Wednesday, April 22, 2015

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

The film tries its hand at humour, and does succeed at times; where it succeeds the most, even if unwittingly, is in being also a very depressing film. While trying to stereotype India, the India where only an Englishman can do something worthwhile (explain dunking toast in tea, visiting a maidservant/low-caste woman, telling how a cricket bat should be held, fixing a leaking tap, keeping accounts - and you better watch the film for the complete enumeration) and the Indian can only play capers and do frauds on people with the chalta hai attitude, the film in fact ends up stereotyping, very miserably, very unjustly (as all stereotyping is), the British themselves: unable to see beyond money and sex? The character of Evelyn Greenslade, played by Judi Dench, is the one most cruelly disappointing: even she was just after the usual rigmarole of companionship, sex and so-called independence! Oh dear! Tati could not have projected this circus in a better way: only, I highly doubt if the filmmakers of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel wished it that way. Interestingly, judging the high opinion in which the film is kept in many quarters, the stereotyping is certainly based on some reality: otherwise, how is that possible? (It would not be amiss here to recall another film, the French superhit of 2011, Intouchables, for the same combination of a film playing on stereotypes becoming a huge hit among critics and masses alike.)

The film starts well: the hypocrisy and heartburns in each character's lives are very believable, very much part of the Tati and Barnum play. But, then, the film nosedives: more and lower. The choices of language are interesting: a normal rickshaw puller is shown speaking in English (and quite fine words), but then why not the old cook and the maidservant? (Should it also be reminded here that the film reinforces European notions of caste and economic class being one?) The choices of language get further interesting: what kind of language is that character from Arsenic and Old Lace - yes, I do mean the Dev Patel character - using? The only worthy wit in cut-and-dried British style comes from the Anglo-Indian club secretary (Denzil Smith): of course not from the slavishly adoring maid.

The biggest flaw of the film is its British characters: the film ends, and yet all of them are where they were. How, where did they develop as humans? If a story starts at point A and ends right there, and no point B, then either you are Jacques Tati and making that as your point, or you are just expressing a very sad aspect of modern life, of modern Britain here: that there's no story (anymore?). No one discovers the rhythm of India, the spirituality of India, the peace of India, the non-aggression of India; running after their unrealized desires, they only discover a new woman in bed, a new man to call their own, a new confidence, a new self-respect, begotten from minds and eyes still in colonial awe.

And yet, are all the minds and eyes in India (still) under that colonial awe? Are they as awestruck by a society which does not even know what to do with their old? That won't be a comfortable question to pose to those who made the film: finding India a jumble and never able to go beneath the rumble.

Champ of the Camp

While someone who is familiar with Hindi movies, like me, might still enjoy to some extent this feature, just because of the songs, it will certainly be a harder take for those not steeped in that context: for the documentary is not very well made, and in fact there rise several questions if it could be called a documentary or just a promotional video. This is a major sore point in watching Champ of the Camp, and all the more so since many viewers decide to watch a film after going through its (official) trailer: the much-interviewed organisers of the singing competition, which in itself has not been questioned at all in the film, are missing completely from the trailer, leaving a very different picture in the mind of the viewer to what the film in reality is. The reality is that the questioning of the gimmick of having a singing competition to market products is not even in the frame of the film: how so? Are the workers of the "labor camps" not the naive, innocent or willingly participating exploited ones, exploited by those who organise this singing competition itself? There is a lack of voices in the film: we have those who are participating, who are willing to gain some notoriety, some fame, some money, some gifts, and we have those who are selling the event, but none of this is questioned. Where are the questioners? Where are the voices of those not getting sold, not selling?

The film reminds me of those ads in newspapers which are not that visible as ads: the ones which counsel you on your falling hair, give some history of traditional methods of falling hair, give you some statistics and some testimonies, and during all that also sell some particular brand of shampoo. Is that an ad or an article? Is this a film or a promotional video? There is also little context, little work done in the background: labor migrants are even in India. A labourer of Uttar Pradesh working in Bangalore is in a much worse condition than those who are working in the Gulf: and as much far from his family, or even more, for with hardly any money, how frequently can he go to his hometown? Nor can he often call his family, living the life of a nomad and in rough company. So why this story and not that? Why not the thousand other stories?

Of course, each story is worthy to be told: but it is the writer, the director, the narrator who tells us why. It is a privilege when an audience seeks your story, hears your story: it is not a right to be assumed with no responsibility, it is not an access to be trifled with. I had not watched the film with high expectations, for the trailer itself gives a clue in that respect: however, I had not expected the film to be such a brazenly made promotional film. It is possible that the director may not have had other means of accessing the story: but, then, if no other way is there, why not wait till a way is found?

Theeb

The director Naji Abu Nowar's debut feature Theeb is a gust of fresh air: in terms of the beautiful performances it offers. No method acting, no same old faces, no getting into the skin of characters. For it is not just non-professional actors here: rather, it is those who don't even have an idea of what cinema is, who have never gone to a movie theatre. And boy, does it work! Jacir as the title character Theeb is astonishing in his skill, charm and magnetism: that much, that he overshadows everything else in the film, even the fine supporting performances, most notably that of Hussein. (It must be said here that the Englishman could have been performed much better, but that is a minor discordant note, which can well be ignored.)

As a story, the film is a simple story: which is good. It is not some boy's coming-of-age story; it is simply a story of a curious boy and the desert. In equal measures, though that judgement probably would vary a lot depending on who watches it. The film opens with beautiful music (and hence, don't miss the opening): I personally would have liked it somewhere else, too, to be used again in the film. As a film, Abu Nowar sells well the idea of a Bedouin Western, and of course reminds one also of a non-Western, David Lean's masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia, being set during the same period and in the same locales.

The inevitable comparison would be quite unfair, though, if pursued: for one, Lean was an experienced master, who could demand a lot from his crew plus work on a lavish scale of funds. This is not something I presume Abu Nowar has or at least had the luxury of. As a first film, the film is a nugget, especially so because of Jacir's performance, but the film could have been much better, could even have been a classic: maybe the debutant director would now learn what he could have done differently and go on to give us even better films. The film's main flaw lies in its pace, in its short running time: it is too fast for a desert Western, for the boy's emotions to sink in, for the desert to immerse each one of us into it. It is too fast for a Lean or for a Sergio Leone Western. It is too fast for the Bedouins of Arabia. The film does not wait for the sands to blow over, for the blood to trickle down and clot, for resentment to crystallize and erupt one unknown day. Given such wonderful actors gifted with patience in themselves as Jacir, the film has left unused some of its treasure. The film also commits the tempting crime of showing the rugged beauty of the wadi as the context in which the action is happening: however, that distracts from the immediacy of emotions, of action, of tension. Because otherwise Abu Nowar has brought out the tension well: however, for this lack of slow distillation, the tension is palpable, and yet not enough wrought to a climax; hovering around, yet not haunting. I hope that this is something that the director will work on, for the knack of getting the right people onto a project and the ability to shoot in places where resistance and/or ignorance might be met are in themselves mighty fine attributes to have: which Abu Nowar has in ample, admirable proportions.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Kurai Kurai - Verhalen met de Wind

Kurai, Kurai: Tales on the Wind is a beautiful, poetically told tale, suffused with soft sunlight and recurring metaphors of wandering and vagabondage: not as much directionless as the tumbleweed (the kurai) it is following, but still anchored to many people, many erring ways and many questions wrought internally, with fear, confusion and pain. The film is a search for meaning, for identity, for acceptance: by many people, all circumscribed by the endless desert, the never-ending chasm between human desire to be loved and human action to undo it all. As a song from Chanakya (ep. 45) says, "Desires rise like a volcano, reaching for the skies; the one who aims at them is him/herself sucked beneath more and more." Often sucked into incomprehension, sadness, an inability of joy and creation. And this is what the film reveals: wandering like the kurai is the solution, the only way out for many of us. Irrigating our heart with the patience required to listen to the tales of the eternally wandering kurai is what will give us the wisdom to bear with equanimity this world's turns and reverses for the good, for the bad.

Beautifully shot, with some lovely, dry humour thrown in, the film is a delight for the eyes as much as the mind: the few characters met in the film are some humans, some tumbleweed, some trains and some wild camels, all borne on the wind, detached from roots, trying to find new roots. All carrying new tales, new seeds as they float along.