Between Reviews: For Old Times’ Sake…

FOR OLD TIMES’ SAKE…

MAR 22, 2009 – AFTER THE INEVITABLE BOUT OF HAND-WRINGING, the non-release of Anurag Kashyap’s Gulaal in Chennai evolved into an opportunity for thanksgiving – for a Friday free of significant reviewing duties. Whatever the reason – perhaps the apprehension that the scornful critic’s sword might cleave a hapless film’s box-office prospects in two? – the tradition of previews is largely absent here. (Among the exceptions was Subhash Ghai’s Yuvvraaj, which, needless to say, would have been better off sneaking into theatres with as little advance warning as possible.) And this translates to Friday nights being work nights, hunched in front of the computer as the rest of the world begins to unwind in anticipation of the weekend. The more ambitious the film, the longer the Friday night, deliberating over what’s to be said, what’s to be scrapped, striving to attain a balance between analysis and over-analysis, between satisfying the self through the writing and the audience through the reading.

Gulaal, regardless of the quality of the final product, would have doubtless resulted in a long, late, draining night – and liberated from heavy-duty reviewing duties (Jai Veeru, thankfully, required very little cud-chewing), there was the tantalising promise of a rare, Bollywood-free Friday evening. The Tony Overwater Trio and the Calefax Reed Quintet were coming together for a rendition of Duke Ellington’s Far East Suite at Fisherman’s Cove. Jazz by the beach, complemented by drinks and dinner – who needs Bollywood? But midway through the first set, I discovered that the evening wasn’t going to be Bollywood-free, not quite – after the announcement that, in deference to local culture, the song Aaj ki raat, from the film Don, would be attempted. (And let’s, for a minute, not get into nitpicking about whether, given this venue, a gaana item from a Kollywood production would have better represented “local culture.”)

I wasn’t entirely disappointed by this encroachment of the very aspect of a Friday I’d hoped to shrug off. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy are among my favourite composers, and this song – gently murmuring lines of melody set against the flashy accoutrements of disco – is a time-capsule drug, a dazzlingly psychedelic flashback to the bad-taste music many of us were weaned on. I was also curious. How would a composition of such tight construction translate to jazz? I supposed that the rhythm equivalent of a relentless machine-drill boring through asphalt would be shaped into a time signature more appropriate for a drum kit operated by human hands. Because shorn of percussive power, Aaj ki raat is truly what its title implies – a song of the night, its mournful phrases characterised by a liquid languor that would find an instant home in smoke-filled watering holes in any corner of the world.

These imaginings were brought to a grinding halt as the double bass began to outline a racy riff – a three-note climb followed by a three-note descent – that had nothing to do with Aaj ki raat from Don. This wasn’t Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy – it was RD Burman! It was Aaj ki raat from Anamika! The bass clarinet took over the daunting duties of approximating Asha Bhonsle’s vocalising, which traversed the gamut from silken purr to shrill screech. As the trumpets kicked in and the pulse began to pound – there’s something about sharp bursts of brass that the adrenaline invariably responds to; think the James Bond theme – it became apparent why this number was chosen. Without the vocals, there was nothing that betrayed the song’s roots. The blink-and-miss curlicue flourish after the chorus, for instance, could have been dreamt up by a jazz genius from anywhere, rather than a genius magpie-musician from over here.

THE OTHER SHARP BURST OF NOSTALGIA, over the weekend, came from a viewing of The Clone Wars, the animated follow-up to the Star Wars films that I’d initially stayed away from because of the stench of rotten eggs that rose from the reviews. The first two installments of the franchise are among the greatest movies ever made, but since Return of the Jedi, the series has been in a serious slump. The prequel trilogy was a succession of ghastly disappointments – though I must admit that subsequent viewings, at a safe distance from external hype and internal expectation, have been a lot kinder. There are several stretches that are as beautifully resonant as anything in the first two films – the graceful interlude in the planet Kamino, for instance, where the seeds for the Clone Wars are being sown, or the showdown between master and apprentice amidst the volcanic fires of Mustafar.

The Clone Wars is not intended for anyone who does not feel for the series in some sense – whether it’s a feeling of happiness about what it’s meant over the years, or a feeling of sadness over what it’s been reduced to over the years, or most likely, a mixture of both. (In other words, it’s mostly for those to whom the preceding passages about RD Burman struck a nostalgic chord.) But perhaps because I was primed to expect the worst – both by the recent track record of George Lucas, and by the vituperous reviews – The Clone Wars wasn’t as dreadful as I’d feared. This is a modestly plotted adventure about the efforts of the Jedi to forge an alliance with Jabba the Hutt (even as Count Dooku attempts to derail them) – and it plays like a cartoony TV diversion, nothing to cheer, but nothing to slit your wrists over either.

But this time around, the mysticism is missing – the Force is barely acknowledged. On the one hand, this allows the film to exist solely on the plane of action-adventure, with none of the psychological baggage from the earlier episodes (which were also dramas about the consequences of personal choice, about relationships under fire, and, most of all, about how the triumph of good over evil isn’t always as easy or inevitable as it’s made out to be). But on the other hand, what is the Star Wars franchise without the mythological Sturm und Drang? We may have been drawn to the series by the pull of our inner adolescents, drooling over lightsabres and intergalactic dogfights, but the reason we stuck with the films is because their larger-than-life conflicts speak to us as adults. Whatever the inadequacies of Lucas, he’s a genius at creating myth. If only he’d been anywhere as good in creating movies.

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Posted in: Between Reviews, Music: Indian Cinema, Music: Western