Some Honest Films

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 Some Honest Films

You know an honest film when you see one, like I watched ‘Masaan’ at ESG, last week. The viewer identified with the escapism of characters (Deepak and Devi),  the former’s clan entrenched in rituals of a burning ghat and the latter’s tied to a conventions of patriarchy. Also, last weekend at Sunaparanta amphitheatre, a set of 3 films, again can be classified as honest cinema. The classical fare of ‘The Color Purple’ directed by Steven Spielberg, ‘Thelma and Lousie’ by Ridley Scott and ‘Mirch Masala’ by Ketan Mehta.

I first encountered ‘Celie’, the protagonist of ‘The Color Purple’, in my post graduate study. I was shocked. Nothing in my life or reading had prepared me for this encounter. The film is based on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Alice Walker. I had goose bumps through the reading of this novel. The experience was something like when I first met Scarlet O’Hara of the fame of ‘Gone with the Wind’.  

 Shabnam Minwalla, a journalist with Times of India summed up this interlude very succinctly, in one of her articles written in 2011, celebrating 75 years of ‘Gone with the Wind’. She recounted how she first met Scarlet when she was 13 years old and Scarlet was of course 16. Three decades down the line, she vividly remembered Scarlet’s green muslin gown, matching Moroccan slippers and ever fluttering eyelashes. Not to forget, her 17 inch waist and grand obsession for Ashley. But most of all, she remembered her overwhelming disapproval. For, you see, heroines were not supposed to flirt, scheme and steal their sister’s suitors. They were supposed to be kind, loyal and obedient. Even if they felt such emotion, they were supposed to camouflage real human sentiment under a lot of kind sweet words and beset with guilt, flog and berate themselves continuously. Little heroines of Enid Blyton, Carolyn Keene, and Mary Alcott had done just that. Compared to all of them, Scarlet was a heartless vixen. So like Annie Zaidi writes in her book ‘The Good Indian Girl’, we all wanted to be good girls, because being bad girls , the consequences were very harsh.

    

Therefore when I met Celie, nothing had prepared me for her grotesque world of poverty, incest, paedophilia, racism and sexism. Celie had to live with and struggle with all these realities in her life, when she was just 14 years old. Alice Walker coined a new term for black feminism – ‘womanism’. She said that the black women had a different reality to grapple with and all women issues could not be studied under one umbrella of ‘Feminism’

    

 This film was Steven Spielberg’s first attempt at serious cinema. But he, too, came in for flak later for not doing justice to the book’s defence of lesbianism. Roger Ebert called it the best film of the year (1985) and though it was nominated for 11 Oscars, but won none. Truth is very hard to confront and accept. Society, mired in superficiality and hypocrisy, refuses to acknowledge hard facts of life. The black men too opposed the film for the portrayal of violence of black men on black women in their households. The entire gamut of factors makes the film an honest attempt at filmmaking. People also say if Steven Spielberg had not made this film, nobody would have read the book, and the tales of human horror would have gone unacknowledged. Here I am reminded of Emily Dickinson’s poem ‘Tell the truth but tell it slant/ Truth must dazzle gradually/Or every man be blind.’

   

  Thelma & Lousie was called the last greatest film about women. The director Ridley Scott has often been given the epithet of a feminist director. He is comfortable with the term –“Lots of people are uncomfortable with strong women, I am not” adding further, “the problem isn’t strong women, we are.” Known for other strong women centric films like G I Jane, Monster and Alien, he went on to direct Thelma & Lousie because he wanted to show a parable about two women, who unaccompanied by their male escorts traverse a territory not designed for them.

    

If a woman wants to be completely free and unrestrained as men are in our society, there is no place for them in this world. That is why the film is said to a flight that ends in flight(sic) in the Grand Canyon, because the two women find that they have only each other and the whole system is pitted against them. They want to have fun and undertake a road trip – a road trip which turns into a series of crimes. The road is metaphorically harsh, winding and rocky for the women. And metaphorically speaking again, it’s a long, long, long, l o n g. lo o ng, l  oo n g, l  o o n g  road to freedom. The film  hailed 90’s feminism but 26 years down the line, the situation isn’t different. A Sisyphian mountain where a feeling of triumph at the top may delight momentarily, but the boulder is slated to roll down all the way to the bottom again and Sisyphus has to roll it up again – an unceasing activity.

   

‘Mirch Masala’ is Ketan Mehta’s best film so far. An unapologetic feisty woman, tyrannical man, fields of red chilly plant and rustic Gujarat – all come together to create a potent drama. The melodramatic film throws up myriad artistic possibilities which engage the viewer completely. The cinematography is spectacular, with colourful ghagra cholis of women contrasted with the white attire of men topped with colourful turbans. The red chilly on the green plant, glistening, robust, ripe, promising and beautiful stands for passion and lust. Later, the red chilly powder denotes the red colour of revolution, the red of women’s menstrual blood and fiery red of a woman which makes her ‘Kali’ when full of vengeance.

A symbolism of feminism, the film portrays animal imagery versus human intellect. Animal instinct in humans is pitted against their powers of reasoning and intellectualism, but alas, isn’t harnessed much, when humans act enslaved to their basic instincts just like animals. The standoff between Sonbai, the peasant woman and Subedar, the tax collector, opens up a playfield of study in human behaviour. But superimposing every scenario is the frame Panchatantra story ‘The Tiger and the Clever Hare’ – when one day it is the hare’s turn to become the feast of the lion and he decides against it.

   Sonbai, impersonating the hare is self-possessed with a bold countenance, who does not indulge in self-pity. Not for a moment does she think of sacrificing her self-respect for the welfare of her community or village. Very few humans are able to take that kind of a bold stance faced by pressures of family ties and commitments. She has no dilemma or doubt and unfazed, she faces the situation.

  

  The films become a study in human nature of power, self-esteem and hypocricy. These are attempts at honest film making – therefore, they are iconic.