Deool - depicting struggle between religion and life

In the last couple of years or so, Marathi cinema has been very vibrant what with several brilliant films hitting the screens. Mind you, Marathi language has a rich tradition of literature and theatre, but not cinema. Owing to the Bollywood epicentre, Mumbai, Marathi cinema has had no big audience. However, this weakness seems to have worked as a strength for Marathi cinema as there is a parallel movement of sorts emerging in Marathi. The trend began with Shwaas which was India's entry for the Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Film category in 2004.

Thereafter, Marathi world of cinema has come up with very impressive films. If the flow continues, it has all qualities of growing into a school by itself, like the Bengali movement in the 50s and 60s.

Director Umesh Kulkarni

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Take for example the film Deool - the film that won the national award this year as the best film. Directed by Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni, this is an awesome tale of the extent of superstition that exists in the rural underbelly and how powers that be can use it to their advantage.

The central issue in the film is a mysterious vision that the protagonist Keshya (Girish Kulkarni) sees of a certain village god. The fall out of this in the lowly village is that all rise into a frenzied ecstasy to build a temple for the new found god. The coming of the temple, though, brings with it evils of its own nature. In the name of the god, the village prospers and politics grows. Even when the god is stolen, the powers that be deem it as their mighty responsibility to install a new god, lest the village be ‘cursed’.

Brilliantly narrated, the film works both as an irony and satire on the village ethos which struggles making a compromise between religiosity and economics. The camera work is exceptionally precise capturing the complexities of the Indian rural. Nana Patekar’s role as Bhau Galande, and the all natural Sonali Kulkarni as his wife add to the success of the film. 

- Melwyn Pinto SJ

Captain Abu Raed - seeking goodness in all

Jordan, as we know, is a small Muslim country in the Middle East. Rarely have we heard of Jordanian films. Even as the neighbouring Iran produces hundreds of films, Jordan has produced hardly any in the last few decades. In fact, it has produced just one full length feature film in the last 50 years. There may be many reasons for such a development. But, one of the major reasons is the lack of support for the film industry.

Be that as it may, the one film that has come in the last five decades stirs you to the core. It is not flamboyant, it is not glamorous. It is simple, straight forward and has a deep message. And the message is that there is goodness in everyone. 

Director Amin Matalqua

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The film Captain Abu Raed is a film about a ‘single’ man Abu Raed who works as a class four worker in the Airport. Accidentally, he gets the title ‘captain’ and becomes very popular among children for his fantasy stories. However, he changes the life of several of those children by seeing the goodness in them. His philosophy of life seems to be do as much as you can to make this world a better place.

The film touches you for more than one reason. For one, it calls you to goodness, without counting the cost. Second, it invites you to see goodness around.

The film works to leave a mark on the viewers, largely due to the powerful expressions and portrayal of an ordinary man in the lead actor Nadim Sawalha. The film is directed by Amin Matalqua.

- Melwyn Pinto SJ

A Separation: visuals speak more than words!

There are few movies which remain etched in the collective conscience of its audience long after they have been watched. These movies provoke thought, elicit questions and provide no easy answers. A Separation, the Iranian film which won the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 2012 Oscars, is one such movie.

A Separation is a courageous attempt, given the circumstances of cultural and artistic repression that exist in Iran. It is a movie about a crumbling marriage between Simin (Leila Hatami) and Nader (Peyman Moaadi). Simin wants to leave the country in order to create a better life for their daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi), but Nader is committed to staying back in Tehran to look after his ailing father who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. In the opening scene, the couple looks directly into the camera and pleads their case to a judge, an imaginary substitute for the audience. It is this incident that precedes the dissolution of their marriage and triggers off a series of events. 

Director Asghar Farhadi

Film trailer

Nader hires a maid named Razieh (Sareh Bayat), a deeply pious woman, to look after his father. Razieh has a young daughter and is carrying another child along the way. She works to ease the financial burden of her debt-ridden husband. However, after a fateful incident, she loses her child. Subsequently, the characters in the movie grapple with law, religion and human sentiment to find out who should be held responsible for the loss of the child. 

When A Separation is placed in the context of the Iranian New Wave, one can see a metamorphosis of this cinematic movement which began in 1969. Gone is the world of Majid Majidi, Kiarostami or Jafar Panhai, where we see reality from the redeeming and innocent eyes of children.

The director Asghar Farhadi’s camera work is to be admired and studied. The mis-en-scence is crafted to externally depict the inner conflicts of the characters. The editing of the film, with ample cut aways and jump cuts is perfect and seamless. The shots also depict the class conflict that exists in Tehran, represented by the differences in the colourful and upper-middle class apartment of Nader to the run-down and poverty-ridden residence of Razieh. 

- Parinitha Shinde

The Birds – a caging experience

Alfred Hitchcock’s name is almost synonymous with suspense and audiences are sure to experience the thrill of a lifetime watching his 1963 masterpiece The Birds. The film follows a wealthy socialite from San Francisco as she meets an interesting man who piques her curiosity. She buys a pair of lovebirds for his sister and, when trying to deliver them to him, finds that he has gone to visit his hometown for the weekend. Being headstrong and used to getting her way, she traces him to his hometown. Over the weekend, strange events involving birds begin to take place.

The mastery of Hitchcock lies in that the narrative begins unassumingly following a seemingly normal pattern of events involving romance and not much more. However, in this slow and steady approach leading up to the attack of the birds, Hitchcock reveals the story layer by layer, demonstrating how build-up is the key to suspense.

 Alfred Hitchcock

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When the birds begin attacking, it starts with isolated events that increase in frequency and violence. Expressions are captured and rendered so effectively so as to convey the sense of terror faced by the characters. The main characters are trapped in the house being attacked by birds and it seems a reversal of roles – humans are now caged inside the house.

One of the best shot scenes is when the female lead actor is attacked in the room towards the end of the film. Here, elements of mis-en-scene and montage are combined in a manner reminiscent of the famous shower scene from Hitchcock’s Psycho. The shot has multiple takes, each focusing on different angles of the attack, which combine to effectively convey the terror and brutality of the attack.

The film does not close with the words The End, as most of his films, but rather closes with only the people driving away in the car surrounded by the birds watching them. This speaks to the audience, telling them that the horror does not end. It continues.

The film has been interpreted differently by different people. But, one aspect that comes so obvious to us through the film is that you cannot endlessly cage nature, lest you should be caged by it.

- Elliot B Clarence

The Artist - back to the origins

The Artist won the Academy Award this year in the best film category and rightly so. It is a silent film. Well, you must define the word ‘silent’. This film recreates the humble origins of a great art form called cinema. Right from the costumes, lighting, the props to music to the intertitles (subtitles in the modern terminology) everything in this film resemble those pristine silent films.

However, there is a difference. The difference is that this silent film is made in modern times. The story, of course, revolves round a famous hero George Valentine (Jean Dujardin). He is a well known artist of silent films. However, when the talkies begin, he has this struggle to change over or move with the times. His initial resistance only adds to his miseries, as all the efforts that he makes to continue the traditional film making fails. Finally, of course, the film has a happy ending as he gets converted and moves according to times, adapting himself.

Film director - Michel Hazanavicius 

Film Clip

Is it not an irony, then, that a film with such a theme is made in the modern age and with no speech? That is where, perhaps, the director Michel Hazanavicius is making a statement. If the film indeed worked and made huge profits in an age of noisy films all over, it is a reminder to all film lovers, in the words of film theorist Rudolf Arnheim, that film is first and foremost a visual medium. It is the visuals that must convey the meaning and not so much the dialogues and the words. Words and dialogues are basically the life blood of drama.

Hopefully we shall see many more silent films in the days to come. 

- Melwyn Pinto SJ