Patch Adams: Healing more important than cure

This may be an old comedy, but its relevance is timeless. The message this film sends across is that love, laughter and affection can go a long distance in healing a person more than the usual doses of medicine. Well, there is a great difference between ‘cure’ and ‘healing’. A physical disease may be cured by the medicines prescribed by the physician. However, there is no guarantee that the person is healed. Healing has to do with the whole person and not just his or her physical ailment. Even a person with multiple physical ailments can be a completely healed person when he/she is completely free from within.

Director: Tom Shadyac

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That is where love, laughter and affection come into play. Here is Hunter Adams, nicknamed Patch Adams (Robin Williams) who learns a great lesson that the only way to forget one’s problems is to get involved in the lives of others and bring them happiness and joy. Hence, he makes a life decision to become a doctor so that he can come closer to those suffering and in pain and ‘heal’ them. Of course, the traditionalists at the medical college and hospital where he is studying have a problem. However, Adams pursues his goal with a single-minded devotion to bring about and spread healing.

The film, no doubt, stirs us to think about the present-day medication system which focuses largely on the disease rather than the person. For most doctors, the patient is just another ‘case’ and no more a person. Such treatment can only make the person sicker than bring about healing. The ‘great lesson’ medical students learn in hospitals that they must be detached from their patients and treat them just as cases with diseases, is unfortunate. This way you create doctors who are robots and not human beings.

Great film! Well, Munna Bai MBBS has been inspired by this film.

- Melwyn Pinto SJ

Bharat Stores: Swept by market economy!

The impact of globalisation and liberalisation on small scale industries and businessmen has been a known factor. Series of researches and studies have analysed these developments. However, not many films have dealt with this subject. The national-award winning Kannada film Bharat Stores seems a very realistic depiction in the recent past, dealing with this theme. 

Director P. Sheshadri

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The film is basically about a shopkeeper Govinda Shetty who is honest and dedicated to his family trade. However, with the rise of market and free trade economy post liberalisation process, he suffers a huge loss steadily, till he is completely outplayed by the growing mall culture. His inability to move with the changing trends, or refusal to compromise with the system, does him great harm, till one day he bites the dust unable to recover.

The film, with some fine performances (especially the protagonist Dattatreya) and exquisite camera work by Mahendra Simha raises several crucial questions. Is it wrong for people to frequent malls when they know that they can shop all that they need under one roof? Should malls be restricted to allow small traders to also do some business? Is it a fault of Mr Shetty that he could not upgrade himself like many others with the current trends in business? Was he so old-fashioned to not see that he could be decimated?

There are no easy answers. However, Bharat Stores, the shop, with its fading light and near empty space towards the end of the film stands as a powerful symbol of the gale of globalisation and liberalisation that is driving farmers to suicides, killing small scale trades and businesses and driving scores of families that were dependent on the street corner shops into penury.

Hats off to director P. Sheshadri.

- Melwyn Pinto SJ

Gabhricha Paus: Ode to the allusive rain that kills!

According to National Crime Record Bureau statistics, 2,70,940 farmers committed suicide in India between 1995 and 2011. In the state of Maharashtra alone this number was 53,818. One can imagine the plight of farmers who are driven to such extreme steps by the compounding issues of anti-farmer farm policies of the governments and the vagaries of nature. Several directors have touched upon this issue in their films in the Marathi film. Gabhricha Paus (The damned rain) is one such significant attempt by director Satish Manwar.

Director: Satish Manwar

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In the background of a series of farmers committing suicide due to varied circumstances, Alka (Sonali Kulkarni) takes upon herself to protect her husband Kisna (Girish Kulkarni) at any cost. She does not allow him to get into depression, nor does she allow him to be alone and aloof. She makes sure that her little son accompanies the father like a faithful dog everywhere to the great displeasure of Kisna.

The film does portray the angst of a farming family, which is in such a painful dilemma like never before: they cannot think anything other than farming; and yet it is this farming that has failed them finally. It is not that there are no solutions to this rural crisis. It is just that distressed farmers seem to be a non-entity to powers that be.

The versatile Sonali Kulkarni comes alive very natural as the anxious wife of a defeated farmer. Here is a film that helps you grasp the complexities a farming community has to address, even as it fights hard to stay alive!

- 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

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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

The Father: 'killing' a step parent!

One wonders how Iran could produce such wonderful films. The answer perhaps lies in the fact that the limitations posed by the state on film makers have been converted into strengths of the film industry in Iran. Majid Majidi is one such director who can be termed as one of the most creative geniuses of film language.

Director: Majid Majidi

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His 1996 film The Father (Pedar) is a fine example of this. As usual, his themes are very simple. But the way he puts these themes into the film language, creating visual images in each frame, is just inimitable. The story of The Father is indeed not so much of a father, but of a son Mehrolloah. He has lost his real father in an accident and has difficulties accepting his step father whom his mother has married without his knowledge. This is because Mehrollah has been away working to support the family – his mother and three sisters – after the death of his father. Once he comes to know of the entry of the step father into the family, he wants to kill him as Mehrollah thinks that he is a bad man.

What happens in his pursuit of devising plans to kill his father is indeed surprises you and thus it is best not describe it here, lest the pleasure of a visual experience be taken away from the readers who would like to watch the film. However, the way Majidi unravels the true selves of each of the characters – especially the son and the step father – is very unique. There is symbolism, as usual; but it is not a forced symbolism as in many contemporary Indian off-beat films. Metaphors and symbols just emerge as the story unfolds. That is possible only when a director allows the visuals to flow rather than intrude and impose violence to the natural flow.

A film becomes an eternal piece of art only when every shot in it is in the right place and in the right balance. The Father is one such film!

- Melwyn Pinto SJ

Amour: True meaning of love!

Amour means love in several languages. This is a French film. The love that this film deals with is the love of an old man for his wife who is also of almost his age. She is incapacitated by a stroke due to the shock of a robbery taking place in the house. The man Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) promises his wife Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) that he would not put her in the hospital as she is afraid of doctors. Instead, he looks after her delicately at home. However, things are not as simple as he thinks they would be. She deteriorates day after day. Worse, she begins to get more and more hysteric. He is painfully inadequate in dealing with such a miserable situation. But he puts up with all that, because he loves his wife so deeply. The end also looks more as a consequence of his love than anything else.

Director: Michael Haneke

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Amour is the official film selected from Austria for this year’s Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Film category and is a front runner to win the award. The narration is melancholic and the mood looks very depressing. But, each scene is delicately woven to portray what true love means and what its burdens and consequences are. True love is full of passion at one level; it is also full of pains at another. This seems to be the message the film tries to put across.

The film has very little embellishments except the fine performances by the lead characters, especially Emmanuelle Riva. She is one of the strong contenders to win the best actress award. The camera acts more as an observer than recorder of scenes, because each moment seems so realistic. Finally, one cannot help but realise after watching this film that, it is one thing to grow old gracefully, but quite different to grow old together!

- Melwyn Pinto SJ

Life of Pi: Living with beast!

What could be the reason that these days there are increasing number of 3D films coming out? Well, one might say, it is the in-thing - as technology evolves, films are supposed to evolve with them as well. Whether a story requires 3D or not, the craze these days seems to be to make 3D films. One of the reasons for a such trend could be to fight piracy that has become a universal phenomenon. With 3D, film-makers succeed in drawing crowds to the theatres. Of course, there are films where the theme of the film would look very dry without the 3D effect. Avatar was one such film and now Life of Pi. In fact, it is this 3D effect that carries the film forward.

Director: Ang Lee

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The story of the film Life of Pi may not have anything spectacular about it. It is about how a human being lives with the beast for a while, fighting all odds. And one day when he thinks that he has made friends with the beast, it just disappears without even paying him one last obeisance. How cruel! Well, some might say that was very ungrateful of the tiger to just leave Pi without even a last glance. But the tiger did the best possible thing. He knew he could not live close to human beings longer, for if it did one day it might devour the same human being. The tiger did not want to stoop to that level perhaps! So it did the most charitable thing under the circumstances by just walking away.

Tiger’s walking away towards the fag end of the story indeed looks not just sensible and charitable; it has a touch of detachment in it. It could not be attached to Pi any longer.

The film is stunning in its effects. The debut of Suraj Sharma has been a memorable one. Irrfan Khan and Tabu are as usual their natural best. Full marks to Ang Lee.

- Melwyn Pinto SJ