Conclave [2024]

 Who’d have thought that a movie packed with ageing, pompous, conservative and hyper-religious men in ostentatious dresses could make for a taut papal thriller. Adapted from Robert Harris’ bestselling novel of the same name, Conclave was at its most entertaining when it functioned as a pulpy potboiler. When the pope dies of a heart attack, what ensues is one of the oldest and most secretive rituals – viz. election of the next pope. Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), as dean of the College of Cardinals, becomes the most powerful man in the Catholic church at such a time as this, and congregates the titular papal conclave at the Vatican City. The frontrunners are a liberal British Cardinal (Stanley Tucci), an ultra-orthodox and gleefully nasty Italian (Sergio Castellitto), a Canadian moderate (John Lithgow) who had a suspicious meeting with the Pope just before his death, an African-American (Lucian Misamati), whose win could be historic moment for the church, though ironically, he’s exceptionally regressive in his views, and an enigmatic last-minute arrival (Carlos Diehz) who’s been based in various war zones. It was amusing, bordering on the fiendish, seeing seemingly “pious” and “dignified” men concocting petty machinations at the canteen and corridors, squabbling with each other like schoolkids, and even resorting to Machiavellian ploys to win the coveted position. Along the way murky events – both within the sequestered chamber and outside – make the proceeding more dramatic. However, where the film faltered – which slightly undermined its delicious fun – was when it tried portraying moral seriousness, existential dilemmas and political correctness. Consequently, while Fiennes was excellent in his performance, his character was arguably the least interesting of the lot vis-à-vis his smug, hyper-competitive and power-hungry colleagues.

Director: Edward Berger

Genre: Drama/Thriller/Religious Drama/Conspiracy Thriller

Language: English/Italian/Latin/Spanish

Country: UK

Padatik (The Guerrilla Fighter) [1973]

 Padatik – the thrilling, fierce, sardonic and meditative final chapter in Mrinal Sen’s extraordinary ‘Calcutta Trilogy’, preceded by Interview and Calcutta 71 – was political cinema at its most blazing, dialectical and fearlessly radical. The electrifying work was infused with Godard’s self-reflexive style and Costa-Gavras’ pulsating aesthetics, in solidarity with the spirit of internationalism while embedded in the turbulent zeitgeist of 1970s Calcutta, powerfully advocating Marxist ideals and agitprop principles of ‘Third Cinema’ and cinema of praxis, and interweaved with dazzling formal and stylistic choices. Sen interspersed observational and conversational chamber sequences with energetic hand-held cams on the streets, documentary footage, newspaper reels, mock advertisements, striking protest photography by himself, Brechtian interludes, POV shots, jump cuts and freeze frames. The film consequently alternated in its championing of revolutionary fervour, class consciousness and political dissent; takedown of apathy, rigid obedience and shallow consumerism; and introspections on the Left confronting the state while grappling with internal conflicts. Splendidly shot by K.K. Mahajan and scored by Ananda Shankar, it follows a few days in the life of Sumit (Dhritiman Chatterjee), a militant Communist who’s been provided refuge, upon escaping from a police van, at an upscale apartment owned by a Punjabi-Bengali woman (Simi Garewal) who’s employed with an ad agency, sympathetic to revolutionary causes and engaged in feminist activism. Sumit’s inner turmoil – which turns towards disillusionment while stationed in the flat – is manifested through his long, intimate conversations with his hostess, changing camaraderie with a younger comrade, and his fraught relationship with his ageing father (Bijon Bhattacharya), a former freedom fighter and now an exploited factory labourer. Chatterjee’s terrific turn, and the film too, incidentally, made for a fascinating complement to Ray’s masterful Pratidwandi.

p.s. This is a revisit.

Director: Mrinal Sen

Genre: Drama/Political Drama

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Calcutta 71 [1972]

 In Calcutta 71, Mrinal Sen constructed a fierce and subversive examination of impoverishment, deprivation, exploitation and the seeds of revolutionary politics, with irony, eclectic influences informed by European New Wave and Third Cinema, and a powerful Marxist lens. Shaped like a multi-act piece, the second film in his magnificent ‘Calcutta Trilogy’ – bookended by Interview and Padatik – was as ferociously political and biting in its social observations as it was dazzling in its blend of formal choices, narrative devices and cinematic styles ranging from classical to experimental. Following an arresting montage, The droll prologue – in the veins of farcical political satire – finds the protagonist from the previous film (Ranjit Mallick) facing an absurdist trial for having exhibited anti-capitalist angst by defiling a mannequin, and featured a hilarious anti-proletarian war waged by the bourgeoisie. That segued into four thematically-linked episodes (adapted from stories by Manik Bandopadhyay, Probodh Sanyal, Samaresh Basu and Ajitesh Bandopadhyay) – a destitute family in the 1930s who’re forced to seek an alternative shelter from incessant rains; a family forced to meet ends through prostitution, while struggling to maintain middle-class respectability, during the 1943 famine; a group of rebellious teenagers smuggling rice by train, braving righteous cops and overbearing middle-class men; and a cocktail party filled with self-centred wealthy humbugs. The first three were made in the neorealist tradition, while the fourth was a quintessential Felliniesque parody. The film ended with a scorching agitprop epilogue where a young Naxal revolutionary, killed by the cops, holding the audience to account. The ensemble cast included Utpal Dutt as a sneering prosecutor, Haradhan Bandopadhyay as an irate judge, Madhabi Mukherjee as a troubled working woman, and Ajitesh Bandopadhyay as a pompous hypocrite.

p.s. This is a revisit.

Director: Mrinal Sen

Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Political Satire/Black Comedy/Omnibus Film/Experimental Film

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Interview [1971]

 Mrinal Sen made a fabulous entry into radical political cinema – blending plucky insouciance, subversive wit and searing angst – with Interview. It, in turn, laid the foundations for his blazing ‘Calcutta Trilogy’ – which also comprised of the scorching Calcutta 71 and the scintillating Padatik – and demonstrated his love for counterpointing Marxist discourse and dissent with formal bravura and postmodernist playfulness. The slice-of-life dusk-to-dawn premise is centred on the titular interview. A young, personable, middle-class guy (Ranjit Mallick) – eager to ascend the social ladder – has landed an opportunity for a lucrative job at a foreign corporation, thanks to his uncle. All he must do is arrive in a dapper Western suit. His plans, unfortunately, go haywire, as his only suit is in a laundry which is shut on account of a flash labour strike, and thereafter for being unable to remain insular in a crowded bus. The only option left to him, ultimately, is to arrive at the prized interview in a scandalously inappropriate attire. The film, interestingly, began with the dismantling of a statue representing colonial past and culminated with the disrobing of a mannequin embodying consumerist present, whilst the tone transitioned from wry and amusing for most parts to seething fury at the end. Around the one-third mark, the protagonist dramatically breaks the fourth wall while traveling in a tramcar, and sheepishly informs that he’s an actor being followed by a movie camera, his onscreen mother is played by Karuna Bannerjee (Pather Panchali’s Sarbojaya), and his story is real despite the artifice. This Brechtian departures, combined with satirical liveliness and ingenious use of street photographs and footage (shot by Sen himself), made it a work of impish, idiosyncratic audacity.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of this film can be found here.

Director: Mrinal Sen

Genre: Drama/Political Satire/Experimental Film

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Amar Lenin (My Lenin) [1970]

 While Ritwik Ghatak’s staunch political beliefs and leanings remained largely beneath the complex dramatic surfaces of his films – imbuing the themes and proceedings with additional context without making them overtly political – they were far more articulated elsewhere, be it in his writings or in his iconoclastic documentary Amar Lenin. Once a holy grail for Ghatak aficionados as it’d been rendered obscure by censorship woes and formal unavailability – it was, in fact, banned by the country’s Censor Board, which was eventually overturned by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi – and it continues to exist today in the fringes through low-quality bootleg copies, and denied public screenings on the rare occasions that anyone attempts to do that. What’s particularly ironic is that, this 20-minute work, made in order to commemorate the birth centenary of Vladimir Lenin, was anything but inflammatory or provocative; rather, made on a small budget, it was completely devoid of hyperbolics, belligerence and harangue, and its tone was gentle, restrained and quietly uplifting. “Jatra”, a traditional form of folk-theatre popular in rural Bengal that’re generally focussed on religious and mythological topics, was often used during the 1960s and 70s by Communist collectives and playwrights to raise social and political awareness; the docu begins with a footage of one such performance at a village, with Marx and Lenin in Western outfits but speaking in Bengali, and then ending with a joyous recital of L’Internationale in Bengali. A young farmer, upon seeing this, is inspired to read more about Lenin’s ideas and activism, and then takes a trip to Calcutta to witness the processions, events and speeches celebrating the centenary, and finally participates with other farmers in a land collectivisation drive.

Director: Ritwik Ghatak

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film/Short Film

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Thampu [1978]

 Aravindan’s gently observational, lyrical and understated docufiction Thampu delicately straddled between fact and fiction. Alongside its form and aesthetics that were shaped by verité and fly-on-the-wall filmmaking, through portraitures deeply rooted in social realities, fragmentary structure, poetic visual language, and startling instances of breaking the fourth wall, it manifested that through its making too. Aravindan travelled to a coastal hamlet in Kerala with few former circus artistes; they set up tent, called the villagers to view performances, and shot the acts juxtaposed with the audience’s enthralled reactions; the villagers eventually got involved in the preparations of an upcoming festival, which therefore led to closure of this setup that merged avant-garde filmmaking with social experiment. Its spare three-point arc – viz. a traveling circus troupe arrives from somewhere to a nondescript village; temporarily sets up shop, provides performances to paying audience during evenings, while practicing during the days; and quietly departs for some other destination – was accompanied with fleeting insights into the group’s long history, current financial challenges, and growing weariness among its older crew members, and interspersed with the aforementioned local festivities and existential crisis of a young guy belonging to an upper class family who’s at odds with his father on account of his love for arts and music instead of worldly affairs. The cast comprised of non-professionals as well as few professional actors like Bharath Gopi as the troupe’s brusque manager who wields his power over this motley group of impoverished, marginalized, disenfranchised and nomadic performers. Shot in austere B/W by veteran cinematographer Shaji N. Karun, it wasn’t surprising that Aravindan displayed such profound empathy for his subjects considering that, like them, he too existed in the margins.

Director: G. Aravindan

Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Docu-fiction/Experimental Film

Language: Malayalam

Country: India

Aghaat [1985]

 While Govind Nihalani’s films were always political, rarely were they so unreservedly Marxist as his compelling and immensely underrated Aghaat. With it he delivered a persuasive, smouldering and nuanced examination of union politics and class struggle. It also, in turn, completed a trilogy of sorts with two brilliant and better-known earlier films. He focussed on a pursuer of individual justice in Aakrosh, an enforcer of legal and vigilante measures in Ardh Satya, and a custodian and enabler of workers’ rights here. Additionally, aside from being fiery, gritty and with violent overtones, the protagonists in all three were driven by their deeply embedded sense of right and wrong and stubborn refusal to quit in morally compromised worlds. It began with a striking dance performance – allegorically demonstrating revolutionary spirit of exploited workers – performed by and for a factory’s union members. Enter Madhav Verma (Om Puri), an educated, conscientious and profoundly committed union representative who’s striving to secure bonuses and benefits with everyone’s long-term interests in mind. His job, however, is complicated on account of a rival outfit – led by self-serving rabble-rouser Rustom Patel (Naseeruddin Shah, in a cameo) and mobilized on ground by his thuggish henchman (Bharath Gopi) – which is fast poaching members through nasty sabotage and reckless promises. When a shopfloor labourer (Pankaj Kapoor) meets with a crushing accident, that ensues an especially unfortunate three-way tug of war with the company bosses who’re happy to play both sides, leading towards an inevitably combustible culmination. The film, buoyed by Vijay Tendulkar’s script that was alternately wordy, introspective and high-octane, was led by a dominant lead performance by Om Puri, and fine turns by Gopi, Amrish Puri, Sadashiv Amrapurkar, Rohini Hattangadi, etc.

Director: Govind Nihalani

Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Crime Drama

Language: Hindi

Country: India

Garm Hava (Scorching Winds) [1973]

 M.S. Sathyu’s celebrated film Garam Hava delved into the minority experience during India’s Partition, not in terms of physical violence and political intricacies, but on its social and economic costs, by steadfastly focusing on a Muslim family that served as a microcosmic representation of the community. Additionally, it provided a mirror to three disparate periods – 1948, recently independent yet divided nation, on the backdrop of Gandhi’s assassination, when the story is set; 1973, on the verge of being plunged into Emergency, when the film was made (against considerable odds); and now, a polarized time replete with ghettoization and persecutions. The slice-of-life parable – adapted from a short story by Marxist and feminist Urdu writer Ismat Chughtai, and adapted jointly by Urdu poet Kaifi Azmi, and script writer, art director and Sathyu’s wife Shama Zaidi – is centred on the Mirza family in Agra, which is headed by two contrasting brothers. While the elder brother, who’s involved in politics and is aware of his self-interests, relocates to the newly formed Pakistan, the idealistic and gentle-natured Salim (veteran thespian Balraj Sahni, in a distinguished turn, that was also his final), who runs a shoe business, and stays back with his wife, kids and aged mother. His deep optimism that things will soon improve is continuously undermined as he loses their ancestral home, sees his business spiral, and faces religious hostility, while his love-stuck daughter (Gita Siddharth) suffers debilitating heartbreaks, elder son checks out, and younger son (Farooq Shaikh) fails to get employed. Yet, despite these relentlessly tragic setbacks, Salim refuses to surrender his dignity and hope, and ultimately embraces progressive politics, with this humanist streak providing a moving mirror to these turbulent times.

Director: M.S. Sathyu

Genre: Drama/Family Drama/Political Drama

Language: Urdu/Hindi

Country: India

Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyoon Aata Hai [1980]

 Saeed Akhtar Mirza’s excellent tapestry Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyoon Aata Hai opened with an absorbing ride through the streets of Bombay, accompanied by a smooth jazzy score, which immediately made this seem like an intoxicating love letter to the city. Being the gentle, erudite and politically invested filmmaker that he was, Mirza had of course in mind a much more nuanced exploration and complex investigation of the city than that. He accomplished that through interlacing of three fervently political themes – with an infectious mix of satirical chuckle, simmering angst and defiantly Marxist gaze – viz. portrayal of minority experience, depiction of a heretofore “apolitical” working-class protagonist’s furiously evolving class consciousness, and an impassioned probe into the early days of what would erupt into the “Great Bombay Textile Strike” during the early-1980s. His infusion of elements of documentary and reportage into the narrative, and a dialectical reworking of the “angry young man” persona, brought in intriguing additional dimensions to it. The film’s eponymous protagonist, played with insouciance and aplomb by Naseeruddin Shah, is a Christian auto-mechanic who starts off as an aimlessly angry, smug, opinionated and insular guy who’s proud of his wealthy customers, is incorrigibly boorish to his independent-minded girlfriend (Shabana Azmi), and is casually derisive of any protests by workers. However, when his father (Arvind Deshpande), a veteran textile worker, is beaten up by lumpen thugs at the best of the mill owners for participating in strikes, he starts experiencing a remarkable change in his political views and expressing solidarity towards those who he’d been dismissive of. The fine cast also comprised of Smita Patil as Albert’s wry sister and Dilip Dhawan as his disillusioned brother, among others.

Director: Saeed Akhtar Mirza

Genre: Drama/Urban Drama/Political Drama/Romantic Drama

Language: Hindi

Country: India

Khandhar (The Ruins) [1984]

 Made during the 1980s, his final productive decade, Mrinal Sen’s Khandhar was as much about physical ruins as emotional ones. The interplay between the two, especially how one informs the other, added nuanced undertones to this quietly evocative work. Like many films before and since, it’s around a few urbane and carefree friends going on a short fun getaway out of the city, only to experience something far deeper and more complex than what they’d expected. It begins with Subhash (Naseeruddin Shah), a photographer, reliving a lasting melancholic memory elicited by an old photo of a woman that he’d taken in the past, and that’s followed by a double click into that memory. Dipu (Pankaj Kapoor) had coaxed him into taking a weekend trip to his ruinous ancestral home located far from the madding crowd; Shubhash’s thoughtful nature and Dipu’s matter-of-factness are complemented by the goofy spirit of Anil (Annu Kapoor), who also joins them. Upon arriving at this dilapidated estate – which had once boasted of prosperity but eventually turned into a crumbling wasteland as residents moved out and scattered elsewhere, and which seems to be stuck in a time warp that’s far removed from modern city amenities – they meet Jamini (Shabana Azmi), an intelligent but lonely woman who too is irrevocably stuck. Her blind and dependent mom, obsessed with a guy who’d promised to marry Jamini but never did, starts assuming that he’s finally returned, and that leads to the formation of a fleeting yet profound attachment between Shubhash and Jamini. Elegantly shot by K.K. Mahajan, comprising of a particularly memorable turn by Azmi, and filled with deafening silences, this clearly remains one of Sen’s most low-key works.

Director: Mrinal Sen

Genre: Drama/Romantic Drama

Language: Hindi

Country: India

Bhuvan Shome [1969]

 Mrinal Sen’s first Hindi film, Bhuvan Shome, came at an intriguing juncture. While he’d already made 8 features – including the delightfully roguish romcom Akash Kusum – he was still a year away from transitioning into an emphatically political filmmaker. This seriocomic ‘slice of life’ tapestry – which he adapted in an understated deadpan vein from a story by the pseudonymous Bengali novelist “Banaphool” – nevertheless amply demonstrated his burgeoning love for formal playfulness, from jump cuts, freeze frames and animated doodles to whimsical episodes, wry internal monologues and sardonic narrations (by Amitabh Bachchan in his first movie credit). Incidentally, Satyajit Ray, who’d derisively summarized it as “Big Bad Bureaucrat Reformed by Rustic Belle” – his seven-word synopsis, though, was inch-perfect – may’ve been influenced by it to an extent when he made his first Hindi feature 8 years later, viz. the deliciously satiric period film Shatranj Ke Khiladi. The eponymous Mr. Shome (Utpal Dutt), a high-ranking Bengali civil servant and middle-aged widower – is an incorrigibly proud and uncompromising stickler for rules. Growing mid-life existential crisis leads him to a “hunting holiday” – in a farcical attempt to cure loneliness with adventure – and finds himself in an isolated terrain in rural Gujarat. At the end of an absurdist last-mile bullock cart ride, he’s inadvertently acquainted with Gauri (Suhasini Muley), a lively, unambiguous and friendly village girl who helps the gauche Shome, clearly a fish out of water, while also reforming him without really meaning to. During his bumbling expedition, Gauri’s vivacious charm and nonconformist views end up striking a deep chord within him – probably falling in love with her too – and he finds himself a light-hearted and uncharacteristically forgiving man upon his return to the city.

Director: Mrinal Sen

Genre: Comedy/Social Satire/Adventure

Language: Hindi

Country: India

A Night of Knowing Nothing [2021]

 Payal Kapadia’s stunning hybrid docu essay A Night of Knowing Nothing – alternately hypnotic and urgent, intimate and shared, impressionistic and pulsating, melancholic and feverish, fragile and radical – fluidly glided between epistolary narrative, found footage and defiant activism. The ‘Film and Television Institute of India’ graduate made her institute both canvas and springboard for her inquiries into individual and collective memories, and invoked Milan Kundera’s powerful statement in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. The delicately muted yet boldly shapeshifting work, unsurprisingly, bore eclectic cinematic traces – from being informed by Chantal Akerman, Chris Marker and John Abraham to directly nodding to Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Pasolini and Ghatak. Set to the heartbreaking voiceover of an unnamed film student – lamenting, over letters to her estranged boyfriend, the breakdown of their relationship as she belongs to a lower caste, and thereby touching upon how love is as much political as it’s personal in an intensely patriarchal and caste-ridden society like India – it expanded into a rousing testament to dissent, disobedience and resistance by students. Starting with the massive protests that’d rocked FTII upon the outrageous appointment of a loyalist of the country’s reactionary government – which Kapadia had herself fearlessly participated in – it then segued into student activism movements that erupted across various public universities, and the violent wrath of the state machinery that they faced. The film’s contrapuntal texture – interlacing elegiac meditations and dream-like images with the thrilling here-and-now verité of archival footage – was magnificently woven through its amorphous structure, exquisite photographic compositions – grainy, low-fi, 8mm and 16mm B/W images, interspersed with shots of saturated colours – and deeply absorbing sound design.

Director: Payal Kapadia

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film

Language: Hindi/Bengali

Country: India

Kalyug [1981]

 Kalyug, Shyam Benegal’s modern-day retelling of Mahabharat, mirrored the giant epic’s violent tale of familial feud, hubris, compromised ethics and mutually assured destruction. Co-written with Satyadev Dubey and Girish Karnad, it transplanted the epic from medieval world of warring royalties to hostile corporate behemoths – two branches of the same family – in 1980s Bombay, who, in their unbridled power lust and desirous of a prized government contract, roll out increasingly ruinous machinations. One half of the battling families – the Pandavas – is represented by the soft-spoken eldest brother (Raj Babbar), the hedonistic middle-brother (Kulbhushan Kharbanda), the arrogant but capable youngest brother Bharatraj (Anant Nag), and the eldest’s bewitchingly beautiful wife Supriya (Rekha) who secretly covets the youngest. The other half – the Kauravas – is represented by the vindictive Dhanraj (Victor Banerjee), and his great friend and mastermind Karan (Shashi Kapoor), who’s a cultured loner, carries a secret torch for Supriya, and – unbeknownst to himself – is the former trio’s eldest brother. One pitfall of having a massive ensemble cast – which also comprised of Sushma Seth as family matriarch, Amrish Puri as her brother, A.K. Hangal as ageing loyalist, Om Puri as trade union leader, Supriya Pathak as Bharatraj’s young wife – is that they must shine in their limited screentime. The heavy plot painted a bleak picture of greed, cut-throat competition and murky realpolitik, while providing limited scope to delve deeper. The film, therefore, was a mix of some captivating highs – Karan’s reaction upon hearing his backstory and Supriya’s motherly consolation of a broken Bharatraj that veered towards erotic were haunting moments, Om Puri’s cameo was explosive, and the bloody tale was unapologetically maximalist – and unavoidable lows due to plot contrivances and overcooked moments.

Director: Shyam Benegal

Genre: Drama/Family Drama/Crime Drama

Language: Hindi

Country: India

Manthan (The Churning) [1976]

 Shyam Benegal, who’d made ad films on Amul during his advertising days, partnered with Verghese Kurien – who’d played a pivotal role in Amul’s success and “White Revolution in India” during the 1970s – and a whopping 500,000 farmers who donated Rs. 2 each, in his compelling film Manthan. It was infused with remarkable political prescience by being a crowdfunded film – and therefore, free of commercial obligations – that chronicled the cooperative dairy movement pioneered by Kurien which turned milk farmers into micro-owners and thereby considerably freed of exploitations by predatory businessmen. Benegal, however, didn’t have a hagiographic character study in mind. Instead, through Manohar Rao (Girish Karnad), a veterinary doctor who arrives in a tiny hamlet with hopes of collectivising the rural community into a cooperative, he painted a microcosmic and multitextured tapestry on impoverished villagers manipulated, fleeced and turned into bonded labour by a cunning local dairy owner (Amrish Puri), and rabid cast-based discrimination of the Dalit populace by an upper-caste Panchayat leader (Kulbhushan Kharbanda). The gruff and tenacious Rao, armed with his with socialist and egalitarian ideals, must navigate through these complex, seething and violent fault-lines in order to have the milk cooperative set-up and operationalized. The fearlessly rebellious Bhola (Naseeruddin Shah), the fiery and independent-minded Bindu (Smita Patil), Rao’s troubled wife (Abha Dhulia) and his impassive colleague (Mohan Agashe) interlaced the brewing maelstrom with riveting human dynamics. This remarkable final chapter in Benegal’s bleak and fierce ‘Rural Trilogy’ – preceded by Ankur and Nishant – comprised of an alternately angry, mournful and sensuous script by Vijay Tendulkar and Kaifi Azmi, lyrical vistas of the harsh landscape by Govind Nihalani, and a recurring song that served as a deeply evocative motif.

Director: Shyam Benegal

Genre: Drama/Rural Drama/Film a Clef

Language: Hindi

Country: India

The Story of Film: An Odyssey [2011]

 At just over a century, cinema is, by some distance, the youngest of all major artforms; yet, it has evolved, expanded and shape-shifted so extraordinarily in its relatively brief history, that any attempts at chronicling its history is bound to be an exercise in audacity. Furthermore, when one realizes that it freely built upon multiple other artforms, and its progression has been as technical as cultural and political, one can also sense the sheer complexity of that endeavour. If one dizzying way to do that was Godard’s dense, metatextual and monumental video essay Histoire(s) du Cinéma, another diametrically opposite approach was Marc Cousin’s in The Story of Film. Running at 900 minutes, and covering around 1000 films across all 6 continents, this was no less ambitious. Further, by consciously spending considerable time on silent cinema, covering films from the “global south”, and complementing technical evaluations and historical details with highly personal views – even if they were dubious or superficial at times – Cousins made this much more idiosyncratic than what a more straightforward documentary would’ve been. Spread over 15 chapters, it covered an immensely wide spectrum – films made within and outside the studio system, films that’re canonical and those beyond the canon, popular and arthouse movies, films demonstrating technological developments as well as political contexts – which also made it episodic and engaging, even if this sacrifice of depth for breadth made it too cursory and thereby less rigorous. Notwithstanding Cousins’ exasperating diction and repetitiveness, one must admire his love for the medium, the stunning span of his focus, and the herculean efforts that he invested by interviewing diverse people and physically visiting numerous places during the course of its making.

Director: Mark Cousins

Genre: Documentary/History/Mini-Series

Language: English

Country: UK

Amma Ariyan (Report to Mother) [1986]

 John Abraham didn’t just embody his trailblazing mentor Ritwik Ghatak – his cinematic dare, blazing left-wing politics, defiant anti-establishmentarianism, self-destructive alcoholism and tragically curtailed life – but perhaps even took these a step further. His iconoclastic final feature Amma Ariyan – he died a year later upon a terrible accident – vividly manifested his fierce radicalism in every aspect. Made under ‘Odessa Collective’ that he’d formed with dreams of making filmmaking a political act that’s untethered from consumerist restrictions, he financed it through street contributions, made it through a participative process, and screened it in traveling shows. If his production and distribution decisions were stunning acts of rebellion, his formal choices were even bolder. It was, on surface, a road movie as Purushan (Joy Mathew), upon stumbling upon a dead young guy in Waynad who’s committed suicide, first decides to determine his identity and thereafter inform the latter’s mother who resides in Cochin. This journey mirrored the collaborative filmmaking process as what starts off with only Purushan, kept expanding and ultimately transitioned into a people’s movement by the time the targeted destination arrives. The revelation of the dead guy’s shifting backstory – amateur table player, jazz drummer, diffident political activist and Naxalite revolutionary, depending on who you’re asking – was alternated with recounting of and medications on historical acts of police brutality, class struggle and popular resistance that Purushan encounters along their route and which he chronicles in letters to his mother. The film, consequently, was heavily experimental and self-reflexive on one hand, and powerfully suffused with documentary references and political commentaries on the other, thus ensuring that this complex, quietly personal and searingly political work operated well outside both narrative conventions and easy interpretations.

Director: John Abraham

Genre: Political Drama/Road Movie/Experimental Film

Language: Malayalam

Country: India

Jana Aranya (The Middleman) [1976]

 ‘Calcutta Trilogy’, which represented a radical shift for Satyajit Ray – into terrains that were darker, themes that were furiously political, and a form that was edgier – culminated with the Dickensian parable Jana Aranya, arguably the bleakest, murkiest and most cynical of the troika. While the books that Pratidwandi and Seemabaddha had been adapted from were excellent too, the novel by Shankar was the richest and most dazzling of the lot, and the wry, ironic and episodic tale – which progressed towards a desolate climax through seriocomic vignettes – couldn’t have provided for a more apposite finale, and in turn a mirror to the troubled times, and therefore the moody subtexts that Ray had in mind. The film’s caustic opening sequence – students nonchalantly cheating in a university exam, surrounded by classroom walls laden with political graffiti calling for armed rebellion against the state – provided a deadpan introduction to Somnath (Pradep Mukherjee), who doesn’t cheat himself but passively enables the illegitimate act. Though he struggles for a conventional job before being drawn into self-employment as a middleman by an street-smart elderly acquaintance (Utpal Dutt), Somnath doesn’t possess the existential angst or political consciousness of Siddhartha in Pratidwandi; rather, he goes on to demonstrate the elastic moral compass and willingness to participate in rat race of Shyamalendu in Seemabaddha, even if his milieu is his polar opposite – viz. the city’s underbelly where everything is purchasable. This Machiavellian corruptibility is epitomised by Natabar Mittir (played with stinging brilliance by Rabi Ghosh), a “public relations expert”, who persuades Somnath into the sordid act of pimping to win a lucrative contract. Despite its many amusing moments, the film’s vision of urban desolation was simultaneously unnerving and transfixing.

p.s. This is a revisit.

Director: Satyajit Ray

Genre: Drama/Urban Drama

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Seemabaddha (Company Limited) [1971]

 Seemabaddha strikingly contrasted Pratidwandi and Jana Aranya, the two films which bracketed it in Satyajit Ray’s stunning ‘Calcutta Trilogy’. The latter films evoked angst, disillusionment and desolation through college-educated young men struggling to land white-collar jobs. This, instead, delivered a coolly sardonic glimpse into a world of privilege, entitlement, contemptuous indifference towards those not belonging to their exclusive world (from the faceless working-class to those battling to dismantle the system), and corporate rat race, where everyone is outwardly cordial while slyly pushing their selfish interests. Adapted from Shankar’s compelling novel, Shyamalendu (Barun Chanda) is affable, charming, intelligent and articulate; he’s also fervidly ambitious and casually amoral, thereby making him a captivating anti-hero, who we root for even when he’s making ethical transgressions. His choices are revealed through the uncorrupted perspectives of his beautiful sister-in-law (Sharmila Tagore), who’s come over for a few days to his posh company-paid flat. She’s held him in high esteem since long – he was once a brilliant student with scholarly bent – and is amazed by his material successes. As the fast-rising executive in a prestigious British firm, gunning for a big promotion, he’s faced with an acute hurdle when an export consignment is found defective; he – along with a self-serving labour officer (Ajoy Banerjee) – concocts a wicked ploy to turn this challenge into an opportunity, to use “corporate-speak”. In a delicious choice, Ray left it until the midway mark to introduce the central conflict, exquisitely shaping the context until then, which made this dark morality tale’s unravelling that much more biting. The climactic stairway ascension, shot in real-time, was as physically exhausting as stingingly allegorical, in this sharply enacted and incisive critique of consumerist ideals.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review can be found here.

Director: Satyajit Ray

Genre: Drama/Black Comedy/Urban Drama

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Pratidwandi (The Adversary) [1970]

 Satyajit Ray had touched upon political themes on multiple occasions – from capital, corruption, crooked godmen and religious dogmatism to class, feudalism, despotism and war, along with stirring feminist expressions – without necessarily being a political filmmaker. With Pratidwandi – the bravura opening salvo in his fabulous ‘Calcutta Trilogy’ (it was followed by Seemabaddha and Jana Aranya) – he blazingly became one. Ray made the metropolis a complex and dazzling canvas, battle-ground and adversary in this edgy trilogy; the political, social and economic turbulence that’d rocked the city during the late-1960s and 70s, with egalitarian and progressive ideals in collision with employment and material aspirations, informed all three films, and in particular this electrifying tour de force that remains Ray’s most radical expression and amongst his greatest masterworks. Adapted from Sunil Ganguly’s similarly blistering novel, it begins with jolting immediacy as we see Siddhartha (in a powerhouse debut performance by Dhritiman Chatterjee) – shot in photo-negative – confronting his father’s funeral pyre. He’s forced to quit medical studies, and – sandwiched between an unforgettable interview near the beginning and a violent outburst of his pent-up fury towards the end – struggles to land a job. Meanwhile, his male ego is hurt as his sister (Krishna Bose) is the family’s sole breadwinner; his younger brother, displaying decisiveness that he lacks, has joined the Naxalite cause; his friendship with a cynical friend (Kalyan Chatterjee) is counterpointed with his growing intimacy with the lovely Keya (Jayashree Roy); and he’s faced with profound dilemma between political participation vis-à-vis staying on the sidelines as a troubled observer. The film’s thrilling here-and-now atmosphere was amplified by its striking B/W images, jerky handheld cams, smouldering angst, and provocative use of conflicts, memories and dreams.

p.s. This is a revisit.

Director: Satyajit Ray

Genre: Drama/Urban Drama/Political Drama

Language: Bengali

Country: India

A Man of Integrity [2017]

 Dissident Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof’s slow-burn thriller A Man of Integrity – which he secretly made in defiance of the suspended prison sentence and ban on filmmaking that’d been imposed by the state – is a bristling Kafkaesque work that delivered a lashing critique of the corruption, authoritarianism and bureaucracy in the broader society. It did that by pitting a wronged working-class man against a powerful, crooked and intransigent system, thereby making it feel like a companion piece to Zvyagintsev’s terrific movie Leviathan, especially in their fatalist and desolate outlooks accompanied by scorching political undercurrents. The man referred to by its title is Reza (Reza Akhlaghirad), a hot-headed, stubborn and principled man – a prickly combination even on a good day, but more so if you’re financially struggling, without any influential connections and residing in a place where due processes are thoroughly subverted – who displays the temerity to stand for his rights. He runs a small fish farm that he refuses to sell off, owes debts that he decides to address by the book, and gets into a fight with the brutish enforcer of the company that has its sights on his land upon realizing that his water is being deliberately poisoned. That’s just the beginning of his problems as he and his wife – Hadis (Soudabeh Beizaee), the school headmistress and an eloquent woman who stands by her husband while also being thoroughly infuriated by his pig-headedness – find their lives spectacularly falling apart. That’s when he decides to strike back and exact revenge for the injustices, which is inevitably at a heavy price. The tense and moody atmosphere made this grim parable, bursting with fury and dissent, a charged and gripping work.

Director: Mohammad Rasoulof

Genre: Drama/Thriller

Language: Persian

Country: Iran