The Opportunity to Defy Death

I am scared of death, truly, genuinely. It is difficult for me to believe that one day I’ll be gone. This world, in its limitless expanse into time and space, exists because I exist – I, in my case, and in your case, you. Before me, the world didn’t exist at all, and it will cease to exist once I’m no more. One day, everything that matters to me, every truth, will turn meaningless. And this is scary. More disturbing than the mystery of “what will happen once I die” is the realization that everything that I’ve paid importance to, including myself, will end, and be lost forever.

I watched ‘Titanic’ today. I’m not a big fan of the movie and the decision to watch it was purely academic. I wanted to see how the 3D conversion of a 2D movie looks like, when done by the person who is an authority on 3D film-making. What I had not imagined was that the movie will also trigger the memories of watching it for the first time fourteen years ago. My brother says it was the first time we were sitting in an air-conditioned movie hall! Today I was reminded of that tender age when I was too innocent to believe that an actress can pose nude in front of the camera. They had chopped off the shots of full nudity and I was to wait several years to finally see Kate Winslet as proudly and defiantly exposed as the pencil sketch of her character.

Those shots were deleted in today’s show as well. The film had not changed much, despite the irritating 3D glasses, and a new ‘depth perspective’. But I had changed, and today the most affecting image for me was neither the erotic and gorgeous beauty of the leading lady nor the helpless surrender of that gigantic creation of man before the might of frozen and fluid water. Just before she is rescued, and seconds after she has let go of Jack’s dead body into the ocean, Rose blows into a whistle in order to attract the rescue boat towards her. That image of the young girl, surrounded by hundreds of dead bodies, blowing not helplessly but purposefully, to fight against death with an uncompromising and relentless desire to live, was for me the biggest moment in the film. In order to fulfill her promise to Jack, she had decided to live, and embrace life with all strength and passion. Today wherever she goes, she carries the photos from different stages of her life – Rose riding a horse, Rose posing like a black-and-white screen diva, Rose with her kids – the photos which are testimony to a life she has lived proudly and fully, a life that has stood firmly against death as long as it can. 

Last year a stupid mosquito had infected me with Dengue. In the hospital, it suddenly dawned upon me what I today consider to be the most valid definition of life. What is life? In my opinion, it is the opportunity to defy death. The best way to live is to honor life, feel blessed that it is with you, and to live as if there is nothing after it, because this is your only opportunity. And if you live it well, without letting any regret haunt you and remind you about “what could have been”, your existence will go beyond the body containing you, and the time defining your tenure as a living organism. A life thus lived will turn into a blissful memory or an inspiration for others, and survive well beyond death. When I listen to Celine Dion’s rendering of ‘My Heart Will Go On’ or when I watch the celebrated cinematic moment of Jack and Rose ‘flying’ with their hands stretched at the bow of the ship, the blissful tears brimming in my eyes are stronger than the fearful sight of hundreds of people dying their premature deaths. Embracing life lovingly and passionately is perhaps the only answer to death, and the only code to immortality.

How to Produce Smart and Successful Sperms

Step 1 – Conception: The writer gets pregnant (in the head) with an idea that is novel, exciting, and promising. Preferably, that idea should be modern – something that was impossible to imagine during the 90s or before. Go for taboo topics if you feel the courage.

Step 2 – Incubation: A lot of blood and sweat is invested to write the script over the next few (read many) months. The best mantra will be (as suggested by Bergman or Wilder or both, I don’t really remember) – you shall entertain, and you shall not sell your soul.

Step 3 – Selection: The director casts the best actors possible for each role, big or small. (Casting, according to Kurosawa, is the most important step in film-making, after writing). Well-written characters will always inspire the actors to do their best, often at a low-cost.

Step 4 – Production: An intelligent and caring producer takes on the project and provides love and support to the team, led effectively by the director. One important tip here is – do not compromise on production value. Negotiate with your talent to cut their costs but not with what shows on screen – the sets, the costumes, the overall look of the film. And yes, there are two words that matter most here – conviction and honesty.

Step 5 – Promotion: Here, the concept that kick-started the writing process will come handy again. A modern and promising idea can create curiosity in the mind of the audience. One section might take this ‘high concept’ as a gimmick, but it will generally work, esp. if it has a sexual connotation. Having a star do an item number for promoting the film is also a good idea. If the star is producing the film, you save a lot of money there as well.

Step 6 – Ejaculation: As always, the timing of release is essential for good performance. “IPL is bad for film business” is a myth. A smart sperm will find one Friday during IPL when no ‘biggy’ is being released and with good reviews and word of mouth will penetrate the tough shell of the ovum waiting for it (read “poor audience, poor both money-wise and helplessness-wise, starving for good entertainment”).

P.S. We badly need such smart sperms, at least once every month. The millions others are too weak to survive in the competition and the cinema consciousness of the audience, and as a result go waste. We call upon the filmmakers for such 'sperm donation' to bring joy in the barren lives of the movie-goers, frustrated with the infertile Hindi cinema of today. Vicky made a few thousand bucks per 'donation'. We promise you crores of them. Just check the latest trade reports.

Must Watch Before You Die #29: 'In the Mood for Love' (2000)

I believe in love. Because I think I understand its mechanism. I’m a student of biology and for me the laws of nature are the biggest and most powerful truths. So with the perspective of the way nature functions, I am beginning to understand the complex phenomenon that we have named as ‘love’. If I didn’t, I would have either unconditionally accepted love as a romantic truth (that most of us do as teenagers) or have discarded it as a false notion (that a lot of us feel after a few failed relationships). Today I have a neutral perspective on it, and hence would like to share it here without any inhibitions.

Disclaimer: We are talking about romantic love here, not the love between a mother and her son, or a boy and his dog. Nothing written here is absolute, and most points made below are generalizations from a male’s perspective. Please feel free to disagree.

We are naturally programmed to be attracted towards the object of our sexual desire. For a man, it can be a woman, another man, or both. Also, one person can have more than one objects of sexual desire. When we are attracted to another person, it is this subconscious (or conscious) desire that drives us. As a teenager, I had this notion of ‘pure love’ – that I’m truly in love with this girl and I don’t think of her sexually. I believe many of us felt that way sometime in our lives. Today I cannot separate sexuality from love, however pure or magical it might be. Now, if both these feelings are true for most people, there has to be a design in place here. The design is the biological truth that dictates us. We all know that a teenager has a lesser role to play sexually than a man aged 25 or above. We also know that a teenager’s notion of the world is more romantic and uninhibited than that of older people. Hence, it is common sense that a teenager’s notion of love is more romantic and less ‘biological’.

Now, we are attracted differently towards different people. This is as true as the varied taste we have for food, hobbies, arts, and perversions. So there is nothing inexplicable about it. Is there a reason why my favorite dessert is ras-malai? And is there a reason why the ras-malai of a particular shop is my favorite among all? No. We like something based on how our senses and feeling react to it, and ‘intellectualize’ it later. This ‘strong and intimate liking based on our response to someone at a sensory and feeling level’ is LOVE. Simple, isn’t it? Simple, until now.

Now, with the same person, who is our love-interest, we feel differently during different stages of our relationship. When we started dating, even before expressing our feelings, we were suffering from terrible weak-knees and dry-mouths, and overnight separation caused terrible anxieties. This magical stage – and this does not stop happening post-teenage – occurs under the effect of the hormone called dopamine. This hormone is also associated with intoxicated states, and all of us know that the ‘magical feeling when we are high’ and the ‘depression during hangover’ is very similar to the experience of the earliest stages of a romantic relationship. This hormone, however, cannot remain triggered forever. Once we start coming close, holding hands, getting physically comfortable with each other, the hormone called oxytocin is stimulated (both in men and women). This hormone is related to the female reproductive system and gives us the feeling of long-term association and bonding. If dopamine charges us, oxytocin calms us down. Again, this is a stage of love we are very much aware of. Even in arranged marriages (where the dopamine stage might be short and less powerful) this oxytocin stage of blissful togetherness is an essential experience. So yes love is magical, and love is also pacifying, fulfilling, and it ‘makes you complete’. All these things are true – we are designed that way.

Even if we talk non-biologically, from a relationship point-of-view, love can be defined as ‘the willingness to go out of your way for the fulfilling company of another individual’. The key part of this definition is: ‘out of your way’. If required, you resist temptations of all kinds, re-think and modify your personal plans, let other relationships and issues suffer, in order to maintain the company of someone you truly love. You say sorry when you don’t even know what your fault was, and you forgive the other person even if he hasn’t accepted his mistake. All these are examples of ‘going out of your way’. If you forgive the negative connotation, we can replace ‘going out of your way’ with the verb ‘compromising’. So, we can now define love as ‘the willingness to compromise for the fulfilling company of someone’. The catch here is, the moment we realize that we are ‘compromising,’ the intensity of our love starts to diminish. We then carry on for social reasons or break up. Or, we carry on as a habit – just being with that person is enough for us, and we decide to spend the entire life-time with him/her, not out of love, but by blaming or acknowledging ‘destiny’.

Remember that the notions of ‘destiny’, ‘social norms’ and ‘personal compromises’ is hardly thousands of years old. The sexual drive is millions of years old. It does not require too much of intelligence to figure out that the willingness to compromise depends greatly on the social expectations that surround us. A freer society has more percentage of divorces than a conservative one. Also, if marriage does not remain an essential institution in our society, 'marrying' for being together, and 'divorcing' for getting separated would be futile exercises. A truly free society will treat divorce and separation as equally normal and important as falling in love. So, in the end, love should be defined as: ‘a strong and intimate liking we develop for an individual based on our sensory reaction to and feelings for him/her, (influenced majorly by our sexual preferences at a subconscious level and affected strongly by the play of our hormones) and the outcome of which is greatly affected by the social norms that we agree to operate within’. This, in short, is love, its cause and effect. We react to it differently at its different stages – whether it is writing a love-sick poem, rendering a shoulder of support, or holding wrinkled hands sitting on a bench in a park.

And after this long post full of bulshit, let me recommend you the sublimely beautiful film on love and longing, Wong Kar-Wai’s ‘In the Mood for Love’ as a must-watch-before-you-die. Gift yourself this unforgettable film, whether you are in love with someone, or yourself.

Must Watch Before You Die #28: 'The Battle of Algiers' (1966)

“It's hard enough to start a revolution, even harder to sustain it, and hardest of all to win it. But it's only afterwards, once we've won, that the real difficulties begin.” - from Gillo Pontecorvo’s ‘The Battle of Algiers’ (1966).

It is one of those rare movies that refuse to age. Whether it’s the appeal of the content, or the brilliance of the craft, I believe its impact remains as powerful as ever was. If you feel otherwise, it can only be attributed to the several movies made after, and unarguably influenced by, this terrific film. That day, a colleague of mine told me that Anurag Kashyap’s ‘Black Friday’ (2007) was inspired by it. While watching the film, I was constantly reminded of it. Content-wise, and structure-wise, both are quite different, and ‘Black Friday’ is as original as films can be. But the grittiness of the docu-inspired style, the use of location as a character, the unbelievably natural performances, and the details of planning and execution of the moves of an urban warfare (or revolution and its suppression) are very similar in both films. In fact, I doubt any film telling a similar story can adopt a different approach and be as successful as ‘Algiers’ was. This is the biggest triumph of the film – it seems to have born out of its organic whole, the craft perfectly in sync with the content. It is one of the most painfully and shockingly ‘real’ films, told in the manner of an edge-of-the-seat thriller. That it is based on real incidents gives it a terrifying truthfulness that documentaries enjoy. Until date, revolutionary groups all over the world, as well as anti-terror outfits, screen this film for their members, to inspire them and make them understand the realities of urban guerrilla warfare. For me, the film also manages to remain more-or-less neutral in its political point-of-view, despite showing so much of violence and blood-bath from both sides. A Frenchman might disagree with me on this, but I felt the film resisted the temptation to take sides, for whatever reasons, and did not portray the French as downright ‘villains’ as a lesser film would have done. Perhaps it was honestly seeded in the harsh truths of our world or perhaps it just decided to be diplomatically correct, but the film works at various levels, deep and complicated.

Steven Soderbergh believes “It does everything that as a filmmaker you want a film to do. It works as a movie, it works as politics, it affects everyone who sees it in a very visceral way, and makes them think differently about a certain situation. Pontecorvo sort of just hit the bull’s eye.” I couldn't agree more. And I want to add that it also does everything that as a film-buff you want a film to do.

Creator of the Cinematic Spectacle

The lovely Isabelle tells the little protagonist in ‘Hugo’: “Thank you for the movie today. It was a gift.” I wanted to say the same to Martin Scorsese after watching his latest film. And I wanted to say the same to the man whom this film is dedicated to.

‘Hugo’ (2011) is actually about Georges Melies (1861-1938), the magician-filmmaker, one of the first few humans bitten by the movie-making bug, and one of the rare few to have explored cinema in such an unbelievable manner. Blending facts with fiction, it is a delightful film told with the fictitious protagonist’s point-of-view, but is actually, as someone rightly remarked, “Scorsese’s love letter to cinema.”

On 28^th December 1895, as the Lumiere Brothers, credited as the inventors of the Motion Picture, conducted their first public screening at the Grand Café in Paris, among the audience being amazed by the magic on the white screen was a magician with the incorrigible addiction to dreams. He immediately offered the Lumiere Brothers 10,000 francs for one of their cameras. They refused to sell it. The man refused to let his dreams die. While the Lumiere Brothers limited their movies to record occurrences in daily life (non-fiction films), and considered it to be an art form without any future, this magician, Georges Melies, immediately recognized the magical powers of the medium. He discovered and used several film-tricks that led into the development of cinema as something that could make dreams come true, and that could make you experience impossible fantasies. Melies made more than 500 films, including sci-fi and horror. He even used the earliest animation techniques and always thought beyond the conventional wisdom. Look at the names of some of his movies against the years in which they were made: ‘The Haunted Castle’ (1896), ‘The Vanishing Lady’ (1896), ‘The Man with the Rubber Head’ (1902), ‘Kingdom of the Fairies’ (1903), ‘The Impossible Voyage’ (1904), ’20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ (1907), and ‘Humanity through the Ages’ (1908). Melies had the incredible distinction of sending humans to the moon as early as in 1902! Very few film-makers have been able to explore the possibilities of the medium as he did. I can imagine how he must have been, like a child who has just discovered a toy and wants to keep playing with it forever. Many of us have that child within us. Alfred Hitchcock was such a child, Federico Fellini was one. Steven Spielberg is a child genius before our eyes. And perhaps remaining a child forever is the only way to do the kind of work that these film-makers could do. 36 years after he had refused to sell Melies his movie camera, Louis Lumiere was to present to him the Legion of Honor, and label him the “creator of the cinematic spectacle.”

The last years of Georges Melies’ life were difficult for him. And it is quite possible, as suggested in ‘Hugo’, that he would have often regretted his days as a film-maker, and would be filled with embitterment about himself. These regrets are not uncommon and most humans undergo these emotions. But how many of them eventually manage to survive well beyond their mortal existence? Today, more than a century since he started creating these dreams on celluloid, Georges Melies continues to exist in the hearts of film-buffs all around the world. That a modern film by a modern master has paid such a befitting tribute to the man is only poetic justice.

Few would have expected such a light and charming fantasy film to come from the man known for stylish masculine crime dramas. But after watching it, you feel it did require someone like a Scorsese, as big a cinephile as a film-maker, to do this with so much of love and passion. Thanks to him, I got to talk about Georges Melies today here on this space, and am recommending his famous short “A Trip to the Moon” (1902) as a must-watch-before-you-die (#27). Click here to watch it. It is only 12 minutes long. And do share your reaction. It would matter to Papa Georges.

Rising amidst the Ruins

A little over five years ago, Vidhu Vinod Chopra's 'Eklavya' was panned by the audience and critics for reasons beyond my understanding. I had liked it a lot and thought it was one very well made film. After all these years, I still don't know what was wrong with that movie. From the parallels it drew with the legend of Eklavya, to its performances, it had impressed me completely. And its use of cinematic technique, I believe, is something not many film-makers in India can match. Vinod Chopra, perhaps, is one of India's best directors today as far as film grammar is concerned. It is unfortunate that most people consider him a successful producer ('Munnabhai' movies, '3 Idiots', 'Parineeta') before believing that he is a competent director. In fact, and here is a confession, despite admiring him for various reasons, it wasn't until recently that I actually realized his might as a director.

Here I'm tempted to recount the movies he has made as a director. Starting with his celebrated shorts - 'Murder at Monkey Hill' (1977) and the Oscar-nominated 'An Encounter with Faces' (1978), Vinod Chopra has directed seven feature films till date: 'Sazaye Maut' (1981), 'Khamosh' (1985), 'Parinda' (1989), '1942: A Love Story' (1994), 'Kareeb' (1998), 'Mission Kashmir' (2000) and 'Eklavya' (2007). You have to watch 'Murder at Monkey Hill' and 'Khamosh' to realize how at an early age he had showed signs of a promising career. Many people recommend 'Parinda' as his best work, but I'm not a big fan of that movie. Despite that, and despite an inconsistent career, today I realize why he is regarded so highly by other directors in the industry, especially those who are serious students of film form and aesthetics. This realization occurred only a few days ago, when I was pleasantly surprised at the wonderful craft of '1942: A Love Story', as I watched it at the recently concluded Vinod Chopra Film Festival.

I was ten-years old when '1942' was playing at a theater in my home-town of Munger. We got to watch very few movies, my brother and I, with Mom and Aunt. It happened only when my Grand-dad was out of town, and my Dad reluctantly agreed to let us go. Mom always took us along. So I don't know why she went to watch '1942' without me. On her return, I still remember how she praised the movie - I really have those images before my eyes now. Almost two decades later, I was to discuss the movie with her on phone - having watched a wonderfully restored print with 5.1 sound, with the cast and crew - including Jackie Shroff, Danny, Javed Akhtar, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Nitin Desai, Vinod Chopra and others.

It's not that I didn't find problems with the film. The performances, not all, were overboard at most places, and there were certain convenient moments in the screenplay that bothered me. But, and I say this with a lot of pride and pleasure, the movie has an impeccable cinematic language. I feel sad about most good movies in Hindi cinema's history when I compare their craft with the best of the world. '1942' shocked me with its design, and now I want to revisit 'Parinda' and other films by Vinod Chopra. To make a film like '1942' you require an understanding of the medium, a passion for cinema, and guts that very few of us possess. And I hope at least those in the film fraternity acknowledge this. Remember, this film was made in the early 90s - easily the worst phase of Hindi cinema. Take any movie made in that period and play it along '1942'. You'll see what 'ageing' means, and you'll know what makes a film last forever. As Imtiaz Ali said, thanking the makers at the end of the Q&A session that followed the screening, "Thank You for bringing splendour back to Hindi Cinema.'

Any discussion on this film remains incomplete without the mention of its timeless music. Vinod Chopra says he wanted to make this film because he wanted to create a timeless music album. We will forever be grateful to him for doing that, and doing that with RD Burman. It was a time when music companies refused to buy an album composed by Panchamda. We can only feel outrage for such an attitude shown towards unarguably the most influential and imaginative music composer in our film history. He passed away before the release of '1942' but thanks to this film, Panchamda ended his illustrious career on a supremely high note - with an album that was inventively radical and soulfully traditional at the same time. The movie won all music awards: Best Music, Lyrics, Male and Female Playback Singers, among 9 wins at Filmfare Awards that year. And Filmfare started RD Burman Award for New Music Talent in his memory that very year. Guess who was the winner of the first trophy!

Actor versus Character

I just read that Woody Allen’s next is titled “To Rome with Love.” After the amazing “Midnight in Paris” (2011), we cannot help but have huge expectations from his next. “Paris” was more a tribute to the arts, literature, and cinema, than to the city, and for us Woody fans, it was about the Woody character (superbly played by Owen Wilson) than anything else. I, personally, feel sad when the Woody character is missing from a Woody Allen film, but he, more often than not, manages to appease me with other wonderful elements so unique of his work. I loved “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” (2008) and “Melinda and Melinda” (2004). And just a couple of days ago, I watched “The Purple Rose of Cairo”, and loved it too.

“The Purple Rose of Cairo” (1985) may very well be the best Woody Allen film in which he has not acted. However, despite his absence, I believe the Woody character is very much there, this time as a female, in the character of Cecilia, and Mia Farrow’s wonderful performance keeps reminding us of Woody himself. She is clumsy, and tentative, and unhappily married. She is in love with the movies and she is struggling with dilemmas about romance and infidelity. She is a simple, nice girl, who manages to evoke humour and pathos at the same time in the hearts of the audience. I was missing Woody Allen badly during the first few minutes of the film, but soon Cecilia took over. And soon we get to see the incredible event that changes the course of the movie and Cecilia’s life.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

Cecilia is watching a movie called “The Purple Rose of Cairo” in a local theater for the nth time, when a character from the movie, called Tom Baxter, ‘spots’ her sitting in the audience and emerges out of the screen to meet her. This kick-starts a series of incredible events – the movie on the screen going off-track with other characters not knowing what to do without Tom, the audience and the theater-owner perplexed and irritated at this, the producers struggling to find a solution to it, and Tom Baxter secretly hiding from everyone else, except Cecilia, with whom he has fallen in love. He knows he is a character from a movie, and that he is not real, but he wants to enjoy his sudden freedom and wants to spend his life with Cecilia. The matter gets further complicated when, on hearing the news, the real actor playing the Tom Baxter character comes to town. What happens next is for you to see. Here I’m sharing the scene where Cecilia brings Gil Shepherd (the Actor) to meet Tom Baxter (the character).


INT. SECRET HIDING PLACE 
CECILIA (entering): Tom! 
CHARACTER: Cecila, I dreamed of us in Cairo… 
CECILIA: I brought… 
ACTOR (entering behind Cecilia): Gil Shepherd. I play you in the movie. 
CHARACTER: You do? 
ACTOR: How dare you run away? 
CHARACTER: This is disconcerting. 
ACTOR (charging at him): I’ll show you the meaning of disconcerting! (grabs the Character by his collar) I’m trying to build a career. 
CHARACTER: I don’t want to be in the film anymore! I’m in love with Cecilia! (manages to free himself) 
ACTOR: You can’t do this to me. It’s my best role. I’ve been critically acclaimed for this! 
CHARACTER: Because of the way I do it. 
ACTOR: No, because of the way I do it. I’m doing it, not you! 
CHARACTER: Then how do you explain that here I am? 
ACTOR: I took you from the printed page and made you live. 
CHARACTER: So I’m living. 
ACTOR: For the screen only! 
CHARACTER: I want my freedom. 
ACTOR: I don’t want another one of me running around the world. I can just imagine how he’s… 
CHARACTER (interrupting): Are you afraid I’ll embarrass you? 
ACTOR: Frankly, I’m afraid… 
CHARACTER (interrupting again): But you created me! 
ACTOR: Look, be reasonable here. I’m starting to build a career. Is life up on the screen so terrible
CHARACTER: I want to be with Cecilia. I’m in love with her. 
ACTOR (rushing towards Cecilia): Will you tell him to go back? Tell him you don’t love him. Tell him you can’t love him. He’s fictional. Do you want to waste your time with a fictional character? You’re a sweet girl. You deserve an actual human. 
CECILIA: But Tom is perfect. 
ACTOR: But he is not real. What good is perfect when the man’s not real? 
CHARACTER: I can learn to be real. It’s easy. There’s nothing to it. Being real comes very naturally to me.
ACTOR: You can’t learn to be real. It’s like being a midget. It’s not a thing you can learn. Some of us are real, some are not. 
CHARACTER: I say I can do it. 
ACTOR: I’m not staying here to argue with you. I’m going back to town and call my attorney, the actors’ union. I won’t take this lying down. Nor will Roul Hirsch (the Producer). Nor the police, nor the FBI. 
END OF SCENE. 

Despite the humor, the predicament of the actor here is very reasonable. An actor actually takes the character from the script and makes it alive, literally adding flesh and blood and face and voice to it. Good acting, they say, is not about trying to play a character different from you, but to find the similarities between yourself and the character, and substituting your own life experiences into the life of the character, trying to understand the character’s psychology from your own perspective and turning it into behavior. But the truth is, despite putting in so much of effort and creating the character with love and empathy, finally the actor needs to detach from the character and his conflicts. He cannot let the ghost of his creation haunt him forever. So, what if some day the character you created as an actor comes alive and confronts you as your alter ego? Isn’t it an exciting premise? Trust Woody Allen for such wonderful moments. He is one true genius, and an inseparable part of cinema consciousness. The eager wait for “To Rome with Love” has begun!

Suspension of Disbelief

"There is a thin, invisible strand between the audience and the screen. It’s called believability. That strand gets stronger and stronger as the picture progresses. It can be easily snapped if you start out being too crazy or unbelievable. As Bill Walsh says: “an audience must believe in and care about your lead characters over the unspooling of the first reel (ten minutes) of the movie. If they truly believe, you can take them anywhere.”

"You have to make the audience care about your on-screen people and their dilemmas, and when that occurs you’ve created believable unbelievability. Audience will just not get with a film that starts with what they perceive as unbelievable unbelievability. 

"Movies are unbelievable. Your job is to make the audience believe its unbelief."

                                  

                                                                        -          Lew Hunter in his book “Screenwriting 434”

Gurudev Uvaacha #4

"Nothing is 'too much' if it has reality... A full experience, no matter how huge it can be, is not 'too much', in my opinion." - Uta Hagen

My Subconscious is Also Me

These days I’m reading an extremely difficult book. Difficult for me, because it has forced me to rethink my way of living, and working. “The Film Director’s Intuition” by Judith Weston is also the only book on cinema that is not giving me an obvious ‘sense of learning and accomplishment.’ And that, perhaps, is exactly the point that it wants to make.

We remain too obsessed with results and accomplishments, and an evident sense of growth and development, so much so that we hardly take time to think whether in this mad rush to feed our conscious mind we are taking sufficient care of the subconscious or not. I realized this only a couple of days ago – that my subconscious is also me. And do I know about it? Do I take care of it? Subconsciously, may be; consciously, hardly. I know I operate mainly from my left brain. I set deadlines for myself when no one does, and I always tend to discipline everything I do, painstakingly, obsessively. Suddenly, this book is forcing me to question something I so strongly believe in.

At this point, I must make it very clear, why I have been so blissfully confident about my methodical approach. It is a constant desire to make sure that everything, every little thing at work or in my life, remains under my control – not to dominate, but to supervise them. I do this not in a stressful way, but to remain stress-free. For close to four years now, I have been monitoring my finances, my studies, my work, even my swimming regimen, with such a minute detail that it would intimidate anyone. Keeping a daily record in the form of diary entries helps. Not taking any day off, at least trying my best not to, has made it a habit. If I’m not sleeping, I’m working, or reading, or watching a movie, or doing something of ‘value’. I don’t sit idle, rarely hang out with friends, have drastically cut down my phone conversations, and there is an unending feeling of being “productively occupied” all the time, which is the pain and the pride of my existence.

I won’t believe I have been doing it wrong. Not having trained professionally, it has been only up to me to study about cinema and film-making. So, I would say these years might be considered as the time I have spent in a film school, working really hard, and orienting myself for objective and evident growth. And perhaps, at the right time, and before it was too late, life has gifted me with this amazing book, where each page is forcing me to see everything from a different perspective.

For example, this book asks me to shut down my “auto-pilot”, to give myself the permission to fail, to take time off from everything and just day-dream, to learn to listen to others as if that is the most important thing in this world, to spend time with nature, and children – things that I hardly do. It advices exercises which do not have any immediate results, but which are supposed to nurture the intuition and the imagination, one of them being indulging in “stream of consciousness” or “free-association”. It has started to convince me that having a good chat with friends is not a waste of time, and that spending hours in a mall, observing people and imagining about their lives is a desirable and productive exercise.

I just finished the first of its three parts, which is called “Intuition, Ideas, and Imagination” and am convinced that as a writer-director I need to strike a balance between my intuitive right-brain and the logical left-brain and pay more attention to the world around me, in all its sensory and visual glory, than the internal, intellectual learning I have imposed happily upon myself. Before moving on to the next part of the book, which is “Script Analysis”, I have decided to take a break from it. Instead of studying more pages of it, and making notes, I would rather spend some time doing these exercises that it suggests.

In fact I’ve already started one.

Just a couple of days ago, when I was irreparably affected by the book’s insistence on unleashing the subconscious, I watched David Cronenberg’s latest ‘A Dangerous Method’ (2011). The film is on the founders of modern psychology – Carl Jung, Sabina Spielrein and Sigmund Freud, and talks about the ways of the subconscious. That night, I had a most weird dream, something that left me bewildered and shocked. The dream was disturbingly visual and had so many layers of possible interpretations that I still feel drained out thinking of it. Next morning, I decided to write down the description of that dream, without making any judgments. And have decided to do this as often as possible, to keep a track of all that my subconscious communicates with me, in order to understand the muted cries of this ignored child, which is very much me. It is an amazing coincidence that I had to watch this film on that very day, consolidating my desire to start listening to my subconscious immediately. It feels amazing to assume that life’s screenplay is always perfectly designed for the most rewarding journey, if not the desired destination. I am forced to believe, that the way I have lived all these years was as correct as the measures I’m now taking to modify my approach. Life is going to take care of me when I, consciously or subconsciously, forget to.

A Monday Morning I was Waiting for

Hating Monday mornings is a cliché. And something I’m not supposed to do. My work does not have weekends, and more importantly, my work is not work. So there is no reason why I would hate Monday mornings, except for a minor fact that my swimming pool remains closed on Mondays. However, a couple of weeks ago I welcomed a Monday morning with an unusual excitement. It was the morning of 27th February, and simultaneously it was the evening of the Academy Awards at Kodak Theatre.

So much has been written before and after that day that I feel this post of mine is a redundant exercise, and not much should be expected either. It is just that I wanted to share my excitement, something I could not do immediately after the Oscars due to my cramped schedule that is not even allowing me to watch movies as regularly as I need to. However, I would have regretted having not written this post, and so better late than never.

This excitement comes from the fact that this was the first Oscars that I watched live. I do not have a TV at home. And I never miss it except for occasions like this. So, after an extremely busy working Sunday, I reached a friend’s place around midnight. We chatted until 3 in the morning and then went to sleep. I got up three hours later and switched on the TV. Thanks to my friend, he was sleeping in the same room and claims no sound can wake him up from a sound sleep, I could watch the entire event from 6 to 10 am. And I could enjoy it like never before.

One reason for that was the ‘suspense’ factor, as I was watching it live. But more important was the fact that I had already watched most of the movies nominated for various awards, and was aware of almost all. This meant my level of participation was many times more than ever. I have always loved how they organize the show, and there were several moments that left me emotional. Every time a glimpse or a mention of a classic or a great filmmaker was made, it brought a wide emotional smile on my face. Meryl Streep’s words about her husband and Angelina Jolie’s leg-show are what everyone is talking about. There were couple of more things I remember affecting me. One was the indifference of the little dog from ‘The Artist’ who had joined the cast and crew on stage when they won the Best Picture. The little creature must be the first living being on the stage of Academy Awards who cared least about it. And another was the contended and calm face of Martin Scorsese – every time someone from the crew of ‘Hugo’ won an award, and they won five that day, they abundantly and sincerely thanked the director, who just nodded from his seat, like the proud patriarch of a family. Those moments made me think of the kind of respect a great director must command from his team by simply being what he is, and of the kind of enthusiasm his crew members must feel while working with him. It is moments like these, which you can only feel and not read about, that justified my excitement for watching this year’s Academy Awards. You may or may not assign importance to the awards per se, but the ceremony is such a beautiful way to celebrate cinema that I would hate to miss it next time.

The Hero and the Storyteller

Last two Fridays have suddenly made the Hindi movie buff happy and hopeful. ‘Paan Singh Tomar’ and ‘Kahaani’ – two very diverse films from two very different film-makers have achieved the right kind of success, and I can not help but notice some striking similarities between the two.

First of all, both films have unlikely protagonists, played by actors of unarguable repute who have suddenly claimed the status of stars. Both Irrfan and Vidya Balan are the finest actors we have today, but none have enjoyed the fan-following that many ‘stars’ have. Hopefully that will change now. Vidya did it with ‘The Dirty Picture’ and now she has followed it with ‘Kahaani’. And going by the cheers and claps that Irrfan’s performance is receiving, I am forced to dream that it will soon become a regular thing – powerful actors, not necessarily stars, will drive the audience to the theatres and their films to commercial success. Also notice that both films have just one big actor, and they are surrounded by a wonderful supporting cast. The work of these supporting actors must be applauded, because it is not easy to be noticed in a small role when you are sharing screen space with such fine and well-known lead actors.

The second common point between the two films is their makers. Sujoy Ghosh and Tigmanshu Dhulia had started their respective careers with small but significant films that eventually attained a remarkable fan-following. But then their careers could not take flight. Now they are back, reminding us of the promise they had made with their first films, and have just made the most successful films of their careers. They chose powerful and ‘different’ stories, based in their ‘home-territories’ – the milieu closest to their personalities, and we saw the result – confident, uninhibited storytelling, flavored with detailed understanding of the ‘worlds’ these stories were set in. Try to imagine ‘Kahaani’ without the infectious and intimidating Durga-Puja fervor on the streets of Kolkata, or ‘Paan Singh Tomar’ without the local dialect and the barren landscape, and you will understand the importance of milieu in cinematic storytelling. These two films have proved yet again that in the vast collective consciousness of our country there are numerous stories waiting to be told, and which can be exotic, not by mimicking foreign films and cultures, but by simply exploring the richness of our own culture and tradition. There is so much of inspiration around us that it is unfortunate that we have to resort to remakes and sequels and shameless plagiarism from other sources in order to make successful films.

And that brings me to the third and the most heartening similarity between the two films – the response from the audience. Gone are the days, and I hope this is true, when we watched brilliant films in empty theatres and regretted their commercial failure only because they were not ‘main-stream’. Both ‘Kahaani’ and ‘Paan Singh Tomar’ are very engaging and entertaining films, and thanks to the unanimously positive reviews and strong word-of-mouth, the theatres are full. I watched both movies on Monday mornings and the theatres were fairly crowded. This is the most encouraging sign for me.

Going back to the three observations, I feel, there is nothing new in what I have written. Whenever a competent film-maker comes up with a strong story and adds parts of his/her own self into it, it results in a good film. Whenever fine actors get author-backed roles, lead or otherwise, they give memorable performances. And the film-buff is always delighted to appreciate such efforts by true heroes and self-assured storytellers. That it has happened with two films within a span of eight days is a good news for all of us. And we won’t ever mind this happening more often.

Must Watch Before You Die #26: 'The Godfather' (1972)

A film-buff who has not watched Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Godfather' is like a Catholic who has never read the Bible. It is one of the most accessible great films that has been acclaimed universally by critics and audiences alike, and has influenced several generations of film-makers all around the world. It is also widely considered as one of those rare films which do justice to its literary source.

Watch it for its brilliant performances. Watch it for its unforgettable characters. Or just watch it for its amazing score. 'The Godfather' is definitely a must-watch-before-you-die film. It is a must-watch-several-times-before-you-die film.

I watched it for the second time a couple of days ago. PVR is screening great films every Thursday across several cities in India. Click here to follow it on Facebook. Every Wednesday I SMS at least 50 people in Mumbai and inform them about the screening next day. Please spread the word if you can. This is an initiative we must encourage, especially if you are repeatedly disappointed with the modern releases.

1st Anniversary in Four Years!

Being able to select, with precise clarity, the best day of one’s life must be a difficult thing for most. Not for me, and I thank God for that. I know exactly which day in almost 28 years of my life has been the most special. It was four years ago on this rare date. It was a Friday. And it was the day when I had screened my first feature-length movie for a very special audience.

It started with me failing in the Gynaecology paper, when almost all my batch-mates had cleared the Final MBBS, officially earning the title of ‘Doctors’, somewhere around the end of January 2008. Most of them were to be commissioned into the Armed Forces and leave the college by the first week of March. I was supposed to clear this one paper in the next exams to be held in June. Technically, I was stuck six months behind the rest of my batch. And thank God for that.

Because as the rest of them were busy practicing for their Passing Out Parade, and attending Internship, and getting volumes of documents ready, I was sitting in my room, working on what was to be my first full-length film – an 85-minute experimental surreal-documentary on them. It was a huge undertaking and some were critical of it at first, but what kept me motivated was the realization that not many among students of Medicine can make a film on their friends and college, and so if I can, it is my responsibility to gift them with something unique and unforgettable. I was also fortunate to have an amazing crew, all medicine students, conducting close to 130 interviews, shooting in and around college, even creating the set of a cave in one of the hostel rooms (please take a look at the attached picture). I doubt if I will ever work with a crew more intelligent than them. They inspired a shamelessly lazy person like me to work more untiringly and dedicatedly than ever before or after. In the last sixty-six hours before the screening, poring over my editing software, I had slept for only six!

When the entire batch assembled at the lecture hall, around 8 pm on 29th February, I was still editing the film. I kept them waiting for more than two hours, and they were impatient only out of curiosity. What followed was the most fulfilling experience of my life – watching the film with them and watching them laugh and cry. I was scared during the screening, about how they would receive it, and more importantly out of fear of some technical glitches. After all, even I had not watched the completed film until then. And I still crave for that moment to be recreated – when after the film, they all came to me and personally thanked me, and whispered into my ears some of the most unforgettable words.

‘The F Word’ (2008) means a lot for my batch-mates at AFMC, for its obvious nostalgia value, and with every passing year, it will only get more and more special. But for me, that film was the beginning of a new journey. For me it was important to see whether I can create something that can keep the audience glued for one and half hours, whether I can make them laugh when I want, think when I want, and cry when I want, and cheer and clap at the right moments. It was my personal test as a storyteller, and though the perfectly personal content for that audience and the timing of release had made my job easier, it was still something I wanted to test myself with. My friends were gone within the next seven days, but so many of them told me before leaving – “You have to leave medicine and the Armed Forced now, and go to Mumbai. You have to try it out.” A few months later, these friends were to pool in lakhs of rupees to help me break free of my Service Liability of seven years in the Army, putting their unflinching faith on me, something that even my family and relatives could not do. And a couple of years later, sitting in the hills and jungles of Kashmir and the North-East, they were to take more pride than me on the poems I wrote for ‘Udaan’. After all, the line and the poem – “Bhool gaye hain joote kahan utare the”, that many now identify me with, had first featured in the climax of ‘The F Word’ – the film made by and for my batch-mates. That the film talked about ‘friendship’, which was to come to my rescue during the toughest phase of my life, now seems both just and prophetic.