On The Reader

It is very problematic when you watch a film and don't "get it". Especially when it is a film that has won many awards and critical acclaim; it has been coveted by the Oscars and courted by critics. One wonders whose fault it is then. Is it the directors fault, who could not convey his message to me through a text that I found obscure and ambiguous? Or mine, because I failed to grasp what the director was trying to tell me, his audience, through his film? Of course, there is also a slight embarrassment one feels at not having understood the film!

The film I am talking about is The Reader (Stephen Daldry, 2008). And this blog is simply an attempt at parsing the film apart in order to figure out what it is trying to say.

What stood out for me in the film, and what must have been an obvious motif for most in the film, is the number of scenes which show Hanna scrubbing and cleaning, not liesurely, or like a chore. But almost with a vengeance, as if her life depended on it. This is, no doubt, symbolic of her trying to "wash away" her past sins, her past life as a Nazi - a secret that she hides from Michael, and us for most part of the film. In one scene, she is also shown bathing Michael, as if she is worried that she has contaminated him too with her deeds.

This makes it very clear to us that she is aware, at least subconciously, about the fact that her actions were inhumane and on the wrong side of morality. If this is the case, then why does she not admit to her crime later in the court? And why does she justify it by saying: "It was my job" - possibly the flimsiest excuse one can give to exonerate oneself from moral culpability. Of course, she is aware of her involvement in the persecution of the Jews. To me her character seemed one of a woman painfully aware of what she let happen, and desperately trying to supress her guilt by having a frivolous affair with a young boy.

Another thread in the film that didn't quite tie up for me was the fact about Hanna's illiteracy, which is represented as a major hook in the plot of the film. After all, if this secret is revealed by Michael in the court, it would exempt Hanna from a life in prison. But apart from this, what other role does it play in the film? Hanna's inability to read is also a cause for one of the levels at which Michael and Hanna connect in the film. He reads well, and wants to be read to because, well, she can't. This then keeps their affair from becoming purely sexual, which would obviously bring Hanna further down moral ladder. But then I did not see any love in the film at all, especially from Hanna's side. A strong infatuation and some goddess-worship on Michael's side, yes, but love? Nope, not at all.

Agreed that she is illiterate, but does that make her non-intelligent? Certainly not. As Rose Mather (the Jewish lady) Michael informs about Hanna's illiteracy at the end of the film mentions: "Is that an excuse for what she did?" So then why the need to show Hanna as a sympathetic character? And I have no doubt in my mind that the director wanted us to sympathise with her - otherwise he would not have taken lovely Kate Winslet in the lead role, as opposed to the hard-faced German ladies we have come across, or may imagine in such a role. Even her other counterparts who are on trial are nowhere close to pleasant looking.

I have to say, now, that I'm not trying to point out errors in the film. These are only gaps which I could not fill, and not necessarily faults in the telling of the story. Which is why, on the whole, I cannot say that I did not like the film. Perhaps it needs another watch, or some more musing over.These points apart, the film raises some very interesting questions about moral responsibility, and an unfortunate inability to turn back time and erase this ghastly period in History.

PART THREE

THE ISSUE

The three films I have analysed in this blog all deal primarily with the nature of love and what marriage does to one's understanding of it. All three films also deal with the question of a woman's choice where choosing her marriage partner is concerned. And all three films are being equally clever in answering this question.

The narrative in these films plays out in such a way that one feels that indeed it is the woman who has chosen to stay with the husband at the end of the film. The characterisation also makes it convenient for the heroine to make her choice. The husbands are shown as understanding, non-interfering, self-sacrificing men who do not impose on the heroine in any way and approach their relationship more with the emotion of a safe friendship. This almost reduces the earlier relationship in the film to a mere infatuation. So we get the sense that the heroine had an option and she chose the right man. But actually the film has short-changed us on that one. To have the heroine step out of the marriage and choose her lover would have been an impossible thing to accept in keeping with convention. Its better to keep the traditional notions of family and marriage intact and not do anything drastic in the film so that the audience goes home happy and one's film is a hit. A film that advocates stepping out of the marital bonds will only come much later - Karan Johar's Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna - and would end up doing average business. So all three film-makers have taken the easy way out by not upsetting convention in any way.

Swami includes an actual debate on choice in its script, but Mini does not even seem to choose Shyam at the end of the film. She makes a split second decision to leave her marital home with Naren and even goes to the station with him. But all Shyam has to do is to follow her there and request her to come home with him, and she meekly agrees. In the film Mini is narrating the story to us and in the final frame, we see her in Shyam's home, sitting on her bed with a look of despair on her face. She has clearly not made the happy choice either since she is not really respected or treated well by her husband's family.Her husband too is rather saintly in the face of this unfair treatment and does not object. The film, thus, seems to say that whether Mini had chosen Naren or Shyam, her life would have been equally complicated.

WSD is the cheekiest when it comes to subject of Maya's choice at the end. The director adopts a 'film-within-a-film' approach to play out the events of the second half. After Maya has told Anand her story and about her love for Prem, he sets out on a mission to locate him and make sure that he and Maya are together. He does finally find Prem by coincidence builds a friendship with him on the pretext of being a film producer and hiring Prem as the music director for his film. The story that he narrates to Prem as the story of the film is actually what Maya has told him about her life. He also tells Prem that the climax is not clear as yet as he has not decided whether Maya should stay with her husband or go with the lover.

The actual climax of the film involves an elaborate discussion on what the heroine of Anand's "film" should choose. According to Prem, she should either stay with the husband or commit suicide(!). Anand suggests that she should be reunited with her lover. Prem shakes his head and says that the audience would never accept this ending as it would go against Indian naitikta and sabhyata. Then Anand makes a pseudo-feminist argument about a woman's right to choose and that is would be inhuman for her to stay married to someone she does not love. Prem is still unconvinced, but agrees as he feels it would not be wise to disagree with the producer of the film. In the end when Maya does choose to remain with Anand, Prem endorses her decision by saying that an Indian woman would never make such a choice and that divorce is a Western import, heartily declaring that even though his ideas may be old-fashioned, but "Old is gold".

With this kind of a climax, WSD is the most non-commital of the three films in closing the discussion that it starts at the beginning of the film. The film-maker has made it all too convenient by appealing to Indian culture and tradition, closing the debate by saying if we already have certain rules in place why defy them. Tradition, therefore, becomes a blanket solution to all the problem the film puts forth.

My favourite among all three is Hum Dil... not just as a film, but also the way in which the conflict is resolved in the end. No rules are broken here as well, and tradition is also left intact in the end, but at least the film does not project itself as dealing with weighty philosophical and social questions of choice and marriage. It pans out simply as a love story, suggesting that Nandini was in love with Sameer, but that has moved on and has now come to love Vanraj. One could say that maybe the film is too simplistic, which true. But my only argument is that it doesn't pretend to be complex. The other two films pretend to be complex and then do nothing about the complexity. Swami further problematizes the issue and WSD offers a too simple solution to it.

All three films are interesting to watch, though, and also to compare. I'm not indicting any for being similar in terms of story, as this is the most interesting aspect of comparing the three films. Same question, different answers.

PART TWO

In this part, I'd like to talk about the two heroes in each of the three films. All three films that I'm attempting to interpret in this blog can be clearly divided into two halves and each of the two heroes has a part to play in one of the halves. I will also try and elaborate in what I've mentioned earlier about the two heroes being "essences" rather than characters in the films.

THE BOY
By the boy, I'm referring to the heroine's love interest before she gets married, namely, Naren (Vikram) in Swami, Prem in WSD and Sameer (Salman Khan) in Hum Dil... .

Now, I'm not sure if these films have had a conscious influence over each other, but its quite surprising how similar they are in the characterisation of the two heroes, as we will see. In Swami, Naren is a city-educated boy, well-read like the heroine and belonging to a well to do family. In terms of their profession, WSD and Hum Dil... are more similar to each other. Both Prem and Sameer are musicians, and their decision to come to the heroine's home has something to do with their music. Prem comes to Bombay to become a music director in films and Sameer comes to learn music from Nandini's father, who is supposed to be a world-famous singer.
The films seem to suggest that even though all three men are quite likable in terms of their personality - all three are friendly, funny and talkative - there is still something unmarriable about them. The film also tells us that this is because family or social restrictions. But there are also other indications within the film which tell us that the "girl" is not going to choose the "boy", even though he is a first love.

All three men are outsiders, in a sense, who originally do not belong to our heroine's world, but have arrived in it. Naren is from the city, Prem from "north India" and Sameer is from "Italy". Even though there is an attempt at assimilation and their two separate worlds do collide, they do not become one. This "alien-ness" of these boys, which never really comes to the fore as an obvious reason, still seems to suggest that the girl cannot mary such a man.

Another reason - again something that the film does not obviously state - is the profession of the men. It is never clearly mentioned what Naren does for a living, but there is a suggestion that he comes from a rich family, which could be involved in business. Both Prem and Sameer are the artist types. In itself, there is no problem with these professions, but if they are set against the profession of the second hero, then they do pose a problem. Shyam (Girish Karnad) in Swami has a regular job as we see him go out to work everyday, Anand (Naseeruddin Shah) in WSD is a doctor and Vanraj (Ajay Devgan) is a lawyer in Hum Dil... .

From a conventional marriage point of view, these professions are far more viable than the unreliable artist type. There is a total lack of imagination even in the conventional-ness of these professions - you cannot get safer than doctor and lawyer!

Therefore, coming back to the essence than these men represent - it is unstability. So if one examines the film in retrospect, the film already seems to say that "love is not all you need".

THE HUSBAND
What struck me most about the husband's role in all three films is the strong "art house" appeal of the heroes that have been chosen to play these roles. Of course, these days Ajay Devgan is quite happy romping around in "a-joke-a-minute" comedies, but at the time Hum Dil... was made, he was considered a serious actor, in films like Zakhm and The Legend of Bhagat Singh.

Then there is their personality that also strikes us - Shyam, Anand and Vanraj are calm and display a quiet maturity that is missing in Naren, Prem and Sameer.

All three are able to gauge that the girl is not very happy with the marriage, and ask their heroines to confide in them as friends. And here we have another contrast - where in the first half we have a love that is "romantic" and based largely on physical attraction, in the second half the film advocates a love that is far more tempered and is based on friendship. This is the kind of love that we do not see very often in popular Hindi cinema and it is what sets these three films apart for me.

The essence represented by the husband is therefore stability in terms of marriage. In fact in Swami, we do have a scene in which Mini's dying uncle tells her that Naren would be the best choice where marriage is concerned: "Naren pyaar kar sakta hai, lekin use nibha nahi sakta." Nandini reiterates this same thought in Hum Dil... when she tells Sameer: "Pyaar karna maine tumse sikha, lekin pyaar nibhana mujhe unhone (Vanraj) sikhaya".
It is this distinction that these two films make between "karna" and "nibhana" that is interesting. Both seem to say that the two cannot be found in the same person. WSD has other issues, which I will deal with in the next section of this blog.

The Tale of Three Films

PART ONE*

In my present blog, I'd like to examine three films - Swami (1977; Basu Chatterjee), Woh Saat Din (1983; Bapu) and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999; Sanjay Leela Bhansali). I'm curious about these films because it seems as if the basic plot elements of all three are very similar. And so are the issues that they deal with. The most common element is the act of marriage which is the focal point of the entire film. Apart from this one major event, nothing really happens in these films, and without it the films would be pointless. I would like to compare all three films on the basis of their similarities, and if this exercise leads me to identify any differences, then I would like to examine those as well.

I mainly want to concentrate on what these films are saying about love, marriage, relationships, and most important, the role of "choice" (especially the woman's) in marriage. At the outset, I would like to say one thing though: my reading of all three films tells me that, what at the surface appears to be a love triangle, it is in fact not one. It is basically the conflict between the nature of love before and after marriage that drives all three films.

THE GIRL
One major reason why I refrain from using the term "love triangle" in these three films is that the three characters are not really shown as three equivalent forces. The heroine is actually the only character capable of registering change. One can draw out a character graph in each film for the heroine, and even though the trajectory would be more sharp than gradual, the heroines do change during each film. As compared to this, the heroes are not wholesome characters, but represent "qualities" or "essences" in the films - a point that I will cover later when I discuss this aspect.

Before marriage, the girls are shown as intelligent, independent women. All three state, sometime in the initial stage of the films, that they would only marry a boy of their choice and not someone that the family has chosen.

Mini in Swami (played by Shabana Azmi) is fond of reading and laps up Western Literature mostly suggested to her by her progressive and open-minded uncle. She engages in intellectual debates with him and her lover, Naren on the question of the freewill. During this debate she does mention that some situations prevent us from exercising our freewill. As an example she says that a woman does not have the right to fall in love with another man after marriage as it is a "bandhan" (bond/ bondage). This tells us that she is not only perceptive, but also practical. She seems to be consistent with her own argument at the end of the film, when she chooses to remain with her husband, but this decision is a little ambiguous as her reasons for doing so are not entirely clear.

In WSD, our heroine, Maya (Padmini Kolhapure) is probably the one most in control of her life before marriage. She is definitely older than the other two, as she works. Also the way in which she "pursues" her lover Prem (Anil Kapoor) is different from the other two heroines. She is neither coy nor reticent. She in fact quite bold, and in one hilarious scene, almost blackmails Prem into kissing her. Her financial independence seems to give her a louder voice as well, as she is quite vocal about what she wants in the film.

Out of all three protagonists, Nandini's character (played by Aishwarya Rai) in Hum Dil... has the least amount of agency at the start of the film. We know nothing of her education or her current occupation. Though she too is spunky and out-spoken, the structure of her extended family tells us that she is definitely not the dominant voice in the film. So her journey after marriage is also a journey of growing up and knowing what she wants. Maya is already a grown up and Mini, by the end of the film, loses all her stubborn-ness and is reduced to a despairing heap.

Like I mentioned earlier, the heroine is the only character in the three films with an identifiable character graph, though it switches rather abruptly from naughty to nice (forgive the cliche). And we also do not really see any outward evidence of the change. After marriage, a series of episodes later (none of which are causally linked) we seem to end up with a new and improved (again, forgive the cliche) version of our heroine.

*This blog will be written in parts as there is just too much to cover and I may also end up editing some bits. For now this is it....wait for Part 2.

Kurbaan and some food for thought

After watching Kurbaan (Renzil D'silva), it dawned on me that much of what we call 'Hindi mainstream cinema' is also 'Hindu mainstream cinema'. Not that I'm stating something that hasn't been dealt with before, but watching this film made me think about the issue (or rather, the problem) of depicting the Muslim identity in Hindi films.

Being a Muslim character in a Hindi film is never incidental. So if you are playing Muslim, the you also become a medium, through which the director tries to deliver a message about identity, communal tension or secularism. Films like Iqbal (Nagesh Kukunoor, 2005) are rare, in which the protagonist's identity as a Muslim has very little to do with how the story unfolds.

A very broad historical review will tell us that Muslim characters in Hindi films are largely stereotypical. The multi-dimentionality that is otherwise available to a Hindu character is almost never given to a Muslim one.

In the 1960s, we saw Muslim characters as protagonists in films like Chaudhavi Ka Chand (M. Sadiq, 1960) and Mere Mehboob (H. Rawail, 1963). These films belong to the genre of the Muslim Social and are replete with nazaaqat and shayari, but fail to go beyond that. Later in the '70s, we will see Muslim characters in supporting and minor roles in films like Sholay (Ramesh Sippy, 1975) bringing home the idea of a secular nation. In a film like Amar Akbar Anthony (Manmohan Desai, 1977), we do come across a Muslim protagonist, but the "role" he is playing in this film is much too obvious. He is clearly not an individual, but part of a trio symbolic of national and religious harmony.

The Sooraj Barjatya and Karan Johar films of the 90s find a tiny niche for Muslim characters, once again only in supporting roles. For example, Sayeeda in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (Karan Johar, 2001) and Anwar in Hum Saath Saath Hain (Sooraj Barjatya, 1999). This is not more than a token presence, almost as if to say, "See, we Hindus are so benevolent towards our Muslim brothers."

Now, owing to the current international climate, some new stereotypes have emerged in the depiction of Muslim characters. On the one hand, we have the slick, smart and glib-talking hero, whose charm conceals the fact that he is a dangerous (and also perpetually scowling) terrorist on a deadly mission. Cases in point are the films Fanna (Kunal Kohli, 2006), New York (Kabir Khan, 2009) and now Kurbaan. On the other hand, we see a man, struggling with the issues of a Muslim identity in a largely Hindu milieu - a milieu that suspects him of being a traitor, as he desperately tries to prove the cliche that he is 'an Indian first and then a Muslim'. For example films like Aamir (Raj Kumar Gupta, 2008), Rang De Basanti (Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, 2006) and Chak De India (Shimit Amin, 2007).

Muslim women, of course, never have to deal with such issues, but that is another concept and merits a separate discussion.

So, even as Hindi mainstream cinema explores different levels of characterisation, the Muslim character still remains a type, and his depiction a problem. It is easy to accept a Muslim actor rising to iconoc status playing a Punjabi boy called Rahul in several films. But somehow the dialogue becomes difficult to digest if the same hero were to say, "Rizwaan, naam toh suna hoga?"

On Sujata

Even though I call myself a film-buff, I am sadly not quite well-versed with the black-and-white era of films - both Indian and world cinema. So it was with a view to educate myself that I watched Bimal Roy's Sujata, and ended up thoroughly enjoying the film. The film found a place in my heart not only because of cinematic reasons, but also because of the way it made me feel. Most of all, I liked the way Sujata's (Nutan) character has been etched out in the film. With the central theme of the caste divide, Sujata's character was in grave danger of becoming one-dimentional, matyr-ish and melodramatic. But thankfully, her character is much more than just symbolic.

What is most striking about Sujata's characterisation is the consistent nature imagery that has been used to make the viewer aware of what happens in her heart. The very first shot of the film is of a single blooming flower swaying in a light breeze, and as the credits role on this backdrop, we immediately become aware of the underlying theme of the film - which according to me is not only caste - but the simple story of a simple girl. This shot reveals to us the most prominent character trait - that she is organic and close to nature. Also that she is not an orphan, but is nature's (or God's) own child.

This nature imagery is carried through the entire film - always remaining subtle, and never becoming corny.

-- In many scenes, we find Sujata framed within the outline of foliage of plants and trees.
-- The scene soon after Sujata finds that she is untouchable cuts to the image of a huge leaf being cowed down by the pouring rain.
-- The first time Adhir (Sunil Dutt) meets Sujata, she is carefully tending a garden, which is supposed to be her favourite hobby, telling us that she is natural and also nurturing.
-- A slowly shutting touch-me-not leaf when Adhir meets her for the second time and also disarmingly flirts with her.
-- And a beautiful ballet of dancing flowers and trees when she realises that she loves Adhir.
-- The scene where Sujata rejects Adhir she is first shown watering a plant, but later, as she talks to him, she moves to a tree devoid of all its leaves.

It is this very trait that even Adhir recognises in Sujata as he tells her on Rama's birthday that the "stars know when you were born".

With all this nature imagery, I half expected to see two flowers inching nearer to each other in a close-up shot, depicting the milan of the two premees. Mercifully this never happens in the film, which is strange for a film set in a time when the union between a man and woman could only be described euphemistically!Instead, we have a mature scene (the ghat scene), where Sujata spontaeneously hugs Adhir and tells him that she is his.

The most interesting part of the film - had nothing to do with the imagery - was the song 'Jalte hain jiske liye'. This was somehow an unexpected way of picturising the song. This film comes at a time when technology did not dominate or direct our communications to any degree, but Adhir decides to sing to Sujata on the phone. I found the song picturisation very novel and pleasantly surprising.

So my indoctrination into the black-and-white era was extremely fulfilling, and I also know that I'm only looking at the tip of the iceberg. So here begins the exploration....

On Hum Aapke Hain Kaun

In 1994, Rajshri Productions released a film called Hum Aapke Hain Kaun! (Sooraj Barjatya), which turned out to be one of the biggest blockbusters of its time. This film was a remake of another Barjatya production called Nadiya Ke Paar, which released in 1982. The latter had the same storyline, but all resemblences ended here. Apart from the story, both films are widely different from each other in terms of treatment and structure. It is this change and its implications that I would like to concentrate on in this blog.

Hum Aapke... released at a time in Hindi commercial cinema when cinegoers were being fed on a constant dose of rewokings of the "angry young man" films of the 70s, rich-boy-poor-girl romances and other dregs of the formula film. Barring a few films, nothing very innovative was happening on the commercial film scene in Hindi cinema. The whole-hearted acceptance that Hum Aapke... got made it possible for a different kind of formula film to emerge - the wholesome family entertainer, complete with popular songs, candyfloss situations and stars who also brought home a conformist moral message of family bonding. This film has not influenced its successors in terms of innovation in storyline or charactertisation, but in terms of the social and inter-personal milieu that it depicts.

Most films of the 1980s and early '90s concentrated on the rich-poor class divide. The rich class consisted of the oppressors - powerful because they had money and were willing to do anything to protect it and make more of it. In terms of morals, they were ready to stretch their limits. The poor class on the other hand, was deprived, but morally upright. Any mingling of the two classes by marriage was strongly opposed by both sides. And here stepped in the main conflict in the film - a clash of the classes.

Hum Aapke... pretty much altered the kind of visibility that the poor class had in films, reducing them to unimportant minor characters or making them vanish altogether. It represented a homogeneous world - inhabited only by the well-off, who were no more shown as morally lacking in comparison to the poor. They, in fact, became the keepers of morality, reinforcing the theme of an ideal and complete family.

This kind of homogeneity still exists in most films of today, for example, in films of Karan Johar and Farhan Akhtar, where the poor have very less representation or are not visible at all. When such a change takes place in terms of the world that such films depict, it also changes the element of conflict in the film. There are no villians - evil is not personified in a single person or a group of people (putting actors like Gulshan Grover and Amrish Puri out of work!) - the villian here is simply circumstance. There is no "clash" between two dissimilar worlds, and only the presence of money makes this possible. And now that we don't have to worry about where the next meal comes from, we can freely (and guiltlessly) pay more attention to our love lives and our relationships with our parents. So now the conflict has become interpersonal and introspective, rather than social.

Of course, the film left behind many obvious remnants - like the mandolin/violin totting hero of future Aditya Chopra films or the fascination for showing North Indian wedding rituals in great detail. Most Karan Johar films pay explicit tributes to Barjatya (the dumb-charades scene in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai or Hrithik Roshan singing "Wah wah Ramji..." in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham).

It is interesting to note here that the Hum Aapke's orginal version was set in a village, not in a palatial bungalow. Would the same have worked in 1994?