What a relief to learn that the rest of the world is just like us, just as fond of mindless movies.
If I recommended a triptych of Swedish films, bearing the names Män Som Hatar Kvinnor, Flickan Som Lekte Med Elden and Luftslottet Som Sprängdes, your response would play out along the lines of a polite “No, thank you,” with a muttered swearword as soon as I exited from earshot. But if I referred to these films by their tantalisingly lurid English names – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest – your interest is piqued. It’s the same set of films. It’s just that the names, earlier, were foreign, and later, in the language this newspaper is printed in. But the only thing that’s changed is the way we address these films. The films themselves remain foreign, inscrutable without subtitles – though, of course, an argument could be made that the action-spiked transpirations of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series are hardly dependent on the audience’s comprehension of the spoken word.
The worldwide success of these Swedish films is certainly a fitting answer to the question: Are audiences open to watching films in languages they don’t necessarily understand? But a more important question has been answered: What kind of movies do normal Swedish people see, the kind of people who aren’t likely to be found within a mile’s radius of a theatre screening a sombre meditation on Spiders and Death and God’s Absence, with stern actors captured in unforgiving close-ups, the kind where, if so inclined (and you may well be, given the pace of the story’s progress), you could count the pores from cheek to pallid cheek? Now we know that the Swedes like shootouts too. They like laughably improbable coincidences too. They like the urgent manipulations of Hollywood-style thriller music too, that insistent thrum of dread we feel in the pit of the stomach. Simply put, they like popcorn too.
For the longest time, I was intimidated by Swedes. What kind of people were these that their cinema yielded only the Bergman oeuvre? Even we had art filmmakers, forbiddingly grim craftsmen like Ritwik Ghatak and Mani Kaul, but we had, at the same time, channels of escape in the works of Manmohan Desai and SP Muthuraman. But these Swedes – didn’t they crave mindless escape? Just how formidably intelligent were they? Did they tuck in their children with bedtime readings of Kierkegaard? (Yes, he was Danish, but this entire essay could be reconfigured to accommodate the Danes as well, those glacial cousins of the Swedes, given that the moviegoers of Denmark, to our eyes, appeared to be weaned singularly on Carl Dreyer’s masterworks.) And just how depressed were they? When the phrase “dinner date” translates to meatballs followed by a screening of Persona, did the couple stand a chance for happily-ever-after?
But now the truth is out, and only one question remains: Is this a new development in Swedish cinema, this out-of-nowhere acknowledgement of the national audience’s pleasure centres? I would think not. It’s just that we are more aware, thanks to our intensely networked world, about what else lies out there. In earlier times, only the festival films were talked about, and as these festivals were dominated by “serious” filmmakers like Ingmar Bergman, whose films won all the acclaim, all the awards, theirs were the only films the critics wrote about, and consequently, those were the only films we read about. Dig into the cinema of Japan, and I’m sure that for every Kurosawa and Ozu, there exists a mindless entertainer where hero and heroine fall in love and execute slapstick-comedy routines and erupt into fights with the villains and, finally, walk away, hand in hand, into a black-and-white sunset. The Japanese, I bet, loved popcorn too.
Lights, Camera, Conversation… is a weekly dose of cud-chewing over what Satyajit Ray called Our Films Their Films. An edited version of this piece can be found here.
Copyright ©2011 Baradwaj Rangan, The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Niranjan
March 5, 2011
I’m sure there is the brand of ‘mindless’ films everywhere. But I get the feeling that some of our ‘most mindless’ movies would kick really hardass at the “Contest For The Most Mind-Body-And-Soul-less”.
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rameshram
March 5, 2011
Hey good luck on your new gig.
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VJ
March 5, 2011
Lights, Camera, Conversation… ! come on that does not acronymize to BR ! 🙂
So you joined Hindu, congrats !
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Ravi K
March 5, 2011
The escapist/genre/non-arthouse European films rarely get much recognition in the US. But there’s a cult audience for such Asian films in the US. Maybe because the Asian action, horror films, and dramas are often extremely violent and over-the-top in a way that HW films rarely are, whereas a European genre drama or thriller isn’t that much different, at first glance, from a Hollywood film in the same vein?
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sathish
March 5, 2011
It was good to read you in the newspaper first before checking your blog online. 🙂
I am sure Japanese have their own popcorn – more saltier and extra cheese on it maybe!
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Gradwolf
March 5, 2011
Why this muted entry? Standing back and giving a smug smile ah?!
And you know what? Japan I think enjoys more mindless shit than anyone in any part of India. I am not sure about films but ever tried Youtube-ing on Japanese ads and pop videos? You’ll die of laughing all day long. Add to that, they love Rajini(*gulp*).
How did you find the three films(Millennium)? I thought the first one was excellently made but the series lost steam in the 2nd and 3rd one. But that’s probably true for the books too. It’ll be quite exciting to see how the atmosphere would be in David Fincher’s adaptation. I wonder if he’ll make it Zodiac-like.
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Just Another Film Buff
March 5, 2011
All the best for your new stint, BR!
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bran1gan
March 5, 2011
rameshram: Thanks man.
VJ: So I guess I should now rechristen myself as Lakshman Chetan Champaklal 🙂
Gradwolf: To paraphrase a great man, Panninga dhaan satham podum… Singam silent-aa varum 😉 I thought the first one was okay but was quite bored by 2 and 3. Like you say, that was the case with the books too.
JAFB: Thanks man. Hopefully it will be more than a “stint”
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Deboshree
March 5, 2011
A great read. Popcorn films will always have a market and hence will always be produced, whatever be the language. 🙂
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Rahul
March 5, 2011
I am pretty sure there are threads in IMDB of fans worrying about how Hollywood remake will “dumb down” the original Swedish version. I haven’t seen the Steig Larsson movies but I have a hunch they may have more in common with your arthouse Swedish /Danish cinema than mainstream Hollywood.
The Nolan remake of Insomnia is probably mainstream , but the Swedish/Danish version is so much more pensive and ambiguous, certainly more satisfying.
I saw the BBC recreation of a popular Swedish crime drama – Wallander , with Kenneth Brannagh in the title role. There is a certain brooding quality about Swedish/Danish cinematography ; probably it has something to do with snow covered landscape in general, but that mood seems to seep in to the characters and story. Branagh has captured the same mood in the BBC version.
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Vivek
March 5, 2011
Don’t have to bother buying NIE on weekends hereafter 🙂 Good luck BR.
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mohan
March 5, 2011
Great to see you back sir. May you continue to write many more erudite and “supera-ezhudharaaru-aana-padam-eppadi-nu-mattum-solla-maatenguraaru” articles in the future. 😉
One small doubt sir, indha maari fiedla kooda(adhuvum ungala maari well-known writersa kooda) velaikku interview vechu bendu nimithuvaagala enna?
And sir, I hope you are reviewing Tamil films too at your new office? Please clarify sir.
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bran1gan
March 5, 2011
Vivek: You actually bought the paper? So you’re not a blog-reading person? Hmmm….
Mohan Sir: LOL! No interview. When you do work that’s published, they know if they want you or not by reading you. Then it’s a question of whether what you want is what they want as well (in terms of the money and stuff). I hope to continue with Hindi/ Tamil reviews on the blog — though not in the paper.
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vikram
March 5, 2011
BR, good to see you back with a piece on saturdays. Which paper/ magazine do we see your reviews in gng fwd
…and all da best Saar
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mohan
March 5, 2011
Ok. Got the hint. No more sir. 😉
Oru mariyadhaikku sonna kooda nakkalnu yaen eduthukareenga?
On a more serious note, am happy that you will be reviewing tamil movies again. Sorry if you’ve been asked this question before, but why did you discontinue reviewing tamil movies in the first place? Any pressure from the Express?
I still remember your 7g rainbow colony and Pudhupettai reviews( me being a hard-core Selvaraghavan fan). Too bad Aayirathil oruvan missed out(though you did write a very insightful Between Reviews piece).
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Hari
March 5, 2011
Good to see your name associated with my favorite national newspaper BR, wish you success.
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kamil
March 5, 2011
Rangan – Why were you so cagey on the move? Barred from even disclosing to your faithful blogees? Good to see you back. What does the change entail for the blog? Or do your followers not have a right in knowing!?
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vivek
March 5, 2011
“What a relief to learn that”
– did we really care???
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Gradwolf
March 5, 2011
Oh no! So no regular reviews from now?! Aaha. What are the regular columns? Suspense ah?
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anamika
March 5, 2011
well done…hope the Hindu route is as musch a search for greener pastures in cinemas as was the earlier express path!!
hail to the mindless mayhem that makes cinema the true alternate universe…what fun to popcorn ones way through total chaos…saw a late night flick called final destination..and it was one acid trip the director was on..!
hope to see what country comes tumbling out of your film corset…ops closet
cheers,
anamika
1
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bran1gan
March 5, 2011
mohan: It was just a question of time. Just got busier and couldn’t bring myself to write detailed essays about stuff not for the paper. (Hence the profusion of itty-bitty posts.)
kamil: What is “cagey” about this? Are we so much in the twitter era that we cannot wait a mere week before knowing someone’s plans? 🙂
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Bala
March 5, 2011
@Baradwaj : does your cryptic last response mean you will not be doing hindi/tamil movie reviews for the Hindu ? Seri…not so cryptic 😀
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bran1gan
March 5, 2011
Bala: My readers seem to have suddenly morphed into wartime cryptologists, scanning innocent dispatches for embedded messages that can overturn the empire 🙂
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Bala
March 5, 2011
@Baradwaj : everything is fair in war and movie reviews dude 😛
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Vivek
March 5, 2011
I do visit your blog frequently but did buy NIE on weekends to read your columns. I somehow feel that print brings more out of your words than the web does.
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Raj Balakrishnan
March 5, 2011
All the best on the move. Are you replacing Sudhish Kamath? I’ve seen the three Swedish movies – the first one was very good, I thought. The other two were not that good. But why do you call these movies ‘mindless’?
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bran1gan
March 6, 2011
Raj Balakrishnan: No replacing. Well, mindless in the sense that they’re escapist in a sense, especially compared to the art films (which were the only films we knew from Sweden earlier).
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rameshram
March 6, 2011
we need an equivalent of a BR thing for the hindu-
enna per vekkalam?
Partha Gnabagam illao?
Rangan de besanti?
😀
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Rangeesh
March 6, 2011
Thought you would dig this article..
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=1944
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Goodness Elliotness
March 6, 2011
Congrats on joining the Hindu!
But hindu? seriously!!! eh
All the best, will continue to read you, wherever you go we follow.
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Indra Srinivasan
October 12, 2011
I am Indra Srinivasan, 56, who have submitted several poems at voicesnet.org, which had been authenticated in their website. Can you please publish my article on “Coffee with Indra” in your Hindu? If you permit, I will send my article. Earlier I have been writing articles and poems to various individual persons.
The Hindu had attained a new high after your most captivating approach in the presentation of your articles. The distinct intellectualism, imbibed with humor, adds color and immense change to all your lines, that provokes a reader like me, to fix my eyes and mind on your writings first, as should be with all the other readers! Kudos for an unparalleled dynamism!
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