Journal of Indian Cinema

Author: S Viswanath

  • IFFI at 50 — a reality check

    IFFI at 50 — a reality check

    Weighed in by the baggage of Bollywood and chasing the chimera of star power to pull audiences to international film festival seems to have taken the sheen off IFFI, & Goa as a film destination is losing its ground.

     

    “Being at a film festival reminds me of the power of film. The power that we have in our hands. Telling specific stories that start the debate that is needed today, and that connect you with realities that you had no idea were connected.”

    -Diego Luna (Mexican actor)

     

    From the momentous summer of January 24, 1952, to November 20, 2019, the International Film Festival of India, has come a long way. One of the most coveted festival dos for the who’s who of cinema, and the most significant of film festivals this side of the continent, IFFI turns 50 promoting the crema la crema of cinemas from the world over.

    From the Commercial Capital of Maximum City Mumbai to the sun kissed, sea and sand drenched tourist El Dorado of Goa, where it has found a permanent home these last 11 years, IFFI, in these last 50 years, has grown in stature, size and significance, has assiduously stood as one of the foremost flagbearers of Indian cinemas for the world to sit up and take notice.

    International Film Festival of India or better known by its acronym – IFFI, has been assiduously providing a common platform for cinemas of the world to project the excellence of film art; contributing to understanding and appreciation of film cultures of different nations in the context of their social and cultural ethos.

    Since its inception in 1952, IFFI has steadfastly nurtured and inspired Indian cinema introducing it to world outside as well as many audiences that coexist in this vast and diverse country. From a modest 23 nations in 1952 to over 65 plus countries in the ensuing 2019 edition, IFFI in its 50 years of existence, has also seen the cinemas being showcased as also audiences that make it to the Mecca of Festival Movies seen manifold jump in numbers each edition every year.

    However, 11 editions on at the permanent venue of Goa, IFFI seems to be on the wane and lost its pull power and punch. Of course, IFFI is toasting its 50th or Golden Jubilee this November. But time has come for a reality check and some soul searching on the part of the Entertainment Society of Goa as also Directorate of Film Festivals, Information & Broadcasting Ministry.
    For a festival that is India’s ambassador to the outside world on the cinemas it produces within, as also films that it showcases from across the globe, that IFFI it seems is regretfully suffering from an identity crisis of sorts, which is indeed a cause for much concern and serious introspection.

    For one who has been attending the annual jamboree religiously it is sad to note that not only is the footfall dropping by the year but also the quality of cinemas being showcased slowly, but sadly, on the decline. Given that platforms like IFFI provide the universal window to the best of best contemporary cinemas globally made one’s expectations and anticipation the festival would better and best itself from its early edition is humungous. That it has been to the contrary only saddens the cineaste in one as it has been a shot in the darkness picking up the best of film to watch at IFFI in recent times.

    Then, the reasons are not far to seek, nor is it tough to tackle the teething issues that dog one of country’s most coveted and much anticipated calendar call specially for the avowed cinephiles from across the country.

    That in the absence of a sizeable local population gracing the festival and it is those 1000s of aficionados especially from Karnataka, Kerala, Chennai, Maharashtra and other distant places who make up the festival crowd should waken up the officials who seem to have gone into a deep slumber and taken it for granted that IFFI would succeed against all odds. But that is not the case.

    The first and foremost problems with IFFI is that despite being Directorate of Film Festivals’ baby, I&B ministry has conveniently thrown its baby into the bathtub of ESG, which is a worrisome factor. That Karnataka, which at one time has boasted of the finest of infrastructure to host film festivals as also given its much more mature and cinema conscious audiences, lost out due to political reasons is another matter.

    That ESG though situated in the epicentre of IFFI venue is still unable to come to grips with meeting the expectations of the avowed lovers of cinema is a matter of deep anguish and shame. The mishandling of entry at venues, the total absence of budgeted food courts and the glitches of online booking of tickets are just tip of the iceberg.

    Also that the MCs who introduce the films to the audience has no knowledge of cinema whatsoever and mouth their introductions in rote like robots is another dampener. If one had expected ESG to have sorted out these issues, I am afraid it has not and ironically, the problems are only compounding each passing year.

    One of the other major issue with IFFI, has been the organisers unabashed fixation with Bollywood and its equally cinema illiterate clan. The inaugural this time was a classic example of how a festival of serious and aesthetic cinema should not be.
    The whole exercise turns into a vacuous one and more of a platform for the invited stars and starlets to promote their own films and agendas than help enhance the prestige and brand of IFFI. Where was the necessary for a Koffee with Karan kind of balderdash that too at an inaugural, not to mention the thamasha in the form of impromptu jigs and jives which do not in any way go with the essential spirit and larger context of a cinema carnival like IFFI is being hosted and held.

    With emphasis more on playing host to a retinue of Bollywood stars for the sake of sound bytes and a few lines in the print the quintessential soul and solemnity of IFFI is shrouded in ritualistic reality show than be the platform to enhance the cinematic experience as also educate the audiences on better understanding and appreciation of cinema in its multifarious forms. Instead of being a well spring for the who’s who of regional cinema to showcase the diversity that India is, except for the token Panorama Section, which has its own biased and parochial considerations of which film find their way into the screening scroll, for the aspiring talents of the country to learn from the films being showcased as key takeaways, IFFI has only turned into a jaunt where freewheelers and tourists are wooed to experience the marvels that Goa offers for itinerant travelers than hardcore lovers of serious and art house auteur oeuvres.

    Where a better financial planning and budgeting could help IFFI to be the best single window showcase to the crème la crème of cinemas of the world, precious money of the exchequer is being frittered away in hosting and housing invitees in star hotels and hiring a retinue of college students to conduct them from one party to another and ferry them to other personal itineraries than IFFI. That film makers across the country only grace IFFI only as official invitees when their films are part of the panorama and do not grace it otherwise only speaks of the scant regard and least priority that they hold IFFI in their personal scheme of things.
    Instead of being a platform where every participant would sorely rue that he did not attend IFFI, the annual festival has conveniently become a ritualistic exercise where a clique of officials and organisers and a few hard followers of serious cinema gather. For the reset though IFFI is as good as not there at all with film festivals held in almost every City and State capital of the country. More than being a best reason to be part of IFFI the festival seems to simply shut the doors given its mismanagement as the depleting footfalls and decreasing quality of cinemas being showcased tell their sorry tale.

    Yes, as IFFI gears itself to toast its 50th year, and Goa, host its 12th edition, it is time the powers that be and well-wishers of cinema as a pure play art form where the aesthetic, creative and best of cinemas showcased ensure the best of talents also make it a point to attend and savour the magic and marvel of movies, it would not be wrong to sing the dirge for IFFI and Goa as a permanent host. If IFFI has to face the test of times it is time officials wake up to the reality that stares at them and set about cleansing the Augean stables and put IFFI on the right track.

    Yes, it is a Herculean task. But it is now or never. The ball is in ESG and DFF courts. Are the officials listening? Come November 20, 2019 true blue cinema lovers will know the answer. Until then it is adios amigos and Vive La Cinema.

  • A pale, placid take on female empowerment

    A pale, placid take on female empowerment

    Women centric films, in the garb of female empowerment, have become the new normal in Bollywood lately. Focusing on issues that women negotiate in today’s times, these films seek to provide a new ideological template by which they seek audiences’ indulgence in the dramaturgy they unspool through their women protagonists.

    Taking incidents from real life, and providing fictionalised construct to them, more so, to burnish them with enough visual “oomph” to woo the gullible and not so “literate” cinema audiences, these film makers are doing grave injustice to women folk.

    Providing their own quick fix, quirky solutions to fight women victims’ demons of their lives, instead of an engaging, eclectic and realistic cinemas, dealt with subtlety and sensitivity their subjects deserved, these film makers, more with eye on box office, turn them into perfunctory exercise than with seriousness they deserve.

    Instead of a well-meaning social treatise to enlighten and open up their audiences to the harsh new realities these directors and their films merely indulge in tokenism their loyalties remaining elsewhere, tacitly with the producer and where the moolah is.

    For the solutions or closures these film makers provide to their troubled female protagonists, turn more damaging and damning than realistic and plausible, thereby perpetuating the already prevalent social ills that one sees and reads every day.

    It is in this context one likes to explore Aruna Raje Patil’s Marathi film Firebrand, steaming on Netflix and produced by Hollywood diva Priyanka Chopra’s Purple Pebble Pictures.

    Director Raje, one likes to posit in this treatise that, skimming the surface of the problem she dwells into, woefully provides a skewed prescription that does great disservice to her own ilk rather than turn into a wonderful and creative cinema it could have been had she not so succumbed to the dictates of box office and banal economics.

    At the heart of Firebrand is a Dalit. A rape victim, seriously suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder at that. She is a feminist lawyer as well to boot. Every epitome of modern day go-getter woman. In fact, director Aruna Raje had a cracker of cinema at hand with such a protagonist in Firebrand.

    But, for Raje, whose earlier visitations at cinema reads Rihaee, Tum: A Dangerous Obsession, et al, bred and brought up on Bollywood brand of formulaic money spinners, to change her syntax of film making keeping with the times and provide more meaningful closure to her protagonist’s woes, was indeed ambitious and aspirational.

    With film’s commercial prospects weighing heavily at the back of her mind, Raje, instead of handling the throbbing topic of a Dalit rape victim, trying to confront the demons of her Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptomatic past, with sensitivity, nuance and subtleness the subject deserved, simply uses these tropes as excuse to drum down her own rather, too facile, off the cuff, shocking solution to say the least.

    Not that Raje’s body of works has anything to laudable or praiseworthy expect that of her being a woman director. Each of her films, at least, as this critic is concerned, are below par, more in tune with commercial cinema’s calculus, which is also self-evident in her latest visitation Firebrand, being dissected in this essay.

    Here was a film crying desperately for a searing and plausible probe. Raje being a woman, one expected she would, in today’s times, truly explore the theme in a mature and masterly manner. But what we get instead is a convenient, clichéd, caricatured, and typically formulaic fare, especially rather depraved denouement she delivers in Firebrand as a closure to her woman protagonist’s traumatic past and moral marital dilemma of present she is caught betwixt.

    Firebrand revolves around two different sets of couples. Divorce lawyer Sunanda Raut and her husband Madhav, and a feuding Divya and Anand Pradhan. The film’s moral fulcrum and social conflict pivots on these two diametrically opposite couples. The trajectory of the two disparate couples provided a perfect platform to examine modern relationships but Raje uses it as a convenient tool for his cringing, convenient climax.

    The Pradhans though appear bit late into the film whose court fight turns into closure of sorts for Sunanda, who is exorcised of the ghosts of her past in most bizarre of “sexual”, “victim” and jaundiced elitist take on relationships.

    If Sunanda and Madhav present perfect, blissful middle class marital home, despite personal trauma affecting their physical lives, Divya and Anand Pradhan are modern day’s feuding couple with foul mouthed wife out to extract her every pound of flesh from her promiscuous businessman husband.

    Investing a strong persona in her ‘feisty’ lawyer Sunanda, and neurotic, vengeful attributes to Divya, making their husbands, ‘willing victims’ of their situation, director Raje seeks to make out a classic case for a feminist film with contrasting repercussions.

    It is Raje’s facile and frivolous attempt to press home her point and kill two birds in one stone – trauma of rape and marginalisation of Dalits, besides, larger gender politics, with over the top acting, set piece scripting, on what constitutes female empowerment, leaves Firebrand with much to be desired delectable cinema.

    Divya’s justification to walk out of a marriage from her philandering husband Anand, a “great womaniser” she tells lawyer Sunanda, reasons for her divorce, which has left them with a neurologically challenged child, is understandable.

    But Raje caricatures her as totally neurotic, vengeful and vindictive woman who would go to any extreme, including inflicting self-injuries, to extract every ounce of flesh from her ‘immoral’ husband to leave him humiliated and in dire straits.

    In Sunanda’s case you have Raje go the other extreme. She has Sunanda conveniently letting a stranger, in this case, Divya’s “womaniser” husband Anand into her household late into night, have him give her a neck massage, indulge her in puerile, psychological game of “Let Go” and “So What” before the two have roaring physical union.

    An act of infidelity which conveniently and cathartically allows Sunanda to purge herself of her traumatic “childhood rape” past and fight the ghost of her humiliation she faced being a “Dalit.”

    This when her own husband’s touch would send Sunanda into frenzied hysterics compelling Madhav to postulate “sex and love” are two different things in a marriage and does not matter when two people are deeply in love. Oh! What a philosophy, Ms Raje.

    An act, which Sunanda confesses to her “understanding” and “accommodating” husband, stating the nocturnal visitor (Anand) was just an acquaintance and she was not Sunanda at all, during the entire night of sexual intimacy.

    Madhav, on hearing her confession, bemusedly says he does not believe in “middle class moralities” as if elitist were more liberal and open-minded with their spouses’ extra marital dalliances. With theatrical and totally absurd scenes leading to its climactic and cataclysmic “liberating sexual encounter” between a defeated Sunanda and thankful Anand (Divya’s husband), Raje defeats the very purpose of Firebrand with her contrasting “sexual mores and morality” so full of vacuous, pontificating verbosity.

    Unable to provide amicable, appreciable solution to her convoluted plot, Raje, pandering to familiar box office formulae, drums up her own regressive and degenerate denouement to Firebrand defeating the very cause of social injustice against a Dalit woman.

    Raje turns Firebrand (so ironic title itself), into a frivolous facile and fecund fare even as she ensure the film is reflective of problems that dog society, and in a way partially creating awareness, among her women audiences.

    But then Raje wilfully compromises on the public morality with her propagation of a closure she provides for her protagonist, least concerned at its dubious repercussions in reality and the debilitating and demoralising effect it would have on the already crumbling and sacrosanct marital edifice in India.

    In trying to pander to the familiar feminist trope that women are equal or more equal than their men in this millennial age, Raje, without realising the enormous impact the film would have on the psyche of her women audiences, panders to a prosaic solution than leaving the film either open ended or providing a trail-blazing solution.

    As Feminist film theorist Jackie Stacey in ‘Star Gazing: Hollywood & Female Spectator’’ so rightly posits ‘identification is the means by which women conspire and become complicit in the process’ turns woefully true in the case of Raje’s Firebrand.

    For, women identifying with women characters onscreen and finding common cause with them, as propelled, by films of Raje’s kind, only turn them into fantasies of power, control and self-confidence, while reality is a different sum game altogether.

    It is such treatment of women that this is rather very worrisome and very antithetical to the innate idea of empowering women in today’s #MeToo times where women are breaking the glass ceiling while their personal and marital situations are taking a severe beating.

    While the very idea that cinema is primarily meant to entertain, especially in in India is in itself repugnant, than a pure-play art form which can, if rightfully delineated, could play a pivotal role in molding objective opinions, by constructing images and reinforcing dominant cultural values, Raje’s Fireband is self-defeating despite trying to address the most sensitive and highly topical theme with a feminist lens.

    For, if one were to a take a cursory look at incidents of violence both within the homestead with rampant domestic abuse, dowry, divorces for flippant reasons, and family honour deaths and outside the home with increasing incidents of acid attacks, brutal rapes and even murder, with both Internet and Mobile contributing their own to the societal malaise fracturing the male female relationship, by projecting her strong protagonist in such simplistic terms is nothing but naivety on Raje’s part.

    By trying to free her protagonist from the shackles of familiar culture constructs and accepted social mores, Raje, caught as she is like her film’s victim, in a Catch 22 situation, fails as a responsible director, given that even today audiences are influenced by what is shown in films, primarily because of lack of knowledge as well as lack of one’s own sense of self.

    With mainstream cinema expectedly continuing to influence audiences’ thinking and behaviour post their theatrical experience, the responsibility squarely rests with directors how they realise the larger vision of their middle of the path cinemas.

    In that sense, Firebrand comes across as a perfunctory attempt by director Raje provide a perspective peek into Dalit dilemma and her cocking a snook at Indian middle class mentality with her uppity elitist take on the social issue she so conveniently caricatures as middle class foibles and comeuppance of the likes of Madhav and his accommodative, understanding and well-meaning mature nature at the psychological conflict his Dalit & rape victim wife Sunanda is faced with.

  • Gantumoote, fallaciousness of the (fe)male gaze

    Gantumoote, fallaciousness of the (fe)male gaze

    Gantumoote, fallaciousness of the (fe)male gaze

     

    Films are the primary source of entertainment for Indians and the cultural constructs created by them strongly influence the thinking of men, women, and most importantly, the new generation.”

    -Cinema & Society: Shaping our Worldview: Beyond the Lens Investigation on the Impact of Gender Representation in Indian Films: Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media & Oak Foundation Study.

     

    Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”

    –Oscar Wilde.

     

    Objectification, commodification, stalking and sexual harassment of heroines in cinema all in the name of professing love, saving the damsel in distress, heroine giving in to the ministrations of the hero, has long been a bane, the world over.

    That, in majority cases, women, with aspirations, become willing participants looking to a glitz and glamourous career in the instant stardom providing industry, becoming putty in the hands of directors or film makers and producers, is another matter.

    More so, it is an accepted belief that, if it is a man behind the camera, he, all the more ensures his female characters become lascivious objects of male gaze to drool upon. Giving play to the lurid imagination of voyeuristic audiences that takes its own flight of fancy as pro-active participants in the vapid visual narratives that unveil before them.

    However, what is worrisome, and disconcerting is, that even women directors brook no bones being no better than their male counterparts when it comes to exploiting their own ilk, exceptions notwithstanding.

    They are equally easily culpable when it comes to depiction of women and their subtle exploitation, all in the garb of championing feminist’s cause, providing a feminine perspective, intended at empowerment and emancipation.  In the guise of tackling bold and women-centric concerns, women directors too, under this convenient ruse of giving voice to womenfolk, have no qualms conspiratorially playing to the gallery, driven by the vicious dictates of market economics, is what this essay perforce posits.

    The case in point, the recently released and much valorised Kannada film Gantumoote (Bag-Age) by debutant Roopa Rao. Ironically, the very eponymous title bespeaks the burden the young director bears such that her film succeeds both at commercial box-office as also catch the eye of discerning audiences alike. As goes the adage: Kill two birds in one stone.

    Roopa Rao, quitting her cushy job at IT bellwether Infosys, took to her aspirational calling, foraying into films after she cut her teeth with the 12 episode web series The Other Love Story, on lesbianism, where two girls from disparate backgrounds – Aadya and Aachal strike same-sex companionship as the case with the ill-fated boy-girl romance in Gantumoote.

    In The Other Love Story, a format faithfully followed in Gantumoote, the protagonist Aadya is obsessed with movies. She pens her thoughts in her diary stating “I don’t know why everything that happens around me feels like a movie. I feel like a spectator, it’s hard to involve, because when I involve it is painful,” about her inability to comprehend the situation she finds herself closeted in, the tentativeness and swirl she feels to the happenings, as does Meera, in Gantumoote. A poster stuck on the wall of her living room proclaims “In a conflict between heart and doubt, follow your heart.” And that is precisely what Meera, as does Aadya, do in their respective roles.

    At the pivot of Gantumoote is 16-year-old still pubescent teen Meera pursued by an emboldened classmate Babu, who, egged on by his friends, hands her a red rose to Meera. The director, on her part, seeks our indulgence to believe Meera is ignorant and innocent as to what it signifies by accepting it without batting an eyelid.

    Here, straightaway you have the classic case of the girl making way for the boy stalking her at every opportunity, and unsolicited intrusion into her freedom and personal space. The way the scene is played is also much to be desired and the dialogues that follow suit despicable.

    The director conveniently infuses in her heroine a facile naivety in keeping with her small town moorings to prove her immaturity in being unable to fathom what accepting the rose signifies and thanks Babu stating she could not have refused for the efforts he had put in.

    For, when Babu asks her “What just thanks”? She retorts: What more should I say? Wondering what the fuss all about is blissfully unaware that Babu is euphorically exulting:  “Macha she has accepted me friends.” To which they respond: Man you have indeed successfully snared her.”

    That the setting of the film is a school rather than a college is another point of disquiet one needs to take note of. The film set in still conservative and tradition bound ‘90s and not in today’s freeway and footloose and fancy-free Internet and Mobile age makes it unacceptable cinematic liberties the director has taken.

    In fact, Meera suffers nightmares from a disturbing episode in the cinema theatre when just nine, where a man had molested her. The trauma revisits her when Babu audaciously makes bold trying to get familiar and fresh with Meera.

    As a pretext of asking what she is sketching, Babu consciously and deliberating places his palm on her thighs triggering childhood memory Meera had suffered as she hurries away shocked by his audacity. Once again the visual blatantly planting in young boys the wanton seeds to mimic it in real life.

    Thereon, Meera tamely rebuffs Babu ignoring his and his friends Hi! Meera greeting, sloppily portrayed, with undue familiarity every time they pass her desk in the classroom, which again is much hard to digest, even in cinematic terms.

    Meanwhile, Meera’s first flush of romance and adulthood is sublimely awakened when she sets her eyes on an otherwise quiescent and nondescript classmate Madhusudan, with familiar codas of cupid play getting underway.

    Again as Meera sets her sights on Madhu she wonders whether it was the influence of cinema that propelled her to fall in love. What has attracted Meera towards Madhu is that his lock of hair falls on his forehead a la Salman Khan’s in Hum Aap Ke Hai Kaun which she had seen when in 9th standard.

    What’s more the director has not be able to shy away from portraying her protagonist as hero’s love interest, despite the fact it is her young heroine Meera who first gives Madhu the comeuppance stealing suggestive glances at him.

    Once this is established, with the girl opening her defenses, the entire dynamics changes with the boy slowly overcoming his awkwardness and boldly asserting his ownership of Meera as his prized property dictating his superiority getting familiar and fresh with her like a possessed tiger playing with its prey before the final kill.

    Rebuffed, and witnessing Meera fanning and mooning over Madhu, you have an enraged Babu slut-shaming by calling her “Dagar (meaning slut) as also writing the word, unfamiliar to Meera, on her desk. Yet another case of suggestiveness that would be locked in the recess of the young similarly disposed viewers.

    Every time Babu and his friends confront Meera they lose no moment in calling her thus with Babu even brushing himself against Meera – in a virtual case of physical assault as she passes him by. It is such scenes shown visually on the screen, without repercussions, that subconsciously trigger similar reactions in real life as well, leading to acid and other attacks on women happening in frequent manner by spurned Romeos who believe every girl are there for them to play wanton sport with and they quiescently succumb to such unwarranted attentions.

    Likewise, prior to the red rose scene you have the bus stop incident. Here, a bunch boys pass lewd and sexist comments at Meera speaking of how Roopa Rao, as a woman director, is abjectly insensitive to her own gender.

    “Boys/brothers (Maga) see what a super figure she has. Yeke Chinna (What Dear) won’t turn and acknowledge me? Hey Bulbul, Hey Dove, you are mine. Do you think I will simply let you off if you ignore and go away?” while his friend keeps whistling alongside.

    Nothing could be more obnoxious construct of a scene the director has taken to show the predictable ‘male gaze’ all of which only catalyse such enactments in real life as well, examples of which galore where women have broken the glass ceiling in aspects and marching stride by stride with menfolk.

    Likewise, you have another equally disturbing love play taking place in the classroom with Mohan authoritatively stating that he is love with Sajida, who much disturbed by this daring declaration, replies she does not like such things asking Meera to tell him that they are already looking for a groom for her.

    Hearing which Mohan starts tattooing her name on his hand with his compass, while he has etched her name on his chest as well, points out another boy. “I have to get her. That’s it. Tell her I am in love with her,” he tells Meera even as a teary and traumatized Sajida rushes to the washroom, with all vehemence.

    Meera then again wonders (note the film motif) whether it is the influence of Shahrukh Khan starrer Darr or Kannada film Shivrajkumar starrer Om that “I love you, you must love me,” has so influenced Mohan to even think that Sajida is his property and is meant for him alone.

    My critique of Gantumoote, therefore, supposedly women-centric cinema, pertains to such the fallacies and fanatical declarations it cleverly perpetuates, in the garb of providing female gaze of its protagonist’s life experiences (more so all drawn from director’s own past), and taking to the typical boy stalking girl formula, than a detached and more realistic and aesthetic portrayal.

    This is what I find problematic in films after films which are predominant commercial in nature. That Deepa Mehta created her own controversies with Fire with that slow-motion deliberate long take of love-making scene between Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das, is another classic case in point or recent Aruna Raje’s Marathi film Firebrand wherein you have the housewife encouraging another man to sleep with to rid the demons of childhood rape that still haunt her despite having an understanding husband.

    The very fact that the film’s protagonist deeply influenced by the film she has seen, Hum Aap Ke Hai Kaun which triggers the 9th standard girl’s romantic hormones validates my case which I seek to put forth in furtherance of my critique of Gantumoote that it is no better than any crass commercial potboilers but done with sophistication camouflaging its more economic aspirations.

    Furthermore, that her very first encounter during a cinema viewing session, at a nubile age of nine, when she is molested and which the heroine seeks to brush aside stating “why should I write about the abuse or even report it, thereby, give the molester prominence he may get as a result and it is better to move on,” only goes on to show, where director Roopa Rao’s sympathies lie and where her priorities are.

    The young Meera persists in watching the film from balcony this time from the earlier Gandhi class, only to scour who her molester could have been, further buttresses my argument, film makers must consider the visual impact their cinemas can have on young minds, unless aesthetically and sensitively done.

    That the girl at such a tender age was even allowed in a theatre to watch the film all alone is bit too hard to digest given the time the film is set in – the ‘90s, that too in a small town, despite all cinematic license one may excuse the director indulging in.

    As a young girl the director may have done that, but depicting it visually on screen is another matter and bit unacceptable. No wonder the censors prudently certified it ‘A’ much to the consternation of the director who bemoaned that young adults would be kept away from her film and rightly and wisely so.

    While it may be argued that one off incidents should not tarnish the entire industry. The most recent of episode of a man influenced to murder his wife after watching Malayalam film Drishyam and Tamil film 99, further strengthens my assertion unless audiences are educated to take sensible, detached and realistic approach to cinema and consider movies more than mere entertainment, strong, potent visuals take deep roots in their mind’s recess and psyche which they then reenact in reality believing they can get away like their heroes on the screen.

    As a result, societies continue to suffer misdemeanours and violent incidents such as Nirbhaya, and the recent Hyderabad tragedy, which haunt larger public in the society, rousing the collective conscience of the diaspora for instant justice raising questions about the safety and security of their girl children and womenfolk.

    While it is indisputable that one of the functions of cinema is to entertain its audiences, give wings to the assorted viewers to travel into an another world if only for its screen time, than lived, real one, providing window of escape from diurnal grind and mundanity of everyday life, one has to argue and assert that there is more to cinema than this.

    For, beyond being a popular vehicle of mass, affordable, and easily accessible consumption, it is also a fact that cinema also plays a pivotal role in moulding and shaping opinions, constructing either positive or negative images, thereby reinforcing dominant and prevailing socio-cultural and political values.

    Given cinema illiterate audiences that folk to theatres are susceptible to carry their screen experience into real life, it becomes even more incumbent upon film makers to exercise caution and be more responsible as to how they depict and delineate their narrative and its hidden homilies than duck under artistic liberty and freedom to do so.

    As Geena Davis study substantiates: though films reflect society around them, they have the unique power to change society as well. Besides the portrayal of women in main roles influencing us, there is invidious subliminal conditioning that takes place by only seeing women playing subsidiary roles on screen, may be even more instrumental in shaping our thoughts.

    I quote few observations from the study of those interviewed.

     

    Whoever has seen whatever movie, he will wonder if he should do that also.”

    –Dixit, 24.

     

    People also copy the fashion, clothes, and attitudes from movies.”

    –Vandana, 35.

     

    It affects the mind of children. It also affects our society and culture.”

    –Maneesha, 30.

     

    Children are deeply affected by these characters and movies as they immediately start copying it after watching them.”

    –Pinky, 38.

     

    See, nowadays, girls are also bold, they smoke, they drink… Now the girls also want to do everything which a boy is doing.”

    –Umeshbhai, 42.

     

    Incidents of rape are increasing in society now. This is because of the effect of movies.”

    –Rupa, 43.

     

    If they show such content, awareness may not increase, but such crimes would increase.”

    –Saleem, 44.

     

    Hence, it becomes imperative how the particular film is packaged and received by the ultimate consumers – the viewers / audiences without being prejudicial to civil society norms on public conduct. For, a notion/perception predominantly based on a director’s beliefs, attitudes and values, combined with director’s own larger but misconstrued understanding of what audiences’ want and pandering suit to popular market demands, must be consciously eschewed for the larger good of society.

    Furthermore, with women constituting a sizeable portion of cinema going population, and more so, the young adults – both male and female, the portrayal of women, the roles they play, the way they come across, on screen, the message these visual registers ultimately carry, is a crucial factor in breaking or reinforcing and determining the prevalent stereotypes that is already firmly entrenched in the society.

    Besides, how it impacts the psyche of diaspora habituated to films more as a means of entertainment, to pass time, than assimilate and approach it as art and creative form that depict social realities or life experiences on screen becomes equally relevant.

    Merely conceived and constructed just as entertainment, however, rabidly it may be, without an educated engagement and appreciation of cinema aesthetics as art form and not merely tool of entertainment, is doing great disservice to not only themselves but larger public in general.

    The film has several such disturbing fault lines in its very construction and scripting that one watches with aghast at the cupid caper played out before you. For example, in mathematics class room scene you have Madhu asking the lecturer whether if someone did not give what they had promised on time, should then they not do so with interest.

    The lecturer states it all depends what was agreed upon, who should have given what, without realising Madhu had asked Meera to kiss him which she had reluctantly not obliged. The next scene has Madhu cornering Meera in the classroom alone and series of kisses and lip lock picturised providing audiences gratuitous ideas to carry home with.

    As if such wanton cupid play was not enough you have even more gross visuals coming in the form of Madhu and Meera making it in the public libraries lip-locking and getting physical, as also during school picnic, where following sudden cloud burst sees Madhu remove his shirt a la Salman Khan.

    It is such blatantly exploitative and titillating visuals, pandering to familiar baser male desires to provide audiences pervert and prurient pleasures, with Meera and Madhu pirouetting on once they formalise their relationship that the director subvertly goes on catering to (fe)male gratification, with the two becoming licentious playground to milk their rendezvous for a trip in voyeurism. That you have another scene where you have Meera asking for cigarette and takes a puff also points to where the film’s intent lies and who it is surreptious catering to.

    Needless to say, despite being a woman herself, Roopa Rao gloriously takes to depicting the world of women is the most regressive, demeaning and depressing manner which constantly thwarts any expectations of seeing Meera in a more plausible and positive manner that would offer similarly disposed young audiences to reflect upon than providing them indirect inspiration to mimic in their lives from what they have seen and experienced in the dark confines of the cinema hall.

    Noticing that both Madhu and Meera are virtually pawing at each other, the mathematics teacher counsels them stating: I like you both as a couple, but you guys need to slow down, while cautioning especially Meera stating you will be the most affected from repercussions of your actions. You are my favourite student. The whole school depends on you. With two months for board exams be serious. To which a flippant Madhu, basking in romantic mood casually retorts there is a good two months to go, and we will make it.

    But sadly, while Meera, given her natural disposition to do well at studies, tops her class, it is one downhill slide for Madhu, who keeps failing, and thereafter, unable to digest the fact that Meera has fared well, and he has miserably failed, goes into depression and commits suicide. This not before the following interlude between the two love birds.

    Madhu asks Meera how you were able to top the school. I am not worthy to be with you. I am a repeater. What did you find in me? When Meera consoles him to not give up and there’s a next time he bites back so now you are a senior advising this dullard of a junior.

    As has been persistently pointed out, cinema being undisputed mediator of socio-realities and personal dreams, it is imperative that one brings under scrutiny and interpret the dissonances and discrepancies inherent in the representation of women, especially in popular cinemas, for audiences to appreciate it as informed receptors of the narratives.

    By showcasing the heroine as mere spectacle or an object of cupid play and dominant male desire, Roopa Rao allows her protagonist to be inexorably trapped in a world of callous, insensitive film making by faithfully following the time-tested template for formulaic no-brainer, insensitive  entertainers .

    Touted as an urban romance with the small town girl going through all the pangs of coming of age and experiencing the first flush of romance, Roopa Rao has not been to escape from the familiar stereotypical representation of her heroine as “sexual objects” the way men (read her young juveniles on the verge of adulthood) would enjoy seeing them on the silver screen….”

    Also by repeatedly perpetuating the very illusion of cinema that her heroine breaks, Roopa Rao, in frame after frame, reinforces the idiosyncratic dangers that films trap the young minds into mimicking them in real life imitating the doings of their hero/heroines. Thereby, as her heroine Meera reflects deciding not to take Madhu’s suicidal path consoling herself that the episode and experience will a “Gantumoote (Bag-age) in her life” so does Roopa Rao by pursuing a more mundane commercial path than provide for a meaning, sensible and subtle cinema that can be celebrated and cheered. Sad!

     

    References

    Analysis of Hindi women-centric-films in India. Srijita Sarkar. University of Louisville

    Stereotyping women in Indian Cinema. Vatika Sibal. St. Andrew’s College of Arts, Science & Commerce

    Ahmed, S. Akbar (1992). ‘Bombay Films:  The Cinema as Metaphor for Indian Society and Politics’. Modern Asian Studies 26, 2 (1992). 289-320. Great Britain.

    Ahmed S Akbar (1992). Bombay Films:  The Cinema as Metaphor for Indian Society & Politics. Modern Asian Studies 26, 2 (1992).

    Nandkumar S (2011). The Stereotypical Portrayal of Women III Commercial Indian Cinema. University of Houston.

    Laura Mulvey (1988) Visual Pleasure & Narrative Cinema. In Constance Penley (Ed), Feminism and Film Theory, New York: Routledge.

    Mulvey L 1989: Visual & Other Pleasures. Bloomington & Indiana: Indiana University Press.

    Cinema & Society: Shaping our Worldview: Beyond the Lens Investigation on the Impact of Gender Representation in Indian Films: Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media & Oak Foundation Study.

     

    External

    Gantumoote on IMDB | Gantumoote official trailer