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
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