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The recent Dus
Kahaniyan is among the few multi-director, multi-story films, IT is said too many cooks spoil the broth. In multi-story movies, however, one cook (read director) is not enough at times. Nikhil Advani made a hash of single-handedly narrating six love stories in Salaam-e-Ishq, one of the year’s biggest failures. On the other hand, Darna Zaroori Hai (2006) saw the collaboration of seven filmmakers, including Ram Gopal Varma, yet it failed to repeat the success of Darna Mana Hai, which had only one (Prawal Raman). Being part of such a film is a big challenge for directors in more ways than one. They have to contribute with their distinct style of storytelling while exploring the common theme. Fifteen or 20 minutes of screen time is all they get to make an impact. Also, they need to be at their best because their performance is inevitably compared with that of the others.
"Unity in diversity" is the key factor. The various parts should not only be engrossing individually but also add up to an impressive whole. Dus Kahaniyan is unique in the sense that half of the stories have been handled by Sanjay Gupta, who is also the producer. One each is directed by Meghna Gulzar, Jasmeet Dhodi, Hansal Mehta, Apoorva Lakhia and Rohit Roy. These are all stories of common people, their secrets and lies, their hopes and fears, the twists and turns in their lives. It’s easy for the viewers to sympathise or empathise with most of the characters. However, the quality of the stories and the direction are rather uneven. Multi-director films are a new territory for Bollywood, and it remains to be seen if Dus Kahaniyan can set a trend. Such movies have also been a rarity in world cinema. Four Somerset Maugham stories were compiled in Quartet (UK, 1948), with the men behind the camera being Ralph Smart, Harold French, Arthur Crabtree and Ken Annakin. It was a star-studded cast of directors in O. Henry’s Full House (USA, 1952) — Henry Hathaway, Howard Hawks, Henry King, Henry Koster and Jean Negulesco. However, the first film was much more successful than the second, signifying the triumph of team work over individual brilliance. Six French New Wave directors — Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Daniel Pollet, Jean Douchet and Jean Rouch — came together for Paris Vu Par(1965), which had six contemporary stories set in the "City of Lights". RoGoPaG (1962) was a joint effort between Frenchman Godard and Italians Roberto Rossellini, Ugo Gregoretti and Pier Paolo Pasolini (incidentally, the film’s title was formed by taking the first one or two letters of the directors’ names). Both productions were interesting but not outstanding. The three heavyweights involved in New York Stories (1989) were Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola. Allen’s amusing story Oedipus Wrecks was the pick of the lot, while Scorsese’s Life Lessons and Coppola’s Life Without Zoe were just above average.
Each short film shows in its own way how the 9/11 attacks changed the lives of people worldwide. Nair tells the story of a missing Muslim youth who’s initially branded as a terrorist but later turns out to be a martyr who died while saving several lives. In Makhmalbaf’s film, an Afghan teacher tries in vain to make a class of children understand "what happened there", even as their parents build clay-brick shelters to protect themselves from American air raids. Ouedraogo’s bittersweet tale revolves around a youngster who believes he has seen the much-wanted Osama bin Laden in his village and dreams of winning the whopping reward. The wide range of perspectives and the variety of filmmaking styles have made 11’09"01 September 11 the perfect movie for a global audience. Taking a cue from this contemporary classic, top Hindi film directors ought to work together on an omnibus of tales about epoch-making events, such as the Partition or the India-Pakistan wars. Another idea can be to adapt the stories of legends like Premchand and Tagore for the big screen, akin to what Gulzar did for TV in the 1990s.
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Easily the most
significant and ambitious of these multi-director films is 11’09"01
September 11 (2002), for which 11 internationally acclaimed
filmmakers joined hands — Mira Nair (India), Samira Makhmalbaf
(Iran), Shohei Imamura (Japan), Amos Gitai (Israel), Ken Loach
(Britain), Claude Lelouch (France), Danis Tanovic
(Bosnia-Herzegovina), Idrissa Ouedraogo (Burkina Faso), Youssef
Chahine (Egypt), Sean Penn (USA) and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
(Mexico).