Perhaps, it is all this Oscar hype that has pushed me, once again, to take up my laptop and with my bruised fingers type this. I have, in my resume, mentioned “Watching Movies” as one of my hobbies and have always feared it would be thought of as one of those clichéd hobbies, a fling, an excuse, which is a way to pass time in lethargic languor. But, as I have always then, later when given the chance, passionately expressed what I meant by that hobby in my interviews, people have been, well, impressed. Writing, as you’d know better than me, is my other “hobby” and I wish to bring both of my lovers together in this post.
I am not going to define a film here—of what constitutes a well made movie. People from each era of what is, comparatively a short history of film making, have stubbornly broken trends and redefined the past definitions. An endeavor, hence, to define what a movie should be like, would be pointless and against the tradition of art.
Film makers and their patrons:
We know that there have always been patrons where there are artists, or should I say, there were artists where there were patrons. They made art for the sake of their patrons, to the liking of their patrons. Like in the film “Restoration” Hugh Grant, a painter trying to get the attention of the king draws cherubs in the portrait of the king’s mistress because the king feels no portrait is complete without cherubs. On the other hand, in “Amadeus” Mozart says to the King who doesn’t like his opera because he feels it has “too many notes”, that there are “as many notes as is necessary”. In another scene Mozart shows off his “A—“to the tone-deaf king and his advisors. In “Cyrano de Bergerac” Cyrano de Bergerac, played by the immensely talented (pun, slightly intended) Gerard Depardieu, gives the beautiful, poignant, “No, merci!”** monologue when asked to join a retinue as a poet.
Today too, there are patrons for artists, only difference is that now, it is a whole multitude of people (to each artist his target audience). For example: The Tamizh cinema has almost always targeted the rural audience, the new-age Hindi movies and the Engo-Indo combo films have targeted the multiplex viewers, and the mallu film makers since they do not really know anymore what audience they want to target have opted to random shots in the dark. But, then there are films like “Dilli-6” which almost give the impression that the director is a confused adultoscent who wants to point out how every boy in the town wants to come of age. But, his “kalabandar” metaphor is a very interesting way of storytelling which is not very often used in Hindi films, and perhaps only seldom in foreign films. “Dev. D” is another movie which the people did not really want to understand. And, as is usual in such cases, the film is shunned by a stunned and disappointed audience. On the other hand, when the audience loved the nocturnal Black Knight saving people in the cover of Dark nights, that film did not get even nominated for the Oscars—I bet the panel got their adjectives wrong. Did they not understand the film? Did they not see through the subtlety of the sheer complexity of Joker? Did they not understand that the Joker character is necessary to be recognized because of what he represents—the spite of the bad, the needs of some mad men to be bad just because they cannot be good—in these times? Why is it that the people and the critics have to always disagree?
Films and their Reviews:
And what the hell was so great about Slumdog, guys!? Don’t get me wrong, I am proud of Rahman, Pookutty, and Gulzar…I am happy that another film has been made about the slums of Dharavi and that it has a happy ending, but come on! The panel feeds on hype like hyenas on fly infested dead carcasses. It is my impression that each year the panel decides first who they want to please and then watch the films. This year – all blacks. This year – all brown ones and their colonial cousins. This year - ….
And they are not the only ones. Indian actors and film folk are bickering over whether this is a good film or not. And as is usual the Film’s promoters and the Indian Media have taken advantage of the confusion in the market of whether to watch the film or not. It has become the new “in thing” to have watched “slumdog”. It is almost right up there with having lost virginity and the latest mms scandal. Don’t even get me started on the “Mozart of Madras” travesty.
Perhaps, if it were any other Oscar ceremony and as usual if someone undeserving would’ve got it I would not have ranted like this. Most probably I wouldn’t have. Why then the sudden outburst against “Slumdog”? I suppose it is because it takes bits and pieces of different films, collects a few clichés, mixes the right kind of music to underline the clichés, a Hindi song to get that exotic touch which people of the west have always eaten up as if it were their own apple pie appam, and in the end say that it is true and fantastic and realistic and hopeful and heartwarming and…. And of course, “we the people” like it because of the same reasons and then some more because the “others” also did. I am not angry like Bachan because the film showcases the slum side of India--India is incomplete without its slums. I am not angry because it seems to be like a rip off from other movies—inspiration is acceptable. I am angry because the film just doesn’t deserve the honor it is getting. Because tomorrow, any other film the west might see from India it will be compared with the “slumdog”. People are putting it on a pedestal which it doesn’t deserve. Perhaps, I shouldn’t be angry at the film, but more at the people who have given it honors it doesn’t deserve—the patrons. But, I hope that after seeing this film people watch films from which its sequences have been inspired: Black Friday, City of God, Satya….of course, I hope the west, now that they know there exists a maestro called Rahman, will listen to what he has composed over the past decade.
The Truth About Watching a Movie:
The act of watching a movie is voyeuristic and the pleasure we gain in watching a film is almost always bordering on perversion. Perhaps that is why most of us do not like to watch the films alone; well, at least sub-consciously, it mitigates this feeling of guilt because it is being shared with the others in the room. The lives of others have always been interesting. Everyone wants reality when it showcases the lives of another, but always fantasizes about their own reality. Another point to be noted, I guess, is the interest of a person to know about a world beyond his own. And more importantly is the need of one to be proven right of the stereotype he has pigeonholed another man in.
In the film “The lives of others” which takes place in communist East Germany, an officer keeps track of an artist who they think is writing against their regime. He has, in effect, judged him to have already passed over to the darker west side of the force…but, as he eavesdrops on the conversations the artist has with people, he slowly starts living vicariously through him and begins to protect him. The director of the movie is like the technician who sets up the microphones and the small state of the art cameras to help us, peeping toms, to get a good view of what is going on. The problem is that a seemingly unconscious, non-living entity such as a camera can be very prejudiced indeed. The power of the film comes from this prejudice: the subtle way in which the camera hides some things and highlights others. The camera is like a talkative beast that always seems to be crying out the truth, even if it were the embarrassing ones (usually, only the embarrassing ones) and even if it were about the character that has allowed the camera to look at his life. It reminds me of a monologue I wrote long back:
Once in a far away kingdom, east of east,
There lived a talking parrot that talked like a beast.
Its master had it from its birth, and he had it caged and fed;
It cursed everyone except its master, and that is how, it earned its bread.
One day, a beggar came by its master’s home,
Begging: for a crumb of bread and the shelter of a dome.
The master threw him out mercilessly and waited for his parrot to curse the beggar;
But, the poor parrot—its conscience be cursed!—was forced to stand for something bigger.
And the parrot shrieked “Injustice, Injustice! Damn you master, for you have wronged!”
And the shocked master, mad and angry, let it starve for the food, for which it had so longed.
It was night, and a dark blue veil had enveloped the world,
And the hungry parrot, unable to sleep, wished its wings could unfurl.
Dark was the night yet, stars did shine like spots on a dice,
And in its cover, the beggar came back, and slyly stole the master’s caged prize.
He took it to a lonely place, gave it the only crumb of bread he had left
And slowly, softly, he whispered to it;
“The world is evil my friend, and I am the only good one left!”
When—conscience, be cursed!—the poor parrot declared:
“Damn you, beggar!—for you have committed theft!”
About love, hope, and sadness:
We shouldn’t summarize a film, saying: “It is about hope. It is about the triumph of good over evil.” Etc etc…but, we tend to do that. Films are stories about people. And stories about people are always about different things, and cannot be about only one single thing. “Slumdog” is not only about hope, it is also about poverty and the consequences of it. And similarly it is not only about poverty but also how, if it is “written”, things can go from worse to good.
Few films that come to my mind when I talk about love in films: “Cinema Paradiso” “Two lovers” “Un home et une femme” “Trois Colors (all the films in the trilogy)” and it always seemed to me, from the movies, that Love is a greater Tragedy than loneliness. Though a few movies end happily it nevertheless brings out the underlying tragedy in the situation or hints at the impending doom…I suppose if it weren’t for that element of sadness these stories wouldn’t be told. Love, on its own, pure and unwavering, cannot remain forever. Love must waver, love must be doubted, love must be complemented with sex…for if it weren’t for these, only love and that too, forever, would be devastatingly boring.
Love is a choice, and not some kind of manhole we fall into arbitrarily. Those who “fall” in love, want to do so. Sometimes, who am I kidding, most times, people think they have fallen in love because of a fear of being alone. “Two Lovers” I suppose gives away this secret at the end of the movie. It inspired me to write the following (And as you will guess, I wrote it when I was hungry):
Prologue:
Buttermilk and fish—a pair of misfits,
Decided one day to be together forever:
Though it was not love, but the fear of loneliness,
That brought them together.
***Two Years Later***
The two lovers sat across each other,
A Chinese repast separating them;
There was no sauce—but they didn’t bother,
And they ate the noodles with the Schezwan chicken.
They ate voluptuously, and as they ate the silence grew,
They gulped down words with a sip of water;
And with muffled munching and the clink of silver,
Conversed about how they wished to start anew.
Music played behind the silence,
“Madness!” sang a lonely tenor,
“What is sadness without the madness?!”
…They had by then, finished the tasteless dinner.
They looked at their empty plates:
Nothing more was left to be eaten;
Time had not tarried when they treated their palates,
And slowly the flame from the candle had been taken.
Epilogue:
Two lovers sat across each other—
And once more it was the fear that brought them closer;
They felt the room, devoid of the smell of food,
They felt the world outside, which wasn’t familiar anymore;
And though they wished they could go out and shut the door,
They feared to trespass boundaries for fear of being rude…
Two lovers sat across each other,
And they had realized they weren’t lovers anymore.
Violence and sex:
Do we need to talk about them? Yes. Why do we need to talk about them? Because these are primordial emotions, without which we would not have procreated and survived the harshness of life. Why then what was the cornerstone of human philosophy now an anomaly? Violence is more a rule than exception. Sex…well, even if we are not preoccupied with it, it is not only a burgeoning industry, but also the crux of youth.
In Salo, the most violent and perverted film I have seen in my life, the whole concept of beauty and human was redefined and slandered and twisted into this ugly and tragic underworld.
A clockwork Orange, Amores Perros, Ran and Nagashi Oshima all show in one way or the other not only how violence and sex are similar to each other or are the consequences of each other, but also how the two combined make for a tight story line.
This is the starting of a short story I tried to re-write a few months back. It is called “A Sade Ode to a Love story” which was, sadly, inspired from umpteen porn films and from a desire to show the dark side of love…and I am going to end this post with the following excerpt from it.
We parked the car in front of the community waste dump. He twisted around his torso to kiss me before being impertinently pulled back by his seat belt—we giggled. We pulled up the windows and pulled down our pants—he never wore underwear, he told me. We looked at each other. I was never so sure about anything else in my life. I caught him and I slowly tightened my grip until he filled it completely and extruded out. I undid my bra as he put on a condom. My dark breasts overflowed in his white palm and bulged out through his slender fingers. He was looking at his hungry hands as I stared at his moist lips; then our eyes met; then his grip grew stronger and then—ouch!—he pulls me towards him and we kiss…. We did that for sometime.
We desperately wanted to get it right the first time. It was a very difficult maneuver to perform even in the back seat (where we had migrated to in our peevish delight) of that dingy blue car and we were in too much of a hurry, which made it harder. It seemed to take a lot of time, but, there we were naked on our sides, at last, and his tongue was not the only part of his which was in me. It was noon, I realized in a moment of sensory lapse, and the heat, it seemed to me, acting as a catalyst, had fused the stink of shit, of burning plastic and of rotten food, into a cogent smell that seeped into the car and mingled with our very own human stink and sweat to become a most potent olfactory aphrodisiac. Nothing, I can guarantee you, could’ve roused my depraved soul to that heightened, almost spiritual, plane more than that reeking stench that had enveloped us like a cocoon of perversion, and that kept us safe, away from all that cancerous decency of civilization, beside those hillocks of rejected, excreted, unwanted, morsels; away, far away, from civilization—as if it were reminding me of my perversion and the freedom I had gained by indulging in it. I realized I had started breathing heavily; then I couldn’t hold my smile back; then my brows furrowed and as they entwined up there, down below I pulled him into me and held him in there tightly; then as I almost forgot to breathe in, there was a deafening silence which ended in a prolonged moan, and then, I could feel nothing but lightness.
***
This is going to be my last post on this blog. This blog and its predecessors have all done me good. But, I feel I do not have anything else to contribute in this blog or should I say, I have surpassed the “idea”—if ever there was one—of this blog and I suppose I should move on to other endeavors on other blogs. A few ideas are in the waiting, and until then, let me leave you with this thought, which is my version of what I read in one of Pamuk’s books….
It is those films and stories which we do not wish to share, or are embarrassed to share that reflect our true selves. To put in a corny remark: We are what we hide.
**The “No, merci!” monologue as translated by A.S.Kline
What would you have me do?
Find a powerful protector: and choose a patron,
like the dark ivy that creeps round a tree-trunk,
and gains its support by licking at its length,
to climb by a ruse instead of rise by strength?
No, thank you! Dedicate, as others do
my poetry to bankers? Become a buffoon
in the base hope of seeing a less than sinister
smile quiver on the lips of some Minister?
No, thank you! Dine each day on a toad?
Own a belly worn out with crawling? Show
a skin that’s dirtied quicker than my knees,
and with a supple spine do tricks to please?
No, thank you! Pat the goat’s neck all over,
with one hand, water the lettuce with the other,
a dealer in senna for rhubarb lovers, I suppose
always wafting a censer under someone’s nose?
No, thank you! Urge myself on from lap to lap:
be a little maestro pacing round in a trap,
or navigate with oars made from madrigals,
and old ladies’ sighs the breezes in my sails?
No, thank you! At some editor’s in the City
edit his verse for pay? No, thank you! Try
to get myself named the high Pope of councils
held in the taverns by imbecilic scoundrels?
No, thank you! Work to be a presence known
for one sonnet, instead of writing many? No,
thank you! Not reveal a talent that amazes?
Not be terrorized by the morning papers?
Not say endlessly: ‘Oh, could I but see
myself in small print in the ‘Mercury’!’
No thank you! Calculate, show fear, grow pallid,
prefer to make a visit than a ballad?
Get myself presented, write petitions to the king?
No, thank you! No, thank you! No, thank you! But…to sing,
to dream, to smile, to walk, to be alone, be free,
with a voice that stirs, and an eye that still can see!
To cock your hat on one side, when you please
at a yes, a no, to fight, or – make poetry!
To work without a thought of fame or fortune,
on that journey, that you dream of, to the moon!
Never to write a line that’s not your own,
and, humble too, say to oneself: My son,
be satisfied with flowers, fruit, even leaves,
if they’re from your own garden, your own trees!
And then should chance a little glory bring,
don’t feel you need to render Caesar a thing,
but keep the merit to yourself, entirely
in short, don’t deign to be the parasitic ivy,
even though you’re not the oak tree or the elm,
rise not so high, maybe, but be there all alone!
