Ten Indian Musicals

Dutt's Entertainment: ten immortal Indian musicals

When most people think of Indian movies, they think of Bollywood, of men and women in colorful costumes, dancing and singing before elaborate sets; when more knowing people think of Indian movies they also think of Satyajit Ray and his brand of understated realism. The world's perception of Indian cinema remains fixed on a juxtaposition of these two extremes-- extravagant commercialism vs. austere arthouse. Film critic Pauline Kael didn't help matters when she said "Ray is the only Indian director; he is, as yet, in a class by himself...the Indian film industry is so thoroughly corrupt that Ray could start fresh, as if it did not exist..."

Which is an amazing statement, one she'd probably never have made if she knew better-- if, say, she had sampled the gritty neorealism of Bimal Roy's Bandini or Raj Kapoor's Awaara, the elemental power of Mehboob Khan's Mother India, the noirish gloom of Guru Dutt's Pyaasa. Indian cinema is a grand buffet of different styles and subcultures, from Bengali (not just Ray, but Ritwik Ghatak, and Mrinal Sen) to Bollywood; Ray didn't just come out of a vacuum but out of a teeming sea of productive filmmaking, most of which are wonderful musicals, some of which have a strong thread of realism and social commentary running through them that surely influenced him, and which he in turn influenced. Roy, Kapoor, Mehboob and Dutt among others made money and won large audiences; they worked in a strictly commercial format, but made films that were at the same time recognizably art.

Pyaasa (Thirst, Guru Dutt, 1957)

Messiah complex

Film critic Pauline Kael once said: "Ray is the only Indian director; he is as yet, in a class by himself." She adds: "The Indian film industry is so throughly corrupt that Ray could start fresh, as if it did not exist." 

A startling statement, if one considers fellow Bengalis Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen; or more classical filmmakers like Bimal Roy, Raj Kapoor, Mehboob Khan, Guru Dutt; or (more recently) Mani Ratnam, Shekar Kapur, Shyam Benegal, Adoor Gopalakrishna-- I could go on. Yes Indian cinema may be corrupt (but what cinema isn't?); it's also a treasure cave of jewels, of a variety and beauty Kael can't possibly imagine.

Split (M. Night Shyamalan, 2016)

Divided

M. Night Shyamalan's Split as of this writing has taken in some $115 million in the United States and $172 million worldwide, all the sweeter considering the minuscule $9 million production budget involved (mostly self-financed), the years of commercial failure and critical abuse the filmmaker suffered.

So Shyamalan's back in a big way, and the question on all our minds is this: what have we bought into/welcomed back/re-created this time, exactly?

China 9 Liberty 37, Mirror Mirror, Snow White and the Huntsman, Magic Mike

Monte Hellman's China 9 Liberty 37 starts out with a spaghetti-ish (not to mention noirish) premise. Legendary gunslinger Clayton Drumm (Fabio Testi) is offered a deal: be hanged or go shoot the railroad company's former killer-for-hire Matthew Sebanek (Warren Oates) whose farm stands in the way of said railroad's expansion. When Clayton arrives at Sebanek's farm, he chances upon Catherine (the luscious Jenny Agutter) bathing naked in a stream.

The stranger who comes upon an isolated house and an ambivalent marriage; we pretty much know how this plays out, only with Hellman we don't exactly know how things plays out, and character as much as conflict has a role in determining the narrative's wayward progress. Hellman's trademark pacing (something a bit more leisurely than a horse's lope) sometimes erupts in sudden, vicious, superbly staged and shot violence (a showdown between Clayton and one of Matthew's brothers comes to mind); said pacing also hides the tensions simmering beneath. Matt knows Clayton was sent to kill him; Matt and Clayton like each other (both are hardened professionals tired of their profession); Catherine and Clayton like each other too. If the actors look as if they're a little lost that's not a flaw in the performances but a natural reaction to being in a Hellman film: so many undercurrents and subtleties crossing each other you have to be careful not to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. 

Arguably the most confident performer here is Oates; having given Hellman the definitive portrait of American machismo at its most unconfident in Two Lane Blacktop he knows enough to armor Matthew with the most obtuse of surfaces, the better to hide his true intentions--which we learn about anyway, of course. Hellman puts up people with varying skills at deception and self-deception (even Testi's open-faced Clayton plays the game), that in the course of his films are gradually stripped of their defenses, leaving a raw, aching awareness. A great western, of course, not the least because it feels so much more than one. 

Tarsem Singh can't really tell a story properly, but he's such a heedlessly fertile imagemaker one doesn't quite care. Mirror Mirror is his modernized take on the Snow White legend, and frankly it's a mess; it's also fun, with Lily Collins as the impish heroine and Julia Roberts in full-on comic mode as the malevolently vain stepmother queen. Scriptwriter Marc Klein and playwright Jason Keller manage to come up with sparkling rom-com dialogue between Collins and her Prince Charming, the heroically game Armie Hammer (he gets considerable comic mileage out of a less-than-dignifying spell that compels him to act like a dog), but the true star of the film is Singh's distinct visual style--exuberant and restless (but not to the point of ADHD), with a gift for imagery (Snow White's minaret palace rising high over a crystal lake from an impossibly curved crag) and dramatic sets (the hushed winter forest; the dwarfs' underground lodge; the ballroom with its breathtakingly cavernous entrance). 

A good chunk of the film's visual appeal are the costumes, by Singh's collaborator Eiko Ishioka with their soaring collars, sweeping capes, and ridiculous swan and sailing-ship hats (sadly, this was to be Ishioka's final work--she died before the film was finished). Call me smitten, but I think it all works--the actors are content to be smart and sassy and shallow, leaving all the real magic to be worked by the filmmakers, toiling away in the background. Easily Singh's most enjoyable picture to date.

And if that isn't convincing, check out Snow White and the Huntsman, Rupert Sander's LOTR-ized version of the legend. Serious themes, dark magics, and Charlize Theron in full Monster mode--for all her talent and beauty, Theron has never struck me as an actress with much of a sense of humor. She's so driven to make us see the acting behind the beauty that we're put off by the pushiness: "you want to be taken seriously, we get that; now back off!"

If Theron is too in-your-face, Stewart is too, well, comatose. She sleepwalks through the film with the same vaguely distressed expression she used during all four (five? I forget) Twilight movies, and frankly the ploy has become a bit wearying, if not soporific. Between the two actresses, one pathetically passive, the other psychotically aggressive, there's no point of dramatic contact whatsoever; it's as if they were acting in two completely different movies, neither of which I particularly liked. 

Sanders directs big, but it's an empty, unevocative kind of big; big sets, big action setpieces, no sense of drama, inspiration, artistry, no acknowledgement of the essential absurdity of the story (A beautiful virgin living with seven dwarfs, unmolested? Really?). There's a suggestion of feminist sympathy for the evil queen, but poor Theron lost me some time back, when she wouldn't even crack wise on the idea of eating a young girl's heart--c'mon, Charlize, not even an Andrew Zimmern reference?

Possibly the picture's low point is when Snow White comes to the heart of the forest, and a mysterious stag with monstrous antlers rises up to greet her (sounds familiar?). Rule number one when making bad movies: don't ever remind the audience of a better film; they might not come back in heart and mind to finish this one.

Steven Soderbergh is the hardest-working serious filmmaker in the business, arguably; his Magic Mike is his low-budget take on favorite star Channing Tatum's life story. The star has a charming, low-key presence, but cedes center stage to Matthew McConaughey's slimy strip club owner, a combination of six-pack abs, long unwashed hair, and fine wrinkles.

Film is nicely understated, the dance sequences nicely shot and choreographed (I can see Soderbergh being capable of doing a musical, though I don't see him wanting to--he's such an odd combination of the canny and straitlaced); several points of contention in a largely competent production: I'm not sure club customers look that consistently good, and the level of homoerotic denial ("Got all these hot women, so I ain't gay") in the air is so intense you can't help but sniff suspiciously for smoke.

Perhaps my biggest beef with the picture is that it ain't Lino Brocka; the club is too clean, the acts too wholesome, the melodrama too tidy. As I wrote in Cineaste, Brocka's Macho Dancer is unashamed exploitation (where Mike--again, too strenuously--keeps its head largely above the muck), and that's part of the film's political point. When it comes to male strip melodramas, make mine Macho.

7/30/12

Immortals (Tarsem Singh, 2011)

Superhero salad

Consider poor Theseus. His divine father bequeathed on him godlike strength, but not godlike immunity to life's sorrows; his human father abandoned him to be raised by his mother. He's required to travel to Athens, encountering many dangers along the way, to claim his birthright; when he arrives his stepmother tries to kill him.

Theseus' father commits suicide; his best friend is captured by the Furies. He's considered one of Athens' greatest heroes, but no one would ever mistaken his life for a bowl of cherries. 

For whatever reason Theseus hasn't enjoyed the name recall of, say, Hercules; his life's story hasn't been adopted into half a dozen sword-and-sandal epics, nor has it been turned into a Disney movie musical. He is mostly remembered for his adventure against the Minotaur, a monstrous half-man, half-bull creature that lives in a labyrinth--wouldn't be surprised to learn that people are readier to remember the Minotaur than they are his name. He hovers in that Underworld of dimly regarded mythological figures--not quite familiar, not quite forgotten. 

Now he gets the exclusive multimillion dollar Hollywood 3D production treatment--only it isn't what it used to be. 3D has lost some of its luster, ever since the sequels to both the Pirates of the Caribbean and Kung Fu Panda franchises failed at the boxoffice. This production was obviously meant to cash in on the success of Clash of the Titans, not to mention the larger-than-life bloodbaths found in 300, but some of the bloom has faded from action-fantasy as well (Conan the Barbarian, anyone?). Knowing all this, I walked into the theater expecting to find a second-rate Clash; instead I found an intensely violent, exuberantly stylish comic-book action movie.

Tarsem Singh for much of his not-very-prolific career has been something of an eye-catcher. His The Cell (2000) I didn't much like--it dwelt too much on a cliché of a story, the hunt for a serial killer and his hidden victim--but it did feature said killer's more exotic fantasies, some of which involved hermetically sealed junk and desiccated corpses in the spirit of Jan Svankmajer (a master at conveying physical corruption). His The Fall (2006) was an altogether warmer, more winning project, the attempt by a disabled stuntman and his child friend to weave a fantasy of a story; Singh envisioned slow-motion action in a swirl of colors, set against an electric blue sky, largely desert landscapes, and ravishing Islamic architecture.

Immortals is a step forward and upwards--not a serial-killer hunt, nor an exercise in willed storytelling, but a retelling of the life of Theseus, one of the great Greek mythological heroes. Characterization is minimal--you barely know these people--but their expressions, their gestures, their voice delivery are consistently intense, outsized, intricate. They may be shallow, barely sketched-out people, but they're vividly, memorably so.

Like Louis Leterrier with his Clash of the Titans Singh makes heavy use of digital effects; unlike Leterrier Singh has formidable imagemaking abilities, and an awesome sense of drama--he'll frame tiny figures against a vast set, crawling across a polished floor like so many ants, or throw vivid colors across electric-blue sky and desolate land, against which he parades a procession of outrageous Eiko Ishioka costumes.

Like, say, Zack Snyder Singh likes to make extensive use of slow motion in his action sequences. Unlike Snyder, Singh has a genuine sensibility, one that draws inspiration from more eclectic sources (for The Cell Singh possibly viewed the works of Jan Svankmajer; for this film he's quoted as saying he's trying to emulate Michelangelo Caravaggio). Snyder's sources of inspiration? For 300 obviously Frank Miller (a good draftsman, but his historically distorted view of Thermopylae (not to mention racist and homophobic view of the Persians) plays out on a monotonous color palette--red on black on red on black...); for Watchmen it's pretty much Dave Gibbons (whose closely detailed realism is effective, not exactly inspired--you can't help but suspect the intricate camera moves found in the comics were closely scripted by writer Alan Moore).

Singh's basic approach to the material may be questionable (a comic-book look at Greek mythology?) but the man does know how to wield a camera, and to cut the resulting footage together in a rhythm designed to elicit awe, exuberance, a sense of majesty. Comic book? Well--yes, but consider: mythology was the Greeks' (and for that matter the rest of Western civilization's) way of telling elemental stories of lust, vengeance, ambition, pathos; they were colorful, dramatic, easy to comprehend. The gods were the ancient Greeks' equivalent of the superhero; like superheroes they maintained some kind of secret identity, showing themselves only in times of great crisis, and only to people who have proven themselves worthy. Like superheroes they (and their progeny) represented the Grecian virtues, Theseus in particular: bravery, loyalty, integrity, ingenuity in the face of impossible odds.

Immortals is short on humanity, long on the human body in all its speed, power, grace; watching this makes you almost want to go hurl a javelin, or run a really long course, or do something Olympian. If the gods had to pick an artist to do their 'graphic novel,' they could have done worse, much, much worse.

First published in Businessworld  12.8.11

Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, 2009)

How to be a millionaire

Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (2008) is that one-in-million movie, a slick, scrappy, rags-to-riches flick complete with love story, chase sequences, menacing gangs, a helpless young beauty, a pair of scrappy brothers, a slum the size and population of a small city.

It's thrilling, funny, tragic, sensuous, infuriating; it's bright-colored and deep-shadowed, crammed full of danceable music, its characters running the gamut from insatiably greedy to viciously hateful to selflessly heroic to endlessly loving. It's the type of entertainment no one wanted to touch before getting made, and everyone loves after breaking boxoffice records; a heartwarmer, a tearjerker, a golden doorstop winner (Best Picture, Best Director, best yadda yadda yadda)

Despise the picture.

And the loser is --

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's that time of the year again.

2009 Oscar nominees

Some notes:

Mildly surprised they didn't nominate Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight for a dozen statuettes--it dabbles in current events, it has the heft and pretentiousness (with a message sufficiently grabled that voters might think it's a pro-civil rights, anti-terrorism cautionary/inspirational tale), and a beloved dead actor's final performance to capture the nostalgia vote, and best of all, it's a boxoffice winner. Hell, film and statue deserve each other; neither has a sense of humor or of shame, both are free of the taint and stench of art, or of artists striving for greatness.

I'd written about David Fincher's Benjamin Button already. Suffice to say, I think Button with a script by Gump-ish writer Eric Roth is populist enough, with a wistful enough message ("nothing lasts") that the voters thought it Oscar-worthy. They're apparently too thickheaded to suss out the film's true theme, the majestic passage of time, and the enduring variety of the world and its seasons.

Have not seen Gus Van Sant's Milk (but will, this weekend). Yes, he's done conventional work (Good Will Hunting, and To Die For) same time he's done more interesting fare (Elephant; the Psycho remake (what can I say? Don't knock it till you've seen it, especially screened side-by-side with the original)), so I for one remain hopeful that it was nominated by mistake, and that there's more to it than its ostensibly liberal (if nevertheless important) message.

As for Slumdog Millionaire, my position is this: why waste perfectly good money watching some tourist of a Brit filmmaker steal story ideas from his Indian betters? Slumdog's entertaining, and especially in the scenes of the pickpocket ring it has a gruesome energy (So why is the man and his minions picking up homeless kids? The answer makes one think of an episode of Tales from the Crypt or Masters of Horror series (not so much that it doesn't happen--apparently it does--but that Boyle insists on filming it in a pulp-horror manner). But--fantastic premises (a street kid as finalist in a million-dollar TV game show)? Outrageous coincidences (kid and his love interest keep bumping into each other with little trouble in Mumbai, a city of over thirteen million people)? There's nothing here we haven't seen done before, and done better, in the films of Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor, Mehboob Khan, Bimal Roy, and many others.

As for shamelessly melodramatic climaxes, the one employed here implies a hundred and eighty degree turnaround on the part of a major character. I know, I know plausibility is not the picture's strong suit, nor was it meant to be, but said character is consistent, was dramatically plausible, despite everything; it would have been easy to rewrite him to follow his true, piratical yet generous, nature.

Give me instead the equally shameless yet to my mind far more effective climax to Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, even if Eastwood does for a few grating moments croak the words to his own song. Slumdog's ending just drops in out of nowhere; Gran Torino's (a lovely act of theatrics and mindfuck psychology) is carefully prepared from the film's earliest scenes, feels true to the character he plays, and is still courageous in its outlandish convictions. Fact is, I wonder why didn't the Academy nominate Eastwood's film? It's the kind of high-quality soap Hollywood used to be good at churning out in its olden days, with a generous dose of politically incorrect humor (leavened with unspoken sensitivity) tossed in for flavoring, and it's Eastwood's cleanest, simplest, least pretentious film in years.

Do the Academy voters feel they have to be serious now? Do they feel they have standards to keep, artistic merit to reward and uphold? From where I'm sitting, they have no standards; the Oscars are a whorefest, a badly dressed one at that, long and dull and totally pointless (the career statue they gave Robert Altman is a capstone insult to the career of a great artist, the competition statue they gave Martin Scorsese a consolation insult to an artist still growing and developing and working in so many interesting ways). Altman and Scorsese are too tactful as human beings to tell the Academy where they can really stick their goldplated doorstops; I for one wished they were not so gracious.

Time Magazine's The Best Asian Films of All Time

Since when was New Zealand a part of Asia?

Glad to see Himala there, would have preferred Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years Without God, Mario O'Hara, 1976), but the others--Shall We Dance? Gwoemul? The Asian bench is much deeper than that.

A Passage to India, E. M. Forster, 1924

I remember being--what, fourteen? Fifteen? When I picked a library book from out of the pile that was in our room, and saw the words on the hardbound spine: A Passage to India. "What the hell is this?" I asked my Evil Twin Brother, "A travel guide?" "It's a novel," he replies. "Fiction. Actually quite good."

Twenty-five or so years and a David Lean adaptation later, I finally caught up with the novel, and yes, it's "actually quite good." Brings to mind Jean Renoir's The River and Anthony Burgess' The Malayan Trilogy in the way the foreign narrator (or storyteller) is able to evoke the sights, sounds, colors, feelings of another country, respecting its otherness at the same time he provides a fascinating view.

If I remember right, Renoir focused on British expatriates living in India, with maybe a few supporting Indian characters to round out the cast; same with Burgess, who also used a more satiric approach. Forster' novel has its share of humor (I'm thinking most of all of Dr. Godbole, who nimbly pads away with many of the scenes he's in), but there's also a magisterial confidence in the way Forster is able to inhabit the mind of Dr. Aziz (the novel's nominal protagonist), also the way he's able to sketch Aziz's lightly comical interactions with fellow Muslims (he can't relate to their passionate anti-Imperialism [at least not at first]), Hindus (he's suspicious and a bit perturbed at their odd [Godbole in particular] way of looking at things), his evolving relationship with the British (he desperately wants to be a friend, but is acutely aware of their contempt)--a remarkable achievement, really, considering how difficult the task is (Who has succeeded at something similar? Plenty of examples, I'm sure, but the first one that pops into mind is Graham Greene's whiskey priest in The Power and the Glory--made into The Fugitive, a much superior film adaptation to my mind, and by John Ford and Gabriel Figueroa, no less).

It's on its most basic level a withering account of racism in British India. Marvelous all the details Forster gets right (or as right as I can tell)--the way, for example, the British women seem more rigid in their attitudes than the men; the way the British pounce on any apparent lapse and hold it up as an example of Muslim illogic or duplicity (a late response to a summons) or even carelessness (a missing collar stud), when in truth matters are more complex; the excruciatingly funny--and pathetic--bridge parties, ostensibly (as implied by their name) meant to "bridge" the gap between Indian and British, only to emphasize the depth and breadth of it to everyone attending.

The rape trial is a comedy of horrors: the startling way the British community quickly and instantly (almost reflexively) comes together--like pioneers pulling their wagons into an embattled circle--at the news of a sexual threat; the odd detail of old Mrs. Moore's role in the alleged crime brought out, blown up, turned into local folklore (she's briefly deified as "Esmiss Esmoor"); the underplayed slapstick of having the community's most notable figures stand on the court's one-foot-tall platform with the complainant (Adel Quested, probably the only innocent involved in all this) as a show of support.

But the novel's so much more than its (accurate, acerbic) portrait of colonial era racism. It's as beautiful an evocation of a land through alien eyes (Forster's India ranks up there with Conrad's Africa, Greene's Mexico, Burgess' Malaysia) and it does something quite extraordinary, I think: where most writers would home in on a rape trial and its verdict as the novel's centerpiece and climax, Passage instead presents a number of storylines and zeroes in on the least likely thread--the friendship that develops between the accused (Dr. Aziz) and the town's school principal, Mr. Cyril Fielding. It's this friendship, more than the trial and its possible disastrous impact on Aziz (a lifetime in a British jail for rape, for starters) that provides the momentum, the pull, even the thrill that keeps one reading--not "will Aziz come through all right?" or "will Adela keep up this monstrous charade?" or "will the Indians show up those stuck-up Brits?" but "will Aziz and Fielding clear up their misunderstandings, and become friends again?"

Amazing how Forster is able to convey the effortless intimacy that can sprout between two sympathetic souls--and, conversely, how said intimacy can vanish for indefinable reasons (a misunderstanding; the steady venomous work of other, more jealous friends) only to spring up again, as unlikely as ever, at a later date. I'm tempted to say Forster's homosexuality at that time and age must have forced him to cultivate such platonic friendships, but the effortless way it speaks to many readers--the way it thrills some chord inside them, me included--makes me wonder if he didn't create something more universal.

I haven't seen Lean's film in a long time, and I do remember liking it quite a bit, but there's this crucial point where the film fails the novel, or fails to achieve the novel's greatness--the Lean of Lawrence of Arabia unable to resist the big drama scenes, and focusing on the trial, the rest of the book seemingly more like an afterthought, pinned on afterwards to forestall any accusations of infidelity to the source material. If Lean had taken the riskier route (a choice the Lean of Brief Encounter might have made), he could have followed the novel's meandering path more faithfully, tried dramatize it within the confines of a two-and-a-half or three-hour film without putting audiences to sleep (as is, I imagine the very title--can you really blame me for mistaking it for a travel book?--is not one to inspire passionate interest).

But even more than the sharp satire, lyrical evocations, delicate delineation of various relationships, there's the mysticism, the sense that Forster was constantly looking beneath and beyond the surface of things (and may have had more inside information--that's the impression I got reading the book--on the underpinnings of existence than any of us might suspect). Maybe one of my favorite moments involved Aziz trying to winkle out of Dr. Godbole the secret he suspects the man is withholding about the Marabar Caves; try as he might, though, Godbole refuses to respond, refuse even to admit he's refusing to respond, or that anything at all is the matter--as Forster puts it "the comparatively simple mind of the Mohammedan was encountering Ancient Night" (love the capitalization, the sense you get of a forbidding Hardyesque allegorical figure suddenly popping up in the midst of a sharply scribed comedy of manners). It's the slightest of omissions, a tiny little knot of nothingness--a foretaste, of course, of the Marabar Cave's mysterious echo.

That echo and Forster's evocation of it and what it means lies at the very heart not just of the novel, I suspect, but of Forster's philosophy, point of view, metaphysics. If, as someone proposed, one of the novel's main theme is "the unity of all things," and if the echo represents the most terrifying consequence of said theme (its single most terrible quality being that it reduces all sounds--from a simple clap to the recital of a beautiful poem--to one level, to the same massively lifeless roar), one wonders, perhaps even trembles, at Forster's view of things. The novel isn't all that dark, though there are passages where some characters undergo fearsome struggles, but that echo threatens to swallow everything (the satire, the setting, the extraordinary characters) into a single featureless "bo-um;" it does succeed in swallowing poor Mrs. Moore and all her idealism (of all the characters her fate is perhaps the real tragedy).

Preceding that echo is the my opinion far more disturbing (not to mention far beyond Lean's considerable powers of filmmaking to evoke) image, of a completely enclosed cavern--or not so much a cavern but a hollow egg, an empty space that "mirrors its own darkness in all directions infinitely." A mischievous reference to the central image in Forster's one science fiction story "The Machine Stops," perhaps (in that story, people are encapsulated--and enfeebled--by living all their lives in fully automated wombs, or eggs)? Or an awful summation of Foster's fatalism, his awareness of dark despair trapped inside unfeeling stone for all eternity--hell (or an unsuspected heaven) in an eggshell, in effect? I remember Kurosawa Kiyoshi's vision of the afterlife in Kairo (Pulse, 2001)--was Forster's echo and egg chamber something similar? Could--stray thought here--Kyoshi be the perfect choice to remake Forster once more on the big screen, at least when it comes to this crucial scene?

Whatever. A great novel, sure, by a great writer; I was enthralled.