We often describe our films as
‘melodramatic’, literally meaning a combination of melody and drama––a
heightened representation of emotional states, achieving climax and offering
collective catharsis to an audience. Melodrama synthesises social criticism
with mythical archetypes thereby enabling the viewers (diverse sections of
them, as another essential ingredient of this genre is the near absence of
psychological depth) to see the follies of men and institutions combined with
the triumph of virtue and punishment of vice. The audience’s involvement with
the characters’ journey is critical to the success of the genre.
Mira Nair’s debut feature film Salaam Bombay which is celebrating its
25th anniversary this year and had a limited re-release last week,
begins like any other conventional film with an underdog hero. Young Krishna
(Shafiq Syed with a brilliant screen presence), barely 12 years old, is abandoned by his boss, the manager of a circus,
and left to fend for himself with hardly any money in his tattered pockets. He
walks up to the nearest railway station, asks for a “bade sheher ka ticket” and arrives in Bombay. In popular cinema
he’d have encountered kindly folk all around or stoked his angst to grow up as a
messiah for other lost souls like himself, either becoming a smuggler/pickpocket
or then, somehow managed to put together the 500 rupees he needs to take back
to his village in Karnataka before his mother will accept him back (he ruined someone’s
bicycle and has been sent off to make good the loss), his makeshift family
bidding him a teary farewell.
Shafiq Syed as Chaipau and Chanda Sharma as Sola Saal
What do audiences take home from films like Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster Returns? I, for
one, came away with a headache. Tigmanshu Dhulia perhaps wanted to critique contemporary
India’s fungible moralities and the absence of valour even in blue-blooded descendants
of erstwhile princely states (of course he'd already done so effectively enough in Part 1, but still...). In a superb tragicomic scene the gangster (Irrfan Khan)
struggles with a rusty knife to pledge his blood towards restoring family honour
before the pockmarked bust of his ancestor. It’s unambiguous irony––among a few
such clever moments––but for those who’ve seen the film, it’s also a dead giveaway
that the SBAG franchise may even spawn
a third edition, particularly if reports of an encouraging box-office opening are
true. In a newspaper interview published last weekend Dhulia confessed that he
only made the film for commercial reasons.
Kai Po Che wouldn't be
the first Hindi film to fail the Bechdel Test for Women in Movies.
Spectacularly too. Nor would it be the last. Male-bonding and undying love
between the boys is one of our most enduring themes. But Kai Po Che is a good place to start
applying the Bechdel to our cinema. The test involves asking three basic
questions––1) Are there at least two women characters in the film with
distinctive names (which means they are identifiable as individuals and not
just as Ma, Behna, Bitiya etc.), 2) Do these women talk to each other (if they
share screen time it means they are relevant enough to the screenplay as
individuals, as is their relationship with each other) 3)
Do they talk to each other about anything except the men in their lives (to gauge if their existence has any importance beyond their relationships with
men)?
Despite its thoroughly
entertaining exposition and great period detailing (how I’d love going back to
the computer/mobile-free ‘80s with just two state-manufactured cars, HMT
watches and all the inconveniences of the License Raj! But that’s misplaced
idealism too…), something about Neeraj Pandey’s Special 26 left me feeling disturbed.
In the run-up to the centenary of Indian cinema, in this Film Impressions special feature we take a look (through an extensive photo-feature and an accompanying essay) at all the women from the Indian film industry who have been decorated with state honors, and what this cross-section of diverse talent tells us about our cinema.
FOR COMPLETE PHOTO FEATURE READ IN MAGAZINE LAYOUT BELOW
In one of 2012's best conceived
scenes, an old woman and her daughter-in-law (Kamlesh Gill and Dolly
Ahluwalia), who bicker and drip sarcasm by day, sit together in their modest
Lajpat Nagar drawing room and get drunk. It's a nightly ritual, we learn, and
such a refreshing break from stereotype! In the same film, the hero sits
at his girlfriend's feet and gives her a pedicure in his mother's beauty
parlour. The film was Vicky Donor, a critically and commercially successful comedy written by Juhi Chaturvedi.
This is possibly the first time
this writer has hesitated to review a film after one viewing. Not because
Reema Kagti’s Talaash was difficult
to appreciate or critique but because one felt so drawn to its central theme and motifs that
it demanded a second, closer look. Also, over the years, it has become evident
that it isn’t possible to do justice to a good film with a hasty review.
If you’re an avid watcher of
Bengali films (as yours truly) Rajesh Sharma would be a familiar face.
Alternately, you may remember him as Silk’s ‘mentor’ in The Dirty Pictureor the cynical Delhi cop in No One Killed Jessica. But Sharma, who slips seamlessly into just
about every kind of character, finally gets a starring role in debutant Sameer
Sharma’s Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana––a
film quite like authentic slow-cooked gravy which may not be very attractive to
look at, but leaves a delicious aftertaste nevertheless.
Rajesh Sharma (in background), Vinod Nagpal and Kunal Kapoor
Cinema, by its very nature, is
voyeuristic. We sit in the darkness and delve into peoples’ lives––in turn
emerging from the imagination of others––and sometimes make an immediate
connection with them like no other art form can achieve on a similar scale. But
what happens when, instead of mining for inspiration in the outside world or
within their fertile minds, filmmakers and/or actors turn the camera around and examine their own lives with, what may be described as, subjective
detachment?
Two fascinating documentaries
screened at the recently concluded Mumbai International Film Festival did just
this with equally satisfying results. The first, Stories We Tell, is a film by Canadian actress/filmmaker Sarah
Polley who discovered a few years ago that her father, Michael Polley, is in
fact not her biological parent and that she was born out of wedlock when her
actress mother Diane Polley had a relationship with another man while she was
in Toronto for a play in the late ‘70s.
