Film Impressions

REVIEW: Qissa

This review contains spoilers. A version that speaks of the queer themes that emerge in the film was featured in the Gaysi blog. We are also running a buzz page for the film.

It is hard not to be effusive about Anup Singh’s Punjabi film, Qissa, a masterful indictment of patriarchy set in partition-ravaged Punjab. Themes of displacement and loss of identity provide texture to a sprawling canvas awash with stunning visuals that are rich in symbolism, from the almost Biblical depiction of the exodus from Pakistan that sets up archetypes of men and women — the stoic Sikh refugee, Umber (Irrfan Khan), and his supportive wife, Meher (Tisca Chopra) who must now rebuild their lives — to the vertiginous shots of bodies that have fallen from great heights, to the conflicted half-smiles of its women that speak such volumes. Dedicated to Singh’s mother, the film is a tribute (even in its own gut-wrenching manner) to the resilience of women who manage to soldier on in the face of great repression. A luminous Chopra is cast in the mould of a pioneer woman in her own right who could be her husband’s equal in every way, but her Meher is slowly deprived of her agency. She becomes an object of abject domesticity, under pressure (as is still typical) to beget a male heir for Umber, given that she has only borne daughters — three cherubic girls lovingly shot in Renaissance frames by the cinematographer, Sebastian Edschmid.

Irrfan Khan & Tisca Chopra in Qissa

ESSAY: Alternative Women of Cinema

This article was first published in Midday, Oct 30.

For the second consecutive year, an Indian entry was adjudged Best Asian Film at the Toronto International Film Festival. After last year’s Qissa, Margarita, with a Straw has wowed audiences and jury alike at Toronto, if the constant buzz on Twitter is anything to go by. Lead actor Kalki Koechlin’s performance as Laila, an aspiring writer living with cerebral palsy, is so masterly that when she walked into the post-screening Q&A, statuesque as ever in a Sabyasachi couture outfit, there was reportedly an audible gasp of surprise from many who had simply assumed the role had been played by a real-life wheelchair user. What marks Laila out as different from the winsome (and decidedly straight-laced) creations who have inhabited other ‘Indian woman discovering herself in the west’ narratives like English Vinglish and Queen, is the fact that she is equipped with a full-blown sexuality that refreshingly doesn’t kowtow to her physical impairment. Intriguingly, she chooses both male and female partners, and the film’s two-minute promo perhaps packs in more lesbian adventurism than several decades of Indian film, in which queer women remain woefully underrepresented. Director Shonali Bose has openly spoken about how she has drawn from her own bisexual relationships and her cousin’s journey with cerebral palsy. It would be interesting to see whether Laila’s sexual fluidity is allowed such fervid expression because her own ostracism leads to a rejection of the labels (and behaviors) that ‘able-bodied’ people box themselves into so easily. Margarita, with a Straw brings to mind Waaris Hussein’s Sixth Happiness, a 1997 film which dealt with the equally indiscriminate sexual awakening of a young gay Parsi writer (Firdaus Kanga) afflicted with brittle bones, who also resolutely refused to play the victim.

Koechlin with Revathy in Margarita, With A Straw

ESSAY: Bombay Talkies

CINEMA OF DELUSION

Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD

Towards the middle of Bombay Talkies, in Dibakar Banerjee’s short film, Star, actor-in-exile Sadashiv Amrapurkar emerges Yoda-like from a dumpster, every dint a doyen of Marathi theatre, unusual abode notwithstanding. Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays Purandar, his son or protégé (as seen in Banerjee’s Oye Lucky Lucky Oye with Paresh Rawal’s character, Amrapurkar is presented as an amalgam of a man’s father figures). Purandar has chanced upon a part in a big film, with just an exclamation by way of dialogue. Still he submits himself to a semblance of rehearsal, mostly by mouthing the filmi lines that are a part of every bit actor’s repertoire. The ‘father’ emerges as a taunting hallucination, and Amrapurkar, tantalisingly in his element, draws nuance from bombast, and breaks down the tenets of raw performance that may well be beyond Purandar’s reach. Purandar is a never-has-been, an eternal ham whose funny faces and odd tales even his daughter doesn’t find funny anymore, although he has tasted blood on stage in the distant past. He lives dissolutely in a chawl, and is an object of much amusement amongst its residents, not least because he keeps an emu as a pet, and the daily barbs add to the din of ridicule that seems to inform his life.

Nawazuddin is the chawl jester.

ESSAY: The Women of State

THE SPOILS OF LARGESSE

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

REVIEW: Ship of Theseus

The review was written during the Mumbai International Film Festival 2012.

THE ESSENTIAL TRUTH

Through an aquamarine-tinted glimpse of an unseen Mumbai that is delectably photographed and appears to be thriving under the dust and the mayhem, and a seamless narrative that masterfully ties together three separate stories with the same soul, right through to the film’s stunning denouement, first-time director Anand Gandhi’s Ship of Theseus provides us with evocative drama that is unhurried in pace but rich in emotional cadences—a slow trickle headed irrevocably towards a postscript that is flush with meaning.

A stirring potrayal by Aida Al-Kashef. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY TIFF

The central paradox on which Ship of Theseus hinges its narrative is derived from Plutarch’s query—whether a ship restored by replacing all its planks remained the same ship. Inversing it somewhat, Mr Gandhi applies the premise to the realm of organ donation, tracing a reverse genealogy of organs from a single man, recently deceased, which have been used to replenish other lives. Aida Al-Kashef, an Egyptian filmmaker in her first acting role, plays a photographer, startlingly expressive in her work when blind, but struggling with a perceived loss of spontaneity even as her restored eyesight allows her more tangible control over her craft. Neeraj Kabi is a monk who revels in his intransigence, refusing treatment for liver cirrhosis, because most pharmaceutical companies, whose drugs could cure him, have a track record of flagrant animal abuse, to which he objects stringently. Sohum Shah, also the producer of the film, is a stock-broker recently in receipt of a kidney transplant, who feels compelled to track down a laborer’s stolen kidney that he initially believed to be his own.

PHOTO ESSAY: The Women of Lajja

OVER-THE-TOP AND THEN SOME MORE...

Raj Kumar Santoshi's magnum opus from 2001—Lajja—hasn't ever been a critics' favorite, with its undeniably well-meaning roster of ideas obscured by the garish masala elements that Santoshi's cinema has long been associated with. Still, it remains one of the Indian cinema's few attempts at using a mainstream idiom to give voice to women's issues in an all-expansive pan-Indian manner, that some may have considered overwrought at the time of its release. As it pans out, Lajja now occupies its own niche as a cult classic—a slice of 'found art' entertainment where women took centrestage in several irrepressible ways, even if it required a man in superhero mode (Ajay Devgn) to save the day in the end. The cast of women were spear-headed by Rekha, Madhuri Dixit, Mahima Chaudhury and a luminous Manisha Koirala. In this special Film Impressions slide-show, we pay tribute to the ensemble of female actors who tried their best to make Lajja an enduring human document, but failed gallantly.

Thespians Manisha Koirala and Rekha in a pivotal scene in the film

ESSAY: Actors of the Year

EVERYDAY HEROES

As it was for this year’s women where we had a clear front-runner in the performing sweepstakes, Ranbir Kapoor in Imtiaz Ali’s Rockstar steals a march on this year’s field, holding together a film that otherwise seems to be coming apart at its seams. In the opening montage, he is the recalcitrant rock star, a rebel who fights through a barricade to take the stage in a giant amphitheater filled with thousands of his fans, and as the camera swoops unto his almost upholstered frame, we segue into flashback mode, with Kapoor now in college tweeds and a marked air of deference, busking with his guitar at a road crossing. Over the course of its running time, the film takes us through his character’s progression, and although the styling of his ‘look’ is an important part of the transformation of a gauche kid with cropped hair to a straggly haired rock icon, Kapoor inhabits each change like a second skin.

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ESSAY: Actresses of the Year

THE YEAR OF THE BAD GIRL

Earlier this year, our mid-year picks brought out the indie soul of Bollywood, before a litany of blockbusters took over the box-office in quick succession. Female actors often have precious little to do in many of these ‘100-crore’ bonanzas. However, this year has certainly reaped a rich harvest of great turns by women, several of which have been in films that have done reasonably well commercially. A common theme that has emerged is how the ‘bad girl’ seems to have been catapulted centrestage, indicating that audiences are perhaps increasingly able to view women outside the mould of tailor-made propriety.

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PHOTO ESSAY: The Women of Bhumika

Shyam Benegal's Bhumika—The Role (1977) featured Smita Patil in arguably her greatest role, for which she won her first National Award. One of Benegal's masterpieces, Bhumika was based on the autobiography of Marathi actress Hansa Wadkar. Amol Palekar, Anant Nag and Sulabha Deshpande play significant supporting parts, as well as a roster of fine women performers who are the subject of this slideshow, part of our Shyam Benegal retrospective.

PHOTO ESSAY: The Women of Junoon

Sanjana Kapoor has recently announced her departure from Prithvi Theatre, and the setting up of Junoon, an organisation that will take plays from around the country to smaller towns. Here is a look at a film in which she made her first appearance—Shyam Benegal's cult classic from 1978, the similarly named Junoon, in which a host of women had strong performing parts. This continues our restrospective on The Women of Benegal. Junoon, based on Ruskin Bond's novella, A Flight of Pigeons, and is amongst the few films that dealt with the 1857 mutiny, a list which includes Satyajit Ray's Shatranj Ke Khiladi and Ketan's Mehta's Mangal Pandey—The Rising.