A Masterful Fable Of Memory And Time

Debutant director Julia Marat in one of the most nostalgic and yet riveting Latin-American debuts ever, tells the fable of a place which time has forgotten. The dozen villagers in ‘Stories That Only Exist When Remembered’ go about their daily routine with a clockwork precision that is both a reverence to their past as it is a wait for their inevitable future.

Time, however, cannot forever neglect its dominion, no matter how remote. And so it happens that time does come visiting the village in the form of a young female photographer who neither understands the place or its people, yet is curious enough to want to know.

“If I was old, I wouldn’t do this film. It will be clichéd then. I did this because for me today this is different and unique,” director Juila Murat told IANS about her film. “As a young person I need speed and the latent energy of a place like Rio or even Mumbai,” she candidly admits.

Hence, her debut feature with its masterful command, not mere control of time and space, stuns you. With touches of eternity, this is indeed a sculpture, a portrait of time.

Julia paints a mythical landscape of a place where a few old people live, neither too nostalgic of the past nor needing any hope. They may seem in a sort of limbo but perhaps these handful old, forgotten villagers and their village, are the only ones who truly live. For isn’t living, about the present moment rather than the burdens of their past or anxiety of the future?

With unsentimental and poetic touches she paints life as it should be, unhurried, relaxed and sentient. Considering that in our structurally violent world today, this is extremely rare, ‘Stories…’ thus becomes a rare fable.

For some the film might be slow. But for those with a fertile imagination it has speed all about it. Every single wrinkle on the faces of the characters, ever single crack on the wall, ever little rust on the iron in the village, tells a million tales of times gone by, stories and histories of its people, both dead and alive and of the village. You have to be sensitive to hear these stories.

Unlike other filmmakers with a rich antecedent, Julia’s candour stands out. She admits the role of her filmmaker mother in shaping her cinematically. “How many 12 year olds watch indie films with a gusto. I did,” she says reminiscing the time watching the best of the films from her country and the world. Her cinematic mastery also comes from assisting her mother Lucia Murat in almost every cinematic department: scriptwriting, direction, camera, editing etc.

Yet, while Lucia’s films are political in nature, steaming from her experience as a journalist and activist against the dictatorship in Brazil between 1968-79 when she was arrested and tortured in prison, Julia’s films are about life.

It is perhaps the poetry of life, that Julia, born the year that dictatorship ended in Brazil, is carrying on her mother’s legacy and represents life just as her mother represented political strife around. With her debut feature, Julia Murat become a voice to watch out for.

This feature has been written for the new wire service, IANS (Indo-Asian News Service). 

An Accomplished Debut Puts Asian Cinema In The Spotlight

If cinema had its child prodigies, she would be one. After all considering the maturity that direction requires, mid 20s could be seen as the teenage of a director’s life. With one of the most accomplished Asian debuts in recent years, 26 year old Kamila Andini makes a great case for Asian cinema. And conservation.

This might seem like a huge load put on a young shoulder, yet see ‘Mirror Never Lies’ and you’ll shake your head with incredulity at both the control and intuition of the film. Kamila has control over time and space that usually comes with experience, and wisdom. Knowing that this is her first film, you’d expect it to have come from a tight script.

“I wrote only 80% of the script, intending to explore the rest 20%. The exploration has gone way beyond that,” she says, an impish smile lighting up her petite face.

The various metaphors in the film thus come as a surprise. A teenage girl, whose father has been missing at sea, refuses to believe that he won’t return. She keeps looking for him in a mirror. Her young mother constantly scolds her for this infatuation but herself hides behind a sunscreen, refusing to reveal her youth to others. It is as if the mother is aware that till her daughter is free from her illusion, she cannot be free from hers.

The images and the split images, the mirrors and their reflections, the calmness of the ocean surface and its serenity below, the characters perceptions and their reflections in the ocean, all come together in an adept, aesthetic and lyrical fable.

“A mirror and the sea have the same mystery to me and contain a lot of questions, reflections and stories. It is these stories that I wanted to explore through the film,” says Kamila.

Unlike many self indulgent films in competition in MAMI this year, hers is surprisingly free of forced control, yet has a strong spiritual core. The beautiful Bajonese people who literally build their high wooden homes in the middle of the sea and live both in harmony and strife with the ocean around, couldn’t have found a better ambassador.

The beautiful underwater shots are haunting. They are like the mythical universe whose door lies in the mirror that the young girl holds in her hands.

Kamila shares the penchant for making children the centre of her film just her father, the celebrated Indonesian director Garin Nugroho. Yet ask her about his influence and she says, “I was on my own. My father saw the film only while it was being edited and even then he merely laughed at my mistakes.” 

The influence of WWF (World Wildlife Fund), who were part of the film, is evident. For at another level it is about mans relationship with nature. It calls people to preserve their nurturer, but does so metaphorically instead of being overbearing.

At MAMI this year, considering the films in competition, there is perceptible difference between films from developed worlds like Europe, North America and Australia and those from developing worlds. Whereas the former have intellectual control, the ones from Latin America (Las Acacias) and Asia (‘Mirror Never Lies’ and ‘Death Is My Profession’) carry a spiritual strength rarely achieved in cinema. Seeing and putting these films into perspective, it is evident, that the hope of cinema lies in the latter.

This feature story has been written for the wire service, IANS (Indo-Asian News Service). 

India Needs Time To Open Up To Gay Themes In Films

In India it has recently become a criminal offence to discriminate against people due to their sexual orientation. But commercial Indian films are far from catching up with the law and still hide under the curtain of comedy -- all for a reason, say filmmakers.


“There is an anxiety when it comes to gay films and gay-based roles,” said documentary filmmaker Sridhar Rangayan at an open forum at the 13th Mumbai Film Festival, Monday.

The talk focussed on LGBT films in India.

Filmmaker Tarun Mansukhani, the director of "Dostana" -- so far the only mainstream, commercial, hit Bollywood film to talk of gay issues upfront -- defended his idea of portraying gays in a comical vein.

“If I were to make a film where both my characters were gay, first of all I wouldn’t get the money. Secondly there would be no mainstream actors who’d want to play it, and thirdly the audience would shy away from it,” he said.

Defending both -- his film and other stereotypical portrayals that could have been more honest -- he added: “If you scream from the rooftops in favour of gay issues, it will not work. Give it some time. Let us begin by having some fun with it. The time will come when the nation would open up and we’d see their true and sensitive representation in commercial cinema.”

But is middle class India ready to see "queer" films? Onir, who is open about his sexual preference, believes they are.

“I have taken both ‘My Brother Nikhil’ and ‘I Am’ to the remotest corners of the country and not only did no one have any objections, but there ran to packed houses.”

When asked to compare his 'commercial' films with those of Onir, Mansukhani said: “They are doing the sensitive side of the issue. I am doing the commercial, where yes, there are a lot of jokes and there is stereotyping of gays.

"But I don’t want to rush into it and not just get booted out, but also kill any chance of any other sensitive filmmaker in the future who wants to make films on the issue.”

He repeated: “Over time it is bound to get normalised in cinema. Have patience.”

New York-based film journalist Aseem Chhabra was of the opinion that there has been a lot of remarkable work done in India in terms of feature films, short films and documentaries. But the work has not travelled much, according to him.

“Not just in cinema, but as a country India has a long way to go,” said Chhabbra.

Actor Rajit Kapoor, who had acted in a very bold short film about a male prostitute serenaded by an elderly businessman, said: “Change is happening slow and steadily. We are on the road to progress. So let us be happy about what we have achieved so far.”

Rajit also features in an upcoming film on the issue by Deepti Naval.

There was no common consensus on the issue during the forum, except one: it was indeed great that MAMI had such an open forum on the same, something it perhaps couldn’t have done a decade back.

The audience, many of whom got emotional on the issue, expressed their desire to not just see more films on LGBT issues at MAMI next year, but to even have such open discussion on an issue for which the time has come to emerge out of the closet.

This story was written for the wire service, IANS - Indo-Asian News Service. 

Of A Stunning Debut And Dead Weights

His film ‘Las Acacias’ received an uproarious standing ovation from the MAMI crowd. But Argentinean director Pablo Giorgelli left them on the verge of tears with his admission, “I don’t think I’ll recover money.” No big deal really, unless you consider that his film won three prizes at Cannes this year, including the Golden Camera and for cinema enthusiasts globally, represents one of the most stunning debuts in the last few years.

If this be the fate of such a beautiful, moving and celebrated film, what hope do others have?

“It took me five years to make ‘Las Acacias’, taking money from wherever I could. It will be nice if I can recover and pay back the money,” he told IANS later, a little introspective for his kind, jovial face.

And if you look at it this way, ‘Las Acacias’ is indeed ironically metaphoric for most film viewers and distributors. This road movie, tells a simple story of the relationship between a truck driver who is ferrying a woman with a five month old baby across the borders of Paraguay and Argentina, a huge cache of lumber loaded on the truck.  

The lumber behind the truck is a metaphor of the dead weights both the characters are carrying in their subconscious, the ghosts of their sad pasts. It can also be seen as the dead weight of film-clichés and expectations that the audiences and distributors worldwide carry that will not allow “one of the most accomplished debuts in history”, as veteran film critic Rashid Irani said of this film, to recover its money.

Yet, one of the most hopeful films in the circuit this year, there is a metaphor in its hope as well. The five month old baby who is always happy and cheerful and carries no past baggage, wins over the reticent truck driver. It is one of the cutest and funniest babies you will see in cinema history of whom Pablo Giorgelli told IANS, “It was a miracle that we found the baby, barely a month before shooting began.” The baby is perhaps a simile for a new kind of audience, young folks who are yet untouched by the past of filmmaking or its clichés.

These new generation of viewers don’t need to know that this film took five years of painful birth pangs to be born, or that the casting for the mere 3 characters that predominate the film took a whooping one and a half year, or the many prizes it has won globally or that the director exorcised his own demons by stripping off layers and layers of unwanted scenes and dialogues to bring before his audience a truly polished gem. All they need to know and believe in is what they see in on screen.

In a quiet, subtle and dignified way, the two protagonists in their hesitant interaction at the climax discard their dead weights. Hope the audiences and film industries globally could do the same for those like Pablo Giorgelli. After all there cannot be good cinema without good and evolved viewers.

“Acacias in Spanish means ‘dead wood’,” Pablo explains the name of his film before signing off.

This feature story has been written for the wire service, IANS (Indo-Asian News Service).  

It’s Raining Women Filmmakers in MAMI This Year

Most film festivals are great in many respects. But even if they are great, few are unique. The Mumbai Film Festival this year, or MAMI as it is lovingly called, is stunning in one respect. From the 14 films in the highly coveted international competition that carries a big prize money, 6 films are from debut women filmmakers, a truly first for any decent film festival in the world.

What is surprising is that the festival organizers, caught up as they are with preparations of the festival, did not realize this till the last moment. “When I’m talking to you, I realize that one of the most unprecedented things for any festival is that in competition we have 6 debut women filmmakers vying for the many prizes,” Rashid Irani, senior film critic and a selection committee member of the festival told this correspondent. “And each one of them is such a stunning debut that you have to see it to believe it.”

True emancipation of women can occur when they occupy position of power in every department, including the arts. And having almost 50% films in the main competition by women director, is one of the greatest proof of them claiming their place in the world. And that all women directors are from different parts of the world, give proof the truly global nature of women’s empowerment in the arts.

Among these films include, Julia Leigh’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ from Australia, ‘History Only Exists When Remembered’ by Julia Murat from Brazil/Argentina, ‘My Little Princess’ by Eva Ionesco from France, ‘The Dead Sea’ by Leena Manimekalai from India, ‘The Mirror Never Lies’ by Kamila Andini from Indonesia and ‘She Monkeys’ by Lisa Aschan from Sweden.

Mr. Srinivasan Narayanan, Festival Director, is all smiles when he is reminded this, “Last year we had an all women’s jury and this year we have women dominating the competition section. What more could we ask?”

But not content with hyperboles, the film lover does ask for more. Shyam Benegal, the Chairman of MAMI (Mumbai Academy of Moving Images), the organizers of Mumbai Film Festival, confirms that the viewers this year will have more than they bargained for. “This is by far the best festival we have had under MAMI so far and the best in the country.”

He explains, “The quality of any film festival should be judged by its films. This year we have an enviable line up of not only the best films made in the world last year, but also the best from the Cannes Critics Week, first films of Indian filmmakers, great first film in competition etc. There’s something in the festival for everyone – the film professionals, cinema lovers and especially the youth hungry for good cinema.”

For once, the hyperbole is the truth. When you look at the line-up, you realize what he means. Not only are there the winners from the world’s best film festivals including Cannes, Berlin, Venice etc. but the International Competition for first film has a line up that will be a thing of envy for the best film festivals in the world.

Then, of course, you have your usual suspects, the past masters who continue to blaze the trail of creativity with Lars Von Trier, Wim Winders, Gus Van Sant and Bela Tarr among others being the stars of this pack.

Seven days, 10 screens in Mumbai, 201 of the best films made last year in the world, 60 countries, and over a crore of Rupeees in prize money and best of all almost half the films in competition being by women filmmakers. Film Festivals in India indeed don’t get bigger, or better than this. 

This story was done for the wire service IANS (Indo-Asian News Service), who obviously (the cub-editors on desk) did not get it and massacred the final story. 

Real Steel – A Real Deal

 Director: Shawn Levy

Actors: Hugh Jackman, Dakota Goyo, Evangeline Lilly

Ratings: 3.5 out of 5

In our technological age we crave for it so much that even brainless film with a lot of tech and action thrown in works. The loud, garish and pointless ‘Transformers’ series is a case in point. Yet, a sci-fi, technological film need not be so bad. Want proof, watch ‘Real Steel’ that combines the best of tech effects with the soul of ‘Rocky’.

In a not so distant future, robot boxing is big. Charlie (Hugh Jackman), a cocky promoter spoils his chances by making some rash calls. An unsentimental guy he even uses the son Max (Dakota Goyo) he had deserted for money. However, the sensibility and sensitivity of this 11 year old kid changes his fortune and his life as a junk robot with a heart of steel and the ‘soul’ of a champion turns out to be a winning prizefighter.

It should be clear at the onset that there’s really nothing original at all about ‘Real Steel’. And it’s not even a very creative reworking of clichés that most art films these days seem to be. Instead, it plays along with the cliché, but with the endearing lightness that makes it a worthwhile watch. Despite its hackneyed plot and predictable subplots, it has the nimble footwork of a heavyweight boxer who manages to ‘fly’ as he boxes.

The non-living, junkyard robot Atom becomes a metaphor for the liveliest emotions we know: love, courage and a never-say-die-spirit. That it takes an inanimate object to arouse human feelings in Charlie is a commentary on our life and times and our obsession for everything external. His wins as an abandoned thing thus become the victories of what is truly important in life, but which we have relegated into the junkyards of our lives. These emotions are indeed the atoms of our very existence.

The man, his son and their reconnecting link. 

The film will remind you of ‘Rocky’ and surprisingly the ending too is similar. And that is another beautiful thing about the film and its message. You don’t have to win to prove a point. The real victory in life is in doing something with passion, standing tall with courage and the ability to never give up despite the odds.

There’s tenderness in the father-son relationship, despite its clichés, that will tug at your heart. The chemistry between the actors playing it Hugh Jackman and Dakota Goyo only adds to it.  

The special-effects are gentle and subtle enough not to jar like in ‘Transformers’. That is because the driving force is the story, not the robots. Those who liked huge metal things fighting or like boxing and wrestling, will love the film.  

It is thus surprising that Steven Spielberg, who is also the producer of the ‘Transformer’ series, also produces this. For Indian cine lovers there’s another reason to watch ‘Real Steel’. It has been co-produced by our very own Reliance Entertainment and of the five odd films they have produced so far, this is by far the best. 

This review has been written for the wire service, Indo-Asian News Service (IANS).

Drive – Has the Drive, Chutzpah & Finesse

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

Actors: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan and Bryan Cranston

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

After the dialogue heavy films of the 40s and 50’s, the New Hollywood of the late 60s and 70s became just the opposite. Films then were perhaps truest to the idea of ‘visual’ cinema with not one extra word, not a single needless expression appearing on screen.

Ironically, it was not the art-house cinema that achieved this miracle, but commercial movies, and leading the pack were action films. A case can be made of ‘Bullitt’ – an ‘action’ film where the protagonist barely spoke a few lines.

If you look inside the bonnet of ‘Drive’ you will find the engine that drove ‘Bullitt’ running this film.

Under the bonnet of 'Drive' is the engine of a 'Bullitt' and inside the driver of 'Drive' is the spirit of Steve McQueen from the same film

A driver (Ryan Gosling) who’s a stunt double in films but moonlights as a driver for criminals, falls in love with his neighbour - whose husband is in prison - and her son. After the husband returns and is forced to pay back protection money or his wife and son would be harmed, the driver gets involved only to find himself a hunted man.

The simple fact that this film relies on visuals rather than words can be found in one tiny detail – the ‘driver’ is never given a name. Nor is he really given a back story. It’s like he is someone who has appeared from nowhere - a quiet, reticent man who merely observes the violent world around him.

We know him through his actions that evolve with time. He is surrounded by violence and violent men. Even his other profession - that of a stunt double - is violent. Yet, like a lotus he remains calm amidst the muck, a smirk permanently fixated behind the toothpick on his lips.

‘Drive’ is thus seemingly unique and refreshing. But its uniqueness lies in the present context. In the land of a blind Hollywood, the one eyed is king. In reality the elements that make ‘Drive’ so endearing have actually been done to death in many spectacular films of the 70s. Indeed, the character of Ryan Gosling, of a strong, reticent, honorable man is modeled on Steve McQueen’s cop character in ‘Bullitt’.

Thus what comes out as a refreshing, art-house take on action, is nothing but an old, 70s-commercial take on action cinema where a car-chase was not about speed, but about the temperament and poise of the man behind the wheels. For proof also watch ‘Two Lane Blacktop’ and ‘Vanishing Point’. The only difference in the film is a lovely background score that punctuates the silence of the film, and some impressionist slow-motion scenes.

‘Drive’ is thus a memory refresher of a fascinating time for cinema, where the past of the character was less important that his present, where unrequited love did not fail to inspire men and where the desire of the director was to tell the story as best as possible without worrying whether it’s original or clichéd.

Today, some might find the above elements disconcerting. Yet, ‘Drive’ based on a book by James Sallis, is not a film you’ll forget in a hurry. Like good cars, it’s meant to last. Just like Hollywood action films of the 70s.

This review has been written for the wire service, Indo-Asian News Service (IANS).