I finally got down to watching the movie COURT which is
referred to as a Marathi movie but in fact is not. One can describe it as a multi-lingual Indian
movie.
Opinion about the movie seems to be sharply divided, with a
majority of the folks who have watched it largely describing the movie as a
“Big bore, a waste of time and a movie in which absolutely nothing
happens”. Some of these observations
bear an uncanny resemblance to what a critic once said about Samuel Beckett’s
book WAITING FOR GODOT – “Nothing happens – it is terrifying”. GODOT is acclaimed as a work of literary
genius for all times. And yes,
absolutely nothing happens in it. I
remember having had to really struggle through reading it. But I also know it
has stayed with me and has affected me in a way that is difficult to describe
by putting pen to paper. In fact I have
had a similar experience with quite a few books – Catch 22, Zen And The Art Of
Motorcycle Maintenance, Pather Panchali, 1984, The Iliad, the 12th
Chapter of the Bhagvad Geeta. Nothing
seems to happen, you have to really labour your way through them pondering en
route whether they are worth the effort. Yet you find that such creations stay
with you and it is only much later that you realize that the drip-drip at the
back of your mind for all those years was the creation seeping into your thought. Adam Smith’s Wealth Of Nations and Tilak’s
Geetarahasya are possibly the most sublime examples I have come across. Of the former I have managed to digest ten
pages, of the latter three paragraphs.
Of course, it does not necessarily mean that every movie or
book that tortures you is valuable. But
it might give us a perspective on COURT.
I prefer to steer clear of either saying I liked COURT or I
hated it. I don’t feel it necessary to
give a verdict. Too many of us are in
too much of a hurry to state an opinion.
perhaps we should give ourselves time.
Twenty or so years ago a movie by the name USKI ROTI (उसकी रोटी) played on
Doordarshan. Nothing happened in that
movie. But it has left a niggle at the back of my mind. I am not for a moment trying to subtly
establish myself as a person with refined and sublime tastes. Because the other
movie that I remember was a Doordarshan movie in which a Marathi actor Dilip
Kulkarni played a police inspector. I
don’t remember the name of the movie and it was a regular movie in which an
investigating officer solves a homicide.
So some movies stay with you, others don’t. That’s one way of judging movies.
Tarantino once said that there are two kinds of movie lovers
– one who just like watching movies and two, those who like watching movies
they like. Tarantino is of the former
kind, I am of the latter kind. Maybe
there is a sub-kind – those who love movies that, from the first frame unto the
last do one of more of the following
unto them – move them to tears, raise their hair, lift them into a state of euphoria, make them feel vindicated or proud
or angry – essentially evoke strong emotions.
Well, COURT is not one of those movies.
And since I suspect a large percentage of the population is today
inclined towards movies that inject emotion copiously, it is not likely that
COURT will win too many fans.
I will now venture into the thoughts that COURT triggered
within me.
ONE – WE ARE AN IRRATIONAL PEOPLE PRETENDING TO BE
RATIONAL
This observation will invite patriotic wrath upon me. So be it.
But I really don’t mean this in a self-deprecating way. Is it really terrible being irrational? Square root of 2 is an irrational
number. Pythagoras actually had a
student murdered for suggesting this. Yet
Mathematics is the queen of sciences. I
think the problem is not that as a society we are irrational. Rather the problem is that we have embraced
systems of functioning that require rational thought, yet we continue to think
irrationally. The judge in the movie supposedly
practises rational jurisprudence, yet is extremely irrational – he summarily
dismisses a witness appearing in court wearing a “sleeveless” dress. He believes that the correct medical treatment
for a kid who does not speak yet otherwise seems to be active and chirpy is not
speech therapy but numerology. The said
judge, with his irrational thought process,
would do a most commendable job as the adjudicator in a khaap/jaat
panchayat (caste court) or in Maharashtra as the respected elder of a गावकी (village
council). But put him in a
pivotal position in a system of justice which is based on the assumption that
Aristotelean logic is the basic level of thought and you have what we see in
COURT.
We need to either imbibe rational thinking or go back to
systems designed for irrational thought.
In passing I must mention that the actor who played the judge’s
role has enacted it to absolute perfection.
TWO – MANUFACTURING AN ENEMY – THE BINAYAK SEN
SYNDROME
If I were to find myself in the middle of a failure, I would
broadly have two options in front of me.
One - fix things, trying to convert failure into success. Or two - which is easier to choose – pin the
blame on someone. The rulers of this
country seem to have chosen two. And by
rulers of this country I don’t mean the incumbent government. This has been going on for at least three
decades. After years of pursuing option
two, the government and administrative machinery have now perfected the art of
manufacturing enemies. It might have
started with the old and convenient “foreign hand”. If you recall the movie in vivid details as I
do, you will realize that never has a motive been discussed for victimizing
Narayan Kamble. Nobody seems to have
nursed a real grudge against him. He
does not seem to have really, really offended anybody. But he is just there – nice and convenient,
awaiting crucifixion for a crime which the state routinely commits against
sanitation workers. I don’t know what we
should call this – the theatre of the absurd? – it most certainly is
Kafkaesque. The Municipal Corporation of
Mumbai has cash reserves of … hold your breath … forty thousand crores lodged
as bank deposits. But it cannot fix our
gutters. So it may choose to compensate by picking an accused, uttering his name and phrases
such as “abetment of suicide, sedition, anti-national, terrorist, Indian Penal
Code, arson, bombs, national security, security threat” in the same breath, thus
successfully manufacturing a villain in the process. A perfectly Kafkaesque story. Narayan Kamble is Josef K. Try this exercise – ask the next ten people
you meet who Dr. Binayak Sen is.
THREE – SO MUCH FOR STEREOTYPES
I grew up in a middle class (whatever the hell that means)
Maharashtrian family in Mahim. We were brought up to believe that all the
sensitivity and fairness in the city of Mumbai is crammed in the working class
tenements of Dadar, Shivaji Park, Parel, Vile Parle etc. And all the insensitivity, corruption and
cruelty resided in Peddar Road, Alta Mount Road etc. Life’s experiences vaporized these stereo
types, sending one through succesive feelings of denial, incredulity and
eventually chastened wisdom.
I really liked the inversion of one of the most cherished
stereotypes from my childhood. It gave
me perverse pleasure to hear the lady public prosecutor from a hard working,
middle class Maharashtrian family say something to the following effect – “Why
doesn’t the judge just get on with it and put him away for twenty years?”. And the contrasting scene of the wealthy,
high society lawyer Vinay Vora breaking down and sobbing softly in the seclusion
of his bedroom. I am not for or against
either demographic in a blanket manner, but I do enjoy the crackling noise of a
stereotype crumbling under the weight of its own illogic.
FOUR – BAN THE GODDAMNED MOVIE
I have heard that the repressive military junta that ruled
Greece a few decades ago had banned WAITING FOR GODOT. It seems they did not understand what Beckett
was trying to say (who the hell does!?) but they were worried it might have an
influence on people that would be inimical to the regime.
If you don’t understand it just bloody ban it.
Since we were are living in the age of bans, especially in
Maharashtra, I would strongly recommend that the government ban the movie for its
seditious, criminal nothingness.
FIVE – AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH
Narayan Kamble is a
performing folk poet. The actor’s stage
renditions of the traditional Marathi folk song form “powada” (पोवाडा ) are
powerful and endearing. That much is
granted by most patrons of the movie. In
one such scene the denouement of a folk song is quickly submerged by a dance
number wherein school girls gyrate to a hugely popular, raunchy foot-tapping
Marathi item number.
So we have poignant “powada”
lines such as…
अरे रान रान रान चला उठवू
सारे रान रे, जाण जाण जाण जरा दुष्मनाला जाण रे (Pandemonium is here, Time to rise and revolt, Time to know your enemy)
ह्या कत्तलीच्या राती...पोळले
हात त्यांना विस्तवाचे दान रे (These
nights of massacre,<the rest is untranslatable>)
पैश्याची लागे मात्रा,
माणसाचा होई कुत्रा, कुत्र्याची रूपे सतरा (The delusion of illusion, Money – it reigns supreme, Has turned man into a mongrel,
This mongrel has 17 breeds…)
..followed by the
following suggestive lyrics laced heavily with innuendo
कामावर जायला उशीर झायला, बघतोय रिक्षावाला, ग वाट
माझी बघतोय रिक्षावाला (I am late for
work, the rickshawwalla is “waiting” for me).
I enjoy a rollicking item
number as much as the next guy. However
the contrast, when put in context, is gut-wrenching. I don’t see why both cannot co-exist. But the fact remains that they do not
co-exist. The space for anything
serious, thoughtful, incisive, trenchant and factual has almost
completely been taken up by the lurid, flashy,
glitzy, raunchy, entertaining and amusing.
That clearly is a societal choice.
Perhaps this is what Neil Postman means when he laments the fact that we
are amusing ourselves to death or when he bitterly rues the “redefinition of
culture as a perpetual round of entertainment”.
SIX – DO WE REALLY NEED MOVIES LIKE COURT?
It seems to me – judging by the reactions to the movie that
I have heard - that most of us don’t need such movies to be made. But a handful of us do need them. Fair enough.
Why do some of us need such movies?
The probable answer is rather unflattering for us as a society. We need them because we walk through life
with our eyes closed and our senses shut.
If one chats up the BEST bus conductor (for which one needs to get into
a BEST bus), there is a fair chance that a COURT will play out. Recently I had to visit the Panvel district
court multiple times for an inheritance deed.
Outside the court building are two parallel stone benches under a tin
roof. I spent a few hours sitting there
waiting for the lawyer’s lackey to call me inside to sign affidavits. If one talks to folks sitting on those
benches with a passive, resigned look on their faces, one can experience a few
COURTs. I met a bunch of folks from a
nearby village where they said a massive mobile towers were erected in the recent past and they have
had multiple sudden and fatal cases of cancer.
I met a father who was waiting for his son to be brought to the court by
the police to obtain a remand for a crime which neither the son nor the father
knows much about. The kid must have been
in the wrong place at the wrong time. We
know these things happen. But we are inured
to them. We rush our way past these real
life movies, by ensuring that our lawyer gets us first place in the queue, thus
eliminating the chance encounter with hundreds and thousands of Narayan Kambles
who languish around in the police stations, jails, courts and government
offices of this country. That, I
believe, creates space for movies like COURT.
But it’s a space that does not interest most of us. Amen.
So I come back to the purpose of this post – Did I like
COURT? I must say I did. The movie did however leave the
following solitary bad taste in my
mouth. On 4th May 2015, the
Maharashtra Times featured on its front page a photograph of the young,
superlatively talented director of the movie Chaitanya Tamhane, beaming into
the camera as he received an award for COURT from President Pranab Mukherjee
with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in attendance. The caption said…
राष्ट्रीय पातळीवर विविध
भाषा आणि हिंदी चित्रपटांच्या शर्यतीत स्वतःचे वेगळेपण सिद्ध करत बाजी मारलेले
मराठी दिग्दर्शक चैतन्य ताम्हाणे याच्या “कोर्ट” या चित्रपटाचा रविवारी सुवर्णकमळ
देऊन गौरव करण्यात आला. दिल्लीत विज्ञान
भवन येथे राष्ट्रपती प्रणव मुकर्जी यांच्या हस्ते ६२व्या राष्ट्रीय चित्रपट
पुरस्कारांचे वितरण झाले. (COURT, the
movie directed by Chaitanya Tamhane, the Marathi director who held his own in
the face of national competition from movies in Hindi and several Indian
languages, was awarded a golden lotus on Sunday. The 62nd National Movie Awards were
given away by President Pranav Mukerjee at Vidnyan Bhavan in Delhi).
What I am grappling to
understand is how the creator of the movie could have allowed himself to be
felicitated by the custodians and perpetuators of the very system he has parodied in
such a nuanced yet incisive manner? If
that is how it was to end, I am better off with G.A. Kulkarni’s books. To me, the photograph was the movie’s last
mile failure of credibility after a very strong initial 99 mile run. Unless of course, I am missing the whole
point which might be – manufacture Narayan Kambles and then preen over one’s faithful and artistic portrayal on paper and
celluloid of them.
At this point in the post, I went back and watched
clips of the movie at home on youtube.
Firstly, some of the scenes moved me to tears accompanied by an acute
choking sensation in the throat. I don’t
believe I can pinpoint any bit in the movie that the director could have made
better for me. Secondly, what brings the
movie down a few notches is the mortifying experience of watching it in a
theatre – the crackle of popcorn plastic, the “what a bore!!” comments from the
row behind you, the guffaws where there is no humour etc. This is a movie to be watched alone in the
dead of the night after the hedonists have passed out and one is able to summon
the courage to will the surroundings into a state of deafening silence, allowing
whatever remains of one’s tattered conscience to surface and then face it squarely. Tomorrow is another day anyways.
