In Custody

The Ivory-Merchant duo are known for their luxurious-looking films, the camera often caressing each fish-fork with the same love it displays for the protagonist. It's somewhat refreshing here to see Merchant without Ivory. Merchant's camera displays the same love for detail that the Ivory-Merchant duo's does, except that it is much grittier, caressing the protagonist's vomit with the same attention that it bestows upon his exquisite Jamewaar shawl. I refer to Shashi Kapoor as the protagonist, because he steals the role away from Om Puri. Om Puri plays the timid Deven, a college professor bent on interviewing his idol, the formerly grand but now-alcoholic Urdu poet, Nur. Shashi Kapoor is perfect as the obese, alcoholic, henpecked, decaying poet because his own appearance encapsulates this decay. Those who do not recognize him as the hero in scores of Bollywood films or in many early Ivory-Merchant productions will miss the subtlety of this cinematic reference, because Kapoor's own physical decay perfectly encapsulates the theme of decay that is central to the film. Shabana Azmi is as competent as ever, bringing a hint of feminism to her character's plagiarism of her husband's work, as well as highlighting the inherently masculinist nature of the poetry that confines a woman's role to the object of desire and nothing else.

Another recent DVD through the Merchant & Ivory Collection. A fair movie at best with some notable talent from a fine actor, Om Puri. The comedy picks up towards the end of the movie which is a god send since the rest of the movie is pure farce. Sadly, age has not been kind to Shashi Kapoor or Shabana Azmi and their roles are two dimensional and uninspiring. India yet again steals the show with the beauty of its architecture, glorious sunsets, and colorful people. The direction works well, and the camera seems to capture the mood eloquently. The poetry in Urdu is glorious to listen to even of delivered by Shashi Kapoor. Maybe good for a rainy day when you wish to be alone with a beer.

Merchant Ivory Productions's adaptation of Anita Desai's novel, 'In Custody' is rawer and grittier than their previous films. Not to put down their previous works, which are gems in their own rights, but such treatment wouldn't have worked for a story like 'In Custody'. Merchant gives it a very lyrical and subtle toned down look. The art direction and props look very authentic. Cinematography has always been a strong point in Merchant Ivory films and here too it is no less stunning.

The film's key theme is that of deterioration. This is reflected in the dying out of the Urdu language that Deven desperately tries to keep alive through Nur's poetry; in Nur's own life (once he was a celebrated poet and now he's merely an over-eating alcoholic has-been who's resented by his own wife) and seeks momentary comfort in his supposed 'fans' who drop by, uninvited, for their own convenience; in Choti Begum who's become the breadwinner as she continues to plagiarize her husbands poems and performs in front of the sleazy men of the village. With Choti Begum, the issue of feminism is touched. When she tells Deven how men were always praised for their poetry while women were merely seen as the object of desire, this does ring true to an extent.

The first rate performances are very natural. Shashi Kapoor performs effortlessly. In a way, 'In Custody' also reflects the deterioration of his physical health. Shabana Azmi also turns in a remarkable performance and Om Puri leads the film with élan.

The poetry is superb. It contributes beautifully. Not only is it a part of the film, but to me the entire picture felt like one poem.

For a certain niche group of cinephiles ever since the release of a film called "Shakespeare Wallah" in 1965, the "Merchant-Ivory" label has become synonymous with high-class rarified taste in cinema in some way associated with India ("A Passage to India", "Heat and Dust"), or, in the later collaborations of this producer-director team, with ultra refined literary adaptations set in Victorian England such as "The Remains of the Day", and "Howard's end". To be brutally frank, since "Merchant-Ivory" productions were never exactly my cup of tea cinematically speaking, (although I made valiant efforts to sit through a number of their films), I never paid enough attention to discern who did exactly what, whether they were both Indian or half-Indian or what -- and merely assumed that they were in some sense co-directors something like their polar opposites, the Coen brothers in the frozen wastes of Minnesota.

From a fascinating 1994 documentary screened here entitled "In Ismail's Custody" by Englishman Derrick Santini, which is basically a biopic about Mr. Merchant, and a takeoff on the name of the one film Merchant directed solo, IN CUSTODY, much of this cloudiness was cleared up. Ivory was a gay American Anglophile based in England and Merchant was an authentic Indian from Bombay. In general Ivory Directed their films and Merchant was the producer. However, "In Custody", is the one and only M&I production where Merchant for once took over the reins actually directing himself and is, for my money at least, the best picture in the entire M&I repertory.

The subject of the film, based on the novel my Anita Desai, is the decline of the Urdu language in India after partition when Urdu became the official language of Pakistan but, as the idiom of the Indian Muslims, began to be looked upon with a baleful eye in India proper.

For the record the plot of "In Custody runs like this: A literary editor asks Deven (Om Puri), a teacher who loves Urdu poetry, to interview a famous Urdu poet, Nur Shahjehanabadi, (Shashi Kapoor) an aging, fumbling,alcoholic, whale of a man not far from death's door. Deven goes to Bhopal from Mirpur to meet the cantankerous Nur, of whom he is in absolute awe. He finds him living with two feuding wives, and constantly visited by sycophants who drink his whisky and eat his food. Deven desperately wants to record Nur for posterity and manages to scrape up the funds to buy an aged tape recorder, to bribe Safiya, the elder wife, to get Nur into a room at a brothel for a week for the recording, and to feed Nur's pals who, whenever they show up, disrupt the recording sessions with their drunken carousing. Moreover, Deven's young technical assistant is an irresponsible deadbeat who feels he is being overworked for a pointless project and keeps messing up the tapes or failing to turn the machine on when the drunken poet finally gets around to reciting from his works. Meanwhile Nur's beautiful second wife, Imtiaz (Shabana Azmi), wants to be taken seriously as a poetess herself, but Dever dismisses her offhandedly while ignoring his own wife and child much as Nur does. In the end, hardly any of the precious recitations by Nur have been preserved as he drinks himself into the grave. In the course of the film, however, much of the melodious Urdu verses recited by Kapoor are actually heard in this boisterous requiem for a dying language. The three principals, Om with his heavily pitted but oh so soulful face, Kapoor with his massive extroverted personality, and Azmi, with her striking beauty, are all memorable as are the numerous supporting actors, particularly a very withered old woman in white whose occasional appearances punctuate the proceedings. Since Urdu was Bombay born Merchant's native language it is clear that he had a special feeling for the subject matter at hand and therefore wanted to do this picture himself. The result is a remarkably moving film which makes one wonder why he didn't do more directing. In fact, based on this one directorial effort I could not escape the feeling that some of the Ivory directed sleeperoos might have been a lot more lively if Jim and Ismail had just switched roles every now and then.

Alex, River to River Indian Film Festival, Florence: Dec. 17, 2005

The movie is loaded with metaphors depicting the death of Urdu poetry. The decaying mansions, the poet's failing health, his fall from grace all add up. The poverty has desensitized the college youth from being able to nurture a taste for poetry. They prefer to get diplomas in "japanese electronic gadgetry". Its grim. But its unavoidable. Urdu was cherished by the elite and rarely accepted by the masses. It was a medium of flattery, romance and also of unabashed obsequiousness. Poets almost ask for poverty unless they have a gracious benefactor. Like a lot of other artifacts of the past, it evokes wistfulness. The art though lives on in isolated pockets of the country.