Film Impressions

ESSAY: The Curse of the Cerebral Woman

WHERE ARE THE CLEVER WOMEN?

While browsing through titles at a Crossword’s in Mumbai, I came across a book that carried a recommendation by the actress Gul Panag. Now, ordinarily publishers would quote such worthy progenitors of good taste as the New York Review of Books, or the color supplement of The Hindu or even that most prolific of ‘blurbers’—Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. It wasn’t quite a ringing endorsement either. Panag said, of the book, “It’s such a quick read that I’m surprised I didn’t finish it earlier.” Quite cleverly back-handed there, and I’m sure she totally gets the irony, because although celebrities are now ubiquitous at book launches and readings (that’s the sideline that keeps them afloat), they’re usually not the go-to people for literary seals of approval. Not to take anything away from Panag, she is considered one of the few ‘thinking’ actors out there, but that blurb did still seem a little out of whack.

NOSTALGIA: Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962)

PATHOS AND POIGNANCY

Ever since the release of Abrar Alvi's Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam in 1962, there has been widespread speculation about the authorship of this film. Abrar Alvi was its director, Guru Dutt, its producer. Legend has it that after the debacle of his dream project Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959), Guru Dutt vowed never to direct a film again. But enthusiasts and academics have analysed the film threadbare to sift the individual roles either of the Alvi-Dutt duo may have played in its creation. While it may or may not have been ghost directed by Dutt, it certainly possesses the qualities of subliminal pathos and innate delicacy which distinguished his cinema from that of other filmmakers of the time.

MUSIC: The Lost Thumris of PAKEEZAH

AN AMBIENCE OF BEAUTIFUL RIFFS

Kamal Amrohi's Pakeezah represents one of Indian cinema's shimmering musical milestones. It was the composer Ghulam Mohamed's final score. Playback queen Lata Mangeshkar was the voice of the courtesan Sahib Jaan, played by tragedienne Meena Kumari, who incidentally passed away shortly after the film's release, resulting in scores of film-goers flocking to cinema theatres as if to pay obeisance at her mazaar (as recounted by the late actress Nadira). Naushad has provided this film with a background score that is much less feted but includes some exquisite thumri numbers and ghazals by singers like Rajkumari, Vani Jairam, Begum Parveen Sultana and Naseem Bano Chopra.

In some scenes, like when Sahib Jaan visits her childhood friend Bibban (Vijay Laxmi), Kamal Amrohi weaves in some brilliant thumri and ghazal melodies as some kind of intricate ambient sound... some of which can be heard in the video below. Have a look, and listen hard. There are many riffs that seem to waft in from the neighboring kothas, and maybe a more enterprising viewer can help us identify every lost melody.

ESSAY: Honor Killings in Indian Cinema

ZAN ZAR ZAMEEN

‘Hai maujazan ek kulzum- ekhoon kaash yahi ho
Aataa hai abhi dekhiye kya kya mere aage’

(There are waves in the turbulent sea of blood I wish it does not go beyond this Who knows what one might have to witness in the future).

This is a couplet by Mirza Ghalib that was quoted in the landmark Supreme Court ruling in May 2011, which decreed honor killings as those rarest of rare circumstances in which capital punishment was wholly warranted. This is a marked change from the kind of tacit silence that authorities have usually maintained on such practices in the past, as has Bollywood’s cinema of escapism, except until recently.

In Love Sex Aur Dhoka, Dibakar Banerjee lets his rather maverick lens witness the honor killings of two young lovers, something that hasn’t usually been depicted so starkly in a film culture where miles of film-reel have otherwise been dedicated to ‘izzat’ or ‘abroo’ and complications thereof. While much of the film is niftily edited and relies upon intrepid splicing of shots from several cameras, with all the hand-held jerkiness we've grown to expect from the cinema vérité techniques that Mr Banerjee appears to have mastered—the murders here are framed in chillingly still fashion. The footage is raw, the camera has been thrown to the ground, no-one helms it. The fact that it’s kept running owes itself to the lead protagonist’s penchant for exhibitionism (he’s a trainee film-maker), but this is a brand of found footage that does not necessarily fit in with the film’s overriding theme of deliberate and intrusive voyeurism. 

Anshuman Jha & Shruti as the doomed lovers in Love Sex and Dhokha