Pornographia: where sorrows and vulgarities merge

A beautiful movie: thoroughly touching. But why ‘Pornographia’?

Pornography is not always vulgar but the first impression of the word usually brings to our mind of something that is vulgar. Conversely, the first impression of movie ‘Pornografia’ is bound to throw us into confusion: it doesn’t consist of anything that even remotely resembles our common understanding of pornography and yet in a warped sense it exhibits what is more vulgar than the most obscene pornography.

Pornographia is about the loss or rather, death of innocence during the World War II. While such a subject have been approached by many directors at different periods of time and from different angles, what sets apart Jan Jakub Kolski is the way he enters into minds of the characters in wartime Poland: effortlessly and expeditiously, without any loud graphic reference to the horrendous violence going on around the world during the time of the world war. There was still a more abysmal violence crippling the minds of people.  Beyond nations there were the ‘people’. Of course the credit goes to a large extent to the acting of the protagonist: Frederik ( Krzysztof Majchrzak ) and to the author of the book, on whose story the screenplay is based: Witold Gombrowicz. Nonetheless, a movie is a baby of the director.

Fear, rage and helplessness, winds up in a refuge in mockery, play and indifference. The youth balefully gets spent. While some people lose their conscience to their fear, like Hippolit (Krzysztof Globisz) , some escape their fear by finding temporary excitements, like Witold ( Adam Ferency ) and some become victims of their grief and rage, like Frederick. The silence that can be felt throughout the movie, even during and between the music, is the silence of weakness or perhaps of the inevitability. Everyone is in a trap and only flying for the moment, hopelessly waiting for a chance to be spared and yet the end is to be the same: dying like the moths, inside the lamp or outside, doesn’t matter. The bug of blasphemy doesn’t spare the most sacred; it’s there crawling inside the church and even on the cross as it tries to sanctify a death. It is crawling in the peoples’ ebbing consciences. Even death cannot prevent one from the entire abhorrence of fear turning into a sinister sickness. The silence signifies the incipient gloom. It also signifies the invariant humdrum of a usual day, war or not, for instances- the accidental death of Amelia (Irena Laskowska) for a piece of cake; Frederick losing his voice temporarily and the flings of the younger generation.  

Krzysztof Majchrzak plays his role beautifully: raged or aggrieved or mocking, the sadness hangs about him like his own ghost and in that whistle. The whistle, in Maria’s (Grazyna Blecka-Kolska ) words- is very happy and sad at the same time. Yes, the title music (to the credit of Zygmunt Konieczny ) is the heart of the movie: touching where all the vulgarities lose what is sad beyond them. While everyone in the story was waiting to be a victim of the Nazis, Frederick already was. His affinity for the bread even in the presence of ample amount of it shows certain insecurity: the result of a noxious hunger I presume. Though not very pronounced for an unobservant eye and that is what, I believe, is the intention of the director: to allow the character his space, Majchrzak took his cue shrewdly. The moment of resemblance of a face to that of his (Frederick’s) child’s is more momentous than any life-saving miracle for him. Besides in the wartime, a miracle itself is another mockery. The last shot is evidence enough.

Cinematically, I won’t enunciate it as one at its best; Kolska could have done better. Nevertheless, he gives us some beautiful moments, for instance the first (after the introductions) and the last shots: the former already justifying the title of the film, where the music is in complete contradiction to what is being displayed, mocking the mundaneness of tragedy in this modern era and the latter, a sharp cut, with its slickly turn from the vulgar to the sad is one of the best shots that the cinema industry must have ever witnessed. There’s also an element of surprise in the close up shots where Frederick’s senses get alert; profitably depicting that on the face of the war, senses (instincts in this case) were turning pale too.

All in all, the film is a must watch for any cinephile. If one doesn’t wish to watch the whole film, one can just listen to the soundtrack : it’s soulful and tells a story in its own language.  

Forrest Gump: Who's Stupid?

Forrest Gump is not a novelty anymore, as it had been during its time. The 1990s were pretty much new to advanced film editing techniques and hence a film like Forrest Gump could win over the audience. Such a movie is likely to go unnoticed today. It faced its share of criticisms during its time, so I think I’ll loosen up a bit on that front.

The movie is not compelling enough to persuade me into watching it for a second time, but it is, despite all its fallacies, a touching one.

Can’t really comprehend what Zemeckis wanted to convey with a three decade long historical backdrop in the film, but to me, he certainly succeeded in questioning the very foundations of ‘heroism’ (albeit conjectural deficiencies)  and also in putting forth the actual state of affairs in the United States of America. Lieutenant Dan’s wheelchair with its label says it all: ‘America- Our Kind of Place’. An excellent shot I would say. The frame of the shot is directed in a manner that the intention of the director comes clear to the audience. America is a cripples’ place (with all the hopelessness we feel in the Vietnam War, Hippie Culture, and prevalence of AIDs) and yet, it’s also a place where cripples learn to get recognition. They fit in, in some or the other way. There are ample of toys, to play with, while they wait for death to arrive.  

The only thing in the movie that made a difference for me; that affected me overwhelmingly is the stupidity of Forrest Gump. Tom Hank’s definitely deserves the credit that he has been given for his acting in this film. Yes, he appeared stupid to me too. I wouldn’t run away from battle grounds. I have some principles. I have some ambitions. He was stupid because all he learnt was to listen to his heart; all he learnt was to love. His heart chose Jenny. Hence, she said ‘run’ and he ran. He kept running. Less stupid people listen to their minds: turn sceptical and calculated; look left and right before crossing roads; continue living under the misguided notion of being Gods, only to die one day.

We all die one day. It is an organism’s destiny, if there is one. However, those who live their lives listening to their hearts often shape destinies for people who live listening to their minds. For instance, Forrest Gump shaped it for Lieutenant Dan, it seems.  

Maybe being stupid is not being naive; naivety is still cleverness yet-to-take-birth in the wake of awareness through learning; but stupidity results from a mysterious incapability of learning to act as required by a situation, despite awareness.

Forrest Gump was stupid. By being stupid, he ran into all kinds of accidents; suffered from them and lived through them and thus, made his destiny. Many of us, by the virtue of not being stupid, bereft us from running into accidents and curb our chances of seeing myriad facets of life. Do we make our destiny, after all?

In sensing that destiny is perhaps a little of both: unintended accidents and deliberate action, Gump shows us that he is no less intelligent than we lesser stupid ones. He is just stupid. Maybe it is what required in this age, where all sense of right-wrong dissolves in over-rationalization: a little bit of stupidity; a little bit of listening to the heart.

It’s not the movie but it’s the story and the way it was projected which shall be remembered, for ages to come. 

Journeying...

Movie: Highway (2014)

{also very briefly on Queen (2014), for a comparison}   

 Jugni rukh peepal da hoi

Jis nu pooje ta har koi

Jisdi phasal kise na boyi

Ghar bhi rakh na sake koi 

[The firefly (here, fiery woman) has an air of the peepal,

which is worshiped by everyone

which is planted by no one

Nor can one nurture it at home] 

Nor can one nurture it at home... this particular sentence, for me, arrests the essence of the movie. Highway reminds me of Agnes Varda’s most acclaimed and often misinterpreted movie: Sans toit ni loi (literal trans. ‘without a roof or rule’; internationally known as ‘Vagabond’). Most cinephiles, who are acquainted with both the movies would question- how? How indeed? Well, as a woman, what I see in both the films is a lost woman searching for the twin; yet neither expects the search to complete nor wishes for a final destination. In the former, the woman is aided by destiny in the guise of a kidnaper and in the latter the woman is aided by destiny in the guise of her belief in complete freedom. Judgements and conclusions are not important; the journey is. The highway is important, because when all is gone, the highway stays.

It is perhaps, first in the history of mainstream Bollywood movies, that a film has been able to portray a woman without entailing the story with a strong feminist ethos. Imtiaz Ali’s story-telling is, indeed, commendable, as is his direction! Highway is the story of every conscious woman, for a woman who is awake cannot be nurtured (read cultured) at home; for a woman who feels the nature inside her bonding with the nature outside her is on the verge of ‘becoming’. This woman is free. Veera (played by Alia Bhatt) is the representation of this woman. Veera’s obsession with nature, wanting to feel it (her radiant smile as she climbs and hugs the tree; her ecstatic expression when she feels the air, the grass, the water, the sand; her hysterical laughter ringing along the rushing stream); her wanting to sink into its mystery, with her eyes often withdrawn from the this-world and looking into the vastness, into the horizon, into the other-world, shows a woman’s subjective self-other relationship with nature, without bringing into play the ‘man’ element, which is usually depicted as the ‘other’ and yet beautifully, very beautifully Ali demonstrates how a man and a woman complement each other; how culture and nature come together, how one is inseparable from the other.

Highway, for me, does not end in Stockholm syndrome or in layman terms, in a romance. I have had my share of reading romances with the so called Stockholm-syndrome, wherein the Saxon princess falls madly, deeply and irrevocably in love with her Norman kidnapper and fights her way to him. Ah! No! Highway is not a saccharine saga. It is a romance nonetheless, but one which has more than a man, a woman and a story. Highway is also the point of confederacy of cultures; of liquid boundaries. Even when the kidnappers carry Veera in the car along the deserted roads, all we can hear is the folk music of the places, where one would usually expect some abysmal suspense filled tune and all we can see are the mesmerizing views of trees, hills, herds of goats, gateways, vehicles, towns, dams, snow. Highway makes us look beyond politics; beyond egos. It makes us aware of beauty; of poetry. 

Randeep Hooda justifies the character of Mahabir admirably. Mahabir isn’t actually the tyrant, or rather, he is the human in every tyrant and with Veera the human peeps out. This is where they complement each other: the other extracts the other.  As a woman, I wouldn’t mind confessing that had I been in Veera’s place, I would have felt the same for Mahabir as did Veera; that Mahabir is wise and lovable shows in how he reacts to his gang leader, when he says- ‘Kutto toh kutto ki maut hi maregi ho, jaisi zindagi maut bhi waisi hi hogi’ (trans. - a dog will die the death of a dog, the way life has been, so shall be death) in a no-nonsense manner. Mahabir did not live in any illusion. His strength of character was what Veera drawn to and what gave Veera the key to her own liberation. The existence of Mahabir gave Veera the hope of the existence of her world.

Surprisingly, under Imitiaz Ali’s direction a non-significant, often taken for granted object surfaces with immense symbolic density: Veera’s sandals. No doubt he meant to use them as a prop and he meant to make a coming-of-age film but what is surprising is his usage of them to presage a transformation in her. They are used allegorically as moments of departures in Veera’s life from bondage to freedom to blasé, before the actual attitudinal transformation is noticeable in her. The feeling-in-the-bones that it provides definitely add more romance to this romance. Esp. for the shot of the dawn, where the sandals appear abandoned in the vastness of the desert and the peacock calls at a distance, hats off to Ali!

The film has no unnecessary hysterics, as is expected in films dealing with abduction. The emotions are not exaggerated and the dialogues, unlike most Bollywood movies, are kept limited to where they are necessary. The only fault, in my eyes, is the incorporation of the shots of the child artists, esp. the child Veera and the last shot before the ending, which I suppose acted only as interruptions to an otherwise beautifully flowing narrative. The songs complemented the narration to a T! Simply beautiful songs! A.R Rahman hardly leaves any chance to be disappointed in his composition and on top of that they were sung by singers like the Nooran Sisters and Sunidhi Chauhan!

On the other hand, Vikas Bahl’s movie Queen (another coming-of-age movie of 2014) which explicitly deals with the concept of ‘freedom of woman’ merely appears as an extension of the feminist rhetoric and nothing else.  The movie might have been a hit in the box office, but I still wonder if the kind of transformation that Rani adopts is possible or even necessary for feeling ‘free’. The definition of freedom is positively at stake, for all we find in the movie are judgements and conclusions and not the journey.

That Highway flopped in box office is good news. The hits in India are often the ones with no sensibility towards reality or aesthetic. Highway is in fact one of the ‘bestest ever’ movies I have had a chance to watch.