rajan-liberation Reviews

Damul (1985)

a tale of feudal oppression, the plight of bonded labours, and the last option available before them

[8/10 · 21 January 2008]

Prakash Jha could never make a film better than this. This film is a masterpiece, not only from the point of view of direction, performances and cinematography, but also because of the wideness of its plot and its capacity to capture and present the reality, in its natural wholeness. From the pitiable condition of a young widow to that of the agrarian workers, from the process of making of bonded labours to the theft of animals, and from the dynamics of caste politics in villages to the genocide of poor dalits,the film speaks on everything and captures the true nature of feudal oppression, which is responsible for all this. Its power lies in the simplicity with which it addresses all such issues and conveys a dissenting voice against these. In the end, it tries to provide and answer when the wife of a bonded labour of local landlord resorts to the last alternative left to her.

For those interested in socially committed cinema( and not for those believing in art gracia art, or the lovers of entertainment), Damul(meaning hanging)will always remain an all time favourite.

Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa (1998)

a retrospection on the SpringThunder, through the eyes of a mother

[8/10 · 21 January 2008]

Corpse number 1084 is lying in the govt. mortuary, a life-less body which is reduced to a mere four digit number by the authorities and the mainstream. Nobody wants to claim the body, or accept his association with it, except his mother. But why is he so neglected, why do people want to forget him, why was he killed and what sort of a man was he, when alive? The film is the journey of his mother to give, and find answers to these questions and through this, the film tries to capture the story of those thousands youth of Naxalite Movement who dared to dream, and fight for a better alternative, and who were butchered by the the nexus of state, right wing parties, and betrayers and saboteurs present in the left movement itself.

Based on a novel with the same title by eminent Bengali writer Mahashweta Devi, this film tries to capture the Kolkata of Stormy-seventies, when Naxalite Movement was penetrating among the urban, educated middle-class youth.

Sujata(Jaya Bachchan) is the mother of Brati(Joy Sengupta), a brilliant and honest-to-self upper-middle class student, who chooses to dedicate his life to the cause of proletarian revolution and is murdered by state supported goons. Sujata goes through an epistemological journey in search of the reasons for this, and finally, realizing the relationship between her own oppression(in the household) and that of the poor (outside), she decides to resist, alike her son. In the end, the mother feels that each time she offers a resistance to injustice, she gives re-birth to her deceased son again, and gets more closer to him as a mother, a friend, and a comrade.

The film captures everything, and that too perfectly, be it the decadence of Bengali well-off society and artists, the tortures inflicted by police on the naxalites, the ideological deviations of the movement, the betrayals by insiders, the beauty and honesty of the dreams of the naxal youth, and the brutality and ugliness of their cold-blooded genocide by the state,the weaknesses of the movement at that time and its capacity to learn from mistakes; and all this added by masterly performances by Nandita Das(Nandini),Seema Biswas(Somu's mother), Jaya Bachchan, Joy and other actors. Govind Nihlani's direction is excellent and the film surely is one of his Masterpieces.

Above all, it shows that Naxalism is not about some splashes of blood or some crime oriented or mindless killings, but it is about a dream nurtured by a whole generation of 16 to 40, which sacrificed itself for the same and whose dream carries audience and relevance till now. Best Hindi film on Naxalism. 8 out of 10.

Manorama: Six Feet Under (2007)

A middle class writer living in a small town takes up a simple looking task and finds himself trapped in a trail of murders, corruption, treacheries and perversions.

[8/10 · 21 January 2008]

In the desert nothing is what it seems.

I must say the film remains honest to this Tagline through the whole of its 135 minute runtime. For nothing and no-one in the story really is as it seems, be it a seemingly committed and innocent looking social-worker, a helpless girl brought up in an orphanage, a simple looking case of post-marital affair of an influential politician, or the corruption in the construction of a canal. Director Navdeep Singh brings the concept of Roman Polanski's Chinatown to Lakhot, a remote small town of Rajasthan situated in the desert, and presents a marvellous adaptation of the theme. Satyaveer (Abhay Deol), a govt. engineer who also writes detective stories and novels, is living his usual course of boringly simple and event-less life unless contacted by a lady(Sarika), who claims to be the wife of the irrigation minister and ex-maharaja of Lakhot P.P. Rathore(Kulbhushan Kharbanda), and asks him to spy her husband so as to confirm her doubts regarding his post-marital affairs, for a sum of money. Satyaveer agrees to this and from here begins a series of murders, assaults, and disturbing revelations. As the film proceeds, things and people start appearing in their nude reality, and satyaveer finds himself trapped in this bizarre tale of selfishness and immorality.

The actors have all given the best of their performances, including Gul Panag(Nimmi, Satyaveer's wife), Vinay Pathak(Brij Mohan, Satyaveer's brother-in-law), and Nowazuddin(Chaila)and Jogi(Fauji) the two rogues who appear for a short time and and yet give commendable performance . The background score is slow,diverse, and powerful, and the direction is excellent; though the film appears slow at some moments. I must say it is a marvellous experiment in the age of boringly monotonous and repeatedly made big-budget, love-story cum family-dramas and stupid looking action films. 8 out of 10.