PK: In search of God!

Controversies about the film PK are yet to settle down. Meanwhile, the film has gone on to be the highest grosser ever in India’s film history with a whopping collection of over 280 crore rupess and might even cross the 300-crore mark. One wonders if all the negative publicity the film earned actually worked in its favour. Could be. However, one cannot ignore the meticulously hewn script and strong performances of the actors.

Director: Rajkumar Hirani

PK: Behind the scene

Rajkumar Hirani, the director, is a master craftsman. All his films till date have been massive hits. And it is not so much due to extensive publicity, as painstaking efforts while making the film. He is a creative genius and knows what works in the Indian ethos and what doesn’t. To that extent, he is perhaps well entrenched in India’s cultural heritage more than the infamous rightwing hooligans.

Coming to the film, PK raises several questions about institutional religions and, of course, God. Not so much the God who is the master artisan of the universe, but god, or rather many gods, that his so called ‘custodians’ have created. It seems very funny that a godman in the film asserts that he would go to any extent to ‘save his god’. Who should save whom?

The film has come at the right time with several self-styled godmen being arrested in India for their crimes and the frenzy of people’s superstitions being exposed. PK perhaps could serve in helping people come out of their illusions and delusions. Rather than seeing the film from that angle, the fanatics are yet again out to prove that they are pontificators of all religious superstitions in India.

As always, dialogues are another strength of Hirani’s films. The class performance of Amir Khan, Anushka Sharma and others has only added to the flavour. Long live Hirani’s tribe and bad luck to the rightwing fanatics!!

- Melwyn Pinto SJ

God on Trial: Putting God to ‘test’

What if God were brought before the court of law for trial? Well, that would be quite a difficult as well as intriguing proposition. The charges levelled against God should be so mystified as much as they are unfathomable just like God Himself!

And that is what the Jews in the concentration camp in Auschwitz during the World War II think when they assemble a court to put God on trial. The charges against God or rather one grave charge is that God had not kept the original covenant. The film God on Trial (2008), seems weird in its content and yet rich in arguments.

Director: Andy de Emmony

Film Clip

To those who are familiar with the Torah of Jews or the Bible, God chooses Jewish people as a chosen generation and makes a special covenant with them to that effect. However, the Jews in the concentration camp, well many of them, think that their present plight suggests that God has rescinded His covenant; that God has not been faithful to His covenant and hence has forsaken them and made them unjust victims of a blood-thirsty racist in the person of Hitler.

But there are also other voices among them who hold that God is present even in such dire straits and that certain suffering is necessary for purification and so on.

There does not seem to be a consensus when it comes to convicting God, but the ‘jury’ has to make a decision. That seems to be an important climatic and yet difficult part of the film and the story.

Some gems that are said during the trial are worth taking home: ‘Small fire will be put out by wind, but great fire only grows greater.’ ‘They may have taken everything, but let them not take your faith.’ ‘God is the only one which they cannot take away from you; keep your God, even if He were not to exist!’

- Melwyn Pinto SJ

OMG: Waging war against God!

There have been very few films in the history of Indian cinema that have critiqued religion. In fact, critiquing religion would be a sacrilege in the Indian religious context. In such a scenario, Oh My God (OMG) is a very bold attempt by director Umesh Shukla. The film not only critiques religion as practised today in India, but demonstrates that the Divine is beyond all religious practices and belief systems.

Director: Umesh Shukla

Film Clip

OMG is a story of a simple middle class man Kanji Lal who wages a war with God, as the insurance company tells him that he cannot be given compensation for the ruin of his shop in the earth quake, as it was the ‘act of God’. And Kanji Lal has to defend his case himself since no lawyer dares fight God. Of course, Kanji Lal has the strength to fight, ironically through the help and grace of the same God whom he does not believe.

The film has been successful for more than one reason. First of all, it treads the untrodden path and boldly tries to expose the hypocrisy and exploitative structures in every religion as practised today. Further, it also makes a bold statement that even if religion (all religions for that matter) may be good in itself, the so called ‘custodians’ of these religions have turned them into a trade. In the bargain, religion today has unfortunately metamorphosed into a mere business with the visible absence of the divine.

The victory of Kanji Lal in the court of law is a victory for the Divine as well, as shown in the film. This is because, God reveals to Kanji Lal, and through him to everyone, that even if humans do not need religion, they need the Divine.

The success of the film is also because of the brilliant role of Kanji Lal played by Paresh Rawal, who embodies true nastic and fighter instincts into his rendering.

 - Melwyn Pinto SJ