a “poverty pimp with an avid”. But the sad truth is that despite its acclaim, popularity and awards it is plain ordinary. It lacks any quality and is just simply innocuous. It is neither good nor does it have the personality to be bad.
The rapid cutting does nothing but display the director’s banality and lack of imagination, and his inability to evoke anything. Despite being an old codger, I do not have anything against frenetic cutting like many others of my age, but it should work and there are directors doing it very effectively. Cyber punk films of Iishi Sogo, Shinya Tsukamoto’s early work, and sections of films by Takeshi Miike, particularly the prologue of the insane Dead Or Alive all use maddeningly wild cutting, but unlike Boyle’s mechanical representations, they rattle you and evoke something that truly enriches the work. Boyle lobotomizes his viewer with his technique and cloying sentimentality, and deceives both his audience and the art he claims to serve. A better filmmaker may use similar techniques but arrive at something unique separating the artist from the salesman or the pimp.
There is an idiotic belief among some audiences that rapid cutting and dazzling camera angles are modern and hip, but let us not forget that many silent film makers did it to fine effect over eighty years ago. A few months ago I saw Battleship Potemkin after almost thirty years, three times in a row and finally shut my system in a state of ecstasy hopping about the room like a rabbit. This despite the propagandist nature of the film. I mention this just to point out that Danny Boyle, despite his popularity and fake hipness, is far from being the Real Thing.
Shot in real Mumbai slums, the director’s aesthetic or lack of it manages to squeeze the life out of the images he uses. This harms Slumdog even to a greater extent than it does his other films. We are left with dead, almost graphic representations of images that could have breathed and pulsated.
The cast, with the exception of perhaps the slum kids and even they are filmed to be cute, are very ordinary, and the less said about Anil Kapoor and Frieda Pinto the better, let them bask in their delirious ignorance.
Even the sound, music and song are strictly functional but then again sound for ninety percent of films worldwide has a dubious function. Pookutty is, I think, a bit more subtle in Slumdog than in the local films, at least the ones I have seen…but….? And if Celine Dion could win an Oscar for that Titanic thing why not Rahman, who among the Indians associated with this film, at least behaves with dignity and decorum.
I am not surprised that the West has lapped up this drivel with glee; every now and then they need a fix of the Cinema of the Deprived to warm the cockles of the heart and make them experience generosity in all its melodrama. While there are many great films dealing with poverty, they lack the kind of audience support that something mediocre like Slumdog gets, thanks largely to the high level of illiteracy and posturing of the media. Also ignorant audiences who gain knowledge wolfing down substandard supplements on DVDs and hack internet sites which have created an odd culture that gains faulty knowledge without experiencing cinema the way it is meant to be.
What is shocking, however, is India’s reception of the film. Our media seems to have gone gaga over it. We seem to have adopted Boyle and naively believe that it is an Indian film winning the Oscars, which itself is quite often a dubious award. The perennially hilarious Barkha Dutt and her NDTV circus put on the most unintentionally comic show with the cast and crew of Slumdog. For a moment, I thought that poor Anil Kapoor, now on cloud 9, and who mistakenly thinks he has contributed to the glories of cinema, was going to sing the classic film song from the 1958 film Phagun – ‘Ek pardesi mera dil le gaya’ (‘A foreigner has stolen my heart’) to his dear Danny Saab, while the channel blokes wag their behinds to the tune of Prince’s ‘Sexy motherfucker shaking his ass, shaking his ass, shaking his ass’ playing in their minds.
With this newfound Indian adoration, Danny Boyle himself seems to be all over the place with a lost expression that reminds me of Captain Willard’s [Martin Sheen] description of Mr Clean [Laurence Fishburn] in Apocalypse Now – “The light and space of Vietnam really put the zap on his head. ”
It’s time we in India realize there is something called ‘Cinema’ even if they do not win Oscars, Golden Globes, and other trashy honors, or are not showcased on tacky TV shows with their ridiculous hosts. We have had greater filmmakers some no longer alive like Ray, Ghatak Aravindan, we have Mani Kaul who did some very interesting work in the first part of his career, before his narrative phase. There are also a couple of younger film makers who, though still finding their feet, need to be considered. All of them are worthy of far greater respect than the said Danny Boyle.
In case, like the boy in Trivandrum who was disappointed to know I was an Indian, you prefer to see films made by foreigners on India, then Louis Malle’s Phantom India series, Rossellini’s Mathrubhumi India 1955 and Renoir’s River (despite the casting flaw of Radha) are great and superior works.
Rumour has it that Danny Saab and Anil Kapoor are planning another film in Mumbai, and why not. Even if he wins all the Oscars, he will never get the treatment in his country that he gets here. He may even win Padma Vibhushan and why not, perhaps even an impromptu Bharat Ratna before the Oscars, something even Ray got in hindsight after his lifetime achievement award from the Academy
My only wish before he starts his next film is that someone gets Boyle to dive into a paan-stained unwashed shit-pot before he makes another film, maybe then he could find the truth…but would he dare to?
- Kiran David
Heimat 2:The Second Homeland
Years ago, probably in the late 80s of the previous century, I was fortunate enough to see Edgar Reitz’s eleven part TV Film Heimat at the Max Mueller Bhavan in Kala Ghoda, Mumbai.
Set in the fictional village of Schabbach in the Hunsruck area of Rhineland Germany, the story of Heimat begins in 1919, at the end of World War I and ends in 1982, chronicling the years between through the lives of the Simon family, their friends and relatives.
The title is partly ironic in its reference to the cloying Heimat films made during 50s postwar-Germany, with their rural settings, sentimentality and simplistic ideals.
While being well received, it was, in some quarters, accused of sidestepping key issues like the holocaust. While not directly dealing with this, I think the criticism is unfair because one senses the effects of Nazism looming over the village and affecting the people and shaping their lives and decisions. At a running time of about fifteen hours, Reitz’s film is proof (along with Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz) that interesting things can be done on television.
Sometime in the early 90s, I heard that there was a Heimat 2: A Chronicle of a Generation, and strangely, I was skeptical of it being any good, and never really bothered to locate and see it. People who had seen it did not endorse the project either. However, a recent screening of it literally blew my mind. Not only was it good, but in many ways it was a better work than Part 1.
The original German title Die Zweite Heimat (wrongly translated as Heimat 2) actually means The Second Homeland, which carries a much more loaded inference.
Beginning in 1960 Munich, it breaks away from the thread of the earlier film, and follows the life of Hermann Simon [Henry Arnold], the son of Maria and her wartime lover Otto. Hermann leaves Schabbach after his family ends his affair with an older woman Klarchen, swearing never to return. Herman is the central figure around whom the work revolves, but it also follows the lives of various artists who are both primarily and peripherally connected to his life, musicians, poets and filmmakers trying to find their voice in the 60s.
Divided into thirteen parts and about twenty-six hours in length, it pulls us into the question of artistic endeavor. I do not remember seeing any film that deals with young artists with such affection and understanding. While they are shown as uncompromising adults who see themselves as Gods hoping to create a new art, be it in music or cinema, they often flounder and are plagued by doubt. As artists they are uncompromising (or hope to be), yet as young men and women they are so human, experiencing all the insecurities and jealousies of young love.
Being set in the 60s, the time when the filmmakers of the German New Wave were in the process of emerging, Reitz seems to have an in-depth understanding of the time and the milieu – there are references to the Oberhausen manifesto, the beating up of young free spirits by the cops, the Bohemian spirit of the times and above all, the quest for pure unfettered art.
The film also deals with the rift between the protagonists and their parents’ generation. There is an intense hatred for what they believed their parents stood for and they hold them responsible for Germany’s past including the terrible Nazi era. This is most harrowingly addressed in the relationship between Ansgar Hertzsprung [Michael Seyfried], possibly the genius of the group who dies early, and his parents. The slogan from the Oberhausen Manifesto – ‘Papa Cinema Is Dead’ – seems therefore to go well beyond cinema and comments on the nature of the prevalent situation and the unbridgeable rift.
As affectionately as Reitz deals with the artists and their quests, he seems rather harsh when dealing with politics, and the youth who lean toward the left. Particularly when dealing with Helga Aufschrey [Noemi Steur], he gives her an abrasive persona and you get the feeling that her political beliefs exist to offset her inability to get love from Hermann. Similarly Kathrin Schops [Carolin Fink], the leftist and hippie, seems to forget all her communist posturing after fucking Hermann.
For me as a viewer, dealing with the political side of the work put me in a quandary of sorts. Unlike Godard who treated his protagonists of the 60s (with all their foibles and inconsistencies) with great compassion, Reitz almost seems mean towards them and pushes them toward caricature. One reason could be that Godard’s films stemmed from the moment whereas Edgar Reitz film is viewing the moment from a distance of thirty years, having experienced and seen the history of the left up to the 90s. Secondly, there could be some truth, cynical as it may sound, in people gravitating towards ideology to seek comfort, without the necessary beliefs based on reason, something that I often noticed and talked about as a student in the 70s.
Another problem, though minor, is the director’s use of dreams which often strike a false note. Clarissa Litchblau’s [Salome Kammer] dream of the cello’s f-holes etched on her back just does not ring true, even though it foreshadows events later on in the narrative. The last chapter when Hermann seems to traverse a dreamscape populated by the people he knows also creates confusion instead of working like a coda of sorts.
While the character of Hermann is the glue that holds the work together, each of the thirteen parts foregrounds one of the major characters. The cast is handpicked and works beautifully, each actor generously contributing even in episodes where they have small parts. Some of them are not actors, Reitz has cast musicians in many of the key roles so that they look and feel comfortable while playing the instruments of their choice.
Despite minor discrepancies, this is a monumental work, where protagonists seek their homeland in the art they love. Heimat 2 ends with Hermann still in a quandary, searching, and finally going back to Schabbach, reminding us of the first film when Paul Simon leaves, passing to my joy on his way into the village Glasisch Karl [Kurt Wagner], my favorite character from the earlier film.
So finally, I hope to see Heimat 3: A Chronicle of Endings and Beginnings soon, which begins with the fall of the Berlin Wall and Heimat Fragments which uses, out-takes from the three films as well as new footage.
- Kiran David
The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai: Politics in Pink
Japanese erotic cinema, known as Pink Cinema or as Pinku Eiga in Japan, has always been an interesting genre for many reasons.
Beginning sometime in the 60’s, and still flourishing, it is essentially soft core porn, about an hour in length, generally shot in 35mm, with a stipulated number of sex scenes popping in with almost clockwork precision. Until recently, pubic hair and genitals were a no-no and were often fogged, pixilated or composed to conceal. Unlike anywhere else in the world, the directors of these films have artistic ambitions and hidden agendas which they weave into the narrative, so that for the attentive viewer there is more to see than the obvious.
Another trait of this genre is that it is treated purely as a consumer product and is most often junked once it finishes its run. Few of them leave the shores of Japan in search of a wider audience. Some films that do go abroad have their titles changed from the obviously lurid to politer versions.
However, some films have survived time, especially the works of Masaru Konuma, Tatsumi Kumashiro, Noboru Tanaka and Seiichi Fukuda, working within an erotic frame and very often using fetishes that cater to the Japanese male. Remarkable directors like Nagisa Oshima, Koji Wakamatsu and Shoei Imamura have worked political themes through seemingly erotic films, without forsaking formal rigor. Many young Japanese directors who worked in this idiom have also graduated to making more important films.
More recently, in the 90’s, Takahisa Zeze, Kazuhiro Sano, Toshiki Sato and most importantly Hisayasu Sato, known as the Four Devils, have been doing interesting work within the confines of the genre, often going beyond its limitations.
Some of these films are visually striking; some, while subverting the idiom, are works that are thematically interesting; and some, as in the films of Hisayasu Sato, are disturbing.
The most current crop of directors, post the Four Devils, includes Mitsuru Meike, whose film The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai is the film I’d like to look at.
Meike’s film is a bit of an odd-ball, released originally in 2003 under the title Horny Home Tutor: Teacher’s Love Juice. The film is about a gormless role-playing call-girl who, during a shootout, gets a bullet in her head that lodges itself in a part of her brain. Overnight she becomes extremely intelligent, discussing philosophy and mathematics with academicians. Thrown into the mix are Korean agents, Middle East arms dealers, war footage, George Bush and a cloned finger of Bush that can trigger off a nuclear holocaust.
With its domestic success, the director got permission to expand the film to a feature- length of about 95 minutes and changed its title to The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai. The film was sent to festivals in 2005 and gained some sort of appreciation and cult status.
While visually not as interesting as the work of some of the previously mentioned Pink directors, its take on the politics of George Bush is quite bizarre. With TV channels devoting excessive time to even the most criminal of politicians, this film puts the king of them all in the place he deserves to be. Besides appearing on a TV screen as a cut-out Japanese-spouting face attached to a body, his cloned finger with the US flag painted on it violates Sachiko Hanai’s privates in a futile search for something, not unlike American antics in Iraq. The images of Bush reduce him to the right-wing Christian cretin he really is, which even Michael Moore could not reduce him to. The film ends with nuclear warheads flying through the sky to the tune of the American national anthem sung in Japanese!
Audiences will probably find the film sexist and the sex gratuitous, but these are the given genre conventions. However Meike seems to treat the sex either in a comical vein, stripping it of any eroticism, or making it look very drab. Politics, however bizarre, is what he seems to be aiming at within the idiom he works in. Even in the trailer, which is hilarious, he is shown talking to the Japanese Prime Minister’s Office, asking if Junichiro Koizumi would be fine with his idea of using Bush as a character in a soft core porn film, and whether it would affect the friendship between the two leaders, a moot point as the Japanese supported the US in Iraq. He also tells the PMO that if he succeeds with this film, he has a chance to move up in life and make other kinds of films!
Despite its formal limitations, Sachiko Hanai may work as a satire in this insane world where politics is practiced and reported by comic book characters. And a film with the exchange quoted below may not, perhaps, be all that dumb.
Young boy: SACHIKO, IS SEX REAL?
Sachiko Hanai: I DON’T KNOW. THE PLEASURE OF IT IS GREAT, EVEN IF IT IS VIRTUAL.
- Kiran David
The Dark Knight – Obviously
Christopher Nolan, as lauded as he is for his various films, is for me a director who, over the years, has mastered obviousness. Being mechanical may be his second, though slightly lesser, virtue.
For reasons strange, I seem to have seen most of his films, from Memento to the current film The Dark Knight, none of which seemed to hold any resonance for me. When I mention this to friends who love him, I am told the great work is his first film which I have not seen – The Following. Somehow, as unfair as it seems, I am sceptical.
My first foray into Nolan’s work was Memento, the clever but tediously mechanical film that goes backwards because it’s cool. As far as this format is concerned I much prefer Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible, however dubious its intentions may or may not be, and the fascinating Peppermint Candy by Lee Chang-Dong which uses the reverse-storytelling technique to evoke a life and a period in Korean history.
Insomnia, Nolan’s remake of the very interesting Scandinavian film with the same title directed by Erik Skjoldbjaerg, was just awful. While it tells the same story as the original, Nolan’s approach to the film leaves nothing to the imagination. The scene at the end, in which the young female cop gives Al Pacino her reason for not turning him in, is a hoot. It is also a scene that defines Nolan’s sensibility.
Next on the list was Batman Begins which I will not waste any time going into.
After missing out on Prestige (maybe the film I ‘should’ see) I girded my loins and bought a ticket for The Dark Knight, the latest Nolan opus.
To be fair, at a basic level it is quite entertaining and more watchable than his other films, definitely more so than Batman Begins.
However, my grouse is the obviousness with which he tells his story. There is no subtlety, the many themes he touches upon are thrust down our throats, things that would have been implied by better directors are verbalized by his characters in absolute terms, leaving no space for the viewer to commune with the film.
On the other hand Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, the best film made on the superhero, evokes its themes in a subtle way. The visual scheme explores the darker side, the otherness of the lead character, and the psychological complexities of the supporting characters, or if you prefer, the baddies. Each of them, be it Batman, The Penguin or Catwoman, all seem to have multifaceted and sometimes conflicting natures. There is a kind of reticence that informs their actions, however blatant they may appear to be. Each of Burton’s characters seems to carry within themselves a solitude and maybe even a sort of melancholy. Burton often seems to catch them on the wrong foot, making the film a much richer and more organic experience.
Burton seems to have mastered the art of evoking the outsider, a theme that runs through all his work. He has the skill to absorb his source material and create a work that reflects his internality and vision.
Nolan’s admirers and fans keep harping that he has succeeded in bringing Batman to the real world, reflecting contemporary global issues, but he is working within an art form, however commercial, and a work without resonance is nothing. In any case, the Burton film, though set in an unreal environment, deals with concerns that interest him personally, some of them mirroring society.
The late Heath Ledger works well within the film’s structure, and is often the reason that one stays interested in the film. I suppose there will be endless debates as to whether he or Jack Nicholson plays the definitive Joker. Taken out of their individual filmic contexts, it is a difficult question to answer. However, I feel Ledger’s performance adds to The Dark Knight whereas Nicholson’s somehow takes away, derailing Tim Burton’s Batman in more ways than one.
Maggie Gyllenhaal is effective, and it was a pleasant surprise to see Gary Oldman play a regular guy. In fact, I took some time figuring out it was him! Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are, as always, untainted by any project, however banal.
Coming to Christian Bale, an actor who normally works well even in awful films like The Machinist, and whose work I’ve admired from the time he was a young boy in Empire of the Sun to Velvet Goldmine and the more recent I’m Not There ; Bale somehow falls flat here both as Bruce Wayne and as Batman. He lacks the complexity and the dark ambiguity that Michael Keaton brings to his interpretation. I believe, Bale has agreed to work on the next instalment only if Nolan directs. I hope he grows up and moves on.
As I mentioned earlier, the film is watchable, with the zap of the contemporary Hollywood flick, despite some dubious cross-cutting in the first part of the climax and a rather tiresome extended second climax with the Two-Face character.
One hopes that one day Nolan will graduate from being the Auteur of the Obvious to someone who understands the richer textures of cinema even if he continues to work within its popular idiom.
- Kiran David.
