Ship Of Theseus: Sailing against the current

I’m one of those old-fashioned viewers / readers who expect a takeaway from a movie or a book. It’s fashionable these days to pooh-pooh “message cinema” but I think the movies (and books) that stick usually do have a strong, coherent message. I know art is supposed to be more about the “how” than the “what” but the “what”, I suspect, matters more than we’d like to admit.  But that’s just my bias. It isn’t an apology for Anand Gandhi’s Ship Of Theseus, which scores high on both the “what” and the “how”, and needs no apology. Gandhi’s movie is a remarkable achievement. Remarkable, because it breaks unwritten rules that Indian filmmakers (even the much feted new crop) have internalized.  In the best possible ways, SOT sails against the current: it is more loquacious than laconic; more wise than witty. It philosophizes unabashedly. It avoids becoming preachy by rooting these philosophical observations (and, yes, messages) in deeply personal contexts.

In the first segment, a blind photographer Aaliya (Aida El Kashef) gets her eye-sight back. But this forces her to undergo a painful sensory reconfiguration. The restored eye-sight doesn’t turn out to be quite the blessing she expected. Not surprisingly, this segment is the one most loaded with sensory delights. The lights (Pankaj Kumar’s camerawork is exquisite), sounds and textures are meticulously woven into the fabric of reality “seen” (a verb Aaliya matter-of-factly applies to herself even when she’s blind) by a blind person. In the final scene of the segment, the lens-cap of Aaliya’s camera falls off into a gorge, hinting at her readiness to lose her blindfolds.

In the second segment, Maitreya, an ailing monk, must choose between a slow, painful death and taking medication manufactured by a company that subjects animals to harsh experiments.  With his brisk walk, wiry frame, and avuncular mannerisms, Neeraj Kabi brings a Gandhian physicality to the Maitreya character, whose staunch  ahimsa and stoic embrace of suffering are also quite Gandhian. The interesting counterfoil is provided by a self-styled Charwak (Vinay Shukla), who plays Plato to Maitreya’s Socrates, indulging in banter and philosophical dialectic with the monk. Both Charwak and Maitreya, doppelgangers of the director Gandhi, are finely etched. Maitreya is as human as he is saintly (“Stay a bit longer”, he pleads disarmingly, as Charwak is about to leave after an unsuccessful attempt to convince him to take the medication); Charwak is as compassionate as he is a “nihilistic hedonist” (“We need you; we love you” is his heartfelt entreaty to Maitreya). Of the three segments, Anand Gandhi is most indulgent with this one. Mark, for instance, the shot of Maitreya walking across a bridge, flanked on both sides by the muck-infested Mahim creek – a lonely saint marching through a filthy world.

The third, and final, segment belongs to Navin (Sohum Shah), a stockbroker whose simple philosophy (“some money, some respect and compassion” – hard to argue with that) is the object of his artist-activist grandmother’s ridicule. Navin has recently undergone a successful kidney transplant. The possibility that his new kidney might be a stolen one pricks Navin’s conscience. He sets off seeking redemption through an act of kindness to Shankar, a slum-dweller whose kidney has been stolen.  (Gandhi’s use of the byzantine Mumbai slums is one instance where his wit shows: Navin’s huge car and his huge friend literally don’t fit in the slums.) Things don’t quite pan out per Navin’s plan, but his intervention does leave Shankar much better off. As Navin’s grandmother, an acts-of-kindness veteran of sorts, consoles him, “That’s the best you can hope for”. All the stories have similar pragmatic endings, rooting, as it were, for a qualified rather than an absolute idealism.

Despite its metaphysical leanings, SOT is a very physical film. It is almost obsessed with the biological universe in general and human bodily functions in particular: there are close-up shots of Aaliya’s eye and Maitreya’s sores. A sophisticated Darwinian worldview informs SOT. It isn’t the simplistic “nature red in tooth and claw” Darwinism, but a poetic Buddhist / Jain one. A shot of squabbling monkeys follows a scene involving a human altercation. But this isn’t so much a condemnation of human beings as “lowly animals”, as much as a reminder that the lines we draw separating species are quite arbitrary. Citing an extended phenotype, SOT points out that we don’t always know where our bodies end and “the environment begins” (Aaliya’s camera as an extension of her eye).

The SOT philosophy is also an impassioned political plea. Anand Gandhi seems to be arguing for a better understanding of our place in the universe, and asking us to recognize that our actions have consequences. The movie takes in nature as it comes – no anthropomorphic spins on it. In this ecumenical view of nature, even human waste can become a positive indicator of intimacy between people (Maitreya and his fellow monks; Navin and his grammy). I can’t think of a more evolved take on life.

(PS - I can’t help thinking that Bhansali would envy this film, given that bodily malfunction & disability have been his preoccupations, but he hasn’t quite been able to peel the layers of high drama and “prettiness” to get to the philosophical core).

Twins and our other selves

We’ve always been fascinated by the selves that we don’t ‘wear to work’. Ergo, many of the interesting films over the past few years have had split-personality protagonists. Take Vishal Bharadwaj’s Kaminey (2009), for instance. Guddu and Charlie can be seen as two sides of a young urban Indian – one, a social do-gooder and the other a crook who will stop at nothing to make a fast buck.

Twins have always been stand-ins for our other selves, one of the pair usually playing Hyde to the other’s Jeckyll, indulging in guilty pleasures on the other’s behalf. In the late-sixties / early-seventies, Dilip Kumar (Ram Aur Shyam, 1967) and Hema Malini (Seeta Aur Geeta, 1972) split into two so that one of them could bash up villainous family members. Back then, overbearing family members who were always around must’ve seemed like they could use a whipping. Since we couldn’t dream of doing it, why not let our less scrupulous twins out? Perhaps these movies were the early signs of an Indian middle class hankering for a nuclear family. But the villain now isn’t society – it’s one of our selves. Charlie, in Kaminey, is not on much higher moral ground than Bhope Bhau, the closest thing to a villain in the movie. This is why Kaminey speaks to our times.We are all part Guddu and part Charlie and the two fight within us, as they do in the movie.

In the year after Kaminey, came Vijay Lalwani’s Karthik Calling Karthik (2010). This one did not hide behind twins. Karthik has dissociative identity disorder, a split personality. Lalwani’s movie was an intelligent comment on, among other things, Indian men’s schizophrenic attitudes towards women. So, one Karthik loves to party with co-worker and love-interest Shonali, but the other one calls her names. The movie inverts the traditional Madonna-whore (or Paro-Chandramukhi) perspective and shows that the split really lies in the (usually male) eye of the beholder. Karthik also embodies our ambivalence towards what’s often called ‘corporate culture’.

Which brings me to Bharadwaj’s more recent Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola (2013), an absurd (in the genre sense of the term) Shakespearean comedy about a landlord with split identities. Mandola is a ruthless land-grabbing lord by day, when he’s sober. At night, pour a few pegs down his hatch, and he fights his greedy self (Guddu v/s Charlie again) on behalf of the very hapless farmers he’s out to dupe. And, Matru, his man Friday by day, goes by ‘Mao’ at night, stoking revolutionary fires. Matru and Mandola are four people, not two. While Kaminey was more circumspect about the capitalist-socialist doublethink that is the urban Indian mind, Matru spells it out. After all, who needs twin siblings and bad family when there are demons within?

Bombay Talkies: To the Four Fathers

At last, we get the real Karan Johar. Constrained only by time and not by seven figure ROI concerns, Johar finds his voice. Sure, there are flaws. Take the openly gay Avinash (Saquib Salim). He is refreshingly different in some respects. He isn’t effeminate. He doesn’t want to be tagged by his surname. “Avinash what?” , his boss enquires. “It’s the what that screws things up”, he responds. And yet, so often does he flash his sexuality-badge that it overshadows his other selves.  In effect, he has simply swapped surnames, not shunned them. He might as well go by “Avinash Gay”. Also, maverick irreverence is all very well, but an openly gay man who relentlessly hits upon his love-interest with scant regard for time and place simply reinforces the “despo” stereotype. This is a recurring theme in Johar’s minority characters (Kurbaan’s Muslims come to mind); they come across more as projections on a single, defining axis rather than as multi-dimensional characters.

That being said, Johar’s film is richly layered elsewhere. The hollowed out marriage between Gayatri (Rani Mukherjee) and Dev (Randeep Hooda, outstanding) and Dev’s trapped, tormented sexuality are handled with an adult sensibility that is rare in Hindi cinema. The looks that Gayatri and Dev give each other convey a mutual exasperation beyond repair. In interviews, Johar has often expressed his dissatisfaction with marriage as an institution; he at last puts his movie where his mouth is.

Cinema isn’t central to Johar’s plot, the way it is to the other three. And yet, it circles Johar’s film in interesting ways. Gayatri’s last line, “I hate lies” is loaded with irony given that she edits a film tabloid. And it is the street urchin’s rendition of a film song that finally forces Dev to come to terms with himself.  Johar finds new meaning in “kisii ke itne paas ho, k Khud se duur ho gaye”.  Above all, he seems to remind us that we cannot dismiss cinema as lies; its truths can often expose us to the lies we live.

For a variety of reasons, Dibakar Banerjee’s segment is the finest of the four. First, by choosing to base his film on a Satyajit Ray short story, Banerjee reminds us of the huge Bengali influence on Hindi cinema. Second, the story revolves around an ordinary man’s (literal) brush with stardom. He is the protagonist, not the star. Purandar (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) doesn’t have much going for him. He’s looking for a job (but has entrepreneurial ambitions based on eggs from a pet emu he keeps) and some dignity, eager to shine in the eyes of his wife and sick daughter. By happy accident, he’s chosen to appear – ever so fleetingly - in a movie. All he has to do is bump into the hero, exclaim “aye!” and walk out of the frame. But for Purandar, this is his to be or not to be moment.

In the pivotal scene where Purandar rehearses for his big moment, Banerjee pays homage to theatre (Kusumagraj’s Natasamrat). Facing his Hamlet-like existential dilemma, Purandar is visited by an apparition (Sadashiv Amrapurkar) of his father figure (a la Paresh Rawal in Oye, Lucky!). He must now face his failings and his ambitions (represented by the emu mulling about). Purandar’s memorable cameo in the movie-within-the-movie is not only an ode to an everyman’s resilience, it is also a bow to the countless theatrewallas who have enriched Hindi cinema in ways that stars could not have done.

 Banerjee’s film is the only one that alludes to the non-Hindi (Bengali and Marathi) cultural influences of Hindi cinema. It plays out as a classic Chaplinesque tragicomedy:  In his eagerness to share his moment of glory with his daughter, Purandar forgets to collect his fees for the cameo.  We know how much he needs the dough; he is too high to care. Nawazzudin Siddiqui sinks his teeth deep into the part, using body language and dialogue delivery to perfection. This one makes you smile, cry, feel and think. What more could you ask for?

Zoya Akhtar’s tale is less ambitious but equally heart-warming. A brother and sister help each other fulfil their little dreams, outsmarting their simple-minded father. The little guy (Naman Jain, delight to watch) wants to grow up to be Sheela (she, of Sheela kii jawaanii) and dresses himself up in his sister’s clothes and mother’s makeup, earning a slap from his father. Akhtar’s silent scenes capture the pain of a childhood dream denied, as when the dance instructor shoos the little hanger-on away.

Anurag Kashyap’s short has its strong flavors, but is overcooked in parts. A young man, Vijay (Vineet Kumar Singh) from the dusty hinterland is seeking an audience with Amitabh Bachchan for his sick father’s sake. Kashyap’s greatest success lies in mapping out the huge distance between a star and his worshipper. How inaccessible Amitabh is to a man who has a lot in common with the star (his looks, his hometown and his most famous screen name)!  Alas, Kashyap overshoots too often. The opening pee-jokes seem forced, a self-conscious peddling of brand-Kashyap bawdiness.  Still, with notable help from Vineet Kumar Singh, he makes our heart go out to the “outsiders” eking out a living in Mumbai.

The coda, “apnaa Bombay Talkies”, with a battery of stars obliging us with their presence in a lazily written and composed track is jarringly out of character for a film that looks at cinema from our perspective. And the merrily penned title track (Swanand Kirkire, I guess?) “yeh khilaaRi nah buuRhaa huwaa”  is anyway a hard act to follow. Blame this one on the promo designers.

It’s interesting that a common thread running through the four films is fathers disappointed in their children. Consciously or not, these four children of Hindi cinema have given us their takes on the generational shifts that have characterized Hindi cinema – each generation of filmmakers imbibing and rejecting various traits of the previous one.  Vive l'evolution!