Are Indian cities sitting ducks?

EDIT:

Deccan Herald published this piece hence updating it to reflect the appropriate link.

http://www.deccanherald.com/blog/?p=196

ShaKri

'Firaaq'ing away from coherence

The name Nandita Das immediately brings to mind a dusky beauty with the subtleties of performance and a gentle reminder of the late Smita Patil-like straight forwardness. After her moving portrayal as the new bride caught between an arrogant husband and a caring sister-in-law in Deepa Mehta’s controversial movie ‘Fire’, she has made a variety of interesting choices in her performances. Some of them include well known features like ‘Aks’ with Bachchan Sr. and ‘Rockford’ by Kukunoor. But apart from a few such recognizable titles, Nandita’s choices seem to have been based more on heart than brain. Sure, she always had the choice to ascend the mantle of the much revered Bollywood but she didn’t do that. Instead she relied on her instinct and did what she felt was right for her inner self. An attribute I truly find worth a commendation. Commercial success of a movie doesn’t always mean that it has genuine quality. That said, having seen a few other works of this young woman I can safely say her choices were never influenced by anything more than a script which appealed to her. If not for anything else, it was her understanding of the sensitivity of human emotion that I found most noteworthy.

With this backdrop in mind I watched ‘Firaaq’, her directorial debut. One of the hottest topics that new and experienced film makers have chosen is the Gujarat riots of 2002. Be it Govind Nihalani with ‘Dev’ or Rahul Dholakia with ‘Parzania’. Almost everyone who has ever wanted to make a statement that was humane to the core has chosen that dreadful event as the theme. This is nothing new as communal riots and inter-faith rivalry has been the bread and butter of Bollywood and art house productions alike for almost half a decade. But what makes each attempt stand out is the coherence with which the strands of the story are held together. One has to understand this concept deeply before attempting to stitch together a piece that genuinely makes you feel…well, human. To see what I mean you can see ‘Garam Hawa’ by MS Sathyu any day. This is where ‘Firaaq’ becomes quite abrupt. At a running time of about 100 minutes, ‘Firaaq’ somehow seems like an incomplete fair.

So let us dig in. We have Paresh Rawal, a wife-hitting Gujarati goon with an extremely submissive spouse, Deepti Naval. The horrors of the atrocities meted out against people, especially the Muslims, is a nightmare that continues to haunt Deepti every wake moment. This extends to such lengths that she has to singe herself with oil just to make the hallucinations of riot victims knocking on her door go away. Then we have another couple, Sanjay Suri and Tisca Chopra, who are moving to New Delhi to start a new life after Sanjay’s business was looted in the riots. The fact that Sanjay is a Muslim is a hot potato topic that he is not able to come terms with. Then we have Muneera (Shahana Goswami), a Muslim woman who returns with her husband and child to find that her entire house has been reduced to ashes by the mob. With the aid of her Hindu friend she starts picking up the pieces of her life albeit at the constant risk of brandishing around as a Hindu. Then we have an orphaned kid Mouseen who is told to tell people his name is ‘Mohan’ since being a Hindu apparently is the only way to stay alive. Finally we have an archetype musician Naseeruddin Shah with a realist housekeeper Raghuveer Yadav. Shah lives in his own world of nostalgic stereotypes and is absolutely clueless about what is happening in the world around him. It takes a few minutes of television watching for him to see the depth of hatred that has seeped into the society he seems so proud to be part of.

With such diverse themes running parallel to each other, there was a need for more clarity between the characters about what all this means to them. This is exactly where ‘Firaaq’ runs into incoherent zones. On the one hand Nandita tries very hard to convey the intensity of human emotions by making a bunch of victimized Muslim men plot an absurdly unsuccessful plot to kill a fellow Hindu. On the other hand we have these multiple stories that seem to go nowhere. Yes, we do get it that these people have been affected by the riots one way or the other but then what does it mean for their present and future? Will they ever be able to get redemption for what they did and had to go through? Is there some appropriate closure that can be given to their stories? Should there not be a way to bring about some meaning to the extremely sensitive threads that were strung up to evoke real human emotion? Why start developing a relationship between a character and the audience when a 10 second frame will capture what we should only guess is the ‘closure’? All valid questions but with incomplete answers.

Somehow I have always felt that cinema’s attraction towards human tragedy is quite insatiable. Film makers often choose these themes since the abstraction of portraying something like this seems to come easily. In that mould of abstraction, somewhere the theme starts separating itself from coherence. Ironically, ‘Firaaq’ which means separation, falls into that trap of ending up as another half baked attempt by an unprepared amateur. The slow moving shots and the long pauses without appropriate background scores (which might have been an attempt to capture ‘real human drama’) don’t make it any easier. Performances are quite consistent given that there is no ‘Bollywood’ face involved except for maybe Paresh Rawal and Naseeruddin Shah. Everyone else is a seasoned player in such features and so contributes his/her part quite effectively. The fact that some of the characters mostly speak English, while is real enough, seemed a tad pretentious given the overdose of verbose vocabulary they were fuelled with. I am not entirely sure what demographic audience Nandita had in mind but it seemed to lose points on all scores anyway. Also, the quickly vanishing and hard to read English subtitles when the characters speak very fast Gujrati don’t help the audience either. This is a clear indication that this was a movie made about the masses but for the classes.

I sincerely hope that Nandita’s second venture is much more deeply researched and a lot clearer with its vision and execution than this movie. ‘Firaaq’ ends up being a bizarre concoction of unfinished ideologies and abrupt strands.



..ShaKri..

Aamir – the antithesis of a Jihadi

The first thing that came to my mind as the credits rolled on the movie ‘Aamir’ was ‘When? Oh when will my beloved Kannada movie makers make films like these? When will they get their money hungry heads out of their ignorant behinds with meaningless overcooked clichés and start making cinema that people can actually relate with?’

I had heard a lot about this movie. But somehow, never got around to seeing it. And what a time to watch it too! After having seen an interesting version of Mumbai in ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, here was yet another version of watching Mumbai bare itself unashamedly. What got me even more curious was that the whole crew of ‘Aamir’ was practically unknown and given the rave reviews it had been getting, I decided to take a chance. And boy! Am I glad I did!

‘Aamir’ is a story of Dr. Aamir Ali who returns from London to his home in Mumbai only to find that someone has kidnapped his entire family. All he has are clues given by an unknown face and cellular phone cues that take him to a mirage of places that are simmering with lower middle class Muslims. He finds himself face to face with a society he had never seen before yet all the time doing what he is being told in order to save his family. At the end of the day he finds himself sitting on a bus with a suitcase that he has been told contains a bomb. He is then told to get off the bus at the next traffic light leaving the suitcase behind.

This is as far as I want to tell you since the final few minutes of the movie are a revelation. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I was completely taken aback by it or wasn’t expecting it to happen, but the conviction with which a normal regular common man steps from those shadows of cowardice and attempts to personify his name ‘Aamir’ – a leader – was what I found most endearing. For a first time director, Raj Kumar Gupta surely treads a risky path as he tackles a burning issue in India head on. He enforces the ideologies that are so often taken for granted and makes the protagonist finally attempt the perfect antithesis of terror and a terrorist.

I must say, it was quite a show. The movie albeit, is slow in parts and could have used some faster reactions from the leading man and some chop offs here and there, but these are trivialities when compared to the message the movie attempts to send across. I recommend everyone to watch ‘Aamir’, as such ‘in the face’ almost surreal seeming plots very rarely make for a good viewing.

Looking forward to Kannada movie makers take a leaf from such cinema and attempt something which finally addresses some real issues.

..ShaKri..

Here is a teaser of the film.

A Wednesday in a lifetime

IT IS TRUE WHAT THEY SAY about greatness. It is always meant to be. No amount of planning or foresight or pundits with beards longer than their hands can ever truly make someone something one is not. If one is destined to be great – one is. Most times one wonders how much more one has to shout and scream so that people can take notice while other times…well, other times silences creep in so beautifully that we hardly recognize them and something breathe taking has already been created.

Before, dear reader, the assumption is made that I am off on a track quite abstract to the common man – ah, that word suddenly sounds so powerful – let me underline the topic I have chosen. I was browsing through my usual collection of review websites when I happened to get a glimpse of one interesting review. It was for a movie I had never heard of. Neither had I ever seen any publicity posters of it nor had I guessed it would feature two of my all time favorites – Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher. The fact that no one else, except maybe the highly underestimated Jimmy Shergill, was even remotely recognizable on the credit list apart from these three did not deter me from giving it a shot. Bollywood these days is being showered with ‘alternate’ cinema that runs a delicate line between commercial masala-fundas and the documentary type approaches. In such a rain it is easy to miss some true refreshingly different rain drops. Having shied away from such features for a while, I decided to give this a look-see since I knew Naseer and Anupam would definitely make it worth my time. With that random assumption, I began watching ‘A Wednesday’.

Two hours later…I was going through a very rare feeling. I did not understand it initially since it had been such a long time but then, I knew. It was the same bunch of emotions I had felt when I had seen the climax of ‘The Sixth Sense’. It was the same ‘Oh wow!’ feeling that had pierced my veins as the final few minutes of ‘The Usual Suspects’ drowned in my eyes. It was the very unique gut sense of genuine enthusiasm I had felt when I finally understood ‘Momento’ in its last frame.

But, this time it was different. I had never felt such a tingle in my heart for a Hindi movie in many years. Sure, I have had my share of laughs and appreciation for some decent Indian cinema over the years, but there was never anything in them that made me say to myself ‘…he is so right…this could happen to me too…today…tomorrow…any day…’ since there was never any context. What ‘A Wednesday’ successfully did was pick me up from my starry eyed slumber and slap a ‘REALITY CHECK’ sticker on my face. It reminded me of the times we are part of. It made me wonder about my own life and how unsure things are in the world we live in. It, if not anything else, made me think.

I am sure people often sigh and yawn about movies that make them ‘think’ since it is exactly the opposite reason of why one would watch a movie. No one wants to see relevant issues these days. There is a huge fan following for the larger than life, escapist features which come and go every week. We Indians, the world’s best consumers, lap it up in all our glee not caring about if it had anything to do with our life. Why? Since it does not matter. It never does, does it?

But then how long can we keep doing this? Once in a while we do need that refreshing slap on the face that makes us realize who we really are. And what a wonderful slap this was! No better way to bring me back to reality than a movie like this one. I was applauding myself for having taken a chance and seen one of the most relevant movies of our times. A silent yet beautiful effort at capturing human emotion on the screen. To summarize in one word – great.

Do yourself a favor – watch ‘A Wednesday’. A must see for every Indian according to me. If not anything else it will definitely catch you by surprise! I strongly recommend this movie to everyone who has ever sat back and said ‘I wish things were different…’


..ShaKri..

For those interested, here is the trailer of this movie –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI3E1jneWvg