That's a first. I have found enjoyment in the silliest of films. I still pause to watch if a TV channel is showing Govinda's Raja Babu or Shah Rukh's Ram Jaane. But by last Sunday, my simple-film-buff mind had been influenced by Chidananda Das Gupta's book. I had begun to analyse why a film like Partner would appeal to a wide audience. Is that because India's recent economic growth and all the noise around it have made us a hedonistic, for-the-moment race and put us beyond the accepted sensibilities of good cinema? |
This book can do that sort of a thing to you. For instance, generations have laughed at our moviemakers' attempts to show a kiss, most often by bringing together two flowers or birds. These scenes have abounded because of the censor board's decision to ban the kiss in the 1930s and filmmaker's discomfort with a real, wet one even after the ban has been lifted. Das Gupta takes us beyond the obvious and links the coyness to the evolution "" and necessity "" of songs.
The ban on kissing denied Indian cinema a way to express the climactic point that would be reached once two persons have expressed their love for each other. Boy meets girl. They realise, and confess, that they are made for each other and rush into an embrace. What next? Since they have to shy away from the logical, oncoming kiss, they break into a song and often dance to its tune. The dancing may involve entwining around trees, rolling down a slope, the big breast shake and the quick hip thrust, signifying you know what.
Das Gupta's book, culled from what he has gathered by writing on cinema since 1946, is not your regular film book. It is scholarly and intellectual. In that sense, Seeing is Believing is a book on films as much as Ram Guha's A Corner of a Foreign Field is a book on cricket.
Like Guha, Das Gupta delves with relish into sociology, apart from religion and politics, and provides interesting insight into sexuality, womanhood and non-violence. He digs out a seldom-narrated instance from Valmiki's Ramayana (not included in later editions by Kamban, Tulsidas or Krittibasa) of Sita, the model of the submissive Hindu wife, admonishing Rama for going around wearing arms. "The fact that you wear arms will make you violent," she says.
Sita seems to have learnt the perils of the have-gun-will-kill attitude that humanity has yet to. That's striking intelligence, in stark contrast to the sanitised role that women were later reduced to: beloved, not lovers, deprived of sex drive and objects to be manipulated by men. To Manu, killing a woman was a petty crime. The Buddha told Ananda that women were stupid, full of passion, envious; one should not speak to them. The Church wiped out women priests; a knowledgeable woman was a witch.
The chapter Cinema Takes Over the State captures the unique way, unparalleled in the world, politicians have used cinema in Tamil Nadu and Andhra "" so deftly that MGR's screen image was often taken to be MGR himself. The last part is given to essays on five filmmakers: Ray, Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Adoor and Benegal. These essays are quite delectable.
Given the theme of the book, it is remarkable that Das Gupta does not seem to be judgmental at any point. His judgment, though, shows in his choice of subjects. My only regret is that Das Gupta does not quite roll up his sleeves and get his keyboard dirty with truly mainstream cinema. It would have been nice to know his views, wrapped in the impeccable language of this former English teacher, on Partner. Could he have watched all of it?
SEEING IS BELIEVING
SELECTED WRITINGS ON CINEMA
Chidananda Das Gupta
Penguin Viking
Pages: 295; Price: Rs 499
