MESSAGE BORED
Rajkumar Santoshi is back, trying to shake awake our collective conscience. If only he’d shaken awake his storytelling skills too…
JAN 13, 2008 – WHATEVER IT IS THAT’S KEEPING KAJOL OCCUPIED during the long gaps between her films these days, it certainly isn’t laying out sumptuous meals for husband Ajay Devgan. The actor was never really one to be described as heavy, but in films like Company, there was at least something robust about him, a halfway-commanding physical presence – and that’s increasingly been replaced with a hollowed-out tiredness, as if liposuction had been performed on a man who, in fact, needed to be prescribed a daily diet of ghee and gulab jamuns. At his current rate of physical attrition, I’m afraid he’s going to end up a stick figure in a game of hangman – and I’m not sure how he’s going to summon up charm and life out of those sunken eyes in romantic films such as the upcoming U Me Aur Hum (though the just-released promo of this film directed by Devgan appears almost as anorexic, peppered with beyond-clichés about “pyaar karna” and, yawn, “pyaar nibhana”).
At the same time, I can’t think of any other star playing street-theatre actor Ashfaque (who’s rechristened Sameer Khan when he enters the movies) in Rajkumar Santoshi’s Halla Bol. At the beginning, when a breathless TV reporter announces the arrival of “the greatest action hero… the superstar,” Ashfaque shrugs off the extravagant praise by describing himself a “chhote se shehar ka mamooli sa aadmi.” Is there another leading man you could pin this label to, another contemporary star who looks as if he bucked the odds and made it despite being a nondescript bloke from a nondescript town?
But having cast the right man for the right part, Santoshi goes terribly wrong in making his hero shoulder that most dreaded of actorly burdens – that of becoming a mouthpiece for the screenplay’s conceits. Devgan has a few nice, unguarded moments – like when he sees himself on screen for the first time and tells his girlfriend Sneha (Vidya Balan) that there seems to be some sort of projection problem, and she points out that it’s just his eyes that are misting over with emotion. But most other times, his brief is to highlight, make bold, underline and italicise such messagey passages as the one where he refuses to play the minority card – he’s being targeted by Hindus; Muslim politicians advise him to allege that he’s being persecuted due to his religious beliefs – because he lives in a country where a Muslim was President and where a Sikh is Prime Minister. It may not be the best of performances, but it’s to Devgan’s credit that he doesn’t end up looking ridiculous.
Unfortunately, a lot of Halla Bol does – and in ways it may not have, a couple of decades ago. The film gets going with a sort-of reenactment of the Jessica Lal tragedy; two rich kids gun down a girl in a nightclub – she won’t encourage their advances – and walk out coolly, in the direct line of sight of every eye in the vicinity, including Ashfaque’s. He subsequently confesses to the cops that he didn’t see a thing, and soon after, he’s reciting thunderous “Zulm ke khilaaf awaaz uthani padegi” dialogue in front of the camera, that it’s time to raise your voice against injustice. If, at this juncture, you’re tut-tutting that, alas, this fiery hero in reel life is anything but that in real life, you’d probably match the profile of the target audience for this film – the good people who’ll await with nail-biting ardour the reawakening of Ashfaque’s dormant conscience, as detailed through the rest of the film.
But after a point, I was bored beyond belief – though I’m almost afraid to say this, because I’m sure there will be those ready to pounce on this confession, claiming that this is a message movie, so it has to be detailed with such broad brush-strokes to reach the widest possible audience. And this makes me wonder: Is cinema a medium for a story or a sermon? The Hollywood mogul Samuel Goldwyn famously said, “Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.” But are things different in an Indian context? Do we expect make-believe characters in make-believe stories to accomplish in three hours what our moral science or civics teachers – or even our parents – couldn’t in all our years of growing up? In between cell phones going off in the dark, babies bawling, restless children scampering about the aisles, frontbenchers hooting, in between the crunch of popcorn and the fizz of soda, do we seek entertainment as well as evangelism?
But even if you agree – even if you view as a function of cinema the dispensing of bitter, little pills in sugarcoated shells – I doubt you’d use Halla Bol as a case study to further this notion, because this film is all medicine. I know a lot of people didn’t care for Santoshi’s Lajja, but I found it interesting that a film named its characters Vaidehi and Maithili and Janki and Ramdulari – victims of our male-dominated society, all – in order to explore what it is to be a woman in the land of Sita. The way Santoshi structured the film, with vignettes woven around these fascinating women, he was able to pack in a lot of familiar masala elements into each segment, which kept the film from becoming an endless didactic tirade. In other words, even if I didn’t buy into (or perhaps even care for) the overarching points about sisterhood Santoshi was making, the individual dilemmas, the little dramatic knots in each of these episodes kept me hooked. And this is the model that be-the-change-you-want-to-see films like Rang De Basanti (as well as its more straightforward, formula-film antecedents like Arjun or perhaps even Dacait) followed, giving you characters you cared about in stories that kept you interested, knocking you flat with emotional impact first, educational import only later.
In Halla Bol, however, Santoshi has a point to hammer home and he goes after this goal with such dedication and such conviction, he refuses to consider that his passion about this issue may not be all that contagious, that he may have to throw a few scraps in the direction of those of us looking for other hooks to hold on to. Santoshi is a crusader here, and you catch only occasional glimpses of the gifted storyteller that he is – that he was as recently as Pukar or Khakee. Early on, Santoshi stages a scene where Ashfaque reveals that the details in his biography – about his dirt-poor childhood, when he had no money and had to study under streetlamps – aren’t true, and when his biographer asks him what the truth is, he replies, “Sach woh check hai jo aapko mila,” that money is the only truth. That’s the kind of whiplash line no one writes anymore in this multiplex age, where everyone tries to “keep it real.” And that’s what makes Santoshi valuable; among directors trying out increasingly newer ways to tell stories, he’s one of the few who knows how to reassure us with rhythms from long ago.
I doubt another filmmaker would have been interested in staging the lovely bit of street theatre that Santoshi does here – again with lines filled with rhymes and other forms of deliberate artifice that are quite rare on screen these days. This staging occurs during a long – and rather ungainly – flashback to Ashfaque’s small-town roots, and Santoshi finds interesting ways to highlight the wholesomeness that still exists, apparently, outside our rotting, big cities. We discover that Ashfaque’s parents (played by Sulabha Arya and the numerologically spiffed-up Aanjjan Srivastav) named their son after the freedom fighter Ashfaqullah Khan, and that this Muslim boy has perhaps learnt a few lessons from the Hindu legend of Raja Harischandra, which appears to be a favourite with his Sikh mentor Sidhu (Pankaj Kapur). When Sneha asks him to choose between her and his dreams of becoming an actor, he chooses the latter – not because he doesn’t love her, but because he can’t lie to her. It’s a classic, old-fashioned morality-tale-moment being spun before our eyes.
But more often than not, this is a flashback – and a film – of events, not individuals. Santoshi chooses to lay out things from a bird’s-eye point of view, instead of opening them out through his characters – many of whom we barely register as people. We are told that Ashfaque and Sneha are in love, and you may wonder: it’s nice that no fuss is made about their religious differences, but how did they fall in love? We are told that Sidhu was once a dacoit in the Chambal, and you may wonder: but how did he make this transition to do-gooder through street theatre? All the back stories are dispensed with through cursory snatches of dialogue, and while it’s not always possible for a film to flesh out every single character, the unfortunate result here is that Sneha and Sidhu and everyone except Ashfaque remain just beyond our grasp. They aren’t fully-formed characters so much as pawns in the screenplay.
Sneha exists for the sole purpose of prickling Ashfaque’s conscience, and Vidya Balan has an understandably tough time trying to make us care about her. She has to deliver gassy lines such as the one where she lays bare Ashfaque’s egotism by observing that he’s begun to use “I” a lot in his sentences, and you cannot help feeling sorry for Balan for having to summon up a meaningful look to go with this stern disapproval of a personal pronoun. (This will, however, be a movie the actress will go down in history for, considering she’s possibly the first Hindi film heroine to refer to her husband’s low hangers.) And while not peddling righteous indignation, the characters come at us with moral indignation. After his protégé becomes a star, Sidhu approaches him with news about the rape of a Dalit woman by an “MLA ka ladka,” and wants Ashfaque to join his old street-theatre buddies in creating awareness about this crime. Ashfaque says he doesn’t have the time, and Sidhu shoots back a look of contempt that all but burns him down to a cinder – but no one, surely, is naïve enough to think that a superstar-actor can dole out dates at whim.
But that’s how Santoshi loads the dice against Ashfaque – through these characters, and through a long, finger-wagging introduction sequence that tells us that (a) he’s the kind of insecure star who asks for a co-star’s scenes to be truncated, (b) he’s the kind of insensitive star who’ll brush aside a respected director who’s been working on a dream script for 20 years, (c) he’s not above sleeping with women who ask him for a role in his films, (d) he won’t clear his schedule to see his only son on stage for the first time in a school play, and (e) he’ll even endorse Bhalu Chaap Kala Dantmanjan if it’ll bring him bucks. If I’ve made this sound like a listing exercise, that’s what it is in the film – a series of black marks indicating a man so depraved, so lost, the only way henceforth is up. Dev Anand played a similar character in the moving Tere Mere Sapne, a small-town doctor who loses his way in the big city before finding redemption, but where that film eased us into his situation, this one merely pins labels on its hero and asks us to care.
Halla Bol might have still worked if Santoshi had strung together a series of powerful sequences – manipulating us this way and that so we react to the film in a solely sensory manner, without stopping to think – but he glosses over even the obvious bits of dramatic fodder, the lightning rods for emotion that he’d have once seized with a gleeful laugh and exploited to the maximum. During the flashback, Sidhu gives Ashfaque a tiny trophy that’s his – it is the first award that Sidhu got – and I thought Santoshi would find a way to milk this moment for all its worth later on, when he cuts back to the present and we see Ashfaque clutching his latest prize in the trophy room at his house. I thought we’d be invited to sniffle at the sight of this new trophy in relation to the older one, the one that Sidhu gave him – now a sad, neglected, cobwebbed Rosebud among the endless rows of bigger, shiner, silver-jubilee awards. I mean, if you’re going all out, why not go all out?
But that moment just flits by, as does another, and another – and by the time Ashfaque’s son is admitted in a hospital, and we see that the nurse on duty is chilling out with a copy of Cine Blitz (how callous! how callous!), I lost all hope that Halla Bol would amount to anything more than a Pankaj Kapur showcase. That, thankfully, the film certainly is, especially when the camera holds the actor in a worshipful mid-gaze – as if it daren’t look away from this juicy a performance – when he’s reciting the tale of Raja Harischandra in stentorian tones. When he gets to the part about the king being separated from his wife and son, his eyes fill with tears and the voice drops a couple of notches; it’s the only time in Halla Bol you’ll find yourself dropping your guard and entering the film, though Kapur finds ways to entertain himself (and us) even when asked to save Ashfaque by driving a lorry and deflecting point-blank bullets with nothing more than a stony look. If I’d not been struck dumb with the sheer gall of the scene (and the performance), I’d have surely reached out to the screen and extended a napkin so he could wipe off the bits of scenery still stuck to the corners of his lips.
Copyright ©2008 The New Sunday Express. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Balaji K
January 12, 2008
Dear Rangan,
Once again a very thoughtful and cerebral review. I have not seen the film so cannot say whether I share your view on the film. But my general observation of critics —- I am talking of serious and sincere ones —- is that in the process of being ramrod right and honest they lose the essential cineaste in them, which I suppose is what made them to get into the vocation of watching and reviewing movies.
Your reviews, wonderfully and lucidly written with all the delicate touches and easy literary flourishes, generally belie the sweaty strain that goes into crafting them. A fan goes to the theatre to enjoy, while a critic perhaps gets down to detail the wrongs. Of course, honest reviewers, like you, don’t fail to pick out the good things. But some how it is not so organic (though not because of not trying).
One of your fellow bloggers and also a movie buff, Jabberwock, recently wrote about Tare Zameen Par saying that he enjoyed the film as a fan but had a few holes to pick as a critic. I found this fascinating in a sad sort of way. There seems to be a gap between the two stools.
Is a critic a different person residing in the same individual, perhaps with shared sensibilities? To put it in a rather raw way, is a critic real? I am not trying to be disparaging here. All I am trying to understand is how much of the fan dies to create a critic, and how much is it all worth it at the end of the day?
–Balaji K
LikeLike
Aditya Pant
January 12, 2008
“…his brief is to highlight, make bold, underline and italicise such messagey passages…”
I so agree with this point. There were numerous places in the film where the point could have gooten across subtly without any dialogue. You’ve mentioned this dialogue about the President and PM. Don’t you think if the scene had ended by Ashfaque asking the Muslim leaders to leave it would have still made the same impact? Similarly, when Sneha asks him if he would choose between film and her, just the scene showing him leaving her hand would have been so much more eloquent.
I felt Halla Bol was a very 80s film in terms of its treatment and storytelling. Those were the times when anti-system films were very popular and very actor worth his salt had to have at least one such film on his resume (Remember the Aaj Ka MLA/Inquilab/Yeh Desh race in the mid-80s). I’m not saying the theme is not relevant today – it sure is – just that the narration and also charcterization has to move with the times. The caricaturish politician is so in-a-time-warp. The amatuerish effort to make incidents and characters look like real life incident and characters (and in doing so touching upon all possible issues) is also quite passe.
Pankaj Kapoor alone was the reason for me watching this film, and he didn’t disappoint me, but the whole film was disappointing.
LikeLike
George
January 12, 2008
I get the impression that Halla Bol seems more of a victim than Family: Ties Of Blood of what I see of Santoshi’s uncertainty about the kind of filmmaker he wants to be: he seems to want to crusade for causes and explore the drama of conflict and human emotion, but can’t seem to shake off a longing for the Bollywood form (yielding to expository superficial elements, song and dance routines and a not-to-dark approach). Mukul S. Anand seemed to let the latter win grandly (with the elements pounding your senses). Santoshi doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d want to go down that road and yet, if this film is any indication, he’s still taking a few tentative steps every now and then. I haven’t seen the flick yet, but I’m worried it won’t have as much of a latent reward as Family: Ties Of Blood did.
LikeLike
Suderman
January 13, 2008
We have quite a fight on our hands. 🙂 Just posted my review and came to see yours. I swear it’s not reactive to yours.
LikeLike
brangan
January 13, 2008
Balaji K: Thank you for such a nice comment. The thing is, you CANNOT be any good as a critic without loving films. It would take too much out of you to trudge in and out of films, non stop, and write extensively about them if you didn’t really have a passion for cinema (good, bad or ugly). So I guess I haven’t lost the “essential cineaste” in me, and the day this becomes a chore, you bet I’ll quit. But movies set bars for themselves that, in turn, make you set bars for their evaluation — at least that’s the way I work. Let’s take Aaja Nachle. All it wanted to be was a star vehicle, plus a pleasantly diverting tale of a small-town rediscovering the arts. So, that being the bar it set for itself, I thought it did a pretty good job of delivering on its promise. TZP or Halla Bol — on the other hand — are hugely ambitious ventures, and they set high “bars” for themselves. So when they don’t measure up in some shape or form, you feel disappointed (even if, in the case of TZP, there’s still lots to enjoy). But yes, that’s a burden a critic has that the audience doesn’t have — though I wouldn’t call it to “detail the wrongs”. There *is* no “right” or “wrong” in films, just “what works for you” and “what doesn’t”, and my job is to say why the film worked (or didn’t) for me. The difference between a fan of films and a critic is only that the latter has to lay things out analytically. A fan may feel the same things, but may just brush it away with a casual “it was good” type appraisal. But I bet even a film fan, if you sit him/her down, and ask them to really process the entire viewing experience they’ve just had, would veer off into shades of grey evaluation instead of outright IT SUCKED or IT ROCKED evaluations.
Aditya: Actually, the lack of subtlety wasn’t a problem. But the fact that nothing was unpredictable, that Santoshi had staged such a by-the-numbers film was. Yeah, I felt that 80s element too. I mentioned it too: “Unfortunately, a lot of Halla Bol does – and in ways it may not have, a couple of decades ago.”
George: The sad thing is that the flair that santoshi had, even that’s deserted him here. The opening fifteen minutes or so are so flat, it’s like a madhur Bhandarkar expose on the lives of our film industry. You have to see it to believe it.
Suderman: No fight boss. I’m glad it worked for you 🙂
LikeLike
brangan
January 13, 2008
BTW, Jabberwock, if you’re reading this, maybe you’d care to elaborate about the whole fan-vs-critic thing. If I’m reading Balaji right, you seem to find the two mutually exclusive, while I just look at being a critic as a geekier extension of being a fan.
LikeLike
Aditya Pant
January 13, 2008
Rangan: I agree completely that a fan would also “veer into shades of grey”. I am not a film critic or a professional reviewer nor have any ambitions to be one, and I see films purely as a fan. Yet, I get great pleasure out of analyzing about why a film worked for me or didn’t. Some actually think I’m crazy in that it makes my whole approach to watching a film ‘clinical’ and I can’t really ‘enjoy’ a film ‘cos I would use my faculties primarily for analysis. But that’s so not true. Enjoying and analyzing are certainly not mutually exclusive.
LikeLike
Amrita
January 13, 2008
haven’t seen the movie but I have been thinking about message movies and why they do / don’t work. I think there are a couple of ways to take that “western union” crack:
One is that cinema is all about entertainment and messages shouldn’t appear period. Except that isnt true – message movies HAVE worked in the past but the thing to note about the successful ones is that they don’t keep the message front and center, they allow the message to percolate in the background while keeping the STORY front and center.
And I can’t answer for Jabberwock but speaking as a person who abandoned the pursuit of a degree in lit crit because it was interfering with my reading habit, I can say that while you’re right in saying that you have to care about the medium before you tackle its crit, criticism requires you to think about the movie in a larger context than the personal.
When you see a movie or read a book as a fan, you’re reacting to it at a personal level – “what does this say to me?” When you’re looking at it from a critical perspective, you’re asking, “What does this say?”
Btw, did you read Variety’s review of TZP? Hilarious and culturally informative, I thought.
LikeLike
Balaji K
January 13, 2008
Dear Rangan,
I understand the idea of the critic being a geekier extension of the fan. I can also appreciate the thinking of ‘what works’ (in the film for an individual) and ‘what doesn’t’. Yet, if the larger argument is going to be that a critic is a fan who gets to write/analyse about the film in a medium, then I think it is a tad facile and over simplistic. Popularly it is said that a cine critic is a failed filmmaker. But, more pertinently, it seems that a surpassed fan is the critic.
Recently, the Indian cricket press contingent doing duty in Sydney came in for some criticism after the fact they chose to spontaneously applaud Anil Kumble after he made those Woodfull-like words (of only one team out there playing cricket). At that point of heightened emotions (and even jingoism), it was surely an impromptu act, a spur-of-the-moment reaction, the likes of which are generally from the honesty of heart. But after that they have been pilloried for behaving like fans. The message: Journos can’t be seen to be as fans, even though they are ones.
Don’t for a minute think I am trying to indulge in pointless polemics. It does interest me to understand the dynamics that motor a serious journalist in these times of polarised and instant-editorialisation in the media. Many impressionable (and dare I say, poorly informed) sweet young things are criticised for letting the ‘fan’ in them come out. They get criticised, rightly, for that. So when is it right to be a fan, and when to be above that?
Thanks for your well thought out response.
LikeLike
Jabberwock
January 13, 2008
One of your fellow bloggers and also a movie buff, Jabberwock, recently wrote about Tare Zameen Par saying that he enjoyed the film as a fan but had a few holes to pick as a critic
Balaji: that’s a misreading of what I said in my post. At the very beginning, I said “I wasn’t as hugely taken with the film as most people I know were”. Which, put most simply, means: I didn’t enjoy the film (as a critic or as a “fan”) as much as most people did. (Note: this is not to say I didn’t enjoy it at all or that I thought it was bad or even mediocre – it’s simply my reaction relative to the almost universal acclaim TZP has received.)
There is ambivalence in my post, as you’ve observed – but it doesn’t come from any critic-vs-fan divide. It comes from my recognition that it was a worthy (important) film and a reasonably well-made one, and hence I wasn’t comfortable writing a review that would (assuming I honestly stated my own reaction) highlight the film’s weaknesses.
That said, you have a point about how reviewing for a living can jade one’s senses and take some of the fun out of the relevant experience. Personally, I relate this not to film-reviewing (which is something I don’t do regularly) but to book-reviewing, which is part of my official beat. Very often, I find that reading is no longer as much fun as it was in the days when I could simply read a book, let it wash over me in a vague sort of way, then put it down and pick another one up – without having to make mental notes or compose a review in my head. But then, that’s an occupational hazard that accompanies the reviewing process. As you’ve suggested in both your comments, it can be unfortunate on occasion – that is, when it translates into spontaneity being overriden by cerebra. I suppose what the best critics succeed in doing (more often than not) is to be honest about their own gut reactions, engage in a certain amount of self-analysis and then articulate those reactions as well as possible.
LikeLike
Balaji K
January 13, 2008
Thanks Jabberwock for pointing to the subtle but important difference in the way I put it and the original thinking that led to your post on TPZ.
Is the occupational hazard you talk about stems from the sense of deja vu that accompanies the process leading to the review, or does at any point the ‘fun’ actually lessens out of reading/watching films? Of course, a fan may also go tired of watching movies or reading.
LikeLike
Yen
January 13, 2008
‘Bored beyond belief’ – is that from L.A. Story?
LikeLike
Jabberwock
January 13, 2008
Is the occupational hazard you talk about stems from the sense of deja vu that accompanies the process leading to the review, or does at any point the ‘fun’ actually lessens out of reading/watching films?
Balaji: it happens both ways. Thankfully it hasn’t been a major issue for me yet. Just when I think I’m completely jaded, I come across a book that strikes all the right chords and makes me happy that I developed the reading habit early in life. Let’s see how long it lasts…
LikeLike
s
January 13, 2008
So, the fan to Critic transition is a sad one, then?
But Jabberwock, why should the intent ever stop you from highlighting a film’s weaknesses? Agreed it did receive a lot of flak for Baradwaj. That’s part of the deal in world not so fair.
LikeLike
Suderman
January 13, 2008
The story, even parts of the screenplay that translated the director’s vision worked for me. I liked some of Santoshi’s touches… but weak writing, loud direction and the ghisa-pita melodramatic score failed to deliver the vision in entirety at least to the modern urban audience that wants the filmmaker “to keep it real,” as you’ve observed. the film might’ve sold its soul to reach out to a mass, but it still has a heart.
No, I wasn’t asking for a fight. I just meant that our reviews seem written as a reaction to each other’s addressing almost the same points… that anyone who read them both would think we had an argument about this. So I thought I should clarify it was purely by co-incidence and that I wasn’t reacting to your review. 😀
LikeLike
Jabberwock
January 13, 2008
why should the intent ever stop you from highlighting a film’s weaknesses?
S: it doesn’t. Check my post about TZP. As I’ve said there, if I were doing a proper review of the film, I wouldn’t have refrained from mentioning the things that didn’t work for me.
LikeLike
Suderman
January 13, 2008
Also, with regard to this part of your review:
“But are things different in an Indian context? Do we expect make-believe characters in make-believe stories to accomplish in three hours what our moral science or civics teachers – or even our parents – couldn’t in all our years of growing up? In between cell phones going off in the dark, babies bawling, restless children scampering about the aisles, frontbenchers hooting, in between the crunch of popcorn and the fizz of soda, do we seek entertainment as well as evangelism?”
Well, that’s the part I wanted to address… the larger issue that goes beyond Halla Bol and it probably it relevant to Taare Zameen Par too…
Out of 858 million people above the age of 7 years, only 562 million are officially literate. And you know how we define literacy in India.
50 per cent of the country’s women have not seen the insides of a classroom, which means they haven’t yet learn to write their name or have access to moral instruction classrooms. They don’t have mobile phones to disturb them or pop-corn in the spaces they get to watch movies… sometimes through the TV set at the neighbour’s place.
Grassroots communication requires opinion leaders… it needs people they respect, people of authority, people they look up to, to start talking to them.
Having said that, I am not saying they are not dumb.
They just need to be spoken to differently. They just need to be a told a story very differently than how we would like to be told. They have been conditioned to drama through doses of larger than life mythology and iconography.
Which is why their street plays use mythology and the idioms used to describe modern day villains too need to be rooted in Indian mythology: like Ravan having many heads is used to describe the rich and corrupt politician who has access to paisa, power and public and do anything he wants.
Why did Gadar which made the urban audience laugh and the politically correct audience cringe in their seats strike a chord with the people and go on to be a huge, huge hit, probably bigger than Lagaan that year? Because it was patriotism packaged through idioms used in Ramayan… abduction and then rescue.
Even Gowariker went on to use these idioms in Swades: the return of Ram to his birthplace. But then Gowarikar wasn’t talking to the grassroots, he was talking to the NRIs and reached out to them using a grammar they are used to by keeping it real and with subtlety in drama unlike Lagaan where he used exaggerated drama while telling us that the hero Bhuvan has traits of Krishna.
These idioms probably are not meant to reach out to us and probably are nothing more than a subtext. But mythology plays a huge role in the collective Indian conscious, more so in the rural pockets.
Mass-based cinema in India is all about exploiting the right types using the right idioms. Maybe Halla didn’t do it perfectly for us, but maybe it did for a different section of the audience.
As a critic, what I found interesting was how Santoshi had taken a few types and used idioms from not just mythology but also from a particular phase of Indian cinema when the conflict between the self and righteousness first set in: the Deewar-era.
So my question to you is, as a critic analysing something made for a diverse audience in India, is it right to just stick to what “I” want in a movie? Having asked that, I should emphasise again that nobody I know writes better reviews than you. 🙂
LikeLike
Suderman
January 13, 2008
Ooops!!!
The sentence in there should read: Having said that, I am not saying they are dumb.
The text editor in the comment section is so small that I can hardly read what I’m typing.
LikeLike
brangan
January 13, 2008
Amrita: That’s exactly it. I’m not against message movies, but the MOVIE should come before the message. But I don’t see why a critic doesn’t have to deal with “what does this say to me?” These are MY views, after all; the thing making them different from another’s reviewer’s take is that these thoughts came from MY head. Am I missing something in what you said? Yeah, I did read the Variety review 🙂
Jabberwock: “I suppose what the best critics succeed in doing (more often than not) is to be honest about their own gut reactions, engage in a certain amount of self-analysis and then articulate those reactions as well as possible.” That’s all you can aim for, really. A beautiful summation of the process. Thanks.
Yen: Uh, it’s from the English language…
Suderman: I love Anand. It’s as traditional a Bollywood narrative as you can find. It has star wattage performances, it’s not very “real”, it has songs and comedy and tears and mother figures and lots of melodrama. Oh, and it also has a message, about “life is short, make it sweet” or however you want to put it. BUT, the film never talks down to you (the audience) about this message. It’s there for those who want to look for it. And it was a huge success. As was RDB, another message film where the message was routed through the story and the characters instead of the film stopping dead in its tracks and bellowing, “Message time. Please pay attention.” My problem with Halla Bol isn’t its message. It’s the tired filmmaking. Had TZP followed the mood of its first half throughout (or had it gone for crowd-pleasing energy from Scene 1), I’d have responded better. Again, the problem isn’t with the message, but in the slightly confused filmmaking. Is it laudable that this film was made at all? Of course yes, and I’ve said so in my review. Regarding “They just need to be spoken to differently,” I don’t know if you read my reviews for Apne (where there’s the mythological aspect again) or Vivah, but they were positive ones. (And speaking of myths, I’ve said in this review that Lajja’s use of the Sita parallels was interesting.) So the subconscious response to idioms/myths isn’t excusive to villagers. All of us brought up in pre-liberalisation India have that conditioning. And if a film is made well with those tools, i don’t think we’d dismiss it just because we’re “urban”. So I don’t agree that “These idioms probably are not meant to reach out to us.” They are, and if used well, they WILL. I find SLB interesting, for God’s sake, so I’m hardly what you’d call a lover of only the “subtle” 🙂 BTW, didn’t we have the conflict between what you call “self and righteousness” long before Deewar? I mean, Awara, for one — nature/nurture, goodness/badness, the whole caboodle. And no filmmaker issues a statement of intent saying “these are the audiences I’m targeting, this is what I’m trying to say in this scene, and so on…” it’s up to ME to guess what’s going on, and interpret it MY way. So yes, every film that I watch is, in a way, asking for My subjective approval. PS: I love the way this blog has, over time, turned into a confessional 🙂
LikeLike
SB
January 14, 2008
hehehe…the first two paragraphs of this review – genius.
LikeLike
Jabberwock
January 14, 2008
Amrita: just saw your comment. Baradwaj has already replied to the “When you’re looking at it from a critical perspective, you’re asking, “What does this say?” bit, but I’d like to add a couple of things: 1) the way you put it makes it sound like there is one universal truth about a film (it’s good. bad. mediocre etc), which is presumably out there for the Critic to unveil. I think it’s fairly obvious that this isn’t the case – otherwise you’d have all good critics in complete agreement about every film. Most honest reviewers recognise that even if they bring a measure of historical knowledge and perspective to their reviews, their own responses are ultimately subjective and may or may not reflect what other reviewers (or other fans) think about the film.
2) In my view, what’s more important than the “what does the film say” question is “How does it say it?” In fact, this can equally be applied to any good review. “What does the reviewer feel about the film?” is usually a distant second to “How well does he express those feelings?”
LikeLike
Amrita
January 15, 2008
Rangan and Jabberwock – okay, i was trying to avoid the miniblogging but this is too interesting so apologies in advance 😀
I wasn’t trying to suggest that the reviewer is or should be able to put aside his personal views. Any review, regardless of medium under discussion, is an opinion piece. I also wasn’t trying to imply that there is some sort of canon that a reviewer should adhere to (don’t know what gave you that idea, JW, but nothing could’ve been further from my mind).
I don’t know if either one of you read Raja Sen’s reviews over at Rediff but the reaction he garners from his readers exemplifies what I’m trying to say – and I dont mean that section of his public that is offended to find that a review written in the English language actually utilises English words. To read their reactions, you’d think each and every one of them have personally put in their blood and sweat into those movies. They’re reacting solely to what they liked in the movie and ignoring the things that they didn’t. So they ask “What does this say to me?” and stop right there.
Now we all do this to some extent, but a critic who consistently asks only that question – Taran Adarsh is a famous example (sorry to be dragging in all your counterparts Rangan) – is setting himself/herself up for a fall because eventually what people get from those reviews is what is important to the author rather than any information about the movie itself.
Re: “What does this say” vs. “How does it say it?”
I think they’re both important but here’s what I was thinking w/r to two message movies: George Clooney’s Michael Clayton and Aamir Khan’s TZP.
One of the reasons why I found that Variety review of TZP so interesting is because it showed the cultural difference between the two countries: in India, dyslexia is still a fairly unknown commodity, whereas in the States, it’s such a well known condition that a movie like TZP gets you the reaction, “And…?” But Aamir, because he was making it for a pan-Indian commercial audience, had to include the PSA-like speech.
Then there is Michael Clayton, a movie where the legal/corporate drama is structured to punch up the human drama rather than the other way around. Almost every single write up about it out there will tell you that it’s a throwback to Hollywood’s conspiracy movies of the 70s and reference The Parallax View in particular. Where TZP included context within the frame, MC moves it outside and asks the audience to find this out on their own (with a little help from the press and a shove or two from the makers, of course). It should be interesting to see what Indian reviewers make of it when and if it’s released in India.
My point being, the message of the movie dictates the way it says it. But of course, nothing is set in stone 🙂
LikeLike
Aditya Pant
January 15, 2008
Amrita: I look at Taran Adarsh with a diametrically opposite view. I think he doesn’t think “what does it say to me”….he think “what does it say for the business of the film…will it be a hit?”. I think the moment he starts thinking about what a film says to him, he will become a better critic.
But, who am I to pass judgments on Taran Adarsh…he has a huge fan following, and I know a huge number of people who read his reviews to make their movie-watching decisions.
LikeLike
Shankar
January 16, 2008
Do people actually make their movie-watching decisions based on what reviewers say? I like to watch movies and see for myself if it works for me. A reviewer’s take is also only another point of view. For instance, Vettaiyadu Vilayadu did not work at all for me though it has been appreciated by many including BR. I could spend all day picking holes in the screenplay of that movie however I do understand that one man’s poison could be nectar to another!!:-)
I tremendously enjoy BR’s reviews for his views and his ability to express them. However, instead of saddling the reviewer with the onerous task of “How & Why”, I would rather do it myself and see if the film works…since only I can be the best possible critic/reviewer for the films I watch!
LikeLike
Aditya Pant
January 16, 2008
Shankar: I completely agree with you, and have myself argued on this point many times. But I don’t think everyone has the same view. I know many people who make their movie-watching decisions based on one of three things: a) does it have my favorite star or is it by my favorite director, b) what are my friends and family saying about it, and c) how many ‘stars’ has the film received in reviews. People who are really passionate about films do not care about these, but a lot of people do. Even if you have been reading the comments on this blog, you wll find many instances of people saying after reading the review: Now I won’t watch this film/ I will definitely watch this film.
That is precisely the reason for vehement reactions for reviews. People do not see them as opinions, but as guidance or the ‘ultimate truth’. Sad, but true.
LikeLike
Jabberwock
January 16, 2008
Amrita: thoughtful comment, thanks (is it okay for me to be saying “thanks” as if this were my own blog?!) Particularly interesting point about the cultural differences – on some level, it’s always going to be a little problematic (if also revealing in its own way) when a critic from one country reviews another country’s films. But I agree with Aditya about the Taran Adarsh bit – from what little I know of his writing, his major preoccupation is what sort of impact a film will have with the bulk of the audience, not “What does this say to me?” Doesn’t he work for a trade paper btw? Maybe that’s what he’s supposed to do – analyse box-office performances and trends.
LikeLike
brangan
January 16, 2008
SB: Thanks…
Amrita: “what people get from those reviews is what is important to the author rather than any information about the movie itself.” In general — and not speaking about Taran Adarsh’s reviews — I feel “information ABOUT the movie” is a fairly redundant thing these days. There are web sites, there’s non-stop TV and press coverage (which includes quetions like ‘what is the story about’ and ‘what is your part in the film’ — why on earth would anyone want to know this BEFORE waching the film?). So the function of a review, IMO, is really only ‘what does it say to me’ (of course, recognising the fact that some movies, like Sunny Deol’s Big Brother, may not exactly be made for *me*) Reg. “the message of the movie dictates the way it says it,” are you saying that if Aamir hadn’t talked down to the camera/audience about those issues, the film wouldn’t have worked? This isn’t about the mertis/demerits/whatever of TZP, but let’s say some director had made the story of a dyslexic child the way Sai Paranjpe made (the outstanding) Sparsh. Of course that wouldn’t have become a fraction of the all-India hit that TZP has become, but THAT MOVIE TOO is possible within the current Indian context, given the multiplex scenario. If we flocked to see Saif in something as out-there as Being Cyrus, wouldn’t we do the same for Aamir in an artier TZP? Conversely, it would be interesting to contrast Michael Clayton with the far more crowd-pleasing Erin Brockovich, which cast a big star and played up the very aspects that make Julia Roberts such a big star (versus Clayton, where Clooney is not in coasting-glamour mode). So I’d say Aamir chose the popular route, the Erin Brockovich route, and that’s fine, but he could have just as well done a Michael Clayton (for smaller audiences) and pulled it off (to a lesser extent, naturally) in an Indian context, I feel. And please, miniblogging is good 🙂
Shankar: “Do people actually make their movie-watching decisions based on what reviewers say?” Actually, like Aditya says, lots do. The regulars on this site know what to expect in my reviews, but you can tell from first-timer comments that they have a hard time wrapping their kinds around what Amrita says, that “Any review, regardless of medium under discussion, is an opinion piece.”
LikeLike
Aditya Pant
January 16, 2008
Shankar – Just see the comment towards the end of BR’s TZP review. USB says: “would be nice if you’d incorporate a star rating for your movie reviews, song album reviews. its a quick and easy way for people to pick a movie based on your review now that you have quite a bit of credibility as a reviewer”
So there. 🙂
BR: No matter what you do, just don’t give in to such demands 😉
LikeLike
Bhudda
January 16, 2008
In some countries, the ticket worth 7 to ten dollars . So if someone tells me “that movie sucks”, i ain’t gonna waist money and time to see it.
LikeLike
Shankar
January 16, 2008
At the risk of sounding condescending (which is farthest on my mind), that pretty much sums up the difference between considering cinema as “time-pass” and being passionate about the art of movies. Like I said, each to his own…there is no right or wrong way here.
It’s the same thing with music too for me. I like to listen to music “technically” and derive great satisfaction, while being the butt of jokes from my “less-technical” friends. However there is no offence taken here. They have the right to listen to it as they please. I just wish they would get an insight into what I experience and see what they are missing out on. That’s all. Everybody is entitled to their opinions including the reviewer. We could just learn to accept that and move on. It’s a peaceful world…let it be! 🙂
LikeLike
Amrita
January 18, 2008
Aditya & JW – I dont know if Taran Adarsh writes for trade magazines, I’ve only ever read him on IndiaFM and that too by chance. I’m not a hater but I am indifferent to him because you guys are right, the question that matters most to him is “will this work at the BO?” And I don’t particularly care to know the answer to that question but, equally, can’t get on his case for asking that because it is what it is.
I think this is where questions like “What does it say to me” get really subjective. Correct me if I’m wrong but apart from Rangan I dont think reviewing is a profession for any of us here on the board, so the questions we’d ask would be different from someone who’s writing said reviews for a newspaper. It’s been a while since I read Rangan in print but I remember them editing him pretty drastically compared to his pieces here, no?
PS – go ahead, thank me! I’ll take ’em all 😀
Rangan – Good point re: “About” but I still don’t know how many people actually listen to that stuff. For example, I remember Karan Johar on some show talking about the first show he held for KANK and some auntie came out and tapped him on the shoulder. He thought she was going to tell him how much she loved it but turned out she’d taken her recently divorced daughter to see the flick because “it’s a Karan Johar movie and it’ll take her mind off her troubles” only to find her exact situation at home being played out 😀 So it makes me wonder if all those interviews actually count for something or are they just filler? And this is a SRK-Karan Johar movie that was endlessly hyped and probably a show that was held in Bombay. So either that lady was totally clueless or people just like to look at the pretty people and not listen to what they have to say!
TZP: the more I think about it, the more bothered I am, lol. I think the movie would have worked if Aamir had left the speechifying out but then he couldn’t have been the Messiah he was in the film. He couldnt have the One with All Answers. The second half just couldn’t have been that simplistic and shifted attention to the Tortured Inner Life of Ram Nikumbh the way it did. For that aspect to work, it was necessary that he give the speech and occupy the high ground. The parallel to Erin Brokovich is really interesting because of course, that’s what he did EXCEPT this is a movie not about Erin Brokovich but one of the side characters who were actually affected by the toxins like, say, Marg Helgenberger (can’t remember anyone else’s name offhand – damn you CSI!). So there’s that big resultant shift between first and second half.
Sigh. I think too much 🙂
LikeLike
Amrita
January 18, 2008
Correction: I think this is where questions like “What does it say to me” get really subjective. should read: I think this is where questions like “What does it say” get really subjective.
LikeLike
ritu
February 4, 2008
anjan srivastava done fantastic work. he created his simple scene so naturally. clapworthy. lovely.
LikeLike