CineM Review: Ikiru (1952)

To Create Is Beautiful

When Akira Kurosawa began filming ‘Ikiru’, the commercial and critical success of ‘Rashomon’ (it won the highest award ‘The Golden Lion’ in the Venice Film Festival 1951 and collected an unheard-of amount for a Japanese film in the US) was fresh behind him. He must have felt very confident about his story-telling abilities. And that shows amply in ‘Ikiru’ – a film examining the struggles in the life of a bureaucrat who is fated to die of cancer shortly; the story itself an inspiration from Tolstoy’s short story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich".

Ikiru means “to live” and strangely (but perhaps not so strange after all), the protagonist starts leading a life true to himself only when he is compelled to stare straight ahead at the grim prospect of death. Kurosawa teamed up with Shinobu Hashimoto (who had earlier written the sparkling script of ‘Rashomon’) and Hideo Oguni to write the screenplay, and the nuances that they bring into a seeming-conventional story are very insightful. The story outline is simple enough – a long-serving, tired and thoroughly insipid bureaucrat is diagnosed with stomach cancer but given a misleading medical prognosis; he gathers though that he does not have long to live and surrounded by a stifling work-place environment and an equally unloving atmosphere at home with his son and daughter-in-law, our protagonist examines his past life, and comes to an epiphany about what he should do in his remaining days. This is a theme which has been widely explored both in literature and films – the onset of a fast-approaching death coupled with memories of a life made up of words left unsaid and work left undone, the ritual breakdown of mind and body, all culminating in a deeply-felt realisation about life (or death). This much-travelled niche is where Ikiru breaks the mould - through performances so sincere, a screenplay so sensitive, and a camera so faithful and alert to what it seeks to capture and what it desires to leave out.

Ikiru’s opening shot with a voice-over narration introduces the protagonist’s death even before we have had a glimpse of the protagonist, in a form of a X-ray film showing the cancerous growth in the stomach. The story then progresses along as the versatile Japanese actor Takashi Shimura in the role of the bureaucrat as Kanji Watanabe, sits through a cold, unsettling (and as proved, ultimately devious) medical diagnosis, stumbles back home to his dark bedroom which is sparsely adorned with certificates of appreciation for a long (but hollow) career in service, ultimately rebelling against his own deep-set frugal nature to seek out a night of pleasures and thrills. This is the definitive point where the film veers away from convention to present us with a truly masterful narrative.

That single night of debauchery has been shot in a marvelous sequence where Watanabe accompanied by a kindred spirit, a writer of cheap novels but possessor of an altruistic sensibility, taste the pleasures of a night that Tokyo has to offer. Stumbling in and out of dubious alleys, in and out of bars, both men end up in a lounge. This lounge is the setting for the scene which strikes me the most; Watanabe requests a song (‘The Gondola Song’) which the lounge pianist starts playing, the young and beautiful people of the night congregate to dance, but stop in mid-step when Watanabe starts singing the lonesome strains. The camera which initially lingers behind a swaying bead screen as the young couples start to dance, glides onto Watanabe as he sings, panning upwards to his face with the glass ceiling in the background reflecting the frozen figures of the other revelers. The sad lyrics of the song which call upon the young to come fall in love before their youth fades away, are sung in a low, so soft voice with the lips scarcely moving and tears silently welling up in Watanabe’s eyes, have stayed with me. This sequence is further embellished with interesting use of reflections of the people on glass surfaces presenting us with allegorical shots of how life holds different views for different people. In a sense, we see the characters both as they really are as well as how they appear to be.

That night is followed by a curious and unlikely relationship that develops between Watanabe and a much- younger female colleague. This bond which Watanabe feels is not easily understandable until the cathartic last dinner in the restaurant when Watanabe reveals haltingly and with characteristic reserve, and later more urgently what he seeks from the girl – the silent and somewhat raw cry of him who is going to his grave for an attempt at redeeming the life which is now past him. Kurosawa directs this part of the story with a stark camera’s eye which lays bare the utter helplessness in Watanabe’s soul – there is a wonderful shot where the side profile of Watanabe’s face frames the picture while the younger, happier, more open face of the girl lingers in the background – a contrast between the two.

Moments in Ikiru are not poetic; scenes are sometimes jagged, insistent, urgent, often giving us close shots of Watanabe’s face as he’s trying to work out his thoughts, perhaps attempting to capture the conflicts in the mind. The most dominant feature on the screen is Watanabe’s drooping figure; the camera follows him ruthlessly around, in one shot capturing his sorry bent figure on knees, frozen in a dark staircase – in a futile attempt to reach out to his son.

As the character of Watanabe approaches and meets its inevitable end, we are presented with a penetrating study into life and human nature, as his family and colleagues attempt to deconstruct his later days and ultimate death, while sipping sake in his wake. Unlike ‘Rashomon’ which captures truth as it undergoes a beguiling and self-mutating cycle of discovery, Ikiru is more concerned with examining the truth as it appears from one incrementally-developing perspective. We, the audience possess the privilege of knowing the unalloyed truth of both Watanabe’s life and death; however as the story’s characters (unsure and some of them, over-zealous) try to understand the motivations for Watanabe’s change from a bored bureaucrat to a tenacious civil servant, we are treated to the scattered and small ways in which the truth and eventually the meaning of life itself, make themselves apparent.

The masterstrokes in this film are too numerous to list them all; however I will make special mention of the scene where Watanabe’s rushes off after that fateful last dinner with the girl, while a bunch of happy party-people gather around the stair-head. They enthusiastically sing ‘Happy Birthday’ for someone who is as yet unseen but coming up the stairs, as Watanabe hurries down below them, his hands clutching his new symbol of hope, with a new flame in his eyes as he understands the way to live. We revel in his re-birth.

CineM’s Verdict:

A Business that Flies…

I recently made a couple of trips to a place called Sonapur in the outskirts of Guwahati; the town lies on the highway barely 30 kms away. Earlier Sonapur was famous for its scenic beauty, the quaint picnic spots it had to offer and its sweet, juicy oranges. Sonapur is now more known for the multitude of dhabas that have come up along the highway, some of whom have grandly advertised themselves as ‘resorts’. The town itself is bound on one side by the highway, on another side by a tea estate and ringed by agricultural land all around. Besides this, Sonapur is also home to a defence establishment (whether army or air force, I don’t know for certain). Beyond the mushrooming of the said dhabas along the fringes and the recent opening of 2 vehicle showrooms along the highway (a Mahindra one for commercial vehicles and another belonging to Maruti cars), there is little commercial and industrial activity to be seen in the place.

Anyway, when I went into the town I asked an old resident as to the predominant occupations of the local folk. He replied that most people were cultivators, some of them ran myriad trading businesses (grocery, convenience, clothes stores, etc). Besides the regular clientele of defence personnel and their families, there is a fair sprinkling of hill tribal communities who also came down to sell their produce in the town, forming another customer group for the town’s traders. When I further enquired about any other business besides the stores and the ubiquitous dhabas, the geriatric man replied, “Oh yes, a great many do engage in ‘flying business’.” Flying Business?! This was the second time in as many months that I had come across the term. The first was when an old acquaintance had claimed that flying business was in fact, one of his major sources of income. I asked him what he meant and he explained.

To the uninitiated, let me make it clear that the term has nothing to do with propellers, aeronautics, flight ticketing or any other paraphernalia that we normally associate with ‘flying’. It is in fact a business that possesses no concrete definition; it operates mostly on the twin bases of local know-how and sociability. For instance, when one party decides to sell off a plot of land and you get hold of an interested buyer and arrange for the deal to materialise, you charge a certain fee as the facilitator – this is one model of flying business. Oh, flying business has numerous models of operations – again for instance, if you are new to a place and someone comes along who manages the gas connection and the police verification for your new rented home, that becomes yet another illustration of how a flying business may be conducted. Chances are that the same guy will also come forward to get you the registration certificate for your newly-purchased car, finagle a trading licence from the oily local officials, get you a maid or even arrange for the neighbourhood electrician to install the fancy chandelier in your living room. I guess you may call this guy a broker or even a middleman. In its essence, a person who engages in flying business is a sort of all-rounder offering his services; he does ‘this’ and ‘that’ and 'everything else' – his only consideration being the fee. The flying businessman may therefore, be considered a necessary and very useful part of the local community, providing his services through the extensive native network that he has cultivated.

The downside is that flying businessmen are often less than sincere about the services that they supposedly offer. They might charge fees upfront for 'incidental expenses' for things which never materialise; frequently leave you hanging with vague statements of ‘you know how it is, these things take time’ after taking responsibility or even rip you off with legal documents or certificates of decidedly dodgy provenance. There is quite simply no accountability mechanism through which one can ensure that services are rendered on time, as promised and in the correct manner. These are all reasons why the term ‘flying business’ has acquired a certain shady connotation today. Perhaps when you are a flying businessman, it is a constant temptation to just take off…..with your client’s bucks!!

CineM Review: Oh My God! (2012)

Ir-reverent Reverence

A friend of mine was asked by his mother to accompany her to the temple. He declined saying that after negotiating through the raucous flower- and incense sellers outside, navigating around the beggars which lie persistently waiting by the temple gate, making a wary way in the courtyard avoiding the droppings of goats, pigeons, ducks (animals left behind at the temple by grateful worshippers), and haggling with the bossy priests, he hardly had any ‘faith’ left to offer to the stone deity within. A frank admission was met (predictably) with a loud rebuke from his mother. An honest discussion about God and how to worship Him does not  exist even within the conversational space of a family, which is why a film like OMG deserves to be appreciated for attempting to bring this topic out onto the collective consciousness.

The story behind OMG is a one-line idea so absurd that it is courageous: a man decides to bring in a suit against God for damages sustained by him in an earthquake, which as the insurance people helpfully informed is “an act of God”. As is the case often with one-liners, there exists extensive bedrock behind one man’s frustration with the mechanism through which we think God operates.

This film suitably anchored by the director Umesh Shukla is actually based on a Gujarati play 'Kanji Viruddh Kanji', which was adapted on the Hindi stage as 'Krishan vs Kanhaiya'. A theological comedy-drama which is primarily arguments-based, it relies on the succinct presentation of logical ideas and facts – a feat which is in no small way, hindered by the Bollywood compulsion to have long-winded, often theatrical showdowns not between ideas but between individuals. Bhavesh Mandalia wrote the Hindi play, which has now been married into the Bollywood production mould by the director himself rather harmoniously – the story itself loses none of its cerebral appeal.

As the chief protagonist Kanji Lal Mehta, actor Paresh Rawal does what he does best – browbeat others through sarcastic expressions and sharp statements, but I felt that given the tone here, the film thankfully did not resort to excessive Bolly-drama and cheap generalisations, though there are moments in the courtroom where the arguments are more rabble-rousing than meaningful cognition (the analogy between God & a Anil Ambani is very borderline low comedy). Kanji’s arguments in the court are mostly well-placed and very observational (there’s no heresay; rather it’s the ‘godmen’ who engage in this). At the other end, the pantheon of ‘godmen’ and ‘spiritual custodians’ who are the respondents in this case, are caricatures of self-importance, deceit and dismissive of contrary opinions. Producer-actor Akshay Kumar in the role of modern-day Krishna is left with little to accomplish except guide Kanji towards the right path. Special mention has to be made of Mithun Chakravarty’s performance as the godman Leelavati – the experienced actor incorporates mannerisms (especially with his eyes and hands) so affected and a demeanour so self-righteous you have to wonder at his supposed 'God'-liness. The early part of his performance is masterful pantomime; and when he speaks, he does a good job of carrying forward that same persona. He has a memorable line towards the end when he points at an encircling throng and proclaims with a knowing twinkle in his eyes, “Look closely at them. They are God-fearing, not God-loving people.”

Srimanata Sankardeva (1449–1568), reformer saint of Assam who advocated spirituality based on moral synthesis and awareness, carved out an image of Lord Vishnu from a piece of wood which he found floating in a river, after he got a divine premonition of the same. The saint (who believed in religion beyond ritualism and idolatry) installed it purely as an art-work, which people subsequently started worshipping as another statue of Vishnu. It is sad to note that half a millenia later, our society continues to relate to God in the same transactional manner and is content to worship him as an overlord (mostly menacing) who is meant to be propitiated with worldly milk, sacrifices, chaddars and what not.

The fight against mere transactionalism and the perfunctory is a constant one in this world, whether it be work, relationships or as OMG shows, with God too.

CineM’s Verdict:

CineM Review: Bella Martha (2001)

Spontaneity meets Precision…

 There’s a moment in this film where a painfully young girl confides in her aunt that she’s already starting to forget her mother – a realisation which is all the more saddening and inexplicable to someone so young who has just lost her parent. This scene is in essence what ‘Bella Martha’ seeks to explore – the uneasy initiation into stuff beyond one’s comfort zone. This film is centered around a fastidiously efficient head chef (Martha) and her young niece (Lina) who comes into her care after her single mother dies in an accident. Both aunt and niece are indulgently riveted on their individual fixations (Martha with her kitchen and Lina with the trials of living with a woman who is not her mother) to the exclusion of their mutual realities. Things change with the entry of a free-spirited Italian sous-chef (Mario) into Martha’s kitchen and into the sequestered lives of aunt and niece. The impulsive boisterousness of the Mediterranean spirit collides with stoic Germanic reserve, resulting in a battle of wills starting with the kitchen and spilling over outside too.

'Bella Martha’ is German filmmaker Sandra Nettelbeck’s first full-length feature and she does a remarkable job of confining the escalating tug-of-war within a limited conventional scope without resorting to overt drama and generalisations. ‘Bella Martha’ translates into ‘beautiful Martha’; both Sandra and Martina Gedeck in the titular role infuse a level of strength and vulnerability into Martha which is aesthetically very sensual. There is a definite flow from start to finish; the introduction of Martha’s perfectionist, inhibited character, her guardianship of her young niece, the entry of the naturally demonstrative Mario and their accompanying battles to discover life beyond.

Martina who would go on to personify a similarly gifted and troubled artist (actress) later in ‘The Lives of Others’ (2006), pulls off a great performance facing difficult situations in a muted, true-to-life fashion. For a romantic comedy drama, the tender love story progresses along in a muted, true-to-life manner too. The ‘big’ moment where Martha and Mario recognise and tentatively submit to their mutual attraction with an almost-stolen kiss is delicately played out among spices, flavours and aromas - all parts of a delightfully created blindfold taste session. The niece Lina like so many young kids tossed into an incomprehensible situation, acts out her anger until it is spent or won over by love. The evolving relationship between Martha and Lina lies at the core of the story, with Mario acting as the catalyst which brings together all the elements to realise that perfect concoction. There is a wonderfully crafted comic vignette between Martha and her psychiatrist before the end credits roll out.

The narrative may feel at times, to be running along in its fairly predictable course. And cold and gray Germany is shot in tones which are ... well, cold and gray. 'Bella Martha' is not a ground-breaking story but it is well-told. 

Ultimately, love unlike a food recipe rarely arrives accompanied with its own checklist; it is oftentimes hard but when it all comes together, it is magical.

This is a well-mounted and well-acted film; so if anyone wants a flashier version, check out the blatant ‘copy and paste’ job that is Catherine Zeta-Jones’ ‘No Reservations’.

CineM's Verdict

Armour of Love: From Nippon to Assam

Weaving is deeply rooted in Assamese culture; in fact, it was customary for every Assamese household at one time to possess atleast one spinning wheel and a loom. Elaborate silk panels woven in Assam depicting typical cultural motifs and religious symbolisms have ended up in museums and monasteries worldwide. Weaving was not restricted to a particular caste nor was it restricted to household with means – every woman and girl irrespective of caste or economic standing spun and wove their own cloth. Dexterity in weaving was one of the prime sought-after qualities in girls of marriageable age in earlier days.

One of the customs among Assamese womenfolk was the preparation of armour made out of – you could never guess it – Cotton! During times of war, diligent wives would gin, card, spin and weave cotton to fashion a piece of cloth (all within a single night) and present it to their menfolk in the morning as they set out for the battlefield. This piece of cloth was known as a ‘kobos kapur’ literally translating into ‘armour cloth’; the men proudly wearing it as a belief that it granted invincibility to the wearer. This custom is all the more heart-affecting cos the Assamese army in the days of the Ahom rulers was hardly composed of warriors. Instead, the Assamese soldier was actually a ‘paik’ – a civilian beholden to the local feudal lord or the Ahom king called up to military duty in times of war. So, when these farmers or woodcutters or fishermen or otherwise peaceable folk went out to war clad in homespun armour made out of just cotton, their courage and sense of duty becomes all the more admirable.

Scientifically, there is a basis to armour spun out of soft fibres like cotton. The soft body armour functions just like a very strong net. The interwoven strands of greatly slender and elongated cotton disperse the energy emanating from the point of impact over a wide area, thus reducing injury from abrasions.

One can see a striking parallel in a far-more warlike land like erstwhile Imperial Nippon governed by the strict Bushido code of war. When Japanese warriors of the Imperial army set out to war, it was the custom of their womenfolk to present them with pieces of cotton cloth to be worn as vests, belts, headbands or caps. This cloth was called the ‘Senninbari’ (or 'the thousand person stitches') – a strip of cloth with a thousand stitches, each sewed by a different woman and lovingly presented to the warrior to protect him. During the Second World War, mothers and sisters and wives would stand near the local train station or temple or store and hold out their senninbari to passing-by women so that they could sew in that one stitch. Oftentimes the senninbari was lined with a few strand of hair of the woman or studded with coins as additional amulets.

Whether it is Nippon or Assam or anyplace else, it is the devotion and love of the women of the land manifested in heartfelt simple ways, sometimes even in fragile homemade pieces of cloth which I am sure in ways unfathomable, somehow lend a different spirit to the wearer.

CineM Review: To Have and Have Not (1944)

Bogie and Bacall had it all

Country singer Bertie Higgins’ song titled ‘Key Largo’ has that well-known ditty “We had it all / Just like Bogie and Bacall”. To develop just an itsy inkling of what Bogie and Bacall ‘had’, a viewing of ‘To Have and Have Not’ comes highly recommended. A film directed by Howard Hawks, launching the sultry Lauren Bacall, with a story originally written by Hemingway and a screenplay developed by Faulkner and Furthman and not least, starring that emerging icon Bogart with the gritty ‘The Maltese Falcon’ and a masterful ‘Casablanca’ just behind him – you have reasons galore for catching this movie!

Hemingway’s story was based on liquor-running between Florida  and Cuba, and contained marked classist overtones, hence the story title. Hawks adapted the setting to the island of Martinique under the puppet Vichy regime, the protagonist no longer ran booze up and down the Gulf, the hero Harry Morgan (Bogie) and his alcoholic sidekick Eddie (Walter Brennan) simply offered their boat and services for the more plain thrill of game fishing. One of the early scenes has Hemingway’s mark all over it, when the duo and a client grapple with a feisty marlin - the author's fav sporting fish. Bacall is cast as ‘Slim’ – a magnetic beauty with fire in her eyes, smoke on her lips and smouldering embers in her walk, just the sort of female wheeler-dealer who asks for a light first and then oh-so-slowly, singes your heart with it.

The politics is superficial, back-stories are dispensed with, motivations are simple and introductions are curt – the free-flowing film serving as a canvas to showcase the electric chemistry between Bogie and Bacall. One of the hallmarks of a Hawks’ film is the exchange of rapid-fire dialogues; here the repartees between the two flow thick and furious, the words lie deliciously scattered around to the point of being non sequiturs.

Sample this dialogue between ‘Slim’ and Morgan when the first on-screen kiss is tentatively shared between the two who would eventually become the future off-screen Mr. and Mrs. Bogart.

 

[Slim kisses Morgan]

Morgan: What did you do that for?

Slim: I've been wondering if I'd like it.

Morgan: What's the decision?

Slim: I don't know yet.

[They kiss again]

Slim: It's even better when you help.

The word-play, the scene, the agony and the ecstasy come together in that perfect wispy breath of cinematic brilliance so much so that Hawks would play out the exact scene 15 years later in ‘Rio Bravo’ between the blustery John Wayne and the languorous Angie Dickinson.

Of course, Bogie and Bacall do it infinitely better.

This scorching chemistry is the most substantial reason why anyone should fit in ‘To Have and Have Not’ in their viewing record. That, and the delight of a superlative Walter Brennan comic turn as the hero’s sidekick whose loping gait makes it look as if he is perpetually attempting to step over a puddle in his way.

CineM's Verdict

CineM Review: The Gunfighter (1950)

Revisionist (or not) Western

The first thing you should know about Henry King’s ‘The Gunfighter’ is this: it is not a Western. Sure, it traces its story in the saloon of a dusty town called Cayenne, and the story demands the ready occurrence of men with guns, and boys with guns. Hence, the setting of the West.

You meet a saloon-keeper unlike any you will come across in the mythically tough Old West – he is girlishly celebrity-struck, presides over his domain like a harried schoolmaster, and is incapable of evicting truant schoolchildren from his porch, forget drunk and rowdy customers. You also meet a town marshal (widely acknowledged to be a hard-as-nails hombre) who is mostly content with setting deadlines, then extending them, issuing terse warnings which go unheeded and pacifying matrons, when he is not acting as a messenger boy between a man and his estranged wife. Finally you meet the gunfighter – a guy with a frank, open face and eyes which twinkle when he meets old acquaintances; who is ready to perform as a town peace office by herding characters with guns into the town jail when the marshal is out, and pacifying a particularly strident women’s citizen delegation with all the diplomatic and conciliatory skills of a town mayor. And this man has toted up a personal body count of 12 men!!

 ‘The Gunslinger’ is a spare story which is sad but has played itself out true before and will, again. There is a man who has committed some wrongs, now attempting to ride away from the destiny which he unmistakably foresees, and then there is a bunch of people, some who would like to be the audience when he meets that fate, and a few who would like to be its deliverer. It is a sad story which dispenses with shining heroes or tenacious villains. You will buy into the premise easily enough, and identify with the man heading towards a fate which you can visualize instantly after the first draw.

 

With a story as spare as this, the screenplay is tight and performances are crisp. The film however, stretches further and wants to up-sell the idea of an identifiable setting with a cast of standard characters acting very un-identifiably just because you have bought into the basic idea. It comes as no surprise that when the gunfighter ultimately meets his fate, it is not on the back of a horse or in a sun-baked dusty street, but on a boardwalk, his head comfortably propped up on a pillow with a blanket laid out and the townspeople congregated respectfully around as if they are at the dying bedside of the town parish priest.

CineM's Verdict