Between Reviews: Our Baggage, Their Baggage
OUR BAGGAGE, THEIR BAGGAGE
JAN 13, 2008 - THE FIRST FRIDAY OF THE NEW YEAR has gone by without a new Hindi film release. (Something named Manthan Ek Kashmakash was supposed to have made it, but it never did – at least to these hoods.) One part of me gets knotted up in angst about Fridays that see no new films, because these dry spells are typically followed by disproportionate downpours – as is the case with the Friday ahead (as I write this; the Friday last as you read this), which brings us My Name is Anthony Gonsalves as well as Halla Bol. That means I’ll have to watch two films back to back, register first-time impressions from these viewings, use these impressions to form opinions that’ll hopefully not sound insane a week later, lay out these opinions in the form of reviews, and mail these reviews in by the next morning.
Then again, there’s something nice about this sort of enforced break from reviewing – because you get to relax with older films. No, let me rephrase that – because when you write about films for a living, when watching movies becomes your job, you never really relax with a film, even when it’s playing on television. Just a few days back, I was watching Pagal Nilavu – one of Mani Ratnam’s earlier works – on TV, and I found my attention piqued not by the story so much as the scenarios that looped back (and forward) to earlier (and later) films by the director. The kickoff to the confrontation between the rowdy (played by Murali) and the cop (Sarath Babu) – isn’t it like the one between the brothers in Agni Natchatiram? That scene where the cop’s sister (Revathy) play-acts dead – wasn’t that in Pallavi Anupallavi?
So, no – those innocent days of kicking back with a film are a distant memory, as far back in the past as the seventies of Seemabaddha, which I caught on Zee Studios’ Ray retrospective one Sunday afternoon. (A prime weekend spot devoted to black-and-white movies from an art-film director – who would have thought this a possibility in these TRP-driven times?) This was my first viewing of the film, so I was swept along by Ray’s typically gentle navigation through his narrative. (Such a thing is never possible after the first time, because once you know where a film is headed, the next time you watch it, it’s always the how that becomes interesting. That’s why great-director films never grow tiring, because each subsequent viewing brings out, if you’re lucky, a new aspect of this how.)
The plot about an upwardly-mobile executive losing his soul to the materialistic charms of big-city life isn’t one to shatter the earth – and it necessitates a few icky detours into the realm of the preachy and the moralistic – but Seemabaddha is a wonderful film, if only because it shows how God is in the (upper-middle-class) details. So it was all the more baffling, for me, when Sharmila Tagore walked into the goings-on, with her not-a-hair-out-of-place bouffant and her coyly ingratiating mannerisms. This sort of performance was perfect for Nayak, where she was herself putting on an act for Uttam Kumar’s benefit, but here – where the point isn’t “acting” so much as “being” – it made wonder how Ray let her get away with the very “Bombay film industry” style of acting (though still subdued by “Bombay film industry” standards) that he once held against Waheeda Rehman (before casting her in Abhijan).
I tried to locate the exact nature of Ray’s reservation by thumbing through his Our Films Their Films, but I couldn’t – though I stumbled, instead, into his fascinating put-down of François Truffaut’s book of interviews with Alfred Hitchcock. “What the book fails to achieve,” Ray writes, “and in failing defeats Truffaut’s main purpose in writing it, is to raise Hitchcock to the eminence of a profound and serious artist… The fact is, the genre that Hitchcock chose for himself debars by its very nature the kind of seriousness one associates with the writers Truffaut mentions.” (In his preface, Truffaut suggests that Hitchcock belongs “among such artists of anxiety as Kafka, Dostoevsky and Poe.”)
Ray concludes that Hitchcock is not a serious artist because he deals with characters “who are supposed to exist on a level of everyday reality, and yet have no existence beyond the needs of a melodramatic plot designed solely to generate maximum suspense.” It’s slightly stupefying how anyone who’s watched Vertigo – for instance – could see James Stewart’s character as having no existence beyond the “melodramatic plot.” (If anything, Scottie’s obsessions spill over the screen and onto us; these emotions are universal.) We critics are often accused of bringing to our worldview (or more precisely, movieworld-view) prejudice and bias – as if it’s possible to be human and yet possess the superhuman quality of absolute neutrality – but it’s comforting to know that even the great masters toted along their little pieces of baggage.
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In case you’re wondering, at the time this piece was submitted, ‘Anthony Gonsalves’ looked like it was going to make it. Finally, on Friday, it didn’t…
I absolutely loved the last line. Can anyone ever get rid of the baggage?
As for Ray, I think in Nayak he had to consciously overcome his “baggage” to let Uttam Kumar and Sharmila Tagore carry their own baggage of commercial cinema. And that worked so well in the context of that film.
Well, could there be anyone without prejudice/bias, especially when it comes to moviemaking/reviewing? Ray is no exception. Thats why art making and appreciation is frustrating sometimes. What someone feels great could be trashed by someone else. No clearcut benchmark on what makes a movie great. Thats why Science rules. Baradwaj you made a mistake switching from Engineering to movie reveiwing
)
Aditya: That’s a nice way to look at Nayak — as Ray overcoming *his* baggage.
Vijay: Thanks for a huge laugh on a Sunday morning. Do you think my old employers will let me have my job back?
Aditya Pant, even before Nayak there was Abhijan, which was a commercial compared to most of his other films.
Vertigo is my favorite Hitchcock film because under its Hitchcockian plot machinations is a fascinating portrait of loss and obsession and even the nature of reality itself. I don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t seen it.
Hitchcock may not have been the deepest filmmaker, but nobody could manipulate the audience like he could. He could have only created suspanse and terror by understanding what made us tense up with suspense or recoil in horror. He tapped into our most primal emotions.
Baradwaj: check this post I did a while back. I think most people who are really passionate about Hitchcock would agree that the Truffaut book, while undoubtedly useful, only skims the surface of Hitchcock’s achievements. Some of the pioneering critical work done by the boys at Cahiers Du Cinema in the 1950s was valuable in the sense that it was the first time anyone was taking Hitch seriously at all - but it was often very limited (like the Chabrol-Rohmer book which looked at every Hitchcock film through the prism of his Catholic influences - e.g. Harry the corpse in The Trouble with Harry being a stand-in for Christ).
One thing about Seemabaddha: the last shot of the film turns the Sharmila character into a symbol - in fact, introducing the film at the Cinefan fest a couple of years ago, she unselfconsciously said “I play the role of Conscience in this movie”. Maybe that justifies her appearance and mannerisms. (Does Conscience have a perfect bouffant? We may never know.)
Ravi: I haven’t seen Abhijan. However, I didn’t mean to make a point about the commercial-ness of Nayak. What I tried to say was that give the role played by Uttam Kumar, commercial-style acting (whatever that means
) worked well in Nayak.
Ravi K: “I don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t seen it.” You mean, these people exist?
Jabberwock: She actually said that? Wow!
So, “Anthony Gonsalves” didn’t arrive in Chennai - but what about “Halla Bol”? In Hindi-film-starved Germany I’m walting for your review!
Note: Please ignore/delete the earlier comment. Abhishek
By a strange coincidence, I watched both ‘Vertigo’ and a Ray movie (though not ‘Seemabaddha’ but ‘Pratidwandi’) this weekend.
This was the first time I saw Vertigo, or any Hitchcock movie completely for that matter, so yes “these people exist”.
Interestingly both movies contain a hallucinatory, surreal or as most people would call it ‘Kafkaesque’ dream sequence subsequent to which the protagonist makes his climactic move.
Have seen ‘Seemabaddha’ only in patches, that too a long time back, comparing it to Nayak (which by the way has a surreal dream sequence too!) is okay because Sharmila has ‘coyly ingratiating mannerisms’ in all her films post Bollywood. No wonder Ray preferred Madhabi for his later female-centric films like Mahanagar, Ghare Baire or even Mahapurush.
bollyaddict: The review is in the previous posting… BTW, do Hindi films make it to theatres in germany, the way they do in the US and UK?
Abhishek: I was just kidding with that comment. Madhabi was in Ghare Baire too? Didn’t know that…
Rangan
//JAN 13, 2008 - THE FIRST FRIDAY OF THE NEW YEAR//, Jan 13 is a Sunday, right? Or meant in some other way?
Regards
Venkatramanan
“…as if it’s possible to be human and yet possess the superhuman quality of absolute neutrality..” Baradwaj saab, I must say that I think you are not too far from achieving that impossibility- have never read reviews as neutral and open-minded as yours- cheers!
“The review is in the previous posting… ”
Oh, my - how could I have overlooked that?
“BTW, do Hindi films make it to theatres in germany, the way they do in the US and UK?”
No, not on a regular basis - sometimes there are shows directly after the Indian release thanks to private initiatives; but unfortunately that happens less and less and if it does, it’s very often films I’m not interested in (the last one being WELCOME). And sometimes, we get them very delayed, at least the big ones like GURU or CHAK DE! INDIA. Still waiting for OM SHANTI OM; maybe it will be shown during the Berlin Film Festival (as last years DON was shown there), although it doesn’t really fit into such a festival; but who cares, if we get to see it that way? I’m really hoping for Santosh Sivans BEFORE THE RAINS as a suitable festival film! But the programme hasn’t been publicized yet, although the festival is starting on Feb. 7. Only a few days before the start we will know…
venkatramanan: No, I meant the “first Friday” - as in Jan 4th
Jahan Bakshi: Thank you sir.
Apropos Jabberwock’s comment, it is interesting to note that Sharmila played ‘Conscience’ in both Nayak and Seemabaddha.
In Nayak, she is given that epithet by Uttam. And she says the same herself in the Cinefan showing.
The bouffant is quite inexplicable. As a girl from Patna who has never seen the inside of a beauty parlour before she lands in Cal, her hairdo is quite something!