‘Indian’ Cinema that Year-Enders will Never Talk About... article

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It's the time when every section of the media - print, electronic, web - will be talking only Bollywood when they talk of "Indian" cinema in 2008. They will talk of how Akshay Kumar gave the biggest Box Office grosser through the infantile Singh Is Kinng, how Abbas-Mustan once again got ‘˜inspired' by one more foreign thriller to give one more hit through Race, how Aditya Chopra worked up a convoluted and weak plot but rode on Shah Rukh Khan's star power to make Rab De Bana Di Jodi a respectable money-spinner and how Ashutosh Gowariker tried his hand at a period epic in Jodhaa Akbar. Yes, they will talk only about that. If anyone goes beyond Bollywood, at the most it will be about how Rajnikanth's Shivaji The Boss created a storm but how Kuselan could not create any BO magic, and if SRK's Billo Barber, based on the same original Malayalam movie Katha Parayumpol (directed by Mohanan), would be able to do otherwise.

Be certain that none of them will be talking about the Indian cinema in its entirety, because we are made to believe that the readers/viewers are ‘˜not interested' to know about it. So, we - those craving for quality cinema from various parts of the country - will never know about a clutch of very interesting crop thrown up during the year by filmmakers working in various languages in various parts of the country, unless we happen to be lucky enough to attend one of the film festivals. Darn - only the minutest part of cine-lovers get to attend these festivals, and so we will almost certainly not get to watch these films even if we get to hear about them.

"Gulabi Talkies" by Girish Kasaravalli

Take for example Girish Kasaravalli's Gulabi Talkies, one more Kannada language film by Karnataka's most-celebrated director. With an excellent Umashree in the title role of Gulabi, a Muslim woman whose husband had abandoned her to marry another woman, and who survives by working as a midwife, the film perhaps sees the most nuanced storytelling of the year on Indian screens. On the surface of it, it is the story of the loneliness of a woman and how she counters it by obsessively watching films and TV.

But going beyond the story of an individual, it has a strong socio-political subtext, as the director weaves in aspects like religious fundamentalism creeping into quiet, peace-loving societies even as TV soaps with nonsensical storylines hold sway over vast multitudes. In the film, the poor woman living in a village of fishermen is gifted a TV set by a rich family satisfied with her midwife's work, but the satirical comment on how political parties - particularly in the South - seek to win votes by promising free TV sets to voters who do not have access to good health care and education is hard to miss.

"Kanchivaram" by Priyadarshan

Or take for example Priyadarshan's Kanchivaram in Tamil. Well, the Priyadarshan we all know is the one who has given us - the audience outside his native Kerala - hit films like Gardish, Mukurahat, Hera Pheri, Virasat and Bhool Bhulaiya, and many a flop too, all based on his or others' original Malayalam work. But this is a new Priyadarshan we see in Kanchivaram, not the one whose repertoire mostly comprises hard action or comedy. This is a film he has made from the heart, quite clearly, not giving any leeway to Box Office masala.

Set in the period just before India's Independence, it is an evocative look at the exploitative way of working of the famed silk industry in Kanchivaram in Tamil Nadu, and how the cooperative movement had taken roots there. Told in a simple, linear style, Kanchivaram, at the same time is a telling comment on why communism has failed in large parts of the world. Priyadarshan shows us why, through his lead character Vengadam's (a great performance by the ever-dependable and multi-talented Prakash Raj) compromises with his ideology so that he can fulfil a promise made to his daughter that otherwise a poor weaver like him won't be able to meet ever. This will probably be marked as Priyadarshan's most-nuanced work ever, unless he decides to tackle more such themes in future, instead of continuing to remake Malayalam hits in Hindi (case in point, Billo Barber with SRK and Irrfan Khan in the lead roles).

"Little Zizou" by Sooni Taraporevala

Or take Sooni Taraporevala's Little Zizou. An insider's view into the Parsi community, it is a little, quaint film that rides on bravura performances by its ensemble - and mostly Parsi, notably barring Naseeruddin Shah's son Imaad Shah - cast. At one level, it is just the story of a young, soccer-crazy kid whose idol is the French football icon Zinedine ‘˜Zizou' Zidane, and his surroundings. But Taraporevala, whose scripts for Mira Nair have resulted in some excellent cinema earlier, does not quite clearly believe in telling a simplistic story, not at least in her directorial debut. So, she brings in elements like rising religious intolerance in the Indian society, and also the crisis of identity that the dwindling Parsi community faces in India, something she has beautifully portrayed through the characters of a community newspaper's owner and a religious extremist who try to inculcate an extreme form of ‘˜purity' among the Parsis. Though a little uneven in structure - the film's overall lighthearted mood gets overtly serious in more than one moment - Little Zizou is one film that goes beyond the usual caricaturing of the community. Shot in the Parsi localities of Mumbai and Gujarat, it is a film that touches you through its sincere storytelling that goes beyond the simplistic.

"Chaurasta" by Anjan Dutt

Then there is Anjan Dutt's Chaurasta - Crossroads of Love, probably the best yet from the musician-director who till now has been trying to find his moorings as a filmmaker.

Very rarely has an Indian filmmaker used a place as a character so well as Dutt does in this film with Darjeeling. It is the story of a set of characters, each with their own issues to tackle and own problems to solve, connected only tenuously with one another. But in a sense, each of them is connected to all others through the setting of the Queen of Hill Stations, as the town in a way impacts how their lives will play out. An ensemble cast comprising Victor Bannerjee, Rupa Ganguly, Naved Aslam and Atul Kulkarni plays out the various characters with aplomb as Dutt deftly uses a lot of old English songs to take forward his story. In a way, this film is also a tribute to Ray's Kanchenjungha, though we never get to see the peak in Dutt's film!

"Yarwng (Roots)" by Joseph Pulinthanath

Another film that goes beyond the mundane is Joseph Pulinthanath's Yarwng (Roots). Only the third film in Tripura's tribal Kokborok language - the second one in that language, Mathia, too was made a few years ago by the same director - Yarwng is a story of how so-called development negatively impacts the lives of those people who never gets the taste the fruits of development. The backdrop of the film is a real-life incident of displacement of about 60,000 tribals in the mid 1970s due to the construction of a dam in Tripura in North-East India (the displaced lot, incidentally, have become permanent vagabonds as they were never rehabilitated by the government), and Pulinthanath, a priest from Kerala who has settled down in Tripura and is associated with Church-backed efforts to give access to education to the people in the remote state, has told the larger story through the tale of unrequited love of a young couple who were forced to separate by the rising waters of the dammed river. Made with a limited budget as Tripura does not even have proper facilities to take the film to the very people on whose lives it is made, Yarwng scores through its portrayal of a simple lot of people who never get to know why they got displaced from the land of their ancestors for the benefit of those who are never bothered about them, and perhaps don't even know about their existence. The film will surely find resonance in many parts of the world as it is a story that has happened in real life - many times over, and in many countries.

"Chaturanga" by Suman Mukhopadhyay

Suman Mukhopadhyay's Bengali film Chaturanga, based on Rabindranath Tagore's eponymous story, is another film that stood out during the year. Tagore's story was definitely forward looking, as many of his writings were, and the questions raised by the protagonists in the film set in a period about 100 years ago are still highly-relevant in the present times. Subrata Dutta, an NSD alumus, has done a compelling job in the lead role of Shashich who is never able to find the real meaning of life despite his best efforts. Told in four chapters, it is a complex story of how the human mind works. With Joy Sengupta, Rituparna Sengupta and Dhritiman Chatterjee playing important characters, Chaturanga is a worthy screen adaptation of Tagore's classic story.

But no, we will not - most likely- get to hear about these films, leave alone see them, when the media at large talks of ‘˜Indian' cinema during 2008, as it was the year before, and almost certainly, as it will be in the year next.