"Varumayin Niram Sivappu" - a Kamal film

"Varumayin Niram Sivappu" (or 'the colour of poverty is red') is a Tamil film by K. Balachander featuring Kamalahassan and Sridevi (it was also made in Telugu and remade in Hindi). Like films such as Mere Apne, the story is about the urban educated unemployed. Irrespective of what we think of our past,  current, and future  professional prospects, I think anyone reading this has never been in a desperate situation with regards to unemployment. These films serve as a document that such a period existed, and quite likely, still exists for people outside our sphere of social connection.

Kamalahassan's character, born to a well to do musician, is unable to reconcile his principles (inspired by the poet-freedom fighter Bharatiyar) with the moralities of most jobs. Poverty is a consequence but as in most KB films, there is a clever way of depicting this world. Like a scene where the lead and his friends pretend to have an elaborate meal behind closed doors so that Sridevi, waiting outside the house for them to finish, thinks they have something to eat.

Finally, the lead finds a job he is happy with - being a barber. It could have been treated as a comic situation but poverty, while being occasionally comic, is not a subject for slapstick. The colour is red, but sometimes, it can be light.

Show and Tell: notes from a seminar on "Cinema and Literature"

Last week, I (along with a couple of fellow itinerants) attended a seminar on Cinema and Literature jointly organised by the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune and the Film Writers Association (a trade union mainly of Bollywood writers). The idea was interesting: to explore the relationships between cinema and literature (sometimes symbiotic, sometimes parasitic). There was also the appealing prospect of watching (gawking?) and listening to people this blogger is quite a fan of.

The opening ceremony saw bodies spilling out of the little FTII auditorium (we had to uncomfortably stand/squat/sit for about 4 hours that day). The principal reason for the interest was perhaps the presence of both Gulzar and Javed Akhtar. True to perception, the former's speech contained the romance of wordplay as well as some pithy observations from film & lit history, while the latter made some strident points without mincing words. Akhtar spoke of the cinema-lit connection involving a love triangle: that of the audience, which affected what was adapted and how it was received. Refering to the ghastly 80s when mainstream Hindi films hit their nadir, he drew a connection between "sarkailo khaTiyaa" and "sarkailo masjid". Gulzar, on the other hand, asked whether it was necessary to be so aware of the audience all the time, and preferred films & literature to dance their duet. He asked an interesting question: how would cinema be if sound hadn't crept in? Would people still come looking to literature, now that words were not needed?

A common reference point throughout the two days was Saratchandra's Devdas, both in terms of number of adaptations, as well as its recency. Gulzar (or was it JA?) refered to it by pointing out that once upon a time Devdas would have been the lowest common denominator of its times! In the session on novel adaptations, Anurag Kashyap didn't bother trying to justify his choices too much - he described how he went about it. In general, there were two kinds of speakers: 'theorists' (usually writers, who spent a lot of time bemoaning adaptations and musing on its fickle nature) and 'practitioners' who seemed to be 'doing' things, trying them out, failing, learning, and moving on. It was the second category that produced the most engaging talks, and Kashyap was one of them.

A writer who spoke wonderfully, and had contrarian views to Kashyap, was Mamta Kalia. But in all, the sessions on novels, short stories and folklore were disappointing. A majority of panelists kept regressing to existential arguments (such as splitting hairs on words like 'inspiration' and 'adaptation', and didn't spend much time in discussing the nuts-and-bolts or challenges of these respective forms). Shama Zaidi tried to show some examples of how changes were made for Shatranj Ke Khiladi, but spoiled things by being too petulant and dismissive. Even the second day's session on mythology kept tracing issues of history and philosophy, but unlike the earlier sessions, it was considerably livened by a set of excellent speakers.

It helped that Kamalahassan was chairing the session. He didn't make a speech of his, but kept insisting the atheist in him was spoiling for a fight on the topic. Gollapudi Maruthi Rao, noted Telugu actor, spoke eloquently on the history of mythology in films (appropriately so; I think the Telugu film industry has made the best use of that material). Kamalahassan then made one his many clever sound-bite interjections: "According to me, mythology is spiritual cosmetic surgery for history; makes the truth more palatable". The man knows how to press all the right buttons on an audience!

Dr. Devdutt Patnaik was the next speaker, and he delivered a very interesting talk. Once a man of medicine, he's now a 'mythologist' and carries the rather exotic title of "Chief Belief Officer" at the Future Group. He spoke of mythology as the 'truth' of a culture, compared Western films about religion with Indian ones, and then plunged into an analysis of 'sanatan' vs social truths (which I found a little slippery to grapple with). At some points, it seemed he was about to invoke Hindu-glory-of-the-past (Kamal later quipped that he thought Patnaik was going to start distributing prasad on stage), but to his credit, he stayed on the side of sobreity throughout. I recommend a look at his presentation, which is available on his website here.

In response, Kamalahassan mentioned how he liked films that tried to be subversive about accepted wisdom, particularly mythology, and cited the example of (one of my favourite movies) The Life of Brian by Monty Python. He spoke of films like Hey! Ram into which elements of the Ramayana are interwoven. And did he blush ever so slightly when someone praised Dashavataram? The man is worth paying to go and listen to, I think.

The last session, the one on drama & plays, was the most well-rounded one: the speakers spoke both of theory and craft. Playwright Mahesh Elkunchwar spoke lucidly about his two experiences of writing his plays for film, as well as dealing with different constraints in the two media. Asghar Wajahat did the same later. Govind Nihalani, who directed Party from an Elkunchwar script, gave the view from the other side. Dr. Jabbar Patel spoke extensively of his collaborations with Vijay Tendulkar and Gulzar, and mentioned that in plays, it was the writer who ruled, while film was the director's medium.

Vishal Bhardwaj also spoke, but this is already such a long post that I've forked that encounter off into a separate post here.

In summary, it was a mixed set of talks. I liked something that Prof.U.R.Ananthamurthy said in his talk: that finally, all that really matters is how engaging the film (and I generalise it to all art) is for the individual viewer - whether you understand the content or crib about the fidelity of the film to the book is not all that important.

Times of India reports: Day 1, Day 2

Kamalhassan's Dasavatharam - Aviyal Fiction

Before I went to watch "Dasavatharam", I had the good sense to watch one of Kamalhassan's interviews. "It's out and out entertainment for the audience", he said. Since I trust the guy, I repeated it to myself each time the word 'T-A-C-K-Y' spelt itself out in front of my eyes, especially between minutes 20 and 40 of the movie.

"Dasavatharam" is undeniably tacky, but it's oddly entertaining too. There's hardly a slack moment. This is a disaster movie that could so easily have ended in one, but as it lurches from action sequence to comic interlude to philosophical filibustering, it never completely comes off the rails. I certainly didn't mind losing three hours of my life to that film (ok, except for that one minute when Mallika Sherawat (or her voice-over) avers that, of course she can speak Tamil - and does so in a badly dubbed voice ).

That Kamal Hassan is over-indulgent is a common accusation thrown at his face ('mask' may be more appropriate), but he is undeniably gutsy. Not because he spends more money on bad makeup than Shahnaz Hussain, but because who else in India would be crazy enough to cook up a hodge-podge involving an ancient Iyer-Iyengar conflict (we come off looking badly, btw), inconvenient truths about the environment, bio-war-sci-fi, atheism, the great Tsunami of 2004, chaos theory (casting credit: stereotypical digitally mixed-in butterfly), mixed with some political body-doubles that wouldn't make the cut at a school fancy dress competition. Heady stuff to unleash on the populace, which had earlier rejected some of the other cocktails (the need to have an opinion on M.K.Gandhi, matricide, communism+atheism, to name a few) that Kamal Hassan has written. Perhaps the lesson he's learnt is: be not so subtle that no one realises you're being something.

Some critical reactions that bemoaned the tackiness (that word again) of the film almost always made comparisons with the likes of Anbe Sivam and Hey Ram. But it's not as if Kamal didn't make bad movies before. From what we know of him, he's usually taken an active interest in the plotlines (even without official credit), so you'd be insulting his intelligence if you thought he didn't know what he was getting into. He's taken an almost gleeful plunge into lots of rubbish - one senses a need to get the silliness off his chest from time to time, in addition to the money needed to make the other stuff that he wants to.

Anyway, back to the movie. The film is almost hopeless in its rendition of events set amongst a laughably stereotypical American setting, but there is an instant quality upgrade when proceedings move to India. Kamal shows an instinctive feeling for dialogue, accent, placement, and scenery in local settings. As we weave our way to the end, the proceedings become madcap, the characters multiply and multi-sect, and there are homilies. Strangely, for a film that is so sympathetic of the need for science and reason, there is also a moment straight from the Mithun-Rajanikant textbook of post-modern medicine.

It's a fitting sign of the surreal nature of events that I found myself doing something I had never dreamed I would: watch a film whose soundtrack was scored by Himesh Reshammiya. Largely forgettable, the only saving grace was the devotional Mukunda Mukunda which in addition to serving as Asin's re-entry point, accompanies one of the more elegant and clever moments in the movie: the shadow theatrical play about the Vishnu Dashavatharam. There was a strange depth to the 12th century sequences as well (despite some of the CGI), which once again serve as testament that the man is good at depicting history.

And closing with the ten. At times, you're beset by the uneasy feeling that the whole of Madame Tussauds' is on the loose, there are so many pale, waxy outlines. I think there are some interesting allusions with the names of the characters which I haven't teased out fully, perhaps except for the execrable 'George Bush'. 'Balram Naidu' was nicely done (reminscent of the mayor in Indrudu Chandrudu), but perhaps the best of the lot was the tough-talking environmentalist 'Vincent Poovaraagan', in both dress and demeanour.

In all, Dasaavatharam is no six-course meal, but perhaps Kamal Hassan never intended it to be so. Of course, for all that money, it'd have been good had they hired better cutlery and not just painted it in. But as far as cinema-as-aviyal goes, it's not such a bad mix.