Cinema of substance

Ervell E. Menezes, who was on the National Film Awards jury, recounts his experience

THE recent National Awards saw Tamil film Kanchivaram, directed by Priyadarshan, bagging the Best Feature Film award for 2007 and deservedly so. The awards were delayed pending a court case and the 2008 awards will be announced in a few months.

Projecting the struggle of a humble silk weaver from the Kanchi community (Kanchivaram is where pure silk comes from), it dwells on his influence with the Marxist movement and that takes him to the depths of despair. Prakash Raj also won the Best Actor award for his unforgettable performance.

Of the 90-odd films in the running for the award, there were scarcely 20, which measured up to the festival standards. More than 50 per cent of these were verbose, long-winding and devoid of cinematic excellence. The other Tamil films were ordinary and so were those from Karnataka and Bengal, with Gulabi Talkies and Ballygunj Court being the exceptions.

The other winners were Chak De! India for the Best Popular Film with wholesome entertainment and Taare Zameen Par the best film for family welfare. The Indira Gandhi award for the Best First Film of a director went to Frozen and the Nargis Dutt award for the Best Film on National Integration went to Dharm. The pre-award lobbying was a tussle between Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par and Shah Rukh Khan’s Chak De India, both Bollywood blockbusters but this could well have been promos or wishful thinking, which eventually did not count.

Veteran filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan won the Best Director award for his Naalu Penangal (Four Women), which takes a close look at the sexual dalliances, or the lack of them, experienced in marriages in a manner quite opposite to Lady Chatterley’s Lover. In typical style, Adoor dwells deep into the psyche of these four women but his "Prostitute" and ‘Spinster" really stand out. Nandita Das was outstanding as the spinster but all his artistes were extremely natural and looked like the characters they portrayed, not actors.

Narrated with the judicious use of flashback, director Priyadarshan begins Kanchivaram with weaver Vengadam (Prakash Raj) being sent on parole to see his daughter who has met with a serious accident. The rickety State Transport bus chugs along and with it the viewer is given an insight into Vengadam’s colourful past. How he had dreams of weaving a silk sari for his daughter and therefore stole silk yarn for the purpose. It forms the basis of this moving human drama. But fate is against him and he is forced to take that last drastic fatal step. Sorrow enters the soul like an iron and the impact is totally shattering.

Shah Rukh Khan’s Chak De India is centred on Khan, an Olympic hockey player accused of betraying his country, takes up a coaching assignment for the Indian women’s hockey team and does an excellent job making them forget their petty differences and welding them into a victorious unit, the familiar Bollywood formula notwithstanding,

Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par brings out the plight of a dyslexic child whose parents are not aware of the child’s ailment and it takes a sympathetic teacher (Aamir Khan) to come to his aid and rescue with a very sensitive portrayal.

Frozen is about folks living in the Himalayans near the Chinese border. It tells one what it is to live in these inhuman conditions where loneliness is the order of the day. It is in black and white with colour coming in only at the end but the camerawork is quite outstanding. It virtually speaks. Not surprisingly, Shankar Raman won the Best Cinematogrpher award for it.

The Marathi films were good and the Best Child Actor award went to Sharad Govekar for his role in Tingya, a young boy passionately fond of his old bull, which is about to be sold. It is set against the backdrop of farmer suicides, which was a major happening that year. Another excellent Marathi film that did not pick any award was Bipin Nadkarni’s Avedhe Se Aathaal, a story of broken marriages. Centred on Bunty whose mother is a bank manager, it is only 20 minutes into the film that one is aware of these problems. The mother is sociable and friendly with a doctor who is also divorced and so Bunty is torn between his two parents but is more attached to his father who is projected as irresponsible and it is not long before Bunty moves to Kolkata to live with his dad. But here too there are problems. May be the final solution in a boarding school is not the best one but Nadkarni seems to have run out of ideas. Still, his overall treatment is quite admirable.

The Best Malayalam film Shyamaprasad’s Ore Kadal (The Sea Within) is a deeply moving love story of a middle class housewife Deepti, who is irresistibly drawn to Nathan, a radical intellectual. As the affair grows in intensity and passion, Deepti develops a guilt complex and this drives her almost to madness. It is an excellent portrayal by Meera Jasmine and it came close to winning her the Best Actress Award.

Girish Kasarawalli’s Gulabi Talkies, the Best Kannada film, is a very moving tale of a Muslim widow Gulabi, the village midwife. But her passion for cinema is almost matchless and hence she is provided by one of her well-wishers with a dish antenna. All is well, until scandal enters her life and she is forced to leave the village. But her story is like a red herring, the bottom line is the effects of globalisation and the impact of "no ban" in international waters, which would adversely affect the fishing community.

To appease these fishermen, the Karnataka Government distributed free TV sets to them. Gulabi Talkies had the usual Kasarawalli flow but the other efforts were quite disappointing, especially Moggina Jade and Chillipili Hakkigalu both long-winded and boring films. Moggina Jade is about a little girl waiting anxiously for her jasmine necklace (given to signify puberty). But the telltale drama is both uninteresting and unedited. So is Chillipili Hakkigalu, about ecology. But the verbose narrative is sure to put even children (for whom it is meant) to sleep. That veteran author and filmmaker Girish Karnad should have taken part in the lead role is even more unforgivable.

Feroz Abbas Khan’s Gandhi, My Father won the Special Jury award for its depiction of the darker side of the Father of the Nation. Whether his son Hari was a rotter or not is debatable but it seems to do justice the subject, however unpalatable it may be. Darshan Jariwala won the Best Supporting Actor award for his depiction and Shefali Shah for her portrayal of Kasturba. There is a particularly touching scene where Hari meets Gandhi and Kasturba on a station and as the crowds chant ‘Gandhi ki Je’, Hari’s shrill cry Ba Kasturba ki Je is drowned.

So much for the serious films but the most delightful comedy was Jab We Met with Shahid Kapur underplaying the lead role. But the only award it could muster was for playback female singer Shreya Ghosal. Ballygunj Court, about the plight of senior citizens, got the best Bengali film award and Periyar, a film on social reformer E.V. Ramaswamay Naikar, won the best Tamil film award. Regrettably there were no films from Assam (attention Janu Barua), Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Manipur.

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