More on "Peepli [Live]"

I return briefly to my post on “Peepli [Live]”. I’ve just come across an interview with Peter Brook done a few years ago, in which he was fed questions by several theatre people and critics about his work and his ideas about theatre. The very first question put to him by a theatre director was, “Given the state of political unrest in Africa, is there an appropriate theatrical response?”

I’d like to quote part of his answer to this question because he it says succinctly about plays what I was struggling to say about the film’s approach to the problem of agrarian distress. He says, “It is quite clear that when one takes any political subject straight on the nose, one is in enormous danger of simplifying what everyone knows by heart from television and newspapers. Suppose we do a play about Iraq or genocide or Aids in Africa, it is very hard not to produce stereotype reactions. The only thing political theatre can do is open up contradictions by exposing the other side of an issue. And sometimes, by taking a subject from the past, we can awaken current concerns. Every real political play contains not only vibrant criticism of a ghastly situation. It's only complete if, at the same time, it evokes the possibility of something worth living for. Otherwise grumbling simply produces grumbling.”

I may not go with the last sentiment, because grumbling has a place in a society such as ours. But when the grumble ends once again with the obvious it doesn’t get us anywhere at all. In “Peepli [Live]” the end shows Natha as a construction worker in Mumbai. The contrast between where he once belonged and where he finds himself now is underlined in bold. Tall buildings go up before him as he sits disconsolately on a heap of rubble covered in the white dust of their construction. A caption tells us that X million farmers have migrated to the cities in the last Y decades. That’s sleight of hand. All those millions didn’t come because they’d lost their lands. They came and continue to come because that’s what industrialisation is all about and also because family holdings cannot sustain growing families for ever. Even if Natha had managed to keep his land, one of his sons would have had to migrate to the city. Are we trying to turn the clock back or should we be saying there will always be people who will choose to migrate to cities and that’s fine, but there should also be an assurance of survival for those who choose to stay back and till their land.

Circumstances being what they are, Natha might be allowed to see a silver lining in his present situation; to see that working hard and sending money home for the family was a better alternative to dying so they could live. It’s not the best life but it is work. Work is dignity. It is also an escape from the clutches of the local goonda politicians.

Of the many lovely touches in the film, one is the brief dream Natha has sleeping in the hut where he’s been dumped by his tormentors. He sees himself dressed in yellow silk riding a caparisoned horse. Perhaps a more realistic waking dream about having work and being productive could have put a little light in his eyes at the end of the film. Such an end would not have destroyed the “messages” the film-makers had already communicated about our cynical media and politicians and anti-poor systems of governance. But it would have given us a less maudlin view of migrants. They are poor, sure. They are exploited, sure. But on both counts less so than in the villages they come from. They are tough, these men and women who come to work in the cities. They have clear goals in life. They don’t sit around on rubble heaps inviting people to feel sorry for them.

[Live] but not alive

I saw “Peepli [Live]” two days ago. Here, first, is my head-view of the film.

My head says the film depicts the truth. How do I know that? Because I read stories and statistics about farmers’ deaths in the papers everyday and I hear television newscasters occasionally breaking news about them. It’s like breaking wind, the only way they can remain in good health they say.

My head tells me the film is right about politicians too. We read those stories too in the papers and hear television newscasters and talk show anchors etc etc.

My head tells me the film has its heart in the right place which, as all of us know, is the left place. The conditions of farmers are dire. In our entire 5,000 year cultural history we have not found a way to beat the rain at its game. In Girish Karnad’s “The Fire and the Rain”, highly placed brahmin pundits hold a huge, huge yadnya to bring rain. At the end the rain comes. So does Indra’s voice, from up above. These things happen in plays, stories, novels, myths being used as metaphors etc.

Some of us believe in the science of yadnyas. Our ancients knew things which modern man foolishly discards as blind faith. Yadnyas are performed today for rain and because we love religious shows. Since belief in ancient science is a matter of faith, we believe the yadnyas work. But they are not known to have brought rain, filled our water reservoirs or irrigated parched fields. So the farmers’ basic most serious affliction remains unaddressed. “Peepli [Live]” demonstrates that this is so.

It also demonstrates other things like the absurdity of government schemes that compensate families of farmers who have committed suicide but do nothing to prevent those suicides. While showing us such worthwhile things about our country and the way it is run, the film also entertains us with excellent dialogue, performances and robust though occasionally erratic camerawork.

Despite all of which, the film fails to engage our mind. The reason is plain. It holds up for our attention what we already know; and since we already know, the thing that is satirically displayed in the hope that the overdoing will somehow penetrate our calloused layers of information. The problem with satire is that there can be no hope of progression. Given how the film begins, we know how it will proceed and how it will end. Its predictability puts our minds to sleep.

Satire is anger’s tool and as cathartic as tears. Let us suppose for a moment that a viewer comes in with zero information baggage. He doesn’t read the papers, doesn’t watch television, doesn’t think. The film tells him all the things about farmers that he should know. If he is sympathetic, he goes away thinking, okay, but what can I do about it? If he is not, he says, wasted evening. They said it’s funny, but it’s not.

The people who are supposed to sit up and take notice, the media, politicians and administrators, have never claimed to be better than their portrayal in the film. So again, it tells them nothing that they don’t know.

Raw knowledge of how things are is not in short supply. Film-makers who wish to turn that knowledge into film must find stories that will grip our imagination, allowing us to discover a new way of looking at what we have always known. Stories as demonstrations of “reality” don’t do that.

Bank clerk to hero with a little help from Shivaji

I finally saw "Mee Shivaji Raje Bhosale boltoy". I had to find out what the buzz was all about. A 3.5 crore budget, three times the norm for Marathi films, people whistling, flinging money at the screen, booked out shows.

Lovely. But on what premise is this success based? On the premise that Marathis have been, and are being, wronged in their own State, particularly in its capital, Mumbai. The representative victim is one totally unbelievable character called Dinkar Bhosale. He is a bank clerk. Not the type we know who doesn't look up while you're standing before his window for a quarter of an hour and when he does, it's like you're a worm deserving to be crushed but he's saddled with this unreasonable job of being at your service.

This bank clerk gets shouted at, abused, ridiculed and pushed around by everybody from the Kolin in the fish market and Gujarati shirt shop owner to his South Indian boss and Marathi wife. He's also taken for a ride by other Marathis--BMC engineers, bureaucrats, politicians, and of course, the police because they are all in the pay of one Gujarati builder-cum-goonda, Ghosalia

Bhosale has a daughter who's 'n' times smarter than him. But when she auditions for a film she gets rejected because she's a Marathi. The director is of the opinion that a Marathi name in Hindi films is very down-market! If at that moment names like Nalini Jaywant, Shobhana, Nutan and Tanuja Samarth, Smita Patil, Urmila Matondkar and Madhuri Dixit whiz through your mind, let them whiz on. Forty years of political rhetoric have made the wronged man image of the Marathi manus a deeply cherished one.

The point of creating an unbelievable loser like Bhosale (till now I'd thought Devdas was the bench mark) is to show that Marathis are to blame for their plight. And the point of showing they are to blame for their plight is to show how they can recover their rights by giving it back as good as they get and putting the corrupt to shame. The point of burdening the totally inept, inadequate, unprepared Bhosale with the job of taking on the world is to bring Shivaji into the picture. It is his power alone that can put iron into Bhosale's (an by implication, other Marathis') jelly spine. All pepped up, Bhosale sallies forth. The corrupt cringe in the light of his moral fire. He delivers thundering speeches (clever dialogue by Sanjay Pawar); and when push comes to shove, he uses Shivaji's Bhavani sword (alleged to be in England) to wound the last bastion of the corrupt--Ghosalia. All the Marathis who've been bribed by him have already returned his petis and khokas in abject shame, and thumped their chests, echoing Bhosale's slogan "I'm proud to be a Maharashtrian". Bhosale is a public hero.

All's well that ends well. Bhosale's daughter opts out of the Hindi film world and does the safe thing-- she signs three Marathi films. With the signing amount she gets, her father fulfills his son's long-cherished dream of owning a bike. Fairy tale over.

The Hollywoodification of Bertolt Brecht

A few days ago I saw Fritz Lang's 1943 film "Hangmen also die". Bertolt Brecht is credited with scripting it. He is called 'Bert' Brecht in the titles. The great American gobbling trick. Gobble up identities. Gobble up cultures. Turn names from trousers into briefs.
The film keeps you riveted to your seat. The script is wound up tight. You don't notice the holes because you're catapulted over them. You are kept in suspense because you want to be in suspense--the delicious pleasure of not knowing when you are certain you'll soon know.
The acting is abominable. Brian Donlevy, as the assassin of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi Reich protector of German-occupied Prague is a non-starter. Heydrich was assassinated by Czech resistance fighters who parachuted down from a British plane. Keeping to its formula, Hollywood has replaced those proud and passionate fighters with a single hero. Fair enough. But why cast someone who walks and talks like a sleepwalker and is about as expressive as a smooth slate on which no word was every written? Aiding and abetting him is another blank slate, Anna Lee, who plays the daughter of a hostage. Her single expression for all emotions from fear to love is an open mouth and popping eyes.
But let's return to the script. Mr Brecht, was that really your doing? How could you have turned a people's fight into the heroics of a single individual? How could you have allowed his worth to outweigh the lives of the 400 hostages, all members of the resistance, who went to their deaths to keep him alive?
I turned to Brecht himself for an answer and found it on page 259 of his "Journals 1934-1955". Below is one of his many entries on writing for the film.
16 OCT 42
Not a bad week, that: Stalingrad held out, Wilkie in Chunking demanded a second front. US planes joined the attack on Germany--and Wexley and I are working 'to the best of our talents and ability' on the script of TRUST THE PEOPLE (our title). Just now, right before the shooting, Lang hauled poor Wexley into his office and screamed at him behind closed doors that he wants to make a 'Hollywood picture' and shits on scenes that show the people etc. The change in the man, once $700,000 is in the offing, is remarkable. He sits with all the airs of a dictator and old movie hand behind his boss-desk, collecting 'surprises', little bits of suspense, tawdry sentimental touches and falsehoods and takes 'licenses' for the box-office. For an hour or two--I am naturally condensing this--as I sit in my treacherously pretty garden and force myself to read a detective story, I feel the disappointment and terror of the intellectual worker who sees the product of his labours snatched away and mutilated."
Poor Mr Brecht. You should have known this would happen when they called you Bert. Anyway, the good news was that the money you earned from "Hangmen also die", enabled you to write "The Visions of Simone Machard", "Schweik in the Second World War" and your adaptation of John Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi". Not your best plays perhaps, but all yours, nevertheless.