The 14th MFF: A Retrospective

The 14^th Mumbai Film Festival (MFF) organised by Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) was my first full-blown film festival experience. Here, I revisit some of the highlights of the festival in the futile hope of continuing to live it.

Stories we tell: Dir. Sarah Polley (Canada)

This one was a devastating start to the film festival. All the stellar reviews and repeated allusions to its shattering impact could not prepare me for what I saw in those 110 minutes. Sarah Polley, an actress herself, directs this documentary about her parents and family, using interviews with them, her siblings, their friends, old photographs and Super-8 footage, reconstructions simulating Super-8 footage of her parents’ youth. Memory, love, desire, art, laughter, freedom, loneliness, regret, fear, bitterness, rage coalesce to form one of the most human stories I’ve seen on screen. Amazingly, in addition to all this, the film works like a mystery, in so far as pulling the audience along in the search of an elusive truth. In the process, it re-examines the very nature of truth and its uneasy relationship with us. No one is spared, no one is judged. Polley even chooses to include footage of herself, in the act of experiencing, what we, the audience do. It is as much a journey of painful, honest revelation as it is of self-discovery. The narrative form Polley chooses is so synergetic with the subject matter at hand, it is what lends the film its quietly catastrophic, heartbreaking beauty.  

Miss Lovely: Dir. Ashim Ahluwalia (India, Hindi)

One of the most eagerly awaited films at the festival owing to its selection in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, the premiere was a bit too well attended, leaving the film’s cast and crew (who’d turned up fashionably late) struggling to find seats at their own premiere. Thankfully, the director and the great Nawazuddin Siddiqui were spared this minor ignominy as they were absent.

Set in the world of the C-grade sex-horror film industry in Mumbai of the mid-80’s (Pyaasa Shaitan, Hawas Bhari Chudail and the like), the story follows two brothers Vicky (Anil George) and Sonu (Nawazuddin) who make such films and a mysterious girl Pinky (Niharika Singh) between them. This film is a rarity in that it does not have much of a plot, (whatever it does can easily be predicted), but depends almost entirely on the creation of an atmosphere to create an impact. The use of this approach is a masterstroke, for it does not quite concretely confirm our worst assumptive fears about such a world, yet greatly magnifies every such fear that is realised. For instance, elsewhere, the sight of a man, hands bound with blood flowing from a cut lip, would not make our skin crawl as much as it would in this film.

It is a dread-heavy film, one whose opening shots, in a mocking, spoofing way, portend the imminent doom. The darkness that pervades the film goes beyond the sleaze, bloodshed or the wretched lives of the characters. It just is. We look at the characters laughing and making merry and wonder how they do it in such a world. We look at them suffer and wonder how they survive in it. The dialogue is so everyday and muttered, it is as if one were eavesdropping on the characters. Yet the sound-design is layered, hypnotic and sonorous creating a closed world in tandem with the claustrophobic locations and the extremely tight photography (Mohanan). The swirling, eddying background score and the garish, baroque set-design and makeup provide a weird beauty to the decaying, noisome world of the film.

A really unique experience, but one you would immediately want to wash off your skin. You can’t.

Ship of Theseus: Dir. Anand Gandhi (India, English/Hindi)

To watch this film is to gulp down breath after breath of pristine, mountainous air, heady with the scent of pines. You feel so alive and enriched after watching it, you almost feel it has healed you in some way. The title refers to an ancient Greek conundrum that asks if a ship may remain the same one after a few or all of its planks have been replaced by new ones or those from another ship? In the latter case, which one, if either, would be the original ship? The film uses this as a springboard to jump into three stories, each one uniquely moving and stimulating. Along the way it asks, posits, debates, philosophical questions and struggles with answers. In spite of these, the film is not weighed down by them and remains ethereal, luminous, humorous and completely in the here and now of things.  Fantastic performances by an international cast most of which is little-known. The cinematography by Pankaj Kumar (in his debut feature) is jaw-dropping, consisting of visually stunning compositions, lyrical lighting and long, continuous takes. It sets a new bench-mark in the field. After hearing a lot of the rave reviews both at home and at the Toronto Int’l Film Festival, this is one film I feel lucky to have watched along with the cast and crew. It received a standing ovation at the Jamshed Bhabha Hall, NCPA where it was screened. Now my only hope is that it gains a commercial release as soon as possible.       

De Martes a Martes (From Tuesday to Tuesday): Dir. Gustavo Trivino (Argentina)

A tightly wound film, it is the story of a man during a period of (as the title suggests) 8 days of his life. It’s a debut feature with a tight budget that contributes to the overall tautness of the film. It would be a crime to give anything away, except that the man is an absolutely regular guy with a blue-collar job and a family. But he secretly nurses a desire and, over the course of the week, is an invisible witness to something that may change his life forever, depending on what he does about it. Or does not. The director masterfully turns up the screws in little touches, subtly supplies clues and creates a generally disquieting atmosphere through everyday interactions and dialogue. Reminded me of ‘The Machinist’, oddly. A crackerjack thriller.  Oh, and with a bloody good central performance.

Antiviral: Dir. Brandon Cronenberg (Canada)

While most kids of great directors struggle to break free out of their parents’ shadow, Brandon son-of-David Cronenberg goes the other way. After watching this film, one would be forgiven for thinking David Cronenberg made the film. The apple clings tightly to the tree.

But that is only so far as the subject matter is concerned. The treatment, while reminiscent of the master, is amped-up with a heavy, electronic score and sustained slow-motion hallucinatory sequences. Celebrity obsession has reached such a peak as to warrant the existence of legitimate companies that patent and sell celebrity diseases to fans who want to feel a visceral connection with their idols. Not only that, there also exists a celebrity meat market, where slabs of meat containing cells of celebrities are sold to customers to provide them the satisfaction of literally eating their idols. This piece of speculative fiction is based smartly on fact. The HeLa cell line, one of the most famous malignant cell lines of all, is invoked to ground this madness in a reality that is chillingly plausible.

This is only the set-up. The film accepts it to be as normal as, probably, the sun rising in the east. The protagonist Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) works at just such a celebrity disease firm, and all hell breaks loose when he breaks the one cardinal rule: he carries a celebrity disease outside the premises of his company to sell it on the black market. And, as in ‘Videodrome’, rival corporations jump into the fray too, with sides being changed, double-crossed, people being hunted and punished in really uncomfortable ways.  

This is one of the coldest films I’ve seen: watching it is like swimming in waves of ice. Most of the film has been shot indoors, yet the locations are all sterile, blindingly white, drained of all warmth. The human beings are pale, seen through extremely tight close-ups, so that we can see every throbbing vein, every freckle clearly. There is a purpose for all this and it is revealed in the graphic displays of veins being pierced by hypodermic needles and copious amounts of dark-red, warm, thick blood flowing over those sterile surfaces and out of those bodies, making even hardened horror fans queasy. Cronenberg Jr. has his father’s gift for icy atmosphere, icy females and warm blood-letting down to boot.  

Aqui y Alla (Here and There): Dir. Antonio Esparza (Mexico)

This film reinforces the fact that just watching human beings be themselves through a camera they are unconscious of is still the most fascinating sight on screen. No, it is not a documentary and neither does it feel like one. The camera is steady and, in most cases, static. But we see lives, deep and rich in their everyday detail unfold before us, people who we can almost touch and talk to and we are hooked, sucked in from one scene to another.

It tells the story of one of the many Mexicans who work legally in the United States. After spending several years in the States, Pedro returns to his native village in Mexico to his wife and two daughters and begins life anew. Through them, it simply shows us the mundane life of a Mexican village with love, laughter and music. There is minimal drama; no one even so much as raises their voice.  Perhaps, this is a movie that defies complete description; it simply has to be experienced.

I have said before that it is not a documentary. It would scarcely have worked as one for it does not speak about any issue as such. When the film ends, you just want to go up to Senor Pedro, shake his hand and tell him, ‘You are a good man’.  

Kurmavatara (The Tortoise, An Incarnation): Dir. Girish Kasaravalli (India, Kannada)

Amidst all the new-age cinema endorsing value systems that are more globalised (if at all they do endorse), it is refreshing to see a film that speaks of Gandhian ideals in today’s times. The setting is a lower-middle class household in Bengaluru, presumably, consisting of Ananda Rao, an ageing government employee and his son, daughter-in-law and their son. Ananda is a gruff workaholic who is approached to play the role of Mahatma Gandhi in a TV production by its director. Initially turning him down, he eventually accepts it at his family’s insistence and the continuing efforts of the director. Being an untrained, inexperienced actor has its pitfalls, however, and performance anxiety is the least of them. He is profoundly affected by Gandhian ideals to his family’s delight, at first, but then to their chagrin. His popularity is taken advantage of by several friends and acquaintances for their own vested interests. One naively expects such a simple, old-fashioned, gently humorous film to merely highlight the paradox of how we see Gandhi today and the contrast between reel and real life. But the film doesn’t stop at that. Ananda does not become more like Gandhi nor does he bring about a sea-change in others around him by resorting to satyagraha. He does try fasting once, but to no avail. The film betrays no such romantic illusions about Gandhi’s methods and thus, reveals a wisdom seemingly at odds with its old-world charm. Ananda does get in touch with his emotions more after being required to emote for the camera. On the other hand, we see several instances of Ananda questioning Gandhi’s own behaviour while being well in character. This is the strength of the film: that it challenges and breaks assumptions about itself even as we watch it. In a sequence in the film, a situation has the potential to become a communally charged one. It is defused, not by appealing to the common sense of the people, or their sense of communal amity, but by giving in to the demands of the fanatics. In that sense, it is a clear-eyed look at the paradox of Gandhian ideals not only in today’s day and age, but also the very ideals themselves. This film provided me with a lot of food for thought, and most of the conclusions drawn above, are in hindsight.

Xingu: Dir. Cao Hamburger (Brazil)

To be honest, I chanced upon this film only because the screening of ‘Amour’, one of the biggest draws of the festival, was cancelled at the eleventh hour. I went in disgruntled, without expecting anything from it, given its title and the synopsis I’d read of it. I hadn’t heard of the director too which was another minus. Yes, my hurt ego had ballooned to an unimaginable size. This film not only pricked the air out of it, but healed it too, restoring it to its erstwhile good humour. A classic case of serendipity, this remains one of the most fascinating films I’ve seen at the festival. It tells the real-life tale of three brothers in the 1940’s who sign up on a whim to partake of the civilisation drive of central Brazil, hitherto unreached. The brothers are of the family Villas Boas, Claudio, Orlando and Leonardo. They are well-educated but pass themselves off as manual labour so that they may live life in the great outdoors at the mercy of Nature alone. While exploring the jungles of Central Brazil they chance upon an ancient, indigenous tribe with whom they successfully manage to interact peacefully. After this first success, they are repeatedly called upon by the National Government to aid the civilisation drives and make contact with other tribes. In most cases, the brothers serve as a velvet glove for the iron fist of the Govt. in displacing the tribals. The film documents the assiduous efforts of the brothers to soften the inevitable blow- of contact between the white man and the tribals- as much as possible.  In the course of their work, we also see their personal struggles, relationships with the tribals and relationship with their own folk, the white men.

In doing so, it raises fundamental questions about the conquest of nature, the neo-colonisation of the tribals and its globalised nature, whether tribals should be brought into contact with white men at all, and the wherewithal to do so. The herculean efforts of the brothers bore fruit when, in the late 1960’s. the Government allowed them permission to build a reserve park where different indigenous tribes might reside in peaceful coexistence away from the sight of white men. The park bore the name of the great river of the region: Xingu. The film benefits enormously from the expert photography on location and extremely accurate recreation of those pages of history that are often overlooked. The end credits showed the great Fernando Meirelles as one of the producers. My day was made.      

BMW: Aditya Bhattacharya (India, Hindi/English)

It is a return of sorts for the director whose last film Dubai Return (2005) with Irfan Khan and Divya Dutta never released. To most people (which is not many) he is still known as the guy who made Raakh way back in 1988, which pulled off a casting coup by getting a very young Aamir Khan, Pankaj Kapur and Supriya Pathak together. And then disappeared. I haven’t seen those movies, so I went in for this screening more out of curiosity than anything else.

It tells the story of a New York based journalist of Indian origin, Nivedita (Sarita Choudhury) who is in Mumbai to shoot a documentary on encounter specialist Dilawar Khan (Javed Jaffri). The titular BMW refers to the car Khan drives, as well as becomes an acronym for Bombay’s Most Wanted. For the film, she also interviews his informer Inayat (Chandan Roy Sanyal) and, later, a former bar dancer Vanilla (Tannishtha Chatterjee). The three subjects share a close bond from an earlier time. The journalist’s arrival coincides with several synchronous changes in the city: encounter specialists are now hunted and harassed by the new political establishment, bar dancers have been rendered jobless due to RR Patil’s landmark decision and the informer is on the run, hunted by both the sides he played and betrayed. Nivedita’s attempt to delve into the encounter killing of the feared Pote Bhau (Vijay Raaz) shifts the delicate balance between the three subjects, in addition to drawing the ire of Khan’s former boss (Adil Hussain) now hell-bent on capturing him to please his superiors. Amid this dynamically changing landscape, Nivedita struggles to piece together the jigsaw of Pote’s killing.

The narrative is rather convoluted with different versions of the same event seen through different eyes, certain events are fractured and intercut with other events, characters and their motivations subtly change with every retelling and fact and fiction intermingle freely to create the uneasy matrix of life. Along the way, the movie doffs its hat to masterpieces in this tradition such as Rashomon, The Usual Suspects, L.A. Confidential, even Ab Tak Chhappan. But at its heart, it is a whimsical film, with a uniquely bittersweet taste, finely, though sometimes, unevenly, textured. The performances are uniformly good, the humour is quite off-beat, the musical influences eclectic, ranging from Italian opera and American jazz to Indian folk and Hindi film music. The director has called it his blood-speckled love-letter to his growing-up city, Bombay. In the list of worthy cinematic tributes to the city, it surely occupies its own distinct niche.  

Reality: Dir. Matteo Garrone (Italy)

It is said that the name of the director (given his last work, ‘Gomorrah’ which I haven’t seen yet) was enough to draw audiences to this film. Turns out it is far, far removed from the world of organised crime explored in ‘Gomorrah’ and tackles the appeal of the reality show ‘Big Brother’ (its Italian version) to a fish-seller in Naples. This one, named Luciano, is happily married with three daughters and a large extended family of brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles who live together in a huge, crumbling mansion that might have once belonged to a fairy tale. As the movie begins, we see him to be infatuated with the reigning Big Brother winner and an ardent aspirant to the show. He is a cheerful, forever optimistic family man, rather like Roberto Benigni’s character from ‘Life is Beautiful’. However, as the film progresses he becomes more like Robert de Niro’s character from ‘The King of Comedy’, a man so naively optimistic that you worry for him, who smiles so hard and so long, you feel uncomfortable and unpleasant, afraid when the smile might slip to be reveal the inevitable ugliness beneath. In his obsession with the show, he slowly descends into insanity, despite repeated attempts by his family members, especially his wife, to break his fall. Stunningly directed, with marvellously long Steadicam-held takes, during which the camera manages to watch the actors so closely we can tell what the characters are thinking inside their heads, the film is a technical tour-de-force. The ending is debatable and seems abrupt. But this is a film that is more about the journey, which itself rushes by with such headlong passion, that we may be forgiven for anticipating a fittingly grand destination.    

Of Guy Ritchie and his best

It was at the place of a peculiar friend of mine that I first came across the name Guy Ritchie. I call him peculiar, owing to his erstwhile blissful ignorance of treasures right under his nose. An unexpected invitation to ‘check out some cool movies’ saw me at his place for the first time in the eight years that I had known him for. While inspecting newly burgeoning collection of DVDs (courtesy his elder brother who’d just returned from China), I happened to come across ‘Chinatown’. An involuntary ‘Wow!’ escaped my lips. Hearing it, my friend, who was busy trying to select a pizza to order, craned his neck over my back and peered at the DVD in my hand. I looked around at him with an expression that screamed ‘Where the hell did you get this?’, ‘Have you seen it?’ and ‘Do you know what this is?’ all at once. Instead, all that came out of my mouth was ‘Man..... this...this is bloody dynamite.’ To which he replied, mildly nonplussed, ‘What? It’s good or what?’

After that, all I could do was silently return to inspecting his marvellous collection once again. ‘All The President’s Men’, ‘Blood Simple’ and ‘Serpico’ were met with similar replies, but with progressively more befuddled expressions at my increasingly loud exultations. In my excitement I forgot what I had originally come to his place for. He reminded me of it, thus: ‘Screw all that’, he said suddenly. ‘Check this out.’ He picked up and handed me a DVD that read ‘Snatch’.

‘What’s this?’ I asked. Now it was his turn to look incredulous. ‘You haven’t heard of it? Don’t tell me...... Really? Hohoho......’his face and voice beginning to flush and thicken respectively with rising thrill. ‘You’re in for some treat.’ I didn’t think so especially after the jewels I had seen just moments back. He seemed to sense my longing for them, for he quickly continued, ‘Just watch it, man. You’ll fall off whatever you’re sitting on. The first time I saw it, I was like....like.....I went...... it’s crazy sh--’

‘What’s it about?’ I asked weakly, trying to stem his gushing flow of words and actions. ‘No point telling you anything beforehand. Watch it here, right now and see for yourself.’

‘Okay, okay, who’s in it?’

‘Brad Pitt and Jason Statham, you know the guy from The Tranporter, plus a lot of other guys.’

I mentally groaned. To me, then, Brad Pitt was just a blond, Greek-God movie star, in the news more for his link-ups than his acting prowess. It didn’t help his case that the only films I had seen of his till then were ‘Troy’ and parts of ‘Meet Joe Black’. Jason Statham was another matter entirely: I’d hardly heard of The Transporter, let alone Statham.

As for the rest of the ‘other guys’, all flashily posing on the DVD cover, I had never seen them before in my life, a fact that gave me little comfort.

‘And who is it by?’ I asked perfunctorily.

I remembered the name that followed the question throughout the viewing of ‘Snatch’, indeed through repeated viewings. I tried to visualise, past the name and the few still photographs on the internet, what such a man thought or did to come up with such movies. Writing such lines of dialogue. Plotting such labyrinthine, yet miraculously interlocking stories. Creating such thrillingly evil, loony villains. Performing such dazzling tricks of visual wizardry on screen, in addition to compositions that looked so dynamic, even while static. Using songs I had never heard before, yet felt floridly exhilarated listening to, especially after viewing the way the scenes had been cut to them.

Indeed, in our late teens, when we first discovered him, a Guy Ritchie film was the epitome of coolness, smartness and, simply put, the way to be. I had discovered him quite late, well after ‘Swept Away’ had been released. I had no idea at first, that the fellow who’d made ‘Snatch’ and ‘Lock, Stock...’ had been behind ‘Swept Away’ too, which I knew to be god-awful. Fortunately, when I learnt he was also responsible for ‘Revolver’ and ‘Swept Away’, I was not far in time from when the first trailers of ‘Rock ‘n’ Rolla’ hit the screens. And I was glad, for they showed he was back to crackling form.

But I was not to experience it first-hand anytime soon, for it released in India on the same weekend that the Taj Hotel was besieged by terrorists and (most) Mumbai residents were under self-imposed curfews. No, it was only as late as 2010 that I managed to see it. But it was more than worth the wait. For this beauty was different, way different from all his other works, despite being in the Guy Ritchie prototype and being proclaimed by critics as ‘back to what he does best’.

The cards are dealt out with dizzying expertise within the first five breathless minutes of the film. Unusual as it may seem, despite not having an action scene as its opening one, it contains more thrills and needs more careful attention than required for an entire average action film. Only then does it slow down a bit, to let us assimilate and grasp the whole set-up.

Narrated by the warm and deceptively inviting voice of Archy (Mark Strong) it starts out defining a rock-n-rolla as one for whom the only way to enjoy the good life is as the sum of its parts: money, glamour, dope, fornication, all at once. It then moves into explaining, at break-neck speed, the current scenario of escalating property rates in London. This is a result of extensive development and redevelopment by mostly foreign investors, operating in an environment very favourable to them, what with numerous tax breaks, hedge fund bonuses and ample government support. Now this has ‘left the natives struggling to keep a foo’hold in the property ladder’ as Archy says. So what remains is the proverbial back-door entry for local property players, the most powerful of them being Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson), Archy’s employer. Who, by definition, becomes the proverbial frowning doorkeeper to an extremely high-profile, uber-exclusive club.

Lenny Cole, for his part, prides himself on being the foremost bastion of the fort called the London property market, and believes that it would behove any foreign investor to approach him and him alone. He possesses the most thorough knowledge of the local markets, has the most well-developed, time-tested connections within the British bureaucracy and as well as the grey area of local dealers, thugs and the London underworld, of which he himself is no small part.

In the time-honoured tradition of a closet-quisling, he harbours a mixture of limitless jealousy, ill-concealed awe and cavalier condescension towards the foreigners, or the ‘f***ing immigrants’ as he likes to lump them all together, and ruthless, cut-throat disdain for the local, bit players.

A couple of small-time thugs, One-Two (Gerard Butler) and Mumbles (Idris Elba) have their eyes on a run-down property for which, as they are informed by a lawyer, they need a large sum of money. The only one willing to lend them such a large sum without too many questions asked (‘given these boys’ criminal records...’) is Lenny Cole, says the lawyer. Lenny promptly agrees, lends them the money and, at the same time, leans on his personal network of lawyers and councilmen to deny them permission for redevelopment.

When One-Two finally realises the permission for planning cannot come through, he is left aghast while Archy’s quietly sardonic voice-over observes, ‘That’s right, sweethearts, you’ve just been f***ed’. Needless to say, the building has been impounded by Lenny Cole, leaving them still short of two million euros for which they have a week to pay.

Meanwhile, a Russian billionaire named Yuri Omovich has decided to buy up and develop 12 acres of prime London property into a residential complex, for which he needs Lenny’s help. Lenny offers him planning and building permits within ‘seven months and no red-tape’ for which he quotes seven million euros as his price. Yuri closes the deal without losing a beat. To seal it, he offers Lenny a painting that he considers lucky, one that Lenny admires, as a sign of goodwill.

To obtain the money, Yuri calls upon his trusted accountant, Stella Baxter (Thandie Newton), a lady with smouldering good looks and an equally icy demeanour. She is so well-versed in her field, she doesn’t think twice about hiring street thugs to rob the money in such cases. And, make a cut out of all such ‘transactions’, of course. Her usual port of call, in such instances, is the Speeler, a ‘hot little house of crime’ that houses as its tenants a local group known as the Wild Bunch, led by One-Two, Mumbles and Handsome Bob (Tom Hardy).

They grab her job offer with the timing and accuracy of trapeze artists and pull it off just as well. The loss of an apparently large sum of money hurts Yuri less than we’d expect, who promptly orders Stella to have ‘another seven million euros lost in the books’. Yuri is smitten by Stella, who, on her part playfully purrs, ‘Mr. Omovich, I’m the best at what I do, but even I cannot hide seven million euros from the tax man.’ Yuri’s entourage views this exchange with rising concern, familiar as they are with his profligate, philandering ways.

Meanwhile, Yuri’s lucky painting has been stolen while in Lenny’s custody, which sends him, Lenny into a nervous rage and sends his men tripping over each other to retrieve it. Archy, of course, leads the operation with surprisingly convoluted results.

The one thing critics always complained about his films is that they are all style and no substance. That they involve a lot of clever trickery without any purpose. That it is hard to take them seriously given their glib lines and clockwork plots and lack of relevance. Though I fail to understand why such movies cannot be enjoyed for their own sake, I do agree that this time round the film cuts deeper because of its firm underpinning in a very real milieu: a London developing at a break-neck pace, foreign investors jumping willy-nilly onto this bandwagon, local businessmen and omnipresent bureaucrats, in their desperation to keep up, willing to do anything to curry favour with the foreigners, and the ensuing skulduggery.

This time, in Rock’n’Rolla, the humour is simultaneously less contrived, more organic, dry and caustic, the actors never seem to be winking at the camera, never behave as if trying to keep a straight face amidst the hilarity, as in his first two films. It is of the kind that is borne of darkness, of the sound of a delirious laugh at the end of a dry sob. The characters are fuelled more by genuine desperation rather than the (relatively) affected truancy and blithe anarchy of ‘Lock Stock...’ and ‘Snatch’. Even the heavy, emotional bits in those movies served more as self-conscious attempts at being serious (and being taken as a “serious” work of art) and do not sit as easily with the rest of the movie as they do in this one. Guy Ritchie, after the twin debacles of ‘Revolver’ and ‘Swept Away’, not to mention his personal turmoil, seems to have been baptised by fire, coming out slightly more unhinged, slightly more reckless, yet mercilessly exact and lacerating. Vicious salvos against most social mores and institutions abound.

So we have Lenny Cole who, upon finding out that his step-son is alive, after reading the news of his death in the papers a few days ago, bursts out in chagrin, ‘He just doesn’t die, that cockroach. I’m telling you, the third world war will have his name written all over it’.

The same step-son, who happens to be a famously doped-up rocker by the name of Johnny Quid (front-man of a band named ‘Quid-lickers’, no less) likes nothing better than to fake his own death at regular intervals, only to stage sensational Lazaruses. This prompts his loyal, yet blasé, managers and assistants to discuss news articles on his various ‘deaths’ as blandly as though they were unexpected weather changes, with one of them even quipping, ‘If he’s dead, that’s the third time this year.’ The reason, as provided by one of his most loyal votaries (a hypnotically eerie Matt King) is as follows: ‘You know his music sales have gone up a thousand percent in two weeks. You see, Johnny, the crack-head, knows that a rocker is worth more dead than alive. Silly world, ain’t it?’

In a scene that would resonate uncannily with (and indeed, be an eye-opener for) Indian audiences, we see Lenny employing a whole range of devices to inveigle a venal councillor (a superbly tremulous, snivelling Jimi Mistry) into doing his bidding. The devices include a high-end car of his choice, desired female company, fat, potent cigars and custom-made lighters with the councillor’s name engraved on it.

We see Stella, impeccably dressed and ravishingly poised, complain, out of boredom, ‘I’m a 30-year old accountant married to a homosexual lawyer. For a marriage of convenience, it can be quite’-after a drag on her cigarette- ‘inconvenient’. But that is only after her dandy husband slyly remarks, ‘Do you know why you get those deals? It’s because those sad, fat old men like it when you swear at them. They shake like cocktails and sweat like Semtex when you raise that posh little voice. You, my love, are a rare commodity.’

We meet a couple of fearsomely built Russian thugs, comparing the appearances and provenances of their numerous scars, while guarding a fortune. And, yeah, just like the step-son, refuse to die, or even stay down, despite an entire action and chase sequence that would finish ordinary mortals twice over. Their stationary car is bulldozed by the flank and turned turtle by an enormous cargo lorry, they are Maced, bludgeoned with golf-clubs, clobbered with thick sticks, they lose copious amounts of blood, give chase until they cannot even crawl, and yet, by the end, retain enough life to shoot looks of pure venom, and swear vendetta, at their prey.

The latter are, of course, the Wild Bunch, who are hardly better off themselves, and indeed, probably cursing the fey moment in which they decided to name themselves such. For their part, they manage to dodge super-machine gun fire (inside a sports supermarket), steal a car and a scooter, ram the car into a pole to avoid the eight-inch jagged knife blade that has pierced the roof itself, wielded as it is by one of the Russian goons. Indeed, various members of the Wild Bunch, by turn request, implore and threaten the goons to stay down, even as they batter them with a golf-clubs and cricket bats. What gives the entire sequence its undercurrent of humour is the fact that the Wild Bunch never expected any show of resistance against their opening gambit of using a cargo lorry as a battering ram against a SUV, in the first place.

The chief antagonist Lenny Cole, is an English chauvinist, who, when not feeding his own countrymen to cannibalistic, omnivorous crayfish, spews out his (considerable) bile at the ‘f***ing immigrants’, slapping, groping and gripping vice-like the you-know-whats of his stooges. Everyone by turn, according to convenience, is labelled an immigrant, be it Omovich (Russian), Mumbles (Afro-Brit), the councillor (SouthAsian-Brit) and One-Two (Scottish).

Johnny’s haunting exposition of his personal philosophy using a cigarette pack while playing an equally haunting piano piece is intercut with an unsettling manifestation of his philosophy in real life. This particular scene exists in a class by itself.

The visual style is restrained, but that is only by Guy Ritchie’s own standards. David Higgs’ photography expertly captures London as it is: in shades of dun. Indeed, the movie almost seems monochromatic at times. There are almost no primary colours, and except for one blue-filtered scene, the film is entirely in golden-brown and grey. Yet there is a difference. This time round, Ritchie is interested not only in the low life of London, but also in the uber-rich. So we have scenes set in golf-courses, on private yachts, in the offices of councillors, high-end pubs. The framing is as immaculate and innovative as ever. Note the way the camera draws in closer to Matt King’s face as he speaks about the morbid fascination of a life of drugs vis-a-vis Johnny. This time round, however, Ritchie is less interested in showing off his fancy camera tricks, and more interested in making sharp, pertinent observations. Yet he cannot help himself, and gives in wholeheartedly to his stylistic urges. Not that we complain. The entire car and foot chase sequence is shot with an impressive mix of hand-held, tracking and subjective shots of the people involved. Low-speed cameras are used to great effect, especially in the subjective shots of One-Two and the Russian running. The blurred frames bounce up and down flush with their heads giving us a sense of their sweaty fatigue.

One of the recurrent points of humour in a Guy Ritchie film has to be the utter bemusement and exasperation of Americans at the ways of the modern English folk, a far cry from the ‘stiff-upper lipped’ ones the Americans love to poke fun at. Indeed, it is the same Americans who in Ritchie’s movies are left flotsam and jetsam amidst the wreckage by the end. Remember Dennis Farina’s character by the end of ‘Snatch’? Not content with one of them, Ritchie has two such dumbfounded, goggle-eyed Americans in the form of Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges and Jeremy Piven, as Johnny’s hapless managers, Mickey and Roman. As if Johnny wasn’t enough, they have to meet Johnny’s feral step-father too. By the end, I’m sure they’re willing to anoint Johnny as their guardian angel.

For a film titled ‘Rock ‘n’ rolla’, nothing less than a scintillating pop-rock score is expected and Guy Ritchie, here, outdoes his previous work. The tracks are not run-of-the-mill, classic rock ones, but lesser known (though no less accomplished) quirky gems. They lend additional character, underscore key themes, and indeed, add new dimensions to the scenes they embellish. After watching them scored and cut thus, we can’t think of the scenes without the accompanying songs. Cases in point: The feverish first few minutes of credits, narration and story all cut to Black Strobe’s ‘I’m a Man’; ‘Be Mine, Little Rock-n-rolla Queen’, cut to shots of a frenzied band performing, an equally frenzied audience losing it and, perhaps, an even more frenzied Johnny demolishing an enormous troll of a security guard with a pencil and a dust-bin lid; the entire desperate chase cut to the ghoulish ‘We Got Love’; Matt King’s gooseflesh-inducing narration intercut with a skeletal Johnny going cold turkey, all cut to ‘The Man has a Gun’. And wait till you hear the simmering ‘Funnel of Love’.

As far as performances go, all the actors have a ball. Gerard Butler, freed from the heavy mantle of a thunderous, comic-book, Spartan hero is relaxed here. By turns smart, oafish, confused, jittery, vexed in equal measure he is one unlikely protagonist, (or leading man, if you will).

Thandie Newton gives the phrase ‘devil-may-care’ a whole new meaning, as she shows a hard edge I couldn’t imagine her having. Just watch her feeling sorry for poor One-Two (in her own way) and making up for it with a sex scene that is cut in the most innovative, yet uncluttered manner.

Tom Wilkinson is barely recognisable with his top-shaved pate and dark, opaque glasses. Yet there is no mistaking the steely rasp in his voice, and he uses it to great effect here to create an absolute dog whose bark is as bad as his bite. Just watch him softly edify Archy using the example of crayfish, while making tea, ‘That’s the thing about greed, Arch. It’s blind.’

Tom Hardy as Handsome Bob develops his character like a Polaroid photograph, slowly yet surely until we marvel at the final image.

Toby Kebbell looks lean, mean and wasted, but his appearance belies his wiry strength, stiff brio and unmatched ability to raise hell. With dark circles under his eyes, the ghosts of the past and present within them and uncomfortable, stinging truths on his lips, he cuts an uncannily commanding figure.

However, it is Mark Strong as Archy, who carries this film on an even keel, as it were. Watching quietly, observing reasonably. Using just as much force as is prudent. (‘Now, if the slap don’t work, you cut’em or you pay’em. But you keep the receipts, 'coz this ain’t the mafia’) Bland, smooth, calmly threatening by turns, and at times, all of them at once. Watch the way he conveys his message to Roman and Mickey in the form of a throwaway wisecrack into a microphone at their studio: ‘You never sing the same if your teeth fight your bone.’ Or at his look of surprised glee when the tables are turned on a never-more-vulnerable One Two.

Brimming over with acerbic, ferocious wit, encapsulating scathing social commentary, a rugged, gritty, yet urbane style that straddles a vast swathe of contemporary London, typically, yet uniquely colourful characters, a deliciously labyrinthine plot with a sting in its tail, RocknRolla is, simply put, one hell of trip. As Roger Ebert said of it, ‘with anything more happening, this movie could induce motion sickness’. Keep your pills at hand.

Rockstar: Always the outsider

In Janardan Jakhar a.k.a. Jordan, the lead character of his latest film ‘Rockstar’, Imtiaz Ali has created a singular character, one that is fuelled by raging fires trying to fill up an endless void within. It is a void created out of love and longing, but as Ranbir Kapoor plays it, it seems to be borne out of something much deeper and more extraordinary. I agree that love and longing can go as deep as anything, but the way it is portrayed in this movie, it doesn’t appear so, especially in comparison to Jordan’s implacable angst. That is exactly where the two halves of the story don’t match up to each other. The result is a movie that dazzles us at its best, but leaves us feeling incredulous at its worst.

The film begins artfully with grainy documentary footage showing scenes from a carnival before an epic Jordan concert. The screen then widens to show us actual aerial scenes of the Colosseum of Rome(?) getting ready for the concert. Meanwhile, the man himself is being chased and thrashed around by the local police on the streets of Rome. He somehow manages to escape from his captors with a few bloody scratches and gatecrashes his own concert to a tumultuous welcome from surging crowds. He hasn’t uttered a single word yet. Springing up onto the stage, he slings his guitar carelessly across his chest and approaches the microphone. With the first pluck of his fingers on the guitar, the scene segues via an astounding jump cut into one several years back and we see a fresher-faced, younger and more callow version of the man strumming a simple acoustic guitar before a bus stand in Delhi. The song is ‘Jo bhi main kehna chahoon’. Very interestingly, the film follows him singing the same song at different venues at various points of time, in a series of abruptly cut scenes. Though his external appearance and his surroundings change, the song remains as whole and complete as ever.

One of the earliest words he utters is the name ‘Jim Morrison’, a man who intrigues Janardan to the extent that, much later, he feels compelled to emulate him. But just then, he is an awkward Jat boy from Pitampura studying in Delhi University, with an unlikely passion for strumming the guitar and singing. This is the subject of much ridicule, none less than from Khatara bhai (Kumud Mishra), the canteen owner. He gruffly provides him with wisdom about all great works of art being borne out of great sorrow and heartbreak. Janardan is so impressed by him that he actually wonders whether he has suffered anything of consequence. The answer, to his enormous disquiet, is a stark NO. In his desperate bid to undergo heartbreak, he wilfully accosts the unbelievably beautiful Heer (Nargis Fakhri), the serial heart-breaker on the campus and lamely proposes to her. The most typical scenes of Hindi romantic films follow, with the lead couple hoping against hope that they do not fall in love, laced with Imtiaz Ali’s characteristic humour, and they develop an unlikely friendship. This gradually settles uncomfortably into a proximity that is undefined, and offset only by a kind of innocently nervous humour that has been practically invented by Ali.

Heer is a Kashmiri Pandit who is weeks away from marriage. And so, like most Imtiaz Ali heroes, Janardan too accompanies her to her wedding set amid the unfailingly stunning locales of Kashmir. Minutes before the actual wedding, they pledge to meet up in Prague where Heer is to head after her marriage.

Upon returning home, Janardan’s boorish brothers waste little time in throwing him out of the house over a petty squabble. Thus begin his physical peregrinations as well as musical odyssey. A chance sighting at Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah by shehnai maestro Ustad Jameel Khan (Shammi Kapoor, in a patrician, magisterial final cameo) lands him a contract with a major music label on the Ustad’s recommendation, despite Janardan’s tempestuous relationship with the slimy label owner Dhingra (Piyush Mishra).

The remainder of the film depicts his subsequent meetings with Heer and the effect of his relationship with her on his music and career.

Imtiaz Ali seems to suggest through Khatara bhai that talent alone is not quite sufficient to create enduring art. Love completes it. Unrequited love, even more. Might very well be true. But it is in the depiction of this very form of love that the film falters. The story between the leads is, to state it baldly, banal. Déjà vu. We have been inured to such tragic stories of love since time immemorial. What is always more fascinating to me is the effect that such love has on the persons involved. In the case of Heer, the effects are disappointingly trite. Tragic, yes, but trite, nonetheless. She cries, sniffles, pines away, sickens, her blood count drops and she can barely stand up. As always, she is torn between the concepts of true love and of fidelity to her lawfully wedded husband. As always, it is upto the guy to set things right, to defy society, and carry her off so that when she regains her consciousness he has done all her work for her. It doesn’t help one bit that Nargis Fakhri is simply awkward with her facial expressions in all her scenes. Her body language and lack of self-consciousness are admirable, though.

In Janardan’s case, the effects are way more exciting. It gives birth to a certain impotent rage, impotent because it is inexpressible, except through music, in which it ascends to the level of existential angst manifested in jewels like ‘Naadaan Parindey’ and ‘Aur Ho’ and the overblown, though perfectly placed ‘Saadda Haq’. He becomes an anguished, wandering minstrel, ceaselessly travelling, always observing, absorbing, blending in, equally at ease amidst Czech gypsies, devout sufis, maata-bhakts, prostitutes, not so much of a rockstar, except in simplified, generalized, explanatory terms to a society that embraces and demonises him in equal measure, but largely fails to empathise with him. The cock-a-snook irreverence, bad boy antics, continual rebellion against authority, on stage rages are inherent symptoms of a failure to connect with people and stridently averse to building a certain image. Ustad Jameel Khan recognizes this very quality early on and cryptically says as much.

Ranbir Kapoor’s performance is one of the great elemental performances of Hindi film, untouched by blemishes in the script or the need to strut and show off. As Jordan, he is all bruised heart, and blazing, imploding (and occasionally exploding) feral energy. Just watch him at the beginning, looking curiously, yet oddly detachedly, as Khatara bhai and his friends debate over his future and imminent doom. Or when he bursts into helpless laughter at Dhingra’s vainly obnoxious tactics to intimidate him. Or when he storms off stage barely managing to finish a stirring performance to steal a few moments of passion with his beloved. Or the way he vibrates as intensely as he sings the sedate ‘Jo bhi main’ as when he sings the aggressive ‘Saadda Haq’. Or his utter immersion while trying to match notes with the shehnai legend. The list is endless. A nearly-frozen tableau of Ranbir exiting a car in ultra-slow-motion while projectile-vomiting after binge-drinking onto a red carpet before a stupefied crowd belongs to a time capsule. After watching it, I dare anyone to wonder aloud why Ranbir is so good. Forget awards (though I strongly suspect he will be inundated with them), his performance will brand itself into the collective consciousness of the Hindi-film-viewing populace as a landmark one. It is of the kind that invades dreams. In fact, I can think of no greater compliment for him than that he elevates even A.R. Rahman’s songs to another level.

Which brings me to the accomplished genius himself. When people quibble about his music not being as great as his last great work, the moment his music hits the stands, they forget the fact that he is a film music composer. (I myself was guilty of the above crime, until the piece ‘Dol Dol’ from ‘Yuva’ reformed me forever in that regard.) His fidelity is to the film entirely and it is not until we see the film with his music that his genius truly, completely reveals itself to us. This is especially so in a film like ‘Rockstar’. ‘Naadaan Parindey’ is the crowning glory and a fitting resolution to the tortuous and, sometimes, uneven journey of Jordan. Irshad Kamil’s lyrics are simple yet profound. I still can’t get over ‘Jo bhi main kehna chahoon, barbaad kare alfaaz mere.’

The supporting cast ranges from good to mildly irritating. The achingly lovely Aditi Rao Hydari is under-utilised as the journalist who is powerfully drawn to Jordan, yet is not above reporting his misdemeanours with vicious ardour. Hers was a character with amazing potential, but is sadly lost amidst the convoluted storytelling. Yet she shines (and looks jaw-droppingly lovely,I might add) in a touching scene with Jordan in his trailer. Piyush and Kumud Mishra are reliably good. Heer’s family members seem to be as awkward as her in emoting with their faces except for Shernaz Patel who plays a variation of her ‘Black’ character again.

Technically, Imtiaz Ali has experimented quite a lot. There is a lot of chaotic hand-held camerawork, as well as sweeping overhead shots, a few violently swinging crane shots, some ultra-slow-mo shots, speeded-up shots (like the South Indian masala films, yes), shots through diffused acid-green frames, lots of monochrome neon-tinted frames, freeze frames. Music serves to propel the story forward and is very effective. Surreal imagery is used too, with a blood-and-wine red guitar slowly being consumed with flames as Jordan sits alone in a tub of water. The editing pattern is convoluted (in places to a fault), mostly in a roundabout narrative style, eclectic, random, purposefully so, to indicate the diverse influences and experiences that have shaped and rounded the artist at the centre of them all. The various concerts look authentic enough and are ably supported by the sound design that renders their frenzied clamour quite accurately.

Ultimately ‘Rockstar’ is a piece of art that, to use a popular phrase, ‘seems to have been torn out from the insides’ of its auteur. It is undeniably a labour of love. There are several sticky spots, places where the narrative deliberately seems to have been forced into Ali’s comfort zone to make it acceptable to audiences. The ending is left open, and, perhaps because of the editing, serves more to confuse than to provide the audience with a sense of sureness. But, at its real heart, this is an untamed gypsy of a movie, fiercely individualistic, perhaps the only Hindi film, so far, to capture the essence of being an angst-ridden rocker, f*** the stardom. In that sense, the title is ironic.

What else would explain the scene when Khatara bhai drags an unkempt Jordan out of a whorehouse and, in his vexation, screams whether he, Jordan, wants people to run away from him? As if on cue, Jordan is mobbed by passers-by on the road and he triumphantly looks at the aghast Khatara bhai and moves on. But not for a moment does he pause to interact with his fans, or even so much as acknowledge their presence.

What could explain Jordan's utter lack of interest when his debut album is titled 'Negative' ( a canny marketing strategy to save face and cash in at the same time on Jordan's stint in jail by Dhingra) and the cover artwork features his face behind bars? Or the fact that his second album is titled 'Noir', evoking brooding world-weariness and disillusionment?

The Proposition: Blood, Sweat, Tears & Dust

Serendipity is one of my favourite words, both in sound and in meaning. Its meaning and importance were reaffirmed when I discovered a movie called ‘The Proposition’ by it. God bless Twitter and God bless Roger Ebert for tweeting so prolifically. I found the movie in a series of free-to-stream movies for Amazon special members, on a website recommended by him. The cast and Ebert’s own rating sealed it for me.

The movie starts with the credits being played to a cheery ballad in a child’s voice, while a series of black-and-white photographs show white men in uniforms alongside coloured men standing with rifles and muskets before colonial-style buildings on wide, flat lands. They end with 3 photographs: the first, that of a man, a very young boy and a woman lying on a bed, shot; the second, that of a woman lying in a coffin, about to be shut; and, the third, showing three graves alongside each other.

The movie opens right in the middle of a violent shootout in a whorehouse where we see a young, clean-faced man, nearly wetting himself with terror, while others around him try to duck bullets and fire back. The sound of bullets seems all too near, the camera is placed all too close to the people as they are shot to bits, in a cramped, sweaty, dusty room with wooden walls. By the end of it, everyone except the clean-faced man and another man, bearded and wild-haired are alive and seated at a table opposite a large, uniformed man, presumably a police-officer. The uniformed man, we learn, is Stanley (Ray Winstone), while the young man is Mike (Richard Wilson). The wild-haired man is Mike’s elder brother Charlie (Guy Pearce).

From the pictures during the credits, the clothes, the guns and the wooden walls it appears to be an usual wild West setting, until we hear Ray Winstone’s oaken, Cockney, voice ask of himself, ‘Australia, what fresh hell is this?’.

Stanley plans to hang Mike to death on Christmas Day, unless, of course, Charlie does his bidding. Stanley wants to bring a man called Arthur Burns to task, himself. He doesn’t necessarily want to kill him or catch him with his own hands, but see him broken, hurt and defeated the way he, Stanley, wants. Arthur Burns is, of course, Charlie’s elder brother, and “a monster, an abomination”, as Stanley calls him. He has been responsible for the deaths of the three members of the Hopkins family, including Mrs. Hopkins, who, at the time of her death was with child. To get at Arthur, Stanley wants to use Charlie. And if Charlie succeeds in doing what Stanley wants, he would pardon both him and Mike. When Charlie protests that he doesn’t ride with Arthur anymore, Stanley gives a small nod of understanding, gets up and smashes Mike’s nose with the butt of his revolver.

Burns is hiding in such a place where even the Aborigines dare not go. Stanley is sure he would be captured eventually by some bounty hunter, but he doesn’t want that to happen. He wants to make an example out of him. He wants to restore law and order in an essentially lawless land, “restore civilisation”, as he says.

Thus is the proposition of the title. And thus begins Charlie’s journey to bring his brother to justice for the sake of another brother.

Meanwhile, the proposition has been kept a secret between Stanley, the two Burns brothers and a handful of officers. The rest of the town, however, outraged by the shocking deaths of the Hopkins family wants to see quick justice being delivered. So do the men under Stanley’s command, even though they have been sworn to secrecy by Stanley.

Stanley’s wife Martha (Emily Watson) is a delicate, gentle, naive English rose. Stanley tries, with all his power, to keep her protected from the bestial nature of life at the police station. Martha has been deeply shocked at the death of the Hopkins family, more so, because Mrs. Hopkins was a dear friend of hers.

In one of the most disturbing scenes of the movie, the men under Stanley’s command are all sitting inside a tent, drinking and discussing how weak Stanley is, how wrong he is to deny them the satisfaction of watching two Burns brothers hang to death and how he is soon going to meet his end. The discussion quickly moves to his wife with almost every man lusting for her, with violent passions.

At the heart of the movie are the relationships of Charlie with his brothers, and of Stanley with his wife. Charlie is extremely protective of his younger brother, Mike, who is believed to be a “simpleton” by Stanley. Now Stanley knows this and uses it to his advantage and for what he feels is right. Dean Fletcher (David Wenham), who appears to be an administrative officer of the town, uses his position and power, and the rage of the people, to sentence Mike to an unspeakably cruel punishment, something he feels is right. In both cases this feeling of self-righteousness and the violence that it engenders, changes these relationships forever. Charlie is forced to agree to kill his own elder brother. Stanley, who is dead against Mike’s punishment (whether out of fear that it might kill him and incite the combined wrath of Charlie and Arthur, or out of genuine concern for Mike, or both, who knows?), is forced to relent when his wife stabs him with the question: what if it had been me? At the end of his ordeal, Mike is almost dead, Stanley is a living ghost and Martha faints. As Stanley lifts her up, tremblingly, she covers her face with her hands and bursts into tears of shame.

Honestly, every frame in this movie seems to be borne of violence. It doesn’t mean that there is physical violence in every scene. Every frame gives us a sense of the crazy heat, the violence going on in the characters’ heads, the effect of pitiless violence on the minds and lives of ordinary people, the morbid fascination, the sense of power, and finally, the sense of futility that it provides. Every frame seems to have struggled through all of this to finally give us a hard, unblinking, level-eyed look at the violence in man. The camera, at times, moves vehemently to mirror the onscreen violence; at other times it is languorous. The editing, too, is, at times, delicate, at times, strident.

The music is unlike anything I’ve heard in a movie. It is mostly composed of a wind-instrument (an organ, I think) deftly intercut with a mournful violin, all set to a distinctly electric, deep bass. The effect is shattering, although very sparse. It generously provides this otherwise brutally harsh movie with a touch of the poignant, the elegiac. At times, the sundtrack is engulfed by a rustling whiper rendering a few snatches of rhyme, as if the very voice of the land itself is trying to speak to its inhabitants. Nick Cave, who composed the music, also wrote the screenplay for the movie. God bless his soul.

Watching this film, I realised how relatively spruce and clean other modern Westerns like ‘The Quick and the Dead’, ‘Appaloosa’, ‘3:10 to Yuma’ and (to some extent) the Coen brothers’ ‘True Grit’ are. Though well-made and shot, with authentic costumes and production design, the actors look as if they just stepped out of their trailers and into the costumes. I realised this after watching the actors in this movie. They look as if they have been living in such a wild land for years. Guy Pearce is almost unrecognisable: he is almost size zero, his face looks cooked rare, the veins starting out on his forehead. John Hurt looks even more craggy than usual, his voice more cracked than ever. Danny Huston looks like a wild beast with his wide eyes, wolfish leer, bare-chested way of dressing and his sheer depravity. Ray Winstone looks like he’s been sitting in a sauna in the middle of the desert. Their hair is stringy, it looks as if it was hacked off, not cut, yet bunched up with sweat, dust and oil. Ditto their skin. Their faces are burnt brown by the oppressive heat. The gang of outlaws are dressed in clothes that have gone limp with the sweat and dust. Their teeth are yellow, rotting. Their bodies are hardened/ emaciated by the conditions, crusted with grime. There are flies buzzing around all the time, around the living and the dead. Both are rotting.

The camera manages to capture this heat and grime even when it’s not looking at the actors. The frames are shot through with a fierce, burning glow. The landscape of the Australian Outback is vast, endless stretches of plain rocky desert. Yet, it is not shot panoramically or romantically. The long shots are seen through a simmering haze of heat. The few wide shots that are there only serve to show the utter desolation and unending harshness of the landscape, and how frail and foolish man looks before it.

This might make for really morbid reading, but there are several factors that determine how real blood looks onscreen. Its shade, its consistency/viscosity, the way it flows out of a body, the volume that flows out of a body part, the way it flows off other surfaces, the residue it leaves behind, its appearance on clothes, the way the scene is lit, the colour tone/ filters used. I have not seen a more real or frank depiction of blood on film till date, than here. I sense that a considerable effort has been put into getting it right. And it is all with a purpose. In showing us the ugliness of violence, this movie is peerless. I doubt that anyone would be enamoured of the violence here. The people are violent either by choice or because they have no choice. Mostly, in a land as feral as Australia in the late 19^th century, it was the former.

It comes as no surprise that the acting, in a movie as uncompromising as this, is of the highest calibre. It is needless, really, to comment on actors like Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Danny Huston and Guy Pearce. I would still like to single out two performances. The first is that of Emily Watson. Even with as distinctive a feature as her eyes, she manages to convince us of her chameleonic ability in film after film. She is as convincing as the tart maid in ‘Gosford Park’, as she is as the quiet, understanding, yet fiercely smart woman who steals Adam Sandler’s heart in ‘ Punch Drunk Love’, and equally so as Ralph Fiennes’ blind muse who evokes strange, terrifying passions in him in ‘Red Dragon’. Here she provides the only source of innocence and beauty amidst the general savagery. Yet, it is tragic to see her character fall prey to the kind of self-righteous anger mentioned above. But what other choice does she have? In the character and her superb portrayal, the movie, and we, the audience, observe, with queasy horror, how completely vulnerable such innocence is, in the face of such monstrosity.

The second is David Wenham. He plays Fletcher as a man of holier-than-thou fastidiousness. He is the only one who seems reasonably civil and well-groomed when compared to the animals around him. He represents the entire British colonial administration of that period in his hypocrisy and prim, moral superiority. With his high voice, unctuous inflections and darting glances of barely-concealed lust at Martha, his act is spot-on. My lower jaw lay on the floor when I learnt that the same actor had played the stately, humane Faramir in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy.

Recently, Amitav Ghosh, when asked about the depiction of savagery in his books ‘Sea of Poppies’ and the upcoming ‘River of Smoke’, replied that had he decided to write some of the more brutal events (that actually happened and have been documented), into the books, his readers would not believe it. It’s true. It is a different time and place from our own and we cannot imagine ourselves to be capable of such behaviour unless we have some way of really being there. It is impossible, of course, but movies like this one, Schindler’s List, There Will Be Blood, and novels like Sea of Poppies, Blood Meridian, Sacred Hunger are successful, to some extent, in transporting us to those worlds. In making us, somehow, feel an infinitesimal portion of the life they depict, in all their glory and shame.

For some reason, I find a similarity between 'The Proposition' and 'Gangs of New York'. Both films are made by artists trying to understand the past of their respective nations and bring it to life for audiences, for them to know and remember the birth and nascency of the nations. In both cases, the period of history dwelt upon is little-known or largely forgotten. And, anything but flattering.

Here, we are witness to the use of Australia as a penal colony, where the only difference between outlaws and the Queen's soldiers is a uniform. Between the two, in a twilight zone, are the bounty hunters, a law unto themselvesin a place no one really abides by laws. Into such a place explodes this story, ostensibly of a sheriff trying to bring an outlaw to justice, but running along deeper lines of nation, race and family. The English look down upon the Irish (with, presumably, a large outlaw population) with suspicion and distaste. Needless to say, they have made the Aborigines thier slaves, treating them as they please, either as animals in chains, or as sepoys, scouts and runners. Either way, they are collateral damage in the crossfire, they, the original inhabitants of the land, the "foreigners" now fight their blood-feuds on.  

This movie scarred me. I have been affected by movies in the past. I have felt miserably sad, angry, weird, frustrated, drunk with happiness, exhilarated, thrilled, sleepy, disgusted, horrified by movies. But this movie has scarred me. It has, through some arcane alchemy, taken numerous elements, all of which I have seen and experienced before, and converted them into a sum total so powerfully abrasive, that I have been eroded into something new. Maybe not too different from what I was. But yet, how many movies can lay claim to having such an ability? For me, from the recent past, only ‘Underground’ and ‘The Believer’ come to mind.

P.S. Mel Gibson, in response to a similar question asked about ‘Apocalypto’, had given an answer similar to what Amitav Ghosh had given. Gibson, I feel, could learn a thing or two from John Hillcoat, the director of this film, and a fellow Australian.

Being Alive

The immediate impression that ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’ left on me was one of absolute refinement. It is, I’m afraid, too refined for most people. I hope I’m mistaken, and more and more people appreciate its virtues, which are considerable. Don’t get me wrong: it is, by no means, hard to follow or esoteric. Stories about characters going on a journey that eventually becomes one of self-discovery, that teaches them to live life to the fullest and appreciate every moment are nothing new. However, it is the execution which makes this movie vastly different from other such movies.

Kabir (Abhay Deol), Arjun (Hrithik Roshan) and Imran (Farhan Akhtar) are three friends since school. Kabir is about to marry Natasha (Kalki Koechlin). Before plunging headlong into married life, he wants to fulfil a pact he’d made with his friends in college: that they would embark together on an adventurous bachelor trip to any part of the world. The choice of destination would lie entirely with the first one to get married (in this case, Kabir) and the other two would have to follow him, no questions asked. Kabir is gung-ho, Imran is perfectly cool with it, Arjun, an ambitious careerist, is reluctant, whereas Natasha, possessive and insecure, is queasy about it. Nevertheless, after a few initial hiccups, the trip begins: a three week holiday in Spain.

Along with the physical journey through Spain, the three characters, unknowingly, set out on an internal journey after meeting Laila (Katrina Kaif), a comely diving instructor. Arjun, at the outset, has the most obvious problems: he is obsessed with money, driven relentlessly by work and heedless of the simple joys of life. There is a rather amusing scene in which he stops their car in the middle of the stunning Spanish landscape and strikes a deal with a Japanese businessman over a video internet call. A deep sea dive, with Laila personally teaching him to control his breath underwater, (he cannot swim and is hydrophobic) produces a sea-change within him.

Imran, I feel, is the most interesting character in the film. He is almost always joking around, has a roving eye for the opposite sex, secretly writes evocative poetry and has a special knack for getting under Arjun’s skin. But, as a Spanish beauty points out, there is a lingering sadness in his eyes that his smile cannot always mask. The film is punctuated with snatches of his poetry that remind me, oddly, of the initially muted voice-overs of ‘Y tu mama tambien’. Imran’s voice fills up the soundtrack reciting ethereal, elegantly sculpted poetry that hovers like a gentle breeze over the strikingly ochreous Spanish countryside.

Kabir is a straight arrow, a clean-cut boy with an equally clean-cut life. Except that it is organised and sorted out a bit too well for him by others, mostly, especially his marriage, while he simply stands by, in passive agreement. His problems are the least obvious and his is the most internalised of the three principal characters. It is a role tailored for Abhay Deol and he knows it.

Normally, I don’t mind Katrina’s lack of acting skills because her looks more than make up for it (unless you count Farah Khan’s last outing). This is probably the first film in which I actually sat up to watch a decent performance by her. I don’t know whether it’s the writing or her quiet, graceful performance or a mixture of both that manages to convey and convince us of the inner reserves of her pure zest for life.

The photography by Carlos Catalan goes beyond capturing picture-postcard images, it makes nature seem attuned to the countless moods of the characters as they navigate an ever-changing emotional landscape. The entire sky-diving sequence is a technical triumph, a virtuoso exhibition of photography and editing, as well as one of the emotional high-points of the film. The Tomatina and the bull-running festivals, too, are amazingly well-rendered.

The screenplay by Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti is very finely written and has a deliberate, measured pace. All the characters are enmeshed in it very well. But it is this same measured pace that seems too slack after a while. The movie does feel long and stretched out. It doesn’t help that the dialogues are pretty banal in many places and tend to dull the proceedings. Plus, their usual idea of practical jokes on the Spanish natives tends to get repetitive and humourless after a point.

However, Zoya Akhtar’s phenomenally assured direction tides over such glitches, supported, as she is, by one of the best technical teams in Bollywood. She is as good with her actors as she is with the technicalities of film-making. The look and feel of the movie is pure class, at the same time eschewing the usual cosmetic grandeur of big-budget Bollywood films.

I would have liked to see more of Nuria, the Spanish beauty who is swept off her feet by Imran. The one intimate scene she has with him is touching in the way they both console each other in their own way, even though neither one knows the other’s language. Add to that my own fixation for beauties rattling off in Spanish (Penelope Cruz, Maribel Verdu).

Where the movie does succeed is in creating a definite mood, a sort of leisurely, lyrical nostalgia borne out of friendship, love and the sheer need to feel alive and present in the world, abiding themes in almost all the works of the Akhtar siblings. Some of Javed Akhtar’s best poetry has been used in the film for that purpose. I’m no judge, but I have never been so moved by his lyrics, as I have been by his poetry in this film.

And that is the basis of my initial concern about the film being too refined for most people. It requires a certain degree of patience, a creation of atmosphere and mood, to fully imbibe and appreciate this film. In that sense, it is not conventionally entertaining. As much as we would like to ignore it, the fact of the matter is that common people, still drunk on the hysteria of ‘Delhi Belly’, ‘Double Dhamaal’ and ‘Murder 2’ will be hard pressed to appreciate the finesse of such a film. It’s a pity. I hope it’s not the truth.

Underground: the graceful dance of anarchy

I consider myself woefully inadequate to describe something like ‘Underground’. Let me first simply try to cough up an introduction. ‘Underground’ is a film by Emir Kusturica (pronounced rit-sa), from Serbia, that released in 1995. It is a story of two friends, Marko and Blacky and a few people around them, most notably Natalija, the girl wedged between the two friends. Nothing extraordinary, except the story starts in Yugoslavia in the year 1941.

The Axis powers have marched into Yugoslavia after bombing its various cities relentlessly. Against this backdrop, the story of these three characters is played out with the momentum of a hurled sandbag. The two friends are both members of the local Communist party which is just an excuse for them to indulge in looting and carrying out acts of anarchy. It also brings them into conflict with the ‘f***ing fascist mother*******’ (as Blacky calls them). Blacky, who resembles a pit-bull, both in physique and demeanour, is a man consumed by lust for war and revolution. Marko, more delicate and cunning, is a sensualist, who, as we see in an early scene, is quite literally turned on by the sound of bombs blowing his own city to bits.

Blacky has a shrew for a wife, Vera. She is pregnant, almost due. Blacky couldn’t care less for her; his considerable affections lie with a theatre actress Natalija, who, in turn, courts a hungry German admirer Franz, of the Gestapo that has recently taken command of the country. Oh yeah, and there’s also Marko’s stammering, naive, young brother Ivan, who runs a zoo, complete with a lion, a tiger ,an elephant and, most importantly, a chimp named Soni.

Only Soni sticks to Ivan after the bombing; the rest of the animals are either killed or run wild. They tag along with Marko after their houses have been destroyed. Also in the entourage are Vera and a few other relatives and friends. Marko’s wife has left him, presumably because of his whoring ways. They hide out in the basement of a distant relative of Marko, a Communist partisan. Blacky, meanwhile proceeds to “rescue” Natalija, from the clutches of “ze Germans”. In this process, he is captured, tortured and nearly killed, and is rescued, rather unlikely, by Marko.

Marko, then proceeds to put Blacky and his remaining family (Vera dies in childbirth, leaving him a son) in the same basement. Marko lets Blacky believe that Natalija is held captive with the fascists, while he sweeps her off her feet, with his silken tongue and promise of power.

So they continue, for twenty years, after the end of the World War, into the Cold War days. During this time, Marko has continuously kept them in the basement, letting them think it is still war. To reinforce the belief, he keeps playing a recorded alarm, jingoistic manifestos and sounds of bombs intermittently. The people “underground” manufacture arms in preparation for the great war that they believe continues, awaiting Marko’s orders. Marko, meanwhile, takes those arms and sells them for obscene amounts of money.

The story looks unbelievable on paper, and even more so, on screen. Kusturica has some extremely strong points to make, and I doubt he could have made them more strongly. It is difficult to describe the movie. It has scenes of such dazzling, absurd ingenuity that we are exhilarated even as we question our own sanity in appreciating it. It is a satire in the sense that it laughs savagely at its characters and makes us laugh with it, while hauling them over the coals. It is an epic in that it spans over fifty years, several events and characters, revealing countless emotions and moods. It is political, without taking sides. It is an allegory because every character represents something broader in the real world. It has scenes of war, of destruction of both a nation and its people.

Each individual scene is a miniature of the whole film, in that sense. Towards the middle, when we are familiar with the setting and backgrounds of the characters, each scene makes us laugh, feel sick, angry and plain weird, all at the same time.

The mise-en-scene is unlike anything I’ve ever seen on screen. It is chaotic; that’s the first impression one gets. Things seem to happen on screen of their own accord, there is no deliberation, no external control over them. Yet, they play out in perfect rhythm, precariously balanced, yet unfailingly steering away from caricature. It is self-organising behaviour, incarnate. The people on screen verily seem to dance, or sway to some music, unheard by us, the viewers, and yet we can very well see they are not dancing. Neither does it look choreographed. It is the underlying order of anarchy. The camera moves too. It is not static, as if it is some passive bystander observing the madness with bemused detachment. Yet, it remains level-eyed and doesn’t spin out of control, as it is surrounded by the madness.

The film would have had about half the effect, were it not for its music. Most of it is shown to be played by the omnipresent brass band and it is just as such: shrill, cacophonous, unruly, yet managing to render a song or a tune accurately enough for people to revel in. There is ample use of folk music along with a few songs of national fervour to repeated sardonic effect.

Explaining the subtext of this film would defeat its very purpose. Even though, it is set in a very specific place and period of world history, (which I admit is not the most widely known), I feel it is universal. It only makes it all the more important to be seen. One need not educate oneself specially about the history of Yugoslavia since World War II to understand or fully experience this film. In fact, it is better experienced ‘cold’ as they say. It is a measure of its power that the film made me read up the history of Yugoslavia during the Cold War and after it. After reading the actual history, my admiration for the film simply grew.

Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina are three splinters of the original Yugoslavia, a country that has suffered unspeakable violence over several years. As I learn from the three movies that I’ve seen from those lands, it is such violence that can be understood only if it is felt, not even imagined, by most outsiders. All three films vary widely in content and tone. One is, of course, ‘Underground’. The others are Danis Tanovic’s ‘No Man’s Land’ and Srdjan Spasojevic’s ‘A Serbian Film’.

All three films try to encapsulate an idea of what it is like to be surrounded by such violence. By violence, I don’t just mean physical violence, but all forms of it. ‘A Serbian Film’ tries to present a visceral and literal account of such violence in its unflinching depiction of....well.... the unspeakable. Watching it would make one literally sick, I suppose, but that is the purpose.

‘No Man’s Land’ tries to present how frustratingly complex a seemingly simple problem can be. Its simplicity knocked the wind out of me. It simply takes two men in a deadlock, lying in the middle of a war, with a mine under one of them in a ditch, that belongs to no country, and hence, paradoxically, to every country and watches as they are strangled by nothing but international relations and talks and their own jangled nerves.

What does ‘Underground’ try to present to us? I feel it tries to convey a sense of absurdity and incongruity caused by monstrous betrayal, the perverse humour of bearing unendurable pain. There is a scene that perfectly mirrors this: Marko, after coaxing Natalija to lie to Blacky that she had been tortured for years in a German camp, is attending the wedding of Blacky’s son Jovan. All of them are still in the basement. Blacky is overjoyed to find his long-lost love just before his son’s wedding. Marko plays the gallant friend who rescues Natalija from the camps, to perfection.

Even though she has been seduced by Marko for twenty years, and has casually, passively connived to keep Blacky and many others underground for 20 years, she is disgusted at having to lie to their faces. Most of all, she is disgusted at how easily Marko continues to lie. In drunken abandon, she climbs atop a tank (built wholly underground by Blacky and his comrades) and straddles its ten foot long gun with orgasmic bliss. Later, sitting at a table beside Marko, she drinks glass after glass of brandy and gin. Marko tries to stop her, but she replies that she cannot bear to look at him while sober. All this while, she is dancing in her seat, her face twisted into ecstatic glee at the music. Marko, too, seems to enjoy himself fully. They segue into cursing each other and each other’s parents venomously, all the while swaying and swinging to the rambunctious music. In an earlier scene, as Marko first courts Natalija, she almost swoons into his arms whispering “Marko, you lie so beautifully”, as they proceed to make love even as the ceiling plaster crumbles down onto them at the sound of bombs (this time by the Allies). The film overflows with such scenes and even more.

For some weird reason, this movie evoked a memory long buried in my mind. As it came back fully, I relished the memory more than ever before. It was one of the cartoons that were shown along with the Mickey and Donald series, the Silly Symphony ones. It was an unusual one because it featured Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Minnie and all the usual Silly Symphony characters like the cows, pigs and other barn animals. It showed Mickey as the conductor of a barn symphony featuring all the barn animals and Donald as an ice-cream seller who happens to come by when they are playing a piece. Towards the end, there is a typhoon, a literal whirlwind that comes and blows them all away. Everyone sees it coming, except Mickey who continues conducting. The symphony continues to play perfectly even as they are being blown around in the storm. It was an outrageously funny piece, the sight of an uncommonly grim Mickey vehemently conducting the terrorised barn animals into hitting the perfect note, even as they are blown head over heels into the eye of the storm.

Such is Kusturica's skill, that as the three drunk “friends”, Marko, Blacky and Natalija sing, with their heads in a tight circle,

“Is it moonlight at noon?

Is it sunshine at midnight?

From the skies above, light is beaming

Nobody knows, nobody knows

What is really shining.”,

we understand them perfectly.