Ramchand Pakistani - Review

There's a lot about Mehreen Jabbar's film, Ramchand Pakistani, that can be appreciated. Syed Fazal Hussain, who plays Ramchand, is on the top of that list, Nandita Das is close to the bottom, and the film itself hovers somewhere in the middle.

To clear the air, it is important to mention that the balanced political standpoint of the film speaks to its credit. For once, an India-Pakistan film isn't about terrorism and the big bad guy across the border. And that is a huge relief. But that is almost all that is convincing about the film. It has moments with immense potential. Whether it is with reference to relationships that build up or even a comment on prisoners and their state, especially the fact of innocent people who have been thrown into jail for small mistakes, as is the case of Ramchand and his father. Unfortunately, they remain mere moments.

The story, as it might be evident already, is about Ramchand, a young, tribal Hindu boy living in Pakistan, his mother (played by Nandita Das) and his father (Rashid Farooqui). One day, the boy unknowingly walks across the border near the Thar desert, and his father follows, trying to stop him. They are both arrested and sent to jail in the Kutch region on the Indian side of the border. The mother tries in vain to locate them, she registers FIRs, makes endless rounds of the police station, but to no avail.

The jail Shankar (the father) and Ramchand are thrown into, would be any prisoner's paradise. The interaction with the police starts with suggested torture but for the rest of the film, it turns into an example of communal, social harmony. With the exception of one potential child molester, the inmates all get along famously, they help each other like family members and all is a little too well in jail-land. The inspectors, both male and female, are sympathetic, kind and concerned. Without any provocation, the head arranges for Ramchand to study and brings in a special female inspector for the purpose. The lady, who has some strangely mixed-Mumbaiya-cum north Indian speech, makes a few remarks about the boy, who is an untouchable, touching her utensils, but one little blurt from him pretty much silences her.

What I'm trying to point out here is the lack of a follow up of any potential leads that could give this film a strong base. There are a few stray interesting incidents, or potential relationships that, for all practical purposes, are in the pipeline, but they just don't develop. They remain connection-less episodes. An example: at one point, Shankar tells the inspector that they treated like dogs in the jail; and while that may be the reality of the actual situation, that is not what is communicated in the film. There is an assumed connection with the real world, and that doesn't work, not when what we see in the film is the very opoosite of 'being treated like dogs'.

There was also the beginning of another relationship, between Champa (Das) and a Muslim member of the community, Abdullah (Noman Ijaz). The tenderness of their relationship is moving and once again has immense potential, but all it takes is one little, almost matter-of-fact comment by a friend that has Abdullah pack his bags and leave the scene. The anxieties of these relationships could be many and they weren't explored in this film. And that is the case with the depiction of jail life as well. I was a bit shocked to realise that the Pakistani prisoners blend in that easily with the rest. No strife? I know people to people relations are good, but there are always malefactors. But they were wished away. Also, who is Ramchand going back to? It is a million dollar question, but it is packed off in one little statement. There is no room for exploration therefore. In fact, i would say that with these mistakes, the film digs its own grave because it chooses to crush the intensity of things in simple statements.

I am not saying, at any point, that everything should be literalised and made all to evident as it is in any run of the mill film. This particular case is more disappointing, precisely because there was so much possible within the ambit of the same film, keeping intact the sensitivity with which it has been approached.

Of ghosts and ruins: Mrinal Sen's Khandar

“I’m going to stop talking now,” said Mrinal Sen as he got up to introduce his film Khandar (1983) at the 10th Osian’s Cinefan Festival, where he is this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award winner. “Because if I don’t, I will contradict myself.” It is hard to believe this of a man who has been known for keeping steady on the path of radical political cinema. He created the Indian New Wave, and he still rules the roost there. No one before or after has had the courage to be the man, so many of whose films were, as he says himself, “popular failures at the box office.”

It seems that Mrinal Sen cannot possibly be content with simplistic emotions. Joy and tears are not nuanced enough to portray reality. Take Khandarfor instance, there is a story, and it has five important characters. The story doesn’t take a back-seat but it lets its characters grow. It is perhaps this aspect of it that made Sen grab it. What is evident is that he directed the actors in such a way that every emotion, every glance, and gesture is loaded. Those who speak the least communicate the most. Sadness doesn’t explain what Jamini (Shabana Azmi) feels when Subhash (Naseeruddin Shah) suddenly agrees to marry her, or when he finally leaves. There is instead a build up of desire, one that engulfs the happy and the sad, hope and curiosity etc etc. And it is the contradiction between an emotion this fluid and the attempt to freeze it that is at the core of this film. Yes, Khandar is very much about ‘the ravages of time’ the ruins it leaves behind. But it is also about the attempt to preserve what is left.
Photography is therefore key to the film. It opens with freeze frames of photos, Jamini’s photos. The pictures have a story behind them but at that point we don’t know that story. The events as they unfold give more meaning to the photo, and in the end when we see him develop it, it is almost as if it is a different picture. Because this time, we know the emotions it captured and in spite of being a photo, it tells the story of the whole film—maybe not the plot, but the crux of its emotions.

This restlessness has a link with the way in which the idea of the film came about. Sen narrates the anecdote, “Every time I completed a film, I passed through a crisis about what my next subject would be. Once, I woke up in the middle of the might and for obvious reasons could not sleep. I left my bed, walked around, ideas popping into my head…I went to my study, stood before a bookshelf and just pulled out a book of short stories by Premendra Mitra. I had read the story so many times, but that fateful night, I read it again and without my knowing how and why, suddenly I could read cinema in the lines, in every line, also between the lines.” Khandar has the dream-cast of almost any director, and they work wonderfully as an ensemble. The three stooges from The National School of Drama (Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur and Annu Kapur) follow each other well and Shabana Azmi is like we’ve never seen her before, strong yet demure, exhausted and desirable, hopeful and yet without hope…this one can be called her best. Though it can’t be called Sen’s best…that place was occupied soon after his film career took off, and therefore, way before Khandar came about. It is still the scathing critique of society, of bureaucracy and the state that is classic Mrinal Sen. Satire, is a lost art today in Indian cinema, especially one that is political in nature. Stark realism gets ovations wherever it goes, but today it seems, no one has the wit and understanding to create a workable satire. Sen however, remains a staunch supporter of the genre, and takes on the task of defending it, “Not many, but happily quite a few of my films have satirical kicks, because it is a tremendous force…not just in literature and drama, but indeed in cinema as well. Think of Chaplin, he’s a master.”
And he hasn’t lost the will to fight for this ‘other’ in Indian cinema. “Social agendas and aesthetics go hand in hand, gracefully and powerfully,” he insists, brushing away all attempts to gather a preference for one or the other.
And who will follow his footsteps? He is philosophical, “Did I have footsteps at all?” he asks, then answers it himself, “ghosts don’t have footsteps.”

Krishnakanta's Will: Nothing Novel

I did it to myself. I had read the novel, not liked it, but curiosity got the better of me and off I went to watch Raja Sen’s adaptation of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel, Krishnakanta’s Will. Did you ever watch The Mahabharata? Well this film seemed longer. In college, we were told this was a novella, a short novel. The film, however, bore no resemblance of this distinction.

A quick recap of the story. There is a patriarch called Krishnakanta Roy, who has disinherited his son, Harilal, for all sorts of reasons. Harilal decides to get a fake will made and with the help of a young widow, Rohini, he manages to exchange the real will for the forged one. Soon the young widow realizes that her action will disinherit the man’s cousin, Gobindalal who is a kind soul and has dealt with Rohini with understanding and affection. Rohini soon falls in love with Gobindalal who is already married. His wife, Bhramar, is jealous. Gobindalal gets attracted to Rohini. They elope. Soon after, Bhramar falls fatally ill while there is trouble brewing between the illicit couple thanks to Bhramar’s father who sought revenge.

It might be evident that it is a fairly stock story. Love, the other woman, jealousy, inheritance, villains, greed, death etc. What I’m struggling with at this point is whether I should even bother to write any more since that is the beginning and end of this film. It is tempting to be critical of Bankim Chandra’s novel because it reeks of his conservative stance in almost every chapter, but that would be unfair—not just because the novel has some unique, appealing features, but because the film didn’t bother with any of the nuances the book had to offer.

The most interesting aspect of the novel was its narrator. A playful, opinionated story-teller who made this simplistic series of events and relationships more connected and hinted an oral flavour. The two overt references to widow-remarriage are not the end of the matter. The novel is not about relationships, it is about women, more importantly, about widows and Bankim’s reservations (let’s be polite and call it that) on the idea of widows getting married again. The narrator hints at these social comments of the writer with much more depth than the actual characters do. And the film does away with the narrator. Just to think of how fascinating a film this could have bee had this voice been retained, makes me dislike it even more. Even while reading the novel, I remember being wary of this ensnaring narrator. One had to think with him and then beyond him. And it is that process that made the experience worth anything, not the story. For instance the character of Rohini. We have no choice but to listen to the narrator pass judgements on her character, but then we think of more erudite concepts like desire, sexuality and the possibility of innocence co-existing with these qualities. There was a point early in the film when there was a hint of this understanding. But the moment she falls for a married man, she is shunned to the dark side, and the director seems more than content with that action. The caring, soft-spoken Rohini turned into a devilish creature who decides to raise Bhramar’s envy. The ‘basicness’ —to concoct an obvious word— of the emotions portrayed is jarring. And clearly if the director is happy with these basic emotions, then the actors will not push themselves and will be happy to remain simple actors in a simple story.

Another telling feature of the novel is how it ends. Gobindalal is blinded by jealousy and realization of Rohini’s ‘loose character’ and thereby of Bhramar’s godliness. Both women die (Gobindalal kills Rohini), and a golden statue of Bhramar is erected. For all those who were in any doubt about the intention of this novel and its construction of the good woman and the bad one, this move changes everything. And the film doesn’t deem it important enough to retain. One can argue that being a man of the 21st century, Raja Sen was distancing himself from this literal deification of women. But if that were the case, Sen wouldn’t have picked this novel or rather this writer at all. What’s the point of basing yourself on a novel if you erase all traces of its uniqueness from your rendition?

What I do have to admit is the one sensible thing I saw in the film. The novel has a very vocal working class that is visible in the peripheries of the plot. A kind of social critique comes through with the various servants we encounter and Sen had the good sense to highlight them.
The greatest mystery however is the look of the film that prompted more than one person to wonder when it was made. The director clarified that it was made in 2007. It is difficult to explain what exactly I mean when I say that it seemed the film was made in the 70s. Try to recall the inherent superficiality of colours that is evident to us today when we watch the first few colour films. The colour seems super-imposed and far from natural. That is true of this film. There must be some secret formula Sen used for it because as far as I know, that quality is now so obsolete that it is impossible to achieve.

I don’t know what else to say. Maybe I won’t say anymore because there isn’t anything more to the film. The possibilities were immense and they were obviously not even in the vicinity of the filmmakers thoughts, and besides, the damage has been done.