Without much ado, I launch headlong into writings on some of the most interesting Indian cinematic choices of the past year. They all prevailed in more ways than one, resisting convention and compounding their assets to engage viewers. Real life issues then appropriately took centrestage and proved why cinema is a veritable mirror of the times.
*****
OCTOBER
The whole paradigm of unexpected serendipity courtesy a near death experience and the fangs it spreads around youth finds its most central, sombre representation, ever, in OCTOBER.
The tale of Shiuli (Banita Sandhu) who asks for her colleague Dan( Varun Dhawan) before falling off a balcony at the five star hotel where they both train in unfurls the humane magic of silent communication, the one found in everyday gestures and selfless insights. It gifts us with an unique platonic bond built around care and concern and this alone makes it one of the most essential narratives brought to cinematic consciousness, far from male - female binaries and transcending the sheer breadth of the four letter word.
The irony of the hospitality field is there as a thrust where insiders either get too inured to courtesies and protocol learnt by rote or strictly adhere to detachment with the routine. OCTOBER beautifully creates an original middle path that ultimately winds down one of sheer integrity. What it establishes in the wake of Shiuli's physical stasis is that comatose / specially abled people are not part of some statistic. Compassion is the need of the hour and this film's communal spirit is truly a benchmark, so utterly realistic and life affirming it is even if there's certain darkness at the end of the tunnel.
In Dan, we find the everyman we must aspire to. One who puts others first and there are plenty others like him I know of, including and not limited to my parents. Here, he departs from prototypes of a young, reckless male as well. Writer Juhi Chaturvedi, a true auteur of the Indian screenwriting pantheon, tells us softly, sensitively that we don't necessarily have to be of a certain, advanced middle age to be alert to others' pain. That age specific stereotype is broken here and I believe it is so fitting as the facts are culled from life.
In fact, there are no water tight compartments in Shoojit Sircar's worldview, which is ultimately like a stream of free flowing consciousness. Every drop of each effort counts.
Kudos to Banita Sandhu for conveying the immobility, resignation of her helpless condition so well and to Gitanjali Rao, a maternal figure overseeing the slow passage towards her daughter's truth, in a stark portrayal of receding hope. As for Varun Dhawan, he's sweet, a natural at essaying the innocence of a young heart and the curdled melancholy that gnaws at us when we leave behind conventional wisdom. God bless this team.
*****
MANTO
A mentally challenged old man transported across the border as part of an exchange programme, who falls dead on no man's land when he realizes his native village falls on neither sides (TOBA TEK SINGH) ; A restless father finding his daughter in an evanescent state in a hospital bed, watching over as she unties the knots on her pants when the doctor asks him to open the window, implying the cyclic violation that has befallen her ilk (KHOL DO/ OPEN UP) ; a woman who pushes her pimp to death, only to observe sustained sleep denied to her (BOOH/STENCH) and that extant touch of unintentional necrophilia and tragedy as a man kills and indulges in anarchy post riots, realizing that the woman he had violated was a dead corpse, confessing the same to a shocked better half (THANDA GOSHT / COLD FLESH)
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A LETTERED SOUL: REFLECTIONS ON LITERATURE, CINEMA AND CULTURE .
Non-FictionI have often wondered about the very curdled natures of our opinions so much so that the perch of imagination simply becomes a bystanding abstraction and real thoughts of genuine merit slip between the fingers. That is a human tendency, to beat arou...
