Dharavi, the densely populated settlement in Bombay (Mumbai)
– patronizingly touted as one of the largest slums in the world – has always formed
a dramatic counterpoint and dark underbelly, in Hindi cinema, to the pompous epithet
of ‘city of dreams’. In the eponymously titled movie directed by Sudhir Mishra,
the grim and gritty tale of one man – his fierce ambition, desire to rapidly
climb the socioeconomic ladder, dogged refusal to strike compromises with his
harsh realities – provided an indictment to the city’s romanticized image that
through sheer hard work, burning ambitions and a bit of luck, a pauper can
jolly well become a wealthy prince. An embittered taxi driver (Om Puri), living
in a cramped shack with his wife (Shabana Azmi), plans to buy a business for
dying clothes along with his drinking pals. However, when contributions fall
short, he makes the fatal choice of taking help from a local gangster which leads
to disastrous downward spirals for all. The film ended on a feeble note of hope
that added an interesting ambiguity to the vicious cycle. His obsession with
getting off the rut, punching way above his weight and becoming the owner of
his own fate, was manifested in his parallel fantasy world by his romancing with
a screen goddess (Madhuri Dixit playing herself) who represents the highest
echelon of beauty, dream and desire for him – a holy grail that he can never
attain in the sordid grime that he exists. Over-usage of slow-mo, sound
amplifications and echoes, to create visceral effects, dampened the viewing
experience, though commendable turns by Puri and Azmi in capturing their
disillusionment and lost dreams, and representation of the mileau,
compensated for these lapses.
Director: Sudhir Mishra
Genre: Drama/Urban Drama
Language: Hindi
Country: India
In 1971, 343 feerless
French women disclosed in the “Manifesto of the 343”, ignoring the possibility
of criminal persecution and conservative backlash, that they’d had abortion; its
signatories included, among others, Agnès Varda. The stirring statement that
“the personal is political” is therefore emphatically applicable in her poignant
and powerful film One Sings, the Other
Doesn’t. An infectious tale of enduring friendship between two women whose
lives parallel the Women’s Liberation Movement in 1970s France, imbued it with
attributes that went beyond cinema; that it was also a beautifully rendered
movie, at once playful and melancholic, irreverent and serious, polemical and poetic,
and comprising of diverse formal choices like voiceovers (by Varda herself),
epistolary narration (through heartwarming use of postcards), blending of “live”
music and non-fiction agitprop elements into the within the narrative
time-space, etc, made this all the more memorable. The kinship of the two marvelously
enacted women begins when 17-year old high-school student Pauline (Valérie
Mairesse) helps fund the abortion for 22-year old Suzanne (Thérèse Liotard),
who’s struggling to make ends meet with the two kids she already has with a married
photographer. And their bond gets sealed for life upon getting reconnected a
few years later at the historical Bobigny trial. Their nature and life arcs
couldn’t be more disparate – Pauline, the more impulsive and outspoken of the
two, becomes part of a travelling feminist folk group singing quirky political
songs and gets briefly married to an Iranian man, while single mom Susanne, who
gradually embraces her radical spirit, eventually starts a family planning
clinic. The final sequence, shot using a gently panning single take, ended this
defiant yet intimate film on a beautifully elegiac note.
Director: Agnes Varda
Genre: Drama/Buddy Film/Feminist Drama
Language: French
Country: France
Jia Zhangke’s
extraordinary masterpiece 24 City is
a work of tour de force filmmaking –
even if, ironically, that might appear counterintuitive due to its profoundly poignant,
meditative, rigorous and austere nature. He’d crafted a magnificent exploration
of China’s sociocultural flux and ensuing human displacements in Still Life, and the same thematic thread
was continued through the premise here, viz. demolition of a state-owned
military-industrial complex which, at its peak of productivity during the
Korean and Vietnam Wars had employed 30,000 workers and formed a township in
itself, and building in its place a sprawling apartment complex. The film,
therefore, covered two connected displacements – getting in place its massive workforce
from all across when the factory was setup in 1958, and thereafter, the
downsizing once the war efforts petered down and eventual shutdown. Jia made
this in the form of intimate oral histories akin to Svetlana Alexievich’s
literary approach in order to capture the deeply personal stories and anecdotes
that powerfully humanized the cost of “progress”, and, in the process, painting
a heart-wrenching picture of loss, loneliness and desolation. Yet, in an act of
outrageous genre-bending audacity, he mixed non-professionals with established
actors for the interviews, thus blending documentary facts with fictionalized
facts, and therefore underpinning an incisive commentary on the futility of
absolute authenticity when it comes to memories and the idea that there’s no
such thing as 100% objective truth. While all the monologues – penned by the
poet Zhai Yongming – were piercing and poignant, the most breathtaking one involved
the stunning Joan Chen featuring as a lovelorn lady who’s been given a moniker by
her co-workers after a film (Little
Flower) which, ironically, she herself had starred in.
Director: Jia Zhangke
Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Documentary
Language: Mandarin
Country: China
Bold, provocative and
confrontational, Ketan Mehta’s visceral feminist film Mirch Masala was all these and a bit more. Subtlety wasn’t among
its facets, and yet, ironically, its bluntness – a tight-fisted punch against patriarchy,
and the accompanying sexual oppression and abuse against women (legitimized through
traditional power structures) – is what made it all the more powerful. The tale,
based on a short story, is set in an arid hamlet in colonial-era India. The
village is marked by its disdain for anything that challenges status quo – the
then swaraj (self-determination)
movement against the British, education for girls, the right to dignity and
agency for women and lower castes, etc. – and the same is perpetuated by the
village headman (Suresh Oberoi) and slimy priest (Harish Patel). The vicious
and arrogant subedar (Naseeruddin Shah) represents the worst of the lot,
assuming it his birth-right to plunder the village for fun, brutally thrash his
servants, ogle at women and have his libido satisfied at will. Things take a
dramatic turn when his lascivious gaze falls on Sonbai (Smita Patil), a sultry
and defiant married woman lusted by the village. And all hell breaks lose when
she displays the gall and temerity to wound his fragile male-ego, leading to a
thrillingly shot pursuit, and the iconic climax that the film is led to upon her
taking refuge in a factory, guarded by an old watchman (Om Puri), where womenfolk
grind red chillies into powder. Both Patil and Shah gave electrifying
performances, while Deepti Naval, too, was memorable as the headman’s feisty
wife who, like Sonbai, refuses to go silently into the night. The film’s
dominant colour palette was red, symbolizing passion, sexuality, fury and
rebellion.
Director: Ketan Mehta
Genre: Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Ensemble Film
Language: Hindi
Country: India
Rian Johnson’s enjoyable
murder mystery film Knives Out is at
once classicist and modern. On one hand it’s a lavishly mounted pastiche on the
classic whodunits of Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle, where a gentleman sleuth in
a dapper suit makes use of minute clues, half-truths and circumstantial
conjectures for solving a case. On the other hand, it also had undercurrents of
social commentary, in its evocation of class politics as well as in its vocal critique
of the rising reactionary wave of xenophobia and majoritarian supremacy in
opposition to immigration and multiculturalism. The death of wealthy
crimewriter Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), on the night of his 85th
birthday party, invites the visit of Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a renowned
detective with a hilarious Southern drawl, to the Thrombey mansion in order to
investigate the potential crime. What he finds is a dysfunctional family of
pampered, devious and self-centered hypocrites who’d go to any lengths to
secure their share of inheritance – Harlan’s egoist daughter (Jamie Lee Curtis)
who started her business thanks to her father, her philandering husband (Don
Johnson), and their narcissistic brat of a son (Chris Evans); Harlan’s slimy
son (Michael Shannon) who runs his father’s publishing company, his right-wing
fanatic wife (Riki Lindhome) and their alt-right teenage son; Harlan’s widowed daughter-in-law
(Toni Collette), who’s a lifestyle guru and siphon’s Harlan’s money on the
side, etc. And then there’s Harlan’s gentle-natured nurse (Ana de Amas), a Latin-American
girl whose origin is hilariously confused as Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and
Brazil by the wretched family members. Even if too slight to be taken very seriously,
the film nevertheless was both funny and stinging in its parody and satire.
Director: Rian Johnson
Genre: Crime Comedy/Mystery/Ensemble Film
Language: English
Country: US
