Little Terrorist is Ashvin Kumar's second attempt at directing a short after the first, 'Road to Ladakh', turned out to be too long for distributors' newer definition of a 'short film' (it was 48 mins in length). The up and coming short film genre was in fact the only genre at the advent of film shown in public theater, before Chaplin and others discovered the longer version. Films were silent and 10-15 mins long. Now, shorts have become the hotbed of experimenting for young directors and the basis of critiquing a new filmmaker's storytelling ability and creativity.
For just his second attempt to be one of five Oscar nominations this year, 2 years after his filmmaking debut with Road to Ladakh, Ashvin Kumar's is quite an achievement. Many wins at other film festivals are also testimony to the quality of this feel-good story, depicting the innate kindness of neighbours separated by fences - fences that force borders between nations. The story is a demonstration that religion and a physical border are meaningless in the midst of friendship and an underlying bond of a community, forceably split by political agendas. Ashvin uses three characters - either very young or very old - to throw us hope with an idealistic story of kindness and friendship. I don't remember Ashvin alluding to the choice of age for his characters in his 'Behind the Scenes...' documentary, but it had to be subconscious at the least - the purity of the untainted youth and the wisdom of a grandfather-like figure are oblivious to the machinations of nations, their politics and their use of commoners as pawns. The film was an adaptation of a news article in 2003-04 that described a Pakistani boy who had accidentally slipped through the Indian border.
Road to Ladakh, the director's first short (currently being shot as a full-length feature) is a far more intense kindling of love between strangers, both isolated in a remote location for very different reasons and whose regular lives seem absent of emotion. Irfan Khan shows us why he's becoming a critic's darling with what we Indians call a strong silent performance. Koel Purie's debut comes off as impressive until we see the documentary 'The Near Un-Making of Road to Ladakh', where we discover the pitfalls it took to get her there.
Adventures in Shorts is one of the most underrated DVD's that I have come across. Not too many people are aware that there is more to the Little Terrorist and Ashvin Kumar than a 15 min film and an Oscar nomination. The DVD itself documents a filmmaker's journey - more real than either film. With the camera rolling alongside Ashvin and his film characters, the story travels to Cannes with Ashvin (captured in the included doc, 'Can You Cannes?) and then to Ladakh for his first short film, back to Cannes and finally to a shoot in Rajasthan that lasts less than a week. Not bad for a Film School dropout who was trying to sell the idea of a short film to anyone who will listen and whose persistence took him to the Oscars. For those who've expereienced a bout of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship, its like being through a series of Film startups with the tidbits of information about Cannes, the amateur actors, the exotic but very difficult locales, the accidents, the improvizations and the wild idea of putting together a very talented team together from a website.
The docs in the DVD almost warrant their own review but it has to be seen in its entire 175 mins to be enjoyed by anyone who loves good film, innovative filmmaking, and a maverick underdog who will do anything to get his film to be seen by audiences - at Cannes and LA, no less. The DVD is also testament to this director's clever ideas of merging good film with stories around the film that truly engage the audience. Keep an eye out for this director - he'll be making news, and more importantly, cheeky and cutting-edge cinema.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Monday, May 16, 2005
Film Review (Doc): Final Solution (2004)
Recently, I was at a screening of the film Final Solution, by Rakesh Sharma. It was my second time in six months - that I was at a large auditorium sprinkled with a fair dose of academics, students, self-styled socialists (not to be confused with socialites, they have no time for such things) and the mandatory set of Gujarati gentleman decrying the biased perspective of the filmmaker. The change in my own thought process in that same six months was quite remarkable. However, to put that change in perspective, one almost has to be 'Waiting for Godot' to be drawn to such a film (unless in one of above 3 categories) and subject oneself to a provocative, yet masochistic, visual experience of this documentary.
This time, there were not one, but two pairs of people who were opposed to the one-sided portrayal of the now age old Hindu-Muslim issue. The question from the first pair was inundated with incorrect statistics about the misery of the Kashmiri Pandits but the stats turned out to be irrelevant since the director pointed out that no single person can address every issue in the country and that his peers (some of them good friends of his) were making at least 3 films with the Pandits as a subject. The second question, from the other pair of gentlemen with origins in Ahmedabad, was more emotional and bemoaned the lack of coverage of past atrocities on Hindus and that it was for the first time that casualties were heavier on the Muslim side in a few decades of riot-related violence. One can't deny this man his point on statistics. There were two things that changed over the last 15 years I suppose - one was that Hindus had become more belligerent in their retaliation i.e. the equivalent of India's nuclear deterrent strategy to scare our neighbors from making silly and cheeky intrusions across the border. The second was that media coverage is not muted any more and is not in the hands of the state alone i.e. such domestic violence will eventually get seen in a democratic nation such as India and will be portrayed in a relatively fair manner. (It is discomforting though that an event such as Godhra was not more relevant for every Indian in the country - this I speak from my own experience with family etc.). However, these two changes are irrelevant to the answer that was rightly given by Rakesh - that after the 1984 aftermath of the Indira Gandhi assisination, there hasn't been such a blatant display of "state-sponsored" killing of a minority community - in this case, inaction by first responders such as the police being as much of a crime as outright support.
Though they are not comparable on scale, the ramifications of such events, when expressed in 'time to recover' do indicate the damage. Without going into the original version of the Final Solution (as coined by Hitler), even the carnage against the Sikh community in Delhi (sponsored then by the so-called secular Congress) has taken two decades to 'recover' from, if such 'recovery' is ever possible for some people, and this was after the separatist movement in Punjad died quickly after. With the punches and counterpunches thrown by the Hindutva parties and the extremist Muslims, this one may take a lot longer. It doesn't help to have Kashmir and Pakistan as issues taken in the same breath in the midst of any Hindu-Muslim issue discussed anywhere in India.
The status quo is fragile since it is shrouded with mistrust at every level - a throwback to what allowed the Brits to easily dominate a vast nation, applying limited resources of its own and using immense guile. Warning against the false comfort of the status quo, the film begs the audience to seek answers to the right questions. As a documentary that asks powerful questions, there is hardly anything more compelling than this film in recent times. It touches issues from gender and children to ghettoization and the Hindutva mindset. It eloquently brings forth the subconscious thinking of the average Hindu and Muslim in these sensitive areas of the country. It leaves you terrified at the impact such events leave on children, who are practicing their math with body counts and their biology with atrocities committed against women. It leaves one praying that the souls of the dead (in this case, the train victims) are left in peace rather than be sullied through a call for vengeance while targetting the next riot victim.
The drama of life and pervasive hatred is not too palatable for the average well-educated, white-collar Joe (or rather 'Jai' or 'Jaffar'). So, even upon personal persuasion, this film hasn't been viewed by too many people that I call friends and who are, without any doubt, my family. The other sublime elements of this film is that it is technically and structurally a great film. So, it should be a cult film by that measure at least but the topic is too hard-hitting for the 'Jais' and much abused by the 'Jaffars' to make the cut to cult.
If I have a pet peeve in life, it is that too many problems are thrown at us without solutions. To counter the idea of a Final Solution, the answer can never be easy, because the problems are multi-pronged and deep-rooted. So, it leaves me thinking of where the debates can be held. Like most educative documentaries, the countersolutions will have to be battled in the classrooms and will inspire another young generation to dream of an ideal secular India, albeit for a few years before they close the classroom door and enter the societal one - a door glossed with a coat of opportunism rather than opportunity, hiding ugly layers of intolerance, insecurity and indifference. Coming back to the change in me, it has forced me to question everything, as good art often does. I haven't found the answers nor has the film but there are thousands of minds in pursuit of those answers thanks to it - even if one finds the answer for themselves, if not for Indian society, the film will have achieved its purpose.
This time, there were not one, but two pairs of people who were opposed to the one-sided portrayal of the now age old Hindu-Muslim issue. The question from the first pair was inundated with incorrect statistics about the misery of the Kashmiri Pandits but the stats turned out to be irrelevant since the director pointed out that no single person can address every issue in the country and that his peers (some of them good friends of his) were making at least 3 films with the Pandits as a subject. The second question, from the other pair of gentlemen with origins in Ahmedabad, was more emotional and bemoaned the lack of coverage of past atrocities on Hindus and that it was for the first time that casualties were heavier on the Muslim side in a few decades of riot-related violence. One can't deny this man his point on statistics. There were two things that changed over the last 15 years I suppose - one was that Hindus had become more belligerent in their retaliation i.e. the equivalent of India's nuclear deterrent strategy to scare our neighbors from making silly and cheeky intrusions across the border. The second was that media coverage is not muted any more and is not in the hands of the state alone i.e. such domestic violence will eventually get seen in a democratic nation such as India and will be portrayed in a relatively fair manner. (It is discomforting though that an event such as Godhra was not more relevant for every Indian in the country - this I speak from my own experience with family etc.). However, these two changes are irrelevant to the answer that was rightly given by Rakesh - that after the 1984 aftermath of the Indira Gandhi assisination, there hasn't been such a blatant display of "state-sponsored" killing of a minority community - in this case, inaction by first responders such as the police being as much of a crime as outright support.
Though they are not comparable on scale, the ramifications of such events, when expressed in 'time to recover' do indicate the damage. Without going into the original version of the Final Solution (as coined by Hitler), even the carnage against the Sikh community in Delhi (sponsored then by the so-called secular Congress) has taken two decades to 'recover' from, if such 'recovery' is ever possible for some people, and this was after the separatist movement in Punjad died quickly after. With the punches and counterpunches thrown by the Hindutva parties and the extremist Muslims, this one may take a lot longer. It doesn't help to have Kashmir and Pakistan as issues taken in the same breath in the midst of any Hindu-Muslim issue discussed anywhere in India.
The status quo is fragile since it is shrouded with mistrust at every level - a throwback to what allowed the Brits to easily dominate a vast nation, applying limited resources of its own and using immense guile. Warning against the false comfort of the status quo, the film begs the audience to seek answers to the right questions. As a documentary that asks powerful questions, there is hardly anything more compelling than this film in recent times. It touches issues from gender and children to ghettoization and the Hindutva mindset. It eloquently brings forth the subconscious thinking of the average Hindu and Muslim in these sensitive areas of the country. It leaves you terrified at the impact such events leave on children, who are practicing their math with body counts and their biology with atrocities committed against women. It leaves one praying that the souls of the dead (in this case, the train victims) are left in peace rather than be sullied through a call for vengeance while targetting the next riot victim.
The drama of life and pervasive hatred is not too palatable for the average well-educated, white-collar Joe (or rather 'Jai' or 'Jaffar'). So, even upon personal persuasion, this film hasn't been viewed by too many people that I call friends and who are, without any doubt, my family. The other sublime elements of this film is that it is technically and structurally a great film. So, it should be a cult film by that measure at least but the topic is too hard-hitting for the 'Jais' and much abused by the 'Jaffars' to make the cut to cult.
If I have a pet peeve in life, it is that too many problems are thrown at us without solutions. To counter the idea of a Final Solution, the answer can never be easy, because the problems are multi-pronged and deep-rooted. So, it leaves me thinking of where the debates can be held. Like most educative documentaries, the countersolutions will have to be battled in the classrooms and will inspire another young generation to dream of an ideal secular India, albeit for a few years before they close the classroom door and enter the societal one - a door glossed with a coat of opportunism rather than opportunity, hiding ugly layers of intolerance, insecurity and indifference. Coming back to the change in me, it has forced me to question everything, as good art often does. I haven't found the answers nor has the film but there are thousands of minds in pursuit of those answers thanks to it - even if one finds the answer for themselves, if not for Indian society, the film will have achieved its purpose.
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