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August 29, 2009

Book Nook: Scorsese On Scorsese

Posted by Just Another Film Buff under All Posts, Books, Hollywood, Review | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Scorsese On Scorsese
Martin Scorsese (Edited by: David Thompson and Ian Christie)
Faber and Faber, 1979
 

“But prayer is really dealing with what you have in the home, dealing with the family, how you raise your children, how you relate to your wife. May be that’s what prayer really is in the modern world”


–    Martin Scorsese (Scorsese on Scorsese, 1979)


Scorsese on ScorseseAmazingly, last night I had the most memorable dream of my life and the best part is that I remember all of it in detail. I was at Scorsese’s house and talking to the man himself about the cinema in India and the deteriorating state of old regional films. How about that?! Dr. Freud would immediately remind me that I had finished reading Scorsese on Scorsese just the day before. Whatever the case is, reading Scorsese on Scorsese is best approximated as an extended conversation with the director. In fact, editors David Thompson and Ian Christie have done a splendid job by keeping factual autobiographical details to the minimum, presenting them as small italicized snippets between Scorsese’s talks, hence removing any hindrance for us to speak with Scorsese the man and Scorsese the director. Though compiled from a set of lectures and interviews the director had given around the world, Scorsese on Scorsese never gives you the feel of an authoritative person directing you towards what you have to know. Instead, Scorsese recollects events, almost from the top of his mind, lets us interpret and thus get to know the man and his films more.

Divided into six chapters, the first of which details his childhood and teenage memories and the rest taking us virtually through the making of each one of his movies, Scorsese on Scorsese is a joy ride for any film buff. There is much humour throughout the book and at times you almost hear Scorsese break out with his characteristic and infectious laughter. Many would agree if I say that Scorsese is one of the biggest film buffs of the world and this opinion is established as a fact in these texts. There is almost no line in the book where you don’t hear the man come up with a movie comparison or a simile that is related to the movies. Even in the most commonplace of statements, like feeling sick on the sets (“…I was coughing on the floor and sounding like a character from The Magic Mountain”), recalling parking problems (“…but destroying things as in a Godzilla movie”) or describing the streets of New York during summer nights (…reminds me of the scene in The Ten Commandments, portraying the killing of the first born, where a cloud of green smoke seeps along the palace floor…), Scorsese’s never flagging enthusiasm for the cinema surfaces.

Scorsese on Scorsese is a must-read for anyone who doubts Scorsese’s status as a genuine auteur. As one moves along in the book, one sees that all of Scorsese’s characters have a bit of Scorsese in them and could be seen as extensions of his personality in a fictional world (Be the screenplay officially by Schrader, Price or Minion, Scorsese invariably seems to have had a hand in their final versions). Although the book covers the directors career only till New York Stories (1989), one can see the same phenomenon carry on in his later films too. As Scorsese goes on explaining how each movie, each scene and each set piece came about one can actually see the deep influence that his childhood and teenage has had on his thought process and his vision of the world. He elaborates on what made him take to priesthood and then the transition to cinema (He says: “In my neighbourhood, the people in power were the tough guys on the street, and the Church. The organized crime figures would tip their hats to a priest and watch their language, an they would have their cars and pets blessed”).

This book was compiled just after The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) hit the screens and it is evident that the whole book centers itself on this event. Right from the unusual introduction chapter, which recounts the events that preceded the release of the controversial movie, one can see that the authors intend to take a look back at the director’s career standing at this historical point. The concept of religion is also manifest in Scorsese’s talks throughout the book as he subtly reveals how his experience during the days as a young priest, away from the meanness of the streets, shows itself in almost all his early films. Be it overt as in Mean Streets (1973) or underneath as in Taxi Driver (1976), the idea of God and religion, Catholicism in specific, seems to be always present, mostly in the form of a hope for redemption, in his movies. In hindsight, The Last Temptation of Christ almost looks like a confrontation of sorts with his own inability to reconcile between what he learnt in the Church and what he saw in the streets.

Another interesting thing is that even though he has had to put up with a lot, Scorsese never dwells on the difficulties much. Yes, he does talk about them in detail, but he makes all his travails sound like simple trivia and things of distant past. It is remarkable how he has earned the title of a major Hollywood director (in spite of his legendary association with New York), especially after his near ostracism by the studios after The King of Comedy (1982). He makes the trouble he had shooting After Hours (1985) and The Color of Money (1983) sound so amusing that one tends to overlook how appallingly tough it must have all been. The book complements these accounts with loads of rare, behind-the-scenes photographs from his movies, the complete story board of the final scene in Taxi Driver drawn by the director himself and other stills from famous movies, including the ones he cites as inspirations, placed side by side as if the director himself is showing us what went through his mind when he made those compositions. There is even a still of Michael Jackson and Martin Scorsese in discussion during the shoot of Bad (1986)!

During the course of all this recollection, Scorsese talks about some abandoned scripts and some ideas for future that now seem so fascinating. He talks about a script called “Gangs of New York” that couldn’t be realized (and which eventually got made in 2002 perhaps with much change), he mentions that he doesn’t really want to do remakes (he made Cape Fear (1991) almost immediately!) and that he was immensely influenced by the music in the Moroccan film Transes (1981) (which has now got restored by the World Cinema Foundation headed by him and shown online for free!). Those who still think that Scorsese has sold his soul to Hollywood of late, I think, would see that The Aviator (2004) is as personal a movie as Taxi Driver or Raging Bull (1980) once they read this book, or rather this memorable evening of reminiscing with Scorsese. At the end of it all, it feels like if Scorsese had indeed taken up priesthood as a profession, which seems to have seemed very likely, the world would have got one good priest more but one great director less. Now, what kind of an unfair exchange is that!

 

Verdict:

P.S: Scorsese on Scorsese contains one of the greatest forewords that I have read. I type it down for you here:

What’s Hecuba to Him?

The first Martin Scorsese film that I saw – or that saw me – was Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. The actors were directed with assurance. There was not a frame wasted. I said to myself: Michael Powell, you’re going to have a good time – this man knows where he’s going and you’re going with him. On the screen we were entering a fast food emporium, with two splendid actresses volleying words and phrases at one another. It was like watching a singles match on centre court at Wimbledon, between two champions. I hadn’t seen match play like this since I saw Pat and Mike.

We screened Taxi Driver. ‘Stop! Stop!’ I said. ‘Who’s that devilish actor who plays the Devil in the scene with Robert De Niro?’
‘That’s Scorsese.’ Said my friend, who had arranged the screening.
‘What! Can he act too?!’
He smiled, ‘want more?’
‘Is there more?’
He nodded vigorously. ‘Much, much more.’

He arranged a screening of Mean Streets. It was in a little projection theatre off Wardour Street, London WI. There were four of us and the projectionist. When the screening ended, we looked at each other, stunned. The five of us crossed a narrow street and went into a pub that was just on the verge of closing. Nobody else was there. Still we said nothing. There was nothing to say.

All art is one, and every artist owes a duty to his art. We can’t all be masters, but we can know a master when we see him, because he has something to say to us, and sooner or later imparts it. The difference between these films of Martin Scorsese’s is that with Alice and Taxi Driver he handles the materials like a master; with Mean Streets he is in direct contact with the audience, from the beginning to the end. This is the rarest gift given to a movie director. Most directors, however wise, however experienced, however resourceful, however bold, don’t have it and never will have it. Marty always had it.

He has this great, generous gift of creating a situation for an audience, and sharing it with them. He is the ventriloquist and his doll, the singer and the song. In his latest film, Life Lessons, Marty performs the same miracle, he is the painter and his palette, he is the pupil and the master, he is the cunning of the fox and the innocence of the child, he is the voice of the tape deck screaming ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’.

When Hamlet sees the tears in the Player’s eyes, and asks Horatio:

What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba
That he should weep for her?

he is asking the same question that we ask of ourselves when Scorsese, in The Last Temptation of Christ, gives us our first glimpse of that hill called Golgotha. For, as the tears spring to our eyes, we know that we shall see that hill again, and then it will be our last sight on earth – and his.


Michael Powell
March 1989

 

August 22, 2009

Book Nook: What Is Cinema? Vol. I

Posted by Just Another Film Buff under All Posts, Books, Review | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |
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What Is Cinema? Volume I
André Bazin (Translated by Hugh Gray)
University of California Press, 1967

 

What is CinemaYes, I know this is the “inferior” translation. But hey, this is all I could get my hands on. But surely, the translation isn’t the bottleneck in understanding what the author is saying, for Bazin himself makes things tough with his analogies and references! Taking examples from almost every field of science and arts – from chemistry to Comédie Française, from geology to Christianity – he stacks one argument upon another, turning down existing critical principles and builds a vision of cinema that does not care as much about the artist’s vision as it does about faithfulness to reality. Presented as an anthology of selected essays from the author’s original four-volume work Que-est-se que le Cinéma? (1958-65), this translation by Hugh Gray has received a lot of flak after the release of the Caboose edition. But the historical importance of this translation remains unquestionable and the book still remains an immensely insightful introduction to the work of arguably the world’s most revered critic.

The anthology begins with the small chapter titled “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” where Bazin traces the need for plastic arts, especially cinema way back to the time of the kings. He argues that it is mankind’s ambitious need to preserve the living and hence achieve immortality that has caused the arts to associate themselves to the reality of the world. He pins down the origin of this practice to the Egyptian craft of mummification and then gradually draws out the evolution of the other arts right down to cinema and photography.  He illustrates how photography indeed freed painting from its ambivalence by allowing it to retain artistic abstraction and leave faithfulness to reality to photography (“…for photography does not create eternity, as art does, it embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption.“). This chapter, in fact, becomes the base for all of Bazin’s theory in the rest of the book, establishing his unshakeable faith that the power of cinema lies in its property to reproduce reality without any form of human interference.

In the subsequent few chapters, he builds on the first chapter and analyzes what reality and cinema mean to each other. In an interesting section, he puts forth the argument the introduction in sound in cinema was not actually the biggest turning point. He says that the dichotomy that existed was not between the talkies and the silent movies, but between films that relied on reality, like the films of Erich von Stroheim and the ones that were trying to do precisely the opposite, like the Expressionist cinema. He further points out that the introduction of sound was a mere technical triumph that enabled cinema to move one step closer to absolute realism. Carrying the argument forward and considering both extremes – spectacles concocted purely in reality that is faithfully filmed by the camera and spectacles concocted by montage which cuts out facets of reality that may hamper the truth of its world – he examines the advantages and limitations of montage where he exemplifies how montage and its avoidance alter cinematic reality and how montage should be used depending on the context of the sequence filmed.

But what the book primarily concerns itself with is the relation that cinema bears to contemporary arts like literature, theatre and paining. Almost half the book is devoted to studying how cinema absorbs and contributes to literature and theatre and how this phenomenon is just a symbiosis among the arts. He argues that although the relatively infantile cinema plunders themes and tales from literature, it is literature that gains audience. Furthermore, he lashes out against dogmatic purists who readily shrug off theatrical and literary adaptations that are faithful to their source. Bazin stands in support of adaptations that are faithful to the source and whose concerns are not merely providing a mutation through cinema. Using a separate chapter titled “The Stylistics of Robert Bresson”, which is more concerned with exploring the relation between Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest (1950) and Bernanos’ novel than with Bresson’s mise en scène and ideology, Bazin establishes the invalidity of existing comparisons between literature and their cinematic adaptations. To quote the author himself:

“But Le Journal has just proved to us that it is more fruitful to speculate on their differences rather than resemblances, that is, for the existence of the novel to be affirmed by the film and not dissolved into it. It is hardly enough to say of this work, once removed, that it is in essence faithful to the original because, to begin with, it is the novel. But most of all the resulting work is not, certainly, better (this kind of judgment is meaningless…) but “more” than the book. The aesthetic pleasures we derive from Bresson’s film, while the acknowledgement for it goes, essentially, to the genius of Bernanos, includes all that the novel has to offer plus, in addition, its refraction in the cinema”

A third of the book is taken up by a chapter titled “Theater and Cinema”, which inquiries in detail what precisely is the difference between the two media is. Strongly supporting Laurence Olivier’s Henry V (1945) and Jean Cocteau’s Les Parents Terribles (1948), Bazin slams the overused critical term “Filmed Theater” and elaborates on the features that separate theater from cinema and why the films that he supports are indeed true to the cinematic medium. He does not agree that it is the mere presence of the actor that makes theater unique, as proposed by earlier theorists. Instead, he postulates that it is the knowledge of being watched – for both the performer and the audience – that forms the basis of classical theater and the one facet that makes it distinct from cinema. A lot of arguments in this chapter went over my head, for Bazin frequently throws in examples from contemporary and ancient French theater to underscore his point. But it is clear that Bazin’s discussion boils down to his theory that that theater space is essentially a showcase of unreality (or a different reality) while that of cinema is true reality.

There is a minuscule yet extremely insightful essay on Charlie Chaplin where Bazin deconstruct the tramp and throws light on the social, cultural, comic and cinematic aspects the iconic figure. He stresses that Chaplin would have been a great theatre actor, but his stint in cinema wasn’t, in any way, less brilliant. He illustrates how Chaplin used the medium to not merely photograph a theater act, but to overcome the limitations of theater and derive maximum comic effect out of film editing. That said, one must also acknowledge that the selection of essays from the original French anthology could have been better or at least arranged in a more streamlined fashion. Since Bazin’s canvas of references is huge, spanning several centuries and fields, it is difficult for me to assess the exact outcome of this reading experience. At the end of it, one feels like having read more about other arts than cinema. It is as if Bazin is pruning down all that is not cinema, but usually associated with it, to bring to surface the real meaning and power of the most popular medium – exhausting what is not cinema to derive what is cinema.

 

Verdict:

P.S: You can read some part of the book here

 

August 14, 2009

Brotherf In Armf

Posted by Just Another Film Buff under All Posts, Bollywood, Review | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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Kaminey

Ingloriouf Baftardf
(Image courtesy: India-server.com)

The protagonist of Vishal Bhardwaj’s Kaminey (2009) tells during the beginning of the movie: “We are never screwed by the paths that we take, but by those which we don’t”. And at the end of the film, this is exactly what must be told of Kaminey too. The idea behind Kaminey is inarguably great – so great that each one of us who hears it would be tempted to elaborate on it, make our own version of it and provide a whole new dimension to it. The sad thing is that that is precisely what has happened. With much hype behind it, Kaminey has proved to be yet another idea wasted, but is sure to have its own takers claiming everything, from Shahid’s six pack abs to its pretty neat soundtrack, as a reason to celebrate it as a masterpiece. Cinema is often called a “collaborative art” and Kaminey serves to prove that the real challenge is not to produce art, but to derive it out of collaboration. What would make for a more interesting movie than Kaminey would be a film about its making, for it is surely going to be funny seeing too many people trying to incorporate their own vision into the film, leaving the director helpless.

(Possible spoilers)

Here is the plot for those who would like to know what the film is about. I’m pruning down a lot of details which Bhardwaj seems to have retained for the sake of filling the runtime of the film. Guddu and Charlie (both played by Shahid Kapur) are twins. Guddu is working in an NGO, spreading awareness about HIV/AIDS and is in love with Sweety (Priyanka Chopra). Sweety is pregnant with Guddu’s child and is the sister of Bhope (Amol Gupte), a fundamentalist politician who is now hell bent on getting rid of Guddu to stabilize his position in the party. Charlie, on the other hand, is a gambler and a small time crook. He dreams of having his own horse-race booking company and hopes to grab hold of lady luck by whatever way he can. His villain is Tashi (Tenzing Nima), a high-profile gangster with international connections whose “goods” fall into the hands of Charlie. There are also some two dozen characters who enter the screen now and then, laugh manically, get shot and get forgotten. And yes, their paths cross, things (are made to) happen and they live happily ever after.

Kaminey is written by four people and it shows. Remember the game we used to play where each one of us took turns to add one line to take the story forward? Now remove all the fun from that and voila, you have the script of Kaminey. This proverbial broth absorbs a specific character from each one of its cooks, but doesn’t have one of its own. Nor does it present memorable characters in it. May be Bhardwaj was trying to create a Pulp Fiction (1994) of sorts, but the result is far from it. His characters are quirky for the sake being quirky. May be their names do allude to some movie classics, but you almost hear them crying out: “Hey there, I’m a offbeat and kinky character. Please love me and imitate me”. Neither are they employed as abstractions to make large scale statements about the world as in “arthouse cinema”, nor are they distorted and caricatured to pay homage and refer to film history as in Pulp Fiction and nor are they used to summarize the spirit of the age. They are not even real people living in all three dimensions. Characters come and characters go. Peripheral characters have their own limelight and die without a trace.

Let me try to clarify what I mean by summarizing what “each script” of Kaminey wants to be and what it turns out to be. The first of these was the potential USP of the film. Kaminey is full of Bolly references. Two brothers, who love each other, growing up on either side of the law, a larger than life baddie who vacations in exotic locales while giving orders to pull the trigger elsewhere and even a climax where almost all the characters in the film start firing at each other, while the bad bro turns martyr to save his sibling – we’ve seen them all before. What Kaminey seems to be trying is to pay tribute to and give a reboot to this Masala Noir genre while attempting to retain the sensibilities of today’s generation. But such a film ought not to take itself seriously. Instead it has to go for the laughs, all the way. This is where the second thread of Kaminey intervenes. One might argue that Bhardwaj was trying to give a slick production like Raghavan’s superb Johnny Gaddaar (2007), but characters in such films, I believe, should never be psychoanalyzed. Look at each character in Gaddaar. What do they all want? Simple. Money. Each of them is a mere placeholder, a mere entity that is driven along by the plot, its uncertainties and well, its fate. Kaminey, on the other hand, earnestly elaborates on the characters’ motivations and dreams, trying to make us empathize with them. It even presents extended Freudian sequences for this “purpose”.

[Kaminey Trailer]

Kaminey is then a character-driven film, you say? Let’s take the case of Guddu and Sweety – the two characters that the writers may claims as having depth. Apart from their one night-stand, we are given about three short scenes that are supposed to illustrate their relationship. The first of this is a perfunctory “chemistry scene”. The second one, which turns up just after the fiasco at their marriage ceremony, seems like just another ploy to siphon sympathy. And wait till you hear what the laughable basis of their romance is, in the third scene which takes place in a train. And finally, the most annoying of all the contributions is what makes the already out of control film seem overreaching and pretentious. With a tacked up message that blows up to full scale during the final shootout and cooked up observations that would make Thomas Friedman scratch his head, Kaminey shows signs of a naughty liberal chuckling his way through. Kaminey is not four films packed into one, but one film torn apart into four. Even if it had stuck to one of those paths, Bhardwaj would have had a pretty decent bullet point in his resumé.

Everything seems to come in pairs in Kaminey. There are pairs of brothers everywhere in the film. I would have even loved if the rapper-gangsta from Bombay to Bangkok (2007) showed up in Kaminey to claim that Tashi was his half-brother! But seriously, Kaminey never capitalizes upon this opportunity anywhere in the film. Let me just tell you about a couple of points in the film where I thought it could have taken the “other path” and salvaged itself to an extent. The first is at the intermission point, where Guddu and Charlie are confronted by wrong sets of goons. There was scope both for some awesome comedy and awesome suspense there. Not by the regular identity-confusion gag (and if the film’s vision was strong, that too), but by some subversion of conventions and morals. Instead, the film opts for some slapdash rush towards the climax, which is the second time I felt that the film could somewhat reset itself towards the destination it wanted. When more than a dozen characters are present on your canvas for a single scene, it’s very easy to mash it all up and that is exactly what happens. But this could have proved to be gold if only Bhardwaj had decided to stick to the true purpose of the film.

I may be just playing the troll over here, but surely, none of the scenes hold together. Each version of the film’s script seems to pull down the other, taking the film into a zone of utter indecisiveness. Kaminey, unfortunately, does not even have the surface gloss of Dev D (2009). Using ill-focused, largely handheld shots, Kaminey betrays both its history and quality. One can’t even comment on the technical aspects of the film, for the script leaves them without a direction. So it remains a mystery whether the excessive number of close-ups did good to the film or whether Bhardwaj’s device of revealing the past towards the end was apt, for the film does not seem to know what is good for it at all. All that is amusing in the film is the way Shahid Kapur makes lisping sound funny (lisping is new, stammering is out of date, you know). As for Vishal Bhardwaj, it is only good that he now returns to his personal and honest way of storytelling, for god sake, having a say on the final script. I risked Swine Flu by going to this movie and I say I deserve a medal.

 

Verdict:

 

August 1, 2009

Silken Dreams

Posted by Just Another Film Buff under All Posts, Cinema of India, Review | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Weaving Gold...

Weaving Gold...

In some ways, Priyadarshan’s Kanchivaram (A Communist Confession, 2008) reminds of another film that released the same year – the Oscar winning Departures. Not only because these films are two of the best melodramas of recent times, but the fact that both these directors had been making pornographies, real or figurative, for quite some time. A while ago, looking at Priyadarshan’s series of inane films, one could almost joke that Priyadarshan is distracting us while he is laying the groundwork for some sinister master plan. Only that it has come true. In Kanchivaram, he creates a film of high cinematic and dramatic values that I wouldn’t think much about calling it ‘the’ movie Indian cinema has been waiting for. Having witnessed, now, that Priyadarshan’s film can lick Departures any day, it is only saddening to recollect that they sent that educational video about dyslexia for the Oscars. Not because the Oscars are the greatest recognition for movies or that the Academy would have easily nominated Kanchivaram (which is actually unlikely), but the fact that we should be careful about the quality of films that we choose to give a boost to.

Priyadarshan’s script, quite simply, follows the life of Vengadam (Prakash Raj), a silk weaver in Kanchivaram, Tamil Nadu during the pre-independence era. Vengadam is one of the best weavers in that region and has just got married to Annam (Shreya Reddy). The screenplay gradually adds detail to Vengadam’s every day life until Vengadam and Annam have a daughter Thamarai (Shammu). At Thamarai’s naming ceremony, Vengadam, as per customs, avows that he will adorn her in a silk sari during her marriage.  And this event becomes the focal point of the story, the object of desire for our protagonist and the fodder for some neat writing by Priyadarshan. The narrative starts two days after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and we see Vengadam, now in the police custody, being taken somewhere. The film shuttles between, ironically, the pre-independence era and the newly independent nation as Vengadam recollects his past during a bus journey. This is one of the most worn out devices in cinema but, surprisingly, it works for Kanchivaram because it tells us beforehand of Vengadam’s fate and in essence, removes the unnecessary element of suspense from, what would turn out to be, a character-driven movie.

Evidently, the facet that stands at the podium is Priyadarshan’s script, which perhaps is the kind Indian cinema has been having a go at, unsuccessfully, for years now. Stringing together a chain of massive ironies, honest observations and relevant details, Priyadarshan concocts a script that doesn’t merely derive its characters like many a potboiler, but lets them evolve. That is to say that it doesn’t just take its characters through preordained dramatic checkpoints, but allows them open up at their own pace. Save for the two inevitable turning points that are required to stitch up the three acts, never does Priyadarshan feel the unwarranted need to see the story through to a climax just for the sake of it. Rather, he relies on accumulation of detail to unravel Vengadam’s world. Consider the scene when Vengadam presents the worker’s petitions to his “boss”. Or the scene where he declares the protest. Or even the scene where he and his daughter get caught throwing pebbles at a bystander. One would otherwise have expected a spat of sorts in each one of these petty situations. Instead, Priyadarshan squelches every possible avenue of exaggeration and manipulation.

KanchivaramThat is not to say that Kanchivaram is not a melodrama. On the contrary, I believe, it is precisely how a melodrama should be. The word “melodrama” has been used very loosely and often as a derogatory remark. Most of our mainstream movies have been put down because of the same reason, and rightly so. Where these ordinary films tried to exaggerate emotions through copious amounts of words, leaving no margin for discovery or imagination, Kanchivaram lets cinema do that for it. Its exaggeration is not the weak over-emphasis of words, but the subconscious amplification by images. Priyadarshan realizes that subtlety is the essence of art and places immense trust on his audience, yet never lets the movie lurk near ambiguity. His melodrama is not made of music cues or slow motion shots, but of cinematic compositions. Consider the final scene where Thamarai, who had earlier taken over the responsibility of taking care of her father from her mother, breathes her last. Vengadam takes her in his arms to show the sari he has been weaving for her. Earlier in the film, Vengadam had does exactly the same thing when his wife is in her death bed. Instead of having Vengadam break down, and cry out aloud the unfairness of it all, Priyadarshan merely uses the same camera angle – looking at the pair of actors through the weaving machine – to nudge our memory, make us work and only then earn the tragedy of the moment.

But what is most striking about the script, which treads a very risky and usually avoided territory in mainstream cinema, is the way it examines what politics means to common man. Even though the novel idea of communism aids Vengadam to realize that he is being exploited, in summary, it amounts to nothing. Personal, emotionally charged motivations overwhelm conscious political ideologies. Importing an alien political system without any concern for existing social structure has resulted in more harm than good. In fact, reminiscent of what fellow Keralite John Abraham did three decades ago in Agraharathil Kazhuthai (1978), Priyadarshan explores the implications of porting any foreign system to suit a completely different environment. The caste system, which was initially used to classify professions, has mutated into an organized system for exploitation, which is passively accepted by both the oppressors and the oppressed. There is even a subplot in the film, which acts as comic relief and satire at the same time, where a policeman, who is to take charge of the convicted Vengadam, finds the official emblem dislodged from his hat and panics at the thought of losing his job just because of that.

KanchivaramAlthough attention-craving at places, Priyadarshan’s direction shows the signature of a mature director who knows his craft. He seems to know where exactly to use expressionist lighting and where to focus deeply. Speaking about cinematography, Kanchivaram would not be what it is without the contribution of three fine pieces of work. The first is Sabu Cyril’s production design. Though aided considerably by what looks like post-production processing, Cyril nevertheless does a terrific job in creating a uniform earthy tone to the film which eventually blends into the red of communism that later becomes the central point of the film. All the people in the film – the leads and the junior actors – look straight out of grandpa’s albums, with clearly defined facial features. The second is Thiru’s cinematography, which speaks for itself. This veteran cameraman had already proved his worth in Hey Ram (2000), Kanchivaram is just second witness.  And equally noteworthy is M. G. Sreekumar’s soundtrack, which is befitting of the period and shuttles between classic Carnatic, which was at one time everyman’s art, and emphatic choral, going hand in hand with the communist theme of the movie. But needless to say, the greater credit goes to the director for retaining the necessary and weeding out the superfluous.

The performances are all fine (except for Prakash Raj’s diction, which sometimes betrays his roots) and would be the first things to amass praise. But I find it kind of funny that a Malayalam film director casts a Kannada actor and a Telugu actress as the lead in a Tamil film! Talking about languages, it is also interesting that Priyadarshan sets his film in Tamil Nadu and not Kerala, given that communism is central to the plot of the film. And one more thing, I would definitely have loved see more of the actual weaving process, the machines and the graceful movements of the workers who churn out such world-class products, just in order to sink into the world of Kanchivaram. Priyadarshan does show these images early on, but cut away too early to have any effect. Furthermore, with clever use, these gestures could have well increased the vitality of Vengadam’s character manifold. Well, let’s just stick to what is present in the movie, which itself is pretty darn awesome. I may be slightly overrating this movie, but what the heck! We are not going to see such an uncompromising Indian film for a long time to come. No, not from Priyadarshan at least. De Dhana Dhan is slated for a 2009 release.

 

Verdict:

P.S: Here is a hilarious article by an American about his experience of working as an extra in a Priyadarshan comedy.

(pics courtesy: Impawards, Rediff, Salisbury International Arts Festival)

 

July 14, 2009

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen Review

Posted by Just Another Film Buff under All Posts, Hollywood, Review | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |
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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
 

Verdict:

 

June 20, 2009

Book Nook: Something Like An Autobiography

Posted by Just Another Film Buff under All Posts, Books, Cinema of Japan, Review | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Something Like An Autobiography
Akira Kurosawa (Translated by Audie E. Bock)
Random House, 1983
 

“I am not a special person. I am not especially strong. I am not especially gifted. I simply do not like to show my weakness, and I hate to lose, so I am a person who tries hard. That’s all there is to me”

– Akira Kurosawa (Something Like An Autobiography,1983)

 

Something Like An AutobiographyThe artist is a typed individual. It is always comfortable for us to outcast him and envisage him as a hermetic loner, scribbling about in the wilderness. Why not? History testifies regularly that great artists often succumb to the battle between personal and professional lives. This preservation of the artist as an enigmatic figure also serves partly to assuage our need for heroes. Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, too, probably would have been the stuff of legends before the world got to know him through his intensely intimate book Something Like An Autobiography. Kurosawa was at the twilight of his career when he wrote the book and he was, clearly, a man with nothing to lose but his vanity. Kurosawa pains an immensely honest portrait of himself, trying as objective to be possible, sometimes even being overly harsh on himself.  Reading the book, one is only surprised that it was this very person who made those fierce Samurai movies!

Divided into many small chapters, Something Like An Autobiography follows Kurosawa’s life right from his birth (!), through his “crybaby” days, his rebellious phase and to his jumping into cinema. With enviable clarity and memory power, Kurosawa recalls even minor incidents that the normal minds do not register. His trips to the ladies toilet (yes, that’s right!), his first encounter with Sake, his friction with the sports teacher and his clash with the local gang of brats are all memories that the reader wishes he had had.  However, not all memories are as sweet. Kurosawa’s years following his decision to leave home and his life during tumultuous times of the second big war are but some of the most horrifying experiences a youth can experience. Kurosawa explains with utmost calm his harrowing period as an editor of an underground communist magazine and the exceeding financial crunch he experienced during that time.  But what takes the cake is his eternally burning rage against the Japanese board of film censor for whom he reserves the choicest of worlds in the book.

In fact, with only a little effort, Something Like An Autobiography could be easily turned into a dramatic film script. Kurosawa, the man he is, handles the whole book somewhat like a scriptwriter or a director would. Consider the passage where he is about to introduce his biggest influence – director Kajiro Yamamato. Kurosawa directly cuts to Yamamato’s deathbed where the latter asks how his assistant directors are behaving on the sets! This minimalist urge to drive home the point and put the audience immediately into the midst of the context clearly shows up in his films too (He mentions a similar incident that he did for the opening scene of Stray Dog (1949)). Special mention has to be made for the translation by Japanese film scholar Audie E. Bock who has successfully has managed to convey perhaps exactly what Kurosawa intended without resorting to verbose intertitles or unwarranted western phrases.

The most evidently surprising thing about the book, written in 1983, is the timeline it covers in Kurosawa’s life. The book proceeds chronologically and ends with a chapter on Kurosawa’s first international success, Rashomon (1950). The post-Rashomon period is completely missing, not even superficially present.  One can perhaps say that the rest was history. But the bigger Kurosawa mystery still persists. What was his state of mind during those troublesome years following the debacle of Red Beard (1965)? Why did he part ways with his favorite actor Toshiro Mifune? Why did he seek out foreign aid for his later films? Kurosawa’s not even willing to bring those questions into picture. You can’t blame him though. He clearly states early on that this book is only something that resembles an autobiography, not an account of what all happened. It would perhaps be fitting to call it a self-portrait than an autobiography – one where the author chooses to illustrate what defines him (and not what is defined by him) with equal measure of subjectivity and objectivity.

But on the other hand, his childhood days are allotted significant amount of space. Kurosawa mentions in the preface that if he had to write a book about himself, it would turn out to be nothing more than a talk about movies. But Something Like An Autobiography is far from that. With the exception of one chapter, there is almost no mention of films that he adored or influenced him.  Instead, Kurosawa basks in his reverence for his elder brother Heigo, his teacher Seiji Tachikawa, his mentor Kajiro Yamamato and his lifelong friend Keinosuke Uekusa. He spends a lot of time reminiscing his pre-cinema times, his trips to the country side, his memories of the Great Kanto Earthquate that shattered Tokyo and his stint at the Keika Middle School. But it is in these apparently casual escapades that we get to know Kurosawa’s inspiration as a filmmaker. In hindsight, one can see why there are almost no parents or kids in his films, why his scripts have always had a patriarchal tendency, why the female figure is regularly absent and why his heroes have mostly been angry and lonesome youth. Perhaps, Dreams (1990) is the cinematic equivalent of Something Like An Autobiography.

Kurosawa emphasizes that everything that is to know about him is there is his films. Interestingly, everything that is to his movies is also present in this book. Brimming with humour (including the laugh-out-loud kind) and pathos, Something Like An Autobiography takes you through a quintessentially Kurosawa emotion ride. It would not be a mere coincidence if you envisage Kurosawa as Mifune while bumbling with cold and hot water at a bathhouse or find Kurosawa meeting Tachikawa after 25 years as moving as Shimura sitting in the snow on that swing. He describes his fond acquaintances with as much love and enthusiasm as for his characters. One does feel at the end of the book that he/she has known Uekusa, Heigo and even Yamamato for years. But most importantly, it becomes clear how Kurosawa and, perhaps, many such stalwarts are as tied to this very world as we are. However, not one ounce of respect is lost as Kurosawa disarms himself to reveal what he really is. On the contrary, one only reveres him more as he passes through the purgatorial gate of Rashomon.

 

Verdict:

 

May 29, 2009

Book Nook: Film As Film

Posted by Just Another Film Buff under All Posts, Books, Review | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Film As Film: Understanding And Judging Movies
Victor F. Perkins
Penguin, 1972
 

Film as Film

V. F. Perkins’ Film As Film is like that invisible little kid in the last bench who stuns the class one day. The smallest of all the books in the pile on my shelf, Film As Film nevertheless offers insights and information that perhaps the others, put together, can’t.  Divided into nine chapters, the book discusses broadly about the history of film criticism, importance of form in movie making, criteria for assessment of narrative cinema, issues about authorship of a film and the need for judgment of films. Written with an intention to view films independently as films and not as a mishmash of other art forms, Perkins’ book, to a large extent, shows that “cinematizing” a piece of literature is far from “visualizing” it. Using examples from popular Hollywood cinema, especially those of Preminger, Hitchcock and Nick Ray, he elucidates the role of a director and the importance of mise en scène n a film, without ever making it look like a class textbook.

Perhaps the most surprising of all the chapters, “Technology and Technique”, takes up a subject often ignored by historians and theorists. Perkins illustrates how a study of history of cinema entails a study of not only the history of photography, but also that of projection. He examines how the invention of photography brought in realist concerns (with reality being a unique property of the photographic image) into the already popular projection techniques – from the Magic Lantern to the Kinetoscope. He proposes an interesting argument, emphasizing that cinema existed even before the invention of the camera, whose properties were merely absorbed into the existing techniques. Furthermore, Perkins explores how the advancement in film technology gave directors a wider range of choices and hence provided a better measure of the talent of the filmmaker. Consequently, he argues that technology has never been a huge limiting factor as far as the maker’s vision is concerned, although it made sure that clarity need not imply crudity.

There is another impressive section called “Direction and Authorship”, where Perkins speaks about the collaborative nature of cinema and the role of the director amidst various dissenting voices and thought processes. He cites various examples where the creativity of the director is brutally marred by the norms of the production house and also those where the final product shines much more than one would have expected from the talent of its director. Perkins’ point is not to discredit the director or to prove that it doesn’t belong only to him, but that one must concern himself only with the coherence of the finished film and not with the means used to achieve it. He says: “Provided that a film has its own unity, it seems unimportant whether the unity was evolved through cooperation and compromise within the production team or conceived by one man and imposed on his collaborators.”. He insists that a freedom from the studio system does not necessarily warrant quality and conversely, a director working under the obligations of a contract need not sacrifice his personal vision and style, however alien the content is.

But the USP of the book is clearly the first few chapters where Perkins analyzes the development of film criticism and the dichotomy that subsequently developed between those who insisted that films exploit unique cinematic qualities and those who believed in the capturing of reality without the artist’s abstraction. Though, initially, I found myself supporting the early theories of Rotha and Eisenstein, Perkins manages to convince how most of these orthodox theories were, actually, pulling a potential art form into some sort of scientific practice. It’s amusing to see how divergent these two schools were. One championed cinema that moved closer to reality and the other praised films that moved as away from it. One placed artist as the centre of creation whereas the other, the world. Kracauer’s quote perhaps sums up the entire atmosphere: “…the intrusion of Art into film thwarts cinema’s intrinsic properties”. Perkins distances himself from both the theories and even holds the orthodox one with a bit of contempt.

The second part of the book mainly concerns itself with the understanding and judging of films, based on certain criteria that Perkins suggests. And this is where I found myself a bit disappointed by the otherwise masterful book.  Perkins suggests two principal elements when judging narrative cinema – coherence and credibility. The issue of coherence in cinema’s narrative pattern is quite an intuitive one and one wouldn’t at all object to Perkins’ claims. But, additionally, he argues that films must, first and foremost, be true to the world they construct and its actions within them must first be befitting of the reality of that world, strictly obeying causality and rationality. Perkins’ theory limits itself to mainstream narrative cinema and clearly disallows symbols for the sake of symbols, self-reflexivity, Brechtian disengagement and many other modernist principles. Further, it proves weak when trying to judge a bad film. The theory devises a sufficient condition for films to be good but not really a necessary one.

However, Perkins vindicates himself in the excellent last chapter titled “The Limits of Criticism”. He neatly illustrates the drawbacks of the theory and clarifies that it must primarily be used for testifying why a film is good rather than why one is bad (“Within the positive criteria suggested, a critical argument which demonstrates coherence must, other things being equal, take precedence over one which does not.”). This is quite evident from Perkins’ attitude that clearly stands against critics imposing a structure on the filmmakers. One could even say that he considers criticism to be slightly subservient to filmmaking. He seems to be of the opinion that film criticism only enriches itself with movies that push the envelope and can successfully judge only the films that are conventional enough to fall within its established norms. He even mentions at one point that film theory is not the theory of film making but of film criticism. In essence, Film as Film becomes a book that urges one to enjoy a good film for the right reasons, but not one that allows the readers to berate bad films, even for the right reasons. There is nothing more to ask for, especially if you are one who wants to love cinema for what it is and not how it could have been.

 

Verdict:

 

April 22, 2009

Book Nook: The Cinema Of Abbas Kiarostami

Posted by Just Another Film Buff under All Posts, Books, Cinema of Iran, Review | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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The Cinema Of Abbas Kiarostami
Alberto Elena (Translation: Belinda Coombes)
SAQI and Iran Heritage Foundation, 2005
 

“Film begins with D. W. Griffith and ends with Abbas Kiarostami”

– Jean-Luc Godard

 

The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami

Thus reads the cover of Alberto Elena’s book “The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami”, one of the very few books available in English on the works of the Iranian auteur (the only other renowned book is by Jonathan Rosenbaum which is rebuked by some scholars, according to this book). Before anything, I have to say that the book succeeds right away – by giving an update to the film world about the status of those elusive early Kiarostami films that seem to visit certain festivals now and then. I’m not sure if this is one of the best books on an Asian director, but I can testify that this is one of the most well researched books that I’ve read. To get a measure of what I’m saying, consider this: more than a third of the book is dedicated to foot notes, references and bibliography! Mr. Elena meticulously grounds his arguments and theories on numerous articles, theses, interviews and other books, hence developing an unchallengeable set of inferences and managing never to be speculative – an achievement indeed.

Mr. Elena explores Kiarostami’s films in ways that the western critics have seldom cared for. He carefully avoids (and sometimes criticizes) the terms the west uses to describe Kiarostami’s films – humanist, neo-realist, experimental, artistic and universal, to name a few. He takes a stance against the filtering of these movies using western norms and theories. Not once is a comparison to a western filmmaker made or a movement or technique from Europe recalled to elucidate analyses. Mr. Elena emphasizes Kiarostami’s desire to engage the audience in order to complete his films without ever reminding us of similar works of European filmmakers (Bertolt Brecht is not even mentioned in this context). He regards Kiarostami as a truly “Iranian” filmmaker with genuine social and political concerns. In order to justify his position, Mr. Elena refers to a plethora of native Iranian critics who have very aptly pointed out the influence of various facets of classical Persian art on Kiarostami’s works.

This, precisely, is the biggest strength of the book and a critical value-add as far as literature on Kiarostami is concerned. Mr. Elena resorts to Persian poetry – both classical and modern – and demonstrates regularly how Kiarostami’s work is closer to poetry – especially the overtly visual haikus – than any other form of art. He takes examples from Jalaluddin Rumi, Omar Khayyam and Hafez to illustrate Kiarostami’s preoccupations with the illusory nature of everyday reality and the inevitability and the possibilities of death. With the same conviction, he also establishes the influence of the modernists (the new poetry movement of Iran) – Forugh Farrokhzad and Sohrab Sepehri in poetry, Amir Naderi in film and Sadegh Hedayat in literature – on his own films and poetry. Additionally, Mr. Elena draws parallels between Kiarostami’s use of “human figures” and the Persian miniature painting.

But the most rewarding aspect of Mr. Elena’s linking of Kiarostami’s works to the Persian art is his illumination of the Sufi themes in the director’s works. Always (and quite naturally) overlooked in the discussion of the films, the Sufi influence is what makes Kiarostami films very “Iranian”. The emphasis that Sufism places on journeys – inner and physical – evidently finds its way into many of Kiarostami’s films. Kiarostami’s protagonists are almost always seen traveling in cars but what is more important is the metaphysical journey that they subconsciously embark on. Mr. Elena analyzes the various elements of the “Sufi journey” such as the presence of an omniscient Pir (guide) and closeness of man to nature and to the present that are present in some form in the director’s films. This way, he places in perspective even the most obscure and taken-for-granted components that define these works.

As an added bonus but also an ineluctable facet while charting Kiarostami’s career, The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami examines the political situations in Iran right from the Shah’s oppressive rule, through the Islamic regime that had its own shortcomings, to the relatively liberal yet largely unsatisfactory Khatami democracy. Mr. Elena describes how Kiarostami’s prosperous years at the Kanun (the Center for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults) were actually safer from the supply-demand rules of the movie industry and the excessively stringent and often absurd rules of the censor. And more importantly, he studies how Kiarostami’s films have always been conscious of their society and the politics that governs it. Albeit their cheeky and subversive form, Kiarostami’s films, as Mr. Elena points out, have always reflected the politics of contemporary Iran, be it the economic downturn in the pre-revolutionary period as in The Traveller (1974), the educational and domestic structure of the country as in Homework (1989) or the women’s issue in Ten (2002).

However, like a lot of “definitive” books that are hurt by partiality and pace, The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami too suffers from abruptness towards the end. Mr. Elena devotes a large chunk of the book for the director’s early short films and medium length features. In fact, a lot of matter-of-fact readings of the films by western critics could have been completely done away with by Mr. Elena, for all these seem to be products of hindsight and over-analysis. The “Koker trilogy” and The Taste of Cherry (1997), too, are discussed in considerable detail and with formidable authority. But from what may be Kiarostami’s most enigmatic and critical film, The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), the book slides downhill. Once the analysis of The Wind Carry Us is hastily completed, Mr. Elena wraps up Kiarostami’s subsequent features – ABC Africa (2001), Ten (2002), Five (2003) and 10 On Ten (2004) – are wrapped up within a few pages in spite of the fertility of the films. Perhaps be Mr. Elena thought that from these films onwards, there are enough printed materials elsewhere for the readers to refer to (The original Spanish version was printed in 2002).

 
Verdict:
 

P.S.: Here is a gargantuan review of the book at Senses of Cinema (which is even bigger than the director’s bio page at their site) that deserves a review of its own!

 

April 10, 2009

Book Nook: The Altering Eye

Posted by Just Another Film Buff under All Posts, Books, Review | Tags: , , , , , , , |
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The Altering Eye: Contemporary International Cinema
Robert Kolker
Oxford University Press, 1983
 

the-altering-eyeThe title of Robert Kolker’s The Altering Eye alludes to multiple things – the eye of the filmmaker that sees the society, the eye of cinema that observes its own content and the eye of the audience that facilitates a response to the images it witnesses. And true to its title, Kolker’s book attempts to explore the way these “eyes” have altered their own vision, refined the meaning derived, redefined the process of watching images and essentially understand the emotional and intellectual response they evoke. I read The Altering Eye over a period of 3 to 4 months (interrupted by a few other books) and as I finished reading the last passage, it felt as if I had performed a feat. The book, now, seems so detailed, so vast and so verbose that I begin to wonder if all critical books on cinema would turn out to be like it.

The semblance of vastness of the book partly comes from Mr. Kolker’s style of description and analysis. He starts out discussing schools of thought, covering almost six decades, from a very broad perspective after which he adds detail, bringing in specific works during the period and key figures behind them. Additionally, he talks about the themes of the films, dissecting their screenplays and illustrating their position in film history with respect to contemporary and ancestral works. Furthermore, he often narrows down to specific shots, and sometimes even frames, to excavate details that reinforce his arguments. And suddenly, as if zooming back, he moves on towards the next school of filmmaking to examine its style and substance, the deviations from the existing system and the drawbacks that eventually caused its downfall. As a result, you feel as if Mr. Kolker has covered a huge amount of ground with considerable detail.

Of course, I could crib about the exclusion of major directors from Asia and America, who are grossly ignored in the book. But that objection is instantly nullified since Mr. Kolker makes clear the kind of films and filmmakers he intends to dissect and the ones he doesn’t. His primary aim is to study the response of the filmmakers of Europe and Latin America to the norms and methods of the studio-based Hollywood movies. He primarily deals with filmmakers who understand the “genre” so well that they deconstruct it only to reveal its inherent flaws and later, filmmakers whose subjects are very much a function of history, current affairs and the social structures prevalent. Both these types of filmmakers (not mutually exclusive by any means), Mr. Kolker emphasizes, offer a kind of vehement reaction to Hollywood’s methods of holding the audience in an intellectual inertia and its subconscious conditioning of their morals and emotional responses.

For this, Mr. Kolker divides the book into three large chapters. The first chapter titled “The Validity of the Image” kicks off with a quote from Giuseppe Bertolucci: “The Cinema was born with neo-realism”. Although Mr. Kolker refuses to take up the conventional chronology that is used to trace cinema’s growth (with the clichéd Lumiére brothers versus Georges Melies discussion), he actually presents a good picture of the history of cinema in this chapter. He superficially explores how expressionism paved the way for film noir, which lead to neo-realism in a way, which in turn resulted in the birth of the French new wave, culminating in a hybrid form of cinema in the seventies.  But his main focus in this chapter remains on neo-realism as he studies the very many theories that attempted at first to destroy the bourgeois control of cinema and then create a form that captured the reality “out there”.

The next chapter is called “The Substance of Form” and is probably the biggest one of the three. Here, Mr. Kolker talks about redefinition of cinematic forms by directors who attempted to develop an interactive kind of cinema in reply to the reassuring continuity and passivity of Hollywood. He discusses how the directors destroyed, exaggerated and mixed genres in order to make the audience understand and work out what happened and why it happened that way. He covers a variety of experiments including fracturing of narratives, working within conventions to expose its absurdity, refusal of continuity and omniscient gaze and much more. The French New Wave, in particular, is covered in detail with an overview of every major director of the movement.

The final chapter, “Politics, Psychology and Memory”, rounds off the book with the examination of the influence of history, politics and leftist revolutions on the filmmakers of Western Europe.  Basing his arguments on figures like Bertolucci, Losey, Fassbinder and other Latin American filmmakers, Mr. Kolker talks about the way these films studied fascism and its effects on psychology of the post-war world.  He additionally probes how bourgeois complacency, politics of sexuality, memories and residues of fascism and the left’s struggles relate to each other and gradually make their way into many of these films. Mr. Kolker successfully covers both periods – the rise and fall – of the student revolution and observes the changes in attitudes of the filmmakers towards their subject following its failure.

What is most surprising for me about the book is the way Mr. Kolker examines the films to support his statements. Each analysis seems indisputable and like the only possible interpretation after all. He deconstructs a film (or a movement) into so many layers of meaning that it seems like a flawless movie until Mr. Kolker himself puts it down with drawbacks one would have never imagined. As a result, unsuspecting readers like me, who haven’t seen those films or are relatively new to cinema, might get completely carried away with the text. I do not hint manipulation here. Mr. Kolker does provide in-depth discussions of the films but is also careful enough to let the reader carry on with the discussion using the threads he has provided.

Having said that it is a fantastic book on films and film movements, I must also point out that The Altering Eye is not for the causal reader. You will be going through a paragraph again and again or stuck in a section for a long time. But that is because the content of the book demands it. So if you are looking for a book on cinema that you would want to read with ease, this book may not be the right choice. However, if you want to seriously learn about serious cinema, The Altering Eye is absolutely essential.

 

Verdict:

P.S: The whole (!) book can be legally read here

 

April 8, 2009

Beyond The Class Notes…

Posted by Just Another Film Buff under All Posts, Cinema of France, Review | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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To Sir, Sans Love

To Sir, Sans Love

Ever since the ultra-slow moment of lunatic ecstasy took shape in Zero for Conduct (1933), schools in cinema have always been about kids. Everything revolves around them, for good or otherwise. They have been the be all and end all through the decades no matter how complex the scripts got. Even when the films, such as To Sir, With Love (1967), had the teachers as the focal point, the protagonists were always hinged to the acts and moves of the students. Or they turned the table around completely. Some of these films would have this altruistic, uncanny, omniscient and awe-inspiring teachers where the student community is a monolithic entity that served merely as the outlet to emotions. Palm D’Or winner Entre Les Murs (The Class, 2008) (perhaps Half Nelson (2006) too, which I have not seen) breaks all these rules and formulae in a naturalistic and unforced fashion.

The Class is a film where multiculturalism is written right on the face. It does not take the issue as a matter-of-fact as the other films of the year do, but cleverly, builds a premise that enables it to confront it straight on. It does not have a script that tries to be subtle and hence be cheeky enough to implant a message or two. That doesn’t mean The Class does not have a message. It sure does and in loads. It just doesn’t try to hide it. In fact, it attempts to highlight the same. Mr. Cantet avoids the temptation of placing the kids at the edge of the frame and takes them head on (and in focus) as individuals and not as outcasts or marginal. The diversity in Entre Les Murs is not restricted to just nationality or ethnicity, In fact, it goes even beyond the disparities of language, sexual orientation and religious customs, into regions of personal likes and dislikes. To the point where the term ‘diversity loses meaning and it all boils down to individuals, who are like human islands with personalized cultural traits.

The Class presents us two worlds – one each of the students and the teachers – that exist on their own without apparent causality. These are truly independent worlds whose inhabitants have their own problems to attend to, their own private jokes and their own reasons for celebrations. The teachers are assigned a big responsibility of handling multicultural students and that too, in a not-so-reputed school. The teachers have not only to handle this responsibility carefully, but the task of gaining an identity as a teacher in spite of the school. François’ (François Bégaudeau , also the author of the book on which the film is based) personal problems only add to the complication. So do the students, who seem confused about where they belong or who they are. And the class forms the playground for both parties to work within the system and find a place and name of their own.

I believe The Class is a film that has to be watched exactly twice. It is like that stretch of time where you have just quarreled with your friend and you are recollecting what exactly went wrong, only to discover that nothing did. Both the sides and their arguments seem correct upon objective evaluation and the mess seems just like the result of a moment of misplaced subjectivity. This problem arises because the story of The Class is filtered through a highly flawed protagonist. He may psychologically be meaning good, but what his actions at the end of it seem rash and unfitting. So are the acts and intentions of the troublesome Souleymane (Franck Keita). I’m sure that we would have had a symmetrically placed opinion had the tale been told through the eyes of Souleymane. This is precisely the reason I say the movie should be watched twice – in order to understand the two sides instead of passing judgments on them or taking a complacent stand.

The Class works even on a very basic level as it explores the explosive atmosphere between the teacher and the students in the class. This is a very tricky relationship indeed. The teacher tries to cut some slack in order to encourage interaction, ease up his job and ultimately gain reputation among the students. The students being the majority, on the other hand, try to display their wit or skill and get a upper hand in this cat and mouse game. But all this is laid on the foundation of a solid principle. That the adult is always the boss. The kids in Entre Les Murs realize that and try hard to keep themselves in control whenever they can. François too tries not to overstress the principle and to listen to the children as responsible individuals. But a small perceived disturbance, lands to shatter the balance and to provide the dramatic momentum to the film. Funny that this extremely talkative film is the successor of an exceedingly quiet one at Cannes.

The other day, I saw an orphaned girl speaking on TV after she had been admitted to a institution for children. She was speaking in Hindi and was using masculine forms of speech throughout. One could instantly make out the circumstances and environment in which she spent the previous years of her life. The importance of language is a vastly underestimated one and the extinction of languages is as critical as any other issue. The Class is a very talkative film as I said but it is these very words that support its premise. The world seems to have changed so much that the demarcations between the student and the teacher become blurred. They learn French grammar and vocabulary from François. They learn words like “Austrian” and “Argentine” which seems to be much sought after. François learns terms like “honky” and what not from the kids. It doesn’t look like degradation of culture, but rather as the evolution of an alternate culture that has much to teach as the existing one does. A lot of dialectical dialog in the film has gone over my head and understanding that perhaps would help one to see the socio-cultural patterns that are established during the conversations.

There is obviously a pitfall in a situation where a director intends to make broader comments using seemingly minor elements of the film, in this case – the children. One cannot make them too simplistic that it falls laughably flat nor too elaborate such that the elements themselves lose identity (of course, there are exceptions where the intention is not to preserve the elements but to map them completely). Kiarostami’s phenomenal film Homework (1989) is perhaps the bible for directors who want to make film that refuses to compromise on any level. Like Homework, but far less perfect, The Class elicits social, cultural and political structures of the society present outside the school through the interaction and behaviour of the students.

Although there are some forced moments here and there in the film, The Class for a large part is an unpolished film. It does not provide us easy questions or comfortable answers. It carefully avoids all clichés of conventional movies that earnestly move towards a self-congratulatory climax. At the end of The Class, one might be expecting François to pin up the self-portrait of the expelled Souleymane or at least provide a symbolic close to it. No, Mr. Cantel avoids that. Nor does he sweeten anything when the hitherto quiet student insists that she has not learnt anything the whole year. Mr. Cantet is perhaps asking us to see them as they are. Some people just can’t be brought into the clockwork of the system and the system in turn should not pat itself for bringing about the change.

“The System” here may not just denote an educational institution but a larger entity that Mr. Cantet has miniaturized into the four walls of a classroom (Interestingly, “Entre Les Murs” translates to “Between the Walls”). In what may be a metaphor for France itself, Mr. Cantet uses the class to make a commentary on the authoritative mentality of the establishment that tries to impose its values upon its variegated set of inhabitants. Those who don’t conform to the standards set by the system are either marked or expelled. The students feel what the school teaches is irrelevant and outdated, the school feels the what students know is useless and fake. As the whole class – the teacher and the students – vacate the room for winter break, we realize that this ordinary room, which could well have been a hospital, a post office or a shop, was given meaning only because of the presence of the system and its constituents – like our earth that is divided by man-made boundaries with its inhabitants having to adhere to a synthetic feeling called patriotism.

 
Verdict:

 

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