Life of Pi: Soulless Visual Delight

Ang Lee had the expectation barometer rising since the day he announced Life of Pi which had had a major impact in the literary world. Stories on the film’s Indian connection have been filling tabloids for the past few months. The dominant image the publicity and promotional stills and movies widely circulated is that of a Royal Bengal Tiger perched on a boat in the middle of the ocean with Pi as company. The tiger had already become the unique selling point of the film; and when in the end he selfishly walks away into the forest and gets lost in his elements, you would know that it is not without reason that the tiger had stolen the limelight in the promos. Apart from the tiger, it is the wonders of the natural world exaggerated through spectacular visuals and enhanced by the 3-D effects is what keeps the film going. However, a film also needs to have a narrative, or else tuning into National Geographic or Animal Planet could have served the purpose. 

            Perhaps, Lee wanted to merge National Geographic- or Animal Planet-style documentary with a narrative of survival against apparently insurmountable odds. The film gets reduced into a boring discourse on self-motivation which might serve as an inspirational visual text, for, say, overworked corporate slaves. The film should and certainly would find place in Masters in Business Administration syllabus. The natural odds Pi fights against might acquire allegorical meaning in an MBA course, where the students are programmed to put up with the merciless demands of late capitalist economy. But the major problem of the film is that the director has spent so much brain and bucks on the form that he has given the content little or no importance. Although Pi’s interaction with Richard Parker or Orange Juice and his thrill at the beauty of oceanic life under the star-spangled firmament send ripples down your spine and touch your heart, the will to live on which is the driving force of the book fails to inspire. What is fatalistic is that it is difficult to establish an emotional connect with Pi. The book which runs two parallel narratives simultaneously and leaves it to the reader to pick his own is more interesting for truth and fiction jostle against each other, where it is difficult to tell one from the other. The narrative puzzle and the suspicion about storytelling which the book so effortlessly generates gets completely lost in the film. 

            Life of Pi connects the elements, but lacks in the emotional quotient. Man’s relation with nature is explored to the utmost, but, the problem is every time nature puts man through a wild test or when man wins over nature, the audience does not feel for Pi’s triumph. What could have become a metonymic text of the history of human civilization, remains more of an individual's story. At the same time, Pi's unwavering tenacity to stay 'human' reiterates the nineteenth century romantic confidence in human rationality, celebrated by several European novelists, from Defoe to Stevenson. Life of Pi does not delve into the dark recesses of the human mind like Apocalypse Now or Lord of the Flies. I cannot tell whether all stories of exile and shipwreck should attempt similar psychoanalytic exploration of the human soul, but I found Life of Pi far too simplistic. Above all,    the technical brilliance unfortunately devours what should have been the soul of the film. 

            The film’s music, cinematography and above all, the visual effects would fetch it several nominations at the Academy Awards this year. Apart from that the film is a mere average work of art. And yes, as I said at the very outset, the tiger deserves special mention for an awesome performance. 

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As Yash Chopra Lives On!

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Life has its own dramatic ironies, and who could have better exemplified that than Yash Chopra who breathed his last with the promise of peddling dreams, as he had done all his life, with the self-assertive Jab Tak Hai Jaan! The titanic dream merchant almost tiptoed away into the twilight zone, as if he were on a clandestine date with death. It seems he had struck a deal with life: he would make films, sell dreams, and celebrate love jab taak hain jaan. And as a true artiste and honest entrepreneur, he stuck to the deal till the very last day of his life. 

                What we identify today as the Yash Raj brand of cinema, which incidentally has become metonymic of Bollywood romances, was born only two decades ago. In 1989, after a few box-office debacles (Maashal, 1984; Faasle, 1985; and Vijay, 1988), Yash Chopra returned with a bang with the immensely stylish Chandni which rescued Sridevi from getting wasted in raunchy, seedy, over-the-top Bollywood potboilers and reinstated her as a diva which even the high-nosed elitist took note of. The lilting melody of Tere mere hoton pe meethe meethe geet mitwa which reverberated in the delightful dales of Switzerland brought to Bollywood romance an ethereal beauty which reconfigured the concept of love forever. That falling in love was not just falling in love with a person, but is also an iconography of beautiful things and locales was first established by Chandni. Chopra celebrated true love, sacrifice and devotion, but also transformed love into a commodity. Lamhe (1991), Darr (1993), Dil to Pagal Hai (1997), and Veer-Zaara (2004) have faithfully rolled on the tradition, when falling-in-love is unwittingly imagined by many as an assortment of chiffon sarees, designer jewellery, unruly aanchal waving in the breeze, expensive cars, sprawling houses, picturesque getaways, perfect bodies and guaranteed happiness in the end. But, Chopra’s journey had begun much earlier with Dhool ka Phool in 1959, when he was a different filmmaker altogether. 

Yash Chopra’s films, when seen chronologically, reveal a linear narrative of history fraught with complexities. Chopra, in association with Saleem Khan and Javed Akhtar, had given birth to the quintessential Angry Young Man and made of Amitabh Bachchan the megastar as he is. A product of the Emergency, the Angry Young Man who rocked the nation with Deewar (1975) became a personification of the deprivations, the desires and most importantly the anger which was simmering in the hearts of the youth.  The demolition of the Babri Masjid, and the bloody communal riots that sent deadly ripples across the country, especially turning the most cosmopolitan of the Indian cities into a necropolis, gave birth to another angry young man, who was no longer interested in social reform, but was a psychopath, inhabiting a state of mind with which the youth again identified. The invisible singer of Jadoo teri Nazar who remained in the dark and romanced from a distance, but got brutal when his beloved was taken away from him, became the new hero of the early nineties. It took an Emergency and a communal riot for two great stars to be born: Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan. The mastermind behind their stardom was Yash Chopra, and their stardom, was, therefore, not accidental. 

However, the economic liberalization changed it all, and the new Yuppie hero was born. It was the Silver Jubilee Year of Yash Raj Films. Yash Chopra launched son Aditya with the revolutionary Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge (1995), where the rich Indian diaspora returned home to take back their matrbhoomi with them! The East/West binary which ruled Bollywood so far, completely dissolved and the transnation was born as a dimpled NRI Shah Rukh Khan held out his hand to a disheveled Kajol who ran alongside the departing train, with the staunch patriarch fading away in the distance but giving up a ‘thumbs-up’ to their union! Chopra had him return with Dil to Pagal Hai, where he reveled in an iconography of abundance and romanced a sublimely beautiful Madhuri Dixit who dreamily strolled and danced across undulating and sprawling meadows looking for her Prince Charming. And it was with Kajol and later with Madhuri that the Chopra brand of Indian womanhood was born.

Chopra was the originator of not only this genre of candy-floss romance, but also of the immensely popular ‘lost-and-found’ genre with Waqt (1965). He tried his hands at serious cinema with Ittefak (1969), with moderate success though. He ventured into controversial arenas of Hindu fundamentalism quite early in his career with Dharamputra (1961) which ruffled the feathers of the saffron-clad crowd. Although he is known for giving love the most stylish makeover, he is also the one who has questioned monogamy, marriage and socially-approved sexual relationships. While Daag (1973) delved deep into the problematics of polyamory, Kabhi Kabhie (1976) uncovered uncomfortable zones of failed marriages and pre-marital sex. Trishul (1978) turned the focus on the illegitimate son, while Silsila (1981) made adultery almost desirable. 

His demise marks the end of a history which has made Bollywood what it is today. Thankfully, a Yash Raj brand of cinema has already arrived, and would stay on! The man who has remarkably changed with changing times, Yash Chopra might just be waiting out there to re-enter the limelight, with lights, camera, and action. Yes, Jab Taak Hai Jaan is waiting in the wings. The dream merchant can never really die.

 
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Student of the Year: Karan Johar’s ‘questioning’ return to a comparatively ‘innocent’ past

In Student of the Year, Johar nostalgically returns to the cool campus where he had launched his career some fifteen years back, and revisits the tropes, some of which he had himself made current in Hindi Cinema, but, with an objective distance of a wiser filmmaker. The campus camaraderie which he had romanticized on in his debut film is under suspect at the very outset, when competition becomes the buzz-word defining relationships and social positions. The brands (notably, DKNY, Nike, etc) he had unquestioningly paraded, all most with a sense of pride, have now become more expensive (Gucci, Louis Vitton, Versace, Fusion, etc), but, the treatment they receive, albeit a celebratory one, is also sarcastic. Non-normative sexuality is no longer something to laugh at, although a certain degree of stereotyping is still there. 

More interestingly, marginalities and deprivations are mapped out in terms not only of class positions, but also, the body and sexuality. When the overweight Sodo (Kayoza Irani), in a drunken state, comes down really hard on the gay dean Yoginder Vasisht (Rishi Kapoor), saying Apko pata hai na aap aur mere jaise logo ko kabhi partners nahi mil saakte, you would know how the film has so far created a register of normativity only to debunk it in the end. Beautiful bodies are posited vis-à-vis obese, unfit bodies; heterosexual conjugal life is posited vis-à-vis the sexual ‘Other’. And, yes, man versus woman: she is patronized for her shallowness and naivety; but, she is made fun of and is discriminated against when she becomes a threatening competitor and enters the ‘male’ domain with confidence. 

And amid all that, the veneer of homosociality is constantly pulled into shreds, as the two boys (Siddharth Malhotra as Abhimanyu Singh and Varun Dhawan as Rohan Nanda) romance each other, more intensely than they feel for the girl. Johar recuperates Bollywood’s famous trope of male-bonding, where the heterosexual love interest mostly finds herself an unwanted intruder in their emotional world of bromance. Abhimanyu’s mock concern, every time Rohan, emotionally, hugs him --- Ab tu mujhe kiss to nahi karega? ---- has no malice in it. And, Shanaya (Alia Bhatt) discovers before long that the boys are all too ready to sacrifice her for each other’s sake. She asks the same questions as a certain Vyajayanti Mala had asked in Sangam (where Raj Kapoor and Rajendra Kumar were more in love with each other than with her) or a certain Madhuri Dixit in Saajan (where Sanjay Dutt and Salman Khan fiercely competed against each other in the sacrifice game); and, she must have felt as left out as a certain Sumita Sanyal who sheds tears from a distance, as a grieving Amitabh Bachchan melodramatically breaks down over a lifeless Rajesh Khanna in Anand. And, in the last frame, she is completely shoved into oblivion, as the two friends, looking suggestively at each other, run towards the camera, in a gesture of go-ahead, when the scene fades-out to bring on the end credits. 

And in tune with the theme, Johar deploys the male-body-as-spectacle: a perfectly chiseled Siddharth Malhotra emerges from the sea in a skimpy swimwear with the dripping waters lustily accentuating his anatomy, soon to be followed by an equally uninhibited Varun Dhawan. The sweaty boy-camaraderie of the football field, of the gymnasium, of the swimming pool and running tracks raise the barometer-reading in almost every frame of the film. Alia Bhatt intervenes sometimes in designer-wear and once in a flimsy yellow two-piece to do service to the male (or queer female) gaze. But the boys win hands down in the bare-dare game! Perhaps, this is where The Student of the Year bears the mark of being a Karan Johar film, apart from the visuals of plenitude and aesthetic material objects which have become integral to all his productions.  

However, the desire for a life of abundance the films of Karan Johar has so far marketed, is seriously undercut by Rohan’s abandonment of his father Ashok Nanda’s (Ram Kapoor) property, and his coming of age as a successful musician. Abhimanyu’s ambition to mimic Ashok Nanda which almost makes of him a fierce competitor is also seriously thwarted by his discovery of the entrepreneur’s essential brutality. Although Abhimanyu does attain success, the film inserts a moral lesson too! The aggressive pursuit of ‘good life’, which many of Johar’s films have so far celebrated as inevitable, is called into question. The Student of the Year trophy which degenerates into a symbol of cut-throat competition and death of humaneness remains untouched in the end. The dying dean confesses his mistake of trying to make robots of his students.

Of the actors, Rishi Kapoor, as the dean of the school, is a revelation; the dufliwala still rocks. The newcomers impress more by their looks than their acting skills. Yet, Siddharth Malhotra with his hot angular face, Greek god torso, and deep baritone is here to stay; Varun Dhawan is cute, but demands some more grooming in acting classes; he needs to work hard on his voice. Alia Bhatt is petite and pretty, with an extraordinary panache for carrying sexy dresses and scarlet lips, but, unfortunately, not an actor to be reckoned with. There is certain dumbness about her which suited Shanaya, but, would definitely prove a handicap in other films, unless, however, she is typecast.

One definite plus point of the film are the witty (read bitchy) dialogues which Karan Johar can only pen; and, of course, the music: Vishal-Shekhar would make you rock with Radha and Disco Deewane, become aggressive with Ratta Maar, and go liltingly romantic with Ishqwala Love. The campus carnivals would have been seriously incomplete without them.

All in all, a gaily entertaining watch, Student of the Year is a familiar Karan Johar film, but definitely not a typical one; I believe, the fun of watching the film, lies in reading it (or even looking upon it as a meta-text) against the entire oeuvre of Karan Johar productions. If not for anything else, watch it for its sheer gloss and glam and those beautiful bodies…Siddharth Malhotra, Varun Dhawan and well, Alia Bhatt too!

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English Vinglish: A review

It was difficult for me to think of a suitable title for my review of Gauri Shinde’s English Vinglish for it is a film which welds too many things into one, but, rather artistically, without resorting to the preachy mode. Refreshingly “feel good”, English Vinglish addresses the contested matrix of gender, class, race, and nationalism, and irons out unevenness in typical Bollywood style, which might appear simplistic, but, certainly, not sloppy. This is because, Shinde puts so much heart in the narrative that the head often wanders off to take a willful break. If the head is not allowed the sojourn, English Vinglish might seem to end up betraying the very cause it launches a tirade against. 

In Sri Lanka, for example, the English language is derogatorily referred to as kaduwa, which is a Sinhalese word meaning ‘weapon’. In postcolonial nation-states, the language of the colonizer has gained immense power, the status of a ‘weapon’, which has subjugated and even replaced vernaculars. Knowledge of English automatically attributes cultural capital to those who can speak, read and write in the language; a clearly discernible hierarchy exists in which the non-English speakers often feel terribly overpowered by those comfortable in speaking, reading and writing in English. In fact, call for complete rejection of the colonizer’s language has often echoed across postcolonial nation-states, but, without much success ever. The all-pervasive power of the English language is hard to contend; in fact, it has proved invincible. 

English Vinglish takes its cue from this on-going war between English and the vernaculars, and tells the story of a middle class housewife and her untiring attempts at mastering the language to gain for herself deference (izzat) in the eyes of her husband and children who barely let go of an opportunity of making fun of her lack of knowledge of English. Shashi Godebole (Sri Devi) is right when she associates having the knowledge of English with gaining izzat (or honour and self-respect). While Shinde is subtly sarcastic about the omnipotence of the English language, the biggest irony is that, the ability to appreciate the film is, by default, attributed to those who can speak, read and write English. In other words, while projecting Shashi’s regular discomfiture (her ignorance of the English language) as something to be sympathized with, Shinde, unwittingly, assumes an English-speaking audience, who wouldn’t identify with her, but, would root for her with a self-distancing sympathy they usually have for the underdog. I seriously doubt whether a non-English speaking audience would be able to appreciate the film, for much of the humour would be lost on them. This is exactly how English Vinglish becomes a film for the English-educated urban bourgeoisie, which mocks its own cultural hegemony only to reinforce it. 

English Vinglish also marks a shift from the British Raj to American imperialism, and the rising importance of English as a weapon one must possess in order to survive in the global world. The overwhelming consumerist impulse driving the middle-class crazy, cultural ghettoization in a foreign land, and America’s salad bowl of multiculturalism are seamlessly woven into the narrative, which, apparently, is about the liberation of a woman through a quest for self-esteem. The film advances a poignant critique of nationalism, first by dissolving national boundaries in the English classroom, and second by unraveling the coercive dimension of the family, often celebrated as a haven of emotional security. Shashi’s last speech is an ironical take on the family and its famed discourses of love and security. Monogamous, heterosexual conjugal life is also called into question when Laurent (Mehdi Nebbou), Shashi’s French classmate falls in love with her, and Shashi resists him, albeit with a sense of compulsion, so as not to forego her duty of mother and wife. The gay English teacher intervenes the overbearing heteronormative ambience causing some discomfort to the homophobic Salman (Sumit Vyas) and Eva (Ruth Aguilar), but, to his own astonishment, wins the greatest sympathy from an Indian housewife when he undergoes a break-up. The film advocates a peaceful co-existence of everyone, in the true spirit of liberal democracy; but, like all Hindi films, at least most mainstream Hindi films, ends up projecting too much faith in it. “Feel good” is the motto! And somewhere, America looms large as the ultimate symbol of happiness worth aspiring for! 

Aishwarya Rai had been initially approached to play Shashi Godebole, although Shinde claims she had Sri Devi in mind while scripting. That Aishwarya didn’t agree should be treated as a huge blessing. The diffidence which is so integral to Sri Devi’s personality makes Shashi so endearing and believable. The director has put to brilliant use Sri Devi’s capacity of impersonating a disarmingly low-on-confidence personality, which had made her so very credible and lovingly vulnerable in the classic Sadma! Mehdi Nebbou with his reticence and gentleness steal the show almost effortlessly. Although a lot or nothing is “lost in translation” the two strike a wonderful chord with each other. Adil Hussain brings to Satish an effortless nonchalance that underwrites his character of an indifferent husband. Shivansh Kotia as little Sagar delights, so does Cory Hibbs as the patient English teacher of a class full of migrants. Amitabh Bachchan’s friendly cameo does not seem jarring.

Overwhelmingly, “feel good”, English Vinglish, all said and done, is a perfectly packaged film for the festive season, which debunks the mood of festivity if you put too much of your head in it, but keeps the spirit inviolate if you do not allow your heart to be overruled by your head. And, yes, for those, who have grown up with Sri Devi, the film would certainly take them down an emotional lane of nostalgia…so, do not give it a miss! 

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