I hear that the term “Baader-Meinhof phenomenon” refers to something that you keep coming across at an alarming frequency after your first encounter with it. This might sound contrived but unfortunately, that is exactly how I felt when watching Germany’s official entry to the Oscars, Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex (2008). If you’ve watched the first couple of scenes, you’ve probably seen the whole film. Deservedly the least successful of the five nominees, The Baader-Meinhof Complex is an exercise in futility that seems to have wasted great raw material for historical, political and cinematic analysis. And looking back to see that this one overtook Gomorra (2008) is only shocking. Don’t worry, I am not going to give you plot details here. This link gives you all the necessary (and more than that) details about the script of the film!
The Baader-Meinhof Complex is an out and out political film as opposed to personal films with political subtexts. Its course has already been defined by the passage of time. Now, the only creative latitude that the director has in these kind of films is in providing dimensions, motives and moral conflicts to his characters in order to understand them. The director inherits the responsibility to explore the subject, analyze it and provide insights into the events from an arbitrary perspective. Take the case of a film that shares some of the content with this one – Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2005). Having got heavily panned for his handling of history in Schindler’s List (1993), Spielberg returns in style correcting all the errors that might have been committed in the latter film. He quite successfully delves into the psyche of a troubled man on whom a national mentality is forced, managing never to be speculative. All the “data” associated with the film – the Munich Olympic massacre, the initiation of the Wrath of God by Mossad and the statistics that would invariably arise with it – take a back seat with minuscule runtime.
Coming back to The Baader-Meinhof Complex. See what plot details Mr. Uli Edel chooses. Activities carried out by the gang, courtroom transcripts, initiation of major figures into the group, counter-terrorist measures of the police team and the members’ trip across the Middle East – stuff that any text book about the period can provide. The only scope of innovation, now, can come in the indoor sequences that actually merge these disparate events. There, too, Mr. Edel does an interpolating job by gathering the consequences of the preceding events and providing the obligatory kick off to the forthcoming ones. Now, a case may be made for the film to be considered as plain “time-pass” or tea-time entertainment, but its own runtime betrays it. One hundred and forty minutes can not be considered a time-pass, especially if the content can be wrapped up in ten.
I’m absolutely OK with on-screen violence if it is used for a purpose – as a motif or as a tool to illustrate additional meaning or at least to imply the futility of it all. In The Baader-Meinhof Complex, the violence is an experiment with the ways a bullet can go through a person. There are probably over a dozen extensively “choreographed” sequences of heavy gunfire and massacre in the film that serve no purpose than to pass (historical) time and to provide some cheap thrills. You can actually predict the routine as in our own mainstream films. SMGs and AKs hog the limelight once the perfunctory events that lead to it are established. It’s almost mathematical in the way the pattern evolves and destinations reveal themselves. You quickly realize how the RAF is, in fact, a shoddy wrapper to the laughable WW2 films from Hollywood, minus the one-dimensional portrayal of the two armies. Yes, credit has to be given to Mr. Edel for at least depicting both sides of the revolution with equal affinity, if not with a reason.
The Baader-Meinhof Complex is a film with fine cinematography, fine editing, fine casting and fine performances but one without a direction. Rather, it is a film with a direction that is already decided by history. As a result, Mr. Edel comes across more as the author of a sensational and often sleazy detailer of events than as a film director with skill or ambition. The Baader-Meinhof Complex is a film without a soul, if you please. If at all Mr. Edel is attempting to say something of his own, it must be that the revolutionaries were as directionless and authoritative as the very system they were opposing. That it was more because of the hip-factor associated with it than the vision of real revolutionaries that anti-establishmentarianism became as widespread as it did. But, except for the last scene that actually salvages the film to a minor extent, these sporadic observations fail to come within the grasp of the film and die off within minutes of birth.
Consider one of the better scenes in the film where the car that Baader steals gets stolen from him immediately after he challenges one of his comrades to flick a purse. There was scope for great analysis following this. In Herzog’s spectacular Cobra Verde (1987), the Kinski character overthrows an existing regime with the help of the slaves of the country only to become its chancellor and indulge in slave trade. A while later, when an associate asks him who the arrested people in the cellar are, he says “Our future murderers”. Here too, a similar situation evolves. It is inevitable that revolution begets revolution. Successful revolutionaries will one day be overthrown by similar kinds. Snatchers will be snatched from. Anarchists will eventually become the system. But the film never capitalizes upon the ephemeral idea. Or the intriguing moment when an officer asks Horst Herold (Bruno Ganz) what perpetuates the evolution of terrorist groups. He replies “A myth”. It sets us ruminating. What myth is he referring to? The Raskolnikovian myth bordering foolishness? The Guevara-esque romanticism? Sadly, the film remains completely oblivious to it.
When one thinks of people like Steve Irwin (“The Croc Hunter“) and Timothy Treadwell (immortalized in Grizzly Man (2005)), it is invariably about the way they died. Some say they saw it coming all the time while some coldly label them romantic fools. But coming to think of it, they perhaps are the happiest kind of people – dying doing what they wanted all their life. And the same goes for the little octopus in Okuribito (2008) that struggles to survive on land and dies serenely when discharged into its habitat. Hijacking the Oscar from strongly tipped films Waltz with Bashir (2008, Golden Globe winner) and The Class (2008, Palm D’Or winner), Departures has attempted to turn the eyes of the world from the age old issue of wars into something perhaps equally alarming.
Kicking off from the buzzing city of Tokyo, the film tells us of Daigo Kobayashi (a very physical, Ben Stiller-ish Masahiro Motoki), a cellist who finds himself out of job, his wife Mika (Ryoko Hirosue) who seems to be tolerant to all his bluffs and goof-ups and their life following their decision to move to the countryside. By twist of fate, Daigo lands up as a mortician and what follows is a series of impressive and often funny encounters that he has in his profession. After the first gruesome “project”, he takes bath vigorously to get rid of the stench having done the same to the deceased! However, he still desires to play the cello at defining moments that either shake him up or have him exhilarated, perhaps the only times he truly feels alive.
Although Departures is not entirely a character-driven film, the people in the film exist not because they are entities that shape the plot but because they signify something that is not forced upon them. Director Takita neither shapes his characters to conform to the mechanics of a plot nor does he let them take over the unraveling of the film. He merely chooses or avoids them. He reveals them to highlight disparities, change in attitudes and at times the national mentality. All of them (most importantly) have a past that runs parallel the country’s itself. They all are aware of their destination – both collective and individual. I do hope Mr. Takita makes a film that is set 25 years hence. That would clearly justify the ominous atmosphere that the characters carry with them.
“Death doesn’t mean the end, but leaving the present, heading for the next stage. Truly a gateway” says the old man at the funeral house. “Journeys” they are called. Takita punctuates episodes in the film with shots of landscape in motion – trams, cars, rivers and birds – illustrating the significance of commutations, movements and relocations in our lifetime and beyond. These journeys are initiated by the morticians with a grace and precision comparable to a wedding or religious ceremony. I guess humans have a paradoxical tendency towards death – possessing inherent self-destructive properties to move towards it yet a grotesque desire to reanimate the dead and to infuse life into the non-living. Daigo embellishes the corpses, endowing them with elegance never seen during their living days, which almost consoles one with the fact that they have had such a beautiful death despite their ugly lives. In essence, a death that unites everyone – the expired and the living. Takita presents a number of such references to the living, the dead and the living dead throughout Departures.
Like Scorsese’s comic book wonder Bringing Out The Dead (1999), Okuribito is a film of great ironies – ironies that come packaged with the biggest taboo of them all called Death. A destitute gets all the respect and care he never had when he lived. A misanthrope would be called a gentle giant the minute he stops breathing. Okuribito explores all these weirdly funny facets of life (and its absence) through the prism contemporary Japanese culture and the paradigm shift that it is currently experiencing. Take the hilarious scene where Daigo “discovers” that the dead girl is actually a transvestite. When asked what kind of make-up – men’s or women’s – would the parents like their child to have, they ask Daigo to use the female make-up – which they perhaps would never have allowed their son to use. One excavates a host of such observations and Herzogian contradictions which will only be ruined by verbalization.
I was tempted to compare the film with Ozu’s masterwork Tokyo Story (1953) until I realized how unfair and often foolish this comparison would be. There is nothing Ozuvian about the form that Takita employs (the first few shots of the film would confirm that). The film is as removed from Tokyo Story, albeit the striking similarity of content, as modern Japan is from the culture the west associates it with. Unlike Ozu’s films that suggest a larger youth population, Okuribito provides us with sketches of Yamagata that are filled largely with old people and a few “Macdonalized” young ones. Yet, both seem so true to the contemporary state of affairs in the country. This just goes to show how the country itself has transformed through the years and that a comparison of films can be made only from a historical perspective and not a cinematic one.
Japan is standing on the brink of a historical moment now. With a large fraction of its citizens moving out of the income graph and a minuscule youth population struggling to stabilize the pyramid, the country’s economy seems to be in for a major crisis – a crisis that every country has to go through some day. Okuribito’s almost allegorical take on this transmutation of the country’s demography and culture is probably what makes it uniquely Japanese (and perhaps the only reason it is fir for comparison with the “Japanese” Ozu). The film’s excessively melodramatic flavour may turn off purists but why I feel that it succeeds despite (and sometimes because of) its flaws is that Departures plays out as an elegy. A requiem for the death, or rather the departure, of its senior population and the social, cultural and economic norms that are soon to go down with it.
Our Films Their Films Satyajit Ray
Orient Longman, 1976
Surely, God is not a socialist. Why then would he bestow so much talent upon a single person and deprive the rest of the artists of country of any comparable finesse? Be it Japanese architecture, German music, English literature, Chinese paintings or world cinema, Satyajit Ray’s knowledge of the seven arts is everything a connoisseur could ever desire to have. And his book Our Films Their Films clearly shows why a true love for cinema is the only pre-requisite to be a filmmaker.
I have hardly seen Satyajit Ray’s films and was apprehensive about taking up this book. I was afraid that it would require a prior introduction to films he talks about and especially to his own films. But as it turned out, I was completely wrong. Shubhajit here recalls how this book single-handedly induced him into the film culture. Why not? Our Films, Their Films is a rare book that works two ways. I can’t imagine any other book that is as interesting for strangers to cinema as it is for the film buffs. Ray never does it like an academic scholar churning out one jargon after another nor does he go too low-brow elucidating every shred of observation. Ray’s tone is conversational and at the end of the book, one does feel like he has spent a good few hours with an interesting man.
The book could be plainly called a bunch of essays by Ray assembled in a chronological order. But surely, it can pass off as so many other things too. Each of these articles has the charm of a short story, the depth of a critique, the personal quality of a diary entry and observations of a great essay. With a language that is neither overpowers the content of the text nor undermines its quality (which I think is true of his films too), Ray sets a standard for not only analytical but also for the verbal component of film writing. No wonder he also stands out as one of India’s key literary figures.
Cinematographe has this to say about the book: “The originality of Ray appears in an indirect manner: whilst talking about others, he offers us a subtle self-portrait“. This is so true. The essays in the book gradually and subtly unravel Ray’s perception of cinema and what he believes makes for great filmmaking, all of which reveals itself through the very many critiques of world films he presents. But the fascinating part is that he never takes the role of a filmmaker when he writes these pieces. He could well have elaborated on what lens John Ford used or what editing instruments Kurosawa employed. But the sections where Ray presents his views of international films could only have come from a true-blue cinephile whose very love for cinema is infectious. Look how he presents his opinion on Kumar Shahani’s Maya Darpan (1972), Kaul’s Duvidha (1973), Benegal’s Ankur (1974) and Sathyu’s Garam Hawa (1973), which organically unfolds into a fantastic review of the films.
But what really swept me off my feet are the observations that Ray makes in these early essays, the last of which was written in 1974. These observations – their almost prescient and intensely accurate quality just goes to show how deep Ray’s understanding of cinema was – both as a person behind and in front of the screen. I’ll give you an example. Ray met Kubrick just after he had made Spartacus (1960). He recollects: “On the strength of his Paths of Glory (1957), Kubrick had seemed to me to be one of the white hopes of American Cinema. He had first rate technique, he had style and I had a feeling that he had also something to say.”. Not just that, his opinions of Billy Wilder, Antonioni, Kurosawa and many others prove to be bang on the money.
If one takes a survey of the favorite section in the book among those who have read, it would definitely produce variegated results, for each section has the power to top the previous, no matter what order you read them in. My favorite section in the book Problems of a Bengali Filmmaker (along with Calm Without, Fire Within and An Indian New Wave?) provides an answer to almost every question I have had about the state of filmmaking in India. But again, this is one opinion that may change even before I finish this review. An Indian New Wave? may be just the winner in the long run, I suspect.
Reading the very many experiences of Ray abroad, one is regularly surprised about the range of people he knows in cinema and the dream-like way they meet each other. Reading these is almost like hearing a splendid raconteur recollecting his road trips with wide eyes. But all that is only because he presents himself with such simplicity. And that is partly a reason that this book shines with honesty. I’m sure, there would be hundreds of pages written from the other side of these meetings that would really give an idea of this monumental figure called Satyajit Ray.
Verdict:
P.S: Some essays of the book can be found here. Do read it. I think this book is a must read for film-geeks and not-so-film-geeks alike.
Stanley Kubrick Directs: Expanded Edition Alexander Walker
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (HBJ), 1972
A brief internet research about the best books written about the life and works of Stanley Kubrick gave me quite a few results with Alexander Walker’s Stanley Kubrick Directs (Expanded Edition) topping the list. Since there wasn’t any book called Kubrick on Kubrick, I had to go for this one! Stanley Kubrick Directs is literally a page-turner, for it contains more images than text. The book is divided into six sections – The Man and Outlook, Style and Content and four chapters dedicated to four of Kubrick’s most famous films.
A friend once remarked that there was spirituality in the way Max Ophüls’ camera moved. I was reminded instantly of Kubrick then. But surely, not for the same reason. Kubrick’s tracking shots are anything but spiritual. I should label them “satanic”. These bewitchingly ominous shots, in my opinion, are the essential sequences from each of the films – be it in the French war trenches, in Korova Milkbar or aboard the Discovery space shuttle. And reading that Kubrick was impressed by Ophüls’ films forced a smile on my face. This is not the only reason that I find the opening section of the book – Stanley Kubrick: The Man and Outlook – fascinating. Walker presents us all of Kubrick’s preoccupations as a child and as a teenager and later establishes how the reverberations of these influences find their way to most of Kubrick’s films. As a film buff, it is rewarding to dig deeper into Kubrick’s films after reading these facts.
But Walker follows it up with the most disappointing of all sections in the book. In this section, titled Kubrick: Style and Content, Walker aims to present us the working methods of Kubrick. Unfortunately, this part turns out to be nothing more than a briefing of Kubrick’s early films, till Lolita (1961), interspersed with elaborations of some obvious facets of Kubrick’s films. Walker’s digresses without hesitation and adulterates the section with facets not in line with the chapter’s objective and analyses that at times seem downright speculative. As a result, this section seems like a poor excuse for a ramp up to Kubrick’s masterpieces that were to follow.
The book then presents us illustrated analysis of Kubrick’s Big 4 that followed – Paths of Glory (1957), Dr. Strangelove (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and A Clockwork Orange (1971). The first two films here take up two thirds of the analysis section and ironically are the least satisfying. Both the analyses of Paths of Glory and Dr. Strangelove are fraught with screenshots (by Halcyon) that are subsequently verbalized. Having presented the early influences of Kubrick, Walker should have let the audience connect the dots and interpret the film their own way. But he starts deconstructing Kubrick’s mise-en-scene frame by frame and strips us completely of the joy of discovering a film. No, I’m not cribbing, but it is a bit discomforting to see such great films presented cut and dried, preventing further exploration the reader may otherwise be tempted to perform. I know this is an analysis, but why at such grassroots level?
Surprisingly, Kubrick’s most profound film is given the least space. A big positive for this section is that it does not go over the top like many an analysis written on the film. Walker sticks generally to the technical and narrative aspects of 2001: A Space Odyssey and discusses “2001 that could have been” citing various choices made by Kubrick with respect to the script. However, it is dissatisfying to see the film grossly ignored in comparison to the earlier two films and sidelined to a smaller status. The film by itself warrants elaborate literature and any analysis should most definitely include the higher aspects it tries to encompass. Walker just grazes through those notions and it never looks like it is for the good of the audience.
But, comes the essay on A Clockwork Orange to salvage the book’s pride. This is the best of the four analyses and serves as a grand climax to an otherwise dissatisfactory book. This is one section that respects the complexity of the film but never once shirks discussion. Walker makes a great move by not just diluting the mise-en-scene by deconstructing it to particulars. He seamlessly integrates multiple ideas the film presents and provides us a solid critical analysis that clearly shines in comparison with the previous three. And it is this section that provides a sense of comfort when one closes the pretty ordinary book.
This book is widely considered the best book on Kubrick till date and that worries me. Kubrick’s canvas is visibly vast and if this is the best of literature available on him, there is a long way to go. Stanley Kubrick Directs does present considerable detail for people who are confused why he is the most critical Hollywood director on a technical level, but the treatment of the content of his film leaves a lot to be desired. May be I expected a bit too much.
Verdict:
Note: This is a section where I will be blogging on books on films and filmmakers. The entries will be far and few, but this will at least provide me an opportunity to read text – a thing that I used to hate till now.
Quarter hour into Delhi 6, I found myself sitting dispassionately with a hand on my forehead. The last thing I wanted to see after all the hullabaloo over Slumdog Millionaire was a film extolling our culture. The pleasantries among the characters had nearly sealed off the fate of the film as far as I was concerned. And Waheeda Rehman wasn’t helping with her repetitive “Ab main chain se so sakti hoon” (I can rest in peace now) act. It was almost as if Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra was selling nostalgia to the NRIs. As if he was making a film about “our great culture” and never taking it as a platform As if he was trying to make the green card holders break down into tears and say “This is MY country after all. These are MY people”. You know… the usual stuff one feels till the pop corn runs out (Damn, Culture sells). But, to my relief and amazement, Delhi 6 recovers from 0 for 3 wickets to making a decent total.
Delhi 6 revolves around…Heck, chuck it. This would probably result in a census report. Let me just say that there are more people in the film than the number of shots. So we have Roshan Mehra (Abhishek Bachchan) who comes to India to take home his granny (Waheeda Rehman). The first half of the film shows us vignettes from the family called Delhi told through the typically patronizing expat eye (but not Roshan Mehra’s). These people spend their time watching unrequited love among Rama and Bharata, but fight with their own brothers. They adore Rama’s marital fidelity, yet go after married women. They are moved when Rama eats food cooked by a socially outcast character yet ostracize and demonize Jalebi, a so-called lower caste woman. They worship Hanuman but are dirt scared of a wild monkey on the prowl, which reveals itself as the focal point of the plot.
There is some good writing at work here. It is as if we have practically isolated our mythology from our everyday lives and deemed it strongly as strictly fictional. Where the characters in Rang De Basanti (2006) found their history more relevant now than ever, here they see otherwise. I’m sure that two of the sequences are going to receive much flak. The first one being the “Dil Gira Dafatan” song, which captures the quintessential dream. Purists may even be prompted to do a Freudian analysis as the images run the ganut of Roshan’s experiences. You have Jalebi vendors and cycle-rickshaws ruling the streets of New York. You have Americans celebrating the birth of a calf and shaking a leg at Hindu processions. You even have the monkey man, having been promoted to King Kong status, romancing on the Empire State Building. The second sequence is a bizarre conversation between Roshan and his grandfather (played by his real life father!) which does seem tasteless for different reasons. But no one can blame them for being out of place, for I believe that this kind of a film warrants such treatment. It is indeed a good move to show disjoint sequences from a society when you are encompassing extremely large issues and not dealing with a smaller struggle amidst larger ones. If a tighter plot would have been used, it would most definitely have been a failure and would seem like the film was biting more than it could chew.
Sonam Kapoor is a bad decision and I felt Soha Ali Khan could have done better. In hindsight, the character of a typically NRI-incriminating modern Indian woman seems tailor-made for Soha. As funny as it sounds, Abhishek Bachchan saves the day. All the potentially fatal reaction shots are redeemed by Abhishek’s unexpected expressions. He plays it low key an never goes into the overwhelming-love-for-home-country mode and cleverly becomes the visitor alone. Though that is a credit to the script, Abhishek manages well to never gain attention (even if it is a consequence of a weakness). All this is until the 115th minute of the film (trust me, I saw my watch here). Then both the Mehras go berserk. There is a fakir in the film who keeps showing everyone a mirror and goes on about the godliness in oneself. This is a good move that could have driven home the point, never looking tacked up too. And at this explosive plot junction (the 115th minute), Abhishek takes up the role of the savior (yes, the pseudo-Indian who refuses to stay passive), he points the mirror to all and “explains” them the truth of life. This is salvaged to some extent by the supporting cast, but the final quarter hour proves fatal. This time, it is the bumpkin Gobar (the talented Atul Kulkarni) who elaborates to all the sane ones how big Abhishek’s role is in changing the lives of the people. And the massacre of the script follows.
Delhi 6 doesn’t suffer from very many problems per se. It is just that it is irregular. Sequences of sheer brilliance are promptly followed by ordinary ones. Fabulous use of soundtrack is interspersed with the stereotypical utilization of music. Rather than calling these weaknesses, I would like to call them glitches. Sporadic, yet affecting the holistic quality of the film. Delhi 6 presents an open ending and fades to black with the most powerful of all quotes in Hindi cinema that I have heard in recent years – “I returned home”. Just see how profound this line is when you discover for yourself what it means. This line would easily substitute for the last 20 minutes of the film. Let’s hope that the director’s cut (if there ever is one) rectifies the mistake.
Delhi 6 is exceedingly well shot. Mehra uses extreme close-ups and deep focus to the point that you can see blemishes on the actors’ faces. In spite of the detached view that the script offers, Mehra’s camera becomes one among the characters. It does not impose on us the bittersweet and condescending opinions that Abhishek’s character may have. See how he desensitizes controversial statements on the news channels by framing the television set along with the news footage. Not only does this offer a space for audience to analyze their own actions but also plays out as a timely satire on the worst thing on Indian television now. The only quibble is that Mehra does not let the images speak for themselves. I would love to show the same mirror that the fakir uses in the film and show it to Mr. Rakeysh Mehra, or his film rather. And tell him “Look, how your film speaks for itself, why try to adulterate it by your obligation to deliver a social message?”
Austria is presently the defending champion of the Best Foreign film Oscar following its dream run last year with The Counterfeiters. However, the inclusion of its contender this year, Götz Spielmann’s Revanche, has come as quite a big surprise. With the film pipping heavy-weight contenders like Italy’s (2008) and Romania’s Gomorra Rest is Silence (2008) , it does make me inquisitive as to why the Academy preferred this one. Now that I’ve seen the film, the curiosity still persists.
I’m not going to give away the plot here although I’m going to mention some interesting points in the film. But don’t worry. This is a film that doesn’t have spoilers, for it derives its glory, ironically, not from concealment of plot points.Revanche kicks off with an array of seemingly disparate sequences involving more than half a dozen individuals. We are forced to think that this is going to be one of those hyperlink films that deal with interconnected lives. But in a Hitchcockian twist to the story Spielmann kills off the central plot and steers the film, literally, into a completely new environment. He shifts a seemingly event-driven film into one that balances character and their actions very delicately.
Spielmann’s camera is reminiscent of the damn good contemporary films from countries like Germany and Romania. It takes up the position of a non-human character in each scene and captures the mise-en-scene with great detail. In most of the scenes, it is situated at a shady corner of a room, the end of a corridor or among the trees of a park. There are no unnecessary pans, hand held sequences or even drastic zooms. To use a cliché, it merely observes. A sizeable distance is maintained while documenting the characters and their actions. But what effect does all this produce? One could say that it provides us drama in its purest form.
Clearly, there is considerable drama in the character’s own lives. The ever-baffling twists of fate, luck and destiny by themselves provide enough fodder to keep one astonished. Spielmann cleverly retains it and never tries to externally dramatize it by employing soundtrack (there isn’t one at all in the film), spectacular camera movements or even by extremities of the character’s actions (although the parallel editing in the first half hour does impose itself on us). The bank robbery, that could easily have been made the central piece, lasts less a minute! Also, Spielmann never delves into the characters psychology for even a moment. He never claims to explore their motivations and intentions. Why doesAlexwork at the farm at all? Why does Susanne visit the old man? Why doesAlex throw away the gun? Spielmann never intends to answer these questions though me makes all of it completely workable. Each of the characters here could be made into a complete melodramatic film. The old man, Alex, Tamara, Susanne andRobert are easy candidates for in-depth psychoanalysis. But Spielmann eschews from making even one.
Furthermore, Spielmann doesn’t even rely on the twists in the plot for attention. The audience can easily guess out what an action is going to result in much before it is revealed. When Alex pins the picture on the wall of his room, we know immediately that it is going to give him away. Spielmann deliberately does that. Consider the moment Alex comes to know that Susanne has found out his secret. There are no wide eyes or Vertigo shots over here! There is a long pause where Spielmann focuses on Alex’s face. That is all. Alex has assimilated what this means and what its consequences are going to be. That is the stuffRevanche is made of. The twists aren’t as important as the actions that they result in or those that precede them. And it is indeed these “actions” alone that help us piece together the characters’ motivations.
Interestingly, there are extended shots of Alex chopping the wood and his grandfather playing the accordion. What begins like an establishing technique goes on to become something more vital. The wood chopping becomes more than Alex’s work. It becomes a gesture by itself. It seems as if it is his interaction with the hermetic world. And same is the case with his grandfather. Both these characters are in complete loneliness even though they live together. They seldom talk and carry on with their “gestures” even if there is no one to receive them. There is something elusive in the presence of these actions. At times the wood-cutting seems like a token of atonement and at others, it seems like a representation of building resentment. In an case, it falls in resonance with the execution of the whole movie – Actions taking the place of words, gestures taking the place of dramatic cues.
Daldry’s Oscar contender The Reader(2008) mentions how European literature thrives on secrets to drive its characters’ lives. That how persons in power are the ones in possession of great secrets. Many a time, concealment of truth is the prime way to domination. Revanche is exactly that. Alex is pretty helpless and possibly a pawn of fate till the second half of the film. Once he knows that he is in possession of an exclusive piece of information, he is able to control his fate and of others. Susanne is very much an instrument controlled by Alex. And so is Robert. Note how the single secret can create or destroy vantage points. Objectively speaking, Alex is the one guilty of a crime. But the concealment of truth makes it look like Robert is the one. Alex is the one who is vulnerable to law. But because he has used his knowledge to suit his plan, it seems as ifSusanne is going to be the victim if everything comes to light. And this is the “Revenge” of the title – revenge without a single (well, one!) bullet fired.
Revanche opens with a shot of a placid lake followed by a startling fall of an object into it. There are ripples and then back to an unperturbed state. But what is buried into it now will be an object of tension for ever. This sequence is whatRevanchemirrors in the rest of the film. What the intrusion of the third personAlex into the peaceful life of a countryside couple has resulted in. The issues may be buried and done with amicably. But its consequences, the tension thatSusanne is thrown into and the fear that Robert is nudged into will echo for eternity.
I’m not sure if the Academy really consideredRevanche as a contender or did they just use it as filler. It neither has the political grounding or the moral righteousness or even the emphatic statements that it looks for. PerhapsWaltz with Bashiralready has the Oscar it in its kitty.
We always have that “one foreign film” to top it all, don’t we? Continuing the tradition of extraordinary films like The Lives of Others (2006), 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), this year we have an Israeli flick Waltz with Bashir. Already a winner of the Golden Globe for the best foreign film of the year, the film is all set to make it big at theAcademy Awards late next month. Director Folman dedicated the Golden Globe to all the babies that were born during the production of the film and desired that when they watched the film in the future, they should think of the film as an ancient video game. And indeed, Waltz with Bashir is a sincere attempt to come to terms with the mistakes of the past.
Waltz with Bashir takes place 20 years after the “purging” operations of the Israeli army in Lebanon. Ron is one of the soldiers in the war who is leading a peaceful life as a filmmaker now. One gloomy night, after he hears about the strange dream that haunts his friend, Ron decides to dig up his past. This takes him to various places across the globe as he gradually recovers his memories of the fateful war. There is considerable romance in the events of the war, with Apocalypse Now – like celebrations of destruction. Men come, men go; No one recognizes the other completely, but each one has a story to tell. Each one has a version of the war. We are presented many POVs as Ron continues inquiring his role in the war. He isn’t happy about what he is discovering. But the thirst for truth keeps him going.
Waltz with Bashir presents a great paradox now. One that all of us carry with us in one form or the other. One that uniquely characterizes the human intelligence. A paradox of memory. When you want to forget something, your mind does not let you. It keeps coming back to haunt you until you confront it for good. And when you want to remember something desperately, the same memory starts playing tricks with you. It cooks up some mutated form of the past combining elements of truth and fantasy. Ron seems happy with his filmmaking business until the inevitable shadow called past catches up with him. He realizes the need to remember. But no one lets him – neither his own mind nor his friends’. Early on, Ron’s psychologist friend tells him of a memory experiment where people were found to accept small deviations from reality as reality itself. Similarly, everyone seems to have settled into some form of comfortable reality in order to barely escape from the horrors of the past and yet remember their years in the war. Unwilling to strike a balance between the need to document and the need to forget, Ron decides that he has to know what happened and not speculate.
It is but natural to be reminded of the previous year’s fantastic film Persepolis, for both employ animation to address issues of very high importance. Persepolis, using its childlike animation effectively along with its monochrome, presented one girl’s quest for identity and her abstraction of the ever-changing world. Marjane’s fantasies of a fairy-tale childhood are slowly corrupt by the knowledge of the harsh realities of the war-torn world. The ever-unsafe world prevents her from carrying on with her illusions of undisturbed happiness. Waltz with Bashir, on the other hand, is an account of one man’s struggle to recollect the past. It sort of reverses the structure of Persepolis and presents us a man who attempts to recall reality exactly as it happened. Ron does not want to concoct a “safe version” of reality that remains tough enough to reflect truth but comfortable enough to be complacent about what happened. In essence, Waltz with Bashir asks us to confront reality– without any pretense and escapism – and get over with it once and for all. And this, in my opinion, is the film’s greatest success.
One can’t entirely say that the film does not take sides. True, it is told from an Israeli point of view and yet comments on the atrocities done towards the Palestine refugees in Lebanon, but the Lebanese evangelists won’t be happy with the depiction of the massacre. However, this can not be considered a blatant caricaturing of them. Waltz with Bashir takes just a single event from the war – the refugee camp massacres at Sabra and Shatila – and questions the appropriateness of that event alone. Yes, it does take a stand there and it does condemn the way things unfolded on that dreadful day. But that’s about it. It does not extrapolate the incident to judge the present political policies of either country or even question the motives of the war that it depicts. It is as if the film isolates the lone event in order to denote the sheer enormity of it all and to show how such unwarranted acts of violence have a deep impact on the psyche of an individual and of a nation.
I can’t complain on the technical grounds either. The animated characters are deliberately out of sync with their environment, which gives the film a kind of surrealism that is in tone with Ron’s recurring dream. The dubbing is spontaneous with even mistakes finding their way into the film. The narrative proceeds non-linearly never once going over the head. But these are just the secondary reasons that make the film stand apart. In an age which is plagued by over-sensitivity towards issues such as racism, communalism and war, films such as Waltz with Bashir (and the surprise winner Gran Torino (2008) appeal for an acceptance of these issues as it is and to deal with them without much fuss. And that is a reason enough for me to cast my vote for Waltz with Bashir.
Bala’s Naan Kadavul is a stupendous failure. Its script is darn predictable. It is nothing more than a reworking of the damsel in distress template. Most of its characters are caricatures and exaggerated for dramatic effect. The final monologue is way over the top. Its shot compositions are weak and inconsistent. It glorifies violence. Its way too melodramatic for its own good. Rudran’s mother is a cardboard and her character, overdone. And so is the character of Thandavan. It uses music way too generously to corrupt its atmosphere. Its editing is way too jagged and at times too liberal. Don’t even get me started on the logical flaws.
Phew! Now that all that’s off my chest, let’s talk about the film.
Bala’s films have become like the Cricket World cup. They come out with much hype and after years of wait. What we have here is a director who has “grown out” of the industry. Rather than going with the flow of things, we have a director here who seems to pave his own way. Very few directors have managed to become independent of the market demand in Tamil film industry, leave alone with such a minuscule filmography. This is one of the very few directors who get a louder cheer than the lead actor of the film during the title credits. Let’s face it, which director, even with the remotest idea of what sells and what doesn’t, would have the guts to open a film in an alien land, with a Hindi title song? Or to follow it up with an extended Sanskrit track? Or to use considerable amounts of lines in Hindi and Sanskrit? Heck, who else would have a lead character who roams around in his loincloth and speaks sparing and barely legible lines? Welcome to Bala’s world.
Naan Kadavul is pretty much faulty with its techniques. Arthur Wilson’s cinematography is weak and shows glaringly in the indoor scenes. His two-shots betray the scene and show complacency. See, you build up tension with the scripted scene and why do you want to drive home the content by losing the atmosphere? Not to mention the scenes in the beggar lair. The whole camerawork is politically incorrect, as in Sethu (1999) too. You never look at the characters like that. Wilson’s camera is always curious. It tilts, it pans and it tracks. There’s no problem with that at all, but the grammar it uses isn’t right. It keeps looking down upon its characters. And also hurting the film is the slew of reaction shots that Bala uses. This technique, fortunately for Bala, proves itself to be a double edged sword in the film. You see, a reaction shot in a scene of drama is a sign of weakness. It is as if the director is showing us the gravity of the situation without letting the audience comprehend it. And Naan Kadavul is filled up with many of these. Interestingly, it is the reaction shot that makes a comedy scene work. More than the comic line or gesture, the reaction from “the victim” is what highlights it. Naan Kadavul is filled with those too. Take the scene where Hamsavali advices Rudran to go back to his family. This could have been one sick lecture, but see how Bala’s reaction shots distort the tone of the scene from melodrama to comedy. Sadly, the former type stands out too. However, the handhelds work well outdoors and, I feel, could have been used throughout the film. And so are the close-ups. It’s been a long time since we saw a director confident enough to use the close-ups. Bala closes in and his actors deliver.
Take the editing of the film too. Bala either cuts way too early for comfort or way too late for continuity. There are some absurd filler shots that are a sore. And some shots that should have been given a second or two more. Consider the scene where Rudran is on the terrace waking up the whole neighbourhood. We are shown a shot of the members of the family sitting together downstairs. They are shattered and helpless. There is a perfect distance achieved by the camera. And what happens? Bala cuts away. This shot could have made much more impact than the buckets of tears. Again, take the scene where the second beggar group is performing at the police station. We see a constable stationed outside, timidly trying to take a look at what is happening. This is great satire. But how many of us noticed it. This is not our problem as Bala refuses to show that for more than half a second. What happens essentially is that the cutting betrays good cinematography and vice versa.
Thirdly and most importantly, the use of background score undermines the quality of the film big time. With all due respects to Ilayaraja (whose score would shine as a standalone piece), I would say that the excessive use of emotional cues is a shot in the arm for Naan Kadavul. You see, the moment you have a violin in your film, you throw it away to the dogs. That is because, by the property of their sounds, violins are very evocative instruments. Bala’s scenes have enough raw power by themselves to convey the depth of the situation. He uses excessive amounts of highlighting score that tries to tell you what to feel eventually making the scenes mediocre. Consider the scenes of Rudran’s return home or the separation of the beggar kids by the thugs. There is already much happening and pop comes the background score to distract us. There is enough drama in all his scenes, aided by good performances. Why over-determine what you want to say? Bala is a director who has as much confidence as does the title of the film, but not (yet) on his audience. He should have believed that his audience would understand the emotional gravity that he felt, without resorting to such poor tricks. Bala is a director who has never shirked from showing raw emotions. So why shirk from hiding it when necessary? Luckily, Bala’s films so far have compensated for the form with their content, more or less. So I’ll just stop there with a hope that all this will be completely corrected in his forthcoming films.
There have always been two facets, taboos rather, that have plagued cinema world over – sex and violence. Their depiction on screen has been much debated over and their use much researched and their responsibilities, studied. The world is slowly opening up to the former, but the latter still remains a hot issue. Popular cinema, however, still treats them as it did decades ago. The use and the meaning it conveys have never been questioned by pop filmmakers of the world, leave alone the Indian ones. Indian cinema has always shown gratuitous amounts of violence on screen and seemed to have no problems with that. But ALL the violence it shows is based on a single moral premise – good over evil – that we all have been hypnotized with. I don’t mean the idea of good winning over its rival but the definition of good and bad itself. Films as graphic as Thevar Magan (1992) to ones as mellow asJaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na (2008) have firmly set their foot on this premise as far as their use of graphic violence is considered. And Bala’s film here, is no different. See how he creates the platform for violence by making his villain despicable. He imparts alarming one-dimensionality to Thandavan and resorts to shocking the audience with graphic torture. In essence, like the very many Indian films, he the sets audience’s mentality to consider violence as a optimum solution to the problem. And the ensuing violence arrives readily justified and as a consolation to the restless audience.
The term “glorifying violence” has been used by reviewers very loosely. They seem to consider any film that shows considerable amounts of it as glorifying violence. If that is so, all the popular films from the country would be glorifying violence. Does Naan Kadavul glorify violence? Of course, it does. But not in a very different way from the other films of today. But does it have an impact? Bala sets up the situation for accepting violence, but would one actually go on to be influenced? No. You see, by the virtue of the character that the script provides, the film provides us an instant alienation from Rudran. Though it makes the audience support his actions, it never would instigate them to follow suit. Naan Kadavul, like almost all pop films, presents itself in a whole new world and consequently cuts off any of its justification of its actions in the real one. And the audience never carries on its support out of the theatre (as much as it does for its morals). So even though the film (and all films that have a stunt sequence) glorifies violence, it never can offer this as a solution to social problems. As a result, the film isn’t a glorification of violence as much as it is of our strong morals.
To get a measure, consider Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na. This is a film that is much closer to our world. All the violence shown in the film is a single punch. Now, the film presents Jai as a character who is brought up against violence. He sticks to it for a large part of the film even though Aditi’s one-dimensional boyfriend provokes. And finally when the film reaches its match point – Wham! Jai punches him to prove his manhood and his love. The audience applauds. And since the film mirrors, to an extent, our world and behaviour, the audience reassures itself that violence is a good solution. It would very well take with itself subconsciously the idea that violence is a token of manhood and a good way of dealing with one’s insecurities. Now, compare this with Bala’s film. It oozes with gore and the gore is washed away from our minds once the end credits roll. This is what the world the director builds can do to the film and its responsibilities. This is Bala’s world. He is not interested in normal people. He is interested in the outcast and the outlawed. All the people he deals with are “strange ones”. Look how the “normal” people are indifferent in the temple scenes as they go on with their routine lives. There is much drama happening in the beggar crowd which they seem indifferent to. There is a Jai and an Aditi walking somewhere in that world surrounding the one that Bala’s interested in. And his success is his conviction that what interests him will interest us too.
[Video: Trailer of Naan Kadavul]
In Indian cinema, there is interestingly an addition to the two member “taboo” set above – that dreaded thing called religion. Our films have always alluded to it, touched it, gone around but have never once confronted it. The films that did deal with it extensively turned out to be one-sided duds like Velu Prabhakar’s films or Ramanarayanan’s. No film has explored how deep religion is linked to each one of our words and gestures. Hell, no film has even examined what religion means to the common man. Dasavatharam (2008) teased us with the possibilities, but stopped there. This is the biggest taboo of them all. Our Gods are a part of or daily talk. We make fun of them and we enjoy humourous anecdotes framed around them. We even spoof our gods never once hurting anyone’s feelings. But when it comes to serious discussion, on film or otherwise, we have never strayed away from our comfort levels. Our ideas about God are so complex that we never want to understand them. Instead, we stay in a safe zone but raise our voices when someone doesn’t. In our cinema, no director has ever approached the subject with honesty and without self-consciousness. That brings us to the strongest point and the raison d’etre of Naan Kadavul.
Naan Kadavul is essentially a mystic rehash of Bala’s own Nandha (2001), but one done with more maturity and confidence. Look how Bala directly “confronts” the issue. This “confrontation” can be very tricky. One has to both make ideas clear and direct and at the same time never stuff them down your throat or be dreadfully didactic. Case in point, Chimbudevan’s Arai En 305-il Kadavul (2008) – an honest but one-sided film that could pass off as a “Sunday school lesson”. Though similar in its ideas about God to Naan Kadavul, it spoon feeds its ideas never knowing when it crossed its boundaries. Take Naan Kadavul. Look at its characters. All of them are like us. They talk about Gods, they make fun of them. For them Gods are no greater than film stars and vice versa. Hell, they are even dressed as Gods but never once take that seriously. For these people, Gods are just another way of livelihood. They beg at places of worship and consider those their “markets”. Oh, but they do believe in Him. Only that they don’t know why. One of the “saints” at the temple quips when another rebukes Murugan for praying regularly “Let him, Why spoil the belief he has?” This is the kind of instinct that these guys have. Not very different from ours, I should say. These are the people who could very well represent a large part our society.
And then there is the contradicting arm of the movie – the character of Rudran. Bala could have easily redone the rational-man-delivering-the-radical-ideologies act, but that would have been one fatal blow to the film. Instead, he chooses a strange man who claims he is God. This instantly makes us repudiate his statements and even ridicule it. As a result, the didactic monologues are avoided and even turned into subtle expressions of Bala’s ideas (The film is called Naan Kadavul and not Naam Kadavul!). Bala is perhaps suggesting this is how every man should be. Every man for himself. Possible, but he never thrusts that idea on us like Arai En 305-il Kadavul.
The beggar people very well know that they need to make their own lives. Yet, they resort to God as a means of reassurance and security. Sort of Plan-B. What makes Rudran different from the beggar crowd is that he knows that weakness and acknowledges it too, but never calling himself an atheist or a revolutionary. In essence, the film does not make the audience hostile using a “normal” man questioning them, but one that makes it think. “Think” because Bala tantalizes us by not giving but by taking the ideas away from us. And this is how he confronts the delicate theme – through his audience.
One thing that was running throughout my mind when watching Naan Kadavul was the Slumdog Millionaire debate. No other film recently has generated so much conversations and arguments as Slumdog Millionaire. It has been accused of “pandering to the western fantasies” and “exposing the underbelly of the nation”. Looks at what Bala’s done here. Not better for sure. Even the cheerfulness, hope and escapist mood of Slumdog Millionaire is lost. Naan Kadavul wallows in misery. But it is hilarious and we laugh at all the jokes it makes. Let’s take a look at what evolves.
Naan Kadavul presents three worlds. The first one is the isolated world of its protagonists – one each for Rudran and the beggar team. The second is the world that surrounds them – the “society” in the film. And finally and most importantly, the audience that is on the other side of the screen. See how the behaviour of the three worlds is. Rudran is self-contained. The second world, the one that is around him, is scared of him. There is great satire here too. The police chase away the “saints” that they know are phony. But when a new one comes in, they are scared. They are unable to come to terms that this one is fake too even if their brain says so. He isn’t, but what if he is? They interrogate him with reverence. We know this is us – throwing in the towel when something seems to transcend reason and more importantly, succumbing to mass hysteria. On the other hand, the audience laughs at these two worlds. Only because it is where it is – the other side of the camera.
Again, the beggar-inhabitants of the first one are self-sufficient. They are occupied with their own work. They cook up their own jokes and celebrate them among themselves. It is a completely different world with its inhabitants challenged in one way or the other. Werner Herzog’s absurdist classic Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) comes to mind. Bala presents these inhabitants as norms and not anomalies. The difference is brought in only due to the audience’s perception. We see them as a different group. We indulge them knowing that we are “here” and not “there”. The second world is totally oblivious to the first one. They completely ignore the first one and carry on with their lives. They seldom hold a relationship to the first world and when they do, it is only exploitative in nature. And finally, the alienated audience that observes (not without the subjectivity imposed by the cinematic elements) these worlds from a distance. We laugh at the not-so-funny-otherwise jokes made in the first world. We condescend on these characters. We patronize them. We feel good about it. But once we are out of the cinema halls, we step into the shoes of the second world. We have our own hectic lives to worry about. So does that mean Naan Kadavul panders to the needs of the upper and middle class for those three hours?
Yes, Naan Kadavul is exploitative, but not unlike every other film. Why! Pop cinema by itself is exploitative, for that matter. Happiness, for it, comes only at the expense of misery looming in it somewhere and from the reassurance and distance the film offers the audience. I don’t mean that we should exonerate such films. What I am saying is that one should not zero in on a single film just because it is being celebrated. What we have to go against is the culture that has been aiding to the rise of such cinema. But hey, those are complex functions of everything that has ever been related to a culture and are a part of a larger debate. And for our part, we need to be less sensitive about these issues I guess (I don’t mean irreverence). These things happen. So what? How long do we want to see perfect creatures leading perfect lives that we can only dream of? Not anymore, says Bala.
Verdict:
P.S: If a film can generate elaborate discussion, why not talk about it? I strongly recommend this movie.
[Edit]: I’ll be posting worthy articles on the film whenever I come across. Here is one from The Hindu today. Interesting, though I disagree at places. Mr. Srivathsan doesn’t find the film to be exploitative or manipulative. Here, I must clarify why I feel the film is exploitative. It doesn’t exploit its characters as much as it does the audience. It offers us distance and hence elicits from us a patronizing look on its characters. Ald this is the same way most exploitative films work. If Slumdog Millionaire was exploitative, it is in the same way. But that doesn’t mean the problem is with us. Essentially what is happening is that the filmmaker exploits both the characters and our gaze of them. And the artifice lies in showing them to be happy and self-sufficient. The exploitation would be seen through if the characters were portrayed to be regretting their situation
Anurag Kashyap’s Dev D begins with a special thanks to Danny Boyle. Poor Danny Boyle has been tormented for some time now for supposedly attempting to expose the “underbelly” of the nation. But if the people are fair and they are able to see what Mr. Kashyap is attempting here, Slumdog Millionaire is going to look like It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)! But wait, Anurag Kashyap isn’t a foreigner and so Dev D is just a film, right? Dev D has already created much hoopla thanks to the bizarre promos, “Emosional Athyachar” and Kashyap’s own blog. With one universally praised and one universally panned film behind it, Dev D is more or less a litmus test faor the director.
The classic Devdas story is a ready made platform for endless psycho-analysis and study of social framework of the age. How does the revamped version fare? Quite well to start with I must say. The original tale relied on the notions of platonic love whereas Dev D is all about physical love. Devdas is a coward who succumbs to social prejudices and carries over the guilt through out his whole life without a chance for atonement. He drinks in order to forget his cowardice. Dev D, on the other hand, isn’t hampered by the social norms. As a matter of fact, none of the characters in the film are. Even Dev’s father Satyapal has thoughts of Dev’s betrothal with Paro (totally opposed to the original story). Dev’s only inhibition is himself – his bloated opinion of himself and his excessive narcissism – a point that Kashyap reinforces regularly. Caste becomes a lame excuse and a sheath to hide from one’s own insecurities. In fact, the society is completely devoid of control on the character’s decisions unlike the book. Dev drinks to hide from the guilt of his hasty decision. This alone, in my opinion, is where the script scores.
Dev is played to near perfection by Abhay Deol, thanks to Anurag Kashyap who managed to elicit an impressive performance even from John Abraham in No Smoking (2007). His performance is quiet and confident. Consider the scene where he listens to the servant maid Sunil. Mr. Deol does not widen his eyes or show signs of shock. He keeps shaking his feet till he gets uncomfortable. And then, bam! This one scene can show how far this guy can go. Paro’s character (Mahie Gill) isn’t as much revamped as Dev’s although she is no more the sacrificial damsel who lives physically and mentally with different men. And Chanda’s (Kalki Koechlin) isn’t either. She is still the hooker with the heart of gold. And the writing further suffers in the end stages of the film. The script tells us that Dev has finally realized his mistake and turned over a new leaf. But how? A lucky escape from an accident can work for an anti-drinking campaign (which could well have made its way into the film), but not for one’s guilt. There’s more, but I’ll stop, for cinema isn’t just about the characters
Dev D is produced by UTV Spotboy and is presented in three parts – one dedicated to each of the characters. The first section titled Paro is the brightest of them all and is shot almost entirely in rural Punjab. The second one is called Chandra and grazes over various locations of the country. And till the end of this section, the form of the film remains conventional and Mr. Kashyap’s weaknesses lie open. The second part is the weakest of the three in the film and he goes over the top with his ideologies. It is only at and after the end of this part that Mr. Kashyap feels completely at home. He now can happily use his “tools” – the bleak production design, gothic soundtrack (a pretty snazzy one at that) and the Wong Kar Wai colour palette that we have seen in No Smoking. Mr. Kashyap maintains the audience’s distance from the characters with the help of their actions and behaviour. He never asks/expects/allows the audience to empathize or sympathize with the protagonists (even if he intended to in some scenes in the first couple of sections). And that serves as one of the very few strong points in the film I could struggle to come up with.
[Video: Emosional Athyachar, The best part of Dev D]
In engineering parlance, there is a word “library”. It refers to a set of already developed subsystems that is utilized for the design of custom systems. These entities are taken by faith and are employed without questions in the super-design. What Mr. Kashyap has got here is an engineering marvel and mind you, that is not exactly a compliment. He generously uses the groundbreaking technique from Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973) to generate the same kind of atmosphere. There is the A Clockwork Orange (1971) written all over in the way he designs his indoors in the film. His use of soundtrack that conflicts with the imagery is a regular trend in world cinema. And mind you, these are not signals of plagiarism or of homage but of considerable knowledge of world cinema – Knowledge that has been obtained by one of the biggest cinephiles of our country. Unfortunately that is the biggest problem for Dev D.
I believe there are three facets of creation – science, engineering and art. Science is purely a product of the brain. A supplier of perpetual innovation. Directors like (early) Spielberg and George Lucas are great technicians. They make up for the one-dimensionality of their scripts with their sweeping visuals and methods. Art is something that is very personal and one that should come from deep within. Scorsese and Cassavetes aren’t what they are just because they shot on the streets or because they took the camera in their hands. What they portrayed on screen was an extension of their own personalities. And in between these two lies the clever device called Engineering. Assembling the innovations provided by scientists to “assemble” a customized product. And that is why Mr. Kashyap comes out as an engineer at the end of Dev D.
So what does Mr. Kashyap want to “design” here? Well, from what we get from it, it looks like Mr. Kashyap is making a broad commentary on our obsession with sex. That every gesture and action oozes with what has been considered a taboo for long. Of course, there is considerable inspiration from L’Âge d’or (1930) here. And perhaps even from the subtle undertones of Dr. Strangelove (1964). But neither does Mr. Kashyap drive home his point explicitly like the former film, nor does he tease the audience with whatever they make out of it as in the latter. The gestures and innuendos that he presents are forced and inserted out of place. Consider the scene where Paro, in a fit of rage, starts out on the hand pump. Now, obviously, there is no reason for the inane sequence to be there other than to reinforce the obvious (which the audience easily did get). Or the numerous sign boards presented as double entendres. The camera sacrifices a pretty good conversation or comedy in order to accommodate Kashyap’s “subtle” allusions. So do his metaphors. The whole film, as a result, seems like carefully engineered and assembled to look like an allegory. Only that it is neither subtle nor effective.
There is a very evocative scene in Slumdog Millionaire – one of the two that embody the whole film – Jamal watches a European opera being conducted in front of the Taj Mahal. The protagonist rues the loss of a woman holding her in his arms. Jamal doesn’t know a thing about what is going on there. But it entrances him for some reason. He is able to siphon the emanating emotion irrespective of the language, the setting or the form of the gesture. A completely Indian cast, A British crew and a limited release – there could only be a few more reasons for the film to go down unnoticed in the west. But hey, it happened. And how! With 4 Golden Globes and going strong for the Oscars with 10 nominations, Slumdog Millionaire has become the film that everyone is talking about – in one way or the other.
Slumdog Millionaire: Tender Coconut in Tetra Pak (pic courtesy: Rediff)
The story? Not different from what you have heard before. But definitely different from what you have seen before. As the title completely gives away, it is “about” Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), a slum kid who participates in a game show and goes on to win the grand prize at the event. He is also in search of his childhood sweetheart Latika (Freida Pinto) who he meets after religious riots in the city. There are villains who try to stop him and some elements – human and superhuman – that help him achieve his goal. But why is this making waves all over? The answer may be – the right move at the right time towards the right direction. It is a story that could possibly happen to anyone anywhere in the world – one of destiny and fate. So, why Mumbai? Well, Mumbai makes the possible probable.
Here is an excerpt from Mr. Amitabh Bachchan’s blog post on the film:
“It’s just that the SM idea authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a Westerner, gets creative Globe recognition. The other would perhaps not.”
Why is that so?
Look at the characters that Boyle uses. Note their objectives. Could they be more stereotyped? Jamal – A lad who has grown with Hindi cinema and unconsciously imitates that. He is still the young hero who dreams of taking his sweetheart away from the jaws of the dragon. His morals are those defined by traditional Bollywood flicks – love over money, hard work and righteousness at all costs. The 20 million never crosses his mind as does the cherished idea of a “familial” reunion. Salim – brought up with similar Bollywood dreams like Jamal, but with a different set of films! The gangsta flicks (a la Drohkaal , Satya and Company) that make you drool over the wads of money that flow here and there. The sheer romanticism of pulling the trigger with utmost indifference. The jump cuts. The cigarette smoke and the all-hiding ever-cool sunglasses. He dreams of literally bathing in loads of money, till the very end (At this moment of the film, a shiver ran down the spine when he strikingly resembled Private Pyle of the chilling Full Metal Jacket (1987)). Yet, the urge to remain upright and undo his sins. And Latika – the Rapunzel of the story, resigned to her fate, fantasizing that a prince charming will come take her away some day. The arrogant constable Srinivas, the savage Mafioso head Javed, the one dimensional child trafficker Mamen – now, how many times have we seen them before?
See how Boyle employs the typical plot points to find a resolution. The baddie turns good out of remorse and sacrifices himself to aid the damsel in distress to reach the safe-space of the narrative. The quintessentially Bollywood theme of predetermination and destiny makes the lovers meet again. The inevitable train sequence that separates Jamal and Latika in the first place. Ring a bell? Well, why Not? These are the characteristic sequences of our cinema (“entertaining mass oriented box office block busters” to borrow Mr. Bachchan). And look how fresh and unseen he makes it all! Boyle has provided the kind of new wrapper to the old sweet that the Indian directors seem to have traded with star power some point down the lane. Indians are masters at storytelling by tradition and cinematically too. But what has happened is that the craft of storytelling always played a second fiddle to the story itself. And Danny Boyle, thoroughly soaked in the Hollywood-type craft of story telling, notes this. In essence, he bridges the best of both worlds – Form and content – to provide something so familiar yet not so much. A stereotype film with stereotype elements celebrating stereotypes with honesty.
There is a lot of talk going on around about the depiction of slums in the film and how the film is essentially a “consolation and titillation” device for the west. Claims are being made that the film is clearly Danny Boyle’s version of the Indian story and not the truth. Of course it is. And the sad thing is that the film is being criticized for that very reason. This is where I sense absurdity. Cinema, art in general, is most definitely an abstraction of the world that the artist sees though a kaleidoscope of his ideologies and idiosyncrasies. And its appreciation is one that involves its decryption and the discovery of what the artist sees, not what the artist should have seen. Danny Boyle says in an interview to NDTV that when a foreigner attempts to picture something on a land alien to him, he must be extremely honest in his opinion. Indeed. When I started watching the film, I was afraid that Boyle would be quite conscious of what he is doing and would probably try not to breach certain lines. But gladly, he doesn’t do that. He relentlessly attempts to show what he sees. The child beggars, the riots, the guided tours. Once more, I take to Mr. Bachchan’s blog.
“If SM projects India as Third World dirty under belly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky under belly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations.”
Precisely. And that works the other way round too. Take Hollywood for instance. Though plagued with essentially American morals (beautifully parodied in Slumdog Millionaire at one point where the tourists offer consolation to the hurt guide, all in the “American way”), the industry has never flinched from showing the darker side of the nation. One of the most self-criticizing and self-correcting cinemas of the world, Hollywood and its associated branches have regularly treaded to their “dark side”, though unfortunately with considerable romanticism. Now, there is no reason for anyone, leave alone developing nations, to turn away from all the filth going on around. Note that all that Boyle has shown in the film has earlier been shown in Indian cinema numerous times, many times going unnoticed. But when Boyle, the unnamed representative of all foreigners, points this out – to us or the west, immaterial – our pride is hurt as if being frank (note that being frank is not related anyway to being true) is a crime. We argue that a westerner should not make comments about our country without even experiencing it. Now, I don’t understand this newly born possessiveness about our “underbelly” that hitherto was repudiated by “the commercial escapist world of Indian Cinema”. If what this film is doing is slum porn, the behaviour of ours should be aptly called shameless opportunism.
I have a question. Zana Briski made an Oscar winning documentary about kids in red light areas – Born Into Brothels (2004) – that was hundred times more stomach churning than Slumdog Millionaire. Now, why was no claim made about that film’s portrayal of the slums, though by no means it projects a rosy view of the state of affairs? Was it because it was low-profile? Was it because only Slumdog seriously reminds us of the stale state of our mass entertainment, hence hurting our pride? Or was it because the facts were undisputable there and in that Slumdog, which is a work of fiction, they can be easily disowned?
Having said these, one must also note that what Boyle has done here is not a consequence of frustration but of brimming hope. True, he does show the most shattering facets of Mumbai’s buzzing life, but he picks up situations that always have an outlet into redemption. Yes, it is typically what a tourist would see in Mumbai. The contradictions, the happiness in spite of that and “the show must go on” attitude – aspects that residents would naturally be indifferent to. He never condescends on his lead actors. There is no sympathy for them. Boyle always films them from a downward angle. Yes, he celebrates them during their highs, but does not go for tears during their lows. And amidst all this, he superficially studies the spirit of the city. Jamal’s win is necessarily an escapist entertainment, irrespective of the money, for the people who would go on to live their own lives after the show ends. All they need is a hero, which is a universal desire, who comes up from rags by the moral path (“substitution of their gaze”). Boyle’s film is an escapist fare about escapist fares. Slumdog Millionaire could well be termed as a crash course to Bollywood to the west – only that it celebrates the tradition honestly and in the right way.
Sorry, but Mr. Bachchan again:
“The commercial escapist world of Indian Cinema had vociferously battled for years, on the attention paid and the adulation given to the legendary Satyajit Ray at all the prestigious Film Festivals of the West, and not a word of appreciation for the entertaining mass oriented box office block busters that were being churned out from Mumbai.”
Now, I’ve read a lot of support for the “Indian mainstream” cinema by people who claim it is purely a manifestation of the workings of the Indian mind and the West can’t possibly judge them using their yardstick. Now, once it has been decided that this type of cinema is clearly democratic (of and for the Indian people), then what is the need to expect admiration and applause from the west? Isn’t it being dishonest trying to entertain locals and requiring admiration world over? Here, in Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle presents escapist entertainment to the west in a form that they would naturally like (incidentally, being liked by the Indian audience too). Thus, it would deserve no more criticism than a mainstream Indian film does. But when it comes to admiration, the craft gains weightage and Boyle scores there.
Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle does Christopher Doyle all the way. The restlessly blurred events, the dizzyingly deep focus shots and the skewed camera angles are clearly adapted from Doyle’s features with Wong Kar Wai, but definitely suit this film too. Probably one of those oriental good luck charms! I will not elaborate upon A R Rahman’s soundtrack as I have been deemed as one of his notorious fanboys. But seriously, it is nothing short of triumphant and a sizeable fraction of the film’s success. And the editing is masterful with snazzy and relevant cuts between the past and the present. The final sequence tops it all where we have three visual sequences intertwined and led by a single soundtrack. It is definitely going to be a tough call between The Dark Knight and Slumdog Millionaire at the Oscars next month.
I had mentioned one of the two sequences that typify the spirit of the film. The second sequence obviously being the one where young Jamal, covered in filth, celebrates after getting the autograph from the angry young man and the hero of this review Mr Amitabh Bachchan. Placing the celebrity above himself, despite of his own pathetic state. Celebrating life despite its own wishes. This is what Danny Boyle (or any foreigner who admires India) has seen in the country. And this is what he has honestly unfolded in the film, with significant decoration but no other hidden intentions. Mr. Boyle isn’t teaching us what to show, but how to show. He isn’t telling us how India is, but how he sees it. And positively, he isn’t showing us our darker side, but the brighter and more humanistic one.
I have hardly seen Satyajit Ray’s films and was apprehensive about taking up this book. I was afraid that it would require a prior introduction to films he talks about and especially to his own films. But as it turned out, I was completely wrong. Shubhajit 
The Seventh Art 