Category Archives: Indian Cinema or Bollywood

Sep 28 2009
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Indian Cinema or Bollywood

Saeed Mirza-man about town:The interview

Saeed Mirza has been on a self-imposed exile for a while, travelling the country, looking for something to say. The first outcome of his search was an extraordinary book Ammi- Letters To A Democratic Mother. Finally he is set to return to cinema with an ode to this city. But the gentle, warm and forever questioning Mirza is greater than his achievements because he embodies the values his work can merely reflect.

Your book dwells on socio-political issues in a personal and honest way, avoiding theory and jingoism, simply by the act of addressing them through letters to your mother.

I had grown uncomfortable with words like ‘democracy’, ‘civilized’ and ‘freedom’. People who use them are usually fascists. This book was to be an attempt to re-imagine their meanings. But in order to do that I had to put my feet back on the ground. I realized I felt most grounded during conversations with my mother. She was an ordinary woman but could grasp the essence of things so well, she could have debated with Descartes with the same ease as she spoke to the maid at home. That kind of innate wisdom made me want to explore the extraordinariness of the ordinary, discarding the belief that I was on another level of thought simply because I had read and debated much.

Your films have usually been heavily researched pieces but the book was about your family and journey. Did you feel more vulnerable interpreting your whole life?

There is such arrogance in even thinking that one will ‘write’. When you think of literature through the ages where would a Saeed Mirza fit in? I wrote the book to purge myself and to confront our perceptions of literature. Throughout I have played games with genres, form and content. Honestly I don’t know if I have achieved what I set out to. There have been some incredible responses- not all flattering. For example this one gentleman from Haryana wrote in saying it’s the perfect book for the Taliban. I assume he had issues with my critique of Ataturk. My critique of Ataturk is an extension of my critique of myself. As ‘liberals’ we have made symbols out of things like the headscarf. I want to re-examine what lies behind the symbology.

It is not easy to let go of clichés. A long time ago at a press conference for a documentary I had made on the rickshaw pullers of Jabalpur I saw a man in dhoti-kurta and a massive tilak. I assumed instantly he would be trouble. He turned out to be the most liberal and evolved mind there. There is a need to look at every definition that informs our understanding of the world. The Marxists are perhaps the most to blame for straightjacketed definitions. Others just followed suit. Definitions deny the aura of people; their human being-ness.

Marxism and Socialism are dead letter in India today, confused with their symbols. Democracy and Globalisation are imports from the west, fashioned in a different context. Secularism is a romantic ideal. Are we breaking these concepts down to weld them into the shape of the Indian cauldron?- which by itself isn’t a distinct idea..

India is a miracle! And if it works it will be a blinding light for the rest of the world.

I speak as a leftist or a sufi, I am not sure who I am, but the problem is the intellectual elite is not really connected with the people they speak of. There is so much arrogance. It reminds me of this Ghalib couplet which goes, ‘You sound so learned Ghalib, I would have pronounced you God had you not been a drunk’!

I have seen plays by ‘leftist’ groups that draw upon tales like Shambuk Vadh to criticize Ram. But underprivileged classes cannot dissociate from ‘God’ as easily as we can. Why shouldn’t ‘Ram’ be re-appropriated for them by talking of say, Shabri instead?

Absolutely. Mythology has been created out of a great need of the human soul. The empirical vision of the world has taken away from mysticism, even if not in a metaphysical way. To deny Ram is to leave large vacuums that cannot be filled. It is a collective memory of the civilization. Who the hell is anyone to deny it?

You belonged to the New Wave of Indian cinema. Even the mainstream cinema of the times had a connect with the masses. Today cinema is by and large an NRI friendly product..

I don’t understand this trend. All you need to do is tell real stories. But NRI cinema seems to have become the staple diet now..

But it is not even the real story of the NRI experience.

Exactly.

Is it lonelier to make films without the energy of those times?

My travels made me realize how un-lonely I am. All you have to do is step out, share a meal, shake hands. It makes you one with that very large stream of people and time. You are overwhelmed by the truth of this land- the ideas, counter-arguments and worldviews of ordinary people. It was so high handed of us to think we will change the world.

But don’t you miss that arrogance of youth sometimes? The camaraderie and the dreams, however foolish?

Yes. Sometimes. But I also realize that change cannot be commanded. It is a long process- a chip here, a shift there. And it will happen despite the warlords and ideologue. We were always in a hurry to bring it on.

While travelling was the sense of hopelessness and the sheer scale of things ever overwhelming?

You know, there wasn’t that much hopelessness. It was mostly exhilarating. These people forgave us- the uncaring elite. What more can one ask for?

The stories of the characters you met in your travels as narrated in the book are unforgettable. What do you intend to do with the material you have documented? Would you consider making a documentary film yourself?

I have given a lot of that material to an organization called Majlis. I could make films myself but right now I am working on my next book, called “The Dark Ages: The Monk, the Moor and Moses Benjalloum”. I used to see life like a photograph of oneself with your own people around you. Gradually other people fade away and then you do finally. But now I see those characters you talk about as a part of me and me as a part of them. That is who I am now.

Does the ideology of Naxalism and Maoism concern you as a leftist today? Is banning them the solution?

I am part of a self-centred elite and therefore disposable. They are entitled to their viewpoint and anger but I am not so sure they are right either. All violent movements in the country are volcanic shifts. And the state deals with whatever they cannot handle by imposing bans!

At its inception there might have been ideology but today there is just anger. Is there is a problem with clubbing all sorts of anger under the umbrella of a common term?

There is just anger now and revenge. I have met them and they are wonderful people despite being angry, each with his own idea of Naxalism. The problem is with the umbrella.

There are two ways of looking at things, the micro aspect of each one as a unique person and the macro critique of the movements..

And any right representation must have both these dimensions to it.

You wanted to make a film on Kashmir a while ago. Why didn’t you?

I didn’t feel sure.  Too many people have died. People have come in from everywhere to muddy that water. Now it is extremely difficult to step into that space.

Your father was a part of the industry and saw its seamier side. Your brother’s been here as well. Does the struggle to put forth your expression get to you sometimes?

No. There is just no time to crib. My joy is in the process and at the end of the day I have made my films, made them my way and had a great time while at it.

Your next film is on Bombay. What part of your city are you bringing to celluloid?

I took a break because I felt I had nothing left to say. But recently when Rajat Kapoor asked me to make a film I knew I wanted to make one where Bombay is a metaphor for a mosaic of stories. It is set in the Bombay of today. A city is about the stories you see the minute you step out on to the road. For instance I know this guy from the northeast who sings in a ladies bar and dreams of being an independent musician. I’ve worked with a lovely bunch of people to talk about the outsiders and insiders who come here in the hope to ‘make it’. The film is about the adventure and the pathos of their journeys.

Is it a romantic take on the city?

It is an ode, yes. My salaam, if you like, to the city.

(First appeared in Mumbai Mirror)

Sep 28 2009
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Indian Cinema or Bollywood, Indian Culture & Society

Dev D- First cut is the deepest

Anurag Kashyap has not adapted Sharatchandra’s Devdas. He has set it free from a gas chamber of confined meanings where it fought long and hard to survive.

The film has a bit of a journey left before it makes it to its final destination so this is not a review, in the technical sense of the word. But it would be too much to ask of a critic to see a film like Dev D. and not brim with thoughts that might just take their toll if not channelized into expression. There is of course a parallel urge to refrain from writing about something that moves you that much until time has brought in a little clarity to the heady impressionism. But a road must be taken, and so I write.

There are a lot of levels on which Dev D succeeds. As a work of cinema it is cutting edge- the sound design, a soundtrack that gets the beat of a generation right, the reworking of the Indian musical genre to give it a contemporary and universal appeal and significance, savoury dialogues, visuals balanced deftly between the real and surreal, honest, evocative and satiating at once, a very involved camera and a slickness that is utterly charming only because it does not compete for attention from the heart of it all.  I suspect in the months to follow there will be a lot of commentary on the actors, filmmaker and writer’s craft but since this piece begins with a disclaimer about its reviewing aspirations, I am going to be content in making a couple of observations about the politics of the film.

If this film were literally political, it would be liberal, left wing, inclusive and humanistic, which is an impossible ideal in the macro sense but duly implanted in the personal politics of this film. Anurag’s Dev is not a larger than life, arrogant, beautiful suffering hero. He is a sharp regular guy from a generation in India that is at the cusp of extraordinary contrasts. He is cursed with that not so irregular phenomenon of a heightened consciousness and perhaps even a little genius is imaginable in the context. He is not a man undone by his great love but an unassuming boy-man trying to find his way through a maze of telling emotional and intellectual quests. Dev’s story is a coming of age story in that sense with a hope of redemption that is not even mildly saccharined. Never before have you known Devdas nuanced so well and yet on some level he is but a representative of those who seek their own way but are never given a well deserved second chance to get back into their life if they lose the track briefly. He is not simplistically and pointedly self destructive, nor does he thrive on pity from himself and his audience. He is a seeker trying to make sense of the world, holding on to what he can, trying to inch his way back into a world he can accept, but rejected by the circumstance of existence and society at every crossroad. For the phenomenon of ‘atyachaar’ is largely emotional and cannot be neatly divided into groups of man-woman, rich-poor, dalit-brahmin. We hurt each other irrespective and outside of our categories- sometimes, irreparably, and even when not, a lot goes into repair work.

This is where the substance abuse comes in. Unlike Devdas, Dev is not a puritan converted to the evil of alcohol by a fallen woman. He always enjoyed his beer and perhaps a doobie or two like regular people; thereby taking away the tricky morality out of the condemnation of excess and escape which he later falls into. Even in the original alcohol was a metaphor of destruction, poignant at a time when there was little else available as a tool for the same. Dev slips in other ways as well as he watches one betrayal after another ill equipped to walk through on his own steam. Kashyap has stretched the metaphor to include other incidents, some touted by the media, others shoved into the unseen underbelly despite their epidemic proportions, both altered in translation by a fourth estate that serves only its own needs now.

The trick here is to look at the film without the defense mechanism of pseudo morality because it concerns all of us. Substance is Dev’s desperate attempt to escape a reality that is not relenting in its harshness, his need to believe in something else. On a literal level this transcends the lifestyle barrier that usually hinders our understanding of abuse so much so that we treat Cocaine abuse in nightclubs as a phenomenon distinct from the railway station addictions of homeless juveniles. On another level, we celebrate Ginsberg and Huxley for their unabashed quest of the hidden corners of the mind treating it hypocritically as an intellectual and therefore higher purpose. The truth about substance is that it is rampantly available through and through due to a system of corruption that we cannot even begin to shut out as easily as we can the acknowledgment of its existence through self censorship mostly. And that dysfunction that we as a society create and refuse to be responsible for, will thrust dregs and disturbed from every strata of society to look for a runaway train, more so when we shun them for it.  Then there is also a need to step further back and ask, are we all not subscribing to some form of addiction or the other, sufficiently opiated at any given time by prejudices, pride and lies in order to continue in the comfort of our burrows?

And Kashyap has not just got the story and its protagonist out of fossils, he has also reconstructed its two heroines, who despite their popularity in pop culture, have largely remained foils and incidents in the life of Devdas through the history of its interpretation. So much so that commentators saw them often as simply one single bifurcated character representing good and bad. Kashyap’s Paro and Chanda are not one stereotype or the other, both women from two different Indias perhaps, united in their struggles and self-expression of rebellion. They meet, like in SLB’s but not to create a spectacle of grandeur only to suggest subtly a crossing of destinies and journeys. To begin with they are fully formed characters that rise above their ‘beauty’ and ‘social placement’ and yet embody both completely. They are fiery and independent, in love with their lives, believing in the changing status of the other sex as projected by the times. They have a sexuality (yes they do!), they have desires and opinions, they have anger. But the layer of equal opportunity painted over by education and such is punched through when they become hapless victims of prejudice and exploitation, judged and betrayed by a psychological morality and perverse cocktail of possession, exploitation and weakness that men throw around when they are not using real acid- crucified for a naïve and natural sexuality that cannot belong to them because it has been usurped by self appointed moral police for double use as pleasure and power.

This is not to say that Kashyap’s film is more ‘sexual’ than the original novel. Saratchandra’s novels were bubbling under with sexuality expressed in the fashion of those times with key symbols. It is only in later adaptations that the sexuality was deliberately under-read or lost due to a failure to revise those symbols. Kashyap brings the sexuality out, only as out as it is in real life but out-er than it is allowed to be in cinema and other mass media. He treats it organically, not giving it more importance than it should get because it is a rare sighting in our constructed collective consciousness. But he is not willing to let it pass as a disconnected, dirty, secret thing that has nothing to do with anything in the outside world. Sexuality is key in man woman relationships, love, desire, jealousy, gender games and bias. It is an oft use tool for deceit and power with an uncanny ability to guide our actions outside of the bedroom too. But then again, when Freud says this he is a genius who must be celebrated in classrooms and debates without asking what repression is doing to our own psyches.

Kashyap’s heroines are not devotees of Dev. They make their choices in the face of adversity, they have an extraordinary capability to love, and their self-respect is not threatened by the loss of their hymen. They are stronger than Dev in every way and treated with a lot of sensibility and sensitivity in the story.

Actually no character in the film is given an excuse for their being where they are.  Their circumstances guide their choices but never impose them, painting thereby an open landscape of the minds of the characters. Relationships don’t fail because parents object or social status intervenes. They fail in the film as they do in real life because we fail them. That truth and pain of relationships that are so fragile they cannot be cemented but by external bonds, so elusive they cannot be explained fully at any stage, reflects itself in moments that sadly cannot be elaborated here before the film is up and running.

Kashyap does not judge either of his characters. He refuses to separate them morally and delineate them in black and white. But what he does do is redefine ‘slut’ as a meaningless descriptive word. All his characters are ‘sluts’, they all at some point or the other sell themselves cheap for security, power, revenge or want. But then who doesn’t? Then again, prostitution is not all Kashyap reexamines.

He has woven into the story two events that received tremendous media attention in the last decade, observing that these ‘accidents’ are not incidental but integral and representative of the state of things. There is a need to see them unaided by media hype, blitz and sensation, in a human way. There is a need to reconsider how we understand them and why they slip off the mind because they are off air. There is more to be done than light a candle for Jessica (no, that is not the event referenced in his film). We are also responsible for the Manu Sharmas in our society and their genesis is as much our problem as Jessica’s justice. The suitable end to a rape saga is not in the jailing of the perpetrator, just as rape is not just its legal definition of ‘non-consensual penetration of the physical body’.

Every critic is innately capable of criticism in the lay sense of the word. This film like its energy, conviction, petition and protagonists, is not incapable of being better than itself. But one is leaving that debate to others simply for an opportunity to stand up for something that feels right, in an impulsive sort of way (which is really the only way anything can ever feel completely right.)

Finally, believe it or not, Dev D is a lot of fun (some scenes might play out after the film and make you laugh for days even!), only without offending the intelligence. Not an ounce of aforementioned urban or intellectual angst weighs on its breezy watchability.  It is unusually accessible from everywhere. With a warm sense of humour that changes various shades of irreverence and black, Kashyap puts forward a case for his generation. He asks for chance for them. It will be ironic if his film doesn’t get a fair one. It deserves to because beyond the ever-open debate of good and bad, it is honest. Atleast it was when I saw the director’s cut. And in an ideal world he should be the only one calling cut.

(First appeared on http://www.passionforcinema.com)

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Sep 28 2009
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Indian Cinema or Bollywood

Swanand Kirkire-man in the inkpot

“Our generation is of lyricists not poets”. Swanand Kirkire grew up in Indore on lyrics, not poetry. Kumar Gandharv would draw his attention to the written word so often sidelined by Classical Maestros and Sahir, Gulzar and other golden era wizards would inspire awe. He fancied becoming a filmmaker until writing plays for the first time in NSD made him realize he had a knack for the lyrical. This was about the same time he began to discover poetry, its science and more significantly its politics. The 90’s were a tormenting decade for film buffs. The worst trash was peddled in the name of songs and one still had to turn to oldies when one’s own college romance needed a soundtrack.

Swanand soon realized that in this country ‘making it’ is not as much about professional talent as the ability to move to Bombay. And he came at a good time. After the initial years of struggle the climate looked poised to change. A new set of filmmakers, music directors and actors were making their forays and they wanted lyrics to go with their enterprise. Swanand wrote Bawra Man for himself and sung it to friends on many a drunken evening till Sudhir Mishra heard it and decided to make it a part of his emergency era ode- Hazaron Khwahishein Aisi. A ‘superstar’ he won’t name told him the song couldn’t work for 3 days, Swanand recounts, musing, “I’ve lived off its legacy for the last couple of years now.” The real challenge came up when he was offered Parineeta and realized he will have to write to pre-composed tunes as per industry norms. The challenge was accepted and the rest as they say is history.

He speaks for himself and his peers when he explains how they are not yoked by tradition and rules of stricture when it comes to writing. They are happy to blend Urdu, Hindi and folk to create a new expression. The emphasis is solely on thought. And he credits Gulzar foremost with ushering in this liberalization by making language the plaything of his deftness. Piyush Mishra, his other big idol, demystified writing for him. As also the language by the liberal use of colloquial and even cuss words in his superior poetry.

A national award and much success later, Swanand is still the happy outsider. He refuses films he cannot see himself fit into (typically the kind that demand ‘hook lines’ from lyricists), preferring to make his dough by writing commercial jingles. He refuses to give in to the fame game. “It is for those who want to lick the cream and run. I’m here for the long haul and here for a reason that doesn’t fit in with my having to wear outlandish clothes and sit in judgment on reality shows.”

Its not all smooth sailing. Lyricists are still second-class citizens in Bollywood scooping out their existence from the whims of music directors and filmmakers. It doesn’t bother Swanand much though. He is writing his first film, planning his next play and dreaming of a renaissance for Hindi literature. There are big banner releases coming up but if it were all to go away, he’d happily become a teacher. His relationship with Bombay is tricky. Nowhere does he feel more accepted. Nowhere does he feel more alone.

His relationship with writing is less uncertain. He still believes in whipping up a frenzy of emotions, plumbing them deep and hording experiences from life’s most secretive corners to write of. If there is an easier way, he doesn’t want to know.

Jun 11 2009
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Documentary Cinema, Indian Cinema or Bollywood, Indian Culture & Society

John and Jane

(This article first appeared in the Mumbai Mirror)

At some point in Ashim Ahluwalia’s many award winner, John and Jane, a call centre trainer recounts the core ‘values’ of the average American – privacy, progress, sense of achievement, patriotism, pursuit of happiness and individualism. The rest of the film echoes the hollowness of these very words in the context of call centre employees in Mumbai catering to clients half the world away in an alien accent with alien names.

The film observes the lives of 6 young Mumbaikars who are negotiating with the humiliations and perks of a call centre job and hoping to ride on it to a place far away from their murky existences.

Now much has been said about the disquieting colonialisation by the American dream and the terrifying loss of cultural identity and pride in a country eager to immerse itself in the globalization and growth agenda vis-à-vis the BPO situation. If this film stands out it is because its form is engaging, impressionistic and immaculately controlled. It lays out its characters precisely and gently, trying as best as art can, not to judge, sympathize or appear voyeuristic.  Lovingly framed images create a dreamlike edgy world, ready to host the strange lives of a generation caught between itself and pre-packaged well-being.

Naturally the film was well received abroad by critics and audiences tantalizingly intrigued and satisfactorily moved by the discovery that their annoying telemarketers have a name, face and disturbing lives in cramped decaying apartments to go with it. But if you live in Mumbai this Powai-Malad reality is about as shocking as the leper that hammers at your car window for a buck at traffic signals. The odd shifts, assumed names and accents cannot keep it from flowing into the mouth of the mainstream Bombay story. The American dream is indistinguishable from its Indian version today and Ahluwalia’s protagonists are aspiring for and struggling with the same things that afflict most of the city’s youth irrespective of where and who they are working for. Bombay has distorted politically and culturally the identity of its inhabitants as it has infused with possibilities the idea of India. It promises what it does on its own terms and leaves you scampering for an inner anchor. There are two ways to deal with its extremes – smoke pot and abuse like Glen does or dream with naïve denial about the promise of a better tomorrow like Irani does.

Either way, the film’s characters are going to mirror more the lives of you and your friends than a unique disposition created by the economic exchange between India and America. And unless it moves someone enough to take on the forces of globalization or abandon it all and move to the mountains, its greatest use will be to provide you with the comfort of knowing that in this city lonely as you might be, you’re never alone in your soup.

-PRAGYA TIWARI.

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Jun 11 2009
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Film Festival, Indian Cinema or Bollywood, Short Films/Shorts

Govind Nihalani interview, MAMI Dimensions

Mumbai Mirror, Sunday, February 10, 2008

“City of Dreams”

Dimensions Mumbai, a competition for short films based on Mumbai, seeks to discover the city’s true spirit

The Mumbai Academy Of Moving Images is dedicated to promoting “meaningful cinema.” To this end the International Film Festival Mumbai was launched ten years ago. This year to mark its anniversary Dimensions Mumbai, a competition for short films on the city is being introduced. The festival, ideated and sponsored by Jaya Bachchan, one of the trustees of MAMI, is open to students and media professionals below the age of 25. Govind Nihalani, another active trustee of the organisation is enthusiastic about the initiative. Excerpts from an interview:

You have often explored Mumbai as a character in your films. Today filmmakers seem less interested in giving that kind of space to the city in their cinema. Is the difficulty in obtaining permissions to shoot responsible or is the real Mumbai becoming elusive behind it rapid face-lift?

Yes in my films like ARDH SATYA, AAGHAAT, DEV and even DEHAM which was set in Mumbai-2022, Mumbai was a character by itself.

That today one doesn’t see the city play any significant role  in our films is a fact.And I shall not attribute it entirely to the problems of shooting in the city, which incidentally are enormous. I would think that most of the film makers’ concerns are different and the city doesn’t find any place in their agenda. On another level, filmmakers today perhaps take the city as the ‘given’. But that is not the end. I would like to believe, every now and then a film maker inspired by some aspect of the city, malls and all, will come up with his unique response to it.

So much has been said about this city. Isn’t there a danger of inviting insipid clichés in a competition like this?

The rationale of selecting this subject was that the young filmmakers should be encouraged to discover the city beyond the very clichés that you mention. And besides, IFF-Mumbai is the festival of our own city and what better subject than exploring different dimensions of Mumbai cinematically?

A lot of good ideas fall flat cinematically if the right technology is not available. We have hardly any initiatives to make good equipment available at subsidized rates for independent filmmakers. Then is a festival like this really free for all?

Frankly I would like to look at the positive side of it. Digital technology is quite affordable today.

Besides, technical quality is not the only deciding factor in the competition- the vision and the originality of ideas and technique will be given greater emphasis. And we hope that the award money will encourage the winners to acquire better equipment etc. for their future work.

What about the future? Do you see independent cinema becoming a viable alternative to Bollywood for these filmmakers?

I see lot of hope for the future. The mainstream Hindi cinema, (I hate the term Bollywood!), has been evolving and will continue to do so. The new generation will bring it’s own sensibility to it. The alternative cinematic sensibility will have to struggle to find its place, like in the past. But it is comparatively easier today to make a ‘different’ kind of film in India, with new technology making the process more economical. One would imagine DIMENSION MUMBAI to be the platform for showcasing the talent of some exciting new filmmakers!

Pragya Tiwari


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Jun 11 2009
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Documentary Cinema, Film Festival, Indian Cinema or Bollywood, Indian Culture & Society, Short Films/Shorts

Cinema Prayoga-Amrit Gangar

(This article first appeared in the Mumbai Mirror)

You have sought to define Indian ‘parallel’ cinema outside of a western understanding of terms such as avant-garde, experimental or underground cinema. Can this severance enhance its sense of identity by confining it to its own roots and natural history?

I call it Cinema of Prayoga (or simply CinemaPrayoga) and it is not to aim at a severance. It is to enlarge the historical scope of the Western sense of Experimental and to make it more inclusive of ‘prayoga’ cinematographic practices outside. And it is to find our own root. It is also not to confine it to a particular boundary but in fact it is to de-confine the Euro-American centric Experimental Film. Avant-garde to me is a military word. CinemaPrayoga aims to get out of that.

In India this cinema is often confused with ‘social’, instructive’ and even middle ground cinema. What will you look for in the films you pick for your 7 months long festival?

Cinema of Prayoga is completely a new term that desires to have its definitional stability and its own discipline sans social or political rhetoric. I look at the films chosen for the NCPA Saat Sarjak Saat Samvaad sessions, as having a certain risk taking element, a vision to broaden the contours of cinematography (in the Bressonian sense of creative cinema), a deviation from conventions to explore time and space to offer cinematography a newer grace and plasticity of its own. The seven artists in Cinema of Prayoga program are crucial for India cinematography – they include the young and the gurus such as Kumar Shahani and Mani Kaul.

Was the unfortunate but vitriolic pitting of ‘cinemaprayog’ against “commercially viable” cinema a prime reason for its degeneration in India? Could it have sustained better if it was not seen as challenging the ego of mass cinema?

Let mass cinema remains as such. What happened, I think, was our lack of faith in strengthening the parallel streams and eccentricities that keep any society healthy.  We have pushed cinema into mass communication and courses like BMM. You have to struggle hard to find Film Studies departments in colleges. Everyone wants to manufacture ‘consent’ and produce mass cinema like commercials. What a pity!

At a time when India is obsessed with its economic potential and discrepancies can art escape the concerns of economics in one way or another? Is this necessarily harmful?

No, it is not harmful. Even in the capitalist North America, you find an experimental film artist such as Maya Deren – she died a pauper but stuck to her belief in whatever explorations she was trying fathom in the ocean of cinematography. Even now you cannot avoid her work. CinemaPrayoga would like to include the kind of discipline that marked the European and American cinematographic practices within the realm of Experimental Film.

World over the spirit of radical experimentation and its scope is only receding from its glory years. Is this global phenomenon linked in any way? Where has the fodder for new thought gone?

In my interview, I asked Mani Kaul how could he reconcile with Ritwik Ghatak and Robert Bresson. He said, “both could cure me of a disease called realism’. We still extol the virtues of realist cinema. Look at our own popular culture traditions they are ‘fantastic’. We need to rescue cinema from mass communication – let that job be done by advertisements and commercial films. I think such boundaries are clear. In literature we can find James Joyce completely driving himself away from the trodden paths – even in India literature can provide some commendable examples.

-PRAGYA TIWARI.

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Jan 19 2009
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Indian Cinema or Bollywood, Indian Culture & Society

Dev D Review

This article first appeared on the cinema portal Passion For Cinema on January 19, 2009. Follow the link to read it there

http://passionforcinema.com/author/pragya

Anurag Kashyap has not adapted Sharatchandra’s Devdas. He has set it free from a gas chamber of confined meanings where it fought long and hard to survive.

The film has a bit of a journey left before it makes it to its final destination so this is not a review, in the technical sense of the word. But it would be too much to ask of a critic to see a film like Dev D. and not brim with thoughts that might just take their toll if not channelized into expression. There is of course a parallel urge to refrain from writing about something that moves you that much until time has brought in a little clarity to the heady impressionism. But a road must be taken, and so I write.

There are a lot of levels on which Dev D succeeds. As a work of cinema it is cutting edge- the sound design, a soundtrack that gets the beat of a generation right, the reworking of the Indian musical genre to give it a contemporary and universal appeal and significance, savoury dialogues, visuals balanced deftly between the real and surreal, honest, evocative and satiating at once, a very involved camera and a slickness that is utterly charming only because it does not compete for attention from the heart of it all.  I suspect in the months to follow there will be a lot of commentary on the actors, filmmaker and writer’s craft but since this piece begins with a disclaimer about its reviewing aspirations, I am going to be content in making a couple of observations about the politics of the film.

If this film were literally political, it would be liberal, left wing, inclusive and humanistic, which is an impossible ideal in the macro sense but duly implanted in the personal politics of this film. Anurag’s Dev is not a larger than life, arrogant, beautiful suffering hero. He is a sharp regular guy from a generation in India that is at the cusp of extraordinary contrasts. He is cursed with that not so irregular phenomenon of a heightened consciousness and perhaps even a little genius is imaginable in the context. He is not a man undone by his great love but an unassuming boy-man trying to find his way through a maze of telling emotional and intellectual quests. Dev’s story is a coming of age story in that sense with a hope of redemption that is not even mildly saccharined. Never before have you known Devdas nuanced so well and yet on some level he is but a representative of those who seek their own way but are never given a well deserved second chance to get back into their life if they lose the track briefly. He is not simplistically and pointedly self destructive, nor does he thrive on pity from himself and his audience. He is a seeker trying to make sense of the world, holding on to what he can, trying to inch his way back into a world he can accept, but rejected by the circumstance of existence and society at every crossroad. For the phenomenon of ‘atyachaar’ is largely emotional and cannot be neatly divided into groups of man-woman, rich-poor, dalit-brahmin. We hurt each other irrespective and outside of our categories- sometimes, irreparably, and even when not, a lot goes into repair work.

This is where the substance abuse comes in. Unlike Devdas, Dev is not a puritan converted to the evil of alcohol by a fallen woman. He always enjoyed his beer and perhaps a doobie or two like regular people; thereby taking away the tricky morality out of the condemnation of excess and escape which he later falls into. Even in the original alcohol was a metaphor of destruction, poignant at a time when there was little else available as a tool for the same. Dev slips in other ways as well as he watches one betrayal after another ill equipped to walk through on his own steam. Kashyap has stretched the metaphor to include other incidents, some touted by the media, others shoved into the unseen underbelly despite their epidemic proportions, both altered in translation by a fourth estate that serves only its own needs now.

The trick here is to look at the film without the defense mechanism of pseudo morality because it concerns all of us. Substance is Dev’s desperate attempt to escape a reality that is not relenting in its harshness, his need to believe in something else. On a literal level this transcends the lifestyle barrier that usually hinders our understanding of abuse so much so that we treat Cocaine abuse in nightclubs as a phenomenon distinct from the railway station addictions of homeless juveniles. On another level, we celebrate Ginsberg and Huxley for their unabashed quest of the hidden corners of the mind treating it hypocritically as an intellectual and therefore higher purpose. The truth about substance is that it is rampantly available through and through due to a system of corruption that we cannot even begin to shut out as easily as we can the acknowledgment of its existence through self censorship mostly. And that dysfunction that we as a society create and refuse to be responsible for, will thrust dregs and disturbed from every strata of society to look for a runaway train, more so when we shun them for it.  Then there is also a need to step further back and ask, are we all not subscribing to some form of addiction or the other, sufficiently opiated at any given time by prejudices, pride and lies in order to continue in the comfort of our burrows?

And Kashyap has not just got the story and its protagonist out of fossils, he has also reconstructed its two heroines, who despite their popularity in pop culture, have largely remained foils and incidents in the life of Devdas through the history of its interpretation. So much so that commentators saw them often as simply one single bifurcated character representing good and bad. Kashyap’s Paro and Chanda are not one stereotype or the other, both women from two different Indias perhaps, united in their struggles and self-expression of rebellion. They meet, like in SLB’s but not to create a spectacle of grandeur only to suggest subtly a crossing of destinies and journeys. To begin with they are fully formed characters that rise above their ‘beauty’ and ‘social placement’ and yet embody both completely. They are fiery and independent, in love with their lives, believing in the changing status of the other sex as projected by the times. They have a sexuality (yes they do!), they have desires and opinions, they have anger. But the layer of equal opportunity painted over by education and such is punched through when they become hapless victims of prejudice and exploitation, judged and betrayed by a psychological morality and perverse cocktail of possession, exploitation and weakness that men throw around when they are not using real acid- crucified for a naïve and natural sexuality that cannot belong to them because it has been usurped by self appointed moral police for double use as pleasure and power.

This is not to say that Kashyap’s film is more ‘sexual’ than the original novel. Saratchandra’s novels were bubbling under with sexuality expressed in the fashion of those times with key symbols. It is only in later adaptations that the sexuality was deliberately under-read or lost due to a failure to revise those symbols. Kashyap brings the sexuality out, only as out as it is in real life but out-er than it is allowed to be in cinema and other mass media. He treats it organically, not giving it more importance than it should get because it is a rare sighting in our constructed collective consciousness. But he is not willing to let it pass as a disconnected, dirty, secret thing that has nothing to do with anything in the outside world. Sexuality is key in man woman relationships, love, desire, jealousy, gender games and bias. It is an oft use tool for deceit and power with an uncanny ability to guide our actions outside of the bedroom too. But then again, when Freud says this he is a genius who must be celebrated in classrooms and debates without asking what repression is doing to our own psyches.

Kashyap’s heroines are not devotees of Dev. They make their choices in the face of adversity, they have an extraordinary capability to love, and their self-respect is not threatened by the loss of their hymen. They are stronger than Dev in every way and treated with a lot of sensibility and sensitivity in the story.

Actually no character in the film is given an excuse for their being where they are.  Their circumstances guide their choices but never impose them, painting thereby an open landscape of the minds of the characters. Relationships don’t fail because parents object or social status intervenes. They fail in the film as they do in real life because we fail them. That truth and pain of relationships that are so fragile they cannot be cemented but by external bonds, so elusive they cannot be explained fully at any stage, reflects itself in moments that sadly cannot be elaborated here before the film is up and running.

Kashyap does not judge either of his characters. He refuses to separate them morally and delineate them in black and white. But what he does do is redefine ‘slut’ as a meaningless descriptive word. All his characters are ‘sluts’, they all at some point or the other sell themselves cheap for security, power, revenge or want. But then who doesn’t? Then again, prostitution is not all Kashyap reexamines.

He has woven into the story two events that received tremendous media attention in the last decade, observing that these ‘accidents’ are not incidental but integral and representative of the state of things. There is a need to see them unaided by media hype, blitz and sensation, in a human way. There is a need to reconsider how we understand them and why they slip off the mind because they are off air. There is more to be done than light a candle for Jessica (no, that is not the event referenced in his film). We are also responsible for the Manu Sharmas in our society and their genesis is as much our problem as Jessica’s justice. The suitable end to a rape saga is not in the jailing of the perpetrator, just as rape is not just its legal definition of ‘non-consensual penetration of the physical body’.

Every critic is innately capable of criticism in the lay sense of the word. This film like its energy, conviction, petition and protagonists, is not incapable of being better than itself. But one is leaving that debate to others simply for an opportunity to stand up for something that feels right, in an impulsive sort of way (which is really the only way anything can ever feel completely right.)

Finally, believe it or not, Dev D is a lot of fun (some scenes might play out after the film and make you laugh for days even!), only without offending the intelligence. Not an ounce of aforementioned urban or intellectual angst weighs on its breezy watchability.  It is unusually accessible from everywhere. With a warm sense of humour that changes various shades of irreverence and black, Kashyap puts forward a case for his generation. He asks for chance for them. It will be ironic if his film doesn’t get a fair one. It deserves to because beyond the ever-open debate of good and bad, it is honest. Atleast it was when I saw the director’s cut. And in an ideal world he should be the only one calling cut.

PRAGYA TIWARI.


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Dec 02 2008
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Indian Cinema or Bollywood, Indian Culture & Society

Dostana – Review

This article first appeared on the cinema portal Passion For Cinema on December 02, 2008. Follow the link to read it there.

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Karan Johar recently said in an interview to a city daily that he pushed the envelope with Kabhi Alvida; he wants to tear it with Dostana. This isn’t the first time he has expressed a desire to break from his own moulds. Often in interviews he is seen applauding ‘good’ cinema, and if you indulge in a bit of reading between the lines, aspiring to make some as well. Despite the debacle of Kabhi Alvida, one couldn’t help but respect his struggle, as one perceived it, to risk it all.

Then after a lot of talk came Dostana, that seemed like a candy rom-com till news of its’ negotiating with the ‘envelope’ started to do rounds. The movie released with the expression of bonhomie and shock in different strokes by different folks. The shock part was not because of the ‘bold’ theme but because some people had dared to call it pro-choice.

Now, to be fair, the movie doesn’t particularly lampoon gay men as claimed by some critics. The genre is such that it sort of makes light of everything, including love, child welfare and psychology, Punjabis, Sindhis, fat/older women’s aspirations to look sexy, you name it.

But maybe the producer should not encash the ‘entertainment’ excuse just yet. It is ok to act according to genre. It is ok to be irreverent. But at what cost? Is it ok to laugh at prostitutes? Dalits? Rape victims? Girl infanticide? HIV patients? Perhaps not. Not even if the genre okays it. (The only envelope this pushes contains jokes on deaf and dumb people, now much in currency on the ‘blockbuster’ circuit). Simply because they are ills that are plaguing the society because of unchanging mindsets. So, unlike Punjabis and Sindhis who are not threatened races, the gay community might have deserved better than to be the butt of jokes in the film.

So the film does acknowledge that homosexuality exists and is even fairly common. The problem is that it sets itself in Miami not India. So those who like can safely conclude it’s a phoren phenomena.

Karan claims on his blog that even grandmothers have seen this film and now they will find it easier to accept their grandsons coming out to them and saying they are gay. Now really, if that is not delusional, nothing is. The oldest films we have are love stories. And to date in this country, inter-caste marriage is an issue! Those so called grandmothers will not allow their granddaughters to wear a swimsuit in public even after watching the film 50 times, let alone respect their homosexuality!

Besides, Karan’s claim is based on dubious grounds. The two male leads who pretend to be homosexuals make sharp disdainful disclaimers every now and then, “Main Gay Nahin hoon. Abe to main kaun sa Gay hoon”; worse- “main waisa nahin hoon!” They pretend to be gay because gay people seemingly have more privileges of whatever kind. Again, not a very healthy notion to propogate in India. The only two real gay characters in the film, Boman Irani’s fashion editor and the immigration officer, are effeminate, outrageously horny and even corrupt. This comes in the long line of gay portrayals that Hollywood and Bollywood have disseminated.

Hollywood was overtly homophobic upto the 70’s. The Celluloid Closet, a documentary based on Vito Russell’s book of the same name makes an important point – “In a 100 years of movies, homosexuality has rarely been depicted on the screen. When it did appear it was something to laugh at, something to pity or even something to fear. These were fleeting images but they were unforgettable and they left a lasting legacy. Hollywood, that great maker of myths taught straight people what to think of gay people and gay people what to think of themselves.” In such a climate, William Friedkin’s The Boys In The Band was a small revolution. But it was not until the 90’s and the new millennium that one began to see homosexuality as a regular part of sensitive cinema (think Birdcage, Philadelphia, Brokeback, Transamerica, The Hours etc. though there is still the occasional Notes On A Scandal and Talented Mr. Ripley, with its psychotic suppressed gay protagonists.) Filmmakers like Almodovar on the other hand have homosexual characters in every film without drawing attention to their ‘novelty’.

In India the tide has still not turned. The Indian male is more obsessed with his masculinity than anywhere else, arguably. And the gay ‘Gud’ is still planted to make him feel more macho. Gay men have no character but their orientation in these films. In Bollywood they are hardly even allowed psychopathic behaviour. They must only appear to be sneered at. When serious attempt is made at bringing homosexuality to light in films like Fire (though admittedly that was just as regressive, suggesting lesbian urges are a by-product of neglect by husbands), the Shiv Sena and other self-proclaimed keepers of our morality, attacked it. Manohar Joshi, the then CM of Maharasthra said something to the effect that homosexuality is “alien to our culture.” If Dostana has not heckled any feathers it is because it does not challenge the moral police even as little as Fire did. Karan loves talking about Bollywood as a fraternity he was brought up into. If he has to push any envelope, he cannot start on a clean slate. He will have to undo what this fraternity has collectively done to the gay character over the years, to begin with.

Politics of the film apart, it is an assembly-line product with no ‘heart’. In another interview, Karan was heard exclaiming in, “I want to kill the demon of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai!”- meaning that he is tired of being expected to meet the standard of his first film. Not to say that Kuch Kuch was a masterpiece of any sort. But to evaluate him by his own standards, he has failed to live up to the promise of his first film because he has started to want to manipulate his audience. The first sign of that is to see a film as a package of goodies rather than a cohesive whole. There is nothing wrong with formula if you have something to apply the formula to. It was easy to believe in Rahul and Anjali’s friendship and later their love. They were left on screen to create moments we could take in and savour leisurely. Dostana is a tale of friendship where we are ‘told’: ‘Ok, now they are best friends’; ‘Ok, now they love each other’; ‘Ok, now they are in love.’ All this, to be able to pack in infinite twists and turns in the plot thinking if one fails to work, the other will. There are three people in love with one girl and one cannot understand either.

The other issue of course, is the sheer unidimensionality (I know there is no such word, but you get the drift) of the characters. Shahrukh Khan once said that romantic heroes never had any character until he began to collaborate with the Johars and Chopras. He was partly right. Rahul and Raj had character. Anjali was more than a ‘heroine’. But in the true tradition of decline, Dostana’s actors are for representational purposes only. And they are representing little more than Manish Malhotra’s skills and their body contours. Even Kiron Kher has been put together with waste material from OSO and Hum Tum.

All Dostana is, is an ad for itself. And a bloody good one at that. Once again Mr. Johar has handed out a glossy empty envelope. It maybe a little tattered around the edges.

Pragya Tiwari

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Sep 21 2008
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A Marriage of Cultures

This article first appeared on the cinema portal Passion For Cinema. To read it there please follow the link

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One of those best of Madan Mohan collections has him speaking about his craft. With a characteristic understated passion he recounted what it took to craft a melody. The result was work that was sophisticated and accomplished, popular at the time and classic ever since. Why is it that today’s Indian finds it so hard to create what might be popular and artistically/intellectually gratifying? Why has the gulf between sensible critical acclaim and mass appeal widened beyond comprehension when it comes to art in general and cinema in particular?

We are negotiating with a very important curb in our history where economic growth, dominance and discrepancy are the preoccupation in all quarters. Are we making any classics along the way though? In these times of the pettiest of bloody politics and a surging feel-good factor despite of it, what is happening to our art?

Bed and Board is a classic as nearly all films directed by Francois Truffaut are thought to be. It is a deceptively simple tale of a marriage and its graph principally. Antoine is married to a violinist and lives out his days in a quaint neighborhood dyeing flowers for a living. Their blissfully ordinary existence is threatened when Antoine embarks on a nearly inexplicable affair with a Japanese woman. Drawn apart (after a dramatic scene in which his wife on discovery of his infidelity greets him in a horrific madame butterfly getup), they are nonetheless unable to settle down without one another and come back together soon enough. This ‘end’ however is happy in only a skeptical sort of way as they are shown not to live ‘happily ever after’ but slip into a life of stable bickering indifference.

Truffaunt’s classic brings to mind our cinematic middle class spokesperson Aziz Mirza’s Chalte Chalte or atleast the second half of it.

After reliving his Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge role in a less flamboyant, more vulnerable avatar, Shahrukh Khan(Raj again) who only ever plays a superstar, settles down in a middle class neighbourhood in Mumbai with his much different wife, Priya.

The ordinariness of their life is shown among familiar character sketches of ‘regular people’ reminiscent of the ‘Nukkad’ life. The wife cooks, cleans, shops for veggies while anda-walas and dhobis walk in and out of her tiny apartment. The husband does his job, hangs with his buddies, comes back home to bicker with wife or woo her with his boyish charm. The break here is not an extra marital affair but Raj’s brash, complexed mindset. He is jealous, loud and feels inferior at the drop of a hat. In both films the ‘fault’ comes from the husband but it was too much to expect a hindi film hero to cross the sacred line of sexual commitment up until Karan Johar’s rebellious but misguided Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna. Nonetheless Raj is grey and real. He broods dramatically and displays only melancholic shades of anger, depression and longing after the wife leaves. Naturally Truffaunt is not given to such show of undiluted emotion. Antoine’s journey is highly personal and internal – his attachment to his wife is palpable but never obvious. Equally stark is the wife’s ‘forgiveness’ of her husband in the end in contrast to Chalte Chalte’s traditional teary climax (replete with sukhwinder singh’s heart rendering high pitch). The end is happier here despite bickering thrown in for good measure, but then anything would be happy after that melodramatic climax at the airport, no less.

It would be easy to see, Mirza made Bed and Board within the Bollywood formula (not implying he copied it. It is a theme often visited by writers/filmmakers and common enough not to attract insinuations of plagiarism). But beneath the obvious conclusion is another story – that of our cultural psychology and philosophy. Evidence is simply in the names of the films. Bed and Board, is as stoic as the film- a demystification on the institution of marriage. It intends to reveal the shallow waters of a much-touted social more and strengthens its case with a strong disillusioning end. Chalte Chalte is more poetic (borrowed from one hindi film song or another), conveying a sense of journey, its mystery and even a hint of fatalism, linking up with its own end brimming with ras. The significance of rasas infact is an Indian cultural obsession from time immemorial. Its unpopularity in the west can be gauged by considering there is no equivalent word in the language for it. the closest one can come is a literal ‘syrupy’ which has derogatory intonations. Bed and Board perhaps unintentionally addresses France’s, rather Europe’s fascination with existentialism. In the end it all means little. Chalte Chalte is rooted deeply in india’s unshakeable romanticism that springs from the abundant faith in our DNA. We are the children of God (and literally too, there are castes a dozen claiming descent from one or the other avatar of the holy trinity) and religion is our single-minded passion. Marriage like all else is tied up with it and therefore sacrosanct (to be fair there is little India that is not sacrosanct in some way or the other, even rats). In the final moments of the climax Raj gives away his Allah charm to his wife. This moves her sufficiently to return home and say, “my place in life is with you”. Religion, fatalism and an pursuit of emotional intelligence underpin the formula to audience appreciation. We go to the cinema “leaving our brains at home” (a popular phrase coined by Indian critics to deride/describe most Indian masala movies), but we take our hearts along and how. You can titillate us all you want but you’re not a bumper hit unless you move us, shake us. The difference in Chalte Chalte and Bed and Board is of bad and good cinema, undoubtedly. But the concept of good and bad cinema is derived intellectually in India from the west. But marriages were made in India. Like heaven was.

Pragya Tiwari

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Dec 02 2007
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Anupama Chopra Book Launch – King of Bollywood

Mumbai Mirror, Sunday, December 2, 2007

The Talk Show

Can we expect our filmwallahs to talk about anything except themselves? Even if the occasion is the discussion of a book

The kitschy purple book-cover with a groomed Shahrukh Khan holding his favourite intense expression tries ardently to lure you with its promise of pure fluff – but deceptively, Anupama Chopra’s King Of Bollywood is also a layered exploration of the shifts in the Hindi film industry and the Indian cultural and economic landscape post independence. Shahrukh Khan has been plugged in apparently to put it all into context. A recent discussion of the book by Prasoon Joshi and Nikhil Advani said a lot about the book ironically without saying much about it at all. Most of the discussion was centered around the future of Bollywood and what is wrong with it today ignoring its influence or otherwise on the macro Indian picture. But then if you expect filmwallahs to talk about anything but themselves you must promptly go back to your own galaxy. The discussion took off from the current favourite cliché of ‘arrival’ of Bollywood in the international arena. Joshi spoke of thought leadership over a leadership of numbers and the complacency with which the industry refuses to seek out writers and other talent from deeper within the country. There was a lot of talk on the dearth of ideas, wrong people taking decisions and unfair distribution of returns and resources but when it came to elucidating with examples the panelists played it safe. So all we heard was Aditya Chopra-is-great-because and Vidhu-Vinod-Chopra-is-great -because etc. Joshi and Advani’s analysis might have gone a step ahead of the book by challenging the ‘arrival’ myth but curiously they too seemed so focused on how much or how little we are wanted abroad that one began to wonder if there is any other parameter for our success at all. They were both trying hard to convince a cynical audience that not just NRI’s, ever foreigners watch our films. Is it not enough that we have forever produced and consumed only our own entertainment undaunted by the threats of giants like Hollywood or that one single industry has by and large united the imagination of a country torn apart by innumerable identities?

The panelists also had little to say about the star of the book beyond a token pandering mention of how he exemplifies the modern Indian’s fantasy man and is mobbed everywhere. Perhaps, Joshi was not just kidding when he said that Khan’s picture has merely been put on the cover to sell it.

By itself too, the biography has little merit, for this is not Chopra’s portrait of Khan but Khan’s portrait of Khan – the Khan who we love because while glibly declaring that he is an employee of the Shah Rukh Khan myth, he charms us into buying it. While most brands create and exploit the human ego’s desire for exclusivity and worth, Khan’s brand thrives on propounding the myth that he is really the characters he plays- a mourning son, a lonely over achiever, a dutiful father, a passionate husband.  Chopra’s book presents him as a role model from a humble background who struggled against all odds to reach the highest peak. The truth is he is a role model only because he can sell it all. But who cares about this subtle difference as long as the sympathetic portrait of a brand as a young man is poised to sell another good product.

Pragya Tiwari


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