Dhobi ghat (Kiran Rao, 2010) is a pleasant enough film to watch; it has a seductiveness, an allusiveness whose charm lasts a while in the mind, and one wonders, after the last unfulfilled pictures have gone, what was this? What sort of movie did I watch? Surely, not a classic Bollywood flick, not a social manifesto, so perhaps an arty evocation of a changing society? A meditation on the new reality India is going through? One could also say, an emerging director’s state of the art research. Kiran Rao, Aamir Khan’s second wife, is here busy demonstrating she’s got the guts to go it alone, after her spectacular successes as assistant director in such blockbusters as Laagan and Swades. Do I sense in her attempt that same superiority complex that always slightly bothers me in Aamir Khan’s dos? The feeling that here is a guy who is about to show what India filmmakers have forgotten all along: Indian cinema isn’t only for Indians, but for the world, it is worthy of an attention justified by its artistic complexity and human depth. The only trouble in this demonstration of artistic value is precisely the demonstration: artistic worth doesn’t need demonstration: if it’s worthwhile, you see it directly. And Indian cinema as a tradition contains enough resources for any filmmaker to create superior art if he or she wishes. This idea to look away from your tradition, and do things according to the assumption that a worldwide attention will be given to projects inspired by other aesthetic principles than our own: I wonder if any lasting good can come out of it.
What I’m saying might sound paradoxical: because the movie’s subject is 100% Mumbaite; the city, its streets, shops, beaches, its lights, smells, noises, its highs and lows; the characters, except for Shai (Monica Dogra) who’s a bank clerk NRI on leave from her work and who’s busy photographing the city for some project of hers. She’s the pretext outsider, and her little accent betrays the director’s need for her exterior point of view. She’s the benevolent eye of the world, a motley, already half indianised world, so to speak. And there she goes, clicking away at people, capturing them in her frames, artistically transforming them just like the film does. One guy, a dhobiwalla called Munna – Prateik Babbar - falls in her trap (or she entraps him, if you want) and believes she can get him into the movies. This happens after she had first fallen for Arun (our one and unique Aamir Khan), a moody painter who’s still affected by his recent divorce and finds a new inspiration from some video tapes of his new flat previous owner, left in a box with the furniture in the flat.

But Shai’s interest in Arun cannot break his shell, and she drifts away from him. Not too far though, because the tide of emotionality soon brings her back to him, even though in the meantime she’s started to appreciate Munna… One has to admit that this intertwining of interests, love or business, is cleverly woven, and very suggestive of the complexity of human feelings when desires, hopes, frustration and pain all interact. A person’s life is never one story only: it has several levels, it takes place on several planes, and this is especially true perhaps of urban lives, where the interactions are more numerous. So I’d say this is where the film pleased me most: one follows these lives very simply, the narration is fluid and convincing. The camera work too, even if sometimes it’s overly conscious of itself.

We discover Munna’s underworld, ie, his involvement with the drug-dealing, violent sub-urban reality which so many films have made us familiar with. We feel the slight hovering hush of danger surrounding the young woman as she naively steps into areas forbidden to the likes of her. And it’s rather good too that the film doesn’t conclude, emotionally speaking. There is no happy end, no relief. But then, is there a message? Is there a story worthy to be learnt? What is the film’s relationship with reality, and which reality? Dhobi ghat left me wondering about the situation in which Indian cinema has placed itself in. Where can it go, what should it do? How can it reflect the tremendous changes the country is going through, and suggest some elements of meaning to this change? Perhaps we need such films, as landmarks which later will reveal themselves as necessary intermediary links between one form and another, or they will just be considered as worthless cranking by camera-happy people without a plan?
 

I was uncertain of the answer, so I went on IMDb, and well, what I found is my impression multiplied by the dozens of people who also thought, sometimes kindly, sometimes less, that the film was on the whole a waste of time. Hmm, but sometimes you do have to waste time to find inspiration, you do have to mill around before the spark ignites. You put yourself in the centre of things (Mumbai) and you open your eyes, perhaps some flash of meaning will come from this, perhaps some structure will emerge. An artist has moments of emptiness similar to this soul-searching attitude. But there is also a non-negligible chance that it is sterile, and that one has simply gotten side-tracked. The old woman who lives in the basement in Arun’s building, and whom we see sitting on the side of her bed so powerless, stands out for me as a sort of symbol of the film: for me she represents an ageing Mother India that Arun’s desperate efforts have not yet been able to revive. She can also be looked upon as the unused and inefficient Indian artistic tradition which sits, speechless and incomprehensible, waiting for her new interpreter.

Hi, I've found this text written a long time ago probably after having seen KKHH one of the first times! Enjoy!

Where does the poignancy of love come from? This love in need of love, this need which screams in the face of the loved one “I will make you happy!”, this tearing of the future when love isn’t fulfilled? The movie rapturously delays the moment of relief, which should be its dominant feature, that of the Happy end, and yet what remains with me is the sorrow, the pain of love when it is offered and unrequited, its naked beauty and its violent softness. This is what characterises Rahul and Anjali’s story. She has loved him from the start; for her, he’s the one. She’s his friend, and a friend stays a friend for always. This “always” is love’s surest guarantee. Without friendship, what’s love? Passion, desire. But friendship is the soul of love, its lasting heart, its tenderness, its modesty. So why the distress, why the reluctance to end the wait, why the little lack of something missing?

If friendship between man and woman cannot reach love, it is amputated, it is forlorn and separated from its purpose. Friendship wants the other person’s well-being, but in the case of an obstacle it hides and flees; it leaves love alone if love won’t accept it. It sacrifices itself because friendship’s love is wiser and humbler than the burning love of eyes and bodies. Friendship becomes love only when united with love; left alone, it becomes a faith, a hope, and won’t reveal the love which lies at its core. But when love comes in its direction, it can hardly believe in it: it’s stunned and disarmed. Can divine love have decided to land close to it, and touch it? Will friendship, little and quiet friendship, become the partner of all-powerful, divine Love? Is such a thing possible?

You are my love, says the lover – I am your friend, says the friend: strange it is (it seems to me the film shows that?) that women are perhaps more on the side of friendship, while men are more lovers. Women like what men disdain; they are friends of who men will be, long before they know it, whereas men tend to love only she who is there before them. Who knows whether he will still love who she will be, and whom he can’t see, even though she’s here, right under his very eyes? But she knows that, and is ready for it. She also loves this unreasonable blind love of the present, childish and immature as it is.

Womanly friendship, soft palm on my cheek, do not move, stay with me, blessed are you to have seen in me that invisible future! Help me to conquer the deceiving present, for you are here now, your presence fills me with a freedom that defines me and delights me.

“All who have parted once must meet,

First we live, and last forget” (Kathleen Raine)

The movie insists on “first love” – one doesn’t love twice, it says, even if life tells us and shows us the contrary. Thus is made clear that life is somehow greater than love – it’s its main ingredient. Upon meeting Rahul again Anjali asks: “You aren’t ill, I hope?”, and he says: How pretty you are”. Life is love’s fundamental basis. But it’s more than love. It’s also reality, humdrum and ordinary. It’s living creatures’ autonomous impulsion, it’s insensitive, and selfish too. What is “first love”? Why is it so often equated to “one and only love”? Our first love is both the child of chance and necessity, both placed in time and steeped in eternity, it is creation, construction, it defines who we are. It refuses to be the “first” time, it is always, it has ever been, like life itself. It wants to be love itself, friendship itself, essential union and agreement of what was before separated; it is the common echo of two beings who have pronounced this word “love” to one another: for them love will have had this echo forever. Once all this has been thrust in the mind, in the eyes, this once is the last because it is the first and the only one. Life can of course build again such a monument, but nothing will replace in the memory the virginity of this first meeting and first eternity.

So first love, if indeed it has been a friendship between two persons, that is to say a mutual yearning for the other’s presence – first love is the greatest, the most beautiful, the only one. It has revealed the heart’s incomplete and eternal reality: and forever this revelation will have a face, a contingent face that could have been any face, but was that one, during friendship’s virgin youth.

This is why morality asks lovers to wait and contain their desire: so that their love, their mutual attraction, becomes a lasting friendship, built in their heart with the white stones of trust. If their love contains such a friendship, then all is good. But would they know it if, rushing past their virginity, they leave the stones in the quarry, and build nothing lasting? If desire alone replaces bond and future, aren’t they fleeing time and themselves?  Friendship is precious in that it builds love on a common virginity of the heart, a common eternity. From its origin, love will have been the waiting and the needing. Without the friendship for the person who shared this time of wonder, this time of first steps, of games and projects and hope, how will love resist another attraction, that will promise the same as the first one?

Friendship is true love, the love that defies time and repetition, the love that builds a lasting home, and can keep love from destruction. Love breaks easily if it isn’t friendly. God loves us as a friend, in a simple and trusting way, forgetting our tantrums and deceits as children forget when they start playing again. But it’s still God, whose majesty and power can transfix those who don’t know his playful heart.

So one understands how petrified friendship can be, when it meets with love, when it sees love coming its way (an almost married Kajol facing Rahul on the balcony): it’s like a simple human watching God recreating him anew, and perhaps making him die in the process. The fear and the hope, the burning ice, banal clichés indeed, are nevertheless the truth of a love that contains friendship at its core. This is why I remember more the moments before the fulfilment, than the fulfilment itself. The two lovers’ reunion in the end is less important than their long wait, their hope and their faith. Indeed something breaks when they finally reach the happiness they had been waiting for for so long, something which was their strength and their virtue, and won’t be needed any more. This something is the mild friendship that bound them in its purity and its love. Now that the distance has vanished, this familiar friendship must leave on tiptoe, before it can come back, much later, after the years when love starts cooling. The triumph of true love always contains a little twinge, the faint misery of lost friendship.

This is a rewriting of a post dated April 4, 2007. The blog output is so low these days that I am resorting to rewrites! ( in fact, I’m busy with other things...)

I don’t know if you’re like me, but most people around me still don’t really appreciate my interest for Bollywood. I haven’t made many converts! They still think it’s a sort of fad, it’s not very serious; all these soppy melodramatic films, that aren’t worth the time spent watching them. Or (worse) they simply aren’t bothered, and leave me to my obsession. They’ve gotten used to it! Some of them still didn’t know, and when they discover, they look at me with a mixture of surprise and disappointment. “You too! You’re interested in this Indian stuff?” They’ve seen Slumdog, and sometimes Lagaan and Devdas, but that’s it, and don’t see the interest of spending more time justifying their impression they know what it’s all about.

So now that I’ve seen all those movies (150?), read those books, thought about the phenomenon, and exchanged with filmi lovers around the world, what can I tell them? Should I just say: they’re short-sighted, they don’t know, and that’s the end of it? Does the distinction between “Bollywood” and “Indian cinema” solve the problem? Should I focus on masala only? There are certain aspects of Bollywood masalas that are a waste of time. And it seems to me, more and more, as I reflect on them now. I probably can stand less fooling around now I have become accustomed to it, and even less star-gazing. Especially as the amount of star-surface is increasing more and more too! It’s been some time I haven’t seen a recent production, but there you are, watching the oldies has inoculated in me a vaccine against the cheaper or more flashy recent pictures. OR, the more recent ones have turned that way, simply from having seen the older ones.

Of course, I remember feeling that refreshing simplicity of story-telling, and not minding simple feelings expressed truly and convincingly. I had arrived at a moment in life when a dose of gaiety and fun was welcome. And love was just great! Silly to say, perhaps, but around 50, you have that soft spot, don’t you, that still feels soft, when perhaps you thought it had hardened! I’m an intellectual, but I’m like most people, I like feeling that divine emotion and watching its progress, its difficulties, its various steps. I don’t mind a sad ending, if it’s justified. Love is not always successful. But it’s always love. The previous post, on Roja, shows that perfectly.

I still marvel about the masala mix of music, dancing, and colours. And all that craziness, and that popular celebration of life. “Whatever works”, says Woody Allen, and yes, there’s some truth in that. Bollywood works because people need fun and joy, perhaps even more than principles and rules. Or at least, you need them both. You know, the old carnival thing. The stories can be exaggerated to the point of silly superficiality. But the beauty of those splendid homes, the clothes, the lights, the luxury: why not, who cares? Even if it’s prepared for the cinema, I also appreciate the  village atmospheres, where poor people are more tired, more frequently ill, less educated of course, etc. I know this is more often the “real” India. The films that hint at these realities with the right dosage aren’t perhaps as frequent (but I don’t really know, I’m guessing), but probably present all the same.

And of course in the course of these three or so years of passion, I have been blessed by the discovery of beauty and meaning, which are the two pillars of art. Such movies as Bandini, Teesri Kasam, Shree 420, Deewar, Charulata, Agantuk, to name a few, are like the capital cities of the countries in a newly discovered continent (In a similar way, the first emotionally charged Bollywood blockbusters I saw in the beginning have seared themselves up there too). I’m grateful (and almost ashamed I waited so long) for having known people like Satyajit Ray, Yash Chopra, Shyam Benegal, Nargis, Nutan, Waheeda Rehman, the Kapoors, Naseerji, Shabanaji, Amitabh, among the best. They are now part of me, I cannot forget what they have given me.

Then there’s the music. Over here in the West, some people find Bollywood voices too shrill, too sharp, especially some women’s voices. How is that? Taste again, of course, but there is such a variety of them! Not every voice sounds like Lata Mangeshkar! I for one am a devout admirer of the great lady. She’s truly amazing. Shreya Ghoshal I love also, but Lata – this morning I was listening to… never mind the title. Her voice, that of an old lady when she sang that song, I knew it, came out, pure as a mountain spring, and I just mused, and wondered. There are some tunes that I whistle all the time, that are catchy, pleasant, musical, everything! What I particularly like in a number of songs is that “elevated” part of the song, when something rises within it, transcends the succession of refrains and establishes a sort of celestial moment at the centre of the song, before one is brought down to earth again. This happens for example in Tumhi dekhon naa, by Alka Yagnik and Sonu Nigam. I also appreciate very much the sort of explosion of voices all combined at the end of certain songs (Saajan saajan saajan, by Alka Yagnik and Kailash Kher). But of course most of all the duet-sung melodies are the secret of Bollywood songs. These days I’m listening to a selection by Shreya Ghoshal, pure delight (Gache je dur chole mon niye, saat ranga ek pakhi, Shono chochk melo…)

I’ll leave the concluding paragraph of that post I’m replacing:

I will finish by speaking about the joy and the liveliness of some of the films I like most. I believe the Indian cinema is beneficial to the world. Well, some of it, at least. I don’t watch a lot, but the films that I love contain a particular optimism which I declare necessary for this planet of ours. This prescription is a mixture of respect for things like love, friendship, family, emancipation, dreams, a taste for beauty and life, for happiness and success, among other things. When I see films in which dancing and music are so important, I know that they are what is important. Our life here is not that dramatic that we cannot sing and dance. We must not forget to sing, we must continue to dance. We must not hesitate to play with the colours and spend our money to organise those lavish weddings, because abundance of life is shown by such extravagance. If we count and weigh, we will not be joyful. Joy goes with a certain expense!  The Indian cinema is an energetic and generous cinema, a joyful cinema, respectful of people and of nature, on the whole. There are some ferments within it that might vulgarise it and spoil its spirit, but this spirit is great, and I love it.

 

I recently heard a journalist ask the question « Is Bollywood nothing more than a cinema made for India, or is there something universal about it?” – and I thought this question deserved a little post. Every one knows for a fact that the Indian cinema is the most productive one in the world, because of the amount of movies a year (is it still 800?) and of course the sheer size of the audiences. I say audiences because the crowds in the South, East and Centre are almost as huge as in the North, and from what I’m told, the penetration of US movies as yet cannot rival. So this raises the question of its local dimension, its adaptation to a public who needs a certain type of entertainment, and the question of the exportability of Bollywood.

In fact I’m not interested here in the figures of the industry’s success in other parts of the world than India. But is Indian cinema universal? Or rather, does it contain enough universal characteristics? Er… and what is “universality”?!  Is it the same thing as worldwide fame? Or does it refer to general recognition? Gone with the wind? Or Titanic? But these are surely typically American, no? What makes them also universal? Probably, something we could recognize in them which appeals to all of us, no? Well at least, most of us. In the two above examples, the beauty of the love-story, because love is a universal emotion. So, if a film deals with that sort of basic human feelings, it would have a chance of being universal: anger, fear, ambition, lust, hate… Yes, but it would need something else too, something like representativity, which would enable people in Japan, Belgium and Chile to feel it refers to them in spite of their irreconcilable cultural differences. What is this artistic quality which enables a culturally defined movie (work of art) to belong to humanity as a whole? Is it not “style”? So (next question…) what’s style?

We’re a little far away from Indian cinema, perhaps? Well, perhaps not: who knows if we couldn’t find that ingredient, style, in some Indian films. Style means personality, doesn’t it? And so we’d have to go in the direction of great directors with that element too. If by watching a film, you were able to say: that’s Satyajit Ray’s style, or that Guru Dutt’s way of filming, and of course if the movie contained a story which everybody would relate to, wouldn’t we have something universal there?

Well, I know of many such universal works – in fact, that’s what I’ve been pursuing in this blog! (Not a surprise, is it?) For example Shree 420, whose universality comes from its profoundly human portrait of man and society, of hope and despair. Or Teesri Kasam, that simple story of love and loss. Bimal Roy’s Bandini, watched recently, would certainly fit in the category, too, for its daring excursion in the mind of an unconventional young woman, whose beauty and purity, rooted in her Indianness, transcends it.  For that is the key element: a universal work of art is not universal because it is so general that all nations could appropriate it (if such a work of art exists), but it’s universal in so far as all other nations see (for example) an Indian film that deals with a collective issue which has found a new and well defined expression thanks to Indian culture. One country’s art forms enable a facet of our human nature to be revealed or dramatized in such a way as we can all recognize it as familiar.

It’s logical that the examples of movies I have provided are from the fifties and the sixties. Up to a certain extent, you need the test of time to say whether great contemporary movies can be called universal: here it’s a little bit like “classic” films. Time does two things to works of art: it elevates them (above the rest of the other works of art of the same period, which become secondary or are forgotten), and it classifies them (the way people refer to them put them in categories where it wasn’t necessarily so clear they belonged when they came out – it’s perhaps easier for movies). Because with time passing, history has been described, and taught. We would now refer to Mother India as a tragic epic with the mother-figure of Indian society held up high for everyone to recognize; but who knows if back in 1957, it wasn’t as much the leftist political message that was clear, because of the specific situation of post-independence.

Success does have a certain relationship with universality, nevertheless. Even if critics could decide, in their beautiful isolation that such and such a movie was a universal one, it would be difficult to accept without a certain element of success. People might throng to see a well-advertised film, and enjoy it because it corresponds to the spirit of the moment, but if the success is lasting (time is a much better judge than space because today even pigmies in the centre of Africa can watch Rambo dubbed in their own language), then the movie belongs perhaps to the list.

The problem today is that we rarely have the opportunity to need to see an “old” film again: there are so many enticing new ones all the time! So I wonder about the spectator’s notion of universality, and I half suspect it to be tainted by Hollywoodian marketing tricks. I wouldn’t be surprised, for example, if someone told me that a universal movie must be packed with action and emotion, possess a clear and suspenseful story, and, all in all, be a good commercial success. If an American audience can be talked into watching a film from anywhere else in the world, it must surely be a universal film! Well, enough said for now. But feel free to leave your impressions and reactions on that subject.