Watching Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro gave me a sense
of déjà vu, in its depiction of the increasing
alienation of a ghettoized Muslim populace that Mirza would touch upon again in
his deeply moving Naseem. Further,
the hopeful howl of its protagonist Salim (Pawan Malhotra) – a small-time
criminal frequenting Bombay’s underbelly – to his close friends Peera (Makrand
Deshpande) and Abdul (Ashutosh Gowarikar) that, despite all the troubles, misgivings,
humiliations and hopelessness of today, “Apna
bhi time aayenga (our time will come)”, a politically charged cry which
formed the rousing rap song in Gully Boy.
Salim’s angst, disillusionment and existential crisis – amplified by a gruesome
riot sparked by the brand of provocative Hindutva politics on the rise in the
80s, and his interactions with progressive journalist Aslam (Rajendra Gupta) –
formed the film’s key thread; his innter struggles at what he is vis-à-vis what
he could’ve been was hugely reminiscent of the “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been
somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am” utterance in On the Waterfront. The people
surrounding him added further context – his unemployed father (Vikram Gokhale);
his dead brother who haunts him with his absence; the sweet-natured Mumtaz
(Neelima Azeem) who works at the local brothel; the shady characters both both ruthless
and warm-hearted, amongst whom he’s carved his place and that he’s now keen on
exiting. However, that said, the film, comprising of compelling depiction of
Mumbai’s signature underbelly, which imbued it with bleak authenticity, veered
towards didactism – making the medium an agitprop mouthpiece of the director’s
own simmering angst – which made it tad heavy-footed, and slightly dampened it
from a purely cinematic standpoint.
Director: Saeed Akhtar Mirza
Genre: Drama/Urban Drama
Language: Hindi
Country: India
In Duvidha, with its tapestry of montages,
tableaux and water colour vistas, Mani
Kaul inflused realism with dream vision, folklore and mythos. Laced with formal
rigour, deft lyricism and a striking visual palette, and based on a Rajasthani folktale
by noted writer Vijayadan Detha, it touched upon multiple thematic elelements,
viz. the feudal systems and deeply inbred patriarchal setups, a subtle
juxtaposition between philistine and aesthete, and, perhaps most importantly, powerful
feminist subtexts. When a young newlywed couple – a merchant’s son (Ravi Menon)
and his sensual wife (Raisa Padamsee, daughter of renowned modernist painter
Akbar Padamsee) – are on the way to their tiny village in Rajasthan, a ghost gets
attracted to the bride when they halt under a banyan tree where he resides;
hence, upon coming to know that the son has taken leave right after for 5 years
in order to make money, the ghost comes in the garb of the husband and take his
place in the household. In the most subservice stance, she accepts the impersonator,
not unknowingly but in full knowledge, as he’s forthright in revealing his
identity as well as his desire for physical intimacy with her. The “ghost”,
therefore, consummates marriage for the lonely bride seeking company. However,
she becomes pregnant before long and the “real” husband too returns, thus leading
to the need for the scandalized village to resolve this conundrum. The film is
filled with exquisite washed out images shot in saturated colours, oftentimes
in grainy closeups, and interspersed with freeze frames; that, along with its
minimalism and absorbing use of Manganiyar folk music, gave a sense of a land
where time and social mores are frozen standstill.
Director: Mani Kaul
Genre: Drama/Rural Drama/Avant-Garde Film
Language: Hindi
Country: India
Kore-eda’s ferocious
masterpiece Shoplifters achieved
a searing balance between narrative power and formal delicacy, wry humour and
bristling social critique, and an absorbing sense of lyricism and levity that
never sugar-coated the director’s underlying fury, melancholy and fatalism. A magnificent inter-generational family drama that
questions the very essence of what it means to be a “family” vis-à-vis the
narrower societal definitions of one – a more full-blown exploration of the
central tenet in Life Father, Like Son
using an intricate ensemble structure as in Still Walking – the film was, at its core, a subtly scathing indictment against class
systems, which the society and its apparatuses are trained at imposing and
sustaining through parochial definitions of right and wrong, good and bad,
legal and illegal; Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, too, focused on similar themes, albeit in a dramatically
different way. The tale’s unforgettable, chaotic, intimate and symbiotically
connected non-bioligical family comprised of Osamu (Lily Franky), a wonky daily
labourer and charming slacker who procures necessities through shoplifting at
departmental stores along with Shota (Kairi Jō), a precocious young boy adopted
into this ragtag family; Osamu’s feline wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) who’s
employed with a laundry service agency; Aki (Mayu Matsuoka), a peppy girl, who
works in the adult industry catering to lonely men; a young girl abandoned by her
bickering parents who Osamu and Nobuyo adopt out of kindness; and the elderly
Hatsue (Kirin Kiki), the defacto matriarch of the absurdly cramped place they
all stay together in fascinating sync. Marvelously enacted by the cast – Franky,
Ando and Kiki were particularly terrific – the film traversed a deceptively
heartbreaking arc through bravura tonal shifts, intricate mise en scène and simmering volatility.
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Genre: Social Satire/Family Drama
Language: Japanese
Country: Japan
Gurvinder Singh’s
much fêted film Anhe Ghore Da Daan,
adapted from a Punjabi novel of the same name by Gurdial Singh, has a
subliminally disconcerting tone and atmosphere about it, in its pervading sense
of existential and political angst. Though rarely spelled out loud, one gets a
feeling that things are bursting through the seams, and an implosion is just
around the corner. The resignation and fatalism of the impoverished, the disenfranchised
and the marginalized, in how their survival is tied to the structural
discriminations that define their existences, amplified the magnitude of its
silent howl. Alternately set in Bathinda and a small village on its outskirts,
and largely based within the span of 24 hours, it provided a peek into the
dreary, daily existential turmoil of a poverty-stricken Dalit family through
three of its members – an aged man (Mal Singh) dumbfounded at the casual act of
violence faced by another family through their forced eviction by a powerful
landlord in the middle of the night; his daughter (Sarbjeet Kaur) who’s
experiencing a barely suppressed wish for freedom from the drudgery; and, her
taciturn older brother (Samuel John), a rickshaw puller existing in the fringes,
and who’s been injured during an ongoing strike called by the rickshaw pullers’
union. A deep sense of confusion, uncertainty and inner crisis permeates in them,
with their lives in a limbo trying to make sense of the dramatic developments
surrounding them. The film, with its bleakly beautiful static frames, moody pacing, extremely minimalist approach with the narrative stripped to its bare bones and exquisite
long takes, was as much Bressonian, as perhaps homage to his mentor and
its creative producer Mani Kaul.
Director: Gurvinder Singh
Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Political Drama
Language: Punjabi
Country: India
Kore-eda crafted a
deftly layered and quietly moving exploration of complicated familial dynamics,
especially in what it entails to be a “family”, in Life Father, Like Son. Examination of the patriarchal / feudal
concept of blood relations vis-à-vis bonding over years of togetherness, along
with the oft-stated juxtaposition of nature versus nurther, could have become
contrived or trite in the hands of a more heavy-handed filmmaker; the Japanese
auteur’s nuanced portrayal of these age-old topics, however, imbued them with
both freshness and melancholy. Ryōta (Masaharu Fukuyama) is a successful architect
who spends far more time with his work than with his soft-natured wife Midori
(Machiko Ono) and 6-year old son (Keita Ninomiya). His carefully chiseled life,
however, faces disruption when the hospital, where Midori had conceived,
informs him that there was an inadvertent swap of babies with another couple who
couldn’t be more dramatically different, viz. Yūdai (Lily Franky), a goofy,
free-spirited slacker who runs a small shop and is an adept handyman, and his
wife Yukari (Yōko Maki), a strikingly beautiful, emotionally strong and
clear-headed lady. The two families clearly belong to disparate socioeconomic
strata – the former stays in an upscale Tokyo apartment, while the latter resides
in a ramshackle place in the outskirts – and this class difference, along with Ryōta’s
masculine pride, formed two other strong thematic elements in the film. Ryōta
could’ve easily denigrated into a one-dinemansional character; however, both
Kore-eda and Fukuyama kept adding subtle emotional layers which gradually revealed
his depths, vulnerabilities and hence his ability for redemption, even if Kore-eda’s
allegiance was clearly with Yūdai. Soft usage of an organ-based score
complemented the well-enacted film’s delicate mood and deliberate pacing.
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Genre: Drama/Family Drama/Urban Drama
Language: Japanese
Country: Japan
