Between Reviews: From A Corner Of The Sandbox
FROM A CORNER OF THE SANDBOX
MAR 2, 2008 – SO IT’S FINALLY COME AND GONE, the show that everyone likes to hate – it’s too long, too self-congratulatory; how can you take it seriously when X is nominated over Y when even Z would have been a worthier choice? – but no one can stop talking about, even writers like, um, you-know-who, whose current column is scheduled to appear almost a week after the event. Anyway, now that the big winners have taken home their gold statuettes, here are my picks for But They Really Should Have Had A Category For. I’ll begin with Best Evidence That Oscar Has A Sense Of Humour, which goes to the groan-worthy (in a great way) montage of binoculars and periscopes in the cinema, along with the follow-up compilation of bad dreams. Next up, Worst Red Carpet Question, awarded to the interviewer who cornered Daniel Day-Lewis and asked something to this effect: “How did you find the humanity in [your There Will Be Blood character] Daniel Plainview, or was there any humanity in him at all?” (Because five minutes away from the start of the ceremony is the best time to dig into an actor’s processes, see?) As for Best We-Really-Didn’t-Need-To-Know Moment, Tilda Swinton has no competition – for her vaguely unsettling comment about her agent’s buttocks resembling those of the Oscar in her hand.
Jerry Seinfeld gets Best Over-thought-out Joke Of The Evening, for the typically Seinfeldian quip made by the comedian’s Bee Movie character upon finding himself (itself?) on the Oscar stage. (“It’s quite a way from the pupa stage!”) The hands-down winner of Best Reason To Believe That This Year’s Supporting Actor Totally Deserved The Prize is Javier Bardem, for proving that in real life he’s nothing like the psychopathic killer he played so convincingly in No Country For Old Men. (I mean, his date for the evening was his mother, whom he thanked during his acceptance speech… in Spanish. What a nice child, really.) And finally, Best Reminder That Filmmaking Is As Much A Personal Art As, Oh, Writing Or Painting goes to Joel Coen, who thanked Hollywood for continuing to let him and his sibling play “in our corner of the sandbox.” No Country For Old Men is a great film precisely because it’s that – a sandbox film, a film that its makers wanted to make and not a film that they thought the audiences would want to see. Like all good art, it expects us to meet it halfway, not just content with unravelling a good yarn but demanding that we fill in the ellipses and participate in the narrative. Despite grossing some $60 million, it’s a true “art film,” challenging us with its philosophies and its layers and its frustratingly (but also refreshingly) open-ended conclusion.
Had a similar instance of mainstream-art been attempted over here, I’m fairly certain it would have been ridiculed and labelled self-indulgent and consigned to instant failure – like Anurag Kashyap’s No Smoking or Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Eklavya or Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Saawariya. This is not about a qualitative comparison of these films (or their directors) with No Country and the Coens, but simply about our apparent unwillingness to accept and respect a creator’s right to both egocentricity and eccentricity – to satisfy himself before satisfying us, and to value his particular idiosyncrasies over our prefab ideas of what constitutes entertainment. The common argument thrown out is that it costs millions (or, in our case, crores) to put together a project, so how can a director not keep the audience in mind? But why should he (or she), if his script and his vision have been approved by – and perhaps even sought out by – the producer in question? Yes, film is an expensive way to make a creative statement – as opposed to, say, investing in a bolt of canvas and a box of paints – but why should that consideration become a factor in our decision to invest some quality time inside the director’s head? After all, there are several filmmakers who seek to merely entertain, and that, when done well, is its own kind of high – but aren’t we shutting ourselves off from another kind of high by expecting every filmmaker to make movies that talk down to us?
If we can take for what it is the willful inscrutability of a Bergman or a Fellini, why do we – at least those of us who watch these other kinds of films – so summarily dismiss the commercial work from our own country that’s not exactly “commercial?” Is it because we have a problem with mainstream-filmmaking tropes being refracted through the idiosyncratic lenses of big-name filmmakers? Is it because the films I’ve mentioned have stars and songs and are therefore automatically perceived as designed to gratify a mass audience? Did Being Cyrus escape this fate – despite being toplined by Saif Ali Khan – because it was in English, and so it was okay that it tried to exist in a corner of the sandbox? And did the likes of Manorama: Six Feet Under and Mithya find the going relatively easier because they were made with non-stars and non-budgets, and because they pitched themselves squarely in the art-house camp? Again, this somewhat-rant isn’t about No Smoking or Eklavya or Saawariya being masterpieces that found themselves at the receiving end of an unjust cold shoulder from an unfeeling audience, but about them not even being given a chance, about not even being considered worthy of the tiniest effort at analysis about what they are and why they were made the way they were. Looking at the reception these films got, the universal sentiment about the directors seemed to be: “How dare they?” How dare they showcase their talents and their imaginations without first wrapping things up for us in a neat bow? How dare they think of themselves first? How dare they play in their corner of the sandbox?
Oh well! Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system – for the time being, at least – let me close with a few words about Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, which I enjoyed as much as I did No Country, but for entirely different reasons. Where the latter is a clinically calibrated exhibition of jaw-droppingly awesome filmmaking skill, Blood – whose awesomeness of technical finesse is no less jaw-dropping – appears to have been made on the fly, its sequences sourced directly from Anderson’s id. Whether it’s the deliberately discordant score jangling amidst eerie stretches of silence or the seemingly-against-all-good-sense escalation of the film’s mood from near-silent film to near-operatic melodrama or the discomfiting hot-cold textures in the characterisations (watch a tender Day-Lewis with his son by the campfire, and watch him again at the end, a rampaging monster determined to consume everything in sight), Blood is like nothing I’ve seen before. The last twenty minutes or so are such a concentrated burst of exhilarating eccentricity – the film goes bonkers as its protagonist goes bonkers – I was left recalling the closing portion of Apocalypse Now, which, instead of propelling the supposed cat-and-mouse narrative to a thrilling conclusion (the cat having found the mouse), stopped dead in its tracks to gaze worshipfully at a mumbling Marlon Brando. I guess my point is that a successful film isn’t always one that does everything right. Sometimes, watching a director – a creator, an artist – go for broke, marvelling at his defiant tightrope-walk across the breadth of the Niagara, is as good a reason as any to go to the movies, even if the film itself is ultimately no good.
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Hi Baradwaj,
Did you review Being Cyrus? I never came across it so don’t know what you really think of the film. Personally, while I loved Manorama and Eklavya, Being Cyrus just seemed like bad film-making to me, unengaging and self-conscious, so I was surprised to see you mention it alongside these others (though try as I might I cannot, sorry, pretend to share your enthusiasm for Saawariya
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Hi Baradwaj,
A nice thoughtful piece indeed. We lack producers and people who let directors play in their corner of the sand box. We are not ready to consider cinema as an art form. The kind of look you get when you tell that you are in the field of cinema is a proof of the public’s perception of cinema.
Joel Coen mentioned about making videos since they were kids. Now, how many parents in India gladly allow their kids to watch a movie, let alone make one?
Boss!! You rock man.. Every other day, I find myself opening ur site to read a new article and you’ve always let me agape..As an aspiring writer, you inspire me every time. I have one personal request.. I am very eager to read ur analysis for many movies which really didnt hit Indian Screen. Few days back, I saw A History of Violence..(I am sure u must ve watched it..) and I couddnt stop thinkin about it for quite long time. IT hit me at my crotch… I would love to read ur analysis for movies like these..Would also love to read ur analysis for various foreign language films (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, Old Boy, Bicycle Thieves, Spring, Summmer,Fall, WInter and Spring-those bein my favorites..)and old classics.(Sunset Boulevard, Nosferatu, Its a wonderful life, 12 Angry Men). I know Im makin too much of a request.. But I couldnt stop askin this.. N of course, I am dyin to read an article about how u relished SHAWSHANK Redemption,… Cant control..:). Feel like askin more:)
BR: You talk about the presence of stars leading to people not accepting mainstream-meets-art films like No Smoking, Eklavya and Saawariya. I have a slightly different take on this. I think it’s the directors, and the image they project of being too full of themeselves. Anurag Kashyap went on an endless rant about mainstream cinema and YRF before No Smoking (he’s sobered down quite a bit now), Vidhu Vinod Chopra always makes loud statements of how he makes masterpieces (I still remember in 1994 after the songs on 1942- A Love Story became a rage, he made statements like this film would create history, etc. and did something similar for Eklavya), Sanjay Leela Bhansali went all over the town proclaiming that he had made poetry on celluloid. I’m not saying what they did was wrong and maybe it was just a marketing strategy that back-fired, but we are always less charitable to people who brag (can only think of SRK as an exception). Coens don’t do that, do they?
BTW, I personally liked NS and Eklavya a lot, and found Saawariya ‘not-bad’
I think the time is ripe to change the culture in India. IMO there are a FEW PEOPLE who are capable of painting on a blank canvas instead of the “join the dots” cinema that seems to be popular. There seems to be some sort of prevalent template that producers seem to harp on. And then a sort of vicious cycle sets in. The “I make movies like that 80’s potboiler bcoz thats what I grew up on” tendency. Meanwhile notable efforts that happen along the way seem to get forgotten. The reason,I think, is the lack of an underground/cult hit culture. The industry does no self-reflection. Scarface went from a box-office flop to cult hit to every single 16 year old walking around with Pacino and his t-shirt and “say hello to my little friend” on his lip.I can’t remember the last time that happened back home. Another school of thought is doing away with songs would automatically improve Indian cinema. My first retort to that is any instrument that helped bring to the fore a potential like Ilaiyaraja must have some positive aspect to it. Secondly the musical as a genre does still exist, but it is very difficult to do because it takes a lot of conviction from the actors and the director/writer for it to come together on screen and for the film to work as a cohesive unit(Try and imagine Walk the Line without the songs – just isn’t the same movie). Also it lets me spontaneously break out into song in the middle of a hike just to prove a point. See Indian people really do break into song when they see trees and the possibility of rain
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“I mean, his date for the evening was his mother, whom he thanked during his acceptance speech… in Spanish. What a nice child, really.”
LOL. This is so unlike you, man! Got your point though. And you haven’t seen Javier Bardem’s other films? Please please watch Alejandro Amenabar’s Sea Inside, John Malkovich’s Dance Upstairs, and this year oscar nominated director Julian Schnabel’s Before Night falls, and there are few Almodovar films too. He also acted in the latest Milos forman flick, I haven’t seen it though. Great great Actor this guy.
I wish you had written more about “There will be blood”, which was really once-a-gen masterpiece from Mainstream hollywood. (I would take it over No Country.. eyes closed)
Shrabonti: Just dug up the Being Cyrus review. And no, it didn’t seem like bad filmmaking to me
Suganth/Aditya: “We lack producers and people who let directors play in their corner of the sand box.” Actually, what I trying to say that even if producers were game, there’s some sort of resistance to consider it at “art” (and therefore to regard it differently). Even if it’s a bad film, people don’t just say it’s bad because of X reason or Y reason — they bring in the whole “indulgent” aspect and make it sound as if indulgence is automatically bad. Like Aditya points out the “being too full of themselves” factor.
Deepauk M: But I feel there is a place for 80s potboiler remakes too. My rant is about cinema that doesn’t seek to “entertain” in conventional ways.
HAL: Oh, I’ve seen all thsoe films. Before Night Falls is the first film of his I saw. But this is the first time I’m hearing of Dance Upstairs. Thanks. Will look out for it. And I didn’t want to write more about Blood in the event that it gets a release here and I have to do a review.
you watch juno yet? would love a review.
I loved this piece man ! One of your very best !
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PS: thanks for the Cyrus review too..and hey I was wondering if your archives have Hey Ram’s review? was unable to find it
In No Country For Old Men, I particularly liked the scene towards the end when something happens to Chigurh. When I first watched it, it came as an unexpected shock. Then I watched it at least 4 times on a flight…despite the fact that I knew exactly what was going to happen, it still had the same element of suddenness as the first time I saw it. Speaks volumes about the mastery of film craft.
Another aspect that works wonders in the film is the sparseness of dialogue and background music. That scene after scene can be so powerful without any BGM shows the prowess of the directors.
Pri – I’ve watched Juno and while it’s certainly an enjoyable film with a great performance by Ellen Page, I just didn’t get what all that hype was about! Would love to read BR’s take on that.
The Coens are absolute masters.
Just checked out “Blood Simple” and “O Brother Where art thou?”
Blood Simple is awesome and somewhat similar in tone to No Country, unlike their other wacky flicks like Intolerable Cruelty, The LadyKillers and the aforementioned O Brother. Yet I have enjoyed all 5 of their movies that I have checked out.
Also check out another movie that hardly got noticed at this year’s Oscars.It is Sidney Lumets “Before the Devil Knows you’re dead”. Both Philip Seymour and Ethan Hawke are rivetting. Awesome movie.
brangan: Great timing on this one for several (purely personal) reasons: I caught the Oscars this time after a five-year break; my curiosity was piqued by No Country sweeping it; and I “happened” to catch the movie just this past weekend at a quaint little movie house at a ski resort.
I have only one thing to say about the movie (and by extension, para 4 of this write-up): It blew me away!
pri: Yes, I’ve seen Juno. Sweet little film, no?
Arun: I’m sure the Hey Ram piece is in my comp somewhere. will dig it out…
Aditya Pant: The same thing happened to me. The second time round, I was as startled by the scene, even though I was expecting it. As for the hype about Juno, it’s probably that it’s a “writer’s” film — as opposed to No Country and Blood, which are first and foremost, director’s films — and it was a feel-goodish year-end release that stood out amidst the bleakness of the rest of the Oscar lot.
Sougata Mitra: Yeah, I think Intolerable Cruelty got a bit of a bum rap. It’s nowhere as bad as it’s made out to be. O Brother is solid gold, though. And yes, Before the Devil Knows you’re dead is quite fantastic. Have you seen The savages. That has another great Hoffman performance.
Sagarika: “It blew me away” — an appropriately violent response to this film, what?
brangan: I have not yet seen The Savages. There is surely no hope that a movie like “The Savages” will be released here. Will have to wait till I get a copy. However checked out “Charlie Wilson’s War” recently. Its a very decent movie. Liked it quite a lot. With Tom Hanks in the lead, whatever character he plays he turns out likeable.
BTW would love to know ur opinion of “Miller’s Crossing” – another Coen masterpiece….one of my favourites.
Brangan,
“Again, this somewhat-rant isn’t about No Smoking or Eklavya or Saawariya being masterpieces that found themselves at the receiving end of an unjust cold shoulder from an unfeeling audience, but about them not even being given a chance, about not even being considered worthy of the tiniest effort at analysis about what they are and why they were made the way they were.”
I’m a little unclear on what you mean by No Smoking, Eklavya, Saawariya “not even being given a chance.” What do you consider giving them a chance?
baradwaj, me too put up hands for hey ram review
brangan: “…an appropriately violent response to this film, what?” Wow – you are good. You got it even though I did not italicize “blew” or put a smiley face at the end of the comment. You just scored an A+ in the read-my-mind test!
Baradwaj, I have the same question as Sagarika on what you meant by not being given a chance. Are you talking about reviews from other critics? Or are you talking about the audience response? i dont think the general audience out there is discerning enough to reject a movie because they thought it was self-indulgence on part of the director. They reject a movie because they didnt feel it was entertaining enough, period. So I am guessing you are talking about other reviewers.
Shalini/Vijay; Not given a chance… in the sense that most critical (and I’m including bloggers in this, because lay-viewers or now, they’ve come to constitute part of the critical space; maybe that’s a topic to explore for a future column) evaluations of these films did not try to see what the director was trying to do; rather the point on which to dismiss them seemed to be “they didn’t work for me (and by extension, the audience)” What I’m trying to say that even if a film doesn’t work for you per se, there may be merits worth digging into, if only you gave it a chance…
brangan, thanks for the clarification. The last point you mentioned applies in my case to some of Kubrick’s movies. They dont work for me but I can see what all the fuss is about
Brangan – That’s what I thought you meant. I guess the only comment I would make to your point is that (in my experience) most evaluations/critiques of Bollywood films don’t contain any exploration or analysis of why the director made the film the way he/she did. In other words, there isn’t much depth/analysis in the review of *any* Indian film. So, it’s not just these “self-indulgent” films that don’t get a chance…most of Hindi cinema doesn’t.