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
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