Journal of Indian Cinema

Author: S Viswanath

  • Violence: a Rite of ‘Dalit Identity’ Discourse?

    Violence: a Rite of ‘Dalit Identity’ Discourse?

    “Idhu namma kaalam. Ezhundhu vaa!”

    (lit. “This is our time. Arise & Arrive”)

    Dialogue from Pa. Ranjith’s Sarpatta Parambarai, which revolves around boxing, a bloody, violent sport and identity of clan prestige.

     

    Mahatma Gandhi epitomised non-violence as a potent tool to express one’s strong dissension against injustice. His peaceful protests against the brutal force unleashed by the mighty British Raj to cow down citizens into servility and submission ultimately won India her freedom. It is now nearly 125 years since that child from Porbandar, the young lawyer from South Africa, rose to singularly take on the mantle of leading India to independence. Answering violence with peaceful, pacifist protest, dialogue and reasoning, affirmative action, rather than by baton for baton and bullet for bullet, Gandhi epitomised what non-violence and civil disobedience can do to unreasoning powerful State authority and its venal, brutal ways.

    It would have been great if our blue blood, modern day young and aspiring film directors took lessons from India’s painful past and gave wings to it in their works of art as they bring to centre stage of public discourse the various ills that still dog the Indian society. However, that is not to be. Filmmaker after filmmaker, in recent times, with wanton disregard to the fact that violence only begets violence, have been celebrating violence as if it were a virtue and their birth right.

    Vicious, vituperative violence is being extolled in film after film as a legitimate form of registering the filmmaker’s displeasure at how the marginalised and underprivileged, especially the Dalits, are being treated in society. Dalit-oriented films have become the staple fodder to draw unsuspecting crowds of late. So much so that every second or third film that graces the movie marquee today, be it at traditional single theatres or streaming platforms, invariably revolves around championing the cause of the much-abused Dalit minority.

    While one does not dispute their legitimate desire to present the problems that have been haunting the marginalised ilk since eons even to this day, what is problematic is the way these directors advocate violence as a necessary and inevitable recourse to protect one’s identity and also earn respect in society. Bikas Mishra correctly avers, “the politics of identity – caste – are central… Things have to be destroyed and demolished for a new world to emerge.” And there is a proper /better way to do it. In the recent past, there have been films such as Chauranga, Court, Fandry, Sairat, Masaan, Anhey Ghore Da Daan, Papilio Buddha, Pariyerum Perumal, and Mandela that capture the humiliation and discontent in the lives of the marginalised and underprivileged sections in a much more humane, subtler, and sensitive manner.

    Currently, particularly in the cinema of Tamil, the erstwhile servile, subservient Dalit character has taken a 360 degree turn. They are now the protagonists and take on their powerful oppressors by fighting back tooth for tooth and eye for eye.

    This change occurred with the emergence of filmmakers belonging to the marginalised class; filmmakers such as Pa. Ranjith, Mari Selvaraj, Balaji Shaktivel, and Vetri Maran. The criticism is that by foisting aggressively assertive, heroic Dalit figures, the filmmakers have conveniently cultivated a commercial narrative rather than reflect the actual reality in a more nuanced and subtle manner. While it is important to make the Dalit empowering, assertive, and aspirational, the manner in which this is carried out is equally important.

    Violence is promoted by the cultivation of a sense of inevitability about some allegedly unique—often belligerent—identity that we are supposed to have and which makes extensive demands on us (sometimes, of a most disagreeable kind)… Violence is fomented by the imposition of singular and belligerent identities on gullible peoples, championed by proficient artisans of terror. (Amartya Sen)[1]

    Replace ‘gullible people’ with ‘mass audiences in India,’ and ‘proficient artisans of terror’ with ‘filmmakers and lead actors who portray the injured Dalit,’ and the ugliness of the complete picture gets revealed. The blinkered approach of these filmmakers, some of whom have had the luxury of good education, raises an abject sense of disquiet and anxiety.

    Our society’s engagement with caste—whether it is cinema or any other domain—has been very poor. We have reduced the narrative to caste as a problem that concerns only Dalits, and involves the perpetration of physical violence. In reality, caste in India works in a myriad of ways. But most of our filmmakers do not seem to see the value in representing these aspects. (Rajesh Rajamani)[2]

    To instigate a new discourse in public sphere, both among afflicted and perpetrators, on subaltern struggles of marginalised and oppressed underprivileged sections of society, their brutalised existence, these new age filmmakers, get carried away depicting visual violence without realising the deleterious effect it may have on the consuming, participative audiences.

    Be it Palasa (1978) or recent releases such as Asuran, Karnan, Kaala, and Kabali, with Dalit protagonists, violence becomes the baton of battle against the dominant and domineering class. The Telugu film Ardha Shathabdham goes to the extent of having a tagline that screams, “Democratic Violence”.

    Playing to the gallery by populating the visual narratives with gratuitous, gruesome and vengeful violence, and streaking the screen in blood, has become the new normal. A pointer to this tempestuous trajectory can be gauged by the dialogues of the sword-wielding Dhanush in Karnan, “They beat us for just asserting ourselves. Now that the assertion has started, we won’t back down,” and Rajnikanth in Kabali, “We will sit, putting foot over foot”.

    Visual violence by idolised icons is an enticing market-driven demand. Therefore, there ought to be a law to ensure that filmmakers and stars take responsibility on how their films are received by impressionable fans eager to mimic their larger-than-life screen idols.

    Dalits are consistently shown as powerless. It is as though Dalit existence has meaning only in relation to caste society, and that victimisation is the essence of ‘Dalithood’… Popular cinemas narrativise the social experiences of the communities corresponding to their constituencies… Strategy is to place a key social happening at the centre of the narrative and use it to relay a ‘political truth’ to then be learned by a chosen protagonist/character… It is therefore easy to confuse the star with his/her role – which might also explain the phenomenal success of some film stars as political leaders. Stars rise into prominence when their physiognomies and screen presences answer to the requirements of the time, and it is uncommon for film stars to play against the types they are habituated to playing… The audience is invited to identify with the protagonist, and it is evidently intended to imbibe the same truths. The effect this has on film narrative is that characters then become empty receptacles for instruction. (MK Raghavendra)[3]

    These new age filmmakers may be making an effort to instigate a new discourse, both among afflicted and the perpetrators. However, instead of abjuring excessive visual violence as form of retribution, they are merely stoking a dormant volcano of impressionable audiences into angry avengers. Instead of extolling machismo virtues and overt caste and identity glorification, Dalit filmmakers should be careful and conscious in every aspect of filmmaking. Shouldering immense responsibility, they should shun over-glorification of violence, pride and bigotry to emphasise on alternative education, constitutional resolution and empowerment.

    Dalit cinema should be careful to not set a wrong example for the Dalit community. Will that happen? Future films and their makers may provide the answer. Till then, violence will continue to rule the roost in Dalit cinemas, as Dalits fight for affirmation, acceptance and assimilative identity in the socio-political scheme of the public discourse.

     

    References

    [1]Sen, Amartya. Identity & Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. 

    [2]Rajamani, Rajesh. Dhanush’s ‘Asuran’: Turning Dalit Atrocities Into Pulp Fiction Is Nothing To Celebrate. Huffington Post. October 23, 2019.

    [3]Raghavendra, MK. Philosophical Issues in Indian Cinema. Routledge. 2021.

     

    Bibliography

    Viduthalai, P, Divakar, AK, Natarajan, V. Failure of Dalit Renaissance: A semiotic analysis of Dalit and Non Dalit films. Periyar University. Amity Journal of Media & Communication Studies. Vol. 7, No. 1. 2017.

    Susairaj, Antony. The Paradigm shifts in the Portrayal of Caste in Tamil Cinema and its impact on the Tamil Society. Journal of the Nanzan Academic Society Humanities and Natural Sciences (20), 121-138. 2020. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/328007935.pdf

    Naig, Udhav. From ‘Attakathi’ and ‘Kabali’ to ‘Pariyerum Perumal’: How this decade changed caste representation in Kollywood. The Hindu. December 30, 2019.

    Pudipeddi, Haricharan. Kaala, Aramm, Pariyerum Perumal: Dalit-themed films are getting mainstream acceptance in Tamil cinema. First Post. January 6, 2019.

    Yengde, Suraj. Dalit Cinema. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. June 3, 2018.

     

    See also:

    https://filmcriticscircle.com/journal/dalits-and-victimhood-in-indian-film/

  • Joji — a comparative study of four Macbeth inspirations

    Joji — a comparative study of four Macbeth inspirations

    Joji — a comparative study of four Macbeth inspirations

    Literary works provide off-the-shelf fast food in the pecking order for film makers to ply their trade when writers’ block bite them. However, a majority of these “inspired” adaptations by filmmakers have always been a tricky and tacky proposition. Only a very few stay true to the text to the ‘T’ and covet the author’s as well as the audiences’ appreciation. The rest simply revel in making suitable — often-times, obnoxious — departures, retaining just a sliver of the original, and invoking disdain and depreciation; the individuals behind such are primarily motived to stamp their individuality on the “inspired” version rather than do due justice to the original and its larger thematic trajectory.

    One may well argue that it is the filmmaker’s prerogative on how to interpret the text in a manner that they feel is best to trigger its visual retelling in the film form. True. One certainly has to concede a person’s artistic freedom in giving vision to the text and theme at hand. However, simply retaining the kernel of an otherwise classical literary work, glibly garnishing the film to suit the maker’s febrile interpretation is not a done thing nor can one condone such an attempt; nothing can be more insulting and demeaning than that to the author, dead or alive, as also the audiences who place implicit trust on the director to come up with an honest and decent job. That unfortunately, and woefully, has been the case with the Bard of Avon William Shakespeare’s very many plays. Not that the revered Indian epics The Ramayan and The Mahabharat have not fallen prey to puerile, pitiable and pathetic renditions primarily pandering to the baser instincts of mass audiences to have cash registers clinking.

    Shakespeare must have turned in his grave every time there was an Indian version of his play, Macbeth in this case. Until of course, director Dileesh Pothan and screenwriter Syam Pushkaran’s “inspired” and inventive Joji joined the scroll of filmmakers by interpreting the bard’s play to a delectable and ensemble effect.  The film’s producer and lead actor, Fahad Faazil, who says it is “not a direct version of Macbeth, but one inspired by its theme,”[1] puts up a bravura performance, making Joji a pleasurable, engaging experience.

    On the international scene, there have been at least six international adaptations /inspirations of the nearly 415 years old play by various directors in the last five years itself — Macbeth (2015 and 2018), Lady Macbeth (2016), Ghost Light(2018), and Stained (2019). The latest is one in the making by one of the Cohen brothers, titled The Tragedy of Macbeth. Additionally, auteurs such as Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa and Roman Polanski too have brought out their own versions.

    In India in the near past, Vishal Bharadwaj foisted Maqbool (Hindi), Jayaraj made the grandiloquent martial art epic Veeram (Malayalam), and Abhaya Simha came out with a modern day rendition, Paddayi (Kannada). But the “tragedy” of gargantuan proportions is that none of these three versions flatter to deceive. The emphasis by these three directors on overtly sexual, explicit body show and lust play with overzealous pursuit of the sex quotient rather than on a subtle, serious and sober look at how overarching avarice, ambition, and guilt, leading to penitence spell doom for the murderous person and his co-conspirator makes one roil at the respective director’s audaciousness to alter the text to their whimsy fancies.

    In fact, a cursory revisit of Shakespeare’s Macbeth would reveal that the playwright has never overtly or covertly dwelt upon lust or sexual trysts as a trigger.  The text only bespeaks of the prophesy of three witches — an opportunistic, over-zealous wife girding the protagonist to a greedy, ambitious action that brings about the doom, and death, of both once their conscience is stricken with guilt and remorse at their deed. This essentially is what the play is all about.

    These three Indian filmic adaptations /inspirations have done away with witches per se but not the occult or oracle portions that are perfunctory to the pursued plotline. Bhardwaj transposes the witches as corrupt, gun-toting, trigger happy buffoonery horoscope-reading cops. Jayaraj conveniently supplants them with exploitative, naked, nubile virginal lasses. And Simha invokes the local Bootha Kola spirit to tastefully deliver the prophesy, in keeping with the local cultural and folklore traditions.

    Since Pothan-Pushkaran’s version is a modern day one that speaks of a family’s expectation of ancestral property, the witches and oracle bit has not been included. Instead the film concentrates on the scheming persona and inner psyche of people populating the household, and shows how greed could stir up even the most lethargic male into affirmative, destructive action.

    Though Simha says “it is not necessary to be honest to the text, but be honest to the life being represented,”[2] his version too, like those of Bharadwaj and Jayaraj have conveniently not included the non-sellable parts of Macbeth.Instead, the trio sex up their respective films with sultriness, and the sensual play is of eyeball-popping proportions, and have stooped to tasteless vulgarity, besmirching the film’s rendition of the tragic play.

    Bhardwaj dresses up Maqbool with an illicit comeuppance cupid-play between the protagonist and a girl married to an aged man. Jayaraj has two nymphets pleasuring and goading his protagonist to avaricious action that could pass off as semi-porn. Simha, on his part, while faithfully retaining the original kinship of a newlywed couple, conveniently spices things up with their sensuous love play and body show in addition to bawdy dialogues, to supplant the film’s amorous quotient. He further embellishes it with needless eroticism — the wife enamoured by a Dubai scent that sends her into ecstatic, esoteric imaginations as an allegorical afterthought.

    Contrast this with the manner in which Pothan has constructed a subtle, understated, unwritten, undercurrent sexual frisson between the protagonist and his sister-in-law sans indulgent physicality. The duo’s matter-of-fact encounters, predominantly in the kitchen, with the man gorging on her cooked meals in no way vitiates the viewer’s aesthetic experience.

    While the trio have taken to a highly stylised, violent and bloody narrative structure in keeping with the general ambience that their respective films have been set in,  Pothan has eschewed such overt, visual exhibitionism and has in a minimalist manner rendered his version in a more relatable and realistic sedate tale of destructive greed, which is what Shakespeare’s Macbeth is essentially about.

    The films of the trio, unlike that of Pothan, have over-the-top situations. Bharadwaj locates his version in the familiar corruptive Mumbai underworld with its scheming dons, their lieutenants, rivalries, and bloody gang war, and two cops as convenient cogs to oil and grease the gangland warfare. Jayaraj is set in13th Century Kerala to the backdrop of Kalaripayattu (traditional martial warfare) warrior characters drawn from Kerala folklore. Simha sets his version in the high tide sea-washed shores of Mangaluru and the fishing community, the fishing trawlers, and shows the business rivalry between contended traditionalists and the money-minded mechanized owners.

    Pothan has situated Joji in the familiar everyday setting of a joint family in which the disciplinarian and doughty patriarch is robust as ever and still building his biceps. Despite his failing health, he defies death, and stands rock solid between the expectations of some of his offspring and the inheritance that would change their lives for the better.

    In terms of subtlety, Joji scores high; the characters convey their emotions through nuanced body language as they go about their daily chores in a mundane manner. Bharadwaj, Jayaraj and Simha, on the other hand, take recourse to embellishing their respective versions with seduction, incest, salaciousness, and needless bloodletting; none of which in any way justifies Shakespeare’s play of royal subterfuge of vaulting ambition and calamitous downfall.

    Therein lies the triumph of Pothan’s pure, fluid and fascinating Joji over the other three lavish productions whose directors concentrated more on vacuous atmospherics, wanton theatrics and audacious adult play than on getting into the pith of Shakespearean’s tragic, political and moralistic royal drama, whose primary import is that greed and vaulting ambition can bring upon one’s ruin and downfall.

     

     

    [1]Newsd. Inspired by Macbeth but not an adaptation: Malayalam star Fahadh Faasil on Joji. April 9, 2021.

    [2]Starbio. “How Paddayi director Abhaya Simha worked with Mogaveera fishing community in Karnataka”. November 29, 2018.

     

  • Film festivals — a platform for gender parity

    Film festivals — a platform for gender parity

    Film festivalas — a platform for gender parity
    Discriminated, underrepresented, misrepresented with that proverbial male gaze syndrome on screen, and subjugated and suppressed to the point of stoic silence off screen, women in the film industry have had to face a Sisyphean struggle to come into their own and wrest their due from an otherwise male dominated /men driven entertainment industry.

    The high profile #MeToo and Time’s Up movements of recent years sharply shifted the focus upon sexual assault victims, especially women, and created widespread awareness. However, very little appears to have changed—the entertainment industry has not really moved forward from the “Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.”[1] syndrome. The decisive change in the West has come from elsewhere. Film festivals there have become a great equaliser. A platform for gender parity.

    The world’s top-tier film festivals congratulated themselves last year when, one by one, they signed a pledge on gender parity drawn up by the French women’s organization 5050X2020. The protocol commits the fests to greater transparency about the number of films submitted and the makeup of their selection and programming committees, and calls for an even gender split in senior management ranks.

    Since Cannes became the first to sign in May 2018, both Toronto and Berlin have named women as festival co-directors for the first time in their history: Joana Vicente and Mariette Rissenbeek, respectively. (Henry Chu)[2]

    That finally, now, there is a conscious attempt in the West to give women their due is a welcome augury. This is a definitive development. And [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]it is hoped that as women representation gains in strength and their voices are heard, seen, appreciated and accoladed, it would ensure that women filmmakers would eventually turn into a great force to be reckoned with.[/highlight]

    In India, though, none of the festivals have taken such a public pledge, and perhaps it isn’t at all necessary.

    Tanu Rai is the Deputy Director of Programming of the Directorate of Film Festivals, which conducts the International Film Festival of India (IFFI). Anupama Chopra and Monita Borgohain are the Festival Directors of the Mumbai International Film Festival (MAMI) and the Guwahati International Film Festival, respectively. Bina Paul, Smriti Kiran, and Shalini Shah are the Artistic Directors of the International Film Festival of Kerala, MAMI, and the Kautik International Film Festival, respectively. Sabina Sanghvi is the Vice Chairperson, and Aditi Akkalkotkar the Deputy Director of Communication & Coordination, of the Pune International Film Festival. And Ratnottama Sengupta is on the Selection Committee of the Kolkata International Film Festival.

    Women in India are well represented in film festival juries too. Last year’s edition of the Chalachitram National Film Festival featured an all-women jury, nine in all, spread across three categories. Additionally, the two most noted international film festival curators from India chance to be women—Uma da Cunha and Meenakshi Shedde.

    At the 50th edition of IFFI, homage was paid to 50 women directors, a first of its kind that demonstrated the importance of providing women the platform they duly deserve while raising the bar on gender parity. At the recently-conducted 51st edition too, women were well represented—there were 24 films by women directors. Furthermore, many of the major festivals in India have a special award for a film by a woman director.

    As divergent as the multifarious cultures and geographies that woman directors represent, their films too, with a melange of themes and social concerns, are as disparate, and offer insights into their minds and methods. That in many of these films the protagonists too are young women navigating the challenges of life and the situations they find themselves in speak of the core thematic concerns of the women directors and the feminine perspective that they bring into their visual narratives.

    For aspiring directors in the highly competitive entertainment industry, the top film festivals, which offers one the opportunity to showcase one’s films to the who’s who of the industry in addition to getting written about in the newspapers, is that first, and highly crucial, career-making step. Each of these women directors of today are thus true ambassadors of their gender. Additionally, they are opening windows of opportunity for the future generation of women filmmakers.

     

    Bibliography

    [1] Berger, John. (1972). Chapter 3. Ways of Seeing. Penguin Modern Classics.

    [2] Chu, Henry; Chu, Henry (2019-08-01). “How the Major Film Festivals Are Faring on Gender Parity.” Variety.

     

    See also

    https://filmcriticscircle.com/journal/women-in-cinema-in-age-of-digital/

     

  • Film festival in the time of Corona

    Film festival in the time of Corona

    Ever since the Venice International Film Festival, the oldest in the world, blew the bugle in late 2020, announcing with much bravado that it would be held on time, cineastes all over the world have breathed a ray of hope. Roberto Cicutto, President of La Biennale di Venezia, said on the eve of the festival, “the show must go on and the world must go on, to watch and to discuss movies together, to live this art the way we used to live it.”[1]

    Following the initial onslaught of the present pandemic and the shutting down of Europe, Cannes first indefinitely postponed and then cancelled their 2020 edition. Many others soon followed suit. However, something radically different came out of this. The major international film festivals, including the top 3, Berlin, Venice, and Cannes, put together a combined act in late May/early June—the ‘We Are One: A Global Film Festival’—a totally virtual one.

    In India, the film festival season traditionally begins sometime in late October, led by the Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI), and is immediately followed by the other biggies, the Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF), the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), and the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK); in that order. In 2020, rather than cancelling their act altogether, the top 4 chose to postpone their respective events to 2021.

    Hybrid film festivals came into fashion out of necessity. Thanks to the internet, one now has the choice of attending film festivals either by being physically present or by not venturing into a cinema hall. Film festivals, through the virtual route, have literally entered our very living rooms. But then, cinema being a collective experience with the ambience of a darkened theatre providing its own individual aesthetics and atmosphere, watching films and participating on online and webinar sessions was not as wholesome or participative as a real-life community participation would have been.

    At the 51st edition of IFFI and the 26th edition of KIFF, both of which went hybrid this time around, half capacity auditoriums, social distancing, masking, sanitisation, and temperature checks became the new normal. The 25th edition of IFFK takes things one step further—it would be held in 4 different cities in Kerala. We need to toast the resilience of all those working behind the scenes, braving the odds to covet cineastes’ hearts and offer us the very best they can in this present situation.

    As one daintily steps into 2021 harbouring much hopes that the year will bring in its wake a resurrection and revival of sorts, the core concept of a film festival, celebrated and savoured since nearly seven decades, has taken a virtual 360-degree turn. While the virtual world makes for a temporary solution, hopefully it would never replace the real-life happenings. For, as actor Keanu Reeves says, “the whole aspect of cinema and film festivals should be a moment to come together and celebrate art and humanity.”[2] Viva la cinema.

    https://filmcriticscircle.com/journal/the-1st-international-film-festival-of-india-1952/

    https://filmcriticscircle.com/journal/on-the-history-and-importance-of-film-festivals/

    https://filmcriticscircle.com/journal/iffi-at-50-a-reality-check/

    Header photograph
    Zeenat Aman on the dais at the closing ceremony of the 51st edition of IFFI.

    References

    1. Stanford, Eleanor (2020-07-28). “Venice Film Festival to Return With Masks and Without Blockbusters”. The New York Times.
    2.  Blueskye, Brian. (2020-01-02) “The best way to experience Palm Springs film festival? With an open mind”. The Desert Sun.

     

  • The Great Indian Kitchen

    The Great Indian Kitchen

    The Great Indian Kitchen

    “Woman is shut up in a kitchen or in a boudoir,
    and astonishment is expressed that her horizon is limited.
    Her wings are clipped, and it is found deplorable that she cannot fly.”
    -Simone de Beauvoir

     

    A mere semblance of defiance suffices for a young bride in India to be slandered in the choicest of words making her very existence miserable and meaningless. It is therefore heartening that gender parity is now a raging topic of public discourse, and that male filmmakers are changing track and helming projects that provide the feminine perspective. The Great Indian Kitchen captures the quintessential dilemma that most Indian women face when their fond expectations of marital bliss are smashed to smithereens.

    A sharp indictment of the traditional and given culture of oppression of the women of households, director Jeo Baby pugnaciously presses home the point to the oppressed sex to not take it lying down anymore. He propels the spectator to reflect on the indignity that men heap on their women in the name of accepted practices.

    This brings to mind Anubhav Sinha’s Thappad, in which a wronged wife is made more angelic than is necessary: She fondly tends her mother-in-law who, like the rest of the family, believes that the girl should forgive her husband for slapping her publicly and take it in her stride. However, one cannot fault the likes of Baby or Sinha for adopting a more mundane approach. Inclined specifically to reaching out to larger masses, and never wanting to ruffle their constituents more than necessary, they water down their otherwise laudable attempts.

    Of course, a fractured family cannot bring about the social change that one loves to witness in this age of gender equity and parity. Women have broken the glass ceiling. But this does not necessarily lead to fracturing of the sacred institution of marriage despite all its faults and fissures. One is reminded of another of Beauvoir’s axioms: The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power.

    Where the film fails is in the closure. One wishes that the husband had not been painted in the darkest possible shade, and that, like the male protagonist in RJ Shaan’s Freedom @ Midnight, an equal case was made for the lead couple. Sure, men are squarely at fault. But that does not mean that, brought up in the patrilineal system since eons, they should not be given a chance at redemption.

     

  • Entertainment industry eyes a Phoenix, post pandemic

    Entertainment industry eyes a Phoenix, post pandemic

    Entertainment industry eyes a Phoenix post pandemic
    The global entertainment juggernaut that was having a great gambol run was arrested in its stupendous stride with the Ides of March bringing in its wake the world’s deadliest virus, quickly christened Covid-19. As ‘Social Distancing’ became the new lingua franca, the entertainment industry, which had witnessed robust business and was in celebration mode to usher in 2020 in grandeur fashion, with big ticket movies set to populate the screens across the globe, saw its aspirations cruelly crushed. Thereby, virtually pushing the otherwise robust and resilient industry and its various constituents and stakeholders into dark times of uncertainty and a state of stasis. It seemed as if Dooms Day had arrived.

    With government after government announcing lockdowns curtailing the free movement of their diaspora, cinema as a collective experience was stifled and strangulated, and cinema loving people were compelled to relinquish their regular romance with the multifarious and multitudinous creative works that had always held them in thrall.

    Needless to say, with huge sums of monies having poured into big ticket movies, the entertainment industry was left starring at humungous losses with virtually no window of hope in the near future to recoup the investments made in anticipation of a huge windfall at the box office. The cascading effect was such that it left the entire value chain of the entertainment industry lurching in a limbo adrift like a rudderless boat wondering will there be a better morrow turning 2020 in to one of annus horribilis never ever envisioned by the dream merchants.

    But then, like a sliver of hope, you had the streaming platforms providing the much-wanted avenue to an industry that had been pummelled into a vortex of darkness and left floundering for a ray of sunlight to survive and revive itself.

    True to the survival instinct of India’s big ticket entertainment industry—Bollywood—you had the stakeholders taking to the streaming platforms like a horse to the water, releasing films like Gulabo Sitabo, Choked, Dil Bechara, Shakuntala Devi, Miss India, Ludo, Ponmagal Vandhal, Soorari Pottru, Penguin, V, Ka Pe Ranasingham, Miss India, French Biryani,Law, C U Soon, Sufiyum Sujatavum, Ayyappanum Koshiyum, Kappela and a host of others in multiple Indian languages.

    Initially, filmmakers boarded the OTT bandwagon quite reluctantly. As one after the other jumped into the bathwater to test the waters of uncertainty, the traditional theatre owners and exhibitors were roiled and much chagrined at their counterparts’ hurry to wrest back their investments. Cannibalisation soon becoming the new survival order in this dog-eat-dog world where huge sums of money had been invested and quickie returns envisaged that there was no other remaining option. ‘Being served rightly and on time’ became the new pecking order as OTT platforms courted and coveted those in dire straits, lobbing the carrot of ‘recover and survive today if you want to make a kill tomorrow’.

    As a result, the streaming industry saw a sudden resurgence and an hitherto unexpected fillip to register a 55-60 percent year-on-year growth in the pandemic hit fiscal, according to the Boston Consulting Group and Confederation of Indian Industry report. Meanwhile, the theatrical exhibition business plummeted, suffering over Rs 3,000 crore plus between March and September.

    Theatres in India were finally permitted to open in October, but only to half their occupancies. The Hollywood film Tenet and a host of Indian films with star attraction attempted to woo back audiences grown up on a theatrical, collective experience of big screen outings and draw them out of their cloistered and boxed-in living room entertainment.

    The traditional exhibitionists of the entertainment industry were now faced with a new question: besides true value for money, how best to cater to the insatiable appetite of the movie public for paisa vasool entertainment following democratisation of screens across the spectrum making it a win-win situation for all the stakeholders in the survival game?

    With the inimitable charm of theatres, a sense of commune in collective, community viewing experience of films, the entertainment industry is perhaps in for a churning and long overhaul where content will dictate who will collect the sweepstakes and who will fall by the wayside.

    While industry watchers believe that there is bound to be a quantitative rise in the content, however, in the new tall order, much emphasis would be on the quality of content and how that content would be stitched and suited to the needs and demands of the streaming platforms and theatrical circuits who will be looking to it. Gone will be the days when one size will fit all and cinemas that will be rich in content, as diverse and disruptive in its execution and engagement in a dystopian world that the entertainment business has been driven into will be the order of the day.

    Sure enough, as industry watchers posit, segmentation and segregation of content would be the new transaction of trade in the times to come, with platforms catering to the niche palates of audiences from the discerning and aesthete to the pure play commercial entertainment seekers.

    One can hazard and envisage to posit that a quiet cinematic revolution is in the offing as a sense of sanguinity sets in to the various stakeholders of the entertainment empire as they seek to put their business back on the rails. Indeed, one can say that a Phoenix act could be witnessed as the pashas of entertaining and engaging cinemas play the roulette of survival to create an annus mirabilis.

     

  • Corona chokes Kannada Cinema’s cheerful climb

    Corona chokes Kannada Cinema’s cheerful climb

    It is nine months now since the curtains were called on a thriving Sandalwood industry that had to shut shop when Corona came calling.

    The pandemic has had the entire world under its virulent tentacles, spreading dread and death, virtually putting an end to public entertainment in its conventional and traditional sense; theatres and multiplexes shutting down for fear of the spread of the virus in community surges.

    Cancellations or postponements of film festivals and other film screenings were the order of the day while the world grappled with finding a quick off-the-shelf vaccine to check Corona in its stride.

    Soon, as months passed by, you have had “hybrid” forms of both digital and theatrical screenings of films being experimented with in the hope the enduring allure of movies would draw the entertainment opiated audiences back while lockdowns were lifted and ‘social distancing’ norms became the new standard operating procedures for public entertainment.

    While the film industry, the world over, grappled with the new Standard Operating Procedures by which they could bring the opiate of the masses to their neighbouring theatre screens, the Kannada film industry too had to face the harsh reality of the new Covid-carved script.

    Nearer home, not too long ago, you had the nerve centre of the Kannada film business—KG (Kempe Gowda) Road—bustling and teeming with die-hard and entertainment-seeking film buffs queuing up at the last vestiges of a handful of single screens that dotted its surroundings.

    Huge posters and cut-outs, traditional drums and percussion instruments and bursting of crackers, and dousing the cut-outs of favourite stars in milk, to sound the arrival of a new film at the theatre in all attendant fanfare were the fanboys’ way of greeting their reel gods.

    Even as each rising multiplex and mall sounded the death knell of the once upon a time pride of the Capital City Bengaluru, the single screens that purveyed ‘entertainment’ in multiple languages, thereby, acting as a unifying force of humanity, saw the arrival of Corona. In its wake, the very survival of the industry was put in jeopardy.

    From the month of March onward, you had the entire spectrum of the entertainment sector down shutters, as nations and governments grappled with the pandemic. Corona, like other epidemics and pandemics that have tested mankind’s resilience to fight the fatal diseases, has brought in a whole new lexicon of transaction by which the entertainment industry would conduct its business in future.

    Herein lies the nub of the problem that has put paid to Kannada Cinema’s otherwise unfettered stride in its over glorious 85-year chequered history.

    The Kannada film industry, in earlier times, was bogged down by the hegemony of other language films—in particular, Hindi films from Bollywood and English films from Hollywood; in addition to Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam from its southern siblings; and on top of all this, Bengali and Marathi too.

    It recently started getting into its own rhythm and finding its feet. So much so that it had pipped the much-envied Hindi cinema to the top spot as the highest film- producing industry in India. More happily so, giving the likes of big budgeted Bahubali and the like competition a taste of its own medicine.

    The last decade had seen Kannada Cinema on a great trot churning out more than 300 plus films a year in regimental fashion, both nurturing content-driven films and action surcharged, larger-than-life character-dominated money-spinners.

    According to Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy Chairman Sunil Puranik, Sandalwood’s annual turnover was around Rs 1,000 – Rs 1,500 crore. In addition to films, it produced quite a number of television shows as well.

    You had Rocking Star Yash’s KGF: Chapter 1, Rakshit Shetty’s Avane Srimannarayana, Rishab Shetty’s Bell Bottom, Raj B Shetty’s Ondu Motteya Kathe, Raam Reddy’s Thithi, Rama Rama Re and the like ensure that the competitive film industry marquee sit up and take notice of Kannada Cinema. Bollywood, in fact, picked up a few to be remade in Hindi.

    The 85-year-old Kannada film industry, which was enjoying an unprecedented productive spell of late, was suddenly left reeling under the deathly impact of Covid and was served a “death warrant.” Corona struck like a lightening out of the blue just as the Kannada film industry started to expand its regional imprint. It ground to dust all the good work and brownie points that the Kannada film industry had achieved in the last few years, leaving it totally adrift and in dire straits with a bleak and uncertain future driving it back to the drawing boards.

    The situation seemed very reminiscent of the troublesome and traumatic 105 days that the Kannada film industry had voluntarily shut down following the kidnapping of Sandalwood’s father figure thespian Dr Rajkumar by dreaded sandalwood smuggler Veerappan. The industry began to re-function only after the much-revered Annavaru was returned back into their midst and normalcy was ensured at KG Road and all across the State.

    Today though you have the industry stakeholders sitting on the edge of the fence with their monies locked up, wondering whether to take that leap of faith and board the Over The Top (OTT) bandwagon or wait for further normalcy to return for single screen theatres to function. Meanwhile, the losses incurred with each passing day due to this indecision is mounting tremendously.

    Darshan starrer Robertt, Puneeth Rajkumar’s Yuvarathna, Yash’s KGF: Chapter 2, Kotigobba-3, and Salagaare some of the many such big ticket films waiting in the wings for a much more conducive milieu to return to ensure that die-hard fans will fall back to the theatres to watch their favourite stars in action.

    A noted Kannada film producer notes that the pandemic induced paralysis of the film industry seems like a death warrant handed to people like him. He dismissively states that it is a waste of time to speculate when a vaccine would provide the sliver of silver lining for the industry in deep freeze, and that if the current situation persists, only divine intervention can save the industry.

    As part of its structured lifting up of its lockdown policy, the Centre recently gave the green signal for single screen halls and multiplexes to open from October 15 with the rider of only 50 per cent capacity.

    Mansore of Nathicharami fame took the bold decision of testing the waters with the release of his latest visitation at the turnstiles, Act 1978, in cinema halls. It was the first South Indian film release in a theatre post lockdown. However, on the first day, only a few brave hearts were in attendance, the fear of Corona possibly at the back of their minds. It is to be seen how many like Mansore will bite the bullet of uncertainty and release their big ticket heavy-budgeted star-shouldering films in the single screens in these uncertain times.

    The director, however, exudes confidence that that this is the right time to release smaller films at theatres since there would be no big-budget films to steal the thunder. According to him if his film even runs to 50 per cent capacity for at least three weeks, he would be able to recover a part of the production costs. Additionally, the OTT platform is always available post a theatrical release.

    Presently 13 single-screen theatres and a host of 46 multiplex screens are soldiering on with this new gambit.

    The Sandalwood mandarins though had thought it better to wait than bite the bait and burn their fingers. Hence, the release of big budgeted, mega star movies have all been put on hold in the hope of a better morrow.

    This brings to mind what a character in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey states: “Don’t open the pod bay doors, HAL. We need social distancing.” It looks like the Kannada film stakeholders have pressed the pause button on film releases to ensure that they don’t suffer huge losses. The entire film industry is unanimously waiting for good times and normalcy to resume before they can breathe easy.

    Of course, the OTT platforms may be providing a window of opportunity for the industry with just a handful, such as Bhinna, Law, French Birayani and Mane Number 13, taking courage to release their film on the Internet and test the pulse of the audiences.

    Some have also taken to re-releasing their films on OTT platforms. However, the muted and not-at-all-encouraging reception has deterred others from sullying the fate of their ambitious projects for which they have invested humungous sums of money.

    With “Social Distancing” becoming the new lingua franca of human transaction in these pandemic times and the whole world trying to adjust itself to the new social order of entertainment consumption, disruption has become the new global order in the way films are purveyed to the entertainment-starved audiences.

    After a great gambol run, the Kannada film industry has been finally been zapped by an existential crisis. Compelled to press the ‘entertainment’ rethink button, it has been brought down on its knees, like the situation the world over.

    Like a bolt out of the blue, [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]the Kannada film industry is faced with a new surreal Sisyphean dilemma. After scripting and spinning sagas after sagas and having the entire humanity in its thrall, it is now stumped by the Corona nemesis whose cataclysmic repercussions has shaken and stirred its very survival.[/highlight]

    The life-altering Corona has sent shockwaves through the ‘entertainment’ industry, fitfully and fearfully left staring into an abyss of uncertainty working out its losses with no early succour in sight.

    The Kannada film industry has indeed been pushed into a state of self-introspection and quick calculus mode, with ‘Social Distancing’ becoming the new currency of public transaction.

    With people dreadful of contracting Corona, not wanting to venture into crowded theatre, these are indeed tough times for Sandalwood satraps whose huge sums have been bankrolled in films that are yet to see the light of the day.

    With masks and sanitisers as additional gears for safety, how these extra appendages and expenditures are going to affect the film-going habits of the diaspora and change the very dynamics of savouring the film watching experience is to be seen.

    Given that cinema is a collective experience, how the post-Corona world would pan out is very hard to hazard be it at the single screens or the plus multiplex theatres facing a bleak future despite all the safety SOPs in place.

    With no quick-fix solution in sight, the entertainment industry per se is left with questions and searching for answers itself despite governmental interventions for the revival of the industry and those that are dependent on it for their livelihoods.

    For now, though, the Kannada film industry can only find a sliver of hope and consolation in the words of film director Christopher Nolan, “When this crisis passes, the need for collective human engagement, the need to live and love and laugh and cry together, will be more powerful than ever.” (quoted from The Washington Post)

    In that sense, in hindsight, Corona seems to be a God Send, providing the entertainment industry such as the Kannada film industry, a chance to rethink, rejig and revisit its monumental mistakes and assumption that “this is what the audience wants” and go for a complete changeover in the way the ‘entertainment’ industry functions henceforth in the near future.

    With producers and exhibitors waiting for cinema halls to return to full capacity and consciously shunning the OTT platforms all hopes now lie with the early founding of a possible vaccine for normalcy to return.

    Amidst this pall of gloom and despair, however, an optimistic few still hold onto the eternal hope that once the challenge of Covid 19 is conquered with the arrival of vaccine, audiences currently gorging on Netflix, Amazon Prime and other OTT streaming platform sumptuous menu of movies, would certainly throng back to the theatres.

    The [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]OTT platforms have in hindsight ensured a new visual literacy to the audiences and it would be up to filmmakers from now on to match this new sensitivity and approach to cinema when they take to making films in future.[/highlight] For, the familiar olden-days dross of mundane masalas would no longer cut the ice with audiences wanting to experience cinema on the big screens.

     

  • SPB — Tenor Nonpareil

    SPB — Tenor Nonpareil

    Here once was a colossus cultural phenomenon nonpareil — SPB — a peerless performer par excellence whose magical, mellow voice saw legions of listeners drawn like bees to a honeycomb, as if a Pied Piper has cast a spell upon them to transport them to an Elysian world.

    Like many of his ilk in his time, he has left us with a memory of his humungous achievements in this mortal life—4,000 plus songs, spanning over a chequered career of 50 sing-sing prodigious years. Covid may have consumed the great SPB at the ripe, still-active age of 74, but his rich, luminous legacy shall live forever. His life he led less ordinary. Led by his self-belief motto: I love my life. If possible, I do not want to die. I have a passion for life.

    Indeed, if only the Almighty Creator was as gracious and benevolent enough, the rotund, ever infectiously smiling super singer would still be busy recording, hopping from one studio to another, or performing live; bringing sunshine into the lives of people, up, close and personal. But then, trust one to be unable to defy one’s own date with destiny. It is, and was, not to be. Virtually battling for over a month with the deathly Corona, the songster who soothed many a soul with his rapturous renditions finally gave in, leaving the music world, both in India and the world, in deep mourning.

    So, Sripathi Panditaradhyula Balasubrahmayam, known more so as simply SPB, or Balu, faded away into the horizon, after living a fulfilling, fulsome life nestling in the hearts every human being by the songs he sang, by the peace and quietude they brought into the lives of ordinary mortals.

    A musician, playback singer, television anchor, music director, actor, dubbing artist, film producer, and a roly-poly powerhouse, perfectionist songster, he was not just phenomenally versatile. [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Tiaraed with a Padma Shri and a Padma Bhushan as crown jewels of an illustrious and fulfilling career, he was an iconic institution all by himself. [/highlight]

    SPB was a polyglot who had a flair and felicity for effortlessly rendering songs in 16 different languages. In addition to singing in the four major South Indian languages—Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam—SPB was also a virtuoso in Hindi, a terrain that even the likes of the exalted Kamal Haasan has not been able to conquer.

    And [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]records were like second nature for SPB, be it the Guinness Book of World Records for his 40,000 songs, or the coveted six National Film Awards for Best Male Playback Singer, or the recording of 21 songs in Kannada for composer Upendra Kumar from 9 am to 9 pm, or the 19 songs in Tamil and 16 songs in Hindi that he recorded on a single day.[/highlight]

    Of course, his dad being SP Sambamurthy, a Harikatha artist, it was only to be expected that this lad from a Telugu Brahmin family from Nellore, the erstwhile Madras Presidency, would take the trail less trodden and not the traditional ones of an engineer or a doctor or such other academic led careers.

    Despite enrolling himself in an engineering college, he gave it up, stricken by typhoid as well as total disinterest. The call of music was strong in the impressionable boy, so he pursued the study of musical notations, and very soon, while still a youth, he began his long and successful journey of winning music awards, one after the other.

    The decisive turn came in 1964 when he bagged the top prize at a music competition for amateurs as a leader of a light music troupe with an upstart/undiscovered Ilaiyaraaja as his chief guitar and harmonium accompanist. At his debut audition, SPB rendered Nilave Ennidam Nerungadhe, a song of his peer, a contemporary and equally-erudite crooner, PB Srinivas, who was more in the mould of Manna Dey and Mohammad Rafi.

    SPB doing a duet with KS Chithra
    SPB duet with KS Chithra. Photo courtesy: Jayanthjwala

    Brilliant with his boggling range of eclectic expressions and enthralling cadence that music directors expected of him and sought him for, he lit up the musical world, sticking true to the destined philosophy “I planned to be an engineer. Then music turned the course of my life. I realised not to plan and let things play out for me.” That was SPB.

    SPB made his debut with Sri Sri Sri Maryada Ramanna (1966), a Telugu film. Eight days after that first recording, he sang for a Kannada film. However, it was the 1980 Telugu film Sankarabharanam and his classical Carnatic rendition of the songs that pitchforked him into the big league. Despite not being classically trained, SPB’s impeccable aesthetic music sense and renditions fetched him his first of four National Film Awards for Best Male Playback Singer.

    For the Carnatic-oriented songs in Saagara Sangamam (1983) and Rudraveena (1988), Ilaiyaraaja and him won the National Film Awards for Best Music Director and Best Male Playback Singer, respectively. SPB was a super success in the cinema of Hindi too. He received a National Award for Best Playback Singer for Ek Duuje Ke Liye.

    In 1989, he became the singing voice of the young-as-a-yuppie upstart Salman Khanin Maine Pyar Kiya. In 1994, his rendition for Didi Tera Devar Deewana in Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! turned him into the Dil Deewana for the audiences of the North of the Vindhayas, firmly cementing his place in Mumbai as well as the recess of India’s cow belt. Indeed, [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]SPB became the offscreen voice of the bad boy of Bollywood in the same manner as his equally ersatz senior Kishore Kumar had earlier become Rajesh Khanna’s singing alter ego.[/highlight]

    AR Rahman’s score in Mani Ratnam’s Roja ensured SPB would be sought after if his alto voice was required to niftily render the soothing lyrics in all its nuances and notes.

    As if playback singing was not enough proof of his virtuousness, you had the legend lending his voice to Kamal Haasan, Rajinikanth, Vishnuvardhan, Salman Khan, K Bhagyaraj, Mohan, Anil Kapoor, Girish Karnad, Gemini Ganesan, Arjun Sarja, Nagesh, Karthik, and Raghuvaran in as many languages as they acted in, proving that dubbing too came as easily as singing a song in the studio or in front of a packed auditoriums the world over.

    A prodigious, youthful and zestful singer blessed with that rare artistry in several languages, his evergreen songs that embellished the Indian movie marquee for half a century has left a treasure trove of glistening gems, such as Aayiram Nilavae Vaa for MGR in Adimaippenn, Iyarkai Ennum Ilaya Kanni for Gemini Ganesan in Shanti Nilayam, Tere Mere Beech Mein Kaisa Ye Bandhan  for Kamal Haasan in Ek Duuje Ke Liye,  Pehla Pyar Hai for Salman Khan in Hum Aaapke Hain Kaun,  and Dorakuna Ituyanti Seva and Saamaja Varagamana for JV Somayajulu in Shankarabharanam.

    With a mirthful, mischievous laugh here, and an angst-ridden sigh there, playful, and pert, [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]SPB has lent a uniqueness to his repertoire,  rendering songs that are an inseparable part of the common man’s everyday lives.[/highlight]

    The words of the Bard of Avon William Shakespeare, “All the world’s a stage… And one man in his time plays many parts” ring so true for SPB. The velvety voice with its multifarious mellifluousness that brought meaning to our existence will never be stilled. Like many of the other greats before him whose works still resonate and reside with us, quite many of the innumerable songs of this gentle genius genie have become a part of our collective conscience and shall for a very long time becalm and be a balm to soothe the void.

     

    Header pic: The then-Union Minister Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu presents the centenary award to SPB at IFFI-2016. Also seen is Shri Laxmikant Parsekar & Shri Mukesh Khanna, CM of Goa, & Chairman of the Children’s Film Society of India, respectively, in 2016. Source: PIB

     

  • Mysskin — Missing the forest for the trees

    Mysskin — Missing the forest for the trees

    A perspective peek at the nonet of films that have pitchforked Mysskin into the exalted realm of Kollywood’s cinematic sense

     

    Straddling the Kollywood movie marquee in the last dozen plus years like a lodestar among his peers, Tamil film director Mysskin, nee Shanmugha Raja, since his trailblazing debut in 2006 with Chithiram Pesuthadi, has been the toast of elitist and eclectic film critics, especially in Tamil Nadu. So much so, he has been [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]valorised as a shrewd filmmaker whose films carry a certain idiom of visual expression to his narratives, of which much has been written about in eulogising terms. Given that they take an academic approach to film criticism glossing over the film’s otherwise mundane and banal reality.[/highlight]

    Sure enough, basking in this newfound fame of critics’ fascination with his films, you have had the director unabashedly flaunting his erudition and education on cinema, from its aesthetics to its functionality, and naming the choicest celebrated auteurs who have influenced his appreciation and understanding of the craft, which “finds visual expression” in his own films.

    Born Shanmugha Raja, he went on to baptise himself professionally as Mysskin—much inspired by Prince Myshkin, the protagonist in Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky’s celebrated classic novel The Idiot.

    His low budget directorial debut Chithiram Pesudhadi coveted critical appreciation for his unique narrative style and mise en scene, while Anjathey, his sophomore essay, catapulted him into the big league of the Kollywood film industry, making him a name to watch out for with awe. His subsequent forays have brought him much appreciation and accolades for his visual style and directorial acumen. Additionally, [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Mysskin has been hailed as one of the trendsetters of contemporary Tamil cinema, changing its otherwise accepted staid image of rolling out familiar flicks in an assembly line fashion.[/highlight]

    Given his favourite subjects—his protagonists, caught on the wrong side of the law, are violent and bloody thirsty in nature—his films have also been termed as dark, dismal and dreary.

    In a Masterclass on Film Appreciation with film critic Baradwaj Rangan, you have Mysskin profoundly stating, “Cinema acts as a therapy when any good story is properly told. It also acts as a metaphor.”  Citing Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped and Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, among the films that have greatly influenced him, Mysskin eulogises, “Simplicity is the hallmark of a classic.” He goes on to say, “ If Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky were alive today, they would be making films.”

    In another interview, justifying the excessive, and graphic, violence in his latest film, Psycho, Mysskin says, “All sincere stories have death. All sincere stories have murders. All sincere stories are full of evil.”  Further, the director has no qualms about blatantly justifying stalking as a means of expressing one’s love to another. “I like my protagonists to be like lightening. Their unpredictability creates an interest in my audience.”

    If only one could fulsomely agree with Mysskin’s idea of cinema and appreciate his approach to film making, which is quite the contrarian to the classics and the masters of cinema and their influences that he so effusively cites in interview after interview!

    Of the nine films in his repertoire so far, nearly four of them virtually run on the time-tested template of most violent and virulent bloodletting, be it his very first foray, Chithiram Pesuthadi, wherein you have the protagonist turn hit man to stave off his debtors, or Anjathey, where you have the reckless hero indulging in violent tiffs, before turning into a new leaf to wear khaki. Thereafter, in Yuddam Sei you have a trail of bloody bodies as a CID officer embarks on a mission to trace his missing sister. Mugamoodi, inspired by various comic book heroes, has the hero chasing criminals who leave a trail of dead bodies.

    And not to discount his latest and most obnoxious, Psycho, whose serial killer hero systematically severs heads of females leaving their decapitated bodies in the open for the police to find.

    However, his Nandalala, incidentally inspired by Takeshi Kitano’s Kikujiro, is surprisingly sublime and sedate, marking a clear departure from his violent preoccupation. Other equally enterprising ensembles that provide a saner, subtler and much appreciable side of Mysskin are Onaayum Aattukkuttiyum, Pisasu and Thupparivaalan—the last being an ode to Sherlock Holmes and his Baker Street irregulars.

    If Onaayum Aattukkuttiyum provides a comedic but realistic portrayal of how good Samaritans end up being culprits for having done a good deed of saving a dying man on the street, Pisasu with its ghost thriller angle spotlights on various social issues.

    Otherwise, you have Mysskin faithfully following in the footsteps of Asian directors such as Takeshi Kitano, Kim Ki Duk, Park Chan-wook, and Miike Takashi known for their bloody, gut-wrenching violent portrayals, and American director Quentin Tarantino known for his macabre violent films full of blood, guts, and gore.

    It is understandable and somewhat acceptable that film directors such as Mysskin resort to stark depiction of visual violence as mise en scène acting as a crucible for social commentary on marginal lives ostracised by social opprobrium and driven by circumstances. However, one is unable to digest the fact that where subtlety and nuanced narration and suggestive visuals could effectively convey the angst and anxiety of these fringe people, Mysskin prefers distasteful and disgusting visualisation of violence to evoke empathy towards the victims. According to him, these persons, who come across as violent, if showered with affection, love and care, which job is conveniently left to female protagonists, change, and are otherwise benign souls but for mitigating circumstances.

    It is at this juncture, one would hazard to state, that [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]cinema, given its overarching influence on susceptible and impressionable minds, needs certain modicum of sanctity. A certain ethical sense of sensitivity. An iota of sanitation. A dose of subtlety and sensitisation. Above all, certain aesthetics whose narrative does not cross the Rubicon of excessiveness to achieve its larger social and moralistic purpose.[/highlight]

    For, cinema is a collective experience. The visual images received and assimilated in the receptacle of the darkened theatre is subconsciously internalised into an individual’s own moral and ethical dispositions and the cultural moorings that they have evolved from. The majority of these audiences are unable to differentiate between reel depictions and the harsh reality of their own everyday existence.

    That being the case, it indeed becomes incumbent and imperative upon a film maker to realise his immense responsibility and ethical duty towards civil society and the disparate audiences that come to watch his films drawn by the media-created halo, and to ensure that his films do not corrupt the gullible or vitiate the discerning and more cinema literate viewers’ sensibilities.

    Given that each person carries his/her own individual experience and understanding from the visual narrative they have been relentless bombarded with for the nearly three-hour-plus running time of the film—most of Mysskin’s films are that long—it becomes imperative that the film does not leave a bitter aftertaste.

    Mysskin on the setsMysskin may argue that his foregrounding of gut-wrenching violence is to specifically critique the social inequalities and the disenchantment that his protagonists find themselves in, in the world around them, and speak of the trauma of societal alienation, and therefore, in response, brutally lash out. But it is a given fact that, unlike in a majority of narrative cinema, the characters’ violent actions do not necessarily lead to “empathetic” resolution.

    Instead, as researchers note, violence only creates a recursive loop, as is evidenced in the brutal killings, rapes and other forms of real-life violent incidents that one sees in real society today.

    Instead of being a cathartic experience, the brutal cinemas of directors who push the representation of violence to its point of acme, repeatedly, using it as a justified means to legitimate ends, has only triggered a wave of such formulaic films to cash in on its success.

    By their celebration of violence in the most stylistic fashion, such as in Mysskin’s Psycho, they become counter-productive to their intended objective, leading to misplaced formulations of masculinity, driven by the viewer’s sense of self-esteem and personal identity injured and defeated by social injustices.

    Violent depictions of this sort only catalyse and instigate the minds of susceptible and vulnerable audiences to mimic their theatrical experience in their own real existence as a form of valorous requirement, justifying their acts that run contrary to the very ethos of normal, law abiding, socially obligatory living.

    It is here that Mysskin’s handful of films and his central motif of taming the violent brute in the form of an understanding, all-sacrificing female principle is contrarian to his own assimilated views on cinema, given his exhaustive reading and learnings about films and film making and cinema as an art form.

    One would like to suggest that Mysskin works on the rather indulgent self-belief that the majority of the audiences who grace his films seeking “entertainment” would also be erudite enough to read the metaphors, symbolisms and allegories and appreciate the fine craft of cinematic excellence that he is trying to bring from his own knowledge and education.

    [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]Unfortunately, these “cinema illiterate” as well as “poorly literate” masses who indulge in such “escapist entertainment” to rid themselves of their diurnal worries and problems, wistfully cheer at the goings on, being lost in the world of make-believe, unlike erudite critics who seek to gloss over the film’s inherent dangers at the peripheral level and its construct of images[/highlight], perforce, mandatorily mimic it in real life, being overawed by its enticing allurement to uplift themselves from their own station in society and living conditions.

    The larger and purposefully intended motif and metaphors of Mysskin’s films are simply lost in the high decibel volatile action and explicit execution, and thereby, fails the very idea of cinema that Mysskin venerates and espouses but himself shirks to take up. His mind weighed heavily by the commercial dynamics of a film’s destiny at the box office and the purse strings of the producers rather than aesthete aspects, Mysskin’s films end up striking a discordant, disquieting note.

    Gainsay, one could accede to a more pedantic and popular academic /theoretical approach that each of the actions has been specifically designed to convey a certain metaphor or to allegorise on the state of mind to the spectator. As to how much of these are meaningfully assimilated by the viewers who come primarily for “time-pass” and “entertainment” and become inured so as to eschew it themselves in their own real life, though, is rather moot.

    For, instances have been cited by police and investigative agencies of crimes committed in real life wherein culprits have confessed to being inspired by depictions of brutal graphic mutilations, including severed heads, in mainstream films such as Mysskin’s Psycho.

    Mysskin’s arguments, as he depicts through his heroines, who, invariably, fall in love or are forced to fall in love and be empathetic with the troubled protagonists, and through their love, care, affection and understanding will reform, is just a fallacious one, as social realistic bespeak otherwise, much as directors may try to dismiss them as being a result of their cinemas.

    While [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]films of the genre of Mysskin’s may make handsome material for contemporary critical discourses on flawed individuals and society at large, raising false hopes of acceptance of judiciously unpardonable crimes committed by the protagonist who in real life has to pay the price for such heinous acts, in reality they cannot be so easily dismissed and one needs to take a very strong stand against such films, the nature of their on-screen violence, and the absurd play of narratives that they bring into their equally trite and mundane tales.[/highlight]

    It is an undeniable fact that films with violence have come to sadly represent a growing trend in the booming film industry of India. Take the case of Anurag Kashyap and his ilk whose every second film turn out to be a celebration of violence and machismo in its most depressing regularity. Such stylised superficiality only give audiences an adrenaline rush as they watch the proceedings in the darkened recess of film theatres when in actuality in real life things may not work the same with no time for rationale thought whatsoever.

    With filmmakers’ sense of commitment to mirror social reality hardly remaining untarnished by strong market force influences, despite cinema being described as an art form to creatively portray social reality, the drive to link the success of a film to box office returns with attendant commercial claptraps puts to shade the real intent of directors, much as critics may sing paeans about their products in esoteric terms.

    Profit prioritisation overpowering their films’ social and developmental goals, [highlight background=”#f79126″ color=”#ffffff”]obscenity, lewdness, and violence have emerged as an integral feature of Indian cinema and a sure-fire success[/highlight] to their own popularity and pulling power.

    Finally, there are two schools of thought on this issue. One line of thinking being that films can never affect or reform the social body or events taking place within it. The other believing that the medium does have a direct or indirect impact on social streams, even though it may not be immediately perceptible. As usual, the ball is in the spectator’s court even as censor and certification boards lock horns with filmmakers on what is the done thing and what is not.

    For now, fired by the patronising criticism of his films more from the perspective of film form and technique and their metaphors and allegories rather than the quality of content and the crass way it is treated and purveyed to gleeful audiences with wet, hanging tongues, Mysskin is enjoying a great gambol run with his kind of cinema.

     

     

    Editor’s note: Earlier in the year, Super Deluxe, a film co-scripted by Mysskin had won the Film Critics Circle of India Award for the Best Indian Film of 2019

    https://filmcriticscircle.com/journal/super-deluxe/

     

    [divider top=”yes” anchor=”#” style=”default” divider_color=”#999999″ link_color=”#999999″ size=”2″ margin=”0″]

    IMDB link — Mysskin

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  • Pandemic pummels cinema into existential vortex

    Pandemic pummels cinema into existential vortex

    Pandemic pummels cinema into existential vortex

    Don’t open the pod bay doors, Hal. We need social distancing.

    2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

     

     

    Nothing can be alarmingly apocryphal than the above lines from the nearly four decade old film. ‘Social Distancing’ has become the new lingua franca of human transaction in this pandemic times with the whole world trying to adjust itself to the new social order of communication and entertainment consumption. Yes. Nothing can be truer than for the world of films and the entertainment industry.

    Change being the only constant, disruption has become new global order in the way businesses are transacted. Sure. After a great gambol run for 125 years since its birth, the moving images industry, more prominent by its popular moniker ‘Entertainment Industry’ has been finally zapped by existential crisis pressing the rethink button.

    The entire industry has been brought on its knees world over. It is as if the industry that was sailing on the placid waters of regimental movie making has now simply keeled over with a new surreal Sisyphean dilemma.

     

    Bolt out of the blue

    Like a bolt out of the blue, the film industry, which scripted and spun sagas after sagas, having the entire humanity in its thrall, from bygone silent to talkies to celluloid spools to modern day digital domain era has been stumped by its nemesis. These 125 years, has been snared by a real-life script whose cataclysmic repercussions it could not have fathomed, despite its own flight of fancy disposition.

    But then one sci-fi script writer indeed foresaw the day when the entire humanity would be shaken and stirred for survival a decade ago. What he did not foresee was that the very industry he represented would also be sucked in its whirlpool. It looks so apocalyptic today, in hindsight.

     

    Harsh reality 

    Contagion (2011) by Steven Soderbergh, consumed as fanciful, febrile imagination, purely to give its watchers heebee jeebees edge-of-the-seat experience as the thriller trundled towards its climatic denouement, has indeed become a harsh reality today.

    Thanks to Covid-19, the vicious virus that simply snuffs out life catching people gasping for breath, taking an octopus grip on their genetic system. Even Soderbergh could not have envisioned such a blockbuster thriller would actually happen in real life when his very own “Contagion,” hit the screens to fade out without much fancy or fanfare.

    The life altering Covid-19 has sent shockwaves through the global ‘entertainment’ industry gnawed by angst and anxiety, fitfully and fearfully, left staring into an abyss of uncertainty working out its losses in billions and crores of dollars and rupees, respectively.

    Film festivals after film festivals have had to go online with no end in sight as to when the pandemic would let humanity breathe easy and allow normalcy to return. Streaming films and seeking donations to sustain the industry and organisations from sure death has become the way of life today.

    Further, rubbing salt into the festering wound afflicted by Covid-19 is the social distancing norms. With no succour or survival in sight, you had a bevy of producers with a huge cache of investment locked in their unreleased films left with no choice but boarding the Over-The-Top (OTT) bandwagon.

     

    Series of releases in 2020

    The first to do so being Shoojit Sircar’s Gulabo Sitabo, featuring the irrepressible and ageless baritoned Big B. Then you had the Tamil films Ponmagal Vandhal and Penguin, followed by the Malayalam film Sufiyum Sujatayum, and the Hindi films Dil Bechara and Shakuntala Devi, among a host of others, with more to follow.

    In Karnataka, you had actor Puneet Rajkumar’s production house, PRK Productions, releasing both their films, French Biriyani and Law, on OTT platforms rather than waiting for things to settle down and have their investments frozen without any immediate returns and testing the fate of their fares through a theatrical release.

    The OTT streaming media service, which is offered directly to viewers via the Internet, bypasses cable, broadcast, and satellite television platforms, seemingly the available alternative to fight the virus and ensure the entertainment industry’s lifeline, which has been pushed into the ICU.

    Yes, the once Rock of Gibraltar of Entertainment that staved through tectonic shifts that sought to shake its very foundation in these 125 years seems to have finally found its nemesis in the face of Big C. Yes , Covid-19, which spells dread, doom, death and destruction in the diaspora.

    The film industry has been pushed into self-introspection and some quick calculus. With ‘Social Distancing’ becoming the new currency to insulate and isolate citizens from contracting the virus, the entertainment industry’s very survival, which thrives on audiences’ thirst for ‘escapist’ entertainment and congregation at malls and multiplexes, finds itself totally in tatters and teetering into uncertainty times.

    With people dreadful of contracting Covid-19, not wanting to venture into crowded theatre, in this Internet & Mobile Age, streaming provides a plausible answer in these tough times where huge sums have been bankrolled and one needs to recover investment made and ensure that timeline commitments are kept.

    With analysts predicting a bloodbath for the industry staring at a $20 billion plus loss, the industry is in for a long haul. Covid-19 seems to have sent local producers on the mend. Film makers and producers are rethinking shooting strategies. Instead of exotic locations they are scouting for locales within the country, even putting shoots on hold.

     

    Humungous loss

    With movie theatres shut and a feeble chance of screens opening anytime soon, estimates state that exhibition companies alone are expected to lose about 35% revenue; that’s about Rs 4,000 crore worth box office collection in 2020, when compared to the same period last year.

    Post the pandemic, ‘Social Distancing’ being new normal for moviegoers, it is to be seen how the entertainment industry will navigate the new disruptive dynamics of film making, marketing and audiences consuming film for entertainment rather than engagement.

    With masks and sanitisers additional gears for safety if one were to have their passage of rite into theatres, it is to be seen how these extra appendages and expenditures are going to affect the film going habits of the diaspora, especially, in India, where cinema is an opiate.

    With the return of die-hards itself a big question mark as to how one would savour the film watching experience with the anointing of posters, tall cutouts that fans would then douse in several gallons of milk deifying their screen idols and heap glory on their films spraying coins, certain to be a thing of the past, cinema viewing will never be the same again.

    Given that cinema is a collective experience with strangers and friends in the darkened theatre all this is sure to change post-Covid-19 world. While cinema halls, including the plush and posh multiplex theatres facing a bleak future despite all the safety SOPs in place ensuring virtually no human contact scenario, OTT platform seems the only window of opportunity for now.

    For a few years now, theatres around the world have rued the decrease in footfalls and this has traditionally been blamed on the rising popularity of streaming services. Due to the pandemic, people are now filling the void of out-of-home entertainment with streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

    The threat of Covid-19 has brought cinema — the making of films, screening and viewing — to a standstill, and the impact is being felt across segments. With OTT as the new platform here to stay, differentiated content and diligent scripts needs to be the order of the day if films are to covet the attention of audiences and make them loosen their purse strings to the streaming platforms where their favourite films are featured.

    Sure enough, the industry needs to self-introspect as also adopt a more realistic approach as to which would work and which won’t on the OTT and digital platforms. The enterprising newbies in the business have shown that one is able to tweak the content to suit the picky palate of audiences who are fed up of dross dished out in the name of ‘family entertainment’. Another aspect is the fact that new age actors and directors who are ready to experiment with nuanced, unchartered topics OTT would best serve their interests.

    Yes, pushed to the brink of ‘rejig’ and ‘revive’ mode, it is crystal clear that mindless entertainment will no longer suffice to see surge of audiences. Even good content may not be sufficient. Only good filmmaking in true sense of the language of cinema will.

    The exposure of audiences in this digital age to the craft of cinema has made the art of filmmaking and the way the narrative is structured and dealt with in a nuanced manner, and it has become a necessary component in addition to having just a good tale to tell.

     

    No quick-fix solution

    A taut screenplay, better understanding of the grammar and idiom of cinema, realistic and relatable portrayals and technical virtuousness are sure to make digital home viewing experience as effective as theatrical viewing.

    Needless to state, there is no single quick-fix solution to the situation. The entertainment industry per se must pose the questions and seek the answers itself. Mere artistic freedom won’t do. There is more to cinema and movies than peddling stuff in the garb of entertainment and that is what the audience want.

    Any crisis it is seen throws open several possibilities to break the standard pattern. Will the need for new and engaging, differentiated and truthful content break the existing patterns of filmmaking and distribution/release?

    Will one witness another new resurgence in the wake of the crisis? How engaging and emphatic will these films be with the intended audiences may be the real test of character of both the film and its makers.

    The basic unique selling proposition of OTTs is that one can watch the film of one’s choice at one’s own pace and several times over and switch from one film to another depending upon the mood and preference.

    Furthermore, OTT platforms come with oodles of freedom. It frees one from the hassle of online booking, mask and sanitiser, arriving punctual at the show timing, and concurrent cost beyond the film in terms of a coke or a popcorn or a burger or a samosa to whet one’s appetite or satiate one’s thirst, eating into one’s already poor pocket given the price of a show’s ticket.

    According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, India will be the tenth-largest market for OTT in terms of revenue in 2022, with mobile internet subscribers increasing to an estimated 805 million from 406 million in 2017.

    Similarly, the Ernst & Young-FICCI 2020 report on Media & Entertainment states that the paid OTT subscriber base, which is around 10 million in India now, is expected to see a further spike thanks to the new situation, while theatre-going audience numbers 100 million.

    With no new films and footfall in movie halls, theatre owners are looking at a new avenue for launching their projects — OTT platforms such Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and other international and regional counterparts.

    Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hotstar were once the favourite online streaming services available in India. But now homegrown brands such as MX Player, ZEE5, SunNXT, Manorama Max and Jio Cinema are gaining ground.

     

    Win-win situation

    But for small films OTTs seem the best bet.  It is a win-win for both the producers and the streaming platforms. A film released on an online platform means the producer is not just paid for it but also need not worry about distributors and expenses for theatrical exhibitions. The OTT platform gains because a new film premiered means more subscriptions for the platform, thereby leading to a revenue surge for streaming services.

    Owing to the fear of catching the big C, people may surely think twice before catching a film at the theatre. However, online platforms that provide an alternative to big-screen halls are constrained by the fact that their reach is limited and is primarily dependent on who has subscribed to which platform.

    Multiplexes who till the other day were shy of providing premium slots to regional films will perforce have to change their approach for, with OTT and digital platforms changing the way audiences consume cinema, henceforth, it is bound to impact the footfall at the theatres with new habits like watching movies at one’s convenience, place and time becoming the new order of entertainment.

    Monopoly of multiplexes may be a thing of the past as the biggest differentiator of digital platforms is their easy accessibility and the convenience of consuming entertainment in the cozy confines of one’s living/bedroom, even while on the go in one’s car or while waiting for friends.

    But then, industry watchers believe that people will always prefer the theatre to watch films for it’s not just the story or film but also the experience. Cinematic experience can’t be enjoyed on hand-held devices or large screen TVs.

    Cinema being more of a collective experience there seems to be a semblance of hope. While movies will continue to be an integral part of India’s social fabric, the industry is hopeful, as director Christopher Nolan wrote recently, in The Washington Post, “When this crisis passes, the need for collective human engagement, the need to live and love and laugh and cry together, will be more powerful than ever.”

     

    God-sent crisis

    In hindsight though, Covid-19 seems to be God Send. It provides the film industry, such as the Kannada film industry, a chance to rethink, rejig and revisit its monumental mistakes and assumptions that “this is what the audience wants” and so we give it to them. This gives the men/women that matter much food for thought. With Covid-19 sending them back to the drawing table, it provides them headwinds to chalk out what is best in the interests of the industry and the audience per se.

    From eschewing expenditures on Big Ticket productions that hardly bring back expected Return on Investment, to Scripts, which, on paper, looks promising, turning out duds, needless and fanciful excursions to exotic locations to film a song or two, sheer waste of precious capital.

    Will Covid-19, in its aftermath, bring about a complete changeover in the way the ‘entertainment’ industry functions henceforth in near future? Only time can tell.

    Will the Mandarins of Movie Business, think beyond ‘Entertainment’ to ‘Engagement’ & ‘Socially Conscious Aesthetic Cinemas’? We have to wait & watch.

    Will soothsayer Nolan’s words come true? Only time will tell. Until then OTT will be the passage of rite for the entertainment industry as it finds its feet back and ensure the return of the golden days of theatrical experience to savour and soak in the magic and marvel of movies.

    For now though it is indeed a Sisyphean sojourn as Covid-19 provides the entertainment industry a golden opportunity to clean its Augean Stables and take a 360 degree turn for better to provide more engaging, enterprising, and ensemble cinemas, rather than take a blinkered box office view and churn out dross after dross in the name of entertainment.

    Yes, it all depends on the ideators, the movie makers and their innate cinema sensibilities and approach to the very idea of cinema and its larger socio-cultural and aesthetic purpose beyond pure play entertainment. Well-thought narratives, with new engaging content, compact and crisp budget films could just be best bet. But then can our filmmakers see the writing on the wall and change for the better?

     

    See also:

    https://filmcriticscircle.com/journal/on-the-illusion-of-sounds-and-images-and-of-perception-and-escapism/