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.

Of Ray and his tryst with Hindi cinema and me

Depending directly on my frequency of watching movies, my mother’s reaction to it ranges from mild disapproval to grave concern and helpless anxiety over my imminent future. The relationship between the two variables, as it were, is almost as exact as a law of physics. It would have been a law of physics had it not been for a certain Mr. Ray, whose impact upon my life and that of my mother, I am now about to discuss.

That Satyajit Ray was an exception in the world of cinema was beside the point for me when I was first exposed to him. The point then was the way my mother introduced me to him and his work. All her anxiety, all her dire predictions of my dark future would simply vanish and be replaced by a sweet compliance, no, hearty encouragement whenever a film by Ray was around. For the longest time, I failed to understand this volte-face. I was told that my mother had taken me to a movie hall to watch ‘Goopy Bagha Phire Elo’ (Goopy and Bagha Return), by Ray. I was all of two years then, with a known predilection for punching and kicking, especially when held in one place for a long time. I leave you to imagine the effect the two hours inside that dark hall with those blinding images and terrible, booming sounds, had on me. I have been told that my mother during those two hours was not even carrying me. No, it was my poor grandmother who bore the literal brunt, while my mother sat in rapt attention to the onscreen goings-on. Later, my grandmother jokingly told me that she had missed almost half the movie on my account. I did not laugh. I was mildly stunned by my mother’s ardour for Ray’s movies. Like I said, whatever he was in the wide world of cinema, did not matter to me then; I simply knew he was an exception in our little world.

I have, very rarely, needed to be convinced to watch a movie. Most often, I have people trying to convince me of the exact opposite. One of the biggest ironies in my life, till date, would be my mother trying to make me watch ‘Shonar Kella’ (The Golden Fort), another of Ray’s movies, when I was about 14. I had already seen it once when I was really young. I could not recall much of it, except that I didn’t quite like it. Attributing my failure to be impressed by it to my being ‘too young’ the first time, she was sure I would love it the second time. Almost bullied by her, I sat down to watch it. This time, I followed the story better, indeed, followed it fully, but failed, once again, to see what was so remarkable about it, except that it had a little boy who said he could remember his past life, in an earlier incarnation. After the movie ended, I couldn’t help but ask her what she so loved in the movie. Even as I asked her that question, I remember being slightly scared of disappointing her. On the contrary, she was absolutely imperturbable when she said,” Why, its realism, of course!” I was stumped. I wasn’t expecting it. I did not know what it meant. And worse, when I asked my mother to explain it, she couldn’t, either. ‘Too young’, was all she said.

Why am I writing all this here? For the simple reason that these were the thoughts that coursed through my head as I watched Satyajit Ray’s solo Hindi offering ‘Shatranj Ke Khilari’, a few days back. It is based on a short story of the same name by Munshi Premchand. The name sounds very pulpy Bollywood, especially today. It is just as deceptive.

Ray’s only Hindi film marshalled some of the best talent in Hindi cinema, apart from his usual crew. It had Sanjeev Kumar, probably the finest mainstream Hindi actor of that time, Saeed Jaffrey (O Master, where art thou?) Shabana Azmi, Victor Banerjee, Farida Jalal, Farooque Shaikh, Tom Alter and Amjad ‘Gabbar’ Khan. It also had a pre-Gandhi Sir Richard Attenborough, although a very accomplished actor on the British stage and in film, even then.

The opening shot is perfectly symbolic of all that follows. It is a simple shot of an array of ornately designed chess pieces arranged mid-game on a chess board, just waiting to be played. The way Ray captures the pieces is what makes the shot so attractive: he shoots it not from any one side, but perpendicular to both the players, objectively capturing both sides. And he shoots it from exactly the level the pieces are kept, so that we see them straight before our eyes. He holds this shot for a few seconds. We expect it is simply a still image, (the background is pitch-black) when to our surprise, a refined, ring-laden hand daintily picks up one of the chess-pieces to make a move, crossing out a piece of his opponent. It is then that we realise what the shot truly signifies: it is the way the players have blocked out everything else from their consciousness. Immediately, an all-too-recognisable voice-over kicks in. Dripping with unctuous irony, it asks us to note the ponderous manner in which the players hold the pieces. It’s almost as if they are strategising about going to war. Except, it is not war. There will neither be rivers of blood, nor conquests of heads and hearts, nor will the fortunes of kingdoms and their subjects change. It is simply a game and the players simply want to ride the horses of wisdom.

It is this same, apparent parallel between chess and war, between love for the throne and actual governance that is explored very interestingly in the film. It consists of two different stories, not really connected to each other, except through similarity and the fact that both are set in the royalty of Avadh, just before the 1857 uprising.

The first story, as is introduced to us, is about Mirza Sajjad Ali (Sanjeev Kumar) and Mir Roshan Ali (Saeed Jaffrey), two wealthy landlords in Avadh, with an undying passion for the game. Mirza’s wife (Shabana Azmi) is filled with yearning for him. But he is so completely addicted to the game and especially playing against Mir, that he almost forgets her. In a fit of petulance, she sends for him, making an excuse of a splitting headache that forces Mirza to abandon his game halfway and rush to her. Her vexation is only matched by his own, at being forced to leave a game he is close to winning. He acidly observes, that when he spends entire nights at ‘mujras’, she doesn’t make as much as a whimper, but when he’s just playing a game in his own house, she has a damn headache. So worried is he, that before leaving the game, he warns Mir not to change the positions of the pieces in his absence.

His meeting with his wife, brief as it is, is perennially clouded over by the itching desire to return to the game as well as paranoia over Mir’s probable chicanery. After a few forced, perfunctory words of sweetness, he returns to the game with relief, leaving her more frustrated than ever. Meanwhile, Mir’s foxy impulses get the better of him and seeing no one around, he makes a few of his own changes to the game.

Mir, as we later, see has even bigger problems in his personal life than Mirza. He spends entire days playing chess with Mirza at the latter’s house. Unbeknownst to him, his wife (Farida Jalal), facing neglect and boredom has started having affairs with several men around town, the point of rendezvous being Mir’s own house. But Mir is blissfully oblivious of such details, lost as he is in the world of pawns and kings. Mirza later hears these rumours about Mir’s wife through the common people and is shocked, but in a salacious way and, while forbidding him to stop spreading such malicious rumours, secretly takes pleasure at Mir’s misfortune and at his own relatively better luck.

One day Mir enters Mirza’s house only to find him furiously berating the servants for having lost the chess pieces. Forced to think of alternatives, they eventually zero in on an old advocate’s house that has an ancient, ornate chess board with marble pieces. Upon reaching his house with the intention of borrowing it for a day, they find that he is unwell and partly unconscious. Nevertheless, they are asked to wait and are seated in the hall by the servants at the very table bearing the precious chessboard. Unable to resist themselves, they surreptitiously start playing, keeping a sharp eye for any lurking servants. To their absolute chagrin, a servant arrives, bearing a tray with glasses of milk, and moves the chessboard to another table to make place for the tray. It is a wickedly comic scene, and Ray has a ball showing us his characters in a series of similar misfortunes ending in a darkly comic twist.

At the end of that episode it is clear that the advocate’s house is not at all suitable for their game. By that time, Mirza hits upon the idea of using different vegetables in place of chess pieces and equipped with the brainwave returns triumphantly to his own home. But by another humorous quirk of fate (or human nature), they are forced to think of another place to play. Mirza finally asks Mir whether his house would be fine. Mir readily agrees.

This arrangement disrupts his wife’s routine of meeting her paramour while Mir is away. She is trapped with no way of letting her paramour know that her husband is at home, that too with a guest. Eventually, he does arrive and enters, as usual, through the back door straight into Mir’s bedroom. His reaction, when informed of Mir and Mirza’s presence, is one of unruffled calm. They are playing chess, he observes, and with an open chessmat and pieces before them, they are blind to everything else. Mir’s wife agrees without a second thought.

Indeed, so sedated is Mir by chess, that when he catches his wife with the other man (Farooque Shaikh) in his own bedroom, he is mildly nonplussed. He naively asks the man (who happens to be a distant nephew, no less!) what he is doing there, only to be told a cock-and-bull story about hiding from the Nawab’s army that is forcefully recruiting soldiers to fight against the English army being assembled at Kanpur. He buys it fully and in a fit of nervous worry runs to Mirza and declares his house to be unsafe and that they should move to yet another location to play chess. Mirza is befuddled at first, but when Mir tells him of his nephew’s predicament, he sees through the whole ruse and starts laughing uncontrollably at his hapless friend. Mir, none the wiser, hatches a plan to travel outside the city to a ruined mosque where they can play for the entire day without any disturbance. They would take mattresses, chess pieces and mat, tobacco and paan with them. Mirza, darkly adds that they would have to take some sort of weapons too, for those who roam around unarmed in Nawab Wajid Ali Shah’s kingdom do not return home.

Meanwhile, there are ominous signs of the East India Company preparing to take over the state of Avadh. The uneasy relationship between the Company and the princely states is depicted by an animation sequence, whose mere presence is unbelievable for its time, especially in Hindi cinema. It is intentionally jerky and very cartoonish, to underline the absurd humour in the dealings between the states and the Company. The states enamoured by the presence of foreigners and foreign money were eager to please them by trading with them. Ultimately, the Company grew so powerful as to go to war with them, defeat them and gobble them up like so many cherries. The rulers of the states were literally caught napping and had no choice but to hand over their territories in return for their honour. Indeed, all these rulers wanted was the honour, glory and splendour of their forefathers, even if their lands were taken away from them. The English merely had to approach the Indian rulers with a minor quibble for them to be readily placated by the Indian rulers with a piece of their own kingdoms.

The film explores this dynamic in utmost detail, through the story of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah (Amjad Khan), the ruler of Avadh. Lord Dalhousie, the then-Viceroy has his sights on Avadh, one of the few cherries waiting to be gobbled. The Nawab’s reputation as an effete sensualist and incompetent ruler precedes him in the British circles. General Outram (Richard Attenborough) is handed the task of driving out Wajid and annexing Avadh. He is flabbergasted at first at what is obviously a thankless job, but even more so at the nature of the King. The scene in which he slowly acquaints himself with the King’s seemingly eccentric ways (400 concubines, dancing with bells on his feet, composing operas) with the help of a British officer Weston (Tom Alter) defines the clash of the cultures and their politics of that age. It is elevated to comic perfection by Attenborough’s bug-eyed, dumbfounded and ultimately enraged demeanour and Tom Alter’s progressively uncomfortable reaction to it. Just watch Tom Alter reciting one of the Nawab’s shayaris, at Outram’s behest, in chaste Urdu and then translating it in English to Outram’s bewilderment. All Outram can do is attribute the shayari with the sole ‘virtue of brevity’.

But even Outram for all his dislike for the King has his misgivings. He is aware of the fact the British are not completely justified in trying to oust the Nawab. The reason being the annulment of an age-old treaty that promised him protection from annexation that his forefathers had signed with the British. The Nawab has been conveniently forgotten to be informed about this annulment by the British. What the British are doing is essentially taking advantage of his ignorance and deceitfully stripping him of his title and his own kingdom and appropriating the entire revenue of Avadh. The Viceroy has no qualms about using such subterfuge. But Outram is hard pressed to execute his orders in the face of such monstrous deception. Nevertheless, he must go ahead with his bounden duty, even in the face of a plaintive complaint by the Nawab’s Vazir (Victor Banerjee), a tearful beseechment by the Queen mother and a pale shadow of a resistance by the Nawab himself.

It is through the Nawab’s reaction to this news that Ray explores the concepts of governance, loyalty, the contentment of subjects, apathy, tradition, heritage and, most importantly, power and greed. The Nawab, as if waking up from a deep slumber, notices, for the first time, that maybe, what he thought as acceptance by his subjects was merely a passive apathy and occasional flattery. The Nawab was widely believed to be a great patron of the arts, especially the dance form ‘kathak’, and all forms of music and poetry. As he is accused by the Viceroy, of incompetence and generally engendering discontent among his subjects, and is in danger of losing not only his kingdom, but also his title, all he can do is reproach his entourage of yes-men who stood by, filling their own coffers and let such disorder creep in. After he has blown out all his anger, he lapses wistfully into memories of the halcyon days of light, music, sublime poetry and beautiful women. He eventually accepts he has been a poor ruler, but then defiantly questions his subjects as to why they never said a word of protest or complaint against him. And then he answers himself by saying that his subjects love him despite everything, love him for his love of song and dance. How many of Queen Victoria’s subjects celebrate by singing her songs, he asks pointedly.

Amjad Khan’s nine minute long monologue throws up very intriguing questions about the nature of feudal rule. For instance, does feudal rule allow for effective dialogue between the ruler and the ruled? What is the importance of such dialogue vis-a-vis the welfare of the state? Was the anti-British sentiment a product of the Indian patriotism or simply the fear of being subjected to rulers who were different from those who had ruled over them for thousands of years? Or did the masses really care? Ray gives us a definite answer to the last question in the form of the two eponymous ‘Shatranj ke Khilari’, the chess players, who for all their sharp intelligence, view the annexation of their own kingdom with brief, bemused detachment. Were they representative of the sentiments of the people at large? Perhaps, at the end, when Mir wryly quips ‘those who cannot control their own wives, how can they face the English army?’, we understand his sentiments and the reasons the British could and did overthrow the Nawab in a completely bloodless coup. For a kingdom of people who spent their time by deriving vicarious pleasure from cock-fights, while their Nawab disported with 'nautch' girls, this was, perhaps inevitable.

These stories may not possess the instant gratification of say a historical romance or an epic, but they portray India in a ‘period of historical change’, as Martin Scorsese said in his introduction to this film, at a Ray retrospective in Washington, D.C. The film is remarkable because it shows us people in the actual act of experiencing a change, letting go of what they have held onto for centuries in favour of something completely new. In that sense, it is a rarity. Another aspect of it that makes it a rare gem, is the amount of ironic, subversively satirical wit it contains. Or simply, the sheer amount of meaning and thought it manages to accomodate within its 129 minutes.

I’m no authority on that period, but Bansi Chandragupta’s art direction is simply astounding. For instance, take a look at the chess pieces themselves, or the royal throne of the Nawab, or the way the high lamps of the royal households are lit, or the way a bunch of paans are suspended by golden chains.

The Urdu in the film is honey for the ears. Not for once was I flustered upon hearing words I didn’t understand (and there were many). It is simply a joy to listen to these words being enunciated impeccably, with all their minute inflections, by such master actors. The dialogues were written by Satyajit Ray, Shama Zaidi and Javed Siddiqui. I suspect Ray to have written the English dialogues which form a substantial part of the film’s screenplay. While I am a diehard fan of his Bengali writing, I had never really experienced his writing in English. It is just as virtuoso. To write well in English is one thing, but to write in such a way as to evoke the days of the English East India Company, especially in a film, at the service of a script based on actual events is a task worthy of a master. And they are delivered with metronomic precision by Attenborough in his polished accent (with a touch of Northern England).

To say anything about the performances in this film, or indeed any Ray film, is a disservice to them. I am not qualified enough to comment on them. To say that they fully embody the truth of the moment will suffice.

What do I feel after watching this film especially with regard to my mother’s remarks about realism? At least I understand her better now, if not completely. Perhaps I’m still too young. But one thing is for sure, I cannot get ‘Shatranj ke Khilari’ out of my head, the way I could with ‘Shonar Kella’, the first time I saw it. I feel better for that.

And, yeah, I recently discovered that ‘Goopy Bagha Phire Elo’ was not directed by Satyajit Ray. It was directed by his son Sandip Ray. When I asked my mother if she knew this, she nonchalantly said yes.

Atonement: Souls in the pages of history

Being a sceptic helps. On the one hand, it steels you against trash whose egregiousness you underestimate and, on the other, it leaves you defenceless against experiences so transcendentally powerful, that you curse your own scepticism. Yet, the feeling of being so profoundly affected by such an experience is so greatly enriched by this initial scepticism that I am almost grateful for it. It’s like what salt does to a sweet-dish, like what the moon does to the sun and its corona in case of a partial solar eclipse. I intend to keep my scepticism alive. I might as well state the reasons for my scepticism about ‘Atonement’:

1. 1. 1. Keira Knightley

2. The director, whose previous, and first, film was an umpteenth adaptation of ‘Pride and Prejudice’, something I’d disliked since school, and positively loathed after seeing what it inspired in Gurinder Chaddha.

3. . 3. It was touted as a story of star-crossed lovers separated by war, a sure-fire excuse for maudlin excess.

‘Atonement’ opens in a palatial house in the English countryside. Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), the youngest in the household, in her early teens, has just finished writing her first play on a typewriter. We see her almost running around the house with the thrill of her accomplishment and the apprehension of how it will be received. The scullery maids are indulgent but unenthusiastic in their approval. So is Robbie (James McAvoy), the young son of the elderly housekeeper. The first real words of encouragement come from her mother who declares it to be “stupendous”. It is interesting to note that she doesn’t approach her elder sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley). When she even as much as voices her anxieties about the play, Cecilia, rather dismissively, says, “I’m sure it’s a masterpiece”. The irony in her voice is lost on Briony: she is simply too young to get it. She does, however sense something is not quite right between Cecilia and Robbie. Again, when she voices it, Cecilia brushes it off carelessly. What she cannot brush off is Briony’s persistent curiosity about the two of them. These seemingly regular episodes of life are, actually, very crucial to how the story plays out later. It provides a sense of the various relationships in the household and offers an insight into Briony’s mind and how it works.

The Tallis household has guests from North England in the form of Briony’s cousins: pudgy, red- and tousle-haired twin boys, about ten, and their equally red-haired, older sister, Lola, slightly older than Briony. They have been sent there on account of their parents’ separation after their mother allegedly “ran away with a Mr. Whatshisname” (another one of Cecilia’s tart observations).

We find that Briony has written the play on the occasion of the arrival of Leon, their oldest brother, presumably, after a long period away from home. He brings along a friend named Paul Marshall (Benedict Cumberbatch), heir to a family well-known for their chocolates.

One hot, languid summer day, Briony, from her bedroom window, overlooking the sprawling lawns of the estate, sees Robbie and Cecilia by the fountain. She sees Cecilia taking off her clothes and jump into the fountain pool in only her thin underclothes, with Robbie standing by. A few moments later, Cecilia emerges dripping wet, her underclothes almost blending into her pale skin as she stands shivering under the resplendent summer sun in full view of Robbie. This vision has a strongly disquieting effect on Briony’s mind, already full of curiosity about them.

It has an equally powerful effect on Robbie and Cecilia, although the two effects could not be more different. We see the same episode through their eyes. They have a squabble in which they end up pulling at opposite handles of a priceless vase that Cecilia was carrying. Robbie breaks one of the handles and a large splinter falls into the pool. Cecilia retrieves it, and in doing so, inadvertently reveals herself before Robbie in more ways than one. That one moment draws out buried emotions and sentiments from both of them and brings them to light in their own and each other’s eyes, crystallising them into something permanent, something palpable, something inevitable and, thus, uncontrollable. They are helpless in efforts to understand and check the sluice of untamed passion. Shame is not the least emotion here, given that it is the upper class English society of the early 20^th century.

Robbie, despite his embarrassment, cannot stop thinking about Cecilia and, in his reverie, types several drafts of letters, giving form to his deepest desires, his most rapturous fantasies. But they scarcely bring him peace. He decides to write a final, formal letter explaining everything, including his own feelings, to Cecilia and hand it to her at the dinner party at the Tallis household to which he has been invited by Leon. While on his way across the fields, Robbie sees Briony playing and asks her to act as his courier and deliver his letter to Cecilia. Briony blandly agrees. As he sees her run away on her errand, Robbie, in a startling moment of epiphany, realises that he has handed the wrong, inappropriate letter to Briony. His paroxysmal scream of “Briony” is futile and echoes emptily over the rolling fields over as Briony races to her destination. She does deliver it to Cecilia, but not before her own unhealthy curiosity gets the better of her. The results are devastating. Briony is shocked beyond belief at what she thinks is sheer depravity on Robbie’s part. It affects her so deeply that she is filled with fear and hatred against him. So much so, that, in the tragic chain events that occur later that night, it is Briony who serves as a witness, and deposes before the police that Robbie is the perpetrator. His highly personal letter to Cecilia, also produced by Briony before her family members does nothing to help his case. A witness she was: she did see the perpetrator in flagrante delicto, just before he fled. But whether she recognised and identified him in the dark is not quite certain. She is unsure of herself and it is only by tremulously confirming her unnamed suspicions with the victim (who is also unsure), and her own coloured opinion of Robbie that she thinks she is certain about him being the perpetrator.

All this, of course, comes after Cecilia has confronted Robbie with the knowledge of his feelings for her and the fact that Briony has read the letter. Robbie is penitent, Cecilia is vexed, but they declare their unending love for each other despite themselves.

Their togetherness is cut short, as Robbie is convicted of the crime and hauled off by the police.

Thus, the lives of all three of the characters, Robbie, Cecilia and Briony are irrevocably changed.

If it still comes across as too mawkish and melodramatic, that is entirely my fault. Academy Award winner Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel is so lean, it reminds me of venison. And in the hands of young director Joe Wright, it leaps and prances with the serous grace of a gazelle.

Where do I start? How do I even begin to describe Seamus McGarvey’s cinematography which for the first hour evokes the idyllic and utopian vision of the England of Enid Blyton I had since my earliest years? Those images of the still, picturesque heather-covered meadows with their blossoms, people basking in lyrically diffused sunlight, talking leisurely about writing plays, composing poems about woods and brooks and having ices, maids in the scullery stocking up the larder for high teas and feasts at night transported me completely to my childhood imaginings in which I would lose myself. Equally masterful is his depiction of wartime London as observed in the vast, sterilised corridors of its hospitals, overflowing with the casualties of war and the cobbled streets crawling with soldiers and anxious civilians.

But I simply cannot fail to mention the legendary tracking shot of the Dunkirk beach. In just over five minutes, it shows us thousands of lives laid bare, the innumerable repercussions war has on men, and the effect of all this on Robbie. It is one of the most powerfully moving scenes I’ve ever seen on film. It is a virtuoso stand-alone piece that is a movie by itself, a movie that has to be seen to be convinced of its truth.

The score by Dario Marianelli and the haunting piano by Jean-Yves Thibaudet is the stuff of legendary, sweeping epics. Indeed, it is the score which gives the movie its sweep, its grandiosity and its empathetic proximity to the human condition. The music in the tracking shot of Dunkirk elevates it beyond the reach of words, into the realm of pure, instinctive emotion. The use of the flat, slapping sound of the typewriter as percussion is sheer inspired, lunatic genius. Briony’s theme music, to which this piece of percussion is set, is labyrinthine, dizzyingly operatic and weirdly unsettling.

Keira Knightley, in this movie, went from being one of the reasons for my scepticism to one of the reasons I love the British accent (some other reasons being Tom Wilkinson, Ralph Fiennes, Mark Strong). She plays Cecilia as almost a shrew, at the beginning, whose facade of frosty curtness later crumbles pitifully into a vortex of passion and endless longing for Robbie. And, man, with her coldly piercing glare, strident body language and diction that sounds like bullets pinging off metal, she is scary good at it.

James McAvoy, who was bloody impressive in ‘The Last King of Scotland’ comes into his own fully here. Portraying the earnestness and promise of youth and deep love at the start, it is he who later serves both as the eyes and the mirror to the utter destruction wreaked on the soul by war. Yet, it is his soulful eyes that keep the flame of love alight against all odds. In a single scene towards the end, he offers us a virtuoso display of powerhouse acting that induces gooseflesh.

Saoirse Ronan, Romola Garai and Vanessa Redgrave. It took these three formidable actresses to portray Briony Tallis, the bedrock on which this entire saga rests. It is a mark of my ignorance that I wasn’t familiar with either of them, before this movie. Saoirse Ronan’s Briony is an uncommonly precocious young girl. Looking at her, one senses the level of quick intuition and cold, prim intelligence she projects far beyond her years. But it is this extreme intuition coupled with the lack of mature insight and her adolescent turmoil that leads her to her fatal folly of judgement, in a sense. An enormously complex role played with blinding clarity by Saoirse Ronan. Her casting is so perfect that she is the physical embodiment of her character: pale, willowy, with a long, straight, open face bearing divinely curved, aquamarine eyes so clear, they seem transparent to her very soul, and ending with thin, pursed lips and a dainty, pointed chin. Add to that the deliberately severe, just-about-lady-like haircut that accentuates her sharp features with an austere starkness.

Romola Garai plays Briony in her most harrowing phase, both professional and personal. Joining St. Thomas’s Hospital, London as a trainee nurse in the darkest hour of England, she is forced to confront the very worst of human suffering. Yet, she goes about her job with a clenched dignity, masking her utter revulsion and horror. For it is but penance for her, a means to atone or maybe escape from the horror of her own guilt, as it lies heavy on her like never before, in those most hellish of days. Garai has, probably, the most crucial scene in the film, the fulcrum on which the entire saga is hinged, the prism through which the reality of the film is viewed at the end. As a young woman, not too far from her childhood, growing up to fully grasp the implications and ramifications of a childhood act borne out of naivete and misunderstanding, at a time when childhood had to be smothered before its time, she aptly mirrors the feelings of denial, the passive horror of someone who wished she was just an innocent bystander, the journey through the endless tunnel of guilt, the slow coming-to-terms with her own guilt and, finally, the mustering-up of courage to make amends. She is a marvel. If I have waxed so eloquent about Romola Garai, it is entirely her doing.

Vanessa Redgrave has the scene of the final resolution. It is here that this epic reaches its absolute peak in terms of almost everything: narrative, acting, music, direction, editing. The ending is tricky, (maybe too slight a word to describe it, beguiling would be more apt) and this is where Wright’s virtuoso direction surpasses itself. With sentences so eloquent, they could only have been taken from the novel, and a performance so sublime, it could only be worshipped, Vanessa Redgrave, in a mere five minutes makes me weep. Not just out of grief, but out of her (and our) love and passion for the characters, the characters’ love for each other, and the wondrous, transformative power of words, of stories, of imagination.