A cinematic passage to India

The sense of mystery about India that has traditionally surrounded it is long gone. The India of today is hardly represented by wicker baskets with snake charmers coaxing hooded serpents patiently out. Even milkmen in rural areas have cell phones now, while‘being Bangalored’ is a commonly used phrase globally, and Indian entrepreneurship is on the rise. It is only natural then that the Indian film industry has moved with the times and undergone a huge change as well.

India has an illustrious cinematic past, of course. Decades ago, Satyajit Ray created masterpieces like his Apu trilogy, which are still hailed by film critics the world over. His brand of filmmaking continued with directors like Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak and Shyam Benegal. Other regions of India also produced cinema that can stand the test of time, such as Mani Ratnam’s Nayagan in 1987, the story of a real-life underworld don in Bombay.

More often associated with mega-budget sets, larger-than-life stars and gaudily-dressed extras in never-ending songs, Indian films have slowly graduated to a no-nonsense, realistic art form, an art form that somehow got lost along the way with 80’s and 90’s commercial ‘Bollywood’ films, with few exceptions. Today, a host of original scripts are making their way to the screen and attracting an audience of their own, thanks to the burgeoning construction of multiplexes in India, which afford viewers a completely different viewing experience compared to the old format single-screen theatres. One of India’s biggest commercial film production houses, Yash Raj Films, ventured into producing a film targeted for an international audience for the first time in 2007. Meanwhile, Sony Pictures Entertainment finally acknowledged the huge business opportunity presented by Indian films and entered hitherto untested waters by producing Saawariya, a typically ‘Bollywood’ fairytale drama, said to be based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s short story White Nights.

With the corporatization of cinema in India came professionalism and the freedom to create stories that are about the new India. In the last four years alone, we have small-budget films like Manasarovar by first-time director Anup Kurian, which traces the story of two brothers and their independent interactions with the same woman a few years apart. Shot in English and set in Kerala, it has a small film feel but a worldly story that is intrinsically Indian. Meanwhile, director Navdeep Singh’s debut feature Manorama Six Feet Under depicts the story of an amateur detective in a small Indian desert town. Another first-time directorial venture, Khosla Ka Ghosla, by director Dibakar Banerjee narrates the travails of a middle-class Indian family and their run-ins with land sharks in Delhi. Such dynamic film projects are making the Indian film industry one that is no longer just about big budget films with even bigger film stars like Shah Rukh Khan or Aishwarya Rai (both of whom are so popular now that they have wax likenesses in Madame Tussaud’s in London). Today we can find Shah Rukh Khan, arguably India’s biggest film star, lending his name to an off-the-beaten-track subject in 2007’s Chak De India, that was a commercial success as well. Said to be based on a true story, the film depicts the story of a defeated hockey player who returns to coach the country’s women’s team.

Yet, for a country that produces the largest number of films in the world, India’s history with the Oscars has been checkered. In 1956, Mother India made it to the Best Foreign Language Film nominee list for the first time, followed by Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! in 1988 and Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan in 2001. Over the last few years though, purely commercial, weakly scripted films were sent as the country’s official nominations, when quality and dynamic films like those mentioned earlier existed alongside. In 2002 we had the costume drama Devdas being nominated, and another costume drama, Paheli, in 2005. Last year’s nomination to the Oscars was probably the most criticized, a film called Eklavya-The Royal Guard, which had big stars but not much of a story. It is possibly part of a trend started by Lagaan in 2001, which had big names and so more financially strong people to push the film’s visibility at an international level.

Critical film viewers cannot be blamed for having numerous questions about the recent direction of the Film Federation of India, and blogs are rife with questions and speculations. Bhavna Talwar, the director of Dharm, a film that was pipped to the post by Eklavya in the final selection, even went so far as to take legal recourse on the grounds that the selection committee was biased. Eklavya of course never made it to the final Oscar nominee list for Best Foreign Language Film anyway, but the issue begs the larger question of how transparent the nomination process is. The process followed by the Academy itself is quite transparent, but what is the process followed by individual countries, specifically India? As it stands today, the general public is certainly in the dark.

It may sound simplistic to say that good films should get the attention they deserve, but more often than not, because they are made without enough financial backing (at least in India), they don’t. Sarthak DasGupta, director of the forthcoming independent feature The Great Indian Butterfly, a film based on an urban couple’s relationship in a changing India, makes an interesting point. He says that cinema which carries the contemporary Indian voice, whether in subject or treatment, is likely to resonate better in international juries' minds. Statistically, he thinks, independent films in India tend to represent this voice more than commercial films.

One solution, maybe, is for big studios to support good-quality, independent Indian films and not just the more commercial fare. These decisions could wind up being commercially astute as well. Miramax, for example, co-produced the multiple award-winning The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which clearly sits in the usual independent film category. Another is for the Film Federation of India to consciously ensure through a transparent system that good quality films truly representing a country’s mood are sent for awards like the Oscars, because this will give a much-needed boost to these films and will ultimately cause a domino effect on the Indian film industry as a whole.

Published in Seven Magazine, 13 April 2008

Hope springs eternal: Life is Beautiful

There aren’t many films that you watch wholly engrossed, a tiny smile lighting up the corners of your face, only to break into unashamed tears the minute it ends. Life is Beautiful is one of those films. If it is known as a brilliant movie, then it is because it genuinely is.

Roberto Benigni directs and acts in this story, based in Arezzo, Italy, of Guido Orefice’ single-minded journey to keep innocence intact in the life of his young son amidst the horrors of World War II. A waiter by profession and a romantic at heart, he sees, woos and marries the upper-class Dora (Nicoletta Braschi) after an amusing series of incidents. But when they are all captured by the Germans as the war breaks out, Guido strives to keep this reality from young Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini), whom he convinces is destined to win this game that they are playing in concentration camp, in pursuit of the ultimate prize.

Guido is one of the most endearing screen characters in recent times. He is simple but not a simpleton, humorous but not a fool - and when it comes to love and life, he is romantic both by nature and spirit. In our heart of hearts, all of us strive to be like Guido - the ease with which he negotiates his life warms our souls. Perhaps just the knowledge that a person like Guido can exist is all it takes to give us hope - that and the beauty with which he protects his son, a relationship which shines in its purity.

Roberto Benigni is perfect as Guido (an Oscar-winning performance), but also noteworthy is little Giorgio Cantarini as his son, a cherub if ever there was one.

Life is Beautiful is indeed beautiful in every way.

Clear confusion-the cloudy world of relationships: Contempt

Contempt is a motion picture essay on the intricate dynamics of a relationship between men and women. In this case, a married man and woman, but the generalization works nonetheless. Men and women are complex creatures, after all. Directed by the pioneering Jean-Luc Godard, Contempt is more like a poem in some ways and a study in human psychology in others. For those reasons alone, it is worth a film student’s weight in gold.

Brigitte Bardot stars as Camille, the wife of struggling playwright Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli), who is in a dilemma as to whether he should take on the job of writing a film script for producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) based on the legend of Ulysses, or not. It’s not as simple as it sounds: Godard is intent on depicting the relationship between Camille and Paul as something so ambiguous that the viewer can never quite make up his mind about whether his sympathies should lie with Camille, who could potentially be the victim of Paul’s greed and cunning, or with Paul, who has to shoulder the torrent of cold retorts that Camille showers on him in a studied outpouring of dislike, or as the title of the film goes, contempt.

The film is full of symbolism. Under Godard’s directorial baton, the camera lingers lovingly on Bardot’s naked body in more than just a couple of scenes - an indication, perhaps, of her vulnerability and also - might we say - perfection as a female. Paul seems to push Camille towards accepting Prokosch’s leery advances and yet seems to be in a constant tussle inside his head as to whether he really wants his beautiful wife to be proved adulterous or not. Does he really love his wife? Is he an ambitious player in tinsel town or just an insecure husband? He could be both - or couldn’t he? Godard seems to be saying throughout the film that in the cloudy world of human relationships, nothing can ever be crystal clear. Camille seems to adore her husband at the beginning of the film, even asking for validation: ‘You like all of me? My mouth? My eyes? My nose? And my ears? Paul: Yes, all of you. Camille: Then you love me... totally? Paul: Yes. Totally... tenderly... Tragically.’ And yet, when she begins to feel that she is being made use of in his journey to the top of his career ladder based on one incident at Prokosch’s house, she seems to lose all love and respect for him. She starts constantly uttering that that she hates him and despises him.

This is where, as a thinking viewer, one begins to wonder how that can really be possible: no one stops loving their partner based on one incident. So was that just the culmination of something that had been simmering for a while, or was it an indication of Camille’s childish, obstinate character? Insight would seem to think it is not the latter - Camille seems to mouth pearls of wisdom throughout the movie. When Paul suggests watching a movie, for example, Camille replies ‘Use your own ideas, instead of stealing them from everyone else.’ Definitely not a blonde bimbo, as Paul seems to think. But Camille is not free from blame either: after she has lost complete interest in Paul, she willingly responds to Prokosch’s advances without a shred of guilt.

Fritz Lang appears as himself in the film, as the director of the proposed movie about Ulysses that Paul is contemplating writing the script for. His character is that of a philosophical mentor, in some ways: ‘We must finish what we have started’, when Paul decides not to do the script, and ‘Children should not play with guns’, when he observes that Paul carries one, ostensibly to hurt Camille or Prokosch.

The film seems to move much more rapidly after the first quarter of the film. The scenes between Paul and Camille at their apartment in Rome are an example of Godard’s brilliant understanding of the relationship between men and women: they exchange verbal jabs at one another as if in a boxing ring, yet are simultaneously relaxed as they undress, bathe and dress slowly, all the while moving from one room to another. That indicates a level of comfort that only people who are very used to each other can have, while the sarcastic repartees are a constant reminder that relationships are not as comfortable as one really thinks they are. As the story moves to picturesque Capri, the tension seems to heighten considerably - and yet everything is still not so clear. Godard seems to be intent on conveying the message that relationships are not black and white, but grey.

And that is exactly what the film is. Contempt is not black or white, but a deliberately grey-toned study in human relationships. And it will be remembered for that.