Kahaani – tacky and deceitful

Most of Hitchcock’s films start in daylight, with bright settings and at times with comic undertones. He once said, "in a light-hearted setting, the advent of drama is made all the more effective by its unexpectedness…The more happy-go-lucky the setting, the greater kick you get from the sudden introduction of drama."  This dramatic tension helps to intensify the climax which when attained spellbinds the audience and takes her breath away. The attainment of ‘thrill’ is compounded by Macguffins with an undercurrent of facetious wit. In many of the Hitchcock’s brilliant thrillers there is sharp divide between what the audience ‘knows’ and what the character ‘knows’. This is how the suspense is cultivated and nurtured. The opposite of that (when the audience actually are made not to ‘know’) is in essence depriving the audience, her legitimate insight to the incidents and events that unfurl. In short, that is when the director cheats the audience.

This is the foremost feeling that I had as an audience of the much-hyped hindi thriller Kahaani. There is a scene where in the confines of her home, dejected and rejected by her fortune Vidya Bagchi, the protagonist cries and thinks of her happy past with her husband. Now in a private moment if a character reacts only to the audience, we expect that to be truthful and the reel reality. In deceiving the audience with character doubles in the end, the director convolutes the build-up of the tension.  From the very beginning the director wanted his audience to run after speed. There are jerky shots with frequent cuts to create a sense of tension and the feeling of speed. Films made by most Bengali film-makers are in slow ambit to bore the audience, so much so that director Sujoy Ghosh pressed the accelerator from shot 1. Hence, the Hitchcockian sublime built up of the suspense sprinkled with comic situations is lost. Now there is no hard and fast rule to follow Hitchcock in a thriller. However, what is required probably is an economy of expression and not facts. For example the innuendo at the private composure of the HR Manager before she was killed is an excess – adding no value to the character or the nature of the crime, nor is there a Macguffin.

The character of Vidya is woven in incompleteness. Now being incomplete proves vacuum in the creator’s head instead of conscious ambiguity leading to multiple interpretations from the audience. For example, why was there no back-ground check done on Vidya by the Intelligence Bureau? Why not the basic check if she did indeed land from London on that day – when a similar check was done on her estranged husband? The apparent joviality of Vidya’s character is another incident of incompleteness. It was not consciously strewn for the audience to swoop on – consider the little flirtations of Vidya with Rana, the young police officer in the tram where she playfully almost rubbed Rana’s feet with her. To me it makes her character inconsistent instead of being ‘whole’.

What however did create a warm ambience is perhaps the depiction of the city of Kolkata. Trams, the Howrah Bridge and the Durga Puja are unfailing traits of the city. The metro got added to that. There is some deft imagery not in the landmarks but in the broiling smoke of the chai at the roadside tea-stall, in the unwound last tram that ferries people to a different world and the lanes and by-lanes of the city. The city does come-out even further at Kumortuli, the place where Durga idols are being made and in the climax Dasami sequence. But the city had remained soft, and warm with almost sepia colours at night or non-committal, even non-interested in the bright day colours. Only a couple of metro scenes where the chilly whiteness of the screen sends a shiver down the spine. Compare this with Satyajit Ray’s handling of Benares in Joy Baba Felunath you will make out how the city (Benares) nurtures the crime, and itself becomes criminal in instinct. Or for that matter the minimally supreme film Aamir which poses Mumbai as the city you cannot leave, a city you never trust. Sujoy Ghosh’s Kolkata in contrast wanted to be a benevolent character in this saga rather than a heinous conspirator in perpetuating terror.

Vidya Balan’s acting is restrained and rational. She lacked support of the script at places and tried to act consistently to an inconsistent character. Her and Rana’s nightly adventures to a couple of Govt. organizations, breaking open the ancient locks with hairpin is another example of too-much creative license. However her physical acting as the pregnant woman deserves credit. The film belongs to Vidya in heart and soul – it’s just that she had limited opportunities to show the gamut of her histrionic skills. The other actors – a host of Bengali ones at times lacked conviction. Parambrata as Rana is one example whose actions and whose revelation in the end are not exactly the same. Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s Khan is strong on the other hand though the character was turned to almost a laughing stock in the end (the entire police force and the Intelligence Bureau were turned to that almost sadly). Sawata Chatterjee’s Bob Biswas, the serial killer cum LIC agent is probably one leaf out of Hitchcock’s cinema. He is cold and clinical though his moving around with a revolver at all places and at all times including the metro station is a bit unrealistic. Also unknown why he wanted to push Vidya in front of the speeding train though he actually got her picture via mms (to kill her) much later.

Kahaani ends with the immersion of the Durga idol in the holy waters. This is just after the climax which is heightened with a shock twist. Hitchcock had mentioned a number of times the subtle difference between shock and suspense. As the idol finally takes to the floating waters of life, Vidya Bagchi gets obliterated. She came with a purpose and left after accomplishing that and also helping the legal governance of the country. What the story suffered from was the single-point focus to make Vidya triumphant. This ruined the chances of one A Wednesday in the making which built the suspense even if the audience knew what the characters didn’t. In the ultimate analysis, Kahaani is jazzy and fast-paced. It will enthrall a part of the audience with its unfailing narrative spree towards the climax. For the other part, this film will pass on as tacky and deceitful, for taking the audience as granted and making a fun of their rationale in the end.

Guru Dutt’s ten years with Abrar Alvi

A book on any film personality creates a lot of interest to the casual mind. There are expectations galore. In India, a film actor is, in many ways looked upon as a role model – a person who has to play his reel roles in his real life, as if. There are however few who can live up to the mystique revolving round Guru Dutt – the quintessential portrayal of tragedy and sorrow. The book Ten Years with Guru Dutt: Abrar Alvi’s Journey (written by Sathya Saran, Penguin Books India, 2008) however comes with a surprise. The bold lettering of the name Guru Dutt does make it marketable but after starting to read the preface it made me unsure – is it a book on Guru Dutt or it is on Abrar Alvi, the forgotten writer of Guru Dutt Films. In actual, it is on both; it is on their creative camaraderie.

                Abrar Alvi penned amongst many others, films like Kaagaz Ke Phool, Chaudhvin Ka Chand, Aar Paar and Mr and Mrs 55. He also transformed the much-publicized Bengali novel and directed it – Saheb, Bibi aur Ghulam. There had been considerable print material devoted on the controversy that had raged for decades as to who directed the masterpiece. The book had gone in detail in charting out insightful aspects of many colourful personalities like Johny Walker, Mehmood, the discrepancies with Raj Khosla, the tragic revelations of physical abuse of Meena Kumari inflicted by her husband Kamal Amrohi and the whimsical miser in S D Burman. There has been a bigger chunk kept for the three highlights of the book, from the content perspective – the suicide of Guru Dutt, the making of Saheb, Bibi aur Ghulam and the hyped love affair between Dutt and Waheeda Rehman. The anecdotes however always revolve round Guru Dutt and Abrar’s observation of the incidents.

This lends an interesting aspect on the way Sathya Saran developed the book. The lengthy interviews that Saran took of Alvi had been carefully crafted in two-person language – it is Alvi’s own narration till the end but interspersed with Saran’s comments and additions that takes Alvi’s narrative forward.  The fluidity of Saran’s diction has made the read an enjoyable one – simple and free-flowing.  Within the funny anecdotes there are incidents laid out with remarkable lucidity that marks the height of creative sustenance between Guru Dutt and Abrar. One such was the technical acumen that Dutt possessed and his stepping in to address the challenges faced by the camera unit technically – Abrar recounts how Guru Dutt described to him the functionality and technical specification of lenses with variable focal lengths. The book also lights up the entrepreneur in Guru Dutt – as the head of his production unit churning out multiple films in parallel to optimize his budget.

What the book probably lacks is the authenticity of the incidents described in fleeting details. Looking from another side, the particular double-spaced style ensured that there is enough fictional heightening of the incidents described. The book itself can act as a script; it is that filmy, yes. However this doesn’t spare from Abrar speaking his mind out. It is easy to depict incidents and comment on people who are beyond chance to tell their version back. However, Abrar had been candid even in his evaluation of many concerned individuals. Take for example, his perception of Waheeda Rehman as Jaba in Saheb, Bibi aur Ghulam - “Waheeda is a fine artist and I could get almost anything out of her. But I still believe she was miscast as Jaba. Her personality was not suited for the role of a mischievous girl with a mercurial temperament. A Madhubala or a Geeta Bali could have done the role so much better”.

                As mentioned, Alvi’s repeated juxtaposition of his closeness to Guru Dutt is at times appalling. He sprinkled his narration with the likes of 'Guru Dutt trusted me' and 'Guru Dutt listened to me' etc which overemphasized the relation between the writer and his mentor. This apart, Sathya Saran had put spices in right ingredients that make the book a thoroughly readable book. The mood sways from fun to tragedy, from sensuality to depression and hatred all mingle for a whole picture. The purpose of the book is probably not only to look into Guru Dutt but to look into the relation of Guru with his key persons. The book serves that very purpose with finesse. Sathya Saran’s immaculate simple style ensured that the book is in the truest sense – Un-put-down-able!

                                                                                                                                                Amitava Nag

The Prince

Growing up in the late seventies and early eighties in a middle-class Bengali family infested with academicians had its own share of mis-fortunes. One for sure was the lack of permission to watch Television. Forget the mugging of TV channels on today’s kids, back then, we had to rely on Mickey Mouse, occasional Kolkata league football match and yes, the Wednesday 8 PM Chitrahar. Rangoli was the other attraction a little later but at 7:30 AM on Sunday mornings it was never within our reach. We never had a TV of our own till the late eighties. In those momentous waits from one half hour Hindi song snippet to the next, sometime I happened to see a jumping man and a bewildered frenzied shout “Yahhooo”. No, I never could take it to my liking, then. But soon the voice became familiar and repetitive – the greatest Hindi playback singer to me, Mohd. Rafi. Rafi’s voice lingered then, and now, with so much pathos, brushes on my beaten soul with tender caress and leaves me wanting more. I could no longer accept anyone else – except quite a few of Mukesh’s glorious renditions of Raj Kapoor primarily and only a few of the versatile Kishore Kumar.  However, following the onscreen charismatic figure used to sway from Raj Kapoor to Dev Anand and even Guru Dutt, till it more or less steadied on that lanky jumping man with breath-taking ‘ruup’. How can a man be so handsome, I asked myself everytime I looked at him? In those pre-teen/teen age of stupidity and innocence, in falling in love and falling apart, Shammi Kapoor with his wild, beastly submission was just what I could never become.

I was growing up in strict Bengaliness, reading Tagore and the other great literary works of geniuses. Hindi cinema was a strict taboo – the only one that we saw as a child was Tapan Sinha’s Safed Hathi. So I had a flirting relationship with Shammi Kapoor – the Wednesday nights or the occasional Sunday mornings. My mates in school had taken onto the towering Amitabh Bachchan by then – reciting his famous lines from Zanjeer to Dewaar and laughing at my rather feminine prescription of the middle Kapoor. In Bengali cinema the options were limited to Uttam Kumar and Soumitra Chatterjee and I was heavily in for the latter. ‘How can you like that joker – who cannot stay still and yet like Soumitra Chatterjee’s Methodist acting and Satyajit Ray’s films?’ asked friends or seniors who took it upon them to “educate” me. I was perplexed as well. Is there any generic disorder in me – that I dreamt of wooing my girl in the lake singing ‘Diwana hua Badal’?  It soon became hence, the deep secret which I cherished and refused to open with. Long after I thank myself not to pursue academics to the extent of film schools – so much so that I can atleast confess my impish ga-ga over the “not-so-artistic” aspect of motion pictures.  That saved some self pity!

I was amazed to find so many people, friends and acquaintances on Facebook sharing Shammi Kapoor’s famous songs on their pages and walls after his demise. Wasn’t he a star half a century back who is up and packed for good for long? Probably yes. But in grief when there is need to be nostalgic to dig up finer moments and sunlights in one’s life I find people who were born decades after Shammi Kapoor gave his last box-office hit rake up the unforgettable ‘Dil dekhe dekho’ or a Teesri Manzil number or even the lyrical Rafi version of ‘Jindagi ek safar’ which soothes the soul so much even now. Does it mean there are certain things which are evergreen as they say? Or, may be classic, testing the sands of time?

I have not watched a Shammi Kapoor movie in ages. Nor do I have any in my possession now that I can embark on a nostalgia trail. But googling in Youtube I did happen to savour few of the enchanting pieces that are trademark his. The list that started with ‘Chahe koi mujhe Junglee kahe’, went on with ‘Dil dekhe dekho’, to the inimitable ‘Aaj kaal tere mere pyar’ (with Mumtaz), the stylistic ‘Badan pe sitare’ (with coy Vaijyantimala in Prince), the superlative numbers with a naïve Sharmila Tagore in Kashmir ki Kali and a slightly ripened her in An evening in Paris. To my surprise I realized few extremely poignant cinematography viz. the ending shot of ‘Yeh Chand Sa Roshan chehra’ where the silhouette of the encircling boats zeroing effortlessly on the couple symbolizing convergence of their love both mental and physical, the drama and sexual tension with Sadhna in ‘Dilruba dil pe tu’ from Rajkumar or the love-torn, confused and accommodating partner of Hema Malini in his one of the last films as hero in Andaaz.

Perhaps Shammi Kapoor was an actor with his limitations – he played mostly the affluent and the rich supplemented with his marked good looks (unlike Raj Kapoor who preferred plating the pauper), he used to jump all around and dance awkwardly to suit his supposedly incapacity to match Helen or the other dancing divas of the time (remember there used to be a lot of facial expressions and body gestures when he paired with them and not necessarily dancing in semblance). But above all, he exudes confidence and warmth which made him so endearing. He was never the biggest superstar – shadowed by the trio (of Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand and Dilip Kumar) in his early career and then swept off by the diminutive dynamite named Rajesh Khanna in the early seventies.

But to those, for whom cinema remains a mystery of light and shade, of larger projection of life with its vagaries, Shammi Kapoor and his histrionics will remain a source of entertaining energy. He forced us to believe that he actually meant ‘Dil use do jo jaan de de’- the Prince who was more than just a hero.

Delhi Belly – shit happens, on screen

A few weeks back I happened to watch Delhi Belly, a film that has supposedly taken the urban country by storm. I happened to laugh away, revere even a few aspects of it in the first count. But after a few days and analyzing it mentally, not all was amusing! Sharing my little disavowal of the ‘humour’ in Delhi Belly (referred as DB henceforth) and my cynicism in accepting it to be ‘outrageous and obnoxious for Indian audience’, left few of my friends sore. They all opined that I have lost it – that sense, what they coin as HUMOUR. Now I have matured enough now to understand that like many things, this sense is also subjective.  I have enjoyed Woody Allen in his relentless hovering in the New York streets, reveled in Vinay Pathak’s antics in the original Bheja Fry but somehow got stumped with the new Golmaal or Welcome.  I do admit hence, that my friends are not at fault, it’s just a sense of humour somehow that rings differently in the different minds

It becomes imperative on my part hence, to clarify my stance – what went wrong with me in the scope of accepting DB as a comedy and as pioneer amongst its peers.  And, possibly few generic musings. I have always believed that there should be an Indian film theory – a theory to understand the different variations within the same genre of Indian films. They are varied based on time, culture and geography. The concept of a pan-Indian audience was cooked, it never was, and the unity in diversity had always been political and less cultural. That is solely the reason I hated the trend that classified Hindi films churned out from Mumbai as “Indian” film. Which India, whose India do they represent? Aamir Khan being a supremely intelligent individual has consciously chosen and supported the subjects of his films that are specific in their charm. DB, for instance is a period film with a difference - it articulates the existence of contemporary times in an upwardly urban city-scape. 

That the film is ‘inspired’ by a host of Hollywood films (who cannot but relate the similes with Todd Phillips’ The Hangover), US tv sit-coms is stated in its texture. There is an interesting usage of a Rishi Kapoor dance number in the first scene and the mockery of it by Aamir’s item number in the end. Then there is a small chase scene almost lifted from the classic Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron and so on. Now what started in the first part of the film as funny – the extreme frequent usage of farting and elaboration of human stool and its passing in the second half took the fun out from this grey humour for me.  Because, it is still at a level of abstraction where the tendencies have been to make the film ‘realistic’ but the form is almost the same primitive.  The scene where the gangman unloads human faeces on the table is hence nonsensical to me – neither humorous nor abhorring the way Pasolini raked up smell from behind the scenes even! Now if someone is not that bold to show the actual things on-screen (which can be fully justifiable) then why just fake it?  Just like Aamir’s earlier Dil Chahta Hai, DB also  renders within the normal peripheries of Hindi mainstream film – only camouflaging as being radical (and rebellious, this time).

Most of the time, the jokes in DB are cartoonish by any standard and raunchy to be best (or worst!). It such a misfortune that the film is branded as “Adult comedy”. It becomes difficult to appreciate that “adultness” is only in scatology and in squeezing the breasts of a prostitute on screen.  Likewise, the whole subplot of one of the characters trying to blackmail his landlord with pictures (taken in a non-digital SLR camera!!) of the latter visiting a prostitute falls flat. Or, take for instance after the other inmate of that crude apartment came to know that his love-interest is already engaged, breaks into a musical number in the typical Hindi cinema isshtyle – the only difference is that the dual-meaning of the lyrics possibly imply that the girl once gave him a blowjob!  Even, for the matter, the joke about branding the female journalist as a lesbian in one of the party scenes. If there is a slant at any transgression if at all, that is not understood. On the contrary in hooking up her with the male protagonist in the end (instead of the protagonist’s rich girlfriend), tries to balance the sexual preference of the female journalist.

In his blog Aamir Khan said, "Aamir Khan Productions is known for its inspiring, clean, family entertainment. All that is about to change! Delhi Belly has the potential of, in a single stroke, destroying all the goodwill we have built in the last ten years” (http://movies.ndtv.com/movie_Story.aspx?id=ENTEN20110175242 accessed on 27-July-2011). As mentioned, apart from that artificial picturisation of stool being unloaded, almost nothing is too gross – neither visually, nor at an abstract level apart from liberal use of curse words. On one hand the sanctity of familial happiness is restored in the landlord getting a let off and her wife knowing nothing about him visiting the brothel, and on the other, the male protagonist’s rejection of his girl-friend and her over-interfering family was as per the mainstream audience’s latent wish!

The effort in the end is a paced film smartly done which in actual is too concerned not to offend the audience or even try to shock it. There are laugh guff which all probably gets white-washed from the mind after some time. We can however, always hope that the next “adult” comedy gives some respect to the matters inside the head rather than your belly!