Desicritics Category: Culture: Films

Movie Review: Aisha

Kaushik Chatterji — Fri, 6 Aug 2010 11:21:38 EDT

I have not read Emma, the classic whose adaptation Aisha happens to be, but from what I've gathered, it is the fluffiest of all Jane Austens. I am not the greatest fan of romantic comedies either - I do appreciate the comedy and that too only at times, but the romance, almost never. Clearly, I was not the target audience for Rajshree Ojha's debut directorial venture, toplining Sonam Kapoor and produced by daddy Anil, his other daughter Rhea as well as the Bijlis of PVR fame.

Yet, I was somehow drawn to this one right from the start. Maybe it was because my expectations were raised due to it being an adapted screenplay, maybe it was just the irresistible combination of Abhay Deol and Amit Trivedi (the brand new music directing sensation maintains his enviable success rate with a formulaic yet immensely enjoyable soundtrack). Whatever be the reasons, I went in to see the tale of an upper-class Delhiite who thanks to her unfounded belief in her cupid-playing ability wreaks havoc in the lives of the fellow members of her swish set, and that one person from outside her high society whom she was hell-bent on turning into a BTM.

Down to business. Sonam, you are naturally squeaky, giggly and everything that was needed to fit the role of Aisha Kapoor to the T, so there was no need for you to try and act out your part. Ira Dubey, if not for those godawful moments with Aisha, Pinky Bose was quite likable. Amrita Puri, thanks for making the stereotypically written behenji role of Shefali such joy to watch. Cyrus Sahukar, never mind the fact that you've played the bumbling idiot over and over again - no one does it better than you. Abhay, why in heaven's name did you have to spoil it right at the end? We went from loving Arjun Burman (esp. when you managed to tick off Aisha almost every single time) to wishing that the damn ladder would snap.

Aisha is a joy to watch on a select few occasions, a pain on most others and absolutely cringe-worthy at some of the most crucial junctures. It's probably a good movie for a first date, but I wouldn't know that. Me, well, not only have I not read Emma, after seeing this I am definitely off all literary classics written by or centred around females, other of course than that evergreen genre of film otherwise known as the rom-com. Then again, if I had L'Oreal, Fortis et al giving me crores to make some ads for them, I'd probably make into a film just like this one just in order to try and earn even more. Greed is, after all, a basic human desire.

Movie Review: Tere Bin Laden

Kaushik Chatterji — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 05:21:32 EDT

Remember Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron? If you do, you probably love it for its darkly comic plot that highlighted the nexus between the officials, media and big business. Or - and this is equally likely - you hate it for its low-brow, slapstick humour. If it's latter, don't even consider watching Tere Bin Laden. If it's the former, or if you don't remember that riot, read on.

The very first scene where you see (Piyush Mishra; editor, proprietor, CEO of the ramshackle Danka TV) Majeed Khan's wig flying off sets in stone the comic style the films is going to follow. What follows are the trials and tribulations of Ali Hassan (Ali Zafar, the Pakistani singer-turned-actor who reminds you of both Zach Braff and Kunal Khemu), one of the employees of that news channel who, like so many around us here in India, dreams of a better life in Amreeka.

Except that it's not India, it's Pakistan. And when you add a partner-in-crime Gul (Nikhil Ratnaparkhi), an aspiring stylist Zoya (Sugandha Garg), a textbook intellectual RJ Qureshi (Rahul Singh) and their collective scant disregard for the intelligence of the older and the rural, especially poultry farmer Noora (show-stealer Praduman Singh), you realize that Karachi and Mumbai are, after all, part of the same subcontinent.

So Ali discovers the Osama lookalike that is Noora, convinces his peers to help him out, records a fake terror tape - and all hell breaks loose. In steps Tedji (Barry John) on behalf of the Amreekkans. In spite of its sheer escapism, it still makes you think - something that can't said of the cheap and increasingly vulgar diet of comedy that we have been fed on courtesy Priyadarshan et al. While it is only slightly offensive to our neighbours, Uncle Sam is sure to feel the full force of the punches it is on the receiving end of.

It may not quite be Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, but it is sure to have you either smiling or laughing out loud throughout. What My Name Is Khan failed to do in over 2 hours, Tere Bin Laden does even before the opening credits start to roll. watch it before its theatrical run gets over, 'coz it's the quirkiest peace message that you're likely to see in quite some time to come.

Movie Review: Udaan

Kaushik Chatterji — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 06:44:40 EDT

Why Jamshedpur? It could have just as easily been any other small town of our country that can boast of being industrialized. Putting this thought in the back of my mind took some doing, but I did succeed in doing so.

At the heart of Udaan there might be the story of Rohan Singh (Rajat Barmecha), a boy who is forced to study engineering (the conservative cliche) even though he aspires to be a writer (the liberal cliche). But before you start thinking 3 Idiots, let me assure you, right at the outset, that the two films have almost nothing in common. While Rajkumar Hirani's blockbuster dealt with a very specific topic and was written and shot in a highly commercial manner, Vikramaditya Motwane's debut directorial feature, on the other hand, is the generic tale of the clash of traditional values and modern aspirations in heartland India that has rarely been given its due, at least as far as mainstream cinema is concerned.

Mainstream this is, let's not have any doubts about that. Very different from the usual and a purely multiplex release, but mainstream nonetheless, a fact that is very evident from the writing that, for instance, exaggerates the character of the father Bhairav Singh (a very excellent Ronit Roy) to demonic proportions while forcing some really cheesy lines upon uncle Jimmy "Chhotu" Singh (an equally brilliant Ram Kapoor). So, while all the locations are as real as they get, they merely act as backdrops; the dialects are paid only passing attention to; the usage of the songs - ridiculously infectious mid-tempo ballads as they are - could have been avoided all together, especially when you look at each of the parts without any background score that, coupled with the raw camerawork in such scenes, have an impact that is more than all the montages put together.

Luckily, unlike almost all the previous films from the Anurag Kashyap camp, none of these is anything more than a minor blip on the radar. You know that this - the strict parent, the friendly uncle, the conflict between hopes and dreams as well as the small private houses, the factories, the railway stations - is all as real as it gets. Plus, when you can't stop raving about the excellent support that Manjot Singh (as Muninder, over the phone beyond the opening credits) and the kid Aayan Boradia (as Arjun, the half-brother) offer, you just know that this film is a winner whose images are going to linger in your head for quite some time to come.Minor bumps notwithstanding, this is a ride which you must hop onto. Sure, the ending might seem to be weak, forced and also unreal, but that shouldn't disappoint - remember that it is, after all, mainstream.

Movie Review: Inception

Kaushik Chatterji — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 13:04:01 EDT

If you want to explore Lucknow's Bhool Bhulaiya, you shouldn't be doing it all alone, at least not the very first time. It is recommended that you take a guide along with you who knows his/her way around the labyrinth, lest you become a tragic little footnote in its history. Of course, if you've been there before and know your way well enough, there's no stopping you - be warned, though, that mightier souls have fallen prey to that temptation.

Christopher Nolan's body of work thus far, if you think about it, has much in common with that legendary Indian maze. His trademark is disorientation - his characters suffer due to it, but more importantly, the audience does as well. So, die-hard fans of his who have been following his career since, well, Following will remember to go in with a fresh and attentive mind. And they will be able to keep track of all the action that is going on at quite a breakneck pace with reasonable ease - and I daresay that many of them will be able to predict some of the most crucial twists.

But for someone whose familiarity with him is restricted to The Dark Knight or, worse, Ghajini (and the number of people who fall into this category, believe it or not, far exceeds the figure pertaining to the other), his latest offering Inception will not exactly be easy to grasp. The story of Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) as he weaves through a world that's part-real, part-dream all the while stealing thoughts that exist in the subconscious or planting ideas that don't is extremely densely plotted and amazingly unveiled.

Without giving anything away, a major part of Inception deals with various dream levels i.e dreams within dreams and this is one place where it shines brighter than a full moon on a dark night. Each level seems to be designed in such a way that it pays tribute to a particular style of film. So while level one is your typical Hollywood fast-paced action thriller, complete with high-speed car chase sequences interspersed with super slo-mo, level two is, at the same time, a direct tribute to The Matrix and an indirect tribute to all those kung-fu and other martial arts films. And while the exotic snowy locations in level three remind you of James Bond style espionage thrillers, the depiction of an apocalyptic world in level four is a throw-back to the disaster film genre.

But he reserves the best for the last, the very last. The clear masterstroke is the final frame and the final cut, so make sure you absolutely do not take your eyes off the screen till the credits start to roll. In spite of it very clearly being intended to be a Hollywood summer blockbuster - which is something it most definitely will be - the final scene refuses to succumb to a formula. That's it - even a word more and your experience is bound to get spoiled.The plot provides almost every answer you're looking for. Mr. Nolan, then, is your guide through his very own Bhool Bhulaiya. If you're a first-timer, make sure you take all the help he's offering while you're in his domain; if you're not, back yourself to find your own way through the catacombs. Either way, if you give this one a miss during its theatrical run, you'll be doing yourself one great disservice

Movie Review: Red Alert - The War Within

Kaushik Chatterji — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 05:30:11 EDT

The Naxal issue isn't a recent one, but there has definitely been a recent upsurge. So, while there have been films based on it for about 40 years now, this being the first one that dealt explicitly with Naxalism v2.0 aroused considerable interest, the lead cast notwithstanding. In fact, one was hoping that Red Alert - The Fire Within could - in the vein of certain great films of yore - throw some hitherto unshed light on this delicate issue that's not given due coverage by the media. The story of Narasimha (Suneil Shetty) and his involvement with a group of Maoists deep in the jungles of Andhra Pradesh definitely had the potential to do so.

So when the viewer got treated to a mix of content straight out of the national pages of a daily broadsheet and typical Bolly action fare complete with glaring inaccuracies, the experience - needless to say - was not a particularly pleasant one. Several key turns in the plot merit a mention here but those would act as spoilers for the two or three of you who still intend to watch this, so here's another instance. Would a delegation of multi-national corporates and government officials move around on a narrow, winding road surrounded by cliffs with almost non-existent security? I think not.

So, journalist being led into their lair, blindfolded? Check. Power-hungry leader who had convinced himself more than others they were leading a revolution for people's rights? Check. Tribal girl molested by the tyrannical local police? Check. Unsympathetic politician looking to wipe out the rebels with help from high level police officers? Check.That's right, all stereotypes as created by our mainstream media were duly reinforced. But a much bigger problem was the one-sided perspective we were offered - other than a few stray dialogues, there seemed to be no genuine effort on the maker's part to dig deep and present us a PoV that could possibly arouse sympathy in the hearts of the urban audience.

The saving grace, then, surprisingly, was the acting. The leads - Suneil Shetty and Sameera Reddy (as the violated tribal Lakshmi) - were good as long as they were not required to mouth scripted lines. The supporting cast was, as expected, rock solid, although one couldn't help but feel how most of them were reprising an extra-judicial character from earlier in their careers, be it Bandit Queen Phoolan Devi (Seema Biswas here as Saralaka), Malli The Terrorist (Ayesha Dharker here as Radhaka) or Wazira from Maachis (Suneel Sinha). Ashish Vidyarthi played his part of the unsympathetic leader Velu to perfection while Vinod Khanna's cameo as "high command" Krishnaraj was good enough for such a poorly scripted character.

But the recent trend of exploiting the brand name that Naseeruddin Shah is in the world of meaningful cinema has just got to stop. We saw it at the start of this year with Bolo Raam; we saw it again recently during Raajneeti. While the latter was marketed on the basis of how Naseer liked the script so much he worked for free, the latter featured him prominently in all the trailers, posters as well as the website. In this, his appearance in one inconsequential scene is literally blink-and-miss. Clearly, the legendary actor needs to get more judicious before giving the nod.

Both sides of the coin are what we don't get to see, and while this film does touch upon the raw nerve that is the People's War (or whatever else it is that you want to call it), it only succeeds in bringing to life what we keep reading almost every single day on the big screen. The action sequences are unwarranted, while the ending is quite preposterous - the solution offered is simple and unreal; if it weren't, we wouldn't have had such a movement in our hinterland for over 4 decades now. But what absolutely kills this one - and what, sadly, is almost surely the reason for whatever accolades it garnered at foreign film festivals - is a quote that graces the frame immediately after the film ends, and which quite clearly tells us where the makers of this film stand.

Watch it, only if you don't read the papers at all, and are okay with a slow narrative injected at certain points with escapist action as well as with an over-simplistic solution to this complex problem that (given your age, location as well as your socio-economic background) doesn't affect you and hence don't really give a damn about.

Movie Review: Amen

IdeaSmith — Tue, 6 Jul 2010 07:48:02 EDT

What’s better than spending Saturday night with a gorgeous, intelligent, witty and sensitive man? I had the privilege this weekend. Harish Iyer invited me to a private screening of the short film AMEN based in part, on his life. My first question was to ask if I should dress up. He said, “No yaar, I’ll be there in my regular jeans and all.” Thank goodness for me then, that I’ve met Harish before and I know what his idea of ‘regular jeans’ is. Never trust a gay man who says he isn’t dressing up!

The movie was screened at Pixion, a luxurious 24-seater in Bandra. The poster shows a part of the famous Michelangelo fresco depicting the Genesis and bears the tagline,

“Life does not let you choose your parents or your sexuality.”

One social message is a heavy charge for a film to bear without getting typecast into the shoddily made, preachy documentary mold. AMEN touched on internet hookups, rape, incest, child abuse, trust issues and love, in addition to homosexuality. It is remarkable that a film could accomplish all of that without sounding like a laundry-list of the ills of society.From a storyteller’s point of view, it was interesting to see how the team managed to make a powerful commentary about the life of a gay man, fraught as it is with much uncertainty, loneliness, fear, mistrust and anger….all of this through the very intimate portrayal of two characters. The film could have gone two ways – maudlin or sleazy. Instead, it came through as sensitive, realistic, disturbing but also thought-provoking.

AMEN is a 24-minute film with taut storyline and a certain freshness without the glitches of an amateur production. The characters were well-defined and both actors (Karan Mehra and Jitin Gulati) essayed their roles without any of the self-consciousness that one might associate with such a bold project. One of the best compliments of the evening came from Vinta Nanda (director, Tara). When she said,

“Ordinarily when you watch a boy-meets-girl story, the women associate with the heroine and the men with the hero. I am a woman but I was completely immersed in the story of two men.”

Personally I liked the two intertwining threads of story within the film - two characters who’ve come to a situation from different places. Their individual experiences have shaped them differently and as a result, how they come to terms with their lives and their sexuality is different. Everything that we watch and read about love stories involves a certain automatic slotting of characters into their gender roles, a certain, ‘It’s a guy thing’/ ‘That’s so girly’ attitude. But AMEN made me see the characters as two people, each one a unique set of emotions and experiences. It made me empathise with each one separately and isn’t that an artist’s greatest challenge?

One normally expects a certain kind of scene to draw a certain premediated response. The violence and intensity of the starting scenes were disturbing. However it was the subtlety of Harry (Karan Mehra)’s mirror scene that really brought tears to my eyes. The mirror, as a metaphor for self-reflection, for facing one’s fears and the subsequent connection of fingertip to reflection was beautifully done.

I also liked the way the conflict was resolved realistically and not in the conventional ‘happily ever after’ way. The ending completely satisfied me as a viewer and that may be the best thing that can be said about any movie.

The making of AMEN is probably enough material for another movie altogether. A labour of love for both Ranadeep Bhattacharyya & Judhajit Bagchi, the experience had them playing producer, director but also spotboy, technician, teaboy and scriptwriter. The shoot commenced over 3 days in a small bungalow, after which the team hand-packed the sets, bundled into a tempo and delivered back the props borrowed from friends and family. Midway during the production, they found even their tight budgeting would not cover the costs of the film. Then Harish put up a status update on Twitter about this and to their surprise, a stranger offered to help them. Expenses were often cut down but money would continue to make its way to them till they finished. Their online guardian angel, Tina Valentina, actually met the team for the first time only at the preview of the film. AMEN was helped greatly by an excellent background score, a gift from Jonathon Fessenden, Hollywood composer and a professional look/feel thanks to Prasonjit.

In sum, AMEN is a fine movie with a solid story that also carries a number of powerful messages. It will definitely be of interest to the gay community but also to anyone who likes good cinema.

(pictures from the AMEN Facebook Fanpage)

Movie Review: Raavanan - Read Amar Chitra Katha Instead

IdeaSmith — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 02:47:10 EDT

If you haven’t seen Ravan (or Ravanan) already, I’d suggest you not bother. If you’re the only person in this country who doesn’t know the story, pick up an Amar Chitra Katha rendition of Ramayana. It has the basic plot, the facts as most of us have heard them and the visuals are nice enough. It’ll be cheaper on the pocket too.

I would have given the movie a definite skip if it had been called Rama or Ramayan. I mean, I was weaned on the Ramanand Sagar classic and the aforementioned Amar Chitra Katha culture. I even saw the various renditions on television, movies and pop culture, edifying the perfect man, his perfect wife and the exact opposite embodiment of evil with all the paraphernalia of Hanuman, Vibhishan, Lakshman and Surpanaka.

If by some chance, I found I’d forgotten a tiny point, I could retrieve my copy of the original or I could turn around and ask just about anybody and expect the right answer. Why then, would anyone in their right minds, want to spend time and money to hear the same story in a theatre?

I was intrigued by the title Ravanan. While I’ve seen the old story in the old setting and in new settings, I haven’t heard it from the other point of view, the darker side. I’m sorry to say, it was a sad trick to lure the audiences into the theatres. As a vision, the idea of telling the Ramayan from Ravan’s point of view is interesting but it didn’t carry through in execution.

*spoiler alert*

A movie that set out with such lofty ideas didn’t even explore the complexity of some of the other characters. Hanuman, for instance, is depicted by a washed-up actor portraying a jungle officer given to silly dancing and pesky monkey-like behaviour. Vibhishan is no more than a nondescript younger brother who has exactly one dialogue and gets shot dead soon after. Lakshman is a lackey cop who is unconscious/dead for most of his screen time. Each of these depictions comes across as a parody in poor taste.

The idea of a tribal leader on the wrong side of the law is intriguing and the tough forest terrain would well explain his personality and behaviour. But it wouldn’t explain spending an entire hour showing what looked like rejected National Geographic clips. I kid you not, I was surprised when the interval came and my watch showed only an hour had gone by. And the Vicco Vajradanti ads in the interval were far more entertaining than what I had been subjected to, before that.

The second half picks up (though not before a forced back-to-back two songs) but by then the damage has been done. Too much, too late. There just isn’t enough time to think about the character conflicts, the depth of each of their emotions. Mostly by then, you just want the movie to get over and be done with it.

I’ve never liked Aishwarya Rai as an actress and with this movie, I add the rest of the cast to this list too. Vikram does an Ajay Devgan with grunts and a perpetual scowl to depict menace. I’m sorry to say that Mani Ratnam and A.R.Rahman fall in my ratings too. This is just lazy creativity – poor storytelling and rehashed tunes.

The bigger question is why are we so stuck on the two great epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata? Granted, they were great stories (and that’s why they’re called epics). But have centuries worth of storytellers not been able to come up with new fare? Have we become pathological remixers?

Last week’s fiasco Rajneeti was a foul remix of Mahabharata and The Godfather. It grated on my nerves for how the characters seemed to be forced into the roles of their Mahabharata counterparts to the point of ridiculous serendipity (Ajay Devgan being the driver’s boy a.k.a charioteer’s son, Ranbir Kapoor as the sharpshooting Casanova a.k.a. Arjun). Ravanan didn’t even get that far. With the caricature of Hanuman in the first few minutes of the movie, they had already lost me.

My tweets on this have been getting a few replies to the effect of human emotions being finite and there being only so many stories to express them. I disagree. The art of storytelling is universal and timeless. It is an art because it moves, it flows, it engages and it grows. It’s what made Omkara wonderful even as it was a retelling of Othello. Vishal Bharadwaj managed to find his Iago in a rustic local goon called Langda Tyaagi. His version, in an English script could have been called Iago and not Othello. That’s what a different story is all about, even though it’s the same plot.

With a movie, there are several components that can drive the story forward – an original script, great casting and acting and good screenplay. Ravanan, I regret to say, enjoys none of these.

Intercourse with the Natives

Dhiraj Singh — Sun, 23 May 2010 18:36:43 EDT

WE STAND IN THE middle of New South Wales’ Royal National Park holding hands and looking heavenwards to invoke Yullangur—‘the dreaming’ of the creation serpent—as our guide Les Bursill starts us on a tour of Australia’s sacred sites. ‘The Dreaming’ describes Aborigine Australia’s curiously Brahma-like worldview. According to it, all our realities lie subsumed by a ‘dreaming’ that started at the dawn of time, whenever that was. The fact that the phenomenon is still referred to in the present-continuous is interesting because it speaks of a larger inclusion of the timeline, especially since the arrival of the white man, a moment in history that has spelt nothing but doom for the ‘dreaming’. White Australians first came as a fleet of convicts and prison-guards to serve what was to be a very rigorous punishment. But strangely, they stayed on to give birth to a white nation, very different from what the Aborigine dreaming had ironically intended.

White Australia’s experience of the dreaming has ranged from outright rejection to utter moral confusion. From the early colonists point-of-view the native culture (or what was often seen as a lack of it) was in a need of a civilising influence. And they were more than happy to provide it. This began with the taming of Bennelong, a male aboriginal who in 1789 was abducted in keeping with King George III’s wishes “to open an intercourse with the natives, and to conciliate their affections…” Bennelong thus became the first Aboriginal to speak English, dress up like the white man and even cross the seas to pay a visit to England—not quite like a caged exotic, but close.

Since Bennelong, white Australia has time and again tried to ‘conciliate the affections’ of those whom it has tried to rule. The dreaming since then has become an object of much research and creative exploration by white Australians. A sense of this ‘terrible fascination’ (to paraphrase Rudolf Otto) is visible at the souvenir shops and Aboriginal art galleries that have turned sacred totemic art into novelty pieces. It speaks of a process of exoticisation that has squeezed Aborigine culture of its values and humanity. But signs of a cultural sensitivity are gradually showing up. In Warwick Thornton’s touchingly unsentimental film 'Samson and Delilah' (2009) an Aboriginal teenage couple escapes to the city from its community only to find city-life terribly harsh and unforgiving to moneyless wanderers like themselves. It is a fair portrayal of two opposing cultures that have unsuccessfully tried to negotiate each other’s mind space. There exists an interesting Aborigine corroboree or oral narrative about a massacre by the white man whose cow they had stolen and eaten because they were hungry. Since in the Aboriginal sense life is a dreaming it requires no further elaboration; in other words it has no need to assert notions of ownership, enterprise and other capitalist biases. These very ideas, on the other hand, have become cast in stone in the mind of the white West since it was industrialised.

Art has in fact served the Aborigine cause better. As its numinous appeal has been more in keeping with the dreaming way of life. But the wedge driven by the racial policies of the first white settlers have had a lasting effect. Most Aussies of a generation or two ago are all too familiar with their treatment of Aborigines, who were often accosted at street corners and told to ‘go back to their own country’.

Internally, Australian racism is often viewed as a ‘hot-blooded’ response to immigrant presumptions but nonetheless it has deeper roots. Australia has been for over 200 years a society running on auto-pilot; a loose mix of white, imperialist and Christian tendencies. And now it suddenly finds itself having to make room for the ‘other’, largely non-white, non-Christian immigrant populations that have been gravitating towards its shores from all corners of the Earth. It is pertinent to recall here that for a long time Australia insisted on a ‘whites only’ immigration policy. It has only in the recent past opened its doors to other races. This makes Aussie claims to a deep-rooted cosmopolitanism rather facile. It’s like a big woman trying to squeeze into a size zero dress.

The ‘Indian issue’ has pained much of the left-leaning press and the intelligentsia but to the majority of Australians ‘it is not a race issue’. Till as late as 2005 white Australia had been at war with its ‘otherness’. In 2005 riots had broken out in Sydney’s Cronulla Beach between Lebanese Australians and whites over a few drunken remarks. A year before that, riots between Aborigines and white Australians had shaken up Palm Island over the custody death of Mulrunji, picked up for being ‘a public nuisance’. A few months before that, Aborigine residents had clashed with the police in Redfern, a Sydney suburb, following the death of Thomas ‘TJ’ Hickey, another Aborigine teenager under police surveillance.

The attacks on Indians have a terrible ring to them, a sense of déjà vu and yet the police and lawmakers continue to treat them as stray disturbances. This betrays an attitude that as a country Australia has not been sincere in facing its demons. It has in fact chosen to look the other way or pride itself for its many ethnic enclaves as a sign of cultural mixing. But in truth mixing in the Aussie sense carries a lot of baggage, especially from the days of its ‘white occupation’. Newcomers to Australia find themselves in a surfacely friendly country that scoffs at any real understanding or abiding interest in the ways of life of its ethnic minorities. It is not surprising then that the exchange between the dominant ethnic group (of white Australians) and the rest gets limited to a cursory stereotyping of the rest by the majority. There is a heart of Australian conservatism, visible some years ago in the anti-immigrant remarks of politician Pauline Hanson, that hasn’t been able to keep up with the spacious geography of the land. Hanson in her book 'The Truth', had parodied the idea of multiculturalism by suggesting that by 2050 Australia would have a woman president who would be part Chinese, part Indian and part machine. This February she announced her decision to move back to England, the country of her birth. Hanson is not alone in feeling a particular fondness for the ‘mother country’. Australian society, despite appearances is remarkably old-world, attached through a well-tended umbilicus to the idea of an imperial Britain that may itself now be a speck in the amber of time.

In a country living largely in denial of its racist background it is a peculiar group that has taken upon itself to ring the alarm bells. It is a group of artists who have since the Sixties been ardent iconoclasts. Most active among them is ‘light-sculptor’ Roger Foley-Fogg, who also goes by the stage-name of Ellis D. Fogg. Roger tells me how much he is in awe of the Indian idea of ‘Vasudev Kutumbakam’ or the idea of the world as one family. Roger’s February show in Sydney was titled ‘Fire 2010: The Spirit of India’ and it gathered rave reviews from the art world especially because of its timing and its unqualified love for India. The show had featured ‘lumino kinetic’ works or sculptures made of LEDs and inspired by Lakshmi, Marut, Agni, Jal and the mandalas. “These were my personal impressions of the spirit of India,” says Roger, “the subtext of which includes the idea that all matter is made from light and music and the harmony created by their mixing.”

Roger’s ideas about the dreaming and the world as one family go back to his Sixties peer group. “I was first moved by this concept at the Yellow House (a former artists’ commune) nearly 40 years ago through an unpublished cartoon by Martin Sharp titled ‘We are all islands, joined beneath the sea’,” he remembers. Today, the thought of Indo-Oz relations being at their lowest ebb pains him. Roger’s light and film projects about Aborigine culture have tried to hold a mirror to mainstream Australia’s clumsy track-record of handling its otherness.

The biggest part, I believe, of any healing between cultures that have been at odds with each other is a dialogue. And what better way is there than using the language of music, art, literature and films to start that dialogue. Aussie filmmaker Albie Thoms made a case for exactly this kind of a movement in his Seventies’ book 'Polemics for a New Cinema'. Surely there’s no better time than now for Australia to open itself for some healing. To tell stories about its struggle with its otherness, especially through films such as the Aborigine saga of 'Ten Canoes' (2006) or the cross-cultural love story of 'The Combination' (2009). And to take on the bigger challenge of getting mainstream Australia interested in the dreaming.

Amar Singh, a Political Reality

Amitabh Mitra — Fri, 21 May 2010 19:19:10 EDT

Amar Singh after months of careful discussion between his supporters in Uttar Pradesh and having taken an extensive tour of the province has finally declared of the formation of Lok Manch which would be a non political entity to begin with and might later end up contesting elections in Uttar Pradesh.

Having written a series of articles on Amar Singh from the time he fell sick, it is indeed interesting to follow the career of this much talked about politician. There are times I felt that he has been garrulous to an extent that doesn’t befits his stature of a prominent politician but then Amar Singh has always been like that. His intensive knowledge of Urdu poetry which he would quote at any given moment, his knowledge of the backward tribes of Uttar Pradesh and their special needs and his creativity within the political arena makes him a figure that can’t be forgotten or avoided.

Former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh said that his newly formed Lok Manch was on the lines of the late V.P. Singh's Jan Morcha which the latter had formed after marching out of the Congress in the eighties.

"My Lok Manch is a non-political forum on the lines of V.P. Singh's Jan Morcha, but I do not deny that this body will eventually merge into the sea of politics," Singh told media persons here Monday.

Accompanied by his Bollywood entourage comprising Sanjay Dutt, Jaya Prada and Manoj Tiwari, he said: "I propose to launch a full scale movement with effect from Dec 1, for the creation of an independent state of Purvanchal to be carved out of the neglected backward Eastern Uttar Pradesh."

I do check on his blog regularly and there are times I felt that his judgement on certain party seats went wrong. Mulayam Singh’s daughter in law lost her seat at the Ferozabad constituency. Abu Azmi, a close confidante of Amar Singh vacated his seat for his son Farhan Azmi. Farhan lost the election in spite of hectic campaigning done by Amar Singh immediately after he came back from a kidney transplant surgery. This clearly indicates that family hierarchy in the absence of intellectual strata does not go down well with people who are aware now and would obviously choose for the best. I had suggested it earlier to Amar Singh.

But then my admiration goes for the way he has created a niche in politics in spite of being expelled from the Samajwadi party. I admire him for his excellent grasp on the English language which he studied under none other than the famous poet, Professor P. Lal at Presidency College, Kolkata.

As I write about him, my outlook express shows that he has posted another blog. His closeness to Subroto Mukherjee another creative politician has been mentioned in his latest blog and his entry into politics after being elected as the Secretary of the Burra Bazar Congress Committee, Kolkata.

The most surprising factor which he has revealed now is his being considered from the Bhind constituency during his days of closeness to Madhavrao Scindia. Being from Gwalior, I understand the politics of Bhind from where the journalist Udayan Sharma got elected. I had met Udayan a number of times during his visit to Gwalior during the eighties. Things would have been entirely different if he had succeeded in getting a ticket for Bhind and later winning it on a Congress I platform.

I had written about Amar Singh’s tryst with films in these columns. He had acted in a number of Bangla and Hindi films. Creativity within politics is a taboo factor and creative impulses have always been pushed down ruthlessly. Be it Kunwar Natwar Singh or Jaswant Singh, the party never promoted lateral thinking or intellectual outbursts.

Amar Singh acted in the first week of May in a Malayalam film titled, ‘Mumbai Mittai’ opposite Dimple Kapadia. The film was shot in Kerala. He plays the role of a classical singer.

Earlier he had done a role in Devanand’s film, ‘Charge Sheet’

Somebody in South Africa asked me the reason that the Minister of Art and Culture doesn’t have any idea of Art or Culture and why shouldn’t an artist, poet, musician or a politician who has an in-depth of knowledge of such disciplines, shouldn’t be chosen as the Minister. I had no reply and I refrain to talk on South African politics.

I remember in the seventies when Yamini Krishnamurti came to give a dance performance at the Jawaharlal Nehru University where I happened to be a frequent visitor. Stalwarts as Sitaram Yechury, Hemant Joshi and Purushottam Agarwal were there in the audience. The university was controlled by the Marxists. Somebody asked her, ‘What is the Marxist interpretation of your dance’. Pop came the answer, ‘I think politicians too can dance’.

Charcoal Drawing of Amar Singh by Amitabh Mitra
Photos from Mumbai Mittai have been given by the kind permission of Shree Amar Singh

Movie Review: Leaving Home

Kaushik Chatterji — Fri, 2 Apr 2010 12:58:18 EDT

Reviewing this is going to be a very arduous task. For starters, how does one slot Indian Ocean, the band that is the subject of this feature-length production? And what do you call this feature-length production? A rockumentary, is it? How is that possible? The band cannot be confined to rock or for that matter any one genre - indeed, as Nandita Das says at the beginning, there's jazz, classical, Sufism, shlokas and even Bengali music. So then what, a bio-pic? A concert film? Let's just stop bothering about what it can or should be called.

Indian Ocean was an unheard quantity until, as the late Asheem Chakravarty (percussions, vocals) puts it, "some firangs wrote good things about us." Like their name (provided by co-founder guitarist Susmit Sen's father) suggests, they are ekdum desi - and this in spite them playing instruments that are associated with the goras - and so are their struggles. Don't go in for this one expecting a healthy dose of sex and drugs 'coz the nearest references to rock 'n roll debauchery that these elderly musicians make are about cigarettes and the desire to pataofy the solitary female member back in the short span of time when she was a part of the band.

The nearest one of these guys came to a stereotypical rock 'n roll existence was when Rahul Ram (bass, vocals) came back after studying Environmental Toxicology at Cornell, got involved in the Narmada Bachao Andolan, got promptly jailed along with the other adivasis and thence came up with Ma Rewa. No, music here is not a viable option since being blessed with and having faith in one's talent is barely enough to guarantee a steady stream of a substantial amount of money which could possibly act as an alternative to the security of a regular job and with it, a routine family life. As almost every non-filmi musician (including three former members of this band) will tell you, the risk is almost never worth the returns - after all, satisfaction se pet nahi chalta hai.

Of course, this is about that rare fairytale actually happening. The "film" starts off with a bunch of testimonials from Prannoy Roy and Anurag Kashyap among others, and ends with clips from some of their famous concerts guest starring Shubha Mudgal, Rabbi and Kailash Kher. In between, it is neatly divided into segments, each of which is named after one of their famous songs. What follows each time is the story of how the song came into being and, in case it is strongly associated with one of them, also the story of the concerned band member in the words of their family as well as the other three - interspersed are bits about other key people and their contributions, like drummer Amit Kilam's mother who wrote Kashmiri lyrics for one of their songs, Kaun.

Each segment ends with an in-concert performance of the song at either their Karol Bagh pad (home, we are told, to such cultural icons like Faiz Ahmad Faiz) or the Garden of Five Senses. A lot of the content is presented in text form, much like a presentation. That and the fact that it did not delve deep into the lives of the people are the only potential downers - in fact, there is a good chance that ardent followers might already be in the know of most of what's presented here. So, even though the inclusion of complete songs rendered live was immensely enjoyable, it might have been a better idea to cut down there, present the stories in live action rather than text format and use the footage in a separate concert film, while keeping this one a true-blue bio-pic.

Then again, the very concept of making a feature-length film on an Indian musical act and releasing it all over the country (albeit in a very limited fashion) is almost if not quite as radical as a bunch of people from mostly middle class backgrounds coming together in mid-80s India, making music that was neither filmi nor xeroxes of their classic rock idols, pursuing that dream even after having left their college years long behind them and actually making it big.