Stanley – the boy with a golden heart

Over 12 million Stanleys work as child labourers in India as per Census 2001 is what the end title of Stanley Ka Dabba (dir: Amol Gupte, 2011) reads. However if we look back, we know that for near one and a half hours we have seen a cinema which never raised slogans. It’s an artistically simplistic movie that takes a raw stance of looking at a normal slice of life and portraying it with perfection. And that is why it’s almost entirely devoid of drama in the events that take place – fluid and smooth. There were caveats though. Amol Gupte was the writer of the illustrious Taare Zameen Par which was monumental and path-breaking in the history of Indian cinema. But whereas Taare…. is about an individual’s courage to existence and brilliance, Stanley…. is more about a commoner. There is no striking extraordinary-ness about the characters which mark them out. If Taare… is like a vast and resourceful ocean where you go and get struck in awe, Stanley… is more like the pond in your locality – you visit everyday and you take from it your resources and it becomes part of your life, you forget it exists individually.

Stanley ka Dabba takes us back to our school days, of shared tiffins, of football matches with mud splashes all over us, in believing in friends and most importantly in sharing love. There are many magical moments in the film where the camera (probably the first Hindi film shot in HD Canon 7D DSLR – colour corrected to have a texture matching 35mm film media, a great application to reduce the cost of production) mingles with the kids. It’s like one of them. Occasionally it enacts the adults when it looks down to them from an elevation. Shot on vacations and on the week-ends (so that the students didn’t miss class) this endeavour itself is worth appreciating. Since the camera is smaller than the conventional movie camera, it was possible to make the school kids almost fully, camera-agnostic. They just existed there.

The Hindi teacher in Babubhai Verma (played by the director himself) is a glutton who for strange reasons never brought his tiffin and almost terrorized fellow-teachers and his students by plunging himself in their dabbas. Modeled on the typical tyrannical representation of authority, Verma is actually comical and in the end almost beyond rational. However this is a small aberration probably which unfortunately slows down the reel-time by repetitions of Verma’s adventures.

Refreshingly. repetitions of Stanley’s wide-eyed ‘stories’ about his mother and the food she cooks (near the end of the film when he actually started bringing tiffin to school) never got boring. Right from the very first scene showing Stanley almost falling asleep pretty early in the film till those innuendos we understand that there is a mystery to Stanley’s life. We come to know later, it’s a cruel one, one which he hides from all and tries to be smart. This made him very imaginative, a hero amongst his peers. But we must admit Stanley was fortunate to get some extra caring and loving friends who seldom had questions about him – that he almost drank water to fill his stomach during tiffin.

Amol Gupte’s sensitive handling ensured that the film remained a normal daily routine – no extravagance. But firmly grounded. This is the reason why the marketing of the film also isn’t harping much on its illustrious predecessor – to give it a miss thinking it will be like a sequel of Taare… means you got it wrong completely. Gupte’s son Partho was in the lead role as Stanley – seldom we have seen such a matured performance from a kid in Indian cinema – balanced and nuanced. Yet, his debut was also not made the headlines, since, as mentioned, it’s the film’s simple message which matters – neither the new technology, nor the individual milestones that matter. The pitfall of this may be insufficient footfalls in the box-office, but only time will tell.

As adults we are thrown into the scorching sun, scampering for cover. Somewhere I read once, the difference between a rich man and a poor man – the rich walk miles to digest their food and the poor walk miles to get there. Babubhai Verma and Stanley represent these two polar opposites. In urban existence we wear so many masks interchanging them to suit our veneer. This film obviously raises the doubt when last did we wear that of compassion, in a real sense?

Stanley in the ultimate count talks about hunger and lost childhood in an endearing way. So much so that even his tragedy seem muted in the bigger spectrum of life. For many of us who have so much in common to those kids in school and who watch their own kids grow up in the secured sanctity of a ‘home’ feel fortunate. But if we cannot read the message in the title rolls in the end then we have wasted our life to a bit – Amol Gupte may not have shown what lies in the future of Stanley, but we all know seeing so many Stanleys round us every day. It’s our duty to act now. Till the minute we get ourselves off from our living-room sofas we should all, bow to the boy who had no tiffin box but had a heart to rule the world. Hats off Stanley, and your gang for showing your world which is as much yours as mine!

Through Space and Time

The Best Feature film of 11th New York Indian Film Festival is the Bengali film Sthaniya Sangbad (Spring in the Colony), directed by Arjun Gourisaria and Moinak Biswas. This is quite interesting since the other awards went to people or endeavours which are more tested out –parallel or commercial (hoping we understand implicitly the differences between them without being too fastidious). By any parlance, most of the Bengali films harp on nostalgia as their sustaining theme ~ be it in referring the films of Ray directly or indirectly or having issues and characters that somehow, almost always look so insulated from the society at large. Sthaniya Sambaad on the contrary start with a portion of the city (Kolkata here) which perennially looks back and holds on to certain values which are post-Partition. Yet, the film doesn’t stink of nostalgic overtones but at one level submerges us in fond remembrances.
From a quantum reality perspective, the film talks of parallel mutiverses while putting the reference frame in any one of them. All these have taken us from the real to the metaphysical and the philosophical. However, most of the material aspects of existence can be measured macroscopically by the four dimensions – three of space and the one of time.  By the early 20th century only physicists, namely Einstein and Minkowski, proposed the concepts of a dilating time using relativity. The concept of “now” henceforth rendered fictitious in the larger scope of nature. So time doesn’t “flow” ~ the space-time is laid out in the matrix.
The name of the film ~ both in Bengali and the English version refer space and time. It doesn’t come as a surprise later on that the four dimensions of interchangeable space-time play significant part in the film’s structure. For example, the narrative progression of temporality has been deconstructed in the film a number of times to give a sense of non-linear progression. However, if looked from a different reference frame it gets obvious that the reference frame of the characters within the film and the audience are different. The events therefore, occur at different time points ~ and as said earlier, they are not chronological in the space-time membrane: they just exist. Also, noteworthy here is the way time has been interchanged with space ~ the flight from the colony to the white town and then to the new one actually replace the pace of time within the reference frame of the film itself. The temporality gets violated naturally since there was a deliberate strategy of trying to move in different paces within the film. That is why there is a sudden jerky effect induced by an uncanny auto-rickshaw chase, the top angle suspense in the lead female character’s surreptitious fleeing from the colony to the white town or the two phony characters who are in pursuit of selling something that we never actually come to know what. In the parallel universe, if we may say so, there is a machine ~ a bull-dozer that becomes a character. In some deft images it blurs the man-machine dichotomy by bearing “human” traits ~ it  almost shies away ~ we find it moving across a pond, spot it moving between two houses, suddenly round the corner and so on. In the final take when the ‘human’ is unaware, it pulls down few houses without making a noise ~ the eerie temporality embedded in the seeds of natural space.
Indian films have seen a lot of genre changes since its inception. There have been quite a few breaks in the long journey. Where does Sthaniya Sangbad stand? It’s however not very difficult to predict a “future” of such a film commercially. It didn’t get a decent screening opportunity, running for barely two weeks in Nandan. The organisations that liaise with online releases of Indian films never got interested in it. There had been occasional screenings amongst well wishers and friends. For returning money to the producer this film is probably not the best bait. However, in the milieu of films that boast of dealing with “communication” or lack of it, thereof, this film stands out for actually communicating with its intended urban audience. The different texture of it and the star-less cast is indeed refreshing. NYIFF’s award is hence encouraging ~ not because awards mean a lot or are absolute yardsticks to judge films, but more because there is hope that this film and subsequent ones which will dare to try differently get recognized in some forum and probably generate some revenue for it. An award or a film review /discussion can then actually do the duty of promoting good cinema in a culture which otherwise thrives on remaining mediocre. 

(Published in The Statesman on 20th May 2011 - http://www.thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=370230&catid=47)

Towards a cooperative film organisation

The objective of the Federation of Film Societies of India according to the memorandum of FFSI is “to promote the study of film as an art and as a social force”. In his seminal book The Social History of Art Vol.4, Arnold Hauser states, “The problem is not to confine art to the present day horizon of the broad masses, but to extend the horizon of the masses as much as possible. The new way to genuine appreciation of art is through education. Not the violent simplification of art, but by the training of the capacity for aesthetic judgment is the means by which the constant monopolizing of art by a small minority group can be prevented.”
The point here is, majority of film societies across the country, it is this superior feeling of film society members that have ruined the possibility of any bridge with the general mass. Just as majority of our filmmakers thought, the film activists also, took the “public” for granted, seldom respecting their intellect and almost always, questioning their attitude. Showing films of different culture and language can be appreciated within a handful of “intellectuals”, but it is difficult to sustain the same taut excitement among different other intellectual strata of the society. On top of that if we look into other art forms, we can find numerous examples of successful adaptations ~ novels, stories, songs, theatre, poetry, etc. Artistes had mingled at every level riding on popular culture and archetypes. Groups like PLT, IPTA and Gananatya Sangha, to name a few, used “art” as a weapon to combat social injustice and apartheid. Probably, film failed in this aspect since it’s a different and possibly more complex and sophisticated medium. But still, how many instances were there, when film societies have traveled places with a Battleship Potemkin, a Pather Panchali, a Ma Bhumi, or, for that matter, a Bicycle Thief? History points us to a singular fact ~ the Indian film societies were largely for, by and of the city elite. Hence, unlike any other movement, the film society movement never took off in the real sense. This leads one to ponder over the nomenclature ~ “film society” remains a misnomer, perhaps “film club” suits better.
We can, however, look into some of the new possibilities of film clubs, both individually and by being a part of a collective whole. The most important postulate to bear in mind here is ~ almost everything associated with a film is costly. So, financially running a film club is always a mind-boggling endeavour, it is time to think of cooperating with each other instead of working in silos. A cooperative organisation can be an alternative and viable vehicle where participating film clubs can join, interact, share and enrich.
To start with, a library (both print and media) can be logically collated under a single cover of the cooperative wherein members of participating film clubs can benefit by borrowing resources of some other film club. That will facilitate and encourage the study of culture among the members ~ an otherwise expensive hobby to nurture. The exact logistics of lending the resources can be sorted out during the actual implementation.
It is true that film screening remains the integral activity of any film club. However, that alone can no longer remain the only major activity of a film club. The cooperative organisation should build and maintain a platform where young and aspiring filmmakers get a chance to film their ideas. This cooperative should operate purely as a parallel mode of production-distribution-exhibition chain. Whereas the promotion of commercial Hindi movies has started to follow a disciplined and intended trend, the regional and low-budget films remain non-cooperated and isolated. The cooperative organization already proposed, can take care to promote Indian films to foreign delegates as well as try to set up a trade relationship with them. But for that the cooperative’s common platform should be the place for these filmmakers as well as their producers to unite with the film clubs. The main objective is to sustain a parallel stream of independent thinkers. Being involved with distribution and exhibition as well, the cooperative organisation can roll the money collected from one film into subsequent ventures. To minimize costs, the cooperative can have its own auditorium in the long run, and its own projection device. Now, if that seems very far-fetched, in reality, it is actually not. There are a number of film clubs in West Bengal alone, which have started having their own projection facilities. By being a part of the cooperative organisation, they will strengthen the cause. For other, there can be a network with some existing auditoriums ~ government or otherwise which can be utilized for this purpose. There are new opportunities of exhibiting films online. The cooperative can organize festivals, emulate box-office theatre shows online through websites like www.Dingora.com and make brisk revenue with virtually minimal infrastructure cost. It can also work as a rental company of DVD films, keeping in mind that the revenue is not profit for the organisation rather it will be consumed in the entire workflow of the cooperative. The WWW has to be exploited ~ either for crowdfunding opportunities and/or for putting up advertisements to attract buyers.
The worst-case entitles to envision a scenario when the films produced, distributed and exhibited by the cooperative don’t return money back to the cooperative. And this can be highly probable. To combat such cases, the cooperative organization can think of lending out its assets ~ auditorium, projection facility, filmmaking equipments. As in South India, film clubs turned out to having studios of their own. Similarly, this cooperative organisation can think of setting up its own studio ~ to minimize cost of its own productions and to raise money for the expenses of its own films.
The government has to step in here ~ to help sort out a number of glitches. FFSI, the government arm had been instrumental in a lot of progress of film culture in India. However, often more than not, it is plagued with bureaucratic misgivings. To lose the unwanted and adverse fat is not easy or quick ~ otherwise FFSI itself could have vouched for my proposed cooperative organization, logically.
In the changing paradigm of today’s world, filmmaking is and should become as easy and effortless as writing with a pen. The reduced cost of pen and paper didn’t become a threat to the quality of literature just as the computer machine has only helped the publication industry without compromising the quality content. But cinema has to still walk a few more miles to be accepted and understood that way. The cooperative organisation of my proposal will thrive to provide that platform which bonds consumers and producers of the youngest art form. 

(Published in The Statesman on 12 May 2011 - http://www.thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=369282&catid=47)

Memories in March - revisited

Reading my initial critique on Memories in March (directed by debutant Sanjoy Nag) my friend film critic Suchetana mailed back - "Sahana is portrayed as the very psyche of our patriarchal society which only features women as commodity? Is sexuality more imporatnt than grief here?" It was a sharp incisive prick at the fabric of my review which I have to admit forced me to harp briefly on few ideas that crossed my mind. When I look back at Memories in March (henceforth referred here as MiM) again, it is apparent that the issues of gender identity takes centrestage in this film. So much so, that at times we tend to forget that Arati came to Kolkata from Delhi hearing the news of her only son's accidental demise. Apart from the initial slow built-up nowhere grief could stand besides the shock of truth that Arati discovered - her son Sid was a gay. In an interesting conversation Ornob, Sid's boss asked Arati which mattered most to her. It was no surprise that she was equally heart-broken that Sid was a gay. As the film progressed it was apparent that Arati and Sid had a relationship wherein Sid probably could open up his 'closet'.

Why didn't Sid tell his mother that he has a gay lover. Probably as George Orwell mentioned once, "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act"? Or there is a deep sense of guilt, of rejection that lurked in Sid's mind. Sid was never physically present, it was only through voice-overs he comes to us. So it is not fair to judge his positioning in the drama of same-gender love. However, Ornob seemed calm, poised, philosophical - above reasoning and beyond doubts. By elevating Ornob's psyche to a stature which normal humans may find difficult to achieve, the director tried to close few open questions on sexuality. However if we look at Sid's SMS which he drafted for his mother but couldn't send, its apparent that he feared that his 'rational' mother will also not accept. This brings us to the five stages of grief for a homo-sexual person as depicted in psychiatry - Denial, Anger, Bargain, Depression and finally Acceptance. These all are the steps towards the self. Ornob suggested that it was Sid who advanced him first, and Ornob only reciprocated. Is it then that Ornob didn't experience any of these stages of grief due to his sheer profound ideology? What about Sid then? He had the fear of the other (his mother here) - but isn't that actually a fear of the self? Isn't it that he himself denies his stature as a homo-sexual the reason for his delay in breaking it to his mother? The film's narrative however tells that he is the initiator. Probably the fine balance of love-tension got altered here a bit where it is more probable that Ornob, the initiated may have the fear of self and to the other more than Sid, the initiator. If we look deep into it, we hear Arati confessing that after her divorce with Sid's father she probably didn't spend much time with Sid - she was confused if that had some bearing on Sid's 'abnormality'. In his seminal essay Maternal care and mental health (World Health Organization Monograph (Serial No. 2), 1951) J Bowlby mentioned “the infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate, and continuous relationship with his mother (or permanent mother substitute) in which both find satisfaction and enjoyment”. Do we hear Arati's concerns here? In Shame and Attachment Loss: The Practical Work of Reparative Therapy (InterVarsity Press, 2009) Joseph Nicolosi categorically mentions the different homo-sexual patients (more than a thousand or so) who tend to homo-sexual attributes, behave such due to want of recognition and in being an outcast in the mental space. The societal structure is such, he mentioned, that many of his patients have unanimously retorted that though their psychiatrists clarified that alternate sexuality is perfectly 'normal', they at times wonder why are they inflicted with this 'abnormality'. And they have raised concerns with the lack in biological construct in a man-man relationship. Was Sid a person like them or Ornob? We don't know what made them 'different' in their seeking of personal comfort and peace. By making Sid physically muted, the director tried to dissociate the sexual connotation if any that would otherwise resonate in the screen cohabitation of Ornob and Sid. Rather, he replaced it with the slanted Oedipal reference of Arati and Ornob.

The transition between the reel reality and the narrated reality play a duality here – the reel reality shows Arati, Sahana (Sid’s colleague who was interested in Sid) and Ornob. Ornob was the ‘feminine’ part in the Ornob-Sid chemistry and hence all the three characters represent the ‘lack’ whereas the narrated reality deals with Ornob and Sid who represent the ‘have’. This complete polarized representation surely makes the film’s texture vapid. As mentioned even if we take into account that the director’s intention was to address issues at a mental space, yet, in subjects of homo-sexuality, questions of libido and sexual comfort will come up naturally. To ignore that is trying to avoid the certain confusions in life. And in regarding confusion as denial!

            In one of the initial interactions between Sahana and Arati, Sahana told Arati about her crush for Sid. Then she straightened her dress and quietly challenged Sid’s mother, “Do you think, I am upto the mark for him?” What Arati replied is un-important. What is important perhaps is the singular dialogue puts the matter of Gender in perspective – the patriarchal society looks at woman as a commodity even in an otherwise attempted asexual film.  With this reading there rises obvious questions – firstly in shielding from accepting and hence showing sexual undertones between male characters and secondly in placing Sahana mostly as a subverted sex-denied woman. In this society, men play the sole role of the strong and virile – depleted of their own grief and extending care for their women. This film apparently showed signs of breaking from this norm to an extent but finally falls into the same trap of prevalent gender politics.

(Published in The Statesman on 6th May 2011 - http://www.thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=368477&catid=47)