Tag: India

Declaration (Ariyippu)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP:LIVE FROM LOCARNO

A naturalist drama that incorporates thriller elements into its slow-burn atmosphere, Declaration shows just how disposable immigrant workers can be. A perceptive work from Malayalam director Mahesh Narayanan, it smartly captures the intersection of class, gender and race-based oppression, showing how an atmosphere of exploitation and corruption hits those at the bottom of the human food chain hardest.

Husband and wife Hareesh (Kunchacko Boban) and Reshmi (Divya Prabha) are from Kerala, in India’s south. They move to the northern state of Uttar Pradesh for a better life. Not only can they find solid work at a disposable glove factory, but they have a better chance of getting their visas approved in order to move abroad. The first images we see are shot on an iPhone, showing Reshmi taking gloves off mechanical hands and putting them in a bucket. This is her skill video, a necessary part of getting her visa application approved. But another, more private video is somehow tacked onto the end of the film, causing a rift between the previously relatively content couple.

The whole film was shot and set during the coronavirus pandemic, which helps to up the sense of paranoia at almost every turn. While no one seems to actually contract the disease, the film makes use of the power dynamics involved with mask-wearing in particularly acute ways: for example, those in charge either choose to forego the mask entirely, wear it under their chin, or have an FFP2 mask instead of the generic blue medical mask. The workers themselves are almost always covered, because they know that the disease would either mean serious health complications or a loss in salary. Coronavirus may seem to infect you no matter who you are or which precautions you take, but the way that you deal with it often depends on your race and class status.

If coronavirus was supposed to be the great leveller, it only really entrenched class privilege all across the world, allowing the rich and powerful to further line their pockets. Marital drama dovetails with the tale of the factory cutting corners, the film slowly accruing details of misplaced and faulty gloves, managers sweeping away inaccuracies and workers blithely uncaring about the quality of the product. Why would they? They’re not even getting paid on time.

If the narrative is relatively straightforward, it’s the way that it’s told that allows complexity to grow in the corners. Narayanan doesn’t necessarily spell out every detail, allowing the camera to linger on certain elements (which I won’t spoil here) to further enrich the hypocrisy that permeates almost every frame. The handheld cinematography and general lack of score immerses the viewer within this realist setting, echoing both the moral dramas of Asghar Farhadi and the class-based consciousness of Ken Loach’s cinema.

While the editing could’ve heightened the stakes in the final act by tightening the tension and removing some fat, the final result is a fascinating drama that makes full use of the coronavirus pandemic — and its attendant measures — as a metaphor for class exploitation.

Declaration plays in the Concorso Internazionale plays as part of the Locarno Film Festival, running from 3-13th August.

The Cloud & The Man (Manikbabur Megh)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM TALLINN

A whimsical Georgian film asked viewers earlier this year: What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Aleksandre Koberidze, 2021). Now from India, we have a more literal answer, no less whimsical in its approach. When Manik (Chandan Sen) finds himself drawn away from the day-to-day doldrums of his mundane life — work, family duties, more work, hearing the complaints of his neighbours — he looks up and sees a cloud in the sky. The only problem is, no one else seems to see it.

At first I assumed Manik takes an umbrella with him everywhere because he wants to keep out of the sun. Kolkata is suffering from record temperature highs, piling on the stress he feels in his everyday work. It turns out the umbrella is actually in case of rain, as he sees an equally lonely cloud in the sky, following his every move. The final result is a small dose of magical realism, a medium dose of attentive city portraiture and a large dose of fanciful character study.

There is a touch of Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1989) to this story, but where the angels wanted to descend to earth to be with mortals, this mortal wants to shake off his coil and be with the clouds. The black-and-white aesthetic is not just a stylistic approach, but crucial to the way that Manik sees the world. Widescreen images and surround sound immerse us in Manik’s world, allowing him to stay in the foreground amidst endless hustle and bustle surrounding him. Colour would be overwhelming, while black-and-white keeps its cool distance.

It’s a contrast in temperament. While the world around Manik seems to be constantly in a state of flux, nothing can change his approach to life. He feels like a throwback: he carries no mobile phone, his job (unspecified) sees him sitting in front of an endless stack of papers, and he likes nothing better than tending to his rooftop garden. One image in particular sticks out: a television with nothing inside; used to frame his flowers and view them in a different light. It invites you to visit this world alongside Manik, expertly downplayed by Sen, all the more effective in his performance for the few times he allows joy to finally crack his otherwise deadpan visage.

Abhinandan Banerjee takes a symphonic, rhythmic approach to narrative, repeating images in the way composers repeat key motifs, building upon them differently each time, paying back a slow start by cleverly rewarding our attention. The music itself grows and changes with the film, starting with simple melodies before adding complexity in instrumentation and exploration. Occasional changes from black-and-white to colour again flip Wim Wenders’ script by seeing the world from the cloud’s perspective, creating a cruel contrast between the world of imagination and the world of reality.

It could be easy to take fun of Manik; to see his perspective as a truly blinkered one. He’s prone to being hoodwinked by fast-talking men and barely resists the harsh reproaches of the women in his life; whether it’s his landlady or even his own mother. But with the cloud, he allows himself to feel different. Filled with possibilities. There’s something rather beautiful in all that, even if it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why. I guess we all look at the sky differently.

The Cloud & The Man plays in the First Feature Competition at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, running from 12th – 28th November.

Bombay Rose

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

From its opening in which alternately horizontal and vertical paint brush strokes appear on the screen, slowly building into a street scene, you know you’re in good hands. This 2D animated tale deftly juggles its assorted characters and themes to construct a panorama of everyday life in Mumbai.

A framing device explores Bollywood action movies in which the no nonsense action hero can rescue the girl by beating up the bad guys. Outside of the movies, however, life isn’t quite so simple. The clearly well-off driver of a highly conspicuous, flashy car involved in a hit and run accident later in the narrative turns out to be the Bollywood action star glimpsed at the beginning. Those doing well out of the dream factory don’t live out the virtues it espouses.

Images of romantic lead Salim are modelled after the screen idol, yet unlike the idol, Salim is capable of change. When he steals flowers from graves to give one to Kamala, the girl he loves, she is horrified and labels him a thief, with the result that he changes his behaviour.

Also unlike the big star, both lovers have money problems. Salim is selling flowers to motorists, Kamala is doing a deal with a gangster to go to Dubai. That’s true of other characters too. An underage boy is dodging police raids while working illegally in a restaurant.

Meanwhile, his sister is taking English lessons from a fading Bollywood starlet Shirley D’Souza living in memories of a successful past. The starlet’s collection of automata from that period are breaking down, but happily her pupil’s grandfather has a gift for repairing such things.

The animation, designed with an intense and gorgeous colour palette to outdo even the most vibrant of live action Indian movies, allows the narrative to periodically shift into cultural, historical and even mythological areas and back again without missing a beat. As well as action movies, these include a man’s strange journey seated atop a flying horse with a woman’s head. We witness the killing of the hero’s parents at the hands of soldiers attacking their Kashmiri village. The gangster appears as a bird of prey, flying in to menace Kamala then flying out. There’s also a highly effective scene where as the ageing starlet walks down the street hand in hand with her young pupil, their surroundings turn from contemporary colour to period black and white.

This is an impressive warts and all picture of Mumbai. The animation style is highly original and well suited to the film’s aims. It’s not really like anything else out there and deserves a wider UK release.

Bombay Rose plays in the BFI London Film Festival on Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th October. Watch the film trailer below:

Naach Bhikhari Naach

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Night time. An open air, square theatre stage under a canopy. Backstage, a male performer dons bras and stuffs them with padding to create the impression of boobs. Out front, a member of the company in traditional Indian male clothing, a gold suit with a purple scarf, tells the expectant audience to be patient and explains that the upcoming performance will be in Bhojpuri (the language spoken by the Bhojpuri people who live in the Bihar region of North West India and Southern Nepal). Assorted musicians sit behind him at the back of the stage, among them tabla and sarang players, who will accompany the performance.

He starts walking up and down the stage, gesturing expressively with his arms and hands, singing an expository song about Bhikhari whose low birth belied his significant cultural contribution to Indian theatre. As the play proper gets underway, a man and a woman (played by a man) argue about her going to work in Calcutta. Also on the stage is a stock Joker character, in a black costume with white collars and ruffs, whose role appears to lie somewhere between the the idea of a Greek chorus commenting on events and a character who makes provocative suggestions to the other characters in the play. The performance is intriguing and possessed of a certain charm, even if the proceedings are a little impenetrable to Western viewers unfamiliar with the local culture or this specific art form.

Welcome to the Naach, a form of Indian folk theatre developed by social activist and playwright Bhikhari Thakur (1887-1971), the ‘Shakespeare of Bhojpuri’, whose presence inevitably hangs over this documentary which sports both his name and that of his art form in its title. Curiously, there’s no direct attempt to show pictures of him or tell the story of his life in any sort of direct fashion. Instead, the film makers show excerpts of live Naach performances, often with little explanation as to what’s going on within them, and intersperse interview material featuring four ageing Naach performers, each one interviewed separately.

Lakhichand Manjhi, 67, explains how Bhikhari’s troupe assimilated a rival troupe run by Gaurishankar. We see him wandering around the National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama, applying makeup, donning costumes. Ram Chander Chhote, 70, talks about Bhikhari’s low birth – a big deal in India under the caste system -– and how he would doggedly affect the outward signs of his social status by sitting on a plain mat rather than a chair when addressing people of high birth as a way of reinforcing his own cultural identity.

Bhikhari’s play Beti Bechwa is discussed, dealing as it does with the once common practice of men selling their daughters into marriage at local markets. “There’d be rows of girls. People would inspect them like one inspects cattle,” says Shival Baari, 75. These days, this apparently no longer happens. The practice started being prohibited after people first saw the play performed.

Naach Bhikhari Naach plays in the UK on Sunday, May 19th at Hundred Years Gallery, Hoxton, London. Click here for more info. Watch the film trailer below:

Love Sonia

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Inseparable rural Indian sisters Sonia (Mrunal Thakur) and Preeti (Riya Sisodiya) work the land with their father Shiva (Adil Hussain). He wishes that his daughters were boys because he thinks that males have greater strength and stamina. Seeing Preeti as not pulling her weight, Shiva sells her to local businessman Baldev Singh (Anupam Kher) for employment in Mumbai. Horrified at her beloved sister’s disappearance, Sonia sneaks off to the local businessman and offers to work in Mumbai so she can be close to her sister.

Singh’s trusted associate Anjali (Sai Tamhankar) takes Sonia across the country by bus. Sonia’s enthralment at Mumbai’s bustling metropolis soon gives way to horror as she discovers what her work entails: she’s locked in a brothel with no obvious way out. Worse still, her sister is nowhere to be seen.

Thrown in with the more experienced and cynical Rashmi (Freida Pinto), Sonia is manipulated by brothel manager Faizal (Manoj Bajpayee) who talks with her as if he had her and all the other girls’ best interests at heart but elsewhere is shown on his mobile touting her as an innocent village virgin.

For its final 20 minutes, the narrative goes international with Sonia and Rashmi transported by computer-trackable shipping container to first Hong Kong where her hymen is resealed by Chinese medics, then L.A. where she services a wealthy client (Mark Duplass).

The opening countryside sequences impress, not only for showing very effectively the two young girls’ carefree, sisterly innocence and the very sweet boy from school who wants to be Sonia’s boyfriend and hold her hand but also for its quite chilling sexist undercurrents. Girls are perceived to be less physically able, so they’re less valued. Simple as that. And as the film progresses, at least until it leaves India, this feeling that women are worth less than men permeates everything.

Even Anjali, the woman who pretends to be kindly and helpful even as she’s transporting Sonia towards brothel incarceration in Mumbai, is trapped by a system that favours men over women. A survivor who’s taken matters into her own hands and doing alright out of it, Anjali has been reduced to betraying her fellow women.

Staying overnight in a hotel en route to Mumbai with Anjali, Sonia is warned by the hotel owner (Ankur Vikal), who clearly has more respect for women than do most of his fellow countrymen, to get away from that poisonous woman. And in Sonia’s brief escape attempt from the Mumbai brothel – before being caught and returned to Faizal’s establishment by the (male) police – a small boy (Sunny Pawar) on a market stall cheerfully describes her as a “Bang-Bang” with crude, expressive hand gestures to match.

The most harrowing scene is Sonia’s accompanied entry into the brothel – the locking of a grille at the entrance after she’s gone inside, the walks down lengthy corridors, the brief glimpses of thrusting male buttocks atop prostrate female bodies revealing exactly the sort of work into which Priiti has been sold. Thereafter, however, the focus is on the psychological manipulation of Sonia by her captors and while this is conveyed very well, you can’t help but feel the film makers have gone out of their way to keep further sexually explicit content to a minimum after this sole, highly effective, almost no holds barred scene.

On the one hand, that may not only allow the film to be watched by viewers who might otherwise find it too harrowing but also spare the actors and actors from portraying acts of a sexual nature which perhaps they shouldn’t be asked to perform. On the other, it perhaps overly sanitises Sonia’s experience, reducing her trauma’s potential power. That said, a couple of sex scenes involve Sonia, including a pretty unpleasant rape, albeit fairly discretely filmed.

Seeming brothel client Manish (Rajkummar Rao) tells Sonia he works for a charity that rescues girls tricked into prostitution. His later attempt to rescue her fails when she won’t come out, possibly because of Stockholm Syndrome, and the police quickly usher him off the premises with the one girl he’s already rescued. This incident makes her captors move Sonia to Hong Kong so she can’t be traced. Hollywood’s Demi Moore later turns up as an anti-sex trafficking charity worker in L.A.

The exposé of enforced prostitution and international sex trafficking, a form of slavery, is to be welcomed, as is the timely portray of widespread Indian male prejudice against women. For this writer, though, Love Sonia would have been more effective still had it not tried to tone down its physical, sexual content. But it’s still worth seeing.

The UK premiere of Love Sonia is on January 23rd at Curzon Bloomsbury – book here.

Love Sonia is out in the UK on Friday, January 25th. Watch the film trailer below: