Expect a flurry of posts over this week. I’m going to be on a transcription spree now that I actually have a little time in hand. For now, it’s back to the Jaipur Literature Festival.
Session: In conversation with Stephen Frears and Rahul Bose
Stephen Frears and the St. Bern... er, Martin Scorcese
I confess I had no idea what Stephen Frears looks like even though I’ve seen almost all his films. Consequently when a portly man wearing a snugly-fitting orange T-shirt, carrying a jhola that would make a Bengali poet puff his chest out in pride and slightly bulgy, bloodshot eyes walked in to the Baithak tent, I had no idea who he was. It’s a tragic world when more people can recognise Rahul Bose, who was dressed in a skintight black polo neck sweater and a tighter pair of black pants, which might have been a DIY costume for a malaria mosquito sans wings. I don’t know if the Stephen Frears conversation was a scheduled event but it certainly didn’t seem like it. Bose said that he’d been roped in at the last minute and the Baithak tent was comparatively empty though that could be because Geoff Dyer, William Dalrymple and others were talking about travel writing in the adjacent tent. Anyway, so here come my notes from the session in which Stephen Frears squished Rahul Bose, leaving only the blood spatter of an actor’s ego for posterity.
Points to be noted:
1. Stephen Frears, who is wonderfully self-deprecating and has a gloriously wry sense of humour, just couldn’t look at Rahul Bose for more than 0.10 second at a time. It’s a feeling I completely understand but I’ve reached this point after suffering the sight of Bose in a number of films and countless press-type encounters. The fact that Bose managed to evoke this reaction in Frears within minutes of meeting him is … impressive.
2. Not only could Frears not bring himself to lock eyes with Bose, he seemed earnestly eager to make Bose’s life difficult with one-line answers. He warmed up to the audience in a bit, however and was perfectly garrulous once we’d proved the crowd at Jaipur Literature Festival wasn’t a collection of eyebrow-less, short brown men with oversized egos and undersized clothes.
3. Rahul Bose said that he’d spent last night researching Frears. In the course of his research and general movie-watching, it slipped Bose’s attention that Chiwetel Ejiofor has done anything before or after “Dirty Pretty Things”. Something like “Melinda and Melinda”, “Love Actually”, “Amistad” and that tiny detail of a Golden Globe nomination in 2010.
Alright, enough Bose-bashing. On to quotes from the Mr. Frears. If anything sounds snarky, chances are you need to remember the man has a wonderful, dry sense of humour.
On why he makes the movies he makes:
Stephen Frears: The truth is I’m only interested about myself but I couldn’t make films about myself. So I made films about other people’s lives. I’m unable to look at myself clearly so I make films about other people.
On “My Beautiful Launderette“:
I didn’t discover Daniel (Day-Lewis). He’d already been in “Gandhi“, a speaking part as an extra no less. He was a young actor and the son of a poet laureate. That obviously made him ideal for the role of a chap who’s part of a mob.
Making friends with Hanif (Kureishi) was a tremendous change for an imperialist like me. You have to remember, when I was in school we were shown a map of the world and it was a collection of red splotches showing the British empire. It was an education. Similarly with Roddy Doyle, from whom I learnt about Ireland. You go into these relationships as a student. It’s been a humiliating experience to know how dreadful we are. We’ve done some really terrible things and I think I wouldn’t have known just how dreadful we’ve been without these friendships.
You cast somebody because it brings the material to life. I’m not good at working with actors a second time because I’m used to seeing them as a character. Daniel, for instance. He’d dyed, or undyed, his hair for his character in “My Beautiful Launderette”, and I remember seeing him afterwards, when he was doing some other film, and feeling hurt and betrayed that his hair had changed. It seemed to me that it was very ungrateful of him to have moved on.
On “Dangerous Liaisons“, which had turned Rahul Bose on to such an extent that all these years later the only thing he could say about the movie was that it turned him on hugely:
Well, that’s what it was made for, to arouse you. Aside from that, it was a big jump in my career because it made me attractive to Hollywood studios but it was an easy film to make. It was so deliciously wicked.
On independent cinema, working for television and the difficulties of adjusting to the studio system:
The real problem is capitalism. Cinema is a capitalist enterprise. You need a big audience to see your films because of the money that has been put into it by one individual or one company, who want their money back with profit. Television is a far more protected enterprise, or at least it used to be because the money was subsidised. It was more middle class and there was no obligation to justify yourself with returns, which meant once you got the money it was yours to make use of. That’s why I worked on television films so often. I was able to make “My Beautiful Launderette” without any interference, which is exactly what I wanted. The moment a studio gets involved, there’s far more money and there’s far more pressure to involve other people. I keep away from the money so as to make the films I want to make.
After “The Grifters“, I agreed to make a few studio films and that was a terrible idea. When “The Grifters” won some prize as the best independent film, I remember saying the prize for making an independent film was to lose your independence. That was how I felt when I was working with a studio. It’s a terrible feeling to know that what you’re making is nonsense but you still have to get up in the morning and go in to work because there’s nothing else you can do.
[At this point, Rahul Bose gaped like a goldfish and expressed absolute horror that Frears had ever gone ahead to work on projects that he didn't believe in. "How do you do that, Stephen?" he asked with a faint hint of contempt. "How do you go in to work when you don't believe in what you're doing?" "You get up in the morning, brush your teeth, shower and then go to work, knowing that what you're working is going to be terrible," Frears replied. "I don't know how you can do that," replied Bose, the actor of cinematic masterpieces like "Pyar ke Side Effects", "Dil Kabaddi" and "Shaurya". For the first time, Frears looked for a brief second at Bose directly. "Are you telling me, " he asked Bose, "that you've never done a movie that you knew was going to be awful?"]
It’s the problem of being a film director. If I was a novelist, I could tear it up. But I’m not. I’m responsible for 100 people and having to behave like a grown-up. It’s ghastly.
But when I was making “The Grifters”, Martin Scorcese was my St. Bernard. By which I don’t mean he was a dog but that he was an amazing guide.
Hanif Kureishi was in the audience and this is him on working with Stephen Frears:
Stephen, unlike most, actually likes writers to be on set. I think he was quite nervous and I think a part of having me there was to be sure that he was getting it right about what Pakis do and how they behave. As if I knew. I mean, I hadn’t the faintest idea. The great thing about Stephen is that he’s very spontaneous and very open to changing things if they’re not working, which is where it’s handy to have the writer on set. He’s very much like a theatre director in that sense.
SF: Writers might be worse than actors. They betray you and let you down. Dreadful people, writers.
On “Dirty Pretty Things“:
My mother would have been horrified with this move. She’d have thought it was a film about foreigners whereas it really was a film about England, I think. An England that, once again, was curious to someone like me who had grown up as an imperalist. I had a Spanish actor who knew no English and who learnt the lines phonetically. Afterwards I thought I must have been drunk to hire him. But when people go on now about these other communities that are supposedly celebrated in my films, they forget something like the fact that there wasn’t a single Pakistani person in “My Beautiful Launderette.” The Pakis thought it was awful. There was picketing and all sorts of things. I’d throw Hanif out to deal with them, but I don’t think it helped.
But the idea of English is something that has changed, one that my mother would never have recognised. After all, I had a Russian woman playing the Queen. What? Helen Mirren is Russian. Yes, she may be an Essex girl as well but her family’s Russian. But then it’s not like the Queen is English. Her family’s German.
On random things he keeps in minds while making movies:
I’m the first member of my audience. Why does the audience have to be any different from me? I only make films for an audience. I’m not making them to watch them in the privacy of my home or some dark cellar. I think audiences like intelligent films. I don’t think there has to be a distinction between me and my audience.
I’m not very visual at all, which might be why I’ve looked at novels as the starting point of so many films. So I regard the cinematographers I work with as teachers. It’s very, very weird being a director. You know nothing about a lot of things and you have some very brilliant people around you who look to you to tell them what to do. As if I know.
Right now, I’m working on a new movie based on a graphic novel by Posy Simmonds.
What I look for in a story is the tone of the writing, the mockery, the romance and the cynicism.
I prefer Aristotle to Robert McKee on the whole. I don’t understand why you would make a film with a bad screenplay? There’s not much hope in that, is there?
Session: Bin Laden After Bush, moderated by Basharat Peer.
That which we did not see at the Jaipur Literature Festival
There’s something a little off about sitting in the sunny front lawns of Diggi Palace and talking about terrorism. This type of thing should happen somewhere gloomier, grimmer, clammier. But here I am, surrounded by pretty decorations and prettier people, turning into a kebab in the sun while furiously taking down quotes of Lawrence Wright, Max Rodenbeck and Steve Coll. Oh, and how cute is Steve Coll! Who’d have thunk that a man who looks like something out of a Pixar cartoon would be the man behind books like Ghost Wars and The Bin Ladens. Also, how much more like the stereotypical war correspondent could Max Rodenbeck look — tall, lean, aquiline features, salt and pepper hair… Sigh.
Anyway, quotes ahoy.
Lawrence Wright on Al Qaeda and Palestine:
There are no Palestinians in Al Qaeda because it doesn’t offer a solution to Palestine’s problems but Osama Bin Laden mentions it in many of his speeches to give Al Qaeda credibility. So it’s really a mercenary use of Palestine by Bin Laden.
Today, 75% of Gaza lives on $1 a day. Twenty years ago, it’s poverty rates were not very different from America’s. It’s a society that has been flattened in 20 years and it’s shocking to think more than a million people are imprisoned on that land.
The Obama administration has expressed very little interested in democratising the Middle East.
I spoke to a group of people in Gaza but most of them were probably killed in a shootout that happened at a mosque a few days later.
Al Qaeda hasn’t got a grasp in Palestine like it does in Yemen or Morocco.
Max Rodenbeck on the nuances in radical Islam:
There’s a confusion and conflation of different Islamic beliefs by the Bush administration and this is a huge problem.
In Palestine, the Hamas are trying to crush Al Qaeda. In Lebanon, the Hizbollah is a Shia group and affiliated to Iran. What they share with other groups, like Al Qaeda, is the same basic worldview of ISlam being under threat. That’s the basic large grievance but within that there are enormous differences in the details of the beliefs.
Steve Coll on where Al Qaeda stands today:
Al Qaeda is failing politically but militarily, it’s resilient. This paradox is the problem for the American administration.
I see Al Qaeda as an organisation, which has management committees and an operating structure. It is also a network of like-minded groups. This definition of Al Qaeda also has the aspiration of becoming a brand. The good news is that the aspiration to generate a political movement in the Muslim world has failed spectacularly but the management remains resilient. The proof that it has failed politically is that the number of people they can call upon is less.
There is now a deep set of credible polling across the Islamic world. What that polling shows is that the radical claims of Al Qaeda is just as resilient now as in 2002 but huge majorities have said that they’re done with Al Qaeda’s means of dealing with them. Al Qaeda wanted to be the vanguard of a revolution but ten years on, they’ve nothing and this is unlike Lenin of Castro. Ten years on, they were building something but Al Qaeda have failed.
Lawrence Wright on Al Qaeda today:
If you look at the history of Al Qaeda, it follows a pattern. It runs up against an obstacle and then changes its goal. Dr. Zawahiri is an excellent example. He didn’t succeed in Egypt, where the movement was suppressed brutally and successfully. So the Egyptians went to Afghanistan to recruit, not to fight soviets, and they found Bin Laden. He was a rich Saudi and they surrounded him. The Egyptians provided the organisation and Bin Laden provided the mystique.
Al Qaeda’s ambition is reaching a roadblock but does it mean an end for Al Qaeda? I hope so but it may not necessarily be so. It’s no longer a political organisation but you can call it a religious terror organisation. Like a shark, it needs to keep moving. What will defeat it is an argument within Islam, the kind that’s beginning to happen now. The theological arguments are now going against Al Qaeda and this is the only thing that can weaken it.
It’s fascinating to see Al Qaeda’s frustrations. Dr. Fadl was Zawahiri’s emir at one point and then they’ve had a falling out. Fadl accused Zawahiri of plagiarism. It’s essentially a literary dispute, which is sort of fitting a subject for where we’re discussing this now. Who knows, maybe next year, it’ll be Dr. Fadl sitting here, explaining how his work was stolen by Zawahiri. Zawahiri doesn’t have the religious credentials to dispute Fadl but he’s trying. He’s brought out three boks. But you see how shaky Al Qaeda has become in its sense of the authority they command. They’ve been reduced to publicly claiming 9/11 and announcing that no it wasn’t the Mossad. Al Qaeda is getting marginalised by the disputes within it and its ideology.
Steve Coll on the Afghan-Pakistan theatre:
There are some basic questions when you look at the Af-Pak region. Where is the network of like-minded groups the strongest? The answer is Pakistan. It has the best resource of regional actors. It’s the most dangerous space and proof of how it can cohere is 26/11.
There’s plenty of provisional evidence of Al Qaeda learning and bomb-making experience and techniques in the handiwork of the local groups. It’s clear there has been a dissemination of information. It’s much harder to actually find concrete, non-circumstantial evidence to connect Al Qaeda to the groups.
It’s worth remembering that Al Qaeda in the Af-Pak region is in the hundreds, at best. Pakistani Taliban, on the other hand, are in thousands. Al Qaeda provides specific node skills and information. But it’s a very tenuous and vulnerable position for Al Qaeda. It could happen that one of the layers it rests upon could sell it out. Abroad Al Qaeda is a valuable brand but in this region, what is their value? Particularly for the risks taken by it’s supporting groups to protect the Al Qaeda? Once you teach them how to make bombs, how long before they send you home? Al Qaeda inspires others to adopt their narrative but I’m not sure all of them think it’s value for money.
The infuence of Al Qaeda’s thinking can be seen in the media operations. Al Qaeda’s own media operations number to about 100 but Taliban media operations are in thousands today. Once, Taliban media operations were basically papering over oil paintings and dealing with what media images were available. Now the Taliban are among the most prolific video image producers.
Someone told me once, the Pakistani army is the best negotiator when it’s holding a gun, to its own head.
Having spent a few hours at my first Jaipur Literature Festival, I’m very sure of two things. One, having walked into a loo at the precise moment when Tina Brown was in it – hey, she shouldn’t have kept the doors parted and unlatched – my chances of landing a gig with The Daily Beast are, shall we say, limited. Two, if there’s a brown author from the subcontinent whose writing you like, you should make sure that there is no way on earth you ever hear them speak (unless it’s me, naturally; but don’t worry, my publisher will make sure no such occasion ever arises). Especially if they’re in conversation with a smart non-brown person.
At the Jaipur Literature Festival, many of the luminaries were foreign writers and journalists. The ones I saw were all fabulous and matching their lovesomeness was the baffling ineptitude of the South Asian moderators, particularly the Indians. I know moderating is not easy but honestly, if the Indian moderators could relax and/or evince just a little more curiosity about the panelists, rather than being entirely focussed on showcasing how cool they themselves are, the sessions would have been so much better. And for heaven’s sake, stop slouching in the chair. I’m not sure if it’s got something to do with the balance of melanin in our skin but one lick of fame and Indian literary figures seem to become poncy, silly or boring. The actor Rahul Bose, being a man of special skills, managed to be all three while chatting with director Stephen Frears but fortunately we have not yet reached that stage at which Bose is considered literary. Omair Ahmad, whose A Storyteller’s Tale I liked so much, proved to be one of those annoying people who loves the sound of his own voice and talks in incomprehensible sentences so that he can keep talking for as long as possible. Under the pretext of asking the charming Niall Ferguson a question, Ahmad would mummify his audience with his unending observations uttered in a weird almost-American accent. Ugh. I’m not sure this was better than having to see Basharat Peer moderate a session with Steve Coll, Lawrence Wright and Max Rodenbeck. Peer had about as much expression and insight as a piece of driftwood that has been fossilised for centuries and then dropped in a vat of chloroform. But I suppose he deserves brownie points for at least keeping his fumbling questions short. And almost 24 hours later, I still can’t get over the fact that Shazia Omar, who wrote Like A Diamond In The Sky and incidentally had a close shave on 9/11, sounds like a Valley girl. While introducing Lawrence Wright, she described how she got away from the World Trade Centre before it collapsed and then said of 9/11, “It was, like, a life-changing moment for me. Really, it was a really big moment.” No shit, Sherlock.
But never mind these people or the fact that this year the Jaipur Literature Festival was, as someone neatly put it, “like a college fest with famous and/or randy 40-somethings”. I had an amazing time bounding from tent to tent and listening to some absolutely awesome people. And now that I’ve got most of the rant off my chest, over the course of the week I’ll put up the notes I took at the sessions that I could attend.
If you are one of the few who subscribes to the RSS feed of this blog, you just got notified about a new post that has nothing in it. Apologies. It’s just that having received the text message I’m going to share with you, I was all thumbs. It’s a mass sms sent out by Suhas Awchat, the owner of the restaurant and kitsch nightmare Goa Portuguesa. If you eat there, you get serenaded by tone deaf men in sombreros and Hawaiian/wannabe-Goan shirts; a look at Awchat’s guns (this is not a euphemism; he carries a gun around in order to add credibility to his claim of having served in the Indian army), and heartburn. The spacing and spelling of the sms have not been tampered with in order to respect the writer’s grammatical integrity.
Mitr,i am appointed as a President of Human Rights Assos of Centre- Mumbai aprvd by Govt & UN.V can now fight against injustice,coruption etc.U can b member & will b entitled 4 Spl Name Plate 4 ur car,Powerful Letterhead & ID/Visiting Card which will enable u 2 help citizens.Pl SMS if intrstd.Tnx,Dr.$uhas
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s $uhas Awchat’s letterhead and visiting card! He has the powerrrrrr! Stay in your cave, Batman. We’ve got the promise of a special license plate and powerful letterhead and visiting cards with which to vanquish evil. Cue in swelling orchestra that befits heroic exit.
Photo of a scene from Mayakkam-Oxymore from Marko-93's flickr
A plea from the vertically challenged: if you’re tall or have a large torso, do not go for a cultural program only to canoodle with your girlfriend. Not that I have anything against tall men canoodling but the fact is, it’s just insensitive to the short person who may be sitting behind you because now they have to play virtual dodgeball with the silhouette of your romantic head in order to see what’s happening on stage. Of course, considering what was happening on stage, I can’t blame Mr. Tall for coochie-cooing with his beloved. When faced with something like Mayakkam-Oxymore, you need something that will make it worth your while to not walk out of the theatre.
Mayakkam-Oxymore is a dance-music-visual art programme that has been doing the rounds in India as part of the Bonjour India festival organised by the French. It’s been organised by a French group called Urbn Buzz. Urbn Buzz connected danseuse Sangeeta Isvaran with computer musician Cyrille Brissot and graffiti artist Marko-93 together. The woman who introduced Mayakkam-Oxymore last night told us the show was “a baby” because it had been put together very recently and that it employed new technology that was “challenging”. It certainly did have cool new technology but the challenge was to figure out what the hell was going on with the old-fashioned dancing.
Mayakkam-Oxymore has its moments. Some of Brissot’s music is pleasing and Marko-93’s light graffiti is good fun to see initially. It makes for some fantastic images, as is obvious from the picture I’ve nicked from his photostream. But the light tricks quickly feel repetitive and when Brissot, possibly hoping for gravitas with his grim expression, began to shred paper and scrunch a plastic bag to create music, he did Cacophonix proud. At that point I was rather glad Mr. Tall was cuddling up to his girlfriend/ wife because it meant I didn’t have to see Brissot ripping paper with the grandiose gestures of a cymbal player in an orchestra. I still had to hear the pointless noise though and Mr. Tall’s head wasn’t big enough to block the sight of the abysmal dancing that accompanied this sound and light show.
Mayakkam-Oxymore is supposed to mean “the enchanted oxymoron” since “mayakkam” means enchanted in Tamil and “oxymore” is oxymoron in French. Isvaran claims to have mastered bharatnatyam, kuchipudi and a bunch of other dance forms. She also claims to tell a story of how the identity of eunuchs are fractured through Mayakkam-Oxymore. To do so, she goes on stage with the eunuch dancer Lakshya, a girl named Thilagavathi Palani (she’s supposedly 18 but looks about 12) and a Caucasian woman whose name I don’t know. Marko-93 appears from time to time, shrouded in black and waving a light sabre as though he’s come for a Star Wars-themed party. The light sabre and another little nifty laser-y gadget create light graffiti on the screen behind the dancers. Brissot sits in a corner, pressing buttons, plucking out every musical possibility of a violin and shredding paper. The 60 minutes of Mayakkam-Oxymore were supposed to look at the dissonance between actual identities and those that transgendered people claim for themselves. It was also supposed to explore the idea of the perfect woman and social stigmas surrounding ambivalent gender identities. What I saw was some bizarre, abstract exotica that was made up of ridiculous costumes, naïve choreography and repetitive gimmicks. There were a few lovely moments, like a fragment in one of Palani’s solo dances to some bouncy music that sounded like a track from Club Hits, Vol. 5. Marko-93’s light graffiti to introduce Lakshya was beautiful. But the good moments were momentary and the rest of Mayakkam-Oxymore was tiresome. Like Isvaran’s first costume, which looked like her sari had come undone and was trailing underfoot. Or the hideously unsubtle fashion show that Lakshya and Palani enact using clothes that look like they’ve been nicked from the discarded wardrobe of “Disco Dancer” (presumably to demonstrate Lakshya’s identification with the feminine and Palani’s desire to be masculine). Tour de pointlessness: Isvaran beating her bosom and her belly while stomping her foot. Why? Who can tell? In order to give the dancers time to change, Brissot went behind the projection screen and scraped his fingernails against it. I don’t know which is more upsetting, that the chaps at Guantanamo Bay could use a recording of this to seriously discombobulate inmates (move over Yoko Ono) or that Brissot and Isvaran thought an Indian audience would be so charmed by screeching plastic that they wouldn’t notice that this part of the show serves no purpose other than abusing eardrums. Then again, given most of the show was pointless, why single out poor Brissot’s efforts at performance art? Especially since there was the particularly meaningless ending sequence during which Isvaran made mad eyes at the audience while an impassive white woman did her best imitation of a many-armed Hindoo goddess, aided by by Marko-93’s neon whooshies.
There are only two questions that I’m left with after Mayakkam-Oxymore. One: Does being transgendered make it acceptable for one to take to a professional stage and dance badly? Isvaran’s choreography was unimpressive and the dancers looked painfully amateur. When all the lights came on and one could see the dancers properly, it was as though we were watching street performers who hadn’t rehearsed. Two: How are any stereotypes being attacked by showing transgendered performers doing vaguely silly dance routines? It’s quite obvious that Mayakkam-Oxymoron had no intention of tackling any questions concerning transgendered identity. If it did, then Mayakkam-Oxymoron wouldn’t hide behind abstractions. Isvaran doesn’t tell a single story properly in her 60 minutes. She avoids conclusions and hides behind face paint, yoga postures, belly-slapping and the excuse that there have been few occasions to rehearse this piece. Frankly, if you didn’t think you had enough rehearsal time, then you shouldn’t have agreed to put it up. The most disturbing facet of the show is that Isvaran actually serves to reiterate well-entrenched notions, like eunuchs basically just dance around and like to dress up as women. Sexuality sells and Isvaran was clearly eager to ride on this wave of interest, but without getting wet. So there are no questions and no insights, only stereotypes and ineptitude. But just because Isvaran got selected by foreigners for a collaboration AND she’s included a transgendered person in the show – How heroic! Who cares if this person is a good dancer so long as she is a hijra? – we must all gush profusely. And I’m going to shut up now because honestly, Mayakkam-Oxymore isn’t worth 1106 words.
Early on in “Sherlock Holmes“, Watson tells Holmes that he knew a man in India who was able to predict not just the time and date of his death but also how many bullets would kill and where he would be shot. This was Watson’s attempt at suggesting to Holmes that magic may exist. I’m not sure whether the other people in the cinema thought the idea of a man foretelling his death in detail was mumbo-jumbo but for me, it was pretty matter of fact. Because my grandfather did predict his death. Unlike Watson’s friend, he didn’t tell us and there were no bullets. After he had died and we were clearing out his cupboards and books, we found his things very neatly arranged and a pile of diaries were kept together with a note saying they should be given to a young chap who used to spend the evenings with my grandfather. Chap in question comes over a couple of days, stammering and shuddering and holding in his hand the diary for the running year. One page said in neat lettering, “End of Anon’s Grandfather”. He had written his own name, not “Anon’s Grandfather”. As psychic as he may have been, I don’t think he had foretold that I would end up having a blog. But he did dabble in astrology. He didn’t talk about it much and actively discouraged his family from taking any kind of fortune telling seriously. About his own astrology, he said he did it because he liked the maths calculations it involved and we know he did those calculations compulsively even though he rarely voiced predictions. I think he did it because as a scientist (yep, he was a scientist), he liked the idea of life being like a toy that one could open up through horoscopes. I suspect it gives you a certain sense of power and the feeling that you can explain loose ends in life even if you can’t tie them all up.
Watson and Holmes, a domestic scene
Guy Ritchie’s Holmes seemed to be a bit like that too. He’s constantly deducing, calculating and predicting how things are going to happen. This being a movie, that’s precisely what happens. Holmes prophesies he’ll bring his boxing opponent down via moves 1, 2, 3 and 4. He goes on to do just that; bones crunch, saliva sprays, body parts dislocate, as per his predictions. Like my grandfather in his astrologer mode, Holmes also completely misses a lot of things, like Irene Adler in a crucial sequence, the fact that Watson’s fiancee Mary isn’t a fool and the fact that there’s an entire chunk of the incomplete London Bridge about to come hunkering down. But logic, curious and weird as it may be, is his magical power and it’s a delight to watch it play out in Holmes. Guy Ritchie conjures up a nineteenth century London that is made up of greys and blacks. It’s creepy but gorgeous, and rather like an underworld version of Richard Curtis’s sunny, pretty London. There are always clouds; ravens perch on roofs; nights are gloomier and menace glints everywhere. What’s delicious about “Sherlock Holmes” is that it is simultaneously nothing like anything Arthur Conan Doyle wrote and yet it doffs its hat, Guy Ritchie style, to the writer in numerous ways. Doyle’s personal fascination with the occult (remember “Arthur & George”?)and magic is saluted in this story. Throwaway details from the stories, like Holmes’s boxing talent, are picked up. Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes may have an entirely unconvincing British accent but who cares? He’s got comic timing, charisma and great abs. Jude Law is superb as Watson. The script gives them some fantastic repartee and really, if it hadn’t been for Irene Adler (yes, she from “A Scandal in Bohemia” and thus another Doyle detail that sneaks its way into “Holmes”) and Mary, this movie could have been as much a caper as a queer romantic comedy. Actually, I’d say it still is, despite the women doing their best to leave an impression on the men. Mary as the fiancée bails Watson out and Irene leaves Holmes naked in bed, handcuffed, but neither the good girl nor the bad one really matter. These boys were meant to be. To quote the old Wills ad, they’re made for each other. Cue in steampunk orchestra playing the bridal march.
When I was saying this to someone, they said, “But who’s the bride?” Is Holmes the shrew whom Watson sort of tames? Is Watson the ideal wife who is supportive without being subservient? They were somewhat thrown when I asked why one of them had to be a woman. Because romantic relationships, it seems, must be a gender see-saw in perfect balance. As the ladyboy hairdresser at Calcutta’s Tolly Club had once told me, “Wanting a life partner isn’t about falling in love and all that. It’s more like making a jigsaw puzzle.” Your life are the pieces that you try to arrange so that it matches the picture on the box, which invariably shows a girl and a boy. That’s the pattern we’re invariably trying to fit ourselves and those we see into.
Last month, Rituparno Ghosh attended the annual film festival in Goa. It was the first time he’d been seen in public in a while and over the past few months, rumours have been flying frenetically about how Ghosh, affectionately known as Ritu, is “changing”. Years ago, Ritu used to looked unremarkable. Many made fun of him for being a little effeminate but that was it. Then he became a filmmaker. His limp wrist and the fact that he could write female characters well and tell their stories with nuance and sensitivity made everyone whisper that he must be gay. Because if you’re “homo” then you like guys, which means you’re like a woman because only women like guys, unless they’re lesbian in which case they’re masculine because only guys like women. Got it? Anyway, so Ritu was definitely gay because he told women’s stories well. Plus, he got into the habit of dubbing for actresses in his movies.
Press image from the Goa Film Festival
As if that wasn’t enough, his wardrobe started becoming rather flamboyant (by Calcutta standards). So there were long flowing kurtas and floaty shawls and dupattas, accessorised with embroidered little bags and the like. Soon enough silk turban-esque headgear was added but curiously, no one said Ritu harboured dreams of being Sikh. Then he said that he was going to act in a film and play a woman’s part. A man in drag and not hiding it — predictably this news gave much of Calcutta tinnitus. When Ritu made an appearance in Goa, a lot of the rumours that had been floating around and the supposed clarifications to scotch those rumours got settled. There’s little doubt from the picture alongside that Ritu is well on his way to becoming a woman. The good news is that no one went into a flurry of speculation about whether to call him Rituparno or Rituparna from now on. Maybe Ritu will be able to make his transition the way Larry Wachowski became Lana Wachowski without having to explain himself. Hopefully, he’ll sit back and spar with someone, like Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law do in “Sherlock Holmes”, and there won’t be any need of an Irene Adler to make the relationship acceptable to prevailing logic.
The smartest thing about “3 Idiots” is that director Raju Hirani uses the student crowd of his IIT-inspired engineering college as a laughter track. This means when an idiotic joke is cracked, everyone in the audience thinks the next person laughed and so they laugh too. Which is ironic because one of the things that the story of “3 Idiots” attacks is herd mentality but that’s my explanation for the uproarious laughter that bounced off the walls every now and then during “3 Idiots” because this movie is not really a comedy. It’s actually bordering on tragic. And not just because the men in this movie have a thing for pulling their pants down and exposing rather unphotogenic bottoms in very unflattering underwear, although it really was very sad that there wasn’t one yummy specimen of masculinity in an entire college of men. If any of you find the boys dancing in their towels to “Aal Izz Well” attractive, you have problems that are far more serious than the butchering that the story suffers in “3 Idiots”.
THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW.
In the first half of “3 Idiots”, two plotlines are set up. One is of a road trip that Farhan (Madhavan) and Raju (Sharman Joshi) take with an old college mate (Chaturlingam, played by Omi) to find their dearest friend in college, Rancho (Aamir Khan). The other is a tale told in flashback by Farhan of their time in college and the heroic antics of Rancho, a prankster who could crack the system and be a topper even while fighting the system’s intention of turning people into zombies. Rancho doesn’t believe in ragging or memorising textbooks. He loves learning, likes to think for himself and he would like people to feel the same thrill that he does when he invents his gadgets. And he’s aware that engineering isn’t the stuff to fire everyone’s pulse rate. At this point, to quote Rancho, aal is well. Ok, so Aamir Khan is an awful caricature of a 20-something and hams so much that Maharashtra might have to double its pig farming since all their produce has been used up in this film, but that doesn’t kill the experience of watching “3 Idiots”. Sharman Joshi is good, Omi and Madhavan are convincing; the script has its moments. Most importantly, you can’t not cheer for the guy who takes on the system and champions the idea of being yourself.
Then comes the second half during which, with rigorous and meticulous care, the director and script team demolish everything that was well-set up in the first half and create so much unnecessary, teary melodrama that you have to wonder whether some glycerine manufacturer didn’t give the money to make “3 Idiots”. So the following happens in this chrono-illogical order:
1. In the present we discover Rancho is not Rancho. The fake Rancho (Aamir Khan) is bright but poor lad while the real Rancho (Jaaved Jaffrey) is a rich man’s idiotic son. The real Rancho’s dad decrees that the fake Rancho will get the grades and degrees in the real Rancho’s name. So the real Rancho goes off to London while the fake Rancho comes to study engineering. If you think this idea has holes in it, wait for the rest.
2. In the past, we see Boman Irani, who plays the principal of the engineering college, get into an ego tussle with Rancho (the fake one, naturally, being played by Aamir Khan). He embroils Farhan and Raju into his spat because he knows they are Rancho’s weak spots and remorselessly does a series of cruel, horrible things, including pushing Raju to attempt suicide. Irani’s character, who was initially shown as a slightly eccentric academic, turns out to be a monster who runs the college like a fiefdom. It’s difficult to decide which is more appalling: Irani’s character, his performance or the fact that we’re supposed to like him because he likes his grandkid and admits defeat to Rancho with utter lack of grace.
3. Also in the past, Rancho delivers a baby using a vaccum cleaner. It seems to be stillborn but instead of kicking the bucket, it kicks Rancho in the face when it hears the words “Aal is well” and so joins the living.
4. In the present, Raju and Farhan elope with Pia (Kareena Kapoor), whom Rancho had a crush on in their college days and the only woman in the world who doesn’t want to take off excruciatingly-heavy wedding jewellery while on a road trip. No, Raju and Farhan don’t both want to marry her; they want to reunite her with Rancho (who they’ve just discovered isn’t Rancho). Whom they haven’t met in some 10-odd years and whose real name they still don’t know. No matter. They know he’d want to marry Pia even though he flatly refused to marry her back in college.
5. Rancho turns out to be an inventor with 400 patents pending and a school in Ladakh.
It’s inexplicable to me that the people who began the story the way they did could actually finish it off like this.
I really, really wanted to like “3 Idiots” and, just for what it says in the first part, I hope it does well. I hope parents see it and I hope young people take some confidence from it. Some characters could have been less flatly written (like Omi and Raju) but neither this nor the pantomime versions of humans as played by Aamir Khan and Boman Irani overwhelm a heartwarming beginning. Unfortunately, what happens in the second part is that the system wins. Rancho isn’t able to rub the principal’s nose in the dirt and we are given no indication that he isn’t being a bastard to the next round of students or changing things at the college to allow more free thinking. An unnecessary romance is thrown in, possibly because the Bollywood system demands it. Glycerine and tears flow and it’s amazing that the outflow from the shooting from this film didn’t make up for the paltry monsoons this year. But most heartbreakingly, there’s so much cruelty in the script; particularly towards poor people, characters like Raju whose poverty and whose family’s misfortunes somehow become an uproarious joke. Except sitting in a plush, comfortable chair in a swanky movie theatre and wearing a skirt that cost half of how much Raju’s mother apparently earned in a month, I didn’t find it funny.
For the past ten days, I’ve been trying to write this post and I’ve failed. I don’t know how to begin it. There’s nothing funny in what has happened and the events offer no insight that I can share. This time next year I will probably not remember what made me sit down to write this post today but that isn’t important. I’m writing this now, so that I don’t forget what happened on Friday December 12. Because a human being (and a reasonably well-known one at that) was killed that night. The killer was found quite easily within a few days. The news that the killer had been apprehended was looped briefly in a few news channels and surfaced in the newspapers a day late. That’s why I’m writing this post. Because by the time actor-photographer Khushi Agnihotri is finally sentenced for murdering dancer Bireshwar Gautam, who knows what will be remembered of Friday December 11?
On Saturday December 12, one of Bireshwar Gautam’s students tried calling him repeatedly but couldn’t get through. There was something to do with a recital and it was very uncharacteristic of Bireshwar to disappear like this. Ultimately, the student went to his house. No one would open the door. The guard said that Bireshwar had not left the building. He’d had a visitor late last night but the visitor had left alone. Ultimately, the police came into the picture when the student decided to get a locksmith to break open the door. When student and locksmith did break in, they found Bireshwar’s dead body with strangulation marks around his neck. The guard told the police that at about 11pm on Friday, a man had come to meet Bireshwar. When the guard had called Bireshwar on the intercom to tell him of the visitor, Bireshwar had asked the guard to let the man in. It didn’t seem odd to anybody because the man had visited Bireshwar’s place a number of times over the past few months. The guard had no trouble helping the police’s artist come up with a sketch of the man who would be identified as Khushi Agnihotri.
All this was presumably reported in the city papers (I wasn’t around so I don’t know). What wasn’t reported was that Bireshwar was found naked and half his face had been bruised so badly, it was decided that his dead body wouldn’t be photographed. So the moment the police saw his corpse, they knew it was “a gay crime”. Because Bireshwar, who with sublime irony in the world was known as Biru (meaning “brave” and a version of Veeru, Dharmendra’s über-macho and heterosexual character from Sholay), was openly gay. I don’t know what a “gay crime” means in India. Is it a hate crime when your lover kills you? Does it get labelled a hate crime because the killer hated the man he killed for screwing him over? Is the fact that the victim was gay explanation enough for the murder? Is the label of “gay crime” adequate to ensure something is reported only in muffled tones?
On Monday December 14, Khushi Agnihotri, a struggling actor and photographer who was wearing the too-tight T-shirt and weirdly-bleached jeans that make up the uniform of “strugglers” in Andheri, was arrested for Biru’s murder. Khushi means happiness or, as my grand-uncle told me when I was a kid, “feeling gay”. It’s a word for an emotion and not used as a name generally but if a name, it’s generally a girl’s. Not that there’s anything effeminate about Khushi from what I saw. He looked buff, as all aspiring Bollywood actors tend to these days. Khushi had been seeing Biru for a few months and apparently, his only reason for being with Biru was that the dancer was supposed to give Khushi a break into Bollywood. As dance teacher to some actresses, Biru had the access that Khushi apparently craved. I don’t know if Khushi has admitted to having a sexual relationship with Biru but he has certainly suggested that he had sex with Biru expecting the dancer would give him the all-important break. When Biru did no such thing, Khushi killed him.
The television reports I saw found nothing problematic about this logic. It seems that’s what people do, or perhaps that’s what gay people supposedly do: kill a guy because he’s not sharing his address book. One of them went on to say that Biru had done this repeatedly in the past and said that one of his ex-boyfriends was a photographer who had also hoped for a break but got no help from Biru. (The news report didn’t tell us whether this photographer had also tried to kill Biru for his lack of generosity.) Then they mentioned that Biru knew lots of people in Bollywood because he gave some starlets dance classes. The classic evil, opportunistic, nymphomaniac gay man. Because there’s nothing opportunistic about the men sleeping with him in order to climb the Bollywood ladder.
Of course according to Khushi, he came on Friday night to show Biru his portfolio. At about 11pm. No one knows what happened after that. Was it an Michael-Hutchence-esque accident? Did Biru say something that made Khushi lose his temper and suddenly go ballistic? All I’m left with are horrifying imagined moments: Biru frightened, desperate to not die, his expressive eyes shining with terror and his face imploding into itself as bone splintered, muscles snapped and blood spread like an ink-stain on his nut-brown skin. They’re like scenes from a silent film because I can’t imagine the sound. Maybe it’s too much to do or maybe it’s just the silence that surrounds Biru’s name now. We cannot talk about what happened to him because we don’t want to know the details. We can’t mourn for him because he died an undignified death; one whose details will be scratched out and perhaps even rewritten. He will be remembered as the dancer of the whispered sexuality, the one who was murdered because he lured men, and we’ll forget how, when he walked on to stage, you couldn’t take your eyes off him. The fact that his slim, graceful body had an elegant virility to it when he danced is something that will fade from memory. Those who saw him perform will forget how expressive his painted face could be and how keenly his unpainted eyes saw things around him. We’ll stop recalling how so many of us fell in love with his choreography and the dancer that he had been because dancers don’t want to remember the man who tainted Indian classical dance with the “gay crime” graffiti. I just hope we don’t forget that, on December 12, 2009, Khushi Agnihotri came into Bireshwar Gautam’s house as a trusted friend and then brutally killed him.
From Avatar
It’s Friday, the day when new movies hit the movie theatres and the film world hopes like hell that all of us will scurry to the box office and buy tickets for the week’s releases. The news this Friday is that all the theatres with James Cameron’s Avatar are full. There were 700 prints of Avatar released throughout India and, in case you were wondering, that’s a staggeringly high figure. Aside from the English version, there Avatar in Tamil, Telugu and a bunch of Indian languages so making it the biggest Hollywood release in India so far. It’s a big deal, and not just because of the amount of money spent on Avatar and how Fox must be desperate to recover the $ 230 million (nope, no typos there) that the madman Cameron has spent making this movie. (Though, if this New Yorker profile is anything to go by, then the suffering inflicted by Cameron upon Fox is more than financial. At some point in the making of the movie, Cameron had a message for the Fox executive via one of the producers, “Tell your friend he’s getting fucked in the ass, and if he would stop squirming it wouldn’t hurt so much. “) What is significant, though, is that Fox is clearly looking at India to supply some noticeable percentage of the earnings from Avatar.
This is weird. Because traditionally, Hollywood has accepted that this is one of the few countries where it doesn’t stand a chance. Till about five years ago, English movies came to India monstrously late and hideously-edited, if they came at all. The first movie to be released in India at the same time as the rest of the world was The Matrix Revolutions. Hollywood producers ignored blatant remakes of their films by Indian filmmakers, probably because it would cost more to sue my brethren than the compensation that they’d get from the chastened party. There was no money to be made in India, despite its English-speaking population, because we like song-and-dance extravaganza. Bollywood ruled. This weekend, however, no Indian producer wanted to release their film because of Avatar and Rocket Singh, released by one of Bollywood’s biggest production houses, may well be booted out. It’s sad, not because Avatar shouldn’t make money, but because Rocket Singh is an extremely well-made film. Mostly when we say a Bollywood flick is good, we mean that it’s better than the average nonsensical fare this industry serves up. Rocket Singh, however, could hold its own against any other indie movie from any part of the world. The acting is natural, the story is realistic, the characters are real, the dialogues are crisp and credible and its flawlessly paced until the last ten minutes. Director Shimit Amin used locations that anyone who lives in India will recognise. From the peeling posters on the wallsspeckled with old paint, to the characterless-cubicled 0ffices, these are places we have all around us and they’ve been shot beautifully. The only weak point is the end, which felt somehow off-key, but that’s just about five minutes. For two and a half hours, Rocket Singh is superb. It’s insightful, cleverly-observed, frequently funny, idealistic and everyone who has ever been in a dead-end job will feel like Shimit Amin’s protagonist is their homeboy.
However, if Rocket Singh makes it through this weekend, it’ll only be because the producers are buying out theatres and that’s tough to do because all theatres want Avatar. They want the blockbuster and apparently, everyone is going to see Avatar. Rocket Singh doesn’t stand a chance, it’s being said even though everyone who has seen it has loved it. But it’s understated, realistic, unspectacular in terms of effects and essentially, more (indie) Hollywood while Avatar is fantastical, ludicrous, and in spirit and intention, somewhat Bollywoody (but for the spectacular special effects although there are those who could claim Jaadu was Na’vi 1.o). So even though it may look like the world is changing when Hollywood finally notices India, actually the world isn’t changing. The good indie flick remains small and the blockbuster still wins. It’s just that now that we’ve been allowed into the global village, our big guys don’t look so big next to the really big guys and our little guys look punier.
This has to be the best invite of the year. Jenny Bhatt doesn’t just want people to come to her exhibition of paintings, she wants them to achieve “liberation thru’ consumption”, which is why the invite for her show is a credit card.
“Dear Seeker,
As part of our dedicated effort to take care of the spiritual needs of our friends, we are delighted to gift you the most invaluable of possessions — an exclusive Moksha Shots Credit Card! With this card you have the special privileges of unlimited shopping for a lifetime! You can now transfer credit onto your next life and in Easy Lifetime Installments. And while you continue to shop, you collect Karmic Brownie Points that you can use to avail of exciting gifts like Mind Flights, Out of Body Vacations, Virtual Artworks and more.”
On the back of the florid pink Moksha Shots Credit Card, which is a Karma Card (that’s like Master Card for those who can levitate, if colours and logo are anything to go by) , it says,
“This card is the property of MokshaShots and the authorized signatory may only use it in accordance of Karmic Law. If found, please hand it over to any Desire Bank displaying the Karma Card sign. Not valid for payment in Extra Terrestrial Exchange.”
Despite titles like “Eurekasana”, “MokshaBum Mandala” and “Kundalini Finds his Hole in the Blissfield”, if Ms. Bhatt’s paintings bring you joy then you might be an extraterrestrial. The Karma Card is, however, rather considerate because humans, particularly those with some aesthetic sensibilities, may well find they are losing their minds (Mind Flight Brownie Points for your Karma Card). They may also feel a bit murderous towards Ms. Bhatt after being knocked back by the Moksha Shots she’s served up, thus stocking up on some seriously bad karma. At which point an Out of Body Vacation might be just what you need.
NOTE: The first line of this post is meant with an extreme lack of earnestness and an earnest dash of irony.
