More than anything, 12th Fail is a triumph of Vidhu Vinod Chopra—the teller who raises the bar of a widely known story of the struggle of the underdog. It is a triumph of filmmaking, the powers it holds, and the possibilities of emotions it can carry within. Along with Manoj and Shraddha, a far bigger victory is therefore that of Chopra, who is making us see these characters in a way that is unforeseen. The story had all the elements to just succumb to the same-old wry and dry aesthetics and tap into similar emotions with a well-established style prevalent in the genre. However, Chopra doesn’t want to do that. He understands that the story is pretty basic, and what really has to stand out is the way in which he tells it.
Writing, producing, directing, and co-editing a film at 71, Chopra rises up as the master. At a similar time in Hindi cinema in the 90s, he stood up to make Parinda, a film that redefined many things. Now, after all those years, he is in utmost control of his craft, and does he blossom?
There are scenes in 12th Fail that are just exemplary in terms of their structure and the way they play out. It just makes you calm down and be still. When someone challenges your notion of what a “film” is by taking you on completely new pathways to reach the same destination, it automatically makes you want to sit and listen. It is not the story itself that your mind is hooked on, but the elements chosen to bring it forward. We don’t know which color Chopra would bring to the palette of every consecutive scene. When the story is a simple drama, Chopra’s aesthetics are like a tale of mystery—you never know what moves he is going to make next.
There is no romantic song that underlines the feeling of love. There is not the sense of rising up shown by the protagonist after something happens to them. There is no traditional use of song and background music that is usually present in popular films to underline an emotion. Rather, the dramatics are well controlled, and the hero’s journey is set not according to any pre-set methods or lazy plot points but with carefully plotted scenarios. When the structure of the film is not made apparent but stays conspicuous within the flair of the aesthetics, it really wakes up to start speaking with you. And in Chopra’s 12th Fail, they sing a symphony.
If I go on speaking of individual scenes crafted by Chopra, it will take a lot of space, as every single shot has so much happening to it that gives you an experience. Manoj and Shraddha meet for the first time at a coaching center, where he saves her from getting enrolled there because of his honesty. She notices him, and they later meet up at the library, and it’s raining outside. She discovers that he works there and doesn’t come there to study, as he had told her before. The scene is filled with so many complexities, reflecting that Manoj is not comfortable being open about his social reality in front of the girl he has developed a thing for. The way it plays out puts you at the center of that feeling.
When Manoj and Shraddha finally fall in love, it is the environment around them and the kind of shot-taking that makes us believe in their story. The lights shimmering in their hearts for each other are reflected through the background of Diwali, with lamps hanging all over. It works perfectly well and doesn’t disturb the overall rhythm, which Chopra wants to maintain throughout.
His sharp and delicate understanding of rhythm is impeccable. He is like that musician who wants each tune to be in place; like that carver who knows what shape he wishes to make of the wood; like that cook who puts just the right amount of sugar crystals in the porridge so that it gives the right amount of sweetness it needs. When Manoj comes to visit Shraddha in Mussuorie and is told by her to just leave and go back to Delhi, the calm hills are shown just for a few seconds for us to absorb the underlying emotion with the twilight. He is giving you a moment to stay with that feeling experienced by Manoj. Instead of breaking that rhythm, this small inclusion in the edit creates a cloudy bridge for us to slowly go into the next scene. It is like a breather for what is to follow.
There are many more such instances. And that’s why 12th Fail, apart from being an inspiring tale, is a masterclass in filmmaking. Vidhu Vinod Chopra has blurred the boundaries of what kind of cinema it is. It has experimental storytelling that stays away from formula, yet it doesn’t ever feel overburdening. Chopra shows with his 2-hour 30-minute film that he can pull you under his influence without ever complicating things. It is a formally arousing, extraordinary achievement.
We are living at a difficult time in history where sentiments get easily hurt even on the smallest of things; where impulsive action is thought to be an idea of justice; and where some people are constantly on the wait to find any thing against another community to show them their place. At the centre of it all is the booming social media presence which seems to be guiding what people are fed and hence what they must think. The opening credits of “Afwaah” are meticulously designed in such a way so as to bring forth this idea of a time where social media has taken over our minds acting always as a catalyst to unleash the terror that remains in our hearts. Reputations are made on social media and lives turned upside down within a few clicks. “Afwaah” starts with one such blot on the reputation of an emerging young leader when his rally turns violent. It is made to be a tout thriller taking place in a single night in lines with Sudhir Mishra’s 1995 film “Is Raat Ki Subah Nahi” which also sets off in a similar way although in an entirely different context. Revisiting the same structure after more than 25 years, Mishra infuses it with incidents from our recent past that have changed the way we inhibit the country. That’s where it loses its ground in the hope of making the story come out of the socio-politics rather than through an interplay of its narrative.
The fundamental problem with “Afwaah” is that it is not designing its characters based on the principles of narrative; rather it is making them stand along with some already identified set pieces from current affairs and then asking them to take a sprint through the 124 minutes that it runs. The characters don’t navigate the story to reach a certain intellectual truth that brings out the political reality of our times but instead they are already given a programmed stance of a certain political understanding. Due to which, inherently, all that the film manages to remain is a clutter of an unresolved anger that has come about from newspaper readings transformed onto the screen without feeding it with any level of cinematic truth or language. Sudhir Mishra, who has always been a flagbearer of layered narratives, ends up becoming more of a columnist and less of a filmmaker. Its as if his brazenly evolved form of the yesteryears is reduced to mere underlining of the facts some of which are heard every day on social-media. “Afwaah” neither surprises nor adds any new reflection to the way our collective consciousness has been put to test in the recent times; in fact, it just reciprocates what the many ‘ahl-e-dil’ have been expressing over the years on the changing nature of truth and the dilution of facts. And if a piece of art merely remains to be a testimony of the times we are living in, without delving into the artistic truth, how far is its purpose served?
The film is not trying to be a sensation nor is it bringing to light some realization that wasn’t known yet. It is the story of an advertising professional named Rahab who has returned to India from America and finds himself caught in the middle of a rumour spread by a politician against him. Oscillating around this orbit of thought is a corrupt policeman, a power-hungry politician, an idealist fighting back to save Rahab and a brainwashed dim-witted gangster. This is a popular elemental structure that we have come to see in the films of Prakash Jha set in Bihar or of Tigmanshu Dhulia that were set in Uttar Pradesh. The only difference being here is that Mishra chooses to set the story in Rajasthan with the dialects of the local language hitting your ears giving you a sense of a different world. In a bid to subvert the dynamics of this plot style, he attaches the fact of rumour mongering that has been a growing parasite in India in the recent years. Mishra explores the cyclic nature of rumour where it goes on to finally bite the one who started it as he also inhibits the same world. The rumour doesn’t spare even the one who spreads it for a mob knows no rationality. Now, on face value the idea sounds fair. When seen in the film however, it raises doubt on what it ends up being while wanting to say something completely different. It culminates to become something unrecognizable to the outer reality. It seems to be attaching a sense of justice to mob lynching where a force of antagonism in the film falls prey to an angry mob riding on the molten lava of hate. On a narrative level, the mob has done justice by dealing with the film’s villain in their own animalistic manner, giving a sense of release and resolution to the story. In satisfying the narrative tendencies, a hurdle is created where although the overall incident is a mirror of the society but what it ends up meaning gets convoluted. It is a misfire and one which nearly wants to make you feel better about the lynching, which otherwise should have filled you with rage. This happens because of the unruly blending of the film’s structure with the politics. The quest to reach a narrative resolution makes for a moment that doesn’t seem to be making sense in the reality which exists around us that it proclaims to be containing of. So, the idea that rumours come back to stab the one who started them, remains a product of Mishra’s imagination which also ends up giving the film a moral tale-ish feeling; its complex subject matter reduced to a simple resolution that is based on the idea of justice of the mob. All of it combined becomes ironical, then, for a film that in-fact wants to take a stance against lynching. Because of the lackadaisical approach to the craft and its broken togetherness with the political reality, the craft begins to take the upper hand in guiding the politics at its disposal. This leads to the creation of an even stranger alternate reality which coincides with nothing on the outside world.
However, what really comes as a moment of relief and eases up the emotions, is the beautiful song that runs through the film in some portions. It reveals the style of Mishra that uses songs to deliver an emotional reaction. Sung in the husky voice of Mame Khan from Rajasthan, it carries the pain of the incidents shown in the film with great intensity. It is written by Dr. Sagar as a child’s lament to the mother of how her lullaby lacks something today. Filled with images that are prevalent in lullabies, the song connects it with the larger ideas of violence and how things have gone awry in the neighbourhood with the coming of spring. The song does well in blending the poetics with politics by employing clever metaphors. If only the film managed to do that as well.
Aren’t ‘films’ made on political realities supposed to be guided by the aesthetics? Shouldn’t the narrative conflicts arouse emotions and thereby make you wonder about the wider political implications? These are some questions that come to mind seeing films made on similar lines with the language of the film not meddling well with the politics but instead seeming to co-opt the latter in its glance. Sudhir Mishra has made films in the past which bring out the nuances of reality through the complexities in the form and so it becomes difficult to accept the fact that “Afwaah” has come out from the same mind. The only way to make sense of it is to think of it as a cinematic representation of a twitter feed that fails to elicit any response to your senses. It is like a tweet which has contained in its limited characters, an impulsive outrage generated by a rampant consumption of news. Sudhir Mishra wants us to know, he is there, speaking through his films. Whether it packs any relevant punches is another story.
Utsav Gonvar’s Photo dives into the authentic language of Cinema to bring out the plight of Migrant workers during the state-imposed lockdown in the Pandemic. The film infuses political reality in its rather straight forward aesthetics. To be able to reach the narrative truth while at the same time edging towards a political truth is a challenge to arrive at in cinema. Many films fail bringing the politics together because of the shoddily worked up filmmaking styles. Some stories need to be told in a manner that bends the already known aesthetics in a way that supports the political reality. Gonvar makes his filmmaking about his politics so that there is no way the two can be separated and viewed in a duality. Characters behave not according to the confines of just the narrative structure but respond more to the politics which they are a part of. Which is why, there are scenes merely situated in the film without any underlining done by the makers to bring out their presence. It is a film that involves you in its world without any pretension of being cinematic. Any film becomes truly cinematic when there is such a marriage of its aesthetics with the subject matter so that the former works effortlessly to bring out the nuances of the latter. Photo is a truly cinematic film in that regards.
Gonvar begins the story at a personal and tenderly specific point, taking it along to make larger connections with how thousands were left in utter neglection during the harrowing period of the Pandemic. Durgya wants to go to Bangalore and click a picture with the Vidhan Sabha in background and show the photo to his friends. Consumed with this innocent desire, he nudges his mother to let him go to his father who works in Bangalore as a construction worker. When he finally goes there, Lockdown is imposed which makes it impossible for him to visit the site and click a photo. What follows next is a perilous journey as they try to make their way back to their native village. With just the story of the father and son, the film evokes hundreds of such stories of migrant workers who suffered beyond limit and walked hundreds of miles to reach their homes.
Durgya’s unexplained fascination for the massive State Assembly building seems to become a metaphor for the hope of the downtrodden on the state’s functionaries; of the overwhelming distance between the two which only goes on increasing and gets all the more naked during such times of emergency. The state which is meant to protect them, ends up further villainizing their entire being by not providing necessary support. Durgya represents that belief on the state which continues to die slowly as the film progresses. Gonvar never lets his aesthetics turn into shallow sentimentality. Neither is there any attempt to sensationalise the incidents. Rather, through just the journey of the two, the darker side of the state’s handling of the situation is brought out. There are constant thoughts lingering in the head of how help could have been provided especially when there are scenes of some policemen acting kindly with the two and helping them. There are these small bits of hope present in the film that imagines an alternate reality for just an instant, making you wonder what if things had happened in a way that was more considerate towards all those workers?
The visual style and the premise of the film is reminiscent of the Tamil film ‘Pebble’ that came out last year with shots of a father and son engulfed in the heat on barren lands. In ‘Photo’ as well, the father and son walk for over 300 kms in intense heat and the camera situates them scaringly against the landscape of the dry land. The visual storytelling triumphs through a simple use of patterned approach in its frames. The film opens with the shot of Durgya’s mother, who is completely lost into washing utensils. The lockdown is yet to be imposed and nothing out of ordinary has taken place. The home in which they live is still a happy place. The mother’s involvement in her daily work becomes a representation of her mental state. More time into the film, the lockdown is announced. Durgya and his father get stuck in the city sending his mother in a drain of anxiety and panic. This changed state is again shown with the element of the utensils: this time, she is not engrossed in washing them but just keeps staring deep into oblivion. Moving further towards the end, when it is known to her that they are going to finally return, she is back to being her natural self. She is happy and lost in preparing to welcome the two. Again, we see her washing her utensils first, just like how she had been in the beginning. The act of washing utensils becomes a visual device to denote the dailyness of her life. The visual pattern introduced with these frames that come at different times in the film, is an example of the simplistic filmmaking which manages to speak volumes when it all comes together.
Fulfilling the primary purpose of art which is immortalising time through the workings of its form, ‘Photo’ deposits a layer on the world of its remarkable presence which will stay forever etched in living memory. It is like that topical poem which brings alive a deed of the past, making everyone shiver with its rhythm till the time its last reader vanishes. It is a testament to the fact that films on political realities can be made without sounding preachy; that heightened dramatics are not required to make the point. It is a striking debut which brings back memories of the troubled times with a carefully constructed narrative that makes you ponder on the lives of many more kids and women and men who lost their lives during the pandemic.
A certain trend of wanting perfection from films is going on, where the heart of the film is not thought of and sharp words crying logic and outright insults take arms. It was seen with ‘Jhund’ with many critics calling it away for the technicalities and basing their entire articles on that while not speaking of the cultural impact of the film. A similar thing is being seen with ‘Brahmastra’. Criticism reduced to shallow understanding of the techniques while not realising how the film makes it base and in what kind of a time it has come, is a misjudgment. ‘Brahmastra’ is not a perfect film. Some of the dialogues create an err and don’t sound nice when said out loud; the humour in the film doesn’t hit anywhere; the characters are developed on some fronts but left out on many others which affect the overall appeal they have on the film while also not giving much to the actors to chew on to the point that they are merely reacting to what is happening with a baseline emotion; and there are scenes that don’t land where they are aimed at, leaving it in an awkward position. Such fundamental errors make it seem that the screenplay is a draft or two behind the final one, requiring some mends and rewriting that would have avoided it. One can imagine what could have happened had these things been taken care of, and if its themes were allowed to fly as high as they aim to, it would be a totally different experience. Having said that, is it a bad film scavenging on the exploits of filmmaking? No!
What still works for the film is the imaginative universe that it creates and staying true to its glory throughout. It gives you a sense of completion, never failing to captivate with breath-taking visuals on a canvas so big, that manages to elevate the effect of individual frames. Told in a westernised superhero format but filled with blatantly Indian touches, both from the mythology and the tradition of Hindi Films, that it never feels like a futile exploration. The themes would be better underlined if the romance of the film was better written without falling into general stereotypes but it is never out of place and happening in a parallel universe. It is planned so as to merge with elements of the story, the only fault being, it is not fully developed. The journey of the hero and his eventual awakening to realise his powers is all given a tight context of the ‘Hindi Film’ idea of love and when looked at it that way, one can start bringing together the diverged parts to make it whole. Fire is used as a metaphor to visualise the saying, “unleash the fire within” and also literally, when the hero manages to do just that to fight away the bad guys. Right in the beginning when Shiva sees Isha for the first time, the visuals speak of how it creates a fire in him. We see him in front of an idol of Ravan that is on fire, which would rise moments later owing to the connection Shiva has with ‘Agni’. It is a fire created by love, a fire ignited when two hearts become one. It is this passion which turns into blaze when he sees the girl he loves, making him unleash the power he carries into the world. It is such a beautiful thing to think of, the magical merging of the idea of love into the superhero dynamics, yet it fails to translate as beautifully on the screen due to the errors in its writing. It doesn’t give enough space even for the lead actors to do much. So even Ranbir fluctuates in scenes, barely doing reactions and the emotions lying just on surface nulls the brilliance of Alia. Together, the two start to feel to be struggling to do something out of a half-realized script. And that’s when the arrow missing the bullseye starts to create disappointments.
All the downfalls aside, the film still manages to enthral with its well-maintained pace that doesn’t meander much. Moments of slumber are quickly followed by high-handed action with the background music, deriving words from many Sanskrit mantras, always keeping you on the edge. And what to say of the visuals, they are just spectacular and done with a style that is flawless and only to be experienced on the big screen. Ayan Mukherjee is dedicated in bringing out his vision on the screen and takes the levels of Hindi Cinema to newer heights just with the visual landscape he has in mind. A superhero film requires a certain kind of rhythm and sense of style to be brought alive completely and it doesn’t falter even a bit on that respect. It manages to fill your hearts with fire, making you wanting for more as soon as the last frame pops up. Critics bashing the film should realise the immediate impact of their words on audiences who will rather be completely sold to the widely imaginative visual beauty that the film is. It may not be a fresh breeze in terms of cleansing the foggy air of the failing structure of the Hindi Film, but it completely brings new waves of a stylised filmmaking never before seen in India. And it demands to be seen and supported just for that.
Jhund is a novel breeze in the ramshackle ruins of Mainstream Hindi cinema. Its as if, Nagraj Manjule, with his debut Hindi film is telling us all how its done. His craft is fresh, unpredictable and absolutely beautiful to watch on screen. It feels he has understood completely the rhythms and beats of cinema as well as the drug on which cinema lives and intoxicates its audiences at large. Nagraj Manjule brings cinema back to the Hindi Film scene and he does so with a silent revolting charm.
In Jhund what speaks louder are its aesthetics. They are in a constant conversation with you. Smashing its golden glitters all over your face to the point that all you can do is sit in awe of its wonder. Jhund tells you that you don’t need a star for a film to speak to you (although it stars Amitabh Bachchan), you don’t need any of the fancy stuff. All you need are smart aesthetics, something fundamental to cinema and what recently was beginning to get lost in the smoke of makers creating only certain type of films with a very formulaic, lazy way of storytelling. Nagraj doesn’t indulge in dialoguebaazi or moral lessons or sudden realisations, something one would expect from the film’s subject matter and cast, but instead he creates magic just through his frames by just pure, unmatched storytelling. Scene after scene, as it was being played before me, I felt happy to be witnessing such profundity through visuals and by the end, I was left teary eyed. Cinema is not yet dead. Nagraj comes to revive it.
The eye with which Nagraj sees the world of the marginalized is one of deep empathy and so we don’t judge the characters. They are just a product of their place, of an oppressive and unjust system which makes them so, which fills their innocent growing years with fuels of violence. We stay with them, breathe with them, abuse with them and end up feeling so much for them. Nagraj takes us to the lanes of the other side, where garbage is being dumped by people of high society, where the old drink day and night and the young are involved in petty crimes. They all have hardened because of the way life has been hard to them, their humanity hidden beneath a sheath of oppression. And we see all this with extreme sense of empathy and love, bringing us closer to the people. While in Fandry and Sairat we see a dangling sense of hopelessness cloud over, Jhund gives rise to a hundred suns that pass through the messiness and emanate light.
Jhund shows the other side without ‘othering’ it. It has some minor glitches in its writing but the sheer magnificence of its telling outweighs everything. It is an important film both sociologically and as a piece of art. It manages to create new ways to bring forth its ideas thereby incorporating a garland spreading its fragrance throughout. Nagraj is the nightingale singing his tunes to glory, spreading its magic in the air, and in the process reclaiming the shoddy paths of popular Hindi Cinema. Bow to thee sire!
Let me express first as to how important a film ‘Jai Bhim’ is in the current milieu. Especially when the masses need escape through the medium of cinema, ‘Jai Bhim’ brings the Dalit voice to popular discourse. It makes me so happy to see certain films which bring important conversations to popular discourse and if not for such films, most of the audience, not having the patience and sensibilities to sit through a much brave and reflective film made with some formal elements they are not in touch with, will not get to know of the utter seriousness of evils that haunt us as a society. Films telling the stories of the oppressed in the mainstream, or if I am allowed to say, oppressors’, language, tend to reclaim spaces where only certain type of happy go lucky stories are told. It is an important film in that respect. But let’s now reflect back and think over some other aspects.
Film is a language. We communicate ideas and emotions using the varied camera angles, lightings, set of dialogues and then stitch them together in a way that resonates. Over the many years of cinema, certain theories have been developed, certain ways of telling stories that are found to be the rules to make an “engaging” film so that it is understandable to the masses. Let’s call this language of film, the popular one. This is like a set of already defined structures in which characters and scenarios are fitted together carefully so that nothing appears out of rhythm or jarring to the layman watching it. Then there are other films that derive their storytelling through the subject matter at hand and by the tremors felt deepest in the maker’s heart by observation of the world outside. These are films that have a formal structure that is completely different from the popularly understood language of film. ‘Jai Bhim’ comes in the former category.
I wish to talk here of one scene from the film that created a disruption for me while I was watching it. ‘Jai Bhim’ is a story about a tribal person who is wrongly kept in jail for a thing he didn’t do and who subsequently succumbs to police brutality. The entire film is told in a crime thriller manner and so naturally there are plot points that are meant to shock you, to bring a twist in the tale. And this is where it tends to be a little hazy. The crime thriller treatment that is meant to suit the masses, comes in way of the politics of the film. There is a dichotomy and this particular scene made bare the unlinking of the language of the film and the subject matter for me. Somewhere in the middle, the Advocate who is fighting for the tribal person’s rights, comes to know that the woman he is representing, who is the wife of one of the persons put behind bars, has not told him entire facts. The advocate loses it and becomes all angry on the woman, even refusing to represent and fight the case further. Now this is where the demand for an “engaging” narrative comes in between the politics of the film. The characters being forced to react and act in the manner just to fit in the structure of the narrative. They become chained to the structure. It just feels so out of place- the aesthetics not suiting the politics. It becomes two films hereon. One that is a crime thriller and one that is a political film on the oppressed and their fight to get justice. These two elements don’t come together and by the end, it’s a mess that doesn’t get cleared. Again, I am not saying that the film and what it says is wrong. No! What it says is utmost important and is in the right place. It is the way in which it is said that is problematic.
Now this disjoint and dichotomy between the language of the film and the subject is a matter of concern. When we have a story of the oppressed told with the tools of the oppressors, how different will it be from the league of other dozen films? It is telling the stories of oppression from the voices of the oppressors, by which I mean the capitalistic tendencies of film. A new set of aesthetics that delves deeper and makes us reflect over the world around us, is thus not created and hence it loses its stream. We are left pondering on the same old grounds. By the end, the crime thriller and courtroom drama find a resolution, but the politics are long left behind somewhere near the first hour. And so, we come out of the theatre, relieved and somewhat enthralled with the story and there is a glimpse of the tribal oppression and identity that stays as a residue in the back of our minds. Clearly that was not the intention behind the film but that’s what it ends up becoming. And this happens because of the popular language that it decides to tell the story in. The scenes, apart from their gruesome violence, don’t shock you. They don’t stay with you, haunt you and so, the film may work as a decent thriller but not as a political film that it intends to be. It looks and sounds similar to other popular films, even though it has a different heart. It will be watched by the masses but what effect will it have on them and the way they think? Will it create a dialogue necessary to reflect over our lives and the world around? Does it provide such an anchor point?
All these questions come to my mind as I watch films made with such sensibilities. I have not yet found answers to all these questions and there is a lot that is unexplored, but these are some concerns that I feel are present in the way a lot of films are being made these days. I rest my case with the words of the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. On the attempts to suit the commercial urges for more accessibility, he says,
“The artist cannot, and has no right to, lower himself to some abstract, standardized level for the sake of a misconstrued notion of greater accessibility and understanding. If he did, it could only lead to the decline of art—and we expect art to flourish…..Nothing could be more deleterious in its effect than the levelling down of commercial cinema or the production line standards of television; these corrupt the public to an unforgivable degree, denying them the experience of true art”
It is really interesting as to how a certain piece of art speaks to us only through the already existing image of the world that we have for we are watching it only through that air of understanding. A good film watched over multiple periods of time would mean differently to us each time, for we will be watching it as a different person as new things get accumulated in our way of living. And so, recently when I re-watched the Guru Dutt film Pyaasa again after three years, it spoke to me differently, entrenching its place further in my heart.
There are a lot of things that I saw now which I couldn’t see then. What had really attracted me then in Pyaasa were the songs which really struck a chord with me and instantly had me curious about poetry. It was then that began my love affair with poetry for there songs of all kind in the film right from talking about the petty social conditions in ‘jinhe naaz hai hind par wo kaha hai?’ to the agony of love and heartbreak in, ‘jaane wo kaise log the jinke pyaar ko pyaar mila’ and the effects of spiritual longing in ‘aao sajan mohe ang laga lo’- there are all sorts of feelings expressed. And Much has already been said about their genius throughout the years.
What the film made me to think on second viewing was the condition of the artist and how their perception of the world is quite different from the people of the world or those unaware or yet to taste the delicacies that art has to offer. The film while resorting to certain extreme generalizations and its rather cynical outlook towards relationships and life in general, speaks on a variety of things. This is made clear in the very beginning when we see Vijay(Guru Dutt) sitting in solitude in a garden humming one of his poems and looking at a bee sucking nectar off a flower. He looks at it with tenderness and sensitivity, cherishing the moment. The flower falls off the plant and we see another man crossing it over, thrashing the flower so to speak and then we look at the saddened Vijay. Symbolic as it is, this opening sequence becomes important as it introduces us with the world of the film. What it also does and wants to say, something reciprocated on multiple occasions throughout and also in the lyrics, is the tenderness and sensitivity with which Vijay looks at the world, his heart a delicate petal of a blossom. Whereas the world just crumbles him and his dreams with every passing footstep. That way the film is a tragedy, a lamentation of the artist or as I would like to put it, ahl-e-dil , people of heart, against every heartless pillars looming high, right from love and family to politics and social conditions.
Now this proposition of the artist and the world is something worth pondering over. In an interview to a YouTube channel, Chalchitra Talks, Bhardwaj Rangan, a film critic says that artists and those who understand or reflect over art are sensitive people. And it is something I instantly agreed with for if not for tenderness in emotions and feelings, it is not possible to be in the arts or its appreciation. That is not to say that other people are not sensitive but just that in order to produce art or appreciate art, a certain level of sensitivity is required, a certain level of understanding of the human condition. Certain sensibilities are pre-requisite in order to say what lies deep within the heart or to experience what a piece of art has packaged in tangible form which is nothing but the deepest desires and feelings about the world and existence in general. Pyaasa is a good anchor point to reflect on these ideas. Vijay(played by Guru Dutt) is the quintessential artist who is deceived by the world at all stands of life and complains about it through his poetry, failing to understand what makes a human act in such a way and if at all there is an end to the misery and suffering of not just the individual but the collective as a whole. Throughout the film, he tries to make sense of his friends, of all the rather fishy things they do, of his brothers who sell his poems to the local paper seller, of his publisher who speaks ill of his poems and refuses to publish them in his magazine. Of the people who like Vijay and understand him is an oil massager for whom Vijay writes a Jingle which helps him to get more clients, a prostitute who buys his poems from the local paper seller and falls in love with them instantly, and his old ailing mother. Guru Dutt through Vijay questions everything and everyone as someone who knows yet fails to understand the world. And through that the film then becomes an exploration of loneliness, melancholy, the state of affairs in the country and the petty conditions in which humans are subjugated to live. A beautiful play of words is used to summarize all this in the end when Guru Dutt exclaims in Sahir Ludhiyanvi’s stark words, “yaha par to Jeevan se hai maut sasti, ye duniya agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hai”. There is one particularly striking scene when Vijay is called on the college reunion and made to recite a poem for the occasion as another famous poet who was supposed to come didn’t show up. He goes on the stage and looks at the audience for a bit and recites one of his poems that is a wail on existence. One person from the audience gets up and asks him to sing something happy for the occasion. To which, Vijay as if making the rest of his poem on spot, wails further exclaiming as to how can he sing a happy song when he is filled entirely with grief.
Vijay becomes the “true artist” who speaks and says through his poems what he truly feels within. Hardly any good happens to him throughout the film and it ends on a very pessimistic tone too, all the while making us ponder on the respect given to art and the artist and how it has just turned into a commodity handled by a few wealthy. These implications somewhere can also be used to reflect on the current status of cinema in our country. We lack the sensibility and general sensitivity as a society. Any piece of art is made when certain things are realized by the artist on a deeper, delicate level and reflected the same through different means be it music, painting, film or poetry. Take any good film or poetry, you need to delve further into it to understand what the artist has realized and wants you to experience too. What I saw in Pyaasa upon revisiting is this constant struggle, this dichotomy between people of the world and Vijay who is too sensitive for them to understand him. All of this is told strongly through songs, stark visuals and scenes which succeed in breaking you, making you ponder about a whole lot of things. The film is as relevant now as it was back then, its songs a real herb to momentarily heal you in your loneliness and making you think about the ‘kuche’ and ‘galiyan’ around. That way, it needs to be seen and reflected over by everyone
The Irishman came out last November. I began watching Scorsese more closely around the same time. I wanted to understand his sensibilities, his style of film making before I watched The Irishman. Honestly, I knew nothing about the film, I had not seen the trailer nor had I read anything about the real story it was based on. I was not at all interested in knowing that. All I was interested was Scorsese as a film maker making a film at the age of 77! I wasn’t disappointed. The first viewing left me in tears. I wanted to watch it again. And again. I felt as if each frame needs to be cherished individually for it was so beautiful, the writing so clever and the scenes so neatly joined together.
Scorsese and screenwriter Steven Zaillian are not much interested to present to us a shocking revelation story of some people that existed once. Surely it is a story about them, but that is used as an element to convey larger ideas. This is clearly evident in both the way it is written and treated. It essentially is about Frank Sheeran, a truck driver in the early sixties America, who goes on to become a hitman for the Buffalino mob family. It’s his story. It begins with him in an old age home sitting on a wheel chair telling his story directly to us, just as in a documentary. The rest of the film, till the last quarter, runs entirely on his narration as he tells his journey from a truck driver to being a friend “to the most famous man in America after the president”. This is the first timeline that is created by Zaillian. Frank on the wheel chair starts the narration with a mention of a wedding for which he along with Russell Buffalino and their wives take a road journey to Detroit. This is the second timeline. The third timeline shows Frank stepping the ladder to become what he is. In just the way they start, the three timelines end just in that order, meeting each other in the course of the film, ending again in the old age home. That is what the structure looks like. And as if this was not interesting enough, there is the treatment by Scorsese that makes it what it is. The first two hours of the film, whenever we are in the past, it runs very quick. Suffice it to say, the first two hours are a clever montage in the early life of these mobsters with accompaniment of music throughout. So much so, that it seems almost like a music video, flowing smoothly and taking you in the brilliance. There are jump cuts used in some places, keeping the pace together never letting go of the rhythm maintained. This rhythm is stopped when the time comes, and you feel it when it does.
Although it is supposed to be a gangster film, Scorsese paints it in a way nobody would imagine a gangster film as. The colors are so vibrant, the frames so still and calculated with never a sense of terror in them, you feel you are watching a fairy tale. It is rightly called an “Epic” gangster film, for apart from the long duration that it runs, these other elements truly make it an epic. The art direction along with the colors give it a very cartoon-ish feel. There are blue colored walls, orange colored curtains, green colored trucks and so on. This again reaffirms the fact that, what the obvious story appears to be is not of importance but what lies beneath it that is of sublime importance and something that influences the themes of the film. The makeover and overall look of all the actors, doesn’t make them appear dreadful but instead lovable people who just do some things that are bad. Even the CGI for that matter, what it adds to the storytelling according to me is that it makes the three central characters look very animated. It’s hard for us to not love them. They may have been terrible criminals doing terrible things in reality, but when passed through the lens of the Scorsese world, they are characters whom personally I didn’t have a very strong feeling against. The existential questions are presented in the last part of the film. This is also the part, (which I have referred to earlier as the stopping of rhythm) when there is almost no music accompanying the scenes. Just a deadly silence prevalent which is very unlike the first two hours. This is the part which is the backbone of the film. This is the part for which the first two hours were presented to us. While they showed the high points and all the choices that Frank made without giving much thought to them, it is the last one hour in which it explodes. It is slow and bound to make one feel uncomfortable. Scorsese gives us time to think. To feel. The cuts become less frequent. As if a roller coaster ride has come to a stop. This is the part of reflection of the choices that Frank made. Were they right? Was it all worth it? Is living life worth it? The theme of morality has been a recurring theme in all of Scorsese films, something, he says, he himself is curious of and thinks about. And then all of it culminates into the last devastating scene: we see Frank, who is now older and cannot walk, lying on his bed. A priest has just come to visit him. He asks the priest to not close the door to his room completely and to keep it open a little. In the last frame, through the gap in the door, we see Frank looking out.
The last frame.
There is a very style of editing similar to Scorsese films. His films cut like grass by the machine, you can feel the thumping through every cut and how it transcends and takes you to the world in just a second, a blink. This is also due to his long-time collaboration with editor Thelma Schoonmaker who is also the editor of The Irishman. Just when Hoffa is introduced, and Russ and Frank are having liquor sitting in a bar, Frank on phone talking to him, there are two actions happening. First of all, we are still in the narration by an older Frank, so in between the call, we cut to see Frank introducing Hoffa to us and there are shots of Hoffa giving a speech, his early days and how everybody knows him! Then again, we move back to the bar and the call. Now, this editing technique is used a number of times in the later sequences too. For example, again When Hoffa is sitting with his family watching TV, Hoffa curses Kennedy for getting elected. The scene cuts with a courtroom sequence involving a certain relative of Kennedy asking Hoffa some tough questions which he answers reluctantly. When this is complete, again, we cut back to Hoffa at home, he curses him even more. It almost feels as an action reaction shot but at two different locations at different points of time. Another example is when Frank’s daughter gives a speech on Hoffa in school. Again, intercut with a business deal that Hoffa gives his nod to in presence of Frank. It’s like, Frank’s daughter introduces to us what Frank would have got to narrate otherwise. She ends with talking about pension. Frank starts off elaborating it more. What this does is it shows us how much his daughter likes Hoffa (while not relating with her own father who is present while she gives the speech), thus strengthening within our minds their relationship further which we were just introduced to a scene ago. What it is also doing, is making a paradox. As innocent as she is, she thinks very highly of Hoffa (something she wanted to feel for her father but couldn’t). So, whatever we hear her say, we are presented with the other story of it. Simple yet effective way of telling the dualities of Hoffa.
Every sequence in the first 2 hours, appear to have its own beginning middle and end. Rightly so, as it is picturization of the narration of Frank that we are being shown. For example, Frank’s descent into being a hitman is shown gradually brick by brick as he beats up the shopkeeper. It begins with these some couple beatings. Within them too, there exists a greater conflict, the one where his personal and professional life collides- the relationship with his daughter. As he goes on killing people, he distances himself from his daughter and then eventually also divorces his wife. So as some time passes, we meet a new Frank: he is a hitman now doing “.. what he’s being told. Just like in the war..” and is further distanced with his daughter. This forms a major conflict in the later part of the film and something which we keep coming back to in between. The seed is sown to reap later.
One other trademark of Scorsese is humor and to use it in the most unexpected places. It is present throughout. In fact, the overall treatment, right from the characterizations of Hoffa and Al Pacino’s portrayal of him to the funky music that plays almost throughout the film, give it a humorous tone. Even when the situation is tense, there is some element or the other inserted to keep alive that humor. I can go on writing examples, but if you have watched the film (if you are reading this then you probably have) you know what I am talking about.
Film is as much about rhythm as are the other arts like music or dance. Not all films have the same rhythm and style and it is when the rhythm is realized and maintained throughout that a particular story can be told beautifully. You will know when the rhythm is off, when a scene is too long or short, when the dialogue just goes over-board, when the camera moves in a scene in a way very unlike the rest, you will know. That is where The Irishman never falls and rightly so when it is handled by Martin Scorsese, the master. I watched it the second time to understand how it is doing what it is doing and I was left in tears this time too by the end of it. That’s what a good film, book or any art does to you. I will go on and say that The Irishman is truly a textbook for film making that needs to be absorbed and re-absorbed to understand the brilliance with which it is made. Period.
Court is a drama about the court. Protagonists here are not the lawyers or the judge or the accused but the legal system in its entirety. Courtroom dramas are not new to film. Stories have been told in the past where court is used as a device to make certain points about society as a whole (Pink, Mulk etc.). It is all like a game: The lawyer investigates, is the pursuer of truth and also the one who has a breaking point somewhere in the narrative when he realizes the importance of getting justice to which then he fights till victory. And usually this ‘realization’ is tied with some personal conflict which eventually makes him to question himself. Jolly LLB is an example of this type of drama. Or there is the other type where the lawyer has realization from the beginning and is fighting to get justice for his client. The Govind Nihalani film Aakrosh is an example of this. In both cases, there is a fight with the system that is going on as to how corrupt, unjust it is and following it, we expect justice to prevail. What Court does different is, it makes us a part of the universe so that we cannot separate the court- or system so to speak- from the world we are living in. Tamhane presents the picture as if saying “This is how it is and going to be”, showing the runners of court as normal beings doing a mechanical job as opposed to someone saving the world.
An important tool in a screenplay is empathy for the characters so that we feel what they are feeling on the screen. In the film, Tamhane just doesn’t want us to empathize with the characters. Instead, he ensures that there remains a gap between what is shown on the screen and what is being perceived. We are mere spectators. Watching the courtroom unfold. There are long shots spread in the film with absolutely no close ups (apart from a few mid shots here and there). When the scene is of lunch on a dining table, we are away from the table and not on it. In the police station, it’s a long continuous shot where we are watching two people talk to the officer from one side, the dialogues and acting toned down with just a sprinkle of emotion in them. Even when one of the characters’ is crying due to an unfortunate incident, we are watching him from the back in a darkly lit room that too in a long shot. All this to create a world where we are made to look at its inhabitants as lifeless creatures working like a machine. Specifically, the public prosecutor (played by Geetanjali Kulkarni) who is supposed to question and reason but just repeats the entire section of the law as argument. She reads her statements from a paper without any feelings or interest. At one point she remarks that the case should be done away with as early as possible and also compares the ‘efficiency’ of the judge by counting how many cases they hear in a day.
The ‘protectors of justice’, when they are not in court defending their client, are not investigating or hunting for the truth, as we would expect them to; but are doing things what these people may be doing in reality: buying grocery, watching a polarizing play and applauding to it or going to a holiday in the middle of an important case when there’s someone’s life at stake. There are instances which show complete opposite personalities of the lawyers and judge inside court and in the outside world. All of this, in part, being a strong criticism of the law system. A system which is trapped in a book. A system which is rational but only till a point. There is one particularly humorous scene where the judge dismisses from hearing one case just because the lady concerned is wearing sleeveless top which is contempt of court!
The film runs without any background music, it’s the silences that sting the most. There’s one instance where the victim’s wife comes up to give her statement in the court for the first time since the death of her husband. After the hearing, her lawyer (played by Vivek Gombar) goes to drop her and her brother in-law to home in his car. We see her sitting in front with him and expect him to ask her more about the case, about her husband. But he starts off by asking her to tie her seatbelt. This is one striking moment which really confused me how to react. I was discomforted with the absurdity and it remains my favorite scenes from the film. The rest of their journey goes almost quiet with none of them speaking much and I was left waiting for the conversation that never took place actually but was playing in my head as I was watching.
Apart from these silences, there are two protest songs composed by Sambhaji Bhagat. Bhagat is a lokshahir from Maharashtra who uses folk music to create songs of protest and revolution. In the film, these songs are performed by Vira Sathidar who plays a lokshahir and gets arrested for allegedly inspiring a man to commit suicide through his songs. Vira Sathidar has been associated with the Ambedkarite movement in India which adds a touch of believability to his performance. The film also speaks of the inhumane act of manual scavenging, though never pressing much about it even when it centers around the death of a man in a manhole. The character of Sathidar too is not given dialogues that speak directly of the discrimination that Dalits face in India (again as I had expected he would be), as clearly, it’s not a film about that. Or rather, the film does all that just in a different way. There are strong implications throughout of his struggle and the irrationality of police’s actions towards him. I could see his rage for the system that has failed the downtrodden, for example, when he is questioned by the judge. He is asked, “You wouldn’t in the future mind writing lines like ‘Manhole workers, all of us should commit suicide by suffocating inside the gutters’?” Firmly, with head held high, he says, “No.” There is anger in the film and what these songs and the character then do is, they give this anger of the film a firm voice. Court is a protest. It is a silent shout on the face of the people. Chaitanya Tamhane manages to make devastating observations about the Judiciary in a matter of fact way, which makes it all the more disturbing. It’s an achievement when the formal aspects of a film go along with the subject matter and tell an important story. Mexican filmmaker and Tamhane’s mentor Alfonso Cuaron said, “When I first saw Court,I saw the work of someone who understands film language, and not just in terms of technique.” Rightly so.
We have seen stories of spies; they are not new to us. Be it the serious womanizer James Bond or the wrongly placed Jhonny English or many other countless spies on a mission to save their country and probably the world from a threat. Exotic locations, flashy costumes, femme fatales, crisp dialogue, stark and stylish lighting, over the top dramatic action sequences- are some of the things that make a good spy thriller. Also, talking from an Indian context as is seen in much web and TV shows, a forcible depiction of violence, sex or foul language (read Sacred Games) is necessary for any show. What The Family Man offers is nothing from the above (no green or red or yellow tints of light) but creates a world and language of its own, to tell a good old story in a new fresh style and it does that with perfection.
We meet Srikant Tiwari, a father of two with a mundane life and a ‘government desk job’ who is a secret agent working for the Indian Intelligence. He owns a Santro, his kids tell him that he is uncool and he is the last person you’d go to if you wanted your country saved! That’s why when it’s mentioned that he is the best agent, a spill of doubt comes but it becomes all clear as we watch more. Srikant is not a hero. He is not a guy who saves the day in the end. No. He is just another guy doing his job. He is not overtly patriotic; he just wants to save his country. There are clear ironies in how he behaves at home and at work. At home he’s a boring father and husband who does Yoga every day, has diabetes and hence keeps a chocolate with him always and never takes out time for his family. At work he is a smart guy taking quick decisions and risking out his life for the country. These are two different personalities and the pilot episode had me totally in splits about the way in which the story was told. It doesn’t at all look like a spy thriller! But as I watched more and understood the context and the fact that it is made by the directors Raj and DK, known for their quirky storytelling, I was hooked.
The creators Raj and Dk said they wanted to make a series taking into consideration the geo-politics. There are instances from the current political scenario like the lynchings and the Kashmir conflict which forms a major portion of the story. This is a really brave decision and is included in the narrative smoothly. We see visuals from Kashmir, the curfews, army check posts and the valley beautiful as ever. There’s one particularly interesting scene where an army man and a police officer from Kashmir have a conversation which gets heated after the latter calls the militants as “martyrs”. What they have done here is to not press on a single perspective but to give the entire conflict in its complexity by trying to present the counter narratives as well. Something which most of the Indian films fail to.
The other likeable thing is the trademark humor of the director duo. There’s humor placed at unusual places, sometimes just between a serious, tense sequence. The thing to applaud here are the dialogues and especially the ones said by the character of Manoj Bajpayee. They are not filled with wit or smartness to paint a larger than life picture for the character but are layered in a simple way. Manoj Bajpayee plays the part to perfection. While watching, it seems that the guy knows how to mend each and every scene and make the audience feel exactly what the filmmakers want them to. It’s not that he hasn’t played an officer before but here it’s different. Also, one thing that the writers have done is to make sure that it doesn’t just become a story about him. There is weightage given to the development of the other characters. There are action sequences given to the other characters, which shouldn’t be a point to make but is an achievement in the Indian context where the ‘Hero’ saves his officers always. Not just that but the action sequences are choreographed really well and are one of the things that make the show binge-worthy. Carefully designed, shot without any accentuating slow-motion effects but real time action. Kudos to the action director for this.
Still there are some parts which doesn’t come up well that could have been avoided. The last episode particularly has some haphazard decisions made which seems to have done to just not let the story to end and there’s a cliffhanger. But then these are too small decisions to impact the story in an overall watchable show. Shows like this and Sacred Games, with their handling and portrayal of serious political issues, are needed in the mainstream. For what’s art that doesn’t discomfort the comforted.
KuchTohBhi 