Friday 19 January 2024

Quick Birthday Note on Anjan Dutt


Coincidentally, my inclusion of Anjan Dutt's Chaalchitra Ekhon, which I saw at its Kolkata International Film Festival premiere, in the World Poll of the best films of the year conducted by the reputed Australia-based film magazine Senses of Cinema became a meagre gift to the great filmmaker on his birthday, as they published it today on their website. His 2009 film, Madly Bangalee, is also on this list as one of the best older films I watched for the first time last year.

 

Chaalchitra Ekhon was a transformative experience for me, someone whose journey into cinema and cinephilia began with Mrinal Sen's Padatik. For quite some time, I've felt nothing but disillusionment in the direction Bangla cinema is headed; I started feeling there's nothing left to cinematically explore in this city, and films like those by Mrinal Sen, or the Calcutta Trilogy of Satyajit Ray can no longer be made. Now, all that's left in this godforsaken city is capitalist and political propaganda on hoardings and posters. Dutt's film broke my (dis)illusion. Working with different mediums like cinema, DSLR, and iPhone cameras, Dutt proved that Sen or Ray could still make films about this city if they were alive today with the same raw energy. The city is not dead. Sen could still get to the streets, film in the busiest of locations, and tell authentic urban tales, perhaps more comfortably owing to the advancement in digital technology.





Madly Bangalee, Dutt's film from 2009, was made by him at age 56. Yet, it's among the most youthful films I've seen. No filmmaker at his age understood the youthful angst of young adults like him. The same could be said about Chaalchitra Ekhon, which he’s made at 70. His interactions with the debutant Sawon Chakraborty make some of the most wonderful moments in the film, especially in the film’s climax.

 

And then, there's his music in both these films. I await the release of Dutt's tribute song to Sen from Chaalchitra Ekhon, the song that kept me standing and clapping with tears when everyone was walking out after the screening ended. I was first introduced to Anjan Dutt through his music when I was young. As a child, I was restricted from going out of my house, so I would sit and gaze at the pedestrians walking by, at birds, cats, dogs, and mice. Later, when I first Dutt's Aamar Janala (on Tara TV, if I remember correctly?), I was reminded of those days looking out of my window as a kid. Dutt's discography is vast and diverse; I can't write even about all of my favourite songs because of how overwhelming their impact has been on me. The music of Madly Bangalee did not just sound good, it wonderfully captured the inner lives of these troubled youngsters as well as the elderly character played by Dutt himself.

 

Happiest Birthday Anjan Dutt!





Wednesday 6 December 2023

Thought on Sandeep Reddy Vanga's "Animal"




The movie's moral position is fascist. No doubt about it. I think films are more often a mirror of society than an agent of change, and that when we blame the movies for the evils around us we are getting things backward.

~ Roger Ebert on Dirty Harry (1971; Don Siegel)

 


There is no doubt about Vanga's fascist positioning either; if there was any, he cleared it in the first few minutes of the film itself with his character's ahistorical monologue about masculinity and courtship in the olden days. The idea is, essentially, that man is animal, and to survive and thrive in this animal kingdom, one has to be ruthless, violent, and immoral. Morality is a construct that does not consider man's true, animalistic nature. This nature compels Vanga's characters to be wildly possessive, apathetic, and violent because he views the world that way. Whoever is most successful in this makes it to the top, and the weaker has to follow. This is the very core of fascism - the supreme leader who has ascended the social ladder through sheer cunning and raw power becomes the leader of the pack, and the others - with limitations, flaws, and setbacks that did not allow them to be as ruthless - have to follow. There is no place for the vulnerable, they are left to be silently victimized.

Vanga likens masculinity to fascism - a man's identity is formed only when he can reach the highest peak of ruthlessness. Till then, he is just another one of the pack. In the case of this film, the protagonist is just another member of the Singh family that runs Swastik Steel, another one of Balbir Singh's children; until he massacres hundreds without mercy. That's when his name is revealed, his independent identity is formed, or rather, forged.

The ideas and politics behind Animal are abhorrent, to say the least, not to mention it's just a wrong view of humanity and masculinity. But I get why all of this makes sense to Vanga, or any other fascist, because there's some semblance of truth in it. The world truly does not function according to progressive moral standards, people do not either. But that's really not what progressive politics is about - such ideas stunt our progress as a society and as humans - sentient beings capable of transcending such primitive constraints.

But in the film's world, all men are animals, dwelling in carnality. There is no place for the vulnerable, violence is unrelenting, and sex is always unprotected and results in childbirth. In his world, the actions of his characters all seem convincing. Vanga succeeds as a storyteller.

The film moves at breakneck pace. Even at nearly 210 minutes, the storytelling does not feel dull except in moments that are clearly designed to manufacture outrage and serve no other purpose. The outbursts of blood and violence are not as frequent as supposedly promised but highly poignant. Even the prolonged pre-interval sequence does not detail the gore nearly as much as, say, Lokesh Kanagaraj, who gets away with casually tossing severed limbs into the air, showing blood spurting out of cut veins and arteries, or chopped heads. Even for people like me who've delved deep enough into regional cinema, some of the more outrageous moments feel rather mild. Films by Upendra have depicted more, and perhaps far worse, abuse of women. The dialogue about pad-changing is also nothing new for someone who's heard the dialogue "Why are you frowning and bickering? Are you menstruating?" (Baishe Srabon; 2012, Srijit Mukherji)

Animal has some of the best filmmaking I've seen in a Bollywood film in years, and few filmmakers've aced filmmaking on digital like Vanga, evident in both his previous film, Arjun Reddy, and this. The techniques used are rather simple, to the point of being unnoticeable, but effective nonetheless: the camera rotating to the rhythm of music, the slick cuts, and zooms clearly added in post. Above all, Vanga understood something few filmmakers understand - digital perceives everything way too quickly, so the time invested in showing things should double that of film. Every cut is twice as quick and seamless; every action is captured at four times the speed with room for further manipulation in post. Not to mention, there are some really stunning images of violence conjured on screen.

Animal is a fascist film. There is no doubt about it. Yet, it provided me plenty of food for thought and showcased some of the best filmmaking I've seen all year in any Indian film. It puts forth a great pathology for fascist mentality as almost a form of confession. I loved it for all the reasons I love the films of Zack Snyder, Vincent Gallo, and Leni Riefenstahl - all films with something to say about masculinity and/or fascism, and something new to bring to the table with regards to filmmaking.

Wednesday 8 November 2023

Debaloy Bhattacharya Breaks the Detective

At the heart of Debaloy Bhattacharya’s bold new show lies the question: "What good can a detective do in a world so screwed?”

[WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD]


I am not an avid viewer of television or web shows, never was. Yet, I decided, in 2021, to include minishows on my list of the year’s favourites; a decision made after watching a couple of minishows, both made for Hoichoi: “Mandaar” by Anirban Bhattacharya and “Boli” by Sankha Dasgupta. I thought it would be a disservice to the artists behind them to not give them their due—a place amongst the best filmmakers to have worked that year. Those shows had some of the finest filmmaking and most original ideas I’d seen all year which made them truly “cinematic.” I was reminded, at that moment, of Cahiers du Cinéma hailing David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks: The Return” as the best film of not just that year but also the decade. Minishows—even longer ones with two or three seasons—can, in fact, be cinematic. At their best, they are an opportunity for filmmakers to make one very long movie, and many short ones, at the same time. In case of longer shows with multiple seasons, the later seasons might be considered sequels to the first. Imagine “The Godfather” getting made today—I’m sure no major Hollywood studio would fund a three-hour-long movie; it’d be a streaming or television network hiring a director to adapt the novel into a minishow, which would then get a new season owing to its success or hint towards one in its ending.

 

2023 has been a great year for webshows, which is why I have more of them on my list. Amazon Prime Video had a couple of great releases this year; both of them find a place in my list and both have to do with movies: “Jubilee,” Vikramaditya Motwane’s à clef work defined by grandeur, about the early days of the Bombay Film Industry and “Cinema Marte Dum Tak,” spearheaded by Vasan Bala, a rather generic yet significant mini docushow about the world of lowbrow erotic B movies. A couple of such great shows came out of Bengal this year too, like Nirjhar Mitra’s “Shikarpur,” a detective thriller unlike any other, a thorough deconstruction and subversion of the genre. The best of all came from Debaloy Bhattacharya—his minishow adaptation of Kallol Lahiri’s superb novel “Indubala Bhaater Hotel,” for Hoichoi, a show so cinematic, so magnificent a portrait of not just a character but also a piece of land that I hailed it as the best movie of the year (till I recently saw “Killers of the Flower Moon”).

 

Bhattacharya is back with another show, for Amazon this time, the neo-noir “P.I. Meena.” So far, the “plots” of Bhattacharya’s work could always be written off in a couple of sentences. “P.I. Meena” is different; it’s the most happening of his works. The staging is elaborate and the action is frenetic—Bhattacharya spends much of his time setting it all up. Tanya Maniktala plays Meenakshi “Meena” Iyer, a private detective working at Sundial Securities, a private investigation firm in Kolkata, where the action begins when Meena witnesses a freak accident on the road—a truck hit-and-running over a young man, Partho Pratim Dey (Sawon Chakraborty)—and takes it upon herself to bring him to the hospital. At the police station, where she is summoned to record her statement, she meets his mother, Chandana Dey (Zarina Wahab). Chandana, on knowing her profession, tells her it could’ve been an attempt to murder Partho and requests her to find the conspirator(s). After Partho’s death, Meena takes up the case, which spirals into a rabbithole of conspiracies involving dubious cops, virologists, Central Intelligence officers, bioterrorists, and politicians.

 

There’s a lot more—including Meena’s troubled past and inner life; her relationship with her comatose brother, Joy; his girlfriend, Annie; her boss, Pritam Sen; a “fraud lawyer” with an opportunistic interest in politics and obsession with the dark net, Subho Roy, who is also desperately pursuing Meena; a virologist and doctor with his secrets, Andrew Rawkhaw. It’s a web of plots, subplots, and characters that Bhattacharya unravels evocatively as the show progresses.

 

The show was not written by Bhattacharya but by his longtime collaborator, Arindam Mitra. Both Mitra and Bhattacharya worked on Anurag Kashyap’s watershed film “Black Friday” in some capacity. Mitra was the producer and pitched Kashyap the idea to work on the ’93 Bombay Blasts, and Bhattacharya worked on the film’s promotional material. They collaborated again in 2006 on Mitra’s directorial, “Shoonya” (which remains unreleased to date) which Bhattacharya edited. “P.I. Meena” is their third collaboration where Bhattacharya is the director while Mitra serves as the show’s creator and co-writer, along with Ronak Kamat and the actor Vipin Sharma (who’s also starring in the show).


“P.I. Meena” does resemble “Black Friday”—it’s brimming with almost as many characters and events, and travels around as much within the city and outside. The investigation takes her to the remote North East Indian town of Littnong, where she meets Rawkhaw (Jisshu Sengupta), who’s the sole doctor available at the local hospital yet helped contain the outbreak of a vicious new virus. In no time, the virus hits Kolkata, leading to an emergency. After certain revelations, the question arises whether or not this virus is a bioweapon.

 

Such details would be sufficient to make a great crime drama, but “P.I. Meena,” like all of Bhattacharya’s previous works, is a great many things at once. It’s no generic detective thriller—the nature of Meena’s job makes it very clear. She resembles a white-collar corporate jobber more than the venturous freelancer sleuth we know. She has to file her expenses, beg for her salary, tolerate Pritam’s pestering and Subho’s pursuits, and ask Adi—perhaps her most considerate colleague—to cover for her while she’s away. It’s safe to say that “P.I. Meena” is a postmodernist work, like Bhattacharya’s “Biday Byomkesh,” which strays away from and subverts all tropes and conventions of its genre. “Biday Byomkesh” subverted the myth of Byomkesh by portraying him as a frail, old man dwelling in darkness. His career dealing with criminals and the dark side of human nature had taken a toll on him, and so did the passing of his beloved wife and friend. The vicissitudes in “P.I. Meena” have real consequences for Meena and affect her terribly, as a result of which, within the span of the show, she visibly oldens.

 

Tanya Maniktala delivers one of the most distinctive and expressive performances in Indian cinema this year. She is explosive and impulsive; her performance is internalized and agonized. It’s stunning how much she is capable of doing with just her large, expressive eyes. Bhattacharya seems to recognize the strength of her eyes and often captures them in close-ups. In these close-ups, Meena’s inner life seems to burst forth on our screens. The eyes express her aspirations, longing, curiosity, anguish, and, above all, innocence. There’s a naivete to Meena—she believes her actions will make a difference, which, as it turns out, couldn’t be less true. She doesn’t seem to realize how everyone involved seems questionable and hides information from her. A shocking revelation soon makes the whole investigation seem futile, and in the climax, her world is turned upside down by the implications of her self-admittedly reckless actions. It’s the journey of this harrowing realization that also makes “P.I. Meena” a terrific coming-of-age story. Not to mention, Maniktala is mesmerizing to look at; the power of her beauty and resilience is made text in the show as a character proclaims, “. . . there’s something about that girl that makes you do things.” Her true joyous, bubbly nature is visible in her appearance but her performance conveys the weight of her traumas and discontent.

 

“P.I. Meena” is not solely Bhattacharya’s work; chances are, he was brought in by either Mitra or Amazon to direct this project. Which is why, I think, it lacks some of Bhattacharya’s key traits, primarily his way of working with music and images. His key stylistic invention that attracted me to his work is the one where his images foray into music which foray into images, elevating the mood and heightening the melodrama. It creates an effect that is—for the lack of a better word—almost sexual; essentially, it’s an intercourse of images and sounds. 

 

In spite of the absence of his most distinctive stylistic creation, his command over the mood of each scene remains unwavering. One of my favourite moments in the show appears at twenty-five minutes into the third episode, right at the heart of the show—it takes place in a bar in Littnong where Meena and Rawkhaw meet for some discussion. The tone of their conversation changes midway, as Meena and Rawkhaw strike a chord, so does a guitarist at the bar, literally. The mood created by the lighting, the music, and the performances seems romantic; the song on the soundtrack—Amit Chatterjee’s “Tu Nehi”—is a love song about longing. A quiet romance brews between them, evident in their voices and glances, yet it remains subtextual. It explains why Meena desperately attempts to contact Rawkhaw as he becomes unresponsive, why Rawkhaw is concerned about her returning to Littnong, and why the scene where they meet again, at last, is staged like a reunion of estranged lovers. It makes Rawkhaw’s death in a crossfire all the more tragic. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, Meena and Rawkhaw’s interactions would remain mere exchanges between sleuth and suspect (unless made explicit otherwise in the text itself), but Bhattacharya turns “P.I. Meena” into a tragic romance between two troubled souls who never meet.

 

There’s no dearth of such sumptuous moments in the show, yet I can’t help but wonder how it’d turn out had Bhattacharya had carte blanche. Regardless, he retains all that is great about all his works: his eye for patterns, rhythms, poetry, and music in scripts is so discerning that he need not write one to conjure them in a project he’s directing. He retains his way with images and montage—working with Indranath Marick, with whom he collaborated on “Dracula Sir,” who infuses his images with textures by way of his lighting—often multiple colours and tones in single shots, as if visually manifesting the characters’ various emotions, thoughts, and personas, functional at the same time—and Sourabh Prabhudesai, who infuses the boring web standard shot-counter shot coverage with rhythm intrinsic to Bhattacharya’s style.

 

The question arising from the news of Bhattacharya directing a show not written by him was how it’d fit into his oeuvre. After watching the show, I have my answer. “P.I. Meena” is utterly continuous with his narrative and stylistic interests. Like everything he’s done up till now, it transcends itself and takes a multifaceted form: Like “Biday Byomkesh,” it is a postmodern take on the detective, like “Dracula Sir,” it’s a tale of unrequited, even unsaid love, like “Indubala Bhaater Hotel,” it’s a stellar coming-of-age story. But it’s perhaps closest to “Biday Byomkesh,” a film that begged the question, “How does a lifetime of dealing with crime, and loss of those closest to him, affect a detective?” Similarly, “P.I. Meena” begs the question, “What good can a detective do in a world so screwed, so full of opportunism, lies and deceit?

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To personally send me your comments, feedback, and questions, e-mail me at swapnilazad.me@gmail.com.