Far East from Bollywood

In Kolkata, I had minimal time for shopping, so the purchase of films was random and intuitive. I just grapped whatever I could. Fortunately, the two music-film stores I visited were very well equipped.

I decided to forget Bollywood this time, and focus on Bengali cinema. I was far, far away from Mumbai. Nothing about the trip made me long for honeymoon musical scenes shot at the Himalayas. I had a feeling it was time to “get real”.

I did go to the movies once, to see the latest Bollywood blockbuster Rocket Singh, a comic tale of India’s most successful salesman. Without English subtitles, it was difficult to understand the comedy. The film was more verbal than what the ads suggested. But it did portray the everyday challenges of young Indian college graduates from a viewpoint of a Sikh family living in Mumbai. There was a level of political commentary against the commercialization of everyday life, which I of course missed.

No matter how little I understood, it was a great experience to be there. The movie theatre at Salt Lake City’s posh mall was perhaps better equipped than any of the cinemas in Tampere. There were even security checks at the cinema gates. The ticket was expensive in Indian standards, 210 rupees. I understood that in the ordinary movie theatres, the tickets cost less than 100 rupees. Now Kolkata had movie theatres differentiated by the income group. It made me wonder.

The film I watched on my laptop at the guesthouse on a sleepless night hit the jackpot. Aparna Sen’s 15, Park Avenue (2005) is a story of mental illness, Westernization, family ties and modern relationships in upper-middle class professional Kolkata. It is a film about parallel worlds, so multilayered in narration that one starts to question the main character’s illness. Meethi’s schizophrenia has been diagnosed and she spends half of her time in clinics, but the film sympathizes strongly with her other world, the imaginary world she has created on Park Avenue, to the extent that the viewer cannot know for sure which one of her worlds is the dreamworld, after all.

I will need to watch this film many times to understand the underlying symbolism. A Bengali friend told me that the filmmaker uses traditional Bengali storytelling about dream worlds to complicate the narrative. This is interesting, because the film has otherwise been almost purged from everyday Indian life. The characters live in a Westernized bubble. One does not see the normal everyday mess and noise of Kolkata’s streets at all.

The other films I have not seen yet, but luckily in my pile there also seems to be another Aparnya Sen film, Sati (1989).
I got 5 Satyajit Ray films, some black-and-white, some coloured: The Middle Man, The Big City, The Stranger, The Enemy of the People and The Home and the World.

Then there is Anjan Das’ Strokes and Silhouettes, a truly artsy film about a family of painters. And a film in Bengali only by director Sab Chotitra Kalponik (without English subtitles), the name of which I cannot read yet.

Apart from Bengali films, I got Deepa Mehta’s “Elements” trilogy. Somehow, they don’t anymore seem like Indian films. I have enjoyed Earth, and followed with great interest the controversy over the film Fire. I will also watch these over time, but now I have a need to understand what Bengali movies are about.

This should provide enough entertainment over the Christmas holidays.

Slumdog millionaire, months late

The whole world's been buzzing about Danny Boyle's film Slumdog Millionaire, and I came to Anil Kapoor fandom long before the film's European release. The love affair started by seeing the film Taal, in which Kapoor plays the role of an opportunist mogul of Mumbai music business. He is extremely cynical and entertaining in the cynicism. I have not come across any other Indian actor or actress with similar scope for the ironic. He speaks straight to me without any cultural translations. I would love to find the female equivalent of AK, someone ruthlessly bitchy, who at the same time loves the people she's with (although she would never admit it).

Curiously enough, I didn't rush to see Slumdog during its Finnish première, but waited until early July. The whole event just seemed overcrowded. Didn't feel any pressure to be there. Funnily enough, the kids insisted. It seemed to belong to their repertoire of films to see, not mine. I succumbed.

I have seen too many films with AK as the crook, or the competing older groom, or the streetwise Indian professional - it would be difficult to imagine him in another kind of role. He is Indian secular urbanity embodied, I would find it difficult to view him in the role of a village patriarch, or a spiritual authority. He is the sleek urbanite with vicious manners, who often has to go through a fierce moral battle before coming to terms with the surrounding humanity.

I smuggled an underaged child to see the film. Nobody stopped us at the gates, though he was 5 years too young. I was first afraid it might be too rough for the kids to see, but it wasn't. So good it was I got myself a copy of the DVD at Heathrow during a conference trip, with a set of fan postcards included. Now I only miss the T-shirt, and I assume it also can be easily arranged. India is not lagging behind terribly in the commodification of film stars. I plan to travel there later this year. How many kgs of Bollywood materials will I bring along?

It was curious to see a film about Indian slum children that did not automatically envoke soppiness in the corner of the eye of a middle-aged European female (I almost always cry); the economy of emotions was more complex, and the film did also appeal to the spectator's analytical skills.

That kind of alienating effect is unusual when viewing Hollywood/Bollywood films of today. I expect to actually learn something from the film after a couple of rounds of more careful screening.