Let's talk about Bollywood!

Taare zameen par (2007) was Aamir Khan’s début movie as director; and for a “beginner’s” movie, it’s a rather good one. Does this sound rather bland? Yes, I admit, from the point of view of universal cinema quality. It’s probably because the story is just too predictable, and the perspective too well-known. An ill-adapted schoolboy who faces exclusion because of his difference, and who finds a defender in the person of an open-eyed teacher. Nothing we’ve not seen a number of times! But in fact, the film surprises because of its continuous attention to detail, and that’s something I’ve rarely seen in Indian cinema, where a lot of what is filmed doesn’t cost much in terms of thoughtfulness. Why is this? Perhaps because of the industrial nature of cinema in India? But also because of the need to lengthen what could be told in half the time. I don’t mean that Taare zameen par is short; it isn’t, it’s often too long, in fact. But Aamir Khan’s touch is pleasant and precise; there are the animated bits at the beginning; he doesn’t weigh down his film with a useless love-story, and even if some characters are rather simplified (the father, the teachers, the headmaster), his main character, Ishaan (Darsheel Safary), is truly good, as well as Aamir himself. A special mention to Tisca Chopra, the torn mother of the story. So all in all, a solid movie considering the odds.

A beautiful lady, to boot.
 

Much of the enthusiasm for the film (there are 24 pages of ecstatic appreciation on Imdb!) probably comes from this approach: “Only when Aamir reveals after the first half of the film that the child has Dyslexia, I realized the complexity of the poor child. Yes, I was ignorant of the symptoms until then. I'm sure most people were before this movie.” (Altaaf Jaffer on Imdb) Indeed, if for you, dyslexia was a sort of mystery before you watched the film, perhaps you will share this spectator’s feeling; but over here in the West, this educational difficulty is rather well known, and if parents might be ignorant about it, no teacher in any primary school in Europe would react the way the teachers do in the film. Such an attitude reminds us of Dickensian practises, but it is simply impossible today. So obviously, the film, whose suspense is partly dependent on the revelation of Ishaan’s disorder (cf. the scene where Nikumbh tells Ishaan’s dumbfounded parents), fails to create the effect it was made to create.

And predictability is also an issue: what can be achieved artistically by filming such a conventional story? I do not criticise the film’s intention as a social and moral awakener, if indeed the targeted audience needed this. But from an artistic point of view, it has much to lose, and that’s what happens. A few commentators go as far as to call the film manipulative: well, before I answer, here’s one of them:

“There was a perceptible manipulation from the very beginning to make the audience go through the emotional ride, which was made to climax in such a way that most people would not be able to help control their tears. But exactly how honest and true was this film in its endeavor? (…) Trust me, although I found a film like Om Shanti Om absolutely disgusting, meaningless and stupidity epitomized, looking back I think the makers of OSO were more honest and genuine in their approach. They made it absolutely clear that they were making a completely melodramatic, over-the-top, loud and exaggerated 70's spoof. TZP, on the other hand, is also loud, melodramatic and over-the-top in the garb of being sensitive, delicate and intellectual. (…) Aamir is no doubt one of the best we have, but if we are truly looking at using the wonderful medium of movie-making to tell stories, and not just a method of proclaiming our intellectual capabilities - we should probably start being a bit more matured at using it.” (Imdb’s strawberryclouds)

This user is no doubt right if we take into account the simplistic storyline, which is based on the child-victim factor: innocence + suffering + righter of wrongs = tear-jerker = success. Aamir Khan might film well, his turbo-charged movie rides for Kleenex tissue paper. In spite of its rather subtle management of the character-spectator relationship (Aamir-Nikumbh doesn’t smile to indicate his superiority when he’s right, for example), the film cannot be called anything else than melodramatic. One good thing that could have saved it is Ishaan’s character: Aamir did not choose an all-lovable child whose “only” problem would have been his dyslexia, neither does he isolate him completely at that boarding school. The teachers there are normal, if standardised; and the other children do not victimize him unduly. A certain balance is kept. Nevertheless, emotionality as a resource is subtly present, and it works all the better. So yes, manipulative.

Yet my perspective is that there is no dishonesty. The commentator above asks the question: “But exactly how honest and true was this film in its endeavor?” Well, I believe it is almost always true in its endeavour, even if it uses emotionality and a simplistic perspective. What shows this is its desire to focus on the child’s world, its particularity and its difference from the more logic and accessible adult world. Not everybody is capable of filming Pather Panchali, Satyajit Ray’s masterpiece of childhood understanding. But when Aamir Khan shows us Ishaan, with his head upside down (with his hair touching the water unknowingly), in his observation of the tadpoles in the jar he has managed to catch them in, he’s displaying that rare talent of giving children’s world the intensity it deserves. And filming (recreating) childhood truly means leaving the comfortable assurances of accepted realism, accepted usefulness, accepted pleasure norms. A child’s world is at once original and banal, and Ishaan’s is perhaps too magnified, too clever in a way. Still, I appreciated it because it is an honest attempt at picturing the singularity of a child’s mind, and the consequences he and his relatives face when this singularity is misunderstood.

There are some good reviews of the movies, Carla’s (who lucidly underlines the melodramatic dimension) or Beth’s, for example, but others cannot always extract themselves from exaggerated appreciation, the heart-breakingness, etc. I find myself in unison with Memsaab, when she says “ anything exceedingly earnest makes me want to run away screaming. When people have an “important” point to make, usually any kind of nuance or subtlety is tossed away in favor of heavy ammo. I hate being hit over the head with a blunt object.” A round of applause for her great screencaps, too.

Yash Chopra’s “Kabhie kabhie” (1976) was for me like a distant reference, a movie many people had seen and loved back in the exotic seventies, and so, I knew I would have to see it one day. And now that I have, and have both enjoyed it and been disappointed by it, it’s funny because it’s like a ball pushed under water: it surfaces again; it has a buoyancy which testifies to its value in spite of all the mistakes and defects it contains.

Its story is the first thing that shows that ambivalent quality: it’s both psychologically interesting and clumsily patched up, almost too complicated, and yet lifelike. Amit (Almitabh) the poet falls in love with Pooja (Rakhee Gulzar) who loves poetry and the poet. But their parents have other plans, as usual, and they submit to their fate: we are not yet in the 1990s! Pooja starts her married life with Vijay (Shashi Kapoor) and Amit with Anjali (Waheeda Rehman). But the past is kept quietly secret by the two lovers. On top of that, Anjali had a daughter before getting married to Amit, who doesn’t know it. We are introduced to her life with her foster-parents. She’s called Pinky (Neetu Singh) who will soon meet up with Vicky (Rishi Kapoor), Pooja and Vijay’s son. The wedding is announced, and on account of it, Pinky’s foster parents believe they have to tell her about her past, that she isn’t really their daughter. She cannot, they think, begin her married life on a secret. But this revelation will trigger a reaction which will catapult the past into the present. Pinky flees her home to go and meet her unknown mother, leaving everyone in a crisis.

The fact that this rather old-looking teenager decides to reject the loving relationship which the story has painstakingly (but lamely) tried to establish (there is some absurd frolicking between herself and her parents, which is REALLY hard to watch) would be contradiction enough if the film wasn’t exploring the idea of filial love and what makes people recognize their parents as such. Pinky’s reaction to the revelation that she isn’t who she thought she was, might be “silly” from a post-modern point of view where genetics don’t matter as much as the people themselves who have adopted you; but she shows that this question of one’s origin is a deeply set one, and that the debate as what is the most important, nature or culture within us, isn’t as easily decided. When Vicky scolds Pinky for being selfish and risking the balance of Amit’s household with her absurd quest, he hasn’t understood this legitimate need for biological roots. In France, the law favours biological descent in cases of doubtful parenthood, and I think this is a reflection of this reality, even if the rights of adoptive parenthood might seem greater in terms of relational investment.

What’s interesting is that the quest for the origins brings about the other problem that the film deals with: how and to what extent our past is still present in our lives. That is the main subject of the movie: our intimate relationships as mature beings are often shaped by wishes or regrets which played long before, and which adulthood has not managed to sort out. One major illusion we have is that maturity and adulthood should integrate and neglect what have only been the passing desires of youth. Indeed an adult is considered to be such inasmuch as he or she has reached a balance which puts into rightful perspective the desires of young age. Psychoanalysis tells us so, up to a certain extent. But it also tells us that a certain labour might be needed before we reach that stage, and we often meet mature men and women who clearly have not reached it, and behave as if they were re-living (or transposing) the unsolved conflicts and contradictions for which they have not been able to find a solution later in life.

Of course the film contains the standard criticism of the Indian practise of arranged marriages, but it contains it only as an aside: it clearly isn’t the main subject. Even if indeed Amit and Pooja should have been given the right to live together as married man and wife, because love once born between man and woman cannot be suppressed by social decisions, what Yash Chopra is doing in Kabhie Kabhie goes further. After all, he shows that the human mind is much more flexible and malleable than cheap romancing would have it: Vijay and Pooja make a good couple, who in spite of Pooja’s secret, build a relationship which is not only cemented by the existence of their son Vicky, but by true love and an acceptance of time’s decrees which isn’t far from wisdom. And the same goes for Amit and Anjali, even though their union was sitting on the time-bomb of Pinky’s hidden existence and Amit’s romantic wounds.

I think what has interested Yash Chopra is not only to provide his audience with the entertainment of love, even if clearly the film has that aspect. But it also tackles the serious issue of maturity, ie, the responsible management of one’s emotional life. This refers to who we are now, but also to who we have been, and the balancing act of both.  We are not the makers of our fate, of course; what happens to us is partly chance, partly determination (time and space, but also family, society, and country all intervene). Nevertheless, we do have a role, and what we say or hush, for example, is our doing. Now, revealing our failures to others isn’t always positive, in spite of what a certain naive vision of the intrinsic value of truth suggests. Sometimes there’s sound reason to keep things unknown. The past is past. Which means, it is no more. Forgetfulness is often legitimate. I think the film shows that it would perhaps have been better if Pinky had not been told about her real mother; or at any rate her reaction shows that she either should have been told much earlier, or not told at all.

But the film also shows that a past whose status has not been settled remains present and that the more it is denied its presence, the more it will grow out of proportions, compared to what it once was. Anjali was wrong to have hidden the existence of her first daughter to her husband, or rather the society which imposed on her the need to hide this as a sin is wrong. But perhaps Amit was right to feel he had been cheated of his love with Pooja, and perhaps it wasn’t really Anjali’s business to inquire into what could have remained a slowly receding pain? A secret must sometimes remain secret if it hurts too much to be known and thrown in the face of the reconstructed person who has had to rebuild himself as an adult. And it is the responsibility of the secret holder to judge whether the truth is better than the ignorance.

The film has often been recognised as more than imperfect, with editing mistakes, psychological blunders and a ridiculous happy end. Evidently Yash Chopra hasn’t given it the attention he gave to Deewar or Darr, for example. But, even if this is a pity (for a work of art is a whole), it doesn’t take away the interest of the theme, nor does one easily forget the actors’ roles. Amitabh didn’t seem very inspired, it seemed to me, but Shashi Kapoor does a fine job, and so does Rakhee Gulzar, already seen in Kaala Patthar; Neetu Singh and Rishi Kapoor I found quite allright as well. The music is recognised to be memorable, sung by Mukesh and Lata Mangeshkar, of course. If you are interested, Beth has a nice perspective on the Chopra-ness of the film, and there is a good review here, but it’s in French.

Memories of rain, by Sunetra Gupta (1993) is a dark jewel of a book, a sombre and dense memorial stone made of darkness and yearning, frustration and anger. We are inside a sort of cenotaph: a young Bengali woman’s stream of consciousness and we never get a chance to hear anything else than her voice and the poetry which often resounds in the vault. It’s gloomy in a sense, but the prose is so dense and palpable that – as an unborn child waiting for birth - one is lulled and fed by its rhythm and texture. Sometimes you gasp for breath, but then, as opposed to the narrator, you can lay down the book and return to it later! I have to say that I have had trouble finishing the 200p novel: it isn’t long, but so little happens that one is at first unsettled and has to adapt. In fact everything has already happened, and what we read is the tremendous impact of what has happened.

She’s called Moni, and one day, during the Calcutta monsoon, Anthony, a drenched young Englishman, her brother’s friend, enters her house and life, and gets caught by her heavy aura of darkness. Like a satellite he is held prisoner by the gravitational pull of a dark star he hadn’t seen as he was cruising by. They marry, and she’s flown away to Bristol, England, where a short-lived period of agonized lust takes place, an Moni, keeping company to her dull mother-in-law, waits every day for Anthony to return from London. She bears a child, but soon their relationship deteriorates, and Anthony meets with Anna, a poet’s daughter and physically Moni’s contrary. The passion which starts between Anthony and Anna is the story’s main event. Moni now revolves around the two bright stars in a desperate orb of darkness and frustration. What she feels and thinks about while suffering because of them is the substance of the book.

Moni’s tragedy is that she’s a doomed woman, engulfed in a destiny of resignation and self-abasement; she cannot shout out, she cannot rebel and plead; she’s made to accept from the start, to resign herself to whatever happens to her, and we as readers watch as disconsolately what she is unable to change as much in front of her as within her, in the sediments of feminine behaviour that she’s made of. Here’s an extract from the book:

She will steal away like a sorry child, without dignity, she cannot confront him, the language of their love was silence, but now the space between them is dull with forgotten emotion, she cannot use silence to convey her pain, they stand upon Parliament Hill, the child unravelling her kite, Anna’s hair shimmering like a net upon the morning wind, the smoky profile of the city stretches out in the distance, she is still a stranger to this land, she watches the dark lust upon his eyes as they twist about in the sea of pale gold that blows upon his face, her hair, she reaches out for his trembling hand, he looks round in surprise, she has not reached for him in many years, she takes his quivering hand in hers, she will know the depth of his desire, she will feel the keenness of his lust, she will intercept the waves of passion that roll towards the emerald eyes, she must remember how much he once loved her to enjoy the prospect of leaving him, for she will not have the pleasure of his despair, she must steal away, when he would least suspect, in the few holy hours before a birthday party… (p.98-99)

This is in fact what Moni will do, this is the only action she will be capable of: slide back to her old place in her parents’ home, get back to her world, to her ring of safety and balance, where the forces that have played upon her and jolted her numb are no longer felt, where poetic oblivion can once again engulf her and soothe her like a child. Moni is as much a woman as a child; her femininity is omnipresent, her body and desires are heavy and rapturous, yet her will is childlike, strangely she can accomplish and impose nothing. In front of her husband’s desire, she submits; in front of his mistress, she submits, and all she needs is to remember, to live her feelings in the past and in song. If she had fought against her rival, God knows what would have happened. But all she can summon is that silent retreat away from him, because she knows he’s involved in an absolute of reality that she can’t even name for herself. He at least knows this absolute, even if she hates him for it. And yet, no, she doesn’t hate him. Not any more. What she feels is that numb distance, that frigid friendliness with darkness, whom she says has been her friend ever since she was little. We see her at times making strange love to this darkness, opening her body to it…

So the paradox and strange attraction at the centre of this story is  a mixture of powerlessness and intensity: she's transfixed, like the toad her brother wanted to anaesthetize and dissect, but on the other hand, it is Moni who creates, she’s the one who magnifies, who churns love into beauty, light into night, song into silence. What Anthony (and everybody else around her) has done is merely at the surface. She inhabits the immense caves of emptiness. The sombre, black-blue beauty we are washed into comes out of her only. It’s sometimes hard to see its colour, but when you do see it, Anna’s golden hair and green fairy eyes are just speckles of day which the huge Monsoon is about to swallow. Moni the dark witch, the drowned queen, the Mermaid of memory, has a power which can hurt no one, but which makes her utterly ill-adapted to the grassy playfulness of human frivolities. No wonder her prince left her to her depths. Having been caught by the spell of her moist black hair, he has quickly let go, and surfacing, has dabbled in the shiny beauty of Anna’s sunniness. She was his truth.

Not everybody will like Memories of rain. Critics say it is indebted to Virginia Woolf’s famous style of writing, but it also probably has the idiosyncrasies of the first novel that it is. Wading through it, I was wondering whether it could possibly become a movie, and I found myself answering yes, surprisingly enough, provided the director could transpose some of its thickness, some of its “glueyness”. I’m sure they are ways to recreate the feeling of hopeless imprisonment that pervades the story, along with its magnificent exploration of the realms of dark femininity. Moni could be interpreted by warm and stubborn Tabu, who has the sombre quality needed, as well as the voluptuousness; then Anthony might be any light-skinned actor, but who would have to have the intelligence and perceptiveness of a sophisticated Englishman!

Roja is an excellent little movie made by Mani Ratnam back in 1992, starring Arvind Swami and Madhoo (Raghunath); it was a real pleasure to watch another of Mani Ratnam’s works. His intelligence, his realism, his careful balance of private and public issues which are typical of his works, all this provides a cinematographic pleasure that makes you feel clever and informed.

This is the story: After an opening scene where soldiers, in the misty half-light of a mountainous forest, encircle and catch a man whom we later come to recognize as a Kashmiri separatist, the scene changes to the Indian countryside, full of splendour and worthy of Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s shots in his film “Home”. We then follow the arrival of an educated young man, Rishi Kumar, who comes  to visit a family where he hopes to find a wife (he's no less than as a local hero - very funny and touching scenes of welcome). He wishes to marry a “village belle”, he says, even though he’s always lived in the city. But when he arrives in front of her, she has a secret: she cannot marry him, could he please choose another girl?  But, guess what? Upon arriving in the village, the visitor had been spotted by the younger sister, Roja.

The spectator has already noticed her, this fiery, brown-eyed beauty, during the bucolic opening. And while the young man was coming, she had spied on him, they had exchanged looks (those knowing looks that lovers the world over recognize immediately, but know as well how to reject because of social realities). But when Rishi Kumar’s decision has to be made public, when they all ask him whether he’s made up his mind, he points to Roja: “she’s the one I want”. Of course this is a minor scandal, and for Roja most of all, but she doesn’t have the choice, and must marry the nice-looking stranger. During the wedding ceremonies and the song Rukmani rukmani which captures its joy and expresses its social meaning, Mani Ratnam uses a remarkable background: a rushing floodlit waterfall, symbol of the impetuousness of love perhaps, and makes old women dance with the young, in a vibrant celebration of life. But Roja leaves her home without her sister having explained the quandary she put her in. This is nevertheless only momentary, and the valiant little sister will soon have her heart filled beyond her dreams.

Then drama occurs; this newly found treasure of a hubbie is kidnapped, and taken into hiding; the horrid battle of waiting, hoping, doubting, despairing takes place, all too familiar in our modern world. Those who know Mani Ratnam know he’s capable of great and efficient suspense there. But I won’t tell you how the film’s story continues, only that it’s packed with action and feeling, against a backdrop of breathtaking natural beauty.

That is what the film will be, in fact, a magnificent celebration of beauty, life and love, in the best Bollywoodian tradition, the one that doesn’t base its appeal on the star-system. Of course it’s Mani Ratnam, so there’s the political purpose (see below), but first the film is simply a classic and perfect Bollywood production, with all the necessary and well-balanced, well seasoned ingredients: we have the intense love affair, the danger-filled and malevolent obstacles to love, the charming and witty humour, which comes from the situations themselves, and does not require a comedian’s antiques; the superb songs (AR Rahman, needless to say), which emerge from the intensity of the action, or the passion; and there are all the great emotions: generosity, hatred, courage, determination, indignation, resistance, pity, silent love, and the magical climax where the two lovers reunite and tears gush out.

Madhoo/Roja is the soul of the movie: her willpower, fuelled by a love which never fails, her faith that Rishi Kumar, her adored husband, is alive in spite of all odds: these feelings are so poignantly presented that it works, we forget the little inconsistencies and the exaggerated story elements. She appears to have forgotten herself, and becomes the fighting wife, the astoundingly daring lover, whose youth serves as experience and aplomb. Her self-confidence sweeps aside, not only all resistance, but all disbelief that we are watching a movie. We are absorbed in the anguish of her quest, in the fearlessness of her pursuit, and we fear with her, we hope with her, we cry with her. Such is the strength of acting!

Arvind Swami’s character and personality touches also, because of his restraint and solidity. He doesn’t emote a lot, perhaps, but I found I liked his acting, which is at times almost expressionless: this lack of intensity struck me in fact as a kind of strength, and the sign of a maturity which complements Roja’s youthful and domineering character. Reviews on Imdb have noted the patriotism of the scene where beaten and humiliated, Rishi Kumar manages to repeat his “jai hind” to the face of the separatists, knowing full well he will incur the consequence of their rage, and one of the movie’s weaknesses is apparent there, in this vibrant and somewhat naïve nationalism. But then again, perhaps this is a westerner’s view. Or it’s because the film was done back in 1992, when certain illusions about the resolution of the Kashmir conflict could still be nurtured.

So: what is Roja, then? A brilliantly made entertainer? A political movie using the swallow-down virtue of boy meets girl? If we notice the two aspects deal with separation and reunion, perhaps we could call it a hymn rooted in the love of the land: its overall purpose is the refusal of separation, and the assertion that love must and will reunite those who are separated. Separatists are wrong, violent, and counter-nature. Roja fights for reunification with her husband, just as Mani Ratnam films for Kashmir to remain united to India. Two reunifications, and this, even if Roja is repeatedly criticised  in the film for her naïve and selfish intentions: doesn’t she know, the general tells her, that the exchange of her husband against the terrorist Wasim Khan has cost the lives of many soldiers, who were certainly husbands and fathers too? How dare she demand her husband to be exchanged, when so many mothers and wives have silently accepted their sacrifices? But the fact that the minister accepts her request shows that these two apparently antagonistic realities can combine, and that unification should be also inspired by human values such as love, and not only through the hard facts of negotiation and politics.

One last word from imdb reviewer Reachrajdream, who I think has a good point: This movie is inspired from Italian movie De Sica's I Girasoli (1970), neverthless no complaints because I don't believe in originality. The movie is worth watching because of good story and flow of the story. (…) Even Vittoria De Sica might have been happy watching this movie because such a solid, positive enhancement of his work.