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!
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