Delhi Belly – Wicked Voice of New India

This review is copyrighted to IANS. Do not repost or copy without their permission. 

Director: Abhinay Deo

Actors: Imran Khan, Vir Das, Kunaal Roy Kapur, Vijay Raaz

Rating: 4 out of 5

It is a cliché as old as this nation - of the many Indias that breathe under one India. Indian cinema has hardly been representatives of even a few of these. Yet, one would have expected, after globalization and the emergence of a new bold, urban India, that at least this class would get representation in commercial cinema.

Though there have been successful attempts in the past, it is with Delly Belly that the urban, money-is-everything, foulmouthed India has been captured with aplomb. And that, depending upon your morality, is good or bad.

Tashi, a Delhi based journalist living filthily with two roommates, winds up with a bunch of ‘desi’ goons chasing him and his mates after a mix-up. The three are forced to navigate the dark underbelly to survive, while encountering one situation after another and one idiosyncratic Indian after another.

The beauty of Abhinav Deo’s film is not its smooth story, loosely inspired by the type of films made famous by Guy Ritchie, ‘Lock Stock..’ and ‘Snatch’ among others, neither is it Ram Sampath’s catchy music that beats to the rhythm of the film, or the slick, seamless direction, or its immaculate casting and performance or even its wickedly witty dialogues. The true beauty of the film is in all these elements together creating a madcap image of a new, unabashed, even shameless section of India.

A shot that is slated to become as iconic as the last shot in Mahesh Bhatt's Aashiqui. 

Though Delhi is referred to in its title, it is not the real Delhi that Dibakar Banerjee captures with satirical reality in his films. Instead, it is the image of a Delhi populated by young, educated, newly ‘liberated’ urbanites. In that it is the splitting image of that young urban India anywhere perpetually churning like the stomach of a character in the film, a showcasing of this nations new neo-liberal underbelly.

However, the other Indias might not take kindly to the film. Hypocritical Indians okay with female infanticide and dowry would be aghast at how almost every ‘bad’ word that they know is spoken everywhere on the streets and in homes, finds a place in the usually moralistic Bolllywood. Cinema purists too may cry foul that the film does not really have a soul and is not really trying to say anything. Though a legitimate accusation, in not having a soul and not really being concerned or serious about anything, the film holds a mirror to a large section of the country. And that is a big statement in itself.

For decades Indian cinema has been shackled with a morality that has not kept pace with the changing morality of life around. Though the morality of the film is strictly of urban, young, middleclass India, and isn’t representative, it is welcome as this is the farthest Bollywood has gone to truly representing urban life. And just for that, hats off to Aamir Khan for yet again, after Peepli Live and Dhobi Ghat, believing in a different kind of cinema, even while he doles out a Ghajini in the same breath.

The last scene of Delly Belly is bound to become as iconic as the one in Mahesh Bhatt’s 1990 musical ‘Aashiqui’. If there the lovers were so embarrassed of their surroundings that they had to kiss under a coat, here the lovers who are not even girlfriend-boyfriend are so brazen and caught in the heat of the moment that the guy kisses the girl in full view, half his body hanging out a slowly moving Maruti car symbolic of old India, unconcerned whether others are looking (which they are not). If that isn’t the urban, chic, and unconcerned-about-others India that has moved away from the morality of an un-liberalized India in ‘Aashiqui’ then what is? 

Scheduled Cast

This feature on the success of small budget films in India, was published in Open Magazine, in their 22nd Jan, 2011 issue. 

Almost every big-budget movie is losing money in Bollywood. And yet, even if a small-budget movie makes thrice its cost, the industry does not count it as a blockbuster. Welcome to the warped economics of la-la-land

HIT

Welcome to the warped economics of la-la-land

Atul Mongia WAS one of the three people most responsible for the making, look and feel of the most unusual film to emerge from Bollywood last year. As casting director, Atul had handpicked each of the movie’s actors, but his role didn’t end there. He trained the cast for three months, doubled as an assistant director, and even did a bit role in the film. By the time he saw the first cut, Atul knew it would be critically appreciated. But that it would make a lot of money never once occurred to him.

“I think it finally sank in on the third week of its theatrical run,” says Atul, “I watched a midweek afternoon show that was half packed. I saw people laugh and be stunned at just the right moment.” He is talking about a film whose entire budget was less than that of an extravagant Bollywood song. Though India has seen small-budget films in the past, all of them tried cheaper alternatives to Bollywood’s established rules. This film abandoned conventions. Not only did it not have one steady shot, it was almost entirely shot by the actors themselves with no one else in the room to say “action” or “cut”. It did not have a song, or stars, or even mediocre sets constructed for it.

The film was Dibakar Banerjee’s B-grade sounding film Love Sex aur Dhokha (LSD). Atul gave six months of his life to LSD for a paltry sum which he does not want printed. He says the budget was not on his or anyone’s mind when they were making the film. “The success of the film landed me so many offers,” he says, “that it’s almost like getting a royalty on LSD.” The film was made at an unbelievable production budget of Rs 1.5 crore, with its total budget including prints and publicity being only Rs 4 crore. The film made Rs 14 crore odd. And yet, for a movie that made triple of what it used up, LSD is not considered a ‘blockbuster’ in Bollywood.

Or consider this. According to media reports, a song for the Salman Khan flop Veer cost Rs 3.5 crore, took 11 days and 600 extras to shoot. Meanwhile, the entire production budget of Phas Gaye Re Obama was Rs 3 crore. The movie was shot in one month with a cast and crew of 100 people. Re Obama has made about Rs 5 crore so far, while Veer barely recovered half its cost of Rs 50 crore. But no one in Bollywood calls Re Obama a superhit.

“Nobody knows the definition of a Bollywood blockbuster,” says Komal Nahta, trade analyst and editor of KoiMoi.com and Film Information, “We follow a system where we define a hit as a film that has made double its cost. A superhit is one that more than doubles the investment, and blockbuster is almost two-and-a-half to three times.Dabanng is a superhit, 3 Idiots is a blockbuster.” For the record, he calls LSD a hit despite its having made more than thrice its total cost.

This vagueness of definition and reluctance to call small-budget films ‘blockbusters’ reveals two characteristics of Bollywood—their resistance to acknowledge change and obsession with all things big; big sets, big stars, big budgets. Big, however, does not work most of the time. LSD’s success stands out after a year in which all things big fell like dominoes. Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Guzaarish, made with two of India’s biggest stars—Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai—on a total budget of Rs 75 crore, took home just Rs 40 crore. Mani Ratnam’sRaavan, with Aishwarya and Abhishek Bachchan, soaked up a good Rs 50 crore but made only Rs 30 crore. The cost of the Ranbir Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra starrer Anjaana, Anjaani: Rs 43 crore. It made less than half of it. Kites, Action Replay, Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey…the list could go on. Nahta estimates Bollywood’s 2010 losses at Rs 475 crore.

On the other hand, audience response to the few independent filmmakers who took a parallel route has taken everyone by surprise. Some of these small films have become ‘blockbusters’ by Nahta’s definition. Besides LSD, there’s Peepli Live (production budget: Rs 5.3 crore; theatrical recovery: Rs 18 crore) and Tere Bin Laden(production: Rs 5 crore; recovery: Rs 13 crore). Others like Do Dooni Char (budget: Rs 7 crore) and Udaan (Rs 3 crore) recovered their money at the box office. Yet, says Anusha Rizvi, co-director of Peepli Live, which is also this year’s official Indian entry to the Oscars: “Had it been a year where the big films had done equally well, the small films, despite their success, would have been sidelined.”

HOW TO MAKE A BLOCKBUSTER WITH FIVE CRORE

Anurag Kashyap, the patron saint of ‘indie films’ as this genre is called, makes his films at obscenely low budgets. Most have been made for under a million dollars (Rs 4.5 crore). Even his bigger films have been just over that limit, with No Smoking at Rs 7 crore and Dev.D at Rs 6 crore. “To make a film, you really don’t need to spend too much money,” he says, “Sadly, Bollywood spends its money in the wrong places like sets, expensive costumes and payment of stars.”

A million dollar film takes hard work. First, you bump up against the Bollywood mindset. Logic would dictate that a cheaper movie is easier to make since you have less funds to raise. But that doesn’t hold. Ask Pooja Shetty Deora, who comes from an old-guard Bollywood family. Her father Manmohan Shetty owned Adlabs before he sold it off and started Walkwater Media, a film production house. When Pooja and her sister wanted to produce Tere Bin Laden, they found their father reluctant. He gave his nod but no thumbs up. “Four days before the release of the film, he finally said that he liked it,” says Pooja, “His validation was extremely important to us, but it came once the cat was out of the bag.” She admits that they were a bit naïve about how they went about the film. “We went against a lot of traditional Bollywood wisdom that told us not to release the trailers too early, or try our best to introduce a love angle. We did none of it. Our focus was more on the story. It was an intuitive approach.” She is honest enough, however, to admit that “one successful film does not mean anything”; “Give us ten years and we’ll know.”

Kiran Rao, director of Dhobi Ghat (production budget: Rs 5 crore), uses the term ‘guerilla filmmaking’ on being asked to describe how she kept her budget low. This means grabbing whatever is available cheap—like real locations and crowds who don’t have to be paid.

Low-budget filmmakers are the wild bunch on the periphery of Bollywood. They travel cattle class on trains, stay in decrepit hotels for shoots, eat cheap food on leaf plates, provide no vanity vans to their leads, and prefer choking to death than spending crores on a song. Scrounging for cash spells problems, of course. Dibakar Banerjee welcomes these. He even has a theory of constraints. “Without constraints, no creative effort can survive,” he says, “A director with an unlimited budget will not even be able to get off his chair and start shooting. So the biggest factor that makes a film happen and differentiates it from others is this constraint, for it decides the creative solution that a maker finds for his film.”

Then there’s marketing and promotion, the third necessity for a small-budget blockbuster. Both LSD and Peepli Live had great marketing. “Besides Aamir Khan and Ekta Kapoor, most have not yet realised how crucial effective marketing is for a film,” says Dibakar. “Good, intelligent, low-budget films by themselves don’t do much. They have to be marketed extremely intelligently to maximise their value.”

What about stars, the pivot around which the blockbuster myth perpetuates itself in Bollywood? Do they matter for a small movie? “The only major advantage of a big star is that publicity gets taken care of without the producers having to worry too much about it,” says Abhishek Sharma, the 32-year-old director of Tere Bin Laden. “Finally, the audience is all important. They have to be entertained. Sometimes you do it with a brilliant script and unknown cast, and sometimes a good story with a star. Any combination or formula would do.”

THE SHOESTRING REVOLUTION

Films made on shoestring budgets have the potential to transform Bollywood. There is a precedent for this in Hollywood of the 1940s, when TV began to steal its profits and theatrical occupancy nosedived. Hollywood tried different things—stereo sound, cinemascope, the works—but couldn’t arrest the decline. Sounds familiar?

Then, a call for change blew in from overseas. As the French New Wave gained steam, many of their films found release in US theatres. Despite their limited budgets, need of subtitles and absence of stars, the 1960s films of auteurs like François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard surprised Hollywood. Eventually, they saw in this threat a window of opportunity. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, big Hollywood studios began to hand the directorial reins to a whole band of new, young and small-budget filmmakers. The math was simple. If a big-budget film cost 10 times a small one, instead of 10 big films a year, a studio could make just nine and spend the rest on another 10 small films. Most big Hollywood directors today—Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott—began frugally as part of that wave (it also includes Martin Scorsese, who refused to come to 2010’s Mumbai Film Festival because the organisers didn’t send him a chartered plane—tastes obviously change with success).

Now the big studios there have segregated their big budget and small films into different units. Thus, Warner Brothers has New Line Cinema, 20th Century Fox has Fox Searchlight, and so on. Bollywood, too, is seeing the early days of this. UTV Motion Pictures, for example, has a subsidiary called UTV Spotboy with the explicit purpose of making clever low-budget films. Says Siddharth Roy Kapur, CEO, Motion Pictures, UTV, “Under the Spotboy banner, we produce different films, films that big banners will not normally touch. And by nature, these films are made by new filmmakers and are low budget.” He cites the example of No One Killed Jessica, which had a medium production budget of Rs 9 crore, higher than typical indie but lower than regular Bollywood fare. UTV’s ratio is interesting. Of the 12 films slated for release in 2011, four are under Spotboy, with production budgets around the million dollar mark.

SMALL MERCIES

The blockbuster worldview of Bollywood, though, is not going to change anytime soon. Anusha Rizvi gives the example of the Star Screen Awards, where, despite Udaan winning the best film and director awards, most other big awards went to Bollywood’s big-budget low-grossers (even duds) and not small films that earned both critical acclaim and box office success.

Komal Nahta does not believe big budgets or stars are in any danger from indie cinema. His argument rests on big returns: “How much profit can you make from a small-budget film, two or three crore? Whereas, if a big-budget film clicks, the profit is [Rs] 10-20 crore. Yes, there’s a danger of equally big losses, but your dream of making a killing is only satisfied by a big-budget film. 3 Idiots makes a profit of [Rs] 60 crore. How many successful low-budget films would you have to make to dream of such a figure?”

To be taken seriously, then, the indie film will have to deliver a blockbuster by the time-honoured definition. Like, say, a Blair Witch Project abroad, which was made for a million dollars and ended up raking in $200 million. “We are still not able to get this kind of multiplier in India because of our inability to maximise the revenue capacity of a film,” says Dibakar Banerjee, “First, the number of theatres limits the possible profit of a film to an average of Rs 40 crore after overheads like taxes are considered. Now imagine a film made in Rs 4 crore that makes Rs 40 crore. This is the  kind of multiplier that will make the industry sit up and take notice and consciously try to make those kind of films.”

Even so, older, bigger banners are unable to ignore these new filmmakers and their audience profile. In 2010, Yash Raj made a dramatic U-turn of sorts with the indie feel of Band Baaja Baaraat, made for just over Rs 10 crore. It not only recovered its money, but also made a little profit for the studio that had no hit in 2010. Big stars are also no longer averse to taking up small films. Aamir Khan produced, vigorously promoted, released and made profits off Peepli Live. He hopes to recreate the magic with Dhobi Ghat.

“It has been worth it in the end,” sums up Anurag Kashyap. “Today, I get to make the films I want to make, without ever worrying about who’s in it, and I get the money to make it.” Anurag’s next Gangs of Wasseypur, starring Manoj Bajpai, has a budget of Rs 20 crore. “It spans a period of 60 years and will be shot in 22 cities,” he says, explaining this surge in budget. His next, Bombay Velvet, set in Bombay of the 1960s, is expected to have an even bigger budget. Raj Kumar Gupta, on the basis of only one film, Aamir, swung himself a Rs 9 crore production budget for No One Killed Jessica, while Dibakar is making his next, Shanghai, for Rs 10 crore. A possible blockbuster, if only the industry will call it that.

A Revolutionary And A Feminist

This feature on the incarceration of Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was published in Times of India, Crest Edition on 12th of June, 2010. 

Satyen K. Bordoloi revisits the works of the firebrand Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and Iranian films overall  in an attempt to understand what make a government so fearful of this little filmmaker.

At Cannes Film Festival this year, a little man’s presence was greatly felt by his absence. At every screening and public function a seat was left empty in hounour of Jafar Panahi. French actress Juliette Binoche broke down during a press conference when Panahi’s hunger strike was announced by Abbas Kiarostami. The most powerful filmmakers of Hollywood Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Soderbergh, Ang Lee and Oliver Stone among many others issued statements asking the Iranian government to release him.

While most of us in India were busy gossiping about how our ‘beautiful’ actresses make a mess out of their dress once again in Cannes, Jafar Panahi’s life was unfolding in a true melodramatic manner, like a Hollywood or Bollywood blockbuster, and very unlike the subtle and gentle films made by him.

DAVID VS. GOLIATH

Yet it is ironical that all the ‘great’ directors of India that makes the largest number of films every year, have less combined influence on the world of cinema, than this one man. In the last few decades, besides a few little known Indian filmmakers whom the mainstream have largely ignored (including Vikramaditya Motwane's film ‘Udaan’ that was applauded at Cannes this year), Indian films have lacked the power to charm Cannes. This is very unlike the 50s and 60s where India was a dominant force in Cannes with Chetan Anand’s ‘Neecha Nagar’ winning the highest prize at the very film Cannes film festial in 1946. If you compare Indian and Iranian Cinema in the last three decades, you’ll realize how in the fight between David and Goliath, the Iranian David has won hands down, even against the mightier Hollywood. A brier history of Iranian Cinema leading up to Panahi will answer why.

THE IRANIAN NEW WAVE:

In 1969, a little known Iranian director Darius Mehrjui, made a film called the ‘The Cow’ followed by Masoud Kimiai and Nasser Taqvai’s ‘Calm in Front of Others’. This set ablaze a trend of cultural and intellectual dynamism in cinema. The Iranian audience became discriminating and encouraged new ideas and trends and in the next 3-4 years, close to 40 noteworthy films were made establishing the Iranian New Wave firmly in the map of World Cinema. Iran emerged as the new centre for creative filmmaking in the world.

Yet, it had taken over a decade and a half to build up. After the coup that Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq in 1953, a political and intellectual movement started that built the romantic climate for a socially committed literature to develop, which in turn inspired cinema.

Directors like Forough Farrokhzad, Sohrab Shahid Saless, Bahram Beizai, and Parviz Kimiavi, became the pioneers of the Iranian New Wave, with Abbas Kiarostami, Majid Majidi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Jafar Panahi and Samira Makhmalbaf carrying this baton of creativity.

SAVING THE WORLD:

This cinematic movement was influenced primarily by the Italian Neorealistic movement of realism in cinema. Despite this European influence, Iranian films are unique. By blending fiction with reality using a documentary style in feature films, the filmmakers developed a visual poetry in cinema infused by a humanistic concern that is influenced by the filmmaker’s local identity as opposed to influences from other films centers like Hollywood and Europe. Iranian cinema is a perfect example of what ‘national’ cinema can and should aspire to be in a globalised world, influenced and yet staying aloof from the world at large.

Thus while Hollywood is busy saving the world in its cinema while the nation does the opposite in real life, the European filmmakers are mostly busy with existential angst of a bored, developed and ‘civilized’ world and the Indians continue to be occupied with love stories set in places and rooted in ideas that have only a remote connection to the reality of the actual world, Iranian filmmakers have busy themselves with little problems of little people in the last four decades, that strangely are still the problems of humanity at large. Thus in reflecting the reality and bringing it to the world’s attention, it is Iranian cinema that is truly saving the world and cinema, one soul at a time.

PANAHI’S CINEMA

Jafar Panahi, a close friend, compatriot and disciple of Abbas Kiarostami, stormed into the world of cinema in 1995 with one such little film about a girl’s attempt to buy a goldfish while the local traders in her street try to cheat her of her money. ‘The White Balloon’ was thus a commentary not just on Iranian life, but the world at large where greed is not satisfied till it has robbed the innocence that is truly precious to humanity. The film won numerous awards, including the Golden Camera at Cannes.

In his 1997 film ‘The Mirror’, a little girl tries to find her way through the maze of ‘big’ people, as her perspective holds a mirror to the world of elders. However, halfway through the film, Panahi takes a leap of cinematic narrative as the young girl throws her scarf and refuses to act saying that she wants to go home, her real home. The audience is suddenly jolted out of the reality of a realistic film and into a different reality, where the frames are neither colour corrected, nor composed. A handheld camera follows the real girl as she heads home. Though the fictional world has broken apart, and we see that the real life girl is much more assertive, it is left to the audiences to decipher whether the two worlds are really that apart.

WOMEN IN IRAN

His 2000 films ‘The Circle’ is another bold narrative experiment. The film follows the story of one woman to another, with the common thread being that they are all ‘fallen’ women according to Iranian customs and laws. Not stopping long enough to tell the complete story of either character yet making the audience empathize enough, the film shows a microcosm of the treatment meted out to a large cross section of women in Iran.

Panahi’s preoccupation with woman in Iran continues in ‘Café Tansit’. After the death of her husband, an independent woman defies tradition that asks her to marry his brother, and reopens the husband’s café that becomes successful with truckers because of its good food and family atmosphere. The envious brother-in-law evokes custom and complains to the authorities. Ironically, this veiled indictment of Iranian traditions, became the first film to be submitted by the country to the Academy Awards. 

Pahahi is more direct in his criticism of the nation’s treatment of women in his 2006 film ‘Offside’. It is a simple story of a few football fanatic women who try to sneak in to watch the Iran-Bahrain match but are caught by the ‘vice squad’. A strange situation for the rest of the world, but a real threat for women in Iran who enjoy far less fundamental rights than the men. The film questions the morality of men that hold themselves superior. As in his other films, the women are no less capable or ingenious than the men, but are victimized because of their sexuality. Yet, like his other films, they show a greater compassion than the men, who are also not stereotyped and shown with kindness in all of his film.

AN IRKED REGIME

Thus while his predecessors and contemporaries have concerned themselves with life in Iran overall, Panahi’s preoccupation is with the condition of woman in Iran, and indeed in many parts of the world. With a compassion and sensitivity rare in cinema he has put forth their case in film after film. Even in film that have not been about women, like ‘Crimson Gold’, a story of a pizza-delivery man in Tehran, he critiques the regime.

This cinematic criticism and his vocal support of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, and his protest against the disputed elections last year, inflamed the administration enough for them to drag him out of his home in March and keep him incarcerated for three month and threatening his family, purportedly for him trying to make another film criticizing the regime.

Panahi went on hunger strike to protest against this ill-treatment evoking a unified response from the cinematic community worldwide prompting the Iranian regime to release him on the 25^th of May.

And like the ‘vice squad’ dare not touch a group of women dressed as men who have sneaked into the football match because they are around international journalists in his film ‘Offside’, perhaps the Iranian government was rattled by the large number of protests across the world against his arrest.

Actress Juliette Binoche who has known Panahi for 15 years aptly described him in a press conference at Cannes saying, “For his supporters and his enemies alike, Panahi has become the closest thing world cinema has to a bona fide revolutionary, the dangerous firebrand who will not be silenced.”
The world waits with bated breath what this revolutionary filmmaker and cinematic-poet makes next.

Fictions About Illusions

This article was published in DNA, 30th May 2010. 

After the observance of World Schizophrenia Day this week, Satyen K Bordoloi turns the spotlight on cinema’s fascination for this illness and how realistically it has been portrayed on the silver screen.

Schizophrenia is by far the most ‘abused’ and misrepresented mental disorder in both language and cinema. In our day-to-day language we regularly use ‘schizophrenic’ as an adjective for almost anything — country, corporations, education…even love. In cinema, often our villains and even heroes display acute symptoms of the disease and in many cases they are labeled schizophrenics.

So while in Hindi cinema you have Shah Rukh Khan displaying a schizophrenic distortion of perception in Baazigar and Darr, in Hollywood you have an Anakin Skywalker who becomes Darth Vader in the Star Wars series or even Gollum whose alter ego Smeagol in The Lord Of The Ringstrilogy is driven to schizophrenic madness by ‘evil’ forces beyond his control.

The sacred grove
Cinema and schizophrenia thus make for strange bedfellows, with the former using the disease and its symptoms in the most random, inaccurate and stigmatising way.

And then, in 2001, schizophrenia suddenly became the ‘talk of the town’ worldwide, and this time it wasn’t being talked about in solely negative terms at all. Such a shift in perception was made possible by the global success of Ron Howard’s Oscar-winning film, A Beautiful Mind, and the realistic depiction of a schizophrenic by its lead, Russell Crowe.

The film was based on the real life story of Nobel Prize-winning scientist, John Nash who suffered from, but learnt to live with his ‘incurable’ mental disorder. Despite romanticising the illness and concentrating on the patient’s visual hallucinations instead of the auditory hallucinations which are more frequent, the film was hailed for both its realistic approach, and for giving hope to millions of patients and their loved ones with its message that one can successfully live with this ailment despite its paralysing nature.

Marathi cinema has made one of the boldest attempts to go beyond A Beautiful Mind, in the form of Devrai, a refreshingly holistic and factual film about the disease, its symptoms, social stigma and treatment. Atul Kulkarni essayed the role of a paranoid schizophrenic obsessed with saving a sacred grove (devrai in Marathi) with subtlety and simplicity. The beautiful metaphor of devrai — an inclusive virgin forest left untouched for generations — expresses brilliantly a vision of a world that has a place even for those that are different. One of the strengths of this film, directed by Sumitra Bhave and Sunil Sukthankar, is the depiction of the embarrassment and social stigma faced by the patient’s relatives. Yet bothDevrai and A Beautiful Mind drive home the point that it is only the love and care of those closest to the patient that enables them to cope and live. In doing so, both the films put the spotlight on the audience, pushing them to be compassionate toward those that are not like the rest. In fact, A Beautiful Mind further makes the point that, far from being a burden, schizophrenics can make highly valuable contributions to society and humanity.

Familial matters
One of the toughest aspects of making a film on illness is depicting the internal anguish and trauma of the patient. The 1994 film Clean Shavenmanages this rare cinematic brilliance. The protagonist Peter covers all mirrors, travels in a car where all windows are covered with papers, sits in a corner covering his ears, and cuts a part of his scalp and removes a fingernail as he believes he is bugged. The tragic finale where Peter is shot dead thanks to the misconceptions of a detective points a finger at the audience, asking them, who is really schizophrenic.

The 1995 Australian film Angel Baby, like Devrai, explores the societal and familial dimensions of schizophrenia. In this film, two schizophrenics fall in love, the woman gets pregnant, and both decide to forego their medication, with disastrous consequences. This multiple award-winning film is a sympathetic portrayal of those afflicted with schizophrenia and those helping them. Avoiding clichés, the film makes the case for the rehabilitation of patients that will later be affirmed by A Beautiful Mind andDevrai.

Despite all the advances in medicine, the causes and treatment of this illness that afflicts over one per cent of humanity is still a mystery. Yet things today are not as bad as in the 1960s, when it was considered a ‘functional illness’ caused by the family. The Oscar-winning Swedish film Through A Glass Darkly, from master director Ingmar Bergman, is based on this thesis, putting the blame on the family. A schizophrenic woman goes to an island with her family to recuperate, only to suffer a relapse in a dysfunctional family. Harriet Andersson’s performance as the woman expecting a vision of god from under a wallpaper has audiences riveted in this multilayered, complex drama.

The 1971 film Family Life by Ken Loach, is one Indians can relate to. Shot in documentary style to heighten realism, it tells the story of Janice. This sensitive, young girl is pushed into schizophrenia by her orthodox and rigid family who demand submission to tradition from her. Though Janice fights back, the societal norms and emotional repression tramples her individuality, leading to schizophrenia, for which she undergoes brutal treatment. The film is an indictment of both a cruel family and the mental healthcare system of the period. Sadly, a far more ruthless system still exists in India where patients are chained to pillars.

Aparna Sen’s 15 Park Avenue handles different aspects of a patient’s life and family. Like the disease, the film is often moody, seemingly disjointed, and demands patience from of the viewer. Mitali, played by Konkana Sen Sharma, believes that she is happily married with five kids who live in 15 Park Avenue. Except that the place exists only in her imagination. The film delves into how a family, often sensitive, and at other times cruel and amused, try to come to terms with the patient as well as their own guilt.

Mad in a mad world
Although medical science today refutes the theory that familial conditions could be entirely responsible for the illness, family does play a crucial part in aggravating as well as treating it. Thus India, with a still prevalent emphasis on familial orthodoxy, has one of the largest cases of schizophrenia, both treated and untreated, with close to 8.7 millionpeople suffering from it. Sadly, it is the same orthodoxy that prevents families from seeking treatment for mental illness, branding it instead as ordinary mental stress. It is estimated that in developing countries like India, 90% of people remain untreated due to the same reason.

Despite these accurate and sensitive portrayals, the world of cinema is full of ‘schizophrenic’ treatment of the condition. Be it in Me, Myself and Irenethat educes the condition to a comic but obscene treatment, or in scores of other films where the patient is reduced to a caricatured madman.

In Devrai, the patient’s sister defends her brother before her husband, “At least his anger comes from an illness. But what about all those that cause riots, corruption and violence in the world. Are they sane?”

The husband then makes a statement out of exasperation, “Sometime I wonder if the whole society has turned schizophrenic, trying to solve all its problems with hatred and violence.” A telling comment on our times, which leads us to wonder whether, as Akira Kurosawa out it, “In a mad world, only the mad are sane”.

If War Is A Drug, Guess Who's Selling It

This article on propaganda cinema was published in DNA on 2nd May, 2010.

DNA compares the three Hollywood war movies playing right now in the city’s multiplexes and situates them in the context of Hollywood’s long history as a vehicle of war propaganda

To say that war is as old as human civilisation would be stating the obvious. A better way to put it is the tagline of The Hurt Locker running in theatres currently, ‘War is a drug’. And cinema has for long been a major tool of influence at the hands of governments seeking to win people over to the agenda of war.

It is for this reason that the Iraq war film, The Hurt Locker and its subsequent Oscar triumphs have aroused a great deal of controversy across the world. Despite showing the plight of ordinary soldiers left with no option but to fight a war not of their making — merely in order to survive — it has been criticised for glorifying violence and war.

Critics also point out how showering the film with awards suits the interests of the current US regime, as it will only serve to promote the worldwide distribution of an Iraq war film that doesn’t at all criticise the US’s military presence.

On the other hand, there’s Green Zone, which released alongside The Hurt Locker, but gives a different perspective on the same war.

While The Hurt Locker aspires to be apolitical, Green Zone delves into the politics of the Iraq war and squarely puts the blame on the US administration. That this film has been allowed to release and find a mass base across the world despite being critical of US foreign policy is a minor miracle.

Animation films also provide a counter-balance against war propaganda. Anti-war messages are cloaked in beautiful metaphors. A good example is the 3D animation film that released last week, How To Train Your Dragon.

Targeted at the holiday audience both in the US and India, the film, despite its seemingly innocent plot, is actually an indictment of wars waged by adults. In a fictional Viking village, dragons are the ‘enemy’ meant to be killed on sight. The myth is rife, till a kid refuses to kill a dreaded dragon, makes the animal its pet, and shows that all it takes is a little kindness and understanding, even as the elders embark in ships to destroy the dragons’ nesting place.

An old marriage
The marriage between Hollywood and war propaganda has been a long one. Not many know that the classic Casablanca (1942) was a war propaganda film, meant to swing public opinion in favour of the US joining the Second World War with the Allied forces.

Mrs Miniver (1942), another multiple Oscar-winning film, was more direct in its call to join the war, bringing the danger closer home in the form of a fugitive German soldier. Such films were made even during the First World War, and include, most notably, DW Griffith’s Hearts Of The World (1918) and Cecil B DeMille’s The Little American (1917).

Other forms of governance across the world have been more open about propaganda in cinema. Vladimir Lenin, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, said, “Of all the arts, the most important for us is the cinema”.

He realised the importance of films in spreading the revolution to rural areas and for raising the awareness of illiterate peasants. He set up the Soviet film industry and provided patronage to such greats as Sergei Eisenstein, two of whose masterpieces, Battleship Potemkin (1925) and Ten Days That Shook The World (1928), were essentially propaganda films.

Nazi Germany’s foray into propaganda was much more notorious. Leni Riefenstahl’s masterpieces Triumph Of The Will (1935) and Olympia (1938) would forever bear the stigma of being Nazi propaganda films despite their cinematic excellence.

However, in a democracy, explicit propaganda of any kind is viewed with suspicion, and associated with totalitarian regimes. Hence the US government could at no time be seen to be directly involved in propaganda of any kind. Hollywood offered the perfect solution: Not only did it reach the masses, its power over the audience was more than that of any other art form.

A propaganda office
Hence, after the attack on Pearl Harbour, an official ‘propaganda’ office was set up under the instructions of President Franklin D Roosevelt to form a cordial relationship with Hollywood. Their mandate was clear: to make films the most important channel to inform the public about war, and to ensure that no films misconstrued or misinterpreted war efforts, i.e. no anti-war films would be allowed certification.

John Wayne, whose popularity as an American hero has not yet been surpassed, starred in many propaganda films, during and after the war, and called for patriotism as the need of the hour. A popular joke after the war was that America did not win the war, John Wayne did.

Propaganda war films are meant to inspire national pride and boost audience morale by displaying the nobility of one’s forces pitted against the villainy of the enemy. These jingoistic films are unrealistic and do not present the truly devastating nature of war or a realistic portrait of the ‘enemy’. It is in this context that The Hurt Locker has been criticised the most, as it depicts American soldiers as fighting a good war against the bad Iraqis, notwithstanding the realism when it comes to showing what goes on in the minds of soldiers. Ironically, though not as realistic as The Hurt Locker, Green Zone has been praised for its empathy towards the enemy, and for its recognition that an enemy soldier is driven by as much patriotism as one’s own.

By refusing to shy away from critiquing its own government, Green Zone ultimately presents a more realistic picture of the futility of war and the reasons for which they are fought.

While ‘war as a drug’ is the message of The Hurt Locker, Green Zone makes a plea for peace, and its thesis is that war is never inevitable. What message you subscribe to, will eventually determine what type of films you’ll end up liking — films that are subtle war propaganda, or anti-war films.