From Film Archives: `Well Done Abba`

I posted this on the A/O forum on 23 October 2009:

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 delightful 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 returning 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 fault-lines 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`sTaxi Driver), his was a much benign and likeable character.   Looking at him in person, one could be in no 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

(c) 2013

Surrey England

From Film Archives: `Gandhi My Father`

I posted this review on the A/O forum on 10 August 2007:

This film opened both here and in India simultaneously a week ago and we saw it last night.  It has received warm critical reviews and I would unhesitatingly echo them here.  Unfortunately we missed the first 5 or 10 minutes of it, because of car parking  problems, but it was not difficult to get into the pulse of the plot as it unfolded, even though at first the sanitised characters in their fine costumery and expensively made up facial images in the opening sequences did seem to convey an imitation of the modern Indian tv soap. 

 

The advance publicity had suggested that this is a film about Harilal, Gandhi`s eldest son, and his relationship with his saintly father, the Mahatma; but it is more than that.  We are given a richly dimensional portrait of not just Harilal but of both his parents, and of his wife Gulab as well.  What comes through so strikingly is that theirs is a complex relationship at all levels.  As the film picks up speed, we get drawn into the dynamics of their collective and individual  lives through the vicissitudes of time and space, and interplay of action and emotion.

 

In the early scenes, we see a youthful and handsome Harilal marry a shy and pretty Gulab with whom he is clearly in love but whom he has to leave behind in India while he is commanded to join his father in South Africa.  For some reason the older Gandhi, then in full swing as a rising attorney there, was reluctant for Gulab to join them in South Africa but charmingly caves in after his English secretary persuades him to and so Gulab does arrive.  However, Gandhi continues to control not just his household, holding the purse-springs, but also to dictate what Harilal should do and not.  He neglects Harilal`s education and thwarts the young man`s ambition to go to England to train as a barrister like himself.  He directs him to take part in the `satyagraha` struggle in South Africa and Harilal willingly does so, always wanting to impress his father as an adoring and obedient son, who worshipped the heroic figure that Gandhi had become.  Harilal was in complete awe of him.  Gandhi failed to notice the effect he was having on Harilal until in a poignant exchange between them Harilal exposes his inner turmoil, after Gulab had left him and returned to India with their children, bidding him to stay on and serve his father `s cause.  At that point, we see the beginning of a mature relationship between the two, but a long and troublesome long journey lay ahead for both of them.  At any rate, Gandhi grants Harilal`s wish to join his wife and children and so the action switches to India.

 

Harilal tries to make an honest living and to be a good husband and father to his children in Ahmedabad but his limited education and lack of business and practical acumen militate against that.  It is only the fact of being Gandhi`s son that helps him to keep afloat, often as a recipient of the largesse of benefactors who were propelled by the Gandhi name or connection to prop him up, or even to exploit him, as some unscrupulous big businessmen did.  His sense of being a failure deepens as one scheme after another proves to be a disaster.  His marriage falls apart.  He becomes an alcoholic.  He even changes religion to become a Muslim, though later he was to repent and revert to Hinduism.  He was a classic lost soul, clutching at straws.

 

All this of course takes place against the background of Gandhi`s triumphant return and rise to the status of a `Mahatma`, as the undoubted leader of the freedom struggle and the father of the nation.  At every significant twist and turn of the narrative we see the two come face to face - either when Harilal comes back to the family home after his wanderings (even a spell in jail) or when the paterfamilias goes looking for him in an effort to reconcile and persuade him to rejoin the fold and more importantly the freedom struggle.

 

But as noted above, this is not just about Harilal and his father.  His mother (Kasturba, `Baa`) has an important part to play in all the drama, right from the beginning to (her) end.  Like all women who are caught between an extremely powerful or dominant husband and a rebellious offspring, she recognizes the force of the conflicts and dilemmas inherent in such a situation and tries to play the role of the arbiter and adviser, never abandoning (as no mother of course would) hope that Harilal would some day fall in line.  The spousal relationship between the Mahatma and Baa too is beautifully captured, through the different stages of their lives.

 

We are of course familiar with Attenborough`s `Gandhi`.  There are many strong resonances of that here, in both the South African and Indian scenes, with some historical news footage thrown in - of marches, meetings and demonstrations etc. Remember the sequence in `Gandhi` when he tends to his ailing wife, as she is nearing death?  Well, we are privileged to witness this and what leads to it in delicate detail.  It is as moving as it was in the first `Gandhi`.  And then the movie (as well as the real-life plot) moves relentlessly to its climactic end, with the day of partition and reckoning for Gandhi, and the quick end of both father and son in that order, the latter`s as tragic, in a different sense, as that of the Mahatma!

 

I am still savouring the aura of the film, and relieved to some extent - because I had been led to believe that it might lead us to rethink our opinion of the Mahatma.  No, of course not.  There are many examples in history of great men and women who have a hidden private life or who undergo many inner turmoils, often on account of their children.   Once Gandhi realised he had failed Harilal, he came to terms with that, but he also sought to impress upon Baa that Harilal had to take responsibility for the consequences of his own actions as he was an adult.  He  himself  had a greater calling, and cause to serve.  But he cared and was caring all the same.  

 

I wouldn`t be surprised if it is nominated for next year`s Oscars in the foreign language category.  `Foreign language`?  Yes, it is in Hindi, but one hardly notices that - the subtitles and the subject-matter are so gripping that one can follow the dialogue effortlessly, imperceptibly.  This coming from me whose grasp of Hindi is poor is a tribute indeed.  The technical presentation is superb too, as is the acting -  Harilal is played by Akshaye Khanna, Gulab by Bhoomica Chawla, Mahatma Gandhi by Darshan Jariwala and Kasturba by Sheffali Shah.  The director is Feroze Khan, who has also co-written the script with Chandulal Dalal.   The music, in particular the singing of `Ragupati Ragav Raja Ram` is beautifully rendered too.  I am hurrying with this and have compressed it somewhat because I am so excited to report about this unique film experience.  Don`t miss it.

 

Ramnik Shah

(c) 2013 (edited)

Surrey England

From Film Archives: `The Journey` (Yatra)

I posted this review on the A/O forum on 30 October 2006:

 

This was one of the many offerings of the London Film Festival, currently in its second week (having opened with The Last King of Scotland - the one about Idi Amin).  We saw it on Thursday at the National Film Theatre on its first showing (each exhibit has two).  Written and directed (in Hindi, with English sub-titles) by Goutam Ghose, it is described in its own self-publicity as "(a) superb must-see film, in which .... Ghose elicits powerful performances from an acclaimed cast including Nana Patekar, Deepti Naval and the ageless Rekha"; and so it is and so he does, though I have to admit that I didn`t think so at first!

 

I was, alas, less than impressed when the film ended and so didn`t feel inclined to participate in the Q&A session that followed with Ghose, who had come from India for the presentation and who stood just 10 metres from where we were sitting.  So why did I feel that way and why have I changed my mind?   To begin with, maybe I was subconsciously put off by his introductory remarks about the film, before it began, in which he spoke of it as a product of his own upper middle-class environment.  He certainly did not lack in modesty; but then considering his 30+ year record of film-making, with some notable successes and awards, even though he may not be so well known outside India, such confidence was perhaps understandable.  I thought there was a touch of pretentiousness about it, but on reflection maybe it was just the way many `desi` Indians do rather unself-consciously think of themselves!  Then being ensconced in the second row from the front made it a little uncomfortable viewing for me, and thirdly, I could not, as an outsider, relate to its purely Indian social nuances and local reference points - but then that is me, whose intellectual and cultural orientation is Western.

 

Well, the film sort of grows on you; at least for me it acquired a meaning and fell into place more in retrospect than there and then. The `journey` is a yatra on a multiplicity of levels where, as the blurb tells us, "fact and fiction tensely oscillate".  Ostensibly there is an elaborate facade of a writer constructing a story that assumes the garb of an imagined past but one which soon dissolves into both a living reality and paradoxically, at the same time, an enigma of surreal, if tragic eternity. If that sounds too vague and poetic then that is exactly the intended effect. The artificial constructs of the structure notwithstanding, the essence of the plot is simple enough: Dashrath (played by Nana Patekar), a respected village schoolmaster, with a wife and two growing children and an elderly mother to look after, has his tranquil existence turned upside down when he comes upon a woman (Lajvanti, played by Rekha) in a most distraught state lying in the bushy wilderness of the surrounding countryside.  She used to be a `nautch` girl but had become the resident mistress of a local `raja` or landlord who was not averse to exploiting and abusing her when it suited him (here is our first song and dance routine, beautifully performed, with the usual horde of hissing middle-aged men squatting on the floor, deliriously drunk and doddering about excitedly).  She has been serially and violently raped and abandoned.  He takes her home, gives her shelter and his wife and family gently nurture her back to some sort of normality when her `owner` and protector sends his henchmen to claim her back and to threaten him with dire consequences if he does not `deliver` her.  So they all leave the village and trek to the big city where he finds her a secure place.  So far so good, and there is no hint of any impropriety or emotional entanglement.  But it is after Lajvanti leaves his protection that he falls for her and from there on, it is reminiscent of Dr Zhivago, the idealistic doctor`s passionate affair with Lara, whose life goes through a series of twists and turns of epic proportions before it ends in a tragic denouement.  

When the film opens however, the transformation of the village schoolteacher into a successful author, his embracing of the `nouveau riche` lifestyle of contemporary upper middle class Indian society, with all the standard comforts that go with it, has already taken place.  And so from there on, it takes on an episodic quality, with all kinds of flashbacks and flash-forwards as well as the unfolding of the sequences that provide continuity and cohesion to the composition as a whole.  This is interwoven with the underlying ambiguity about the essence of the film: is it Dashrath`s tale or one that he has created, with a large dose of self or wish fulfilment? 

 

In his opening, pre-show remarks, Ghose had referred to the new India, its vibrant economy and consciousness being part of the cross-cultural ways of our post-modern global era.  He demonstrates this in telling ways: Dashrath`s (by Indian standards) ultra-modcons of domesticity - the hi-fi, the cable tv, the fridge/freezer, the telephone and other gadgets - and outside, in the city (Hyderabad) the shopping mall, the car and the mobile phone - all this is the changing face of the country, no doubt.  This is not all.  We see early scenes of marital affection between Dashrath and his wife, involving lip-kissing, and later on casual and graphic sex between peripheral characters (a `Sex in the City` style young business executive and a budding film maker to whom Dashrath has confided his whole life story, which is the outer casing of the film, as it were, during a train journey to Delhi to receive a literary award).  So the picture we get here is indeed of an India that is on the move, in more than one sense.  But there are incongruities too.  For example, the two grown up children (son and daughter) of the family are too goody-goody and all their internal dynamics are too tame, for those of us who are used to a much less sentimental approach to human interactions.  Even so, when the wife and the mistress meet (in circumstances) which had best be left unsaid here) the lack of any empathy between them while understandable in one sense is too stark as a dramatic conclusion.  The stiffness of their encounter is too jarring a note on which to end the film.      

I have touched only on the basic elements of the film, which has a layered complexity in terms of narrative, characterisation and performance.  The brevity of the publicity blurb is indeed true in its core message.  All the acting is superb, and so is the music.  Rekha does surprise us with the sheer virtuosity and physicality of her dance numbers, both traditional and modern.  A google search will reveal Ghose`s impressive credentials.  He is a Bengali, born in Uttar Pradesh, and clearly at home in both Hindi and Bengali.  `The Journey` is his own creation, not based on or adapted from someone else`s, but he comes from a long line of distinguished Bengali and Hindi film makers (a  la Satyajit Ray and Aparna Sen) and so their influences must inform his works too.  The theme of sexuality and adultery, was most recently explored in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, albeit from a diasporic Indian perspective.  Here it is in a home-grown context, but even so deep down one can sense a resonance with great Russian literature where personal pleasure is tempered with feelings of guilt and remorse and notions of crime and punishment play such a decisive part in family sagas.

But at the other end of the world, the film is bound to come to America (and Australasia and E Africa) too (it may already have?). The new Bostonians there may find in it an echo of the old - a kind of Merchant-Ivory treatment, in reverse, as it were, of morals and manners, and mere mortals.  If it should happen that some of our members have a chance to see it (and meet the director) maybe they could ask him this question: why is it that the film - set in Hyderabad of all places, which otherwise makes a point of portraying a 21st century India with all its technological advances and is about a successful writer who consciously writes in long hand - does not showing us a computer screen anywhere, either in his study-cum-sitting room, or anywhere outside, whether in the bookshop where he is signing copies of his book for his admiring readers, at the hotel in Delhi where he is guest of honour at the award ceremony, in the call-centre for an outsourced American corporate client where his daughter chucks her job in disgust, or in any of the other public places that we are taken to?  He is clearly making a point about it, but what?

That said, do go and see the film: it is a cinematic experience of art par excellence.

Ramnik Shah

(c) 2013

Surrey England

From Film Archives: `Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna`

I posted this review of Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (Never Say Goodbye) on the GlobalEar forum on 09 September 2006:

 

This is a Bollywood blockbuster indeed, but with a big difference. It is not set in India .... but rather in New York, and is about the lives of Indian diasporans there (and by implication in the West generally). So it is a puzzle as to why the film was not made in English, as it easily could have been, with the bilingual actors using their own authentic voices for an equivalent Hindi version. After all a lot of the dialogue in whole or part is in English, reflecting the true life-style of the characters it portrays anyway.      

 

Be that as it may, the readily decipherable English subtitles (which also appear when English is spoken!) do make it easy to follow the movie (more so if one has a smattering of the lingo), which however is long, too long at 3 hrs and 13 mins! The first hour or so is just plain poppycock: caricature of the traditional Bollywood-style extravaganza of carefully choreographed dance, colourful costumes and loud accompanying music, scenes of surreal shenanigans and a mixture of brash baffoonery and bashfulness - enjoyable no doubt to the mass loyal followers of Hindi cinema, but embarrassing for the critical viewer because of its lack of intellectual subtlety and nuance. This is no art movie; it is a commercial production for a vast global market that now spans across continents from India to the Middle East to Africa and to Europe and North America in the West and Australasia in / and the Far East.

But what is so especially novel about the film, so we are told, is that it deals with a taboo subject: of adultery and sexuality, in a very explicit way, which goes against the grain of the standard Indian movie fare. That kind of social realism may be seen as a revolutionary departure in a wholly Indian setting, but not one involving NRIs (`Non-Resident Indians` a term that, alas, is open to misconstruction and challenge because it takes no account of the varied nature of the Indian diaspora which comprises not only those who actually hail from the sub-continent and may retain Indian nationality but also the progeny of those who left its shores generations ago to form immigrant communities in diverse colonial societies in the far corners of the British Empire, eventually to settle in Britain or other parts of the West, more appropriately called `persons of Indian origin` or PIOs). So the movie-makers are to be congratulated for daring to touch on a sensitive issue in a way that would not be offensive to their multi-million mass home audiences. For them this is truly a `Bollywood blockbuster` because it stars a galaxy of their heart-throbs: Amitabh Bhachan, Sharukh Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Preity Zinta, Abhishek Bhachan et al, and contains all the gimmickry and other associated elements designed to appeal to and entertain them.

The plot, shorn of its hype and many pointless highways and byways, can be reduced to a simple scenario: of how two mis-matched couples struggling to cope with their unhappy marriages and moral dilemmas born of a cultural inheritance that inhibits their freedom of action and even expression of sentiment, come to terms with their inner emotional and personal conflicts. This broad theme is explored against the background of the daily hassle and struggles of living and working in the world`s greatest metropolis, though the city portrayed in this movie is not the New York of Manhattan or Marathon Man - the backdrop scenery has not the same dynamic edge.

The real life father-son (Amitabh and Abhishek Bhachan) also play the same character roles in the story as Sam and Rishi respectively. Their celluloid affection for each other (greetings of "Hey, dude" as well as genuine and feigned exclamations of exasperation that often pass between parents and grown up children) may or may not be mirrored in actuality, but in the movie it strikes a poignant note. The older Bhachan`s sexual antics come across at first as those of an ageing playboy bent on making up for earlier missed opportunities but later these give way to a paternalist concern for the welfare of his son and more especially of his daughter-in-law and protege Maya (Rani Mukherjee) even though she is cold and unfeeling towards her husband, and in fact advises her to get out of an unloving marriage rather than endure it. There are of course lots of twists and turns to the story, with the other couple (Rhea - played by Preity Zinta - and her good-for-nothing hubby Dev) weaving in and out of focus as Dev and Maya get drawn ever closer to each other through a succession of romantic trysts.

After all the early silliness, it is when the movie moves on to the plateau of relationships that it begins to hold our serious attention. When confidences are exchanged and there is a corresponding build up of empathy and understanding all round, we do feel drawn to the characters, with the one exception of Dev, played by Sharukh Khan - a cantankerous and truly obnoxious figure masquerading as an Al Pacino verisimilitude - his speech full of `shit`, his manners equally crude, his demeanour gruff - (think of A Scent of a Woman or Dog Day Afternoon) - except that he doesn`t quite pull it off! If his foul-mouthed temper was the result of a sporting injury that finished off his career as a rising football star, and if his damaged psyche dictates all his actions, then that does not sit well with the notion of spiritual redemption through love. His domestic relations with his wife (a smart business executive) and mother-in-law are never too well disposed, but it is his cruelty to their only son that is so shocking that not even the rather limp attempt to bring about a soft reckoning between them at the end mitigates the sheer horror of his total unsuitability and indifference as a parent.

The absence of chemistry between the married partners of each couple leads to their inevitable rupture but the tantalising expectation of a cross- affair between Rishi and Rhea never materializes beyond some chaste exchanges, while we are allowed to witness the one and only sexual encounter in a hotel room that is the denouement of the movie (a la Madame Bovary), albeit rather suggestively than in sequenced detail, as the fulfilment of their illicit desire by Dev and Maya. There are all kinds of peripheral goings on and other loose ends all of which have to be tied up somehow, which is done either hurriedly or half-heartedly - hallmarks of a long story that is short on direction!

But despite some of these flaws, there is a kind of symmetry in the finale: relationships do fall into place, the characters do get their just deserts, and above all the message is conveyed: that just as Indian diasporans are coming to terms with modernity in the West where they have settled, so Indians back at home (the `desi` types) who hitherto have largely been the voyeurs of alien occidental lifestyles too are becoming more adept at adapting and handling them in the context of their own rising middle-class aspirations and affluence - that is already evident from the daily soap opera features of domestic Indian tv screens. All said and done, the movie is an experience not to be missed.
 

Ramnik Shah

(c) 2013

Surrey England

INDIA BLOG ARCHIVES (10) - December 2010

To get the full flavour of my India Blogs, start at no. (1) below and work your way up to (9).
My last blog however was posted on 11 December 2010 under An Indian Odyssey - 2010. 


Ramnik Shah
(c) 2013
Surrey England