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.

Aamir: A do-gooder gone wrong

Rajkumar Gupta’s recent film Aamir has created a stir it seems in the country. And not just because it stars Rajeev Khandelwal—a relatively new face on the big screen, but also because it is one of the films that dares to approach the tabooed Muslims-in-India issue. The long and short of the film is that it is about Aamir, a young doctor who has just stepped foot on Indian soil after finishing studies in the UK. No sooner than he has cleared customs starts a harrowing journey that he is pushed into by the Islamic fundamentalist underworld. They are unbelievably well-coordinated with each other and have the longest process all worked out for this less than enthusiastic young man. The journey resembles a treasure hunt of sorts, at the end of which his abducted family will be released.
The film presents a picture of the two kinds of Muslims that there are. The modern, educated, liberal, secular in thought kind and the crazed, fundamentalist, psychotic, terrorist kind. My problem with this film is actually not just with this film alone, it is with the gamut that it belongs to. Irrespective of their religious, political or social inclination, many filmmakers have tread this path of representing the Muslim post 9/11. Thankfully, some recent ones have distanced themselves from the jingoism of Border and LoC (1997, 2003 resp, J.P Dutta) etc. However, if you think about it, most films made in India (and I’m talking primarily Hindi cinema) with central characters that are Muslim, hover around the territory of terrorism in some form or the other. Either that they are terrorist and traitors, or that they invariably get involved in such situations. Perhaps there is a need for bringing the prejudice and the humiliation to the forefront, but the group as it grows in this lone direction, is counter-productive. It doesn’t help the suspicions that plague Muslims in the country. Because in the long-run, it seems, as if they all will without a doubt and maybe without their consent or desire have some role to play in the terror situation. It might be because they don’t have a choice, but that is a small consideration in the larger picture, which seemingly concerns itself with personal and even national safety. And this is troubling because these films flood the mainstream and their superficially balanced approach attracts some undecided or superficially liberal audience, making the film a critical and often even a commercial success. Think Fanaa (2006, Kunal Kohli), Fiza (2000, Khalid Mohammed), Mission Kashmir (2000, Vidhu Vinod Chopra) and now Aamir, among a whole host of films not just in our own country but also from all over the world – most recently Pakistan (Khuda Ke Liye - 2007, Shoiab Mansoor) and the big-daddy of pedantic views on everything – Hollywood. At the cost of appearing impossible to please, I will say that the apparently liberal view is often as damaging as anything else.
Come back to Aamir. Agreed that there is an attempt to portray a new Muslim. Educated, liberal, human. But despite this educated, modern protagonist occupying the screen a good 95% of the duration, his views are weak and remarkably forgettable. What stayed with me after the film was not his meek three lines (literally) about modern secularism, but the guttural and extremely repetitive dialogues of the nameless and nearly faceless underworld don. I’m not sure if one should blame the writer (also Rajkumar Gupta) for his terrible script indicative of a serious lack of imagination or should one congratulate him on achieving his aim of showing the communal fanaticism of this Muslim don. The repetitive use of the word and the idea of ‘kaum’ (community) is not just jarring to the ear; it has a more sinister result—of convincing the audience that this is the only driving, determining force for a large part of the Muslim community. The elaborate Muslims community that is shown to be at work to bomb innocent people (because it is some twisted form of revenge), is hardly dented by Aamir’s secular squeaks. And at a more obvious level, he dies and they don’t. So what kind of Muslim lives on? The terrorist, monstrous kind. The one who says, ‘phone band mat karna mujhe bomb ki awaaz sunni hai’ (don’t switch off the phone, I want to hear the sound of the bomb blast).
The film adopts an ‘aesthetic of garbage’ and takes is very seriously, to the extent of one getting numb to its impact. It seems as if the director is trying to do to the audience what the don is trying to do with Aamir – acquaint us and him to the pathetic, filthy conditions of Muslims in India. There is no doubt that there is lower class that occupies slums all over India. But the determining factor there is class for a better part of it, not religion. Agreed that there are areas where the majority consists of people of one religion, but there isn’t any place that I have heard of, that is one hundred per cent Muslims, all of whom, needless to say are filthy, uneducated, fanatic, butchers. There is one lone modern Muslim in this film. But we don’t see his house, his locality, the hygiene conditions of his surroundings. We are instead thrown into the muck of a few slums that will now be considered the beginning and end of Muslim existence in the country. How does that help the image, for me it only further deteriorates it. Okay, so it maps the city to an extent, so what? Is the context right? Is it balanced? I don’t think so. I find it passive aggressive.

In between Tehzeeb (2003, Khalid Mohammed)—a film most would have forgotten even if they ever watched it at all and more recently, Chak De! India (2007, Shimit Amin), there have barely been any films that think Muslims in India can have any concern other than terrorism. What this group of films that Aamir belongs to is doing is to create a denial in society about a large group of Muslims, who are definitely concerned about the state of affairs in the world, but live in very normal conditions. Those who are not terrorist and never will be. They don’t live in slums, they are educated, they don’t spell every English word incorrectly, they don’t wear short pajamas and a religious cap and they are as enraged as anyone else at the loss of innocent lives in terror attacks.

JUNO

Every once in a while a film comes along that can leave you a bit stunned. Primarily because it’ll trick you into believing that you have a fairly good idea of what it is about. This Oscar season, the dark horse was Juno.
Written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman, this film was last year’s charmer. And the charm is a collective effort of the story-tellers and the actors who leave little to be desired. To say that Juno is a pregnancy comedy is doing it a great deal of injustice because it leaves a category as simple as that many miles behind. It is the story of an accidental pregnancy and an inexperienced teenager, Juno (Ellen Page) who decides to have the child and give some parents-in-the-wings “a gift of life or whatever”. The film walks a tight rope between the expected and the unexpected, taking care to be fresh and subtly comment without shocking anyone out of their comfort zone. And the greatest achievement of the film is its approach towards relationships. For once, we are taken on a trip where we see not just the hopelessly crumbling families of suburban America but a family that still has it together without being righteous or sugar-sweet about it. What is evident however is that it takes work. A stepmother who is evidently at her stepdaughter’s side at every step of this less-than-normal situation is a hallmark of this unusual film. Consider, for instance, the parents' response to Juno's announcement of the pregnancy. No hysterics, no broken relationships, no boyfriend dragging yet so real. They are concerned about her health, about her being able to handle this situation she isn’t ready for in any way imaginable. Instead of a trailer park teenage pregnancy of a drug-addict single mother we're in a family surrounding.
Another twist from the usual pregnancy comedy (or tragedy for that matter) is the father of the child, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). Before we actually see the boy, we are made to think of him as the jock who knocked up the girl and will then not accept responsibility. There is complete preparation for this image by the film-maker - we see Bleeker's running outfit, his health-conscious food routine, his wrist-bands etc, but then we see him— a shockingly innocent, not to mention, unlikely candidate for such a situation. One who is unsure about how to respond to the girl’s announcement and is further confused at her statement, “it wasn’t your idea anyway” and is left mumbling, “uh…then whose idea was it?”
The best however is revealed to us much later. The seemingly perfect couple Mark and Vanessa (Jason Bates and Jennifer Garner) who are in reality less than perfect. A born mother and a repressed rock-star turned adman. Initially ware led in a direction where we might disapprove of Vanessa’s apparent control over Mark, but once again, we are asked to be a bit less judgmental and see the picture from either side. The scene in the shopping complex is what captures the finesse of the film in the second half. Jennifer Garner outdoes herself in this scene.
The film ends in the only possible way one would (by then) expect the expert drivers to steer it in. Happy and a bit more mature.
One of the most well-deserved Academy Awards went to Diablo Cody who came up with a screenplay and dialogues one wouldn’t expect in one film, examples of favourite lines range from, Brenda asking, “Juno, did you barf in my urn?” to Juno telling her friend Leah “Dude, I’m telling you I am pregnant and you are acting shockingly cavalier.” And as she said in her acceptance speech, Ellen Page really is ‘superhuman’. She makes this film so lovable that most have gone back to it more than once.

Goya en Bordeos – From One Artist to Another

Velasquez's Las Meninas-one of the most talked about paintings in the history of European Art is a mere reference towards the end of Carlos Saura's film Goya en Bordeos. The young artist examines the painting-as it inhabits a dark go down-with growing realisation with each passing moment. It is a while before he can understand the enormity and the complexity of that painting, where Velasquez has painted representation itself. Subject, painter, canvas and mirrors occupy the painting, bringing to mind Saura's self-confessed ideal form of representation-one which is yet incomplete. "What fascinates me is the process, the preparation for a performance where every step that goes into the making of the final performance, every effort is visible." he said in an interview in New Delhi recently.[1]
Saura plays with light and colour in every frame of his films, seemingly prioritising aesthetics over any other principle of filmmaking, yet Goya en Bordeos is arguably Saura's most direct engagement with art. Not unlike some of his other films, Saura invests a bit of himself in his protagonist. Only this time it is surprising because he manages to find the link between himself - a 20th century filmmaker and Goya - a 19th century painter, that goes beyond the Spanish connection. The link is that of camaraderie of art and artists. Through Goya en Bordeos and a number of other films, Saura deliberates on questions of the relationship between an artist and history, both personal and political, on the meaning of art as expression and art as profession.

There is a central image that binds this film - that of the spiral as Goya etches it on the window early in the film. The fact of a centre from which all else is born and by extension that to which everything is connected becomes a symbol not only for art and also for life itself. And it connects the two artistes-Goya and Saura, both of whom were occupied with ideas of representation (a telling example is Goya's two paintings - one clothed and one naked - in the same posture of one woman who was widely rumoured to be The Duchess of Alba), of social commentary through art, prevalence to aesthetics and of course the question of censorship.

The symbol haunts the entire film. At times literally, at times by the power of suggestion. The film opens on a violent note with the image of a dead animal, hung from the ceiling, and the tools of his demise occupying the foreground in the mis-en-scene. The entire surface is drenched in a red light that looks like blood - in fact we can't tell the red of the light from the red of the blood that is probably on the rope and pail that we see before we finally see the entire body of the animal being pulled up, and hung, not unlike the crucifixion. Biblical undertones return towards the end of the film in a long sequence, beginning once again with deep shades of red, this time with actual crosses, another crucifixion-like image and violence directed at people. Buried bodies, lost, dead children, and people in chains - this sequence is at once biblical and contemporaneous for Goya and Saura both of whom saw violence and destruction in their time. In an attention to detail, we see a number of dogs inhabiting the space of the exodus with the people, signifying the barbaric instinct though somewhat ironically because they are the least threatening presence in the scenario. What it does bring to mind is the presence of dogs in a number of portraits (Goya was known for portraiture) to suggest masculinity and loyalty. However, true to the cycle of life function of the symbol, soon after the carnage in this scene and the death of Goya, the film closes with the image of birth. Just as the dying Goya finishes drawing the symbol in the air for the last time and calls out to his progeny, there is a stunning manifestation of the spiral symbol in the staircase from which his daughter Rosarita comes running down. (see above)

Notions of death occur in different ways through the film, particularly in dreams and paintings. The balance is created perhaps with the closed, womb-like set-up of Goya's room, where a majority of the film is played out. (At the very end of the film, as Goya dies, the same room is transformed and a child is born there). A translucent red wall, made, it seems, of cloth, which at once walls in in a confining sort of way, while allowing a view of the outside. Except for one scene in the park, most of the film is set in closed spaces - perhaps because Saura thinks the outside distracts the audience and is superfluous. Yet, the one scene in the open leads to our realisation of a feeling of being closed-up all this while and for time to come. And since most scenes are played out in the interiors of his house, we see the paintings as Goya meant for them to be seen – in the dark, where the painter has control over the light and the consequent effect on the viewing of a painting.

It is curious that a film which occupies closed spaces opens itself out to a history that is constructed by a heady mix of dreams and reality. Saura plays with the narrative, flirting with post-modern ideas of layered time, fragmented reality and memory - but ultimately comes back to the original idea of the bio-pic. And therefore, the spiral returns to assert its focus, which is the artist and the art. He doesn't abandon his focus but it is clear through this film (and others) and his interview that he is a staunch advocate of a wild imagination. "Reality is not just what we see, but also what we dream." he said. And it is this fluid reality that he presents in Goya en Bordeos. The film uses passageways lit in contrasting colors, from a bare white in the beginning to black as a background for his paintings making a connection between an artist's unconscious and his work. Further emphasising the contentious nature of truth, Saura literalises a few probables of Goya’s life, in particular his relationships. For instance, most biographies of the painter throw open a vague suggestion of a relationship with The Duchess of Alba, but Saura makes her the centre of the spiral of Goya's life - his muse, his subject, his only memory - she was ‘Only Goya's' as her portrait says.

Fluidity pervades Saura's style as well - for in spite of being under the influence of Dali, Lorca and his mentor Bunuel, he has never based his work on any one of these celebrated styles. He found his own way to defy linearity even while working in the most straightforward of genres like the bio-pic. I can't think of a literary enough term to classify Saura's work for he uses light and colour like a painter would, creating something so unique that to call it anything more general than ‘Sauraesque' would be doing it great injustice. And it's just as well, because as he said, he doesn't believe in schools.

[1] Carlos Saura came to New Delhi, India and was in conversation with Aruna Vasudev on the 10th of March, 2008.

Charlie Wilson’s War: The Then and Now of the United States?

This year’s Oscar nominee, Charlie Wilson’s War (Philip Seymour Huffman for Best Supporting Actor) is a puzzle. It could be one of two things: an incredibly clever, subtle scathing comment on the history of American foreign policy, or a fairly uni-dimensional – not to mention jingoistic – addition to the ‘great America’ series that occupies a significant place in Hollywood.
The film is based on the life of Congressman Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks), who, in spite of being a rampant womaniser and a person of generally questionable morals, was greatly moved by the plight of the Afghan refugees in Pakistan during the Cold War when Soviet Russia was attacking Afghanistan.
The US believed in erring on what they considered the side of caution as far as Communist or for that matter any left-wing radical tendencies were concerned. Caution being represented by unsubstantiated accusations, murders, curbs on intellectual, artistic freedom and in more extreme cases, bans and the overall witch-hunt that started in the McCarthy era. One is tempted to admire their handiwork in creating mass-hysteria for generations to come against leftist tendencies or beliefs. Charlie Wilson is upheld as a force that may have changed the history of the world, saving it from drowning in the deep waters of Communism and domination by the godless Soviets.
The film too, at least in its surface structure, charts the journey of this small-time congressman who overcame great hurdles, both political and personal, to make drastic changes in not just US foreign policy, but also diplomatic affairs of other countries like Pakistan. Wilson moves from a courtesy call to President Zia ul Haq to the undying commitment he developed to bettering the plight of the Afghani people and fighting on their behalf. Why this film seems like it might be yet another piece of American propaganda is because like all propaganda films, it shows just one point of view – statistics and images of death and despair selected with a clear agenda — to clarify the good from the evil. Russian pilots are shown for a sum-total of thirty seconds, where they display their soullessness (since they were godless they had to be soulless as well, right?) very satisfactorily. Gradually, Wilson had the US parliament convinced that it is their moral duty to help Afghanistan fight the Soviets. And slowly, the Government of the United States of America increased the arms budget for the Mujahideen of Afghanistan from $ 5 million to a whopping billions dollars.
However, there could be a deep structure to this film, a kind of subtlety we haven’t witnessed in a long time, if ever. And this structure is imaginable only because of the decade we are in, where the US and Afghanistan have once again found mention on the same page, only this time, not so friendly. In this decade, the US graduated to a new pet-hate after Communism – Islam. Signifiers of a critique in the film are so small that in the success story of Charlie Wilson, they can elude us. The keywords are Afghanistan, Mujahideen and the Arms supply and budget from the US to the Mujahideen. The film went as far as to specify that the Mujahideen ran schools that trained students for armed battle against the enemy. What they don’t obviously mention is that Osama bin Laden, 9/11 and a number of world terrorist attacks are a result of the Mujahideen. For once there was a mainstream American film accepting responsibility for arming and funding the Mujahideen. Is there an acceptance of their role in the world terror situation? An acceptance of the partial amnesia that the US has undergone about this little heal-the-world project it undertook? In my opinion, Mujahideen is too topical, too well-known a word for the filmmakers to expect an overlooking. Another contributor to this sneaking hope is one image in the film. Tom Hanks with his back to us, standing with the Mujahideen, holding a big gun, raising it to the sky as if dedicating it to God. I was instantly reminded of so many pictures of terrorists in a variety of media. Once again, too loaded an image to have used lightly. I am reminded of Soldier Blue where dominant images of the Vietnam War (the soldier holding a dead girl) were used in the mis-en-scene of the film’s final sequence.
Like most political films about the US in recent times, this has an opinion – by means of implication – on the Iraq war. In the final scene, when Wilson tries to get funds for education and the rebuilding of Afghanistan, he meets disappointment. US officials weren’t interested in any actual development activity once they had achieved the defeat of Russians. The Mujahideen went on to ruin any semblance of order in the country, ultimately giving rise to the Taliban. The question is: Is history being repeated in Iraq? This sequence of the film doesn’t actively question the fact of interference in the affairs of another country (the Soviet Union was invited by the government of Afghanistan), maybe not even question the US’s hysterical stance on Communism, but it does bring forth their role in the destruction of a country – one they had set out to save.
In the wake of growing sympathy for the US forces stationed in Iraq and in the increasing strength of the demand to call them back, Hollywood is playing its very crucial part by exploring all the reasons why US should retreat from Iraq. Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs is more explicit since it takes names and is more openly self-critical. I have a feeling, Charlie Wilson’s War has that inclination too, only it does it very subtly, perhaps too subtly. And maybe not at all. But that’s not what I like to believe.

No Disgrace

There are some writers who can justifiably be subjects of legends true and false. J.M Coetzee is one such. It is said that he never laughs, and his Nobel Prize winning work, Disgrace confirms it. Disgrace had shaken me out of the comfort zone of politically correct and somewhat idealistic views on the much celebrated end of apartheid in South Africa. There were parallel stories, imagery, comment on history, violence, society etc…and all captured with a kind of precision that seems impossible. I feel ridiculous building up a book so much, but it really was the perfect novel. With this baggage it is only too easy to guess what I expected from Slow Man, Coetzee’s next novel. And I have to say that I was a little disappointed.

Paul Rayment’s life changes when he is hit by a speeding car. His leg is amputated and he is maimed for life. He hires a nurse, Marijana, who he is attracted to. There is no evident future with Marijana because she is married with a large family of three children, all of whom Paul tries to win over. In an unexpected turn of events, Australian novelist Elizabeth Costello comes into their lives, into Paul’s home, uninvited, with no promise of leaving.

In Slow Man, J.M. Coetzee moves out of South Africa, into Australia, and in the process seems to lose some of his grip. Perhaps because he belongs, in more ways than one, to South Africa. He hasn’t completely acclimatized to this new literary locale. One would think that this physical move is a mere detail since his position remains essentially the same, that of the settler, one who has been assimilated into the culture and lifestyle he inhabits, even though his origins lie elsewhere, in white Europe to be specific. Like a lot of Australian literature, in this novel, Coetzee dabbles with ideas of identity, of language, of origins and ultimately of history.

In classic Coetzee style, there is careful deliberation on each sentence, on the very use of language, which the writer often discusses with the reader. The novel opens with these lines, “The blow catches him from the right, sharp and surprising and painful, like a bolt of electricity, lifting him up off the bicycle. Relax! he tells himself as he flies through the air (flies though the air with the greatest of ease!), and indeed he can feel his limbs go obediently slack. Like a cat he tells himself: roll, then spring to your feet, ready for what comes next. The unusual word limber or limbre is on the horizon too.”
He does something similar in his comparison of the two women of almost identical names, Marianna, a call-girl of sorts who Elizabeth Costello arranges for, and Marijana, who Paul loves. “He says Marianna, she says Marianna, but it is not the same name. His Marianna is still coloured by Marijana…not the French Marianne? (he asks)…Not French. A pity. France would be something in common, like a blanket to deploy over the pair of them.”

The question of identity is central to this novel. Why does Paul fall in love with Marijana, is he really in love or is it just desire, fulfillment of which will provide him with a sense of superiority? Paul talks of being in love and in the same breath he says he wants to look after Marijana and her family, including her husband. In this attempt he offers to fund her son’s college education, and pays a considerable amount to bail out her daughter of a petty theft accusation. Coetzee invites his reader to join him in observing his protagonist, no doubt with a knowing smile. For instance, Paul writes a letter to Marijana’s husband clarifying his position, “It is not just money I offer. I offer certain other tangibles too, human tangibles…I employ(ed) the word godfather. I do not know whether in Catholic Croatia you have the institution of the godfather. But you must be familiar with the concept…the godfather is the personification of the Holy Ghost.”
At the same time, Paul doesn’t find it in him to be condescending to Elizabeth Costello of white European descent like him. He isn’t in love with her, but she forces him to treat her like an equal, in her mystical way she insists that she didn’t come to him, rather he came to her. There is no explanation as to why she came, from where and when she will go back, and in the way the story develops, she becomes a counterfoil to Paul. She offers him a better life, away from the present, she offers her company and support, a bit like Paul’s Holy Ghost analogy, only more subtle, more humble! She seems to know everything Paul knows or has been through and even those things that he suspects, but doesn’t speak of.
But what is identity without history, arguably Coetzee’s favourite topic. In each of his novels, Coetzee designs different ways of representing history. At times it is through people, some times through spaces, through language. Slow Man uses a metaphor more predictable, photographs. Paul is ready to go miles to help Drago or any member of Marijana’s family, but when Drago steals an original photograph from his collection, we see, for the first time, a stern Paul. In a sequence of events not out of the ordinary, Drago steals the original and makes a copy in which he has superimposed his grandfather’s image. The idea of rewriting history is only too obvious, especially since Paul has made it abundantly clear that it is through his collection of photographs that he wants to immortalize himself. The pictures aren’t his, neither are they taken by him, but they belong to him. To add to it there is the usual conversation about how he has left France far away and is a mere speck in his memory, it isn’t a culture he can blend with any more. It’s too direct, it’s lacking the usual craft that one associates with Coetzee’s writing. The gamut of emotions, conflicting, tearing the reader apart that are signature Coetzee in so many of his novels, The Master of Petersburgh, Youth, Waiting for the Barbarians, Disgrace etc, are compromised in favour of the discourse of identity. A limiting of thought that is disappointing.

Slow Man still has some features of a classic Coetzee novel. The central protagonist is a middle-aged, single, lonely man, who is very difficult to identify with, and sometimes impossible to sympathise with. There is desire that appears almost perverse, but also very real. There are the women that come out looking stronger than the men in spite of being secondary characters.
Slow Man took its time coming, but it hasn’t been able to match the standard Coetzee had set with Disgrace. Not by a mile.

Taare Zameen Par: Review

It Matters coz its Black or White

It often happens that when you have low expectations of a film, you end up enjoying it because it has something that you didn’t expect it to have. When I read the tagline of this film – Every Child is Special – every cynical bone in my body had low expectations of the film. Unfortunately, even that could not redeem the painful experience that was Taare Zameen Par. For a person hailed as a perfectionist, Aamir Khan sure didn’t deliver in his directorial debut.

Some may think that this is the view of a cynic, who doesn’t appreciate the moving journey of a little boy’s struggle with dyslexia. And I would like to set the record straight by saying I was moved by the boy, but not because his story was depicted with any complexity, but only because Darsheel Safary (who plays Ishaan, the dyslexic child) gave a memorable performance. In fact, the emotional quotient is the root of the problem of this film. Aamir Khan is a thinking, responsible individual of the film community and he has proved this more than once by joining hands with social causes that need support. And one appreciates that. However, in this film, in his attempt to bring this issue into mainstream cinema, he seems to have lost his grip. The film is a long, trite and preachy classroom lecture on dyslexia. The humour in the first forty minutes of the film, that showed some promise in terms of treatment of a serious social-medical issue, soon gave way to a good two hours of constant weeping. I'll begin with the mother, a character that held immense potential for the depth of the film, was brutally limited since her response to any of Ishaan’s or her husband’s activities or decisions was to cry. I can’t recall a single scene in which she didn’t have tears in her eyes. This is not to be insensitive to the struggle and frustration of a parent who can’t understand her child’s disability, but really, I feel that the insensitivity isn’t mine, but that of the filmmaker who has created such a formulaic mother - who will be read as the archetypal woman who has no opinions at all, and if she does (considering she is an educated woman who cares a lot for her son) she doesn’t feel the need to voice them.

Continuing with the poor characterisation, there is the father. Even if I am to be extremely kind and say that perhaps the father stands for the competitive, straitjacketed world, he falls miserably short. A trained actor, Vipin Sharma, is one of the weakest presences in the film. His responses as an actor are extremely contrived, as if out of a very dated Acting for Dummies kind of manual. He has three major conversations with Mr Nikumbh (Aamir Khan) in the film, and the graph of each is strikingly similar. It starts with him on the offensive about his son’s weaknesses, about his role as a father and Nikumbh’s place as a teacher. This is followed by an inspirational (read extremely trite) speech by Nikumbh about how every child has his strengths and how parents don’t understand this and pressure the child. And this is followed by the previously mentioned predictable facial responses of the father who looks down to show understanding and shame. The question to ask is, if this tempo was followed in the first conversation where there was a sense of understanding and shame in the father, why does he come back to repeat the pattern? It is a real waste of effort and not to mention our time, if the father is back to a tabula rasa state by the second conversation.

This brings us to Nikumbh, the character who makes this film the painful diatribe that it is. He enters the scene as a clown with big ears and a funny moustache, dressed in bright colors, uttering gibberish and basically establishing himself as the anti-thesis of the teachers we witnessed before (images of a whistling Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society haunted me). The greatest problem of Taare Zameen Par is that polar opposites define the film. There isn’t any scope of layers, or of shades of grey of any character, particularly the teachers, who therefore become caricatures rather than characters. That the cartoons of the three teachers at the art mela captured their entire essence should have been a clue to Aamir Khan. Ishaan and his brother, the mother and the father are the other polar opposites that exist in the film. Coming back to Nikumbh, quite predictably he is an art teacher. Predictable not just because a dozen films have used it before (Mona Lisa Smile and Notes on a Scandal to name a few recent ones) but because it is an easy way out to make art the polar opposite of any ‘actual subjects’ that are taught by the other teachers. I certainly expected Aamir Khan to think a little more out of the box. There is almost nothing believable about Khan’s character (and here I am willfully ignoring the fact of a singing and dancing teacher). He legally teaches in two schools, he addresses little eight-year-olds as ‘doston’, and comes up with the most didactic, unreal dialogues about how a table is too small to handle the weight of a child’s imagination etc. The listing of famous and successful dyslexic people was accompanied by technical sounding descriptions of their achievements that were out-of-place to say the least. Somewhere in the film, it seems, as if Khan got confused about how to treat these eight-year-olds, like adults or to become a child along with them.

Moving on to the theme of the film. I am in two minds about the ethical question behind the treatment of dyslexic people and in effect people suffering from any misunderstood mental disorders who have to struggle harder than others to survive in society. I strongly agree that there need to be more avenues for creating awareness and sensitivity about neurological disorders. At the same time, I feel that we do the sufferers a great injustice by pitying them. Perhaps the greatest oversight (in some ways an oversight is the opposite of perfection) is that dyslexia is equated with physical and mental challenges. That is completely incorrect. "Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that manifests primarily as a difficulty with written language, particularly with reading and spelling. It is separate and distinct from reading difficulties resulting from other causes, such as deficiencies in intelligence...Evidence suggests that dyslexia results from differences in how the brain processes written and/or verbal language. Although dyslexia is the result of a neurological difference, it is not an intellectual disability." [1] So, all the connections made with the school for mentally and physically challenged children and the documentary footage used with the closing credits only succeeds in evoking pity which is a response that results from a sense of superiority. And in the simplistic treatment of the life of Ishaan in the film, I believe the film hasn’t achieved any real sensitization, rather only a long weeping trip that wears off soon after we leave the cinema-hall because apart from anything else, all was well at the end of the film and it seemed to take precious little to cure the boy. Three quarters of the film was about Ishaan’s struggle with dyslexia, while it took just the duration of a song to fix it all. It seems to reduce the pain and the effort it must take to even begin to make some progress in cases of dyslexic children.

Besides by the end of the film, he has 'won' in the traditional, somewhat conservative sense - his report card has moved his parents to tears (sadly that is their response to a good and a bad report card)...he has achieved it all - he is on the front and the back cover of the yearbook. The feel-good factor ruins the aim of the film. Let me justify this, while interpreting Walter Benjamin’s stance on television, Alan Meek says, “TV positions us as subjects of a technological imaginary and…virtual participants in what modernist theorists once called ‘mass culture’.”[2] We can extend this argument to the experience of a film in the cinema hall as well, in fact it perhaps works better that way because with television we are still aware of other people and things around us to bring us back to our reality, but in the cinema hall, the attempt is at building an intimate relation between us and the film. Another form of mimicry, this leads to viewers responding as characters in the film. As a result, what remains at the end of the experience is not the hard part, but the warm feeling inside of having done something good. If we are so satisfied with the way things turned out the process of sensitization is over with the film.

But one must end on a positive note – Darsheel Safary is a treat because he is the only actor who has a character that goes through a journey in the film and he does great justice to the role. We see him transforming from a wonderfully spirited child to one who seems to have given up on the world. He cries and makes you cry, but that is not his defining feature – he has captured the frustrations, joys and the life of Ishaan in a way that makes him the only believable character in the entire film. The flip-book was a great device but its greatness is slammed in your face till you are tired of it and its sentimental implications.

So I guess while every child may be special, every film might not be, and this one certainly isn’t.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia

[2] http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fir998/AMfr4e.htm

Pan's Labyrinth - The Labyrinth of History

Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro’s deep spiritual struggle with the representation of the Spanish Civil War was first visible in The Devil’s Backbone in 2001. He chose the ghost-story as a natural symbol for a tragic history, one that hasn’t been avenged and therefore put to rest – quite literally, it spoke of history as a something that haunts the present. It was perhaps this literal quality that pushed him to look at the event again in 2006, with Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno), this time with a dual purpose; first, to play not just the historical event but to explore its agents. Second, in the process, also examine the space that encompasses the event—that of the historical narrative. As a result, the film doesn’t fit into any single traditional or modern or post-modern trope of history writing. With the introduction of the fantastic, del Toro has added another layer to the filmic representation of the Spanish Civil War. With this added element, the film can lay claims not just to traditional and post-modern forms of representing history but also to allegory.

As a rule, allegory refers to a story with a double meaning – a primary or surface meaning and a secondary or under-the-surface meaning. It is a story that can be read, understood and interpreted at two levels.[1] It is in its use of the fantastic that the film becomes part of the allegorical mode of representation. The most usual understanding of the use of fantasy is with respect to escaping a brutal reality. A seminal example of this is C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia where the children approach the closet and hence the world of Narnia when they are trying to escape punishment in the real world. In a film based on a fascist camp in Spain during the Second World War it would be easy to think that Ofelia will use the fantastic as a space where she can escape Vidal and his cruelties. And that del Toro will use the fantastic as symbolic of the real, in a way masking it. This is precisely what he does not do. The fantastic doesn’t becoming a stylised way of suggesting the violence, because the violence is not suggested, it is shown in detail, for instance, when Vidal deliberates on each tool of torture that he will use on the rebel he has captured. At the end of the film in particular, he takes us to a point where our willing suspension of disbelief is at its height and we are just about to feel comfortable and somewhat happy at the joyful reunion and Ofelia’s success when we are pulled back to face the dying Ofelia.

Del Toro has introduced the fabulist element for a purpose very different, and in some ways quite contrary, to the tropes of escapist cinema and literature. It is a two-point agenda:
First, there are three orders that are visible in this film: Vidal’s fascist group, the revolutionaries and Ofelia’s imaginary world. In an interview del Toro explains that in the film, everything is in threes, there are three fairies, three tasks, three doors etc. The relationship between the fascists, the revolutionaries and the imaginary world too functions like a triangle – with the fascist group on one side and the other two on the other side. We see the revolutionaries primarily in the peripheries, and as Pedro says, they might not be able to eradicate the fascists, but they can at least make things difficult for them. Therefore, the world of the revolutionaries is defined by that of the fascists.

The imaginary world becomes another way of deterring the order created by Vidal. It facilitates and almost demands a disobedience of the existing order. For instance, Ofelia first sees the fairy when she is asked to address Vidal as father; the pressure on this new relationship seems to work as the catalyst to the desire for an alternative order. Even when she enters the dead tree to fight the frog, her dress – meant to ‘make her beautiful for the captain’ – is ruined beyond recognition; in effect, she refuses to comply with the concept of beauty as it is defined in the real world. Ofelia underscores the action of the rebels who we see mostly in the peripheries; fantasy then isn’t an escape, but an extension of the revolutionary forces. In some ways, del Toro plays on the concept of the underworld – using it to refer to the imaginary underworld as well as the political underworld.

A key similarity between the world of the rebels and that of Ofelia lies in the question of choice. In the scene where Vidal kills the doctor, we see that these two worlds are different from the fascist world primarily because they have the desire to choose something other than the absolute order of Vidal (and thereby Franco). The very creation of the alternative order is a manifestation of a choice. Just before the faun tells Ofelia about the final task that will reopen the world of Princess Moanna, he starts resembling Vidal and the fascists when he asks her never to question him or his tasks again. Ofelia not only questions him, but she also defies him by refusing to shed her brother’s blood. The biblical overtones of the idea of sacrifice link the episode to the Book of Genesis[2] where God asks Abraham to sacrifice the life of his only son Isaac, and Abraham agrees; in her refusal, Ofelia rejects the Christian order that was an undercurrent of the Spanish Civil War. The difference between the two worlds is made clear because in the imaginary world she becomes Princess Moanna in spite of her defiance, perhaps because of it, whereas in the real world, it kills her.

The defining feature of the fascist world is the lack of choice, and this is evident from the onset; when Ofelia and her mother reach the camp, Vidal forces Carmen to sit in the wheelchair despite her protests that she is perfectly capable of walking. This is a clear act of taking away her agency, and it is this that Ofelia wants to rectify in her world. In her world, she has to be guided but she has agency nevertheless— she has to complete the three tasks at the end of which she will be a princess. And her responsibility is larger than one would imagine; when the faun reprimands her for disobeying him in the second task, he says, “Your spirit shall forever remain among the humans. You shall age like them, you shall die like them. And all memory of you shall fade in time. And we’ll vanish along with it.”(emphasis added).

There is a somewhat similar treatment of Mercedes in the film. Both women become key players in their alternative orders, in fact, at times they function as heroes. Ofelia saves the ‘kingdom’ from the frog and Mercedes risks her life to bring food and medicine etc to the rebels. Both Mercedes and Ofelia have one very basic tool that helps them escape monsters, real and imaginary – Mercedes has the little knife and Ofelia has the chalk. So if Ofelia is a parallel to Mercedes, the imaginary world is a parallel to the world of the revolutionaries, because ultimately, both worlds have to fight monsters.

The second agenda fulfilled by the use of fantasy, the beneath-the-surface layer is del Toro’s defiance of the laws that define historiography and the real. Hence, the labyrinth. The very physical structure of the labyrinth is at variance with the decidedly straight, linear appearance of history in traditional history-writing tropes, particularly the annals as described by Hayden White where the event is more important than the agent. “…(the annals figure) forth a world in which things happen to people rather than one in which people do things.”[3] In Pan’s Labyrinth, del Toro redefines historiography as a coming together of the political and the personal. He defines the entry into the labyrinth as a journey of Ofelia discovering herself. “Unlike a maze, a labyrinth is actually a constant transit of finding, not getting lost. It’s about finding, not losing, your way…I can ascribe two concrete meanings of the labyrinth in the movie. One is the transit of the girl towards her own center, and towards her own, inside reality, which is real. I think that Western cultures make a difference about inner and outer reality, with one having more weight than the other. I don’t. And I have found that [the inner] reality is as important as the one that I’m looking at right now.”[4]

Like Ofelia, del Toro has created a logic that isn’t governed by the laws of the real world, but is logic nevertheless. The logic of exactitude in Vidal’s world where every activity is preceded by a visual reference to the pocket watch is in contrast to a logic where time is measured by the moon and hourglasses. While a chronology dominates the real world, del Toro introduces multiple dimensions of time in the imaginary world which has a past where Princess Moanna lived with her father the king, a present where the faun is trying to test the princess’s essence, and a future that is introduced when she is invited to share the throne with her father and mother. The history that del Toro endorses is therefore more visceral, one where different layers exist simultaneously. There isn’t any absolute in this version of history, it lends it self to the realm of a fluid truth as well. Therefore, the film doesn’t fix history in a moment, it gives it layers of meaning. It doesn’t halt or attempt to cure history in its narrative[5] and this is most evident in the way the film ends with the image of a dying child.

The internal logic of del Toro’s worldview is captured in the fact that the world where a sense of the grotesque and the baroque are in contest with the very visible neatness of Vidal’s world, the former wins. Vidal is characterised by well-oiled, closely combed hair, wearing a crisp uniform and repeatedly shown shaving and polishing his boots. In contrast, physically, almost all characters in Ofelia’s world look somewhat monstrous. The Pale Man, the Frog (and the yellowy mass he throws up, full of huge beetles), the Faun and even the fairies look like unappealing insects in the beginning. The allegory is most effective in the comparison it inevitably creates between the two worlds because gradually, the ‘real’ becomes more frightening and more grotesque than the imaginary despite the literal monsters in the latter. There is a sense of comfort about the imaginary world with reference to the horror that occupies the real world and the grotesque that under rides it. We are as relieved as Ofelia when the faun comes back to give her another chance.

What this does to the idea of fantasy is bring it to the level of the real, therefore, one can no longer justifiably limit the fantastic to escape. Del Toro’s comment therefore is on the usual gap that comes between the real and the decoding of the allegory and its symbolism. While the fantastic enhances the representation of the real, making it more nuanced, the brutality of the real is in no way diluted. A reality that so closely borders on horror requires fantastic means to comprehend it. Del Toro says this himself, “She’s (Ofelia) actually articulating the world through her fantasy. So the things in her fantasy would reflect things in the real world. It’s not really her way of coping with the real world, more like interpreting.”[6] And through Ofelia, we come close to actually understanding what that reality must have been like. The magical occupies the gap between the madness of Franco’s Spain and us. This brings to mind Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Nobel Speech, he says, “A reality not of paper, but one that lives within us and determines each instant of our countless daily deaths, and that nourishes a source of insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty, of which this roving and nostalgic Colombian is but one cipher more, singled out by fortune. Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable.”



[1] A Dictionary of Literary Terms. Cuddon, J.A. 1982. London: Penguin Books
[2] The Book of Genesis: 22.
[3] White, Hayden, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality” in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 7:1, autumn, 1980, 5-27.
[4] http://movies.about.com/od/panslabyrinth/a/pansgt122206.htm
[5] Staiger, Janet, “Securing the Fictional Narrative as a Tale of the Historical Real” in The South Atlantic Quarterly vol.88:2, 1989.
[6] http://www.aintitcool.com/node/31084 (Capone interviews Guillermo del Toro)

Dancer in the Dark

Dancer in the Dark: Lars von Trier and the Golden Heart

Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier makes no secret of his deep criticism of the United States of America. He made Dancer in the Dark, the third part of his ‘Golden Heart’ trilogy, in 2000, and the film served, in many ways, as a precursor to the ‘USA: Land of Opportunity’ trilogy that he began after being criticised by American filmmakers at the Cannes Film Festival when he went to showcase Dancer in the Dark—he was told that he had no right to make a film about the United States without actually visiting the country.[1]
Von Trier uses the protagonist Selma Jezkova, a Czech immigrant, to enter into the discourse of the construction of America as the land of possibility. Selma moves to America from Czechoslovakia because in America there is technology that can cure her son’s poor eyesight that he has inherited from her. She confesses that she knew he would get the disease that would escalate to total blindness, but she had him nevertheless. Her aim then, in moving to the United States, becomes an attempt at expiation of the guilt. The biting irony lies in this very guilt, because as the film progresses, we see that Selma is among the few that has no reason to be guilty, hers is the golden heart.

“More than anything, there are more images in evil. Evil is based far more on the visual, whereas good has no good images at all.”[2]
Von Trier’s attack on America is methodical and whole— it is the system that tramples this golden heart. The individual, the family, the professional set-up, or the justice system—every step of society seems either helplessly or consciously embedded in deceit. Bill and Linda are Selma’s landlords (they own the land on which she has her trailer) and friends. Though Linda thinks that Bill has great inherited wealth, he is actually in great debt and doesn’t have the courage to tell her about this. He tells Selma that Linda is a compulsive spender and he can’t do anything to stop her. Caught desperately in the consumer culture, Bill decides to steal from Selma the two thousand odd dollars she has saved up over the years for her son Gene’s eye operation. Von Trier invests a great deal of thought in Bill’s character—though he is the reason for Selma’s tragedy, we see his compulsions as well. The scene where Selma finally kills him, the struggle gets transferred from the actual physical struggle between him and her to Bill’s emotional struggle between the guilt of stealing and the somewhat involuntary response of taking advantage of Selma’s blindness.
Samuel, the director of The Sound of Music production that Selma is a part of, is a more directly deceitful character, more meticulous and cunning in the way he helps the police capture Selma.

“My films have become highly moral recently.”
But individuals aside, von Trier’s most poignant attack in the film is for the American justice system. Almost every one who testifies against Selma is either lying or constructing a somewhat imagined version of the truth. For instance, Linda’s testimony is partly what she was lead to believe, but was part exaggeration to direct sympathy towards Bill. As a result of her build up, the all-American jury is most-likely to see it as an attack of the outsider on the American victim. The prosecuting lawyer spells this out, he says, “She didn’t show the pity she is now expecting from us…After all that this country gave her, this is how she repays us.” What is interesting and probably the sharpest comment against the farcical proceedings is that the prosecution is not able to tell the difference between the real and imagined; the lawyer takes Selma’s statement that her father is the Czech tap-dancer Oldrich Novy seriously, and he summons him to court to testify against her. The reflection on a justice system that can’t tell the real from the imaginary is complete. Selma isn’t really the one who appears blind. Conspicuously, we see the prosecution build a case against Selma for a good half hour, while we don’t hear the defense at all. Even the lawyer Catherine hires doesn’t get a chance to defend her. So effectively, Selma doesn’t get a defense.

“Regarding the rule about colour, that one was for me, because I have always felt it difficult to accept the way a colour film looks. I have always spent a lot of energy changing it one way or other, so I could bear looking at it, and therefore it was a wonderful rule for me.”
The thing we notice first about Dancer in the Dark is its curious technique, specifically, the camera work and the use of the musical form.
Sudden shifts in appearance telling the real world from Selma’s imagination are made evident with the help of lighting and the jerky movement from one shot to the next. Privy to the shift from real to the imaginary, we know that switching to the mode of the musical is Selma’s way of dealing with a situation she has no control over in real life. And surprisingly enough, we need this shift as much as she does, it becomes our breather. The level of empathy is completed with the hand-held camera which gives a documentary-like feel to the film, allowing it a kind of truth claim.

“The problem about a musical is that it’s a little hard to swallow that suddenly they’re like dum-dee-dee-dum-dum this is always a little difficult.”
The film begins with Selma rehearsing for a Broadway musical – The Sound of Music, where she is to play the role of Maria. Von Trier’s use of The Sound of Music establishes Dancer in the Dark’s claim to the genre of the musical, simultaneously marking the differences between the two. The Sound of Music becomes the traditional musical as opposed to the more experimental musical that is Dancer in the Dark. With the parallel drawn between the two, a part of us expects a similar, bitter-sweet end like in The Sound of Music, and therefore, the end here is that much more striking.
Von Trier accepts the musical's escapist potential and uses it to describe just that...the need to deny reality. Yet, in the film neither the protagonist nor the viewer is spared any trauma. Von Trier uses The Sound of Music as a stepping stone, only to move ahead and redefine the musical. While Selma uses this form to run away from reality, she is brought back each time and the harshness of the reality hasn’t gone or reduced. Once again, this is used most effectively in the end when she is hanged suddenly in the middle of a song titled ‘The next to last song’.

“Visible good easily becomes trite…”
Only here, it doesn’t.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_von_Trier
[2] All quotes used as titles are statements made by Lars von Trier. They have been taken from the site: http://www.quotesandpoem.com/quotes/showquotes/author/lars-von-trier/

Om Shanti Om

Let me state for the record that I love Shahrukh Khan. I know his acting skills support him only as far as he plays romantic roles, his attempts at variety are usually disastrous—the prime example of which is Duplicate—and that we are lucky he tries this on rare occasions. So I went to watch Om Shanti Om expecting a ridiculous plot (everyone said it was a remake of Karz), and bad acting — not only from Shahrukh, but this new model-turned actress, Deepika Padukone. I don't remember the last time I was so happy to be wrong. Om Shanti Om is easily one of the better films made in our film industry in a long long time. Farah Khan keeps the promise she made at the time of Main Hoon Na.

First of all, it is not a remake of Karz, unless Karz was a biting irony about itself and the entire film fraternity. Farah Khan picks up the element of rebirth and karma etc from Subhash Ghai's film, only to turn it on its head, not just for the sake of mockery, but to bring attention to the most important element of the relationship between the filmmakers (whether it is the director or the actor) and the audience — a relationship that very easily embeds itself in the willing suspension of disbelief. Farah Khan strategically inserts a dialogue in the film where, through Sandy, she defends what we call ridiculous plotlines and situations. The reality or plausibility of an action or a situation is not what is of the essence, it is whether the audience is engaged with the story. The space of the cinema hall then becomes a transient space that allows the audience to let go of the bounds of rationality that rule their daily lives. Why is it any different from fantasy that has held a proud place in the hallowed world of great literature? It is a way of dealing with reality, a means of escape, and in this case a way of looking inwards and laughing at oneself.

What is creditable about this film is that without the usual tricks of gaining access to the category of experimental cinema, it creates levels and deals with them with great ease, not letting the viewer complain of a single dull, trying-to-be-intellectual moment where the filmmaker along with some scholars revels in the greatness of a single shot while the general audience is left guessing what was so great about a great film. Calling the film within the film Om Shanti Om as well is not unusual and it works very well here, especially in the last song, where Shahrukh (the reincarnated Om, also called Om) retells the story of the first half of the film with clips recreating those scenes. If we pay attention to the lyrics of the song, its heightened self-consciousness at its melodramatic content is evident. Though it hardly matters to the audience, who for all their rationality, are enthralled by the suspense and melodrama of the moment, the film creates levels where the lyrics of the song are simultaneously referring to Om Shanti Om starring Om Kapoor and Om Shanti Om starring Shahrukh Khan. It's meta-fiction, people!!!

Irony directed at oneself is the greatest achievement of this film, and it was heart warming to see so many in industry come out and laugh at themselves. The award ceremony is one such scene where we see industry greats like Amitabh Bachchan, Shabana Azmi, Hrithik Roshan, Rani Mukherjee etc show the persona adopted by filmstars around the media. Shabana Azmi's jab on herself and the long line of leading ladies saying a variety of "We are just good friends" are highlights of this scene. There is also a pointed reference to remakes and plagiarism as the film very obviously lifts the climactic scene from Madhumati. The formulaic stories and appearances, the focus on NRI representation in Bollywood, and the annoyingly repetitive gestures between friends add to the mockery riot this film is.

But jokes aside, Arjun Rampal's character isn't around as just the killer, it adds to the complicity of the film and its comment, he shows the side of the industry where relationships are determined by their monetary implications, with secret marriages that are never discussed to keep open the possibility for further relationships, where producers forge ways of draining the insurance company after 'failed' projects, and of course the variations of the casting couch.

In all, Om Shanti Om is a great coming together of intelligent film-making and total masala entertainment. And for those who aren't interested in the self-reflexivity, the irony and the layers, go watch a funny, melodramatic film that will keep you thoroughly entertained. Shahrukh can certainly be a better actor, and the film would be more convincing if he were, Deepika Padukone is a refreshing surprise and Kirron Kher is a delight. And of course, you can see 31 stars dancing!!

Innocence and History in Forrest Gump


The 60s have held a fascination in the minds of millions across the world— the Beat Generation, the hippie culture, Joan Baez, Holden Caulfield, the Beatles, lifting the ban off Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Catch 22 etc have appealed to the rebellious desires of artists, writers and filmmakers for years. In the romance of the rebellion, it is easy to forget what it was that gave strength to this counterculture—the Vietnam War. American cinema is flooded with films about the Vietnam War and it is interesting to note that an entire chunk of these films were made in the 90s. Most of these films are centered around a sense of loss and hopelessness as they base themselves on (and at the same time also create) the veteran discourse.
Robert Zemeckis’s multiple Oscar-winning film, Forrest Gump (1994) isn’t just about the Vietnam War though it tells the story of a war veteran. It records the history of America in and around the 1960s through the figure of a slow-witted man, Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks). In this paper, I would like to discuss how Zemeckis’ representation of the Vietnam War is significantly different from most accounts of the War, especially a film like Oliver Stone’s Platoon, and why Zemeckis feels the need to take a somewhat simplistic view of history. Is it that by the 90s America had finally reached a place where the trauma had been dealt with and there was space for alternative views on the War in popular culture? Or is it embedded in a more political reason, whereby a conservative worldview had to be justified and encouraged?

I

The problem with Forrest Gump begins with the beginning, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.” True to this opening line, the film treats American history of the decades between the 1950s and the 1970s as a box of chocolates; you might not know what flavour you are going to get, but whatever it is, it will still be chocolate. The view of history the film will adopt can be ascertained by the fact that the original quote in Winston Groom’s book on which the film is based, was, “…bein’ an idiot is no box of chocolates.” In the film, Forrest flows in and out of events that shaped American history, particularly in the 1960s, like George Wallace and the desegregation of Alabama University, the Watergate Scandal and the Vietnam War etc. Through Forrest, we see a linear American history¾no mistakes, no looking back, just success. Simple. Encapsulated. In this triumphant march of history, or rather of America, the representation of the Vietnam War is what suffers the most. Numerous critics have debated the conservative or radical impulse of this film, but it is in the representation of the War and the counterculture that the film becomes conservative.

In the latter half of the 80s and through the 90s, America saw an intellectual and artistic revival of the experience of the war in Vietnam where the United States sided with South Vietnam against the Communist regime of North Vietnam. The Vietnam War was the subject of more than thirty films that appeared in this period, the most widely acclaimed of which is Oliver Stone’s Platoon. As Marita Sturken says, Platoon was marketed as ‘the first real Vietnam film’ because of its autobiographical content.[1] Through the film, we are rooted in the landscape of Vietnam and the feeling of no escape is transferred from the soldier to the spectator for whom that landscape is as alien. The film begins with the ominous image of dead bodies wrapped up, ready to be sent back; this is the first view of Vietnam for the protagonist Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) as well as the spectator. The film doesn’t spare us the brutality that ruled that space and time, and this is most evident when Taylor fires at a Vietnamese boy who is expected to keep jumping from one side to the other to protect himself from the shots. Taylor can’t seem to understand why he is doing what he is, he doesn’t understand the anger that is growing inside him, which he decodes only when the film closes, he says, “we weren’t fighting the enemy, we were fighting ourselves…the enemy was within us.” There is death everywhere, not just of American soldiers, but also of the Vietnamese, American GIs burn down entire villages, kill innocent civilians and even attempt a gang rape. There is a critique of the self (read the American), its brutal abilities and the role it plays in the carnage that is made most visible through the film.

Forrest Gump too looks at the Vietnam War, it uses the traditional vocabulary and references¾ the use of the word ‘Charlie’, the reference to the incessant rain, the weapons used, the phones connecting the lieutenant of a platoon to the base camp etc— yet it depicts a different, a softer history. Unlike the opening shot of Platoon, when Forrest appears in Vietnam, the mise en scene is that of a beach party, there are barbeques and stacks of beer cans everywhere, there are GIs playing cards, and there is music in the background. In fact, the comic is introduced in the next scene in an overlap between Forrest’s omniscient narrative and mise en scene. When the GIs are patrolling, Forrest’s omniscient narrative voice says, “Lieutenant Dan was always getting these funny feelings so he’d tell us to get down, shut up.” And then Lieutenant Dan (Gary Sinise) repeats, “get down, shut up.”
Most importantly, we don’t see any Vietnamese people in Vietnam. We don’t see the Americans as aggressors in any way, only as helpless GIs—all of whose names and hometowns have been discussed by Forrest—who merely defend themselves, against the faceless oppressors. Quite naturally, the spectator’s sympathy is directed towards the young, innocent, injured familiar figure of the American GI, not with the faceless Vietnamese attacker. In the way the War appears in this film, even in their defense, the Americans didn’t kill or injure a single Vietnamese, because the only dead and injured that we see are the Americans.
It is interesting how Zemeckis tries to deal with the political situation of very real events and at the same time tries to distance himself and his film from any direct political comment. He shirks the responsibility of the statements made through the film by focusing on the innocence that Forrest embodies. The pretence is that of an ‘objective’ history; for instance, he places the blame of the injuries and death in the war on a loosely defined entity, that is never shown and hardly ever referred to directly. Whatever else this entity may be, it is not American, so there is no space for self-reflexivity. In Platoon, there is a sense of guilt that comes across in Sergeant Elias’s (Willem Dafoe) statement, “…what happened today is just the beginning, we are going to lose this war…we’ve been kicking other people’s asses for so long, I figure it’s time we got ours kicked.”
The impact and suggestions of Forrest Gump regarding Vietnam are very different from other such films where the spectator and the filmmaker have to come to terms with the destruction and the unending sense of doom that stems from the fact that USA lost the War, something that Zemeckis chooses not to mention. The real difference therefore lies in the struggle with the self and its sense of morality and also with one’s country that continues to be hailed as the moral saviour of the world in the moment when films like Platoon were made. It is the lack of this struggle that marks Zemeckis’ film, where events flow with so much ease that the War, the loss and the entire age seem mocked at.

II
The question that needs to be answered, however, is why the last fifteen years of the 20th century keep coming back to the 60s moment. There are two broad possibilities:
First; as Marita Sturken says, “American society slouches toward the 21st century as a culture deeply suspicious of its history. We have moved from various phases of late modern optimism into cold-war fears, from 1960s disillusion to a late 20th century culture in which conspiracy theory forms a primary narrative…the contemporary paranoia of American culture and about American history can be seen as a direct outcome of the political and social upheaval of the 1960s.”[2]
So while Platoon occupies one end of the spectrum with Stone’s deeply critical view of the Vietnam War, Forrest Gump occupies the other where not only is the significance and impact of the War underplayed and shielded from the viewer, but the American GI is looked at most uncritically. Look at the figure of Forrest. He is the physical embodiment of all boy-scout qualities—he is honest, courageous, loyal and masculine (in his chivalry, also physically, he is a star football player, and during the War, he has the physical strength to carry his injured friends to safety). Very early in the film, we are told that he has an IQ of 75, a mere five points lower than the level required for public schools. In every other way he surpasses ‘normal’ – he is emotionally intact and knows how to respond to love, jealousy, disappointment etc, he is successful, humble, and an eager parent. In other words, he is good at everything he does. The lack of cynicism that functions as the catchphrase of the film is a result of a careful process of selection done by Zemeckis from the original novel. Zemeckis decides to leave out almost all of Forrest’s failures as they appear in Groom’s text—that he went to a special school, failed in college, could not marry his friend Jenny, smoked pot and had an incredibly troubled relationship with his son.[3]

The publicity material for this film stated, “Forrest is the embodiment of an era, an innocent at large in an America that is losing its innocence.” Losing its innocence perhaps because of the darker side of benevolent America with its sensitive, heroic, self-sacrificing soldiers is explored and thus made available for the world to see by films like Platoon and earlier by a film like Soldier Blue.
Second: till the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States of America focused in everyway at containing Communist forces across the world. The Cold War was depicted as the war over evil and liberty. With the end of the Cold War there was a disintegration of this focus and a sense of direction. American authorities could not afford to let go of the status of the saviours of democracy and freedom. Secretary of State James Baker addressed the World Affairs Council in March 1990. He said, “Already a great, new debate —actually a great, old debate —has broken out, an argument as old as our republic. Now that the adversaries of democracy are weaker, some say we should retire, mission accomplished, to tend our problems at home. I am not among them. In the new world struggling to be born, like the old world now rapidly passing away, there is no substitute for American leadership.”[4]
At this point the United States was also looking at interference in a number of other countries, the Gulf and Central America for instance. The public had to be convinced of this foreign policy, they had to be convinced of the reasons for fighting this war that had no direct consequences for the American people. The larger-good-of-mankind argument had to be made in the context of the Gulf War. And since a similar argument was used for Vietnam, the ghosts of that war had to be touched up and re-presented. In Forrest Gump’s version of the Vietnam War, there is less violence, one death (of Forrest’s friend Bubba) and the possibility of looking forward—the Vietnam War introduces Forrest to ping-pong, bringing him fame (he meets the President again and appears alongside John Lennon on The Dick Cavett Show) and money to start the shrimping business which in turn brings him more success and financial security. Ironically, it seems as if Forrest Gump begins where Platoon leaves off, where Taylor says, “Those of us who did make it, have an obligation to build again, to teach to others what we know and to try with what’s left of our lives to find a goodness and meaning to life.”
There was a need in the 90s therefore to bend popular opinion towards ideas of a free world that America had an obligation to build, and it was necessary to convince the public to ensure that a counterculture like the one that appeared in the 60s didn’t raise its head again.
Thus the other indicator of Forrest Gump’s conservative nature is the representation of the counterculture of the 60s. In the film, the counterculture is signified through the figure of Jenny (Robin Wright), Forrest’s friend, object of desire and ultimately his wife. Through Jenny, the counterculture is represented as the darker side of American history, that which was unsuccessful and destructive.
Despite their friendship, Jenny is always the anti-thesis of Forrest. She is engendered in an atmosphere of abuse and has no stable home at any point during the film. She avoids her father’s house, and then moves in with her grandmother who lives in a trailer; Jenny is seen at every point in the film near cars and buses—means of escape, leaving for someplace where she’ll look for meaning. This is reflective of the very mobile hippie culture that she invariably becomes a part of. Not daring to think out of the box, Zemeckis places her in very traditional images of drugs, prostitution, suicide attempts, abusive relationships, and misguided youth—represented through the leader of the Black Panthers Party whose personality comes across as confused, aggressive and astray—and not surprisingly, all of these become characteristics of the counterculture. At various junctures of the film, Forrest comes to her rescue, the most interesting of which is the episode at the headquarters of the Black Panthers Party where in spite of his agitated speech about women being mistreated as a result of the War, the leader and his entire group stand and watch as Jenny’s boyfriend beats her, it is only Forrest who intervenes. Until she decides to unite with Forrest, Jenny, and hence the counterculture is a failure. Constructive aspects of the counterculture like its art, literature and music are conspicuously ignored or ridiculed—for instance, Jenny aspires to be like Joan Baez, and while we do see her singing ‘Blowing in the Wind’, she is doing it in a strip club where no one is paying attention to her song. Through the protesters who force unknowing people (like Forrest) into the peace congregation, the ‘host’ at this congregation who wears the American flag and repeatedly uses obscenities encouraging the mob to cheer, and through the leader of the Black Panthers, the counterculture is not only severely criticised but also caricatured.

We see both Forrest and Jenny growing up together, but since the film is his (fictional) biopic, we see the process of his growth, while she is seen in relation to him. We see him as a witness or a participant in the events that shaped 20th century American history, and this is achieved most convincingly through the interpolations in documentary images that are used throughout the film—he meets almost every president of the United States, he is present at the desegregation of Alabama University, he cracks the Watergate Scandal leading to Nixon’s resignation, and he is a soldier fighting in Vietnam. Jenny’s life however is not seen as a selection of events, but as moments. They are more like snapshots that have no explanation, they are just images. The corroboration of his history with actual events are in contrast to her history, which is caricatured, and also, in comparison, open to debates about authenticity. This establishes Forrest’s as the master narrative, the mainstream, and hers as the disturbed fringe that is tolerated as an unfortunate detail.

The closing decade of the 20th century saw a culture of affluence in the United States; in the Introduction to a New Yorker anthology, David Remnick says, “The American record of economic growth (was) unprecedented and, since March 1991, uninterrupted, and (had) inscribed itself on the landscape¾the McMansions of suburbia, the princely constructions along the oceans, the real-estate manias from Manhattan to Palo Alto…” Remnick recalls a sentence from The Great Gatsby, “He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.” he places this sentence at the heart of the contradiction that defined America in its ‘moment of prosperity, satisfaction and self-satisfaction’.[5] It was perhaps this contradiction of the ‘New Gilded Age’ that lead to the oppositional instincts of self-satisfaction and self-exploration.
Despite its simplified representation of the Vietnam War and the counterculture, some of these contradictions occupy Forrest Gump as well, because the Vietnam War is just one aspect of this film, and therefore all questions are not yet answered.

[1] Marita Sturken. ‘Reenactment, Fantasy and the Paranoia of History: Oliver Stone’s Docudramas’ in History and Theory volume 36:4:36, December 1997.
[2] Marita Sturken. ‘Reenactment, Fantasy and the Paranoia of History: Oliver Stone’s Docudramas’ in History and Theory volume 36:4:36, December 1997.

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Gump
[4] American Foreign Policy Current Documents 1990 (1991). From http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/61.htm
[5] David Remnick (ed). The New Gilded Age—The New Yorker Looks at the Culture of Affluence. New York: The Modern Library (2000/2001). All references in this paragraph are from David Remnick’s Introduction to the anthology.