THE TRUTH ABOUT FICTION
MAR 29, 2009 – AMIDST THE FEEDBACK TO MY REVIEW of Firaaq that appeared in this paper were the fulminations of a mildly rancorous gent, in whose estimation I had failed in my duties. I had not addressed, for one, the slyly opportunistic timing of the film’s release, “just prior to the elections,” the way Parzania was released prior to the Gujarat assembly elections. While being moved by the piteous plight of the Muslims that Nandita Das (the director) chose to present for our sympathies, I had, apparently, not taken into account the fact that Hindus too had suffered grievous loss of life and livelihood – not only in the cataclysms in Gujarat, but also in Kashmir and elsewhere around the country. In any event, the correspondent chided, I’d been conscripted into the ranks of the “secular media,” wearing my bleeding-liberal heart on my organically dyed khadi-kurta sleeve.
For the purposes of a review, however, a film is evaluated on simply one criterion, and that’s how well it goes about doing what it set out wanting to do. In other words, if Das wished for nothing more than to strike a matchstick in the dark recesses of Muslim suffering and frame these gloomily flickering images for our perusal, and if this goal was achieved, then the film is a success – even if it fails to consider, with a similarly empathetic eye, the analogous afflictions of the Hindus. The latter isn’t so much a failure of the film as our expectations. Just because we seek a comforting balance in communal representations in our cinema, the filmmaker isn’t obliged to comply. But more importantly, if filmmaking were reduced to the equivalent of ethically and morally responsible journalism, wouldn’t it lose its place of pride amongst the most vital and valuable of modern arts?
Yes, capital-letter art. Let’s, for a wishful instant, brush aside the bulk of our filmmaking output – the least-common-denominator entertainments engineered to rake in maximum profits – and talk of film in its most idealised sense, in its incarnation as what the novel was to the nineteenth century, a repository of great beauty, great ideas of great power, but not necessarily the truth. The latter is the domain of daily news, and it has little (if any) truck with art. When we settle down with a book, or sink into seats at the multiplex, our only concerns are (a) what is being told, and (b) how it is being told. It is the foremost fundamental right of the creator to weave, for our benefit, enthralling fictions that revolve around what could be his notions of truth, but which may not correspond to our own.
When we choose to see Rang De Basanti, therefore, it is not our place to snicker that there were viable legally and morally sound conclusions to the predicament of the disillusioned students, and that assassinating the corrupt villains, taking the law into their fragile fingers, was just not right. Of course it’s not right in the real world. But this is a fictional universe, the story of a few youngsters who chose this cynical option – as opposed to, say, the rose-tinted youth of Yuva, who managed to hold on to their optimism and still somehow triumph over slimy politicians oozing with the experience of decades of Machiavellian machinations. The story that Rakeysh Mehra wanted to tell was of an Aamir Khan and a Siddharth who turned their backs on democratic idealism – and that’s the story we need to respond to, whether that story was told well.
A Wednesday, similarly, isn’t a recommendation of vigilante violence as the insta-fix solution for our ills. It’s just the fiction of one man who’d had enough and decided to do something about it in his own way. In an alternate timeline of the universe, there’s possibly an Aamir Khan and a Siddharth who painstakingly put together evidence against the politico villains and published these facts in the free press, and there’s possibly a Naseeruddin Shah who enlisted the country’s best legal minds and set about avenging himself in court, and there’s possibly a story of the communal riots in Gujarat that divided its running time between the plight of the Hindus and that of the Muslims, with each side teetering between oppressor and oppressed. But those are entirely different movies – not the ones we got.
Perhaps other filmmakers may make those films – and perhaps they won’t. And till they do, if at all they do, our options are either to stay away from films with so inflammatory a core, films that so violently clash with our own belief systems, or else to surrender, for the duration of the film, to a different point of view, from an intelligent and passionate creator who isn’t after reportage so much as the rendering of a story that he (or she) feels deeply about. But to expect films to conform to objective evaluations based on abject realities of the world around us is to do the medium a great disservice. Art is too valuable to be consigned to the stultifying chore of chronicling the truth.
Copyright ©2009 The New Sunday Express. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Baradwaj Rangan 
A
March 28, 2009
So the previous thread provoked such a long response :). But very well put.
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priya
March 28, 2009
apart from an evaluation of a film based on the story it sets out to tell, a complete review should also examine the movie with respect to real life, society and the impact it makes on both. this might not be that much of a requirement of movies made solely for entertainment, like say Phoonk or Om Shanti Om, but when you have a film like Parzania or Firaaq so explicitly made to provoke or provoke debate, such an evaluation is also required.
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Adithya
March 29, 2009
Superbly articulated, BR.
“Art is too valuable to be consigned to the stultifying chore of chronicling the truth.”
Has anyone made you wonder why you are quoted widely? :p
This is very similar to how Slumdog Millionaire was reviewed by many people in India. They saw the cliches, the “dirty underbelly” blah blah. It is like saying I feel for the Palestinians and so I did not like Munich. Oh, well!
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Amrita
March 29, 2009
Priya – I believe you’re confusing reviewing a film with critiquing a film.
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Noor
March 29, 2009
Very well put.
I think its time people realized that there does exist a thin line between reality and cinema.And that cinema is not bound by constraints to depict only the truth.
Alas, we may never ever again enjoy the quirkiness of a Mr.India or feel the rush of adrenaline for the train chase sequence in Sholay!!
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brangan
March 29, 2009
priya: Amrita stole my words, but yeah – a weekend review cannot hope to be as neutral and all-compassing as a critical dissection. The former is more subjective and personal, while the latter aims for the bigger picture.
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Venkatesh
March 29, 2009
“and that’s the story we need to respond to, whether that story was told well.”
Excellent response.
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Raj Balakrishnan
March 29, 2009
Baradwaj, I wouldn’t agree completely with your piece. If Nandita Das is claiming to make a film about the Gujarat riots, which is a real life incident, she cannot be selective in deciding what facts she will show and what she will ignore. The Gujarat riots were triggered by the Godhra massacre, she cannot ignore that and call herself an honest filmmaker. Nandita Das is trying to manipulate public opinion by depicting only one side of the story. That tantamounts to lying.
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brangan
March 29, 2009
Raj Balakrishnan: “If Nandita Das is claiming to make a film about the Gujarat riots…” She’s not — at least not in the broad sense that you imply. Perhaps you should actually see the film in question before continuing to raise objections.
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Satyam
March 30, 2009
Your piece is admirable on many levels here and one that I can almost completely subscribe to. I say ‘almost’ because I understand the partly polemical nature of this ‘response’ and therefore also realize that it is not your aim here to engage in a more intricate analysis of this problematic. Having said that I will raise (hesitantly) an objection..
It is certainly accurate to assert that a film must be judged on what it’s trying to do, and not based on what one wishes it were doing. But I wonder if the ‘politics’ of a work (in the widest sense of the term which includes the whole field of human experience that carries one way or the other the ‘charge’ of ‘politics’) can so neatly be divorced from the ‘choices’ that go into the making of any ‘fiction’. In the current example (and I’ve not seen the film yet) Nandita Das is not obliged to show as it were ‘both sides of the story’ but can she not be critiqued for the overall political framework she possibly relies on and within which such a ‘fiction’ would then make sense? Stated differently a film is not a failure if one does not agree with its politics but it might be one if the fiction does not adequately support the political references (a criticism that I would bring to the table against Gulaal for example). When a film engages in certain ‘serious’ questions it cannot only be regarded as a ‘story’. The stakes are just higher.
I completely see your point of course and which is why I’ve raised this objection a bit ‘hesitantly’. But you might also be risking over-simplification in your rebuttal. The objections in the case of Firaaq, often from those on the right, come about because the choice on the director’s part is seen as being ‘political protest/statement’ in the guise of a cinematic fiction. I think you and I agree that this is entirely her prerogative (and right) to do so. To this extent the objections are misplaced. But what if the shoe were on the other foot? What if a compelling fiction were made about Narendra Modi’s ‘enterprise’ as leader of his state? I would find it extremely troubling and even unacceptable if such a work totally glossed over Modi’s (as I see it) reprehensible, indeed criminal actions as CM of his state when a vast atrocity was taking place. I would not at all be persuaded by the idea that the film was otherwise a good ‘yarn’.
Again I don’t think this is what you are suggesting by any means but your formulation even if polemically inclined risks such an interpretation. To take another one of your examples I do find the politics of Rang de basanti muddled [more on this here: http://satyamshot.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/rang-de-basanti-chak-de-india-lage-raho-munnabhai-and-the-%E2%80%98non-sense%E2%80%99-of-democracy/%5D for reasons internal to the narrative but also at some level ‘external’. I think a standard that one always brings to any work of art or serious entertainment is the extent to which one finds the politics on display acceptable or not and on what grounds either way. Any such work does have a link with the ‘outside’ of its immediate ‘fictional’ frame or to sound less tortured on this point the ‘fictional’ world is always in commerce with the (non)’fictional’ one (which is to say it is always a tale of ‘two’ fictions).
I do not agree with the right-oriented critique of Firaaq. The ‘always tell both sides’ of the story charge besides being ‘naive’ in the ways you’ve suggested is also a bit cynical because one does not see the same adherence to such a principle when the tables are turned.
You might have amplified on that point, risked less, perhaps allowed for more subtlety, and therefore inoculated yourself from the charge that I now so ‘hesitantly’ bring to the fore!
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Satyam
March 30, 2009
On Raj Balakrishnan’s point here I would disagree. Because there is an assumption here that there is an entire set of ‘facts’ that is somehow out there somewhere ‘ready to be picked up’ as easily as one would cans from a supermarket shelf but somehow Nandita Das refuses to do so and chooses only one side of the story. For one as Baradwaj here points out Nandita das is not obliged to buy everything on display in the supermarket. But in a more serious vein it is precisely the ‘facts’ that are under dispute. The ‘artist’ intervenes in ‘reality’ to temper it differently, re-configure the ‘assumptions’, indeed recast our understanding of it. What if for example the director’s point is precisely that the ‘two sides’ claim to Gujarat is really a smoke screen intended to obscure the very real suffering of the principal victims of that outburst of violence? Why is it a ‘lie’ to believe this? Again I haven’t seen the film but this is a real possibility.
But let’s take another example. Would we wish to here Hitler’s side of the story in his ‘debate’ against the Jews? I think that either one raises such questions cynically or if one is really sincere about them one is needlessly attached to a kind of cliche that has really no bearing on real life situations. It isn’t even that there isn’t another side but that a certain ethical framework should preclude the possibility of (for example) our having to take seriously Hitler’s ‘side’ of the story. And I don’t mean to introduce Hitler here to derail the argument. The seeming ‘extreme’ here serves an important theoretical purpose.
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oops
March 30, 2009
I put my view also here, first made on Satyam’s blog…
What I feel is that people are taking the wrong platform for this debate when they make it on Brangan’s forum. The critic that he is can only talk about his POV within the limits that given to him, the film and its story. It is not his job to create another side of the coin when there is none. He cannot say either what Das should do, if it got nothing with the story she wants to tell. Why she choose to tell this and not that is another debate, Brangan haven’t open a new post for that so for me it’s almost out of topic because we are not dealing with the movie anymore.
When he says that “AMIDST THE FEEDBACK TO MY REVIEW of Firaaq that appeared in this paper were the fulminations of a mildly rancorous gent, in whose estimation I had failed in my duties”… it makes me think that his readers are giving him too “many” (I’m using it on purpose) powers now. A critic is not a moral authority that can give good and bad points just like that (even I told him to use stars when his essays are too long for my computer screen 🙂 ). He’s not a leader who is here to guide the masses. I noticed that a lot of people consider Brangan that way, and that’s wrong because he keeps repeating that he is not. What I appreciate in his answer is the “leave it or take it” part “but don’t say that cinema is only there to make everyone happy at the end of the day”… . Or stop pretending that you prefer Aamir over SRK 🙂
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brangan
March 30, 2009
Satyam: As you say, there is some oversimplification in my piece — and truth be told, films work on a “case by case” basis. But where I was going with Firaaq is that it never claims to be the never-before-told saga of the Gujarat riots, in which case both sides of the coin *would* be needed. It’s primarily a slice-of-life drama, and it should be looked at that way. (Of course, even taken as a very intimate slice-of-life drama, it needn’t work for others the way it worked for me, and that’s fair enough.)
Reg. “When a film engages in certain ’serious’ questions it cannot only be regarded as a ’story’. The stakes are just higher.” — But does this not also depend on the extent to which the film is dependent on the political framework to make its points? Stories like Firaaq and Parzania rely more on human drama for their impact, and IMO, if the human drama works, the film works, even if the politics is problematic. That is why in my review, I spent a lot of time talking about how Das chooses to focus entirely on the plight of the Muslims AND YET, the film works because of the drama.
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Joe Anthony
March 30, 2009
Quote: “When we choose to see Rang De Basanti, therefore, it is not our place to snicker that there were viable legally and morally sound conclusions to the predicament of the disillusioned students, and that assassinating the corrupt villains, taking the law into their fragile fingers, was just not right. Of course it’s not right in the real world. But this is a fictional universe, the story of a few youngsters who chose this cynical option – as opposed to, say, the rose-tinted youth of Yuva, who managed to hold on to their optimism and still somehow triumph over slimy politicians oozing with the experience of decades of Machiavellian machinations. The story that Rakeysh Mehra wanted to tell was of an Aamir Khan and a Siddharth who turned their backs on democratic idealism – and that’s the story we need to respond to, whether that story was told well.”
Rang De Basanti was a well-told because its strongly rooted on the said “disillusionment” and “Machiavellian machinations”. If it had been a completely different “What-have-you-got?” kind of rebellion it wouldn’t have attained the cult status that it enjoys today. What Mehra did was to channel the audiences emotions to a fictional universe where everything, righteously, goes wrong. I, for one, wouldn’t have taken that trip to that fictional universe if the film had failed to give its proper nods to the current socio-political realities. In your own words, I would not have “surrendered”. So the case is, is art isn’t free at all from the real sphere. At least, in the case of political films, the least you could do is to give a political commentary.
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Satyam
March 30, 2009
response to Oops also put up on the blog he’s referring to:
[The critic though might justifiably ask why a certain story was selected on a certain subject..
For example if Preity Zinta is shown as a fashionable TV anchor (this point is not original to me) in a film (Mission Kashmir) that ostensibly deals with the strife in that region one might justifiably ask if this is not an absurd representation (i.e. not true in even the loosest sense).
This is the mistake that masala cinema never made. It was never that specific. Once a filmmaker decides to be so certain ‘responsibilities’ arise. But take Pukar (Bachchan). Here one sees a rare masala film set in a particular historical period and what mitigates it is the fact that bachchan’s character immediately becomes a rather problematic one. Even otherwise this film is about real and imagined betrayals.. themes that form the lifeblood of every revolutionary moment. Not just this, the political here also cuts across the central romantic relationship of the film.]
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Venkatesh
March 30, 2009
This is a very interesting discussion.
But from a very naive POV @Satyam:
“When a film engages in certain ’serious’ questions it cannot only be regarded as a ’story’. The stakes are just higher. ”
I don’t understand the above ., why are the stakes higher and why can’t it only be regarded as a story. As one great critic once said(paraphrasing) – you shall only draw conclusions from what is on the screen. Everything else is simply irrelevant.
Be it a weekend review or a Scene by scene dissection of the movie – the only question a critic must,can and should answer is “Does the film as it is on the screen work for him” ., everything else is irrelevant.
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Satyam
March 31, 2009
Venkatesh: Because what is ‘on screen’ makes completely sense only within contexts that assume something ‘outside’ the frame. For example in the recent Tahaan Sivan sets the film in Kashmir without ever telling you anything about the recent history of that region. The entire political dimension here is introduced by way of a very intimate story. Everything that transpires here makes sense because one otherwise knows what’s been happening in Kashmir.
Any film (or any work in any other medium) ultimately relies on such contexts. In your average commercial potboiler the specifics aren’t very important (though in a good potboiler they’re always lurking somewhere below the surface) but in anything more serious or ambitious those questions come into play. Again Rathnam’s Ayudha Ezhuthu offers another example. Why is Bharthiraja dressed in black at a key point? Why not white? But of course the former color would immediately make sense to a Tamil audience.
With Firaaq I see Baradwaj’s point when he suggests that Nandita Das does not mean to offer a ‘history’ of the Gujarat violence. But at the same time the ‘tale’ of the film assumes the contexts of this history. Let’s juxtapose this with Rathnam’s Dil Se. Here Rathnam keeps things very abstract. The ‘anarchy’ is prevalent in a place that seems like a cross between Kashmir and the Northeast. However, we still have to be able to connect to this ‘history’ of post-Independence Indian ‘insurgencies’. If the same story were set in Dubai it would make no sense.
Das is not at all obliged to tell both sides. But she is referring to a certain ‘history’ by the very act of setting a story in contemporary Gujarat.
With a much more commercial venture the ‘stakes’ are often lower because such cinema typically relies on the ‘generic’ in every sense. Hence you have Vijay beating up Prakashraj or romancing Trisha or whatever. It’s not a story specific to TN though much of the culural flavor of the film might be so (this again introduces the question of contexts even if in a different fashion). But when a Kanchivaram (a film that I incidentally cannot wait to see) is made the questions raised are very different ones. One could not argue here that it wasn’t Priyan’s aim to present a history of the Left in TN. Because those contexts are intrinsic to the narrative.
Connected to this last is the other question I was stressing on earlier. I’ve been led to believe that Priyan does in fact focus on ‘politics’ in his film to a great degree. But what if he just passed over it in incidental fashion? Wouldn’t a critic be justified in chiding him for irresponsibility? So on and so forth.
Hopefully my rambling here has clarified things..
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sm
March 31, 2009
Mr. Rangan, you say, “… and talk of film in its most idealised sense, in its incarnation as what the novel was to the nineteenth century, a repository of great beauty, great ideas of great power, but not necessarily the truth.”
So you disagree with Keats that, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” 🙂
Perhaps you meant to say “facts” and not “truth.” If we are treating film as an art form, and the filmmaker as an artist, should we not also acknowledge that the artistic quest is always the quest for “truth” as the artist sees it? Isn’t this why there is a distinction made between the “commercial” and the “true” artist? Isn’t the difference between the two supposed to be just this very dedication to “truth” and not any other considerations, such as box office potential? So when we evaluate an “artistic” film, whether in a review or a critique, should we not in fact examine the “truth” it tells or tries to tell, and not just its “beauty”?
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sm
March 31, 2009
Let me just add to the above, if beauty were all we are concerned with in a film, why is a “great” film like “Birth of a Nation” always presented nowadays with an apology and a disclaimer, that it does not represent “truth”, but only excellence in filmmaking art and craft? Why is a “classic” film like “Gone with the Wind” again felt to be “untruthful” in the present day, merely because the general society’s sensitivity to racist assumptions and stereotypes has improved? I deliberately chose non-Indian films as examples, to avoid seeming to favor one agenda over another. But I think these films are sufficiently well-known that you can see my point.
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arun verma
March 31, 2009
But why bother .. Firaaq is a bad piece of cinema anyway..
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Venkatesh
March 31, 2009
@Satyam : I think i understand what you are saying , ( we shouldn’t be using Baradwaj’s forum for inter-communication really ) but to be able to comment further – i will have to see the film.
The point of Rathnam’s Dil Se(which i have seen) is very interesting ., i wonder how it would play to someone who is completely unaware of the Kashmir/North-East conflict. What happens when you show the film to someone who doesn’t know anything about said conflict.”If the same story were set in Dubai it would make no sense. ” Will that still hold true in such a situation ?
Isnt this a purely a subjective thing ., – a person who is unaware of the Hindu-Muslim wider social conflict in Gujarat would look at Firaaq,Parzania as a “normal” film ., may be even equate it to a Gilli – ( well why not ) – isn’t that what a critic is supposed to do . Look at it purely as a film.
( again , paraphrasing a famous critic )
It is not what is being told – it is how it is being told.
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brangan
March 31, 2009
sm: Yes, but the artist’s truth needn’t be a universal truth is what I was getting at. This is not about the non-necessity or truth in fiction, but more about how an artist’s truth needn’t correspond to an audience’s or a more “objective” version of the reality of the world around.
Venkatesh: The point of being “unaware” is a very valid one. I’m not an in-depth follower of politics and most of the time, I only have a general overview of the issues in question, so the baggage I bring to the film would be very different from that from someone more involved in politics. Again, it all boils down to the very subjective nature of movie-watching, which again raises the point of how funny it is when critics are expected to be “objective”.
And please feel free to continue the intercommunication 🙂
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Venkatesh
March 31, 2009
“Again, it all boils down to the very subjective nature of movie-watching” – absolutely.
However, its the subjective opinion of a specific critic ., so you can either agree or disagree with a critic’s opinion. But to diss a critic’s opinion because he/she doesn’t bring your(the viewer;s) political opinion to his criticism is simply unfair IMHO.
As they say – a big up for the intercommunication…. 🙂
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Satyam
April 1, 2009
Venkatesh: But one’s non-knowledge as a viewer is different from the contexts that a filmmaker relies on to tell a story. I might not be aware of who Hitler is and perhaps could watch a film set in Nazi Germany as just a story! But the filmmaker would expect the viewer to be aware of those contexts for his film to really achieve it’s potency.
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brangan
April 1, 2009
Satyam: “But the filmmaker would expect the viewer to be aware…” I’m not so sure about this, that every filmmaker expects all audience members to be on the same page (or feel the same way) about the things he/she is trying to say. The most you can say is that Viewer A saw exactly the movie the director was trying to make, while Viewer B saw some of what the director was trying to say and filled in the gaps with his own knowledge of things (which may not be the most informed opinions), while Viewer C wasn’t aware of any context and therefore saw the movie the only way he could, i.e. as a pure “movie” (or pure “fiction”). With different films, the critic could be Viewer A or Viewer B or Viewer C — and I think the value that a critic brings is in the ability to engage with a film *regardless* of how much he knows about its various contexts.
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Venkatesh
April 1, 2009
BR you beat me to it ., couldnt have said it better.
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Satyam
April 2, 2009
Baradwaj: I don’t disagree. I suppose I should have been clearer there. There are elements of a film that are accessible perhaps to more members of the audience than certain other features. But the ‘set’ that is the film depends on a critic knowing ‘more’ than ‘less’. Perhaps we need to demarcate the critic from the rest of the audience in this sense. A film like Kurosawa’s Stray Dog works perfectly as a ‘detective story’. But the ‘greater’ film here lies in also comprehending the portrait of post-War Japan that Kurosawa comes up with and that he means to be ‘read’ as complementing his more obvious tale. In other words the contours of that basic tale are enriched as one accounts for those contexts.
This is not support a tyranny of the ‘informed viewer’. In any case I don’t think anyone can see a work precisely as the maker intended it. Nor does the maker’s ‘intention’ exhaust the ‘meaning’ his or her work can give rise to. We can as viewers discover more in a work than the director even consciously intended. But leaving this aside the critic is certainly not required to do a crash course in the film’s contexts. I would think though that there is a principle of ‘sufficiency’ involved here. To take up the Firaaq example again one would not need a complete timeline of events related to the Gujarat violence but perhaps an awareness of the event would be a little necessary. But I would also qualify it this way — the director might expect an ‘Indian’ audience to be aware. if we were for example watching a Kazakh film on a similar topic we would be relating first and foremost to the story.
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Satyam
April 2, 2009
I hit ‘submit’ accidentally without completing the thought..
I meant to suggest that as ‘Indians’ we would perhaps be expected to ‘get’ contexts that wouldn’t be a natural expectation for a Kazakh audience. And vice versa. Now this might seem contradictory as I just put up the Kurosawa example. There the point was that certain events transcend merely local contexts and become part of a global framework. I am not German but I would be expected to know something about Hitler if I were watching the Fall.
Of course some of the greatest talents (not only in cinema) have this incredible ability of producing works that lead a ‘double life’. The works can be read for very specific ‘coding’ and at the same time function as universal ones. Kurosawa is such a filmmaker to my mind as is Shakespeare.
Let me end with Iruvar. Here’s a film that could be understood by anyone. I believe this is a universal tale of power and political memory and so forth. On the other hand it relies on a very specific twinning on tale and ‘biography’ that is immediately apparent to a Tamilian. one could even go so far as to say that there isn’t a possibility of the latter watching this film without hearing the echoes of the history involved. But what if there is a Tamilian who has never heard of Karunanidhi or MGR or Periyar or Annadurai and so on? Could such a viewer still watch this film? But of course! However, wouldn’t Rathnam be operating on the assumption that this group wouldn’t be in the majority?
Why would all of this even be important? Isn’t Iruvar a richer film inasmuch as it relies on those historical referents? Not because the history illuminates the film but the exact opposite! The fiction here offers insight into the nature of the political and the specific history of TN politics. We possibly understand it better for this film having been made.
A similar argument could be used for all films that rely on specific historical episodes or contexts.
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Satyam
April 2, 2009
And to be even clearer I do not dispute your last response at all. I was however addressing a larger question of why certain contexts needed to be introduced into the debate on Firaaq when the director wasn’t offering a film on politics per se. My contention was that the film depended on a political history and therefore questioning the film in the light of the latter was justifiable even if it wasn’t incumbent on any critic to follow exactly this path.
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Joe Anthony
April 2, 2009
Satyam, exactly! To restrict the possible semiotics in favor of a formalistic content analysis is to miss the concept of art itself, at least in some cases.
Of course individual perception is subjective to one’s ‘baggage’; but its very hard to imagine a perception without any baggage at all. It might presumably be justifiable for a critic to limit to the artistical merit, but its a comfortable cocoon nonetheless.
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Satyam
April 7, 2009
Interesting piece by Nandita Das in the context of this discussion:
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090407/jsp/entertainment/story_10784362.jsp#
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rs
April 8, 2009
I have had time to just skim thru the other comments and I’m sure I would be touching on points others have made.
your ideas are very well-put and convincing. i don’t disagree with you. but i think cinema is not only, and never can be, only about the text. for whom it is produced and why as well as how it is received is very much part of the picture.
a work of Art with capital-letter is necessarily political in my opinion.
Though your argument holds well, I cannot buy the ‘Art for Arts sake’ idea
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bk
April 17, 2009
“For the purposes of a review, however, a film is evaluated on simply one criterion, and that’s how well it goes about doing what it set out wanting to do”
and then later
“The latter isn’t so much a failure of the film as our expectations”
Firstly, do filmmakers overtly declare in elaborate detail what they set out to do ? If so, I’d like to know what Ms. Das set out to do with Firaaq ?
Secondly, how does one assess “how well” a filmmaker went about their goal without it involving our own expectations?
A mischievous filmmaker can successfully
blur the line between reality and
fiction and may have set out to do
just that. IMO, that in itself taints
their end product. The “art” of
making that product cannot be enjoyed
in a vacuum (not by all).
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