Film Review: "Well Done Abba"

This year`s London Film Festival is on and as usual we are treated to an eclectic mix of offerings, "Well Done Abba" among them. I saw it on Tuesday. A Shyam Benegal`s film is always something to look forward to, and so one went in with high expectations. But though immensely enjoyable, reflecting on it afterwards I wondered if it was that different from the standard Bollywood fare of romance, drama, music and entertainment. In India, it may well be classified as an art movie, but to a western audience, what comes across is a fairy story of the good triumphing over or trumping the bad with a happy ending. That said, yes, it deserves plaudits for technical detail and presentation, narrative, location and, above all, casting and acting.

The hero is the simple-minded Armaan Ali, a chauffeur working for a big Mumbai business executive, who has to explain to his boss why he should not be sacked for overstaying his home leave by two months, and so he launches into his tale of woe and wonder. He is a widower who has left his young daughter to be brought up by his socially irresponsible twin brother and his wife back at home. His return there is the beginning of a complex sequence of misadventures involving corruption and greed at every level of local administration when he is misled into applying for a government grant under a scheme for helping houseowners below a certain level of income to enable them to sink a well for fresh water supply in their properties. We see how the system works and how he gets sucked deeper and deeper into it. But it is a comedy - a light hearted look at the working of Indian politics and society in its most basic functional modes. In short, it is a delighful satire, with a serious undertone.

So we get drawn into the small-town life of the community, predominantly Muslim, that Armaan Ali navigates willy nilly. This is beautifully captured (and indeed in some respects it resonated with the American film that I had seen the day before, `The Exploding Girl`, set in upstate New York about a couple of college students rreturning home on vacation to find that nothing much happened there while they wrestled with their youthful angst). The various characters, ranging from the police inspector to the civil engineer to the local tax officials to the village headwoman - all their personal, professional and domestic flaws and foibles are bared with sharp humour while on the political front the hypocrisy and double-dealing of the legislators and the government are exposed mercilessly.

But it is Armaan Ali`s feisty daughter (played by Sammir-Minissha) who steals the limelight when it comes to getting him out of the trouble that he lands himself in. There is also the romantic angle, in the shape of the idealistic young mechanic who, while initially pursuing Armaan Ali`s good-for-nothing brother for a small debt, falls for her and their romance develops as she begins to reciprocate the feeling. But the faultlines of the film are the many incongruities and implausibilities that abound: how is that the daughter who is otherwise so rebellious and outspoken is meek and malleable in other respects, why Armaan Ali could not have phoned his boss to beg an extension of leave and how come he seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of ready cash! These and other flaws do not exactly mar our enjoyment, because we go along with the flow of the narrative and the many twists and turns of the plot to see where, or rather how, it is taking us. We get some useful glimpses into the social mores and realities of life in their particular regional and religious context, such as issues relating to arranged (or coerced) marriages to rich Middle-Eastern predators for cash. The scenes involving the sex-crazed shenanigans of the civil engineer who has to win over his reluctant wife are titillating, while other marital or domestic situations are sensitively handled, with a keen eye for the comic. And without giving away too much, suffice it to say that there is some ambiguity in the end, for it is not clear if the undeserving or discredited bad guys exactly get their just deserts.

From the post-modern Indian perspective, yes, it does presumably have a certain artistic appeal to the intellectual class. Its core message is clear enough: in India nothing is straight (`No full stops in India`, a la Mark Tulley!); the small man or woman always has an uphill struggle to get round bureaucracy and corrupt policemen, politicians and the proverbial pimps; that everything has a price in the form of a commission or bribe. That is all very well. How this is conveyed is the essence of the cinema as an art form. But to my thinking, how it translates, in cross-cultural terms, into a universal theme is where global considerations come in, and here one has to make some allowances, which intelligent world viewers would do anyway, even if they may be unable to relate to the plot or understand its many reference points.

At the (second) showing that I went to, the task of explaining the film and conducting the Q&A fell on Boman Irani, the lead actor whose rendering of Armaan Ali was simply brilliant, because Shyam Benegal had already left London. He was as good on his feet as on the screen. He said that the film script had been put together from two or three short stories and,,when I put to him, was happy to confirm that unlike the driver in Arvinda Adiga`s `White Tiger` (or indeed in Martin Scorsese`s`Taxi Driver`), his was a much benign and likeable character. Looking at him in person, one could be in doubt about his acting talent and hinterland. His performance in person was as articulate and wholesome as it was in the movie. `Well Done Abba` indeed.

RAMNIK SHAH