Love, Sex aur Dokha: Experimental at its best!

It’s been really long since we have seen such an experimental film. It’s claustrophobic in the sense that it gives you a terrible feeling that you are under the constant vigilance of an unseen eye! Kind of a Foucauldian panopticon syndrome…the very watchfulness of an unknown pair of eyes that would make you feel imprisoned when you are apparently free! The entire film is shot in a hand-held camera that triples up as the camera of an amateurish filmmaker, the spy-cam of a departmental store, and the hidden camera of sting operation. All three are love stories…the first inspired by the iconic DDLJ, a deglamourised intertext of the same working in and out of the narrative underscoring the remarkable difference between the dream-like romantic world of Bollywood and the murkiness of the real world. The second draws from several MMS scandals that have flooded the internet! The third is based on a sting operation…the project of a news channel to unmask a pop-star, by revealing to the world his casting couch. The film does not resort to any kind of commentary for its difficult to even feel the presence of a director…for in all three stories the camera is controlled by the characters. We see what the characters within the film wish us to show. It is difficult to recall any film where the director is so completely absent. By absenting himself, the director seems to have put the responsibility of telling their own stories to the characters. ‘Mind-blowing’ would be an understatement. It’s brilliant, it’s awesome! In spite of all the experiments, the film does not bore you even for a minute. I had fallen in love with Dibakar Banerjee when he had gifted us with his awesome Khosla ka Ghosla…the respect for him has increased manifold after Love, Sex aur Dhokha! The Indian film industry has really matured…no doubts about that! Three cheers for Indian films! And one more thing...You need no stars to make a good film!!!

The Great Famine: Middle Class Bengali Men and the S-Word Mania

Let me warn you at the very outset: this post is not meant for hypermasculine, militant, sexist, insensitive men!

Have you ever stayed with a bunch of young catastrophically middle class (not to say LS) Bengali men in the same room? If not in the same room, you have certainly shared space with this species in some point of your life. But staying in the same room is a different ballgame altogether. Provided you are sensitive, intelligent, insightful, basically tolerant by nature, and not sexually starved, and of course, do not subscribe to the Victorian morality and taboo associated with the s-word, you are sure to sense some kind of claustrophobia growing into your soul and threatening to eat you up. I have never experienced a real famine; but my stay with a bunch of these men (hypermasculine and sexist at its worst) has given me a fair idea how insufferable it is! It’s a suffering which these people do not recognize as suffering, for they have pitifully become used to fantasizing about s-related things, in the most crudest way possible for the ‘real thing’ is a taboo to them, and bask in the pleasure of having ventured into ‘forbidden territory’ by watching downmarket pornography and discussing aloud the power of the male organ, at their mother’s, girlfriend’s or wife’s back! Hey, they are that regressive, believe me! They still believe that power resides in that protruding tool, the fantasies and meditations on the dimensions of which occupy many many important moments of their life.

Let me describe a typical evening, well morning…no night…actually anytime of the day, how does it matter? What you would immediately recognize is that, that is if you are that insightful and objective, that no matter what time of the day it is, they, at the slightest opportunity, plunge into lewd jokes and juvenile puns which might not have interested you even when you were in school, almost effortlessly. These jokes often give way to the narration of other peoples’ experiences on bed. These tales mostly work themselves out through the binary of the strong man and weak woman. The man in these stories could well replace Jackie Shroff in the Musli-Xtra Power ads, and is enviously appreciated by the narrator and his intent listeners. Sometimes the binary is reversed: these stories have Circe-like women who really know how to dominate over the men. If you closely follow the expression of the narrator and the reaction of his listeners, you may notice a thin streak of fear and of course, disgust for the heroine who dared to…you know what! All this is of course drowned in unthinking laughter, for they have been interpellated into this convention that once a lewd joke is said, you need to laugh, no matter how terribly stupid it may be! And when, they are not cracking these mind-boggling and suicide-inspiring jokes, they watch pornography. Most of them use their newly purchased laptops to this much celebrated noble end of watching porn, and their degree of popularity is contingent upon their ability to provide the starved population with endless supply of nudity. See logic in this: which neta wins the election? Of course, the one who can meet demand with supply! In this case, the supply is usually measured in Gigabytes…the more Gigabytes of porn the more popular you tend to be! And you cynics out there blame Rakhi Sawant for her endless stunts for cheap popularity! See, what you are missing out! Well, ironically, these Gigabytes also measure out the depth of their sexual frustration, mind it! It's a different thing, that they do not realise this.

And one of my very nice female colleagues who has no choice but to participate in this male homosocial group, most often than not, finds herself at the receiving end of several bawdy jokes…but has a big heart to laugh them away, only lamenting that she can’t believe that she is, by default, the chosen site for the ‘libido sublimation’ of these famine-stricken guys! And she says that aloud! But the impact of such humour is lost on them! For, most of these guys do not understand English, and let me tell you, they are college teachers! Ha ha ha! Shocked? You are in West Bengal, my dear, which was officially de-English-ed some two and half decades ago.

And, once in a while, when pornography does not interest them, they watch heroic films such as Troy, appreciating the hypermasculinity of Achilles and the brotherly affection of Hector (now and then, rewinding and pausing to ogle at Helen’s exposed parts), or World War movies, imbued with belligerent violence. This female colleague of mine, aware of my interest in Gender Studies, has asked me to turn my gaze away from books and focus on this reality I am an unfortunate part of. And, she is right! Very right! Well, I surely would, provided I survive the painful claustrophobia of having to live through this great famine in which these men are caught up for life!

"My Name is Khan": Fighting Terrorism the Bollywood Way

Interestingly, at Fame, My Name is Khan is preceded by or intercepted by trailers of films having titles such as Lahore and Tere Bin Laden. All of a sudden, and perhaps, deservingly so, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Al-Qaida, and terrorism have entered the Bollywood scriptwriter’s favourite-list. There’s nothing to believe, of course, that these scriptwriters are dying to fight a social cause; for, Bollywood is far too commercial to do art for art’s sake, or address a social cause out of a sense of necessity. The eye is always on the box-office and these days themes related to terrorism are fetching money. For a hardcore commercial filmmaker like Karan Johar, My Name is Khan is just another project that he thought would set the box-office bells ringing. To the theme of terrorism, he adds another crowd-pulling formula: a diseased protagonist. Taare Zameen Par had made dyslexia an upmarket disease; and Paa had projeria raising the expectation bars. Now you have Asperger’s Syndrome! And why do you think actors like Amitabh Bachachan and Shah Rukh Khan enthusiastically take up these roles? For, they all of a sudden realize that they need to act seriously. Portraying a diseased character gives ample opportunity to act, really. So, the preoccupation with rare diseases and the filmmaker’s show of social awareness should be taken with a large pinch of salt. Everything is fixatedly focussed on the box-office return. While sympathizing with SRK and wiping your tears with the edge of your handkerchief, do not overlook the economic side of it all. By the way, let me clarify at the very outset that SRK is extremely loveable in MNIK. I haven’t seen anyone suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome; I guess very few people have. But, somehow SRK makes it look convincing, although a reality-check on it is a little difficult.

Postmodern history is best understood through stories of the individual who not always makes to the headlines, but has the historical moment inscribed in him, in his body or his psyche. So, postmodern literature and cinema turn to the individual and relate history through narrating the personal. My Name is Khan captures the historical moment of a paradigm shift in world history, the fateful 9/11 incident that divided the world into “us” and the “Muslims”. Rizwan Khan goes out into the world to destroy this binary, having lost his stepson in a racial fight on the soccer field, post-9/11. The odyssey he undertakes across America to meet the President takes him across ethnic cultures that shape the American multicultural melting pot. This odyssey is for the sake of love; for, his emotionally shattered wife asks him to visit the President and tell him that “My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist.” Deeply hurt, almost insane with grief, Mandira holds her marriage to a Muslim man responsible for his son’s predicament. As she continues to fight for justice, Rizwan tours the US seeking an opportunity to meet the President and ends up in jail while he is mistaken for a terrorist at a meeting in which George Bush is the chief speaker. Assisted by the media, Rizwan is freed, but he refuses to return to Mandira who has by this time realised her mistake. A terrible hurricane strikes Wilhelmina and Rizwan braves all odds to save Mama Jenny and her son, a black American family that had given him shelter. He becomes famous overnight and moves all and sundry into playing the Good Samaritan. American history sees a remarkable turn with an African American President coming to power. The television channels splash headlines such as the “Victory of Democracy” while Rizwan recovers from a serious injury caused by a Muslim fundamentalist. He finally meets the President, and announces that he is not a terrorist. He emerges as the spokesperson of a community which has been suffering since 9/11, for wrongs which they were never responsible for. Several emotionally charged moments add up to a sentimental climax, a la KJo films, and suddenly all seems well in the classic Hindi film style ending. This is where the film loses the audience’s sympathy.

It’s commendable that the filmmaker tells the story from both sides as evident in the loss of Rizwan-Mandira’s white journalist friend who is sent to cover the war in Afghanistan. Rizwan weaves his story of loss in the insufferable story of the Black Americans, those who lost their near and dear ones in the Iraq war. Again, the 1983 Hindu-Muslim riots in Bombay appear in the flashback. The film cuts across borders, national, ethnic or otherwise, by telling the whole story through the eyes of a man who sees the world as divided into two kinds of people: good and evil. Rizwan’s simplicity is that of a child, so is his innocence. Perhaps the film advocates a return to the lost days of innocence when labels hardly matter.

SRK as Rizwanur is simply loveable. The moment of the film is that when Mandira proposes to him in the backdrop of the high rises of San Francisco bathed in the halo of dawn and he acts coy, covers his face demurely. Kajol looks rather fatigued; kind of disinterested in what she is doing. The chemistry does not work! No, it doesn’t. Gone are the days of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai! The other actors are more or less okay. The music with a heavy doze of Sufism sets the right kind of mood. Sajda really rocks!

My Name is Khan is good; but not great. The film in a way reassures that the Bollywood hero is still alive. So what if he suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome! He is still the braveheart, the Good Samaritan. In this sense, the film is rather traditional. The hero does not fight petty villains anymore; he is saddled with a larger responsibility of fighting a global war of love and hate and he emerges successful in the conventional Bollywood style. MNIK could have been a landmark film had it not been so traditionally Bollywoodish after all! Go for it; it deserves a one-time watch despite numerous loopholes in the plot.