APOLOGY

It has been some time since I have published anything on this blog. For that, I must apologize to everyone, with all sincerity. I have an excuse though. I have recently relocated to Hyderabad, and I am living in a hostel. However, new reviews will be put up very soon. Tentatively speaking, I will be reviewing "The Other Bolyen Girl", "Werkmeister Harmonies", "THere Will be Blood", and probably "Batman: Dark Knight". Keep in touch. Adieu for now.
BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI

Fracture (2007) by Gregory Hoblitt; Rating: 2 in 5.

May be I am not the best person to review a film like “Fracture” (directed by Gregory Hoblitt). It is a crime thriller cum courtroom drama, and I solved the mystery within the first seventeen minutes of the movie! So, may be I am not the right person, maybe someone a little more gullible would have liked it better. From the very outset, it proved to be an inept thriller; but, even more disastrously, it desperately tried to make everything look very, very smart. The result is a pitiable show of ineptitude.

The plot is simple: Ted Crawford (played by Anthony Hopkins) is a very rich aeronautics engineer, who is married to a much younger wife, Jennifer (Embeth Davidtz). Jennifer, surprise, surprise, is having an affair with a police officer named Rob Nunally (Billy Burke). Rob does not know her last name, where she lives; they call each other ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’! You can see that the trash has already begun to pile up! Well, obviously, Ted comes to know about his wife’s infidelity, and kills her. Willy Beecham is the state attorney; he is the I’m-so-cool-and-the-best-lawyer-in-the-world hero. Throughout the rest of the movie, we see a cat-&-mouse thing going on between Ted and Willy; and at the end, the hero, obviously, wins. The whole plot hinges upon one little secret, a very obvious secret; there is no psychological angle, no character formation, nothing. After the murder, we see our hero and others scratch their heads for almost two-thirds of the entire length of the movie. Meanwhile, Ted, played by Anthony Hopkins, tries his enormous best to drag the film on by making the shallow eccentricity of his character believable. The solution is revealed five minutes before the end, and, by then, if you haven’t solved the case, well, buy more Agatha Christie-s and study hard.
The amount of juvenile, puerile stuff present in this movie is completely mind-boggling. I have already mentioned about that ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ thing; there is a scene where a judge tells our hero “thank you for being so concerned about the dignity of the court, double o’ seven”! I mean, give me a break! The fundamental problem with this movie is it does not know what it really wants to be; --- a courtroom thriller, a Bond offshoot, a glamorous Dolce & Gabbana spectacle, or a Hannibal Lecter spin-off. Willy Beecham is particularly trashy: he mumbles, makes fluid hand gestures with half-closed eyes, and smiles as if he is Brad Pitt playing a womanizer. It is so disheartening to see a somnambulating, overgrown munchkin trying to be honest and intelligent all the time. And then, Willy and his would-be boss at a corporate law film, Nikki (played by Rosamund Pike), gets into an affair that is one of the worst love affairs I have ever seen on the screen, and that includes B-movies. Willy, with his half-moon smile, goes to a party, is immediately seduced by none other than his boss (!), manages to look at her (probably her assets) all the time during an opera or some recital (shows the taste these characters have got), and by the end of the evening they are in love. Without one damn meaningful conversation, two corporate lawyers are in love! And we tend to blame Bollywood here! The whole episode of Nikki and Willy stinks of shit, is completely inadequate, and utterly unnecessary for the plot. Willy Beecham does not feel like a lawyer; his competency is not made very clear too. All he does is to mumble, look perpetually astonished, give seductive grins, and scratch his head most of the time. Ryan Gosling, the Prince of Indy films, is hopelessly out of water; it seems he was told to show all the mannerisms he can show within the given timeframe. Rosamund Pike is an ex-Bond girl, which is not a good thing for a serious actress; I haven’t seen her in any other movie (although I am impressed by the fact that she is a skilled cellist, and can speak French and German fluently. I am obsessed with cello), so I cannot possibly judge her completely, but in this film, she plays the dumbest of ice queens. Over all, the film-makers exhibit a preposterous overconfidence in believing that does not matter how incredibly inane their characters, dialogues, and plots are, people will still be seduced by the charm of glossy style and big names.
The film has a notched-up ambience of a particularly glossy television thriller, which is not surprising given the director is a well-established television director. The film lacks the gritty mise-en-scene that could have created a more authentic cinematic ambience. Instead, what we face is a hopeless jungle of tasteless decors. To heighten up his shallow eccentricity, Anthony Hopkins’s character is shown building a certain sort of entrapment made of shining brass (it’s a kind of toy where little glass balls keep rotating around meandering tracks due to their momentum); it adorns his home, office, it is everywhere. Hopkins poses menacing through the grid of the toy, obviously reminding us of his famous refection in the Riddley Scott film “Hannibal”. Well, I can give you a film that uses the same entrapment, although a cheaper and more believable version, far more effectively; it is called “Blown Away”, it showcases the histrionic talents of two really good actors ------ Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones ------- by setting them against each other. The film wastes serious talents in no-good side roles: someone as good as David Straithairns and Fiona Shaw are seen in roles without resolution or growth. By making the villain reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter and by roping Hopkins in the role, the makers (presumably) tried to cash in on the Hannibal magic; -- that fails too. One of the reasons why Hannibal Lecter was so mysteriously believable and completely scary was the small details that defined his character. Lecter was a gourmand, he read Marcus Aurelius (Meditation; I can bet most of the people who saw the films never read it), he specifically preferred Glenn Gould’s recital of J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations (how many of you are aware of the significance of this allusion?), he quoted serious poetry. What was scary was not Lecter’s cannibalism, but his astounding refinement. On the other hand, Ted in “Fracture” is a character you cannot pin down; despite his refined behavior and suggested brilliance, what we see him doing is to build a toy, finding cracks on eggs, or on an X-ray photo. Of course, Anthony Hopkins does what he does best: he under-acts. He is not only one of the living greats, he is a rare breed of actors who believes not in method acting but in proper usage of dialogues, a descendant of classic British stage actors such as Lawrence Olivier. Still, an actor can do this far and not beyond that. This film fails despite Sir Hopkins.

I told you at the beginning: I am not the best person to review this film. When you solve a film’s mystery even before it has begun, it becomes very hard to praise the film nonetheless. However, the film does not even work at the level where characters take on a believable nature, and we start to feel empathetic. The script is sketchy, the characters are overdone, and the mystery is inane. What is surprising then is the fact that this film has received a few good reviews here and there. I would have liked to see how Roger Ebert would have rated this; however, due to a broken hip-bone, he has not been able to do so. With a gesture of homage towards him, I will borrow a few of his famous words and say “This Movie Sucks!”
                                                   BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI

The Tracy Fragment(2007-08) by Bruce McDonald; Rating: 4 in 5

“The Tracy Fragment” is a very demanding film; you would have to completely commit yourself to its cause. Most of you will invariably find it irritating. Some will say it is an unwatchable film. I will say it is a very brave and a pretty good film. I liked it; I was challenged by it. By now, you might be interested: why is it ‘unwatchable’ or ‘irritating’?

The movie not only follows a scrambled chronology and fragmented narrative (is that surprising anymore?), it uses split-screen on virtually every frame. The result is a challenging visual kaleidoscope: the viewer effectively faces as many as eight different images at once [watch the pictures here to get an idea]. It demands an active participation too: you would have to piece the fragments together and create a meaning out of it. It is undeniable that most viewers will not be prepared to face such a challenge; some will ask why they should even try. Well, I can give you an answer, it will be up to you whether you accept this or not. See, we all have different tastes of books, -- given a chance, some will read Dickens while I will read Joyce. Now, I cannot really criticize someone for choosing Dickens over Joyce (however, if one chooses Mills & Boons or Anne Rice over Joyce, I will accuse him/her of puerile taste); I can only tell him/her that he/she is missing something really great. Sometimes, to experience great things, you need to first cross difficult hurdles. It holds true to all art forms, including cinema. There are levels of film-watching: you have to graduate from one to another, just like school. You may refuse to try; the one that will lose out is you. However, a more relevant question is whether the film is worth that much of attention. This is a vital question, and we will come to that later.

Although “The Tracy Fragment” uses split-screen throughout its 77 minutes, it is not as maddeningly art-house as Andy Warhol’s “Chelsea Girls” proved to be. It has a palpable story, characters, and events. The film is a cinematic monologue delivered by the protagonist, 15-year old Tracy Berkowitz (played by the one-and-only Ellen Page). The fragmented narrative and the split-screen technique are analogous to the literary strategy of Stream-of-Consciousness. The film does not differentiate between the truths from the lies or exaggerations Tracy is fabricating, and leaves the decision to the viewer. For example, Tracy’s parents seem a bit theatrical and too cruel to be true, but then, it might be the way Tracy is projecting them. Every image is subjective here; they can be interpreted in thousand ways. But, before we go any further, I will quote the gist of the plot from Wikipedia ------ “15-year-old Tracey Berkowitz is naked under a tattered shower curtain at the back of a bus, looking for her little brother Sonny, who thinks he's a dog. Tracey's journey leads us into the dark underbelly of the city, into the emotional cesspool of her home, through the brutality of her high school (because she is flat-chested, everybody calls her “It”. ---Author.), the clinical cat and mouse games with her shrink and her soaring fantasies of Billy Zero - her boyfriend and Rock 'n' Roll savior. Her travels also put her in contact with the seedier inhabitants of the city. Like Lance, her would-be savior who ultimately puts her life in jeopardy. Tracey's stories begin to intertwine truth with lies, and hope with despair as we move closer to the truth of Sonny's disappearance.” I am quoting from Wikipedia here because it almost gives you no concrete inkling about what the film might be, whereas, I often tend to spoil a bit too much information here. The film is an adaptation from the novel of the same name by Maureen Medved (she wrote the script too). However, veteran Canadian Indy maverick Bruce McDonald makes something purely cinematic out of an evidently average teenage story. By his split-screen narrative strategy, McDonald, to a large extent, manages to eschew catharsis; what interests more is the movement of Tracy’s psyche than the tragedy of her life (as she herself is responsible for most of them). However, the biggest weakness of the film lies in its weak script.

Even the innovative narrative structure and brilliant acting fails to hide the paucity of good script material. The basic story is all too common, with embellishments typical of those teenager-y books that the young ones prefer so much. There are certain episodes in the film -------- like the episode with a crow, and where Tracy encounters a druggy woman who claims she has been robbed -------- that are completely unnecessary and not brilliant in itself. Some try to establish a completely uncalled-for and trashy sympathy for the main character. Evidently, these weaknesses stem from the script (can you deny a novelist who is also writing the script?); but, still by large, despite the occasional MTV-ish-ness, the film-maker manages to overcome such puerility through his cinematic narrative (didn’t Godard once say that bad novels are exceptionally good material for good cinema?). What we confront on the screen is a kaleidoscope of mental-images (not images of mental state, but an image that functions as explanatory conjunctions like “like”, “because”, “as” etc. A simple portrayal of mental state would have been affection-image or action-image) that reveals the complexity of psyche, the terrible game that goes on inside us between guilt and self-delusion. The film does not present a closured meaning, but offers us free interpretations. In this respect, this is an oppositional cinema that challenges the ‘let-me-tell-you-a-story’ tradition of classical Hollywood films. It is extremely brave in its oppositional nature; more films like this might mean the ultimate redemption from the despicable redundancy of contemporary mainstream films. It is a flawed film, but it is worthy of judicious applause and appreciation.

Another weak point is the ending. It is hard to end a film like this, and the ending does seem a bit simple, and quite inadequate. Again, we must blame the script.

There is something deeply obnoxious about this film. Except Tracy, almost every other character is blown a bit too large. A linear reading will come to the conclusion that the film fails to portray the characters believably. But look closely, and you will realize that whatever you are seeing is the projection of Tracy’s mind, tainted by her angst, frustrations, and attitudes. Nothing that you see onscreen is just what you see, but a hint at that thing that lurks at the background, that what is not on the screen. It is a game you have to play with this film; without the game, you will not grasp a thing. I truly enjoyed playing it.

The film is almost entirely shot with handheld HD and 35mm cameras; the color scheme is largely blue and gray, with a few, occasional bursts of orange and red. The wintry mise-en-scene is very, very bleak, so bleak that it might make your heart feel like a particularly heavy stone. The shooting for this film was done in only about 19 days, but the post-production (mainly editing) went on for nearly nine months! To achieve the kaleidoscopic effect, McDonald employed three editors who contributed their individual versions that were then integrated into the split-screen frames. The background score is especially worth a mention. Scored by the Canadian Indy rock group Broken Social Scene, the soundtrack features Peaches, The FemBots, Rose Melberg, and a particularly beautiful track by Patti Smith.

There are two things that work for this movie, --- the director, Bruce McDonald, and the lead actor, Ellen Page. I know I am repeating my statements here, and you might think I am a gormless fan of her, but Ellen Page is a frightening genius. She is only twenty-one, and already she has made at least three movies that stand their ground only because Page has triumphantly managed to carry them through (Hard Candy, Juno, The Tracy Fragments, and I have heard that she has given yet another amazing performance in the film “An American Crime”). I am challenging you; --- show me another actress in last ten years who has managed to accomplish what Page has managed to do. When most female actors look to do Hollywood teen comedies, and so-called soulful ones, she has bravely got into the world of Indy film-making, and has been creating strong, dynamic characters that go through the hell-est of hells. Even in Juno, I noticed something flinty, cut-off-thy-balls in her eyes; ----- it seems she is hell-bent on taking up the most impossible of challenges she can possibly find. Not aided by the evidently weak script, she puts every ounce of her soul into the character of Tracy. Watch her scowl, growl, curse, cry, deliver deadpan monologues, and watch how subtly she conveys anguished guilt. There is something of the young Brando in her: the sheer force of their performances is enough to take your breath away. No one can predict the vicissitudes of fate, but if she manages to go at this rate, she will surely be hailed as one of the greatest of all time. She is trying new things too; --- after this impressive bunch of angst-ridden teen characters, she has signed up to portray Jane Eyre, an obvious attempt to venture into more nuanced and understated acting. She is already by far the best actress of her generation, even when we keep in mind such talented ones like Natalie Portman and Julia Stiles. Hopefully, Hollywood would not be too ‘aroused’ by her; she is not a ‘beauty’ by any standards. Good for us.

This film opened the Panorama section of the 57th Berlinale, and it gathered mixed applause from critics at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. It is being distributed in USA by THINKFilms, and was released on May 9, 2008. “The Tracy Fragments” is also revolutionary in one aspect; right after its theatrical release, the film-makers released the rush footages of the film on the net so that viewers can download them and edit them into their own films. This is a first, and obviously it will meet a lot of paranoia from critics over-worried about authorship. However, I personally feel it is a great move, a truly brave move that acknowledges the importance of viewer participation in building cinematic narratives, and happily affirms the multiplicity of the medium. Truly, “The Tracy Fragments” is a worthy postmodern (I am using this word as a time-frame as well as an epistemological era) film, despite its faults. I am happy I have watched this film, and I will hope (however vainly) for more such brave and honest experiments.

I will award this film a 4, its weak points being the script, the conclusion, and slight slips that hurt.

In my previous entry, I was talking about the advent of a new genre. The significance of films like “The Tracy Fragments” lays in the fact that the filmmakers are finally liberating this genre from the iron grip of Hollywood. There is tremendous potential in this genre, and it might prove to be a refreshing change for world cinema (as I have commented before in the entry about “Elephant”).

In my next entry, I will be reviewing “Fracture” (Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling).
                                                            BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI

Paranoid Park (2007) by Gus Van Sant; Ratings: 4 & 1/2 in 5

"Dude, I don’t think I’m ready for Paranoid Park.”

“Hey, nobody is ever ready for Paranoid Park.”
                                        -----PARANOID PARK, GUS VAN SANT.

If you are expecting plot, suspense, story, conclusion, analysis, curious dialogues, don’t ever watch Gus Van Sant. He eschews all narrative conventions that he thinks are redundant, and what remains is purely, dazzlingly cinematic. His recent movies ( “Gerry”, “Elephant”, “Last Days”, “Paranoid Park”) are pure cinemas, and cinemas that are unmistakably his own. America has seldom seen such a strong auteur film-maker in recent years, and it pays far less attention to his genius than what he deserves. Van Sant started as a major member of the Queer Cinema movement (“Drugstore Cowboys”, “My Private Idaho”), then had a brief and eventful foray at Hollywood, where he made one Oscar-winning film (Good Will Hunting), and managed to make an absolute shot-by-shot, angle-by-angle remake of Hitchcock’s “Psycho” that proved to be the most mordant joke anyone ever cracked at Hollywood’s practice of making remakes and so-called ‘adaptations’ (the studios and majority of the critics did not enjoy the joke at all; people with power are exceptionally touchy about their skins!). Predictably, Hollywood threw him out after that. What followed is the second phase of Van Sant’s film-making; taking a little something-s from a diverse array of influences ranging from Tarkovsky, Belá Tarr to Cinema Verité documentaries, he created a style permanently his own. His ‘Death’ trilogy (“Gerry”, “Elephant”, and “Last Days”) has been one of the major cinematic discoveries of the last decade. “Elephant” won the Palm d’Or at Cannes [for details, check the review of this film published on this blog]. “Paranoid Park”, written (loosely based on a novel), directed and edited by Gus Van Sant, is a companion-piece to “Elephant”. It has won the 60th Anniversary Award at 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Although not as overwhelming and major as “Elephant”, it is still a small, beautiful, and original film that almost forces its viewers into a hallucinating, tranquil trance.

“Paranoid Park” is visually stunning, and I am understating here. It has the barest minimum of a plot: in Portland, Oregon, a teenager, called Alex (played by Gabe Nevins), goes to a skateboard park called the “Paranoid Park” (which is the Mecca for all Portland skateboarders), meets a freight-train-hopping guy called ‘scratch’, takes a ride on a freight train, when a security guard intervenes, he hits him with the skateboard, which causes the guard to fall under a train and die. Coming from a troubled family where the parents are in the process of getting divorced, Alex faces his first existential problem: guilt. The film only studies that and nothing else (Police does come to know about it, but they never zero in on Alex; in fact, the police angle is only perfunctory). No one gets caught; no one comes to know about it, no catharsis, no conclusion. It uses real-life non-actor teenagers who really, for once, sound like teenagers. Dialogues are sparse: cinema talks through images. Alex goes through his voice-overs as if he is reading his creative writing project in front of a classroom, while he is actually expressing the innermost crisis of his life. Nowadays, many films use hop-scotch chronology and fragmented narratives just as a trendy fashion style (the Bourne films and “Crash” would be a good example); it makes the film look better than what it truly is. “Paranoid Park” is not one of those; its fragmentary and elliptical nature is the direct consequence of how Alex deals with his inner crisis: he sways and wavers, like the motion of a skateboard, facts and impressions come out in bits and pieces. Reminiscent of “Elephant”, Alex walks down the school corridors that look severely antiseptic with a lost look as if he is under a coral reef scuba-diving. In fact, the whole teenage experience in Van Sant’s films has the feel of an underwater life, ---- an original ambience of alienation I find subtle and breathtaking. Van Sant has a sympathy for these young men that transcends the boundaries of the teenager archetype, and gets him across the very dangerous waters (infested with squirming archetypes) of the teen-flick genre. He finds an unconceivable amount of depth within teenage boys who still wear elastic friendship bands!
Skateboarding is the major metaphor here; it is the teenage mimicry of the adult world. Throughout the film, we see various skateboarders performing tricks in front of an 8mm handheld camera: they are practicing the next, big steps. To the urban, cosmopolitan teenagers of Van Sant’s movie, adulthood is ‘high’, it’s ‘cool, dude’, its ‘paranoia’. There is an amazing sequence in the film that frames this with quaint humor. A police officer (played by Daniel Liu) talks to the skateboarders of Alex’s school to learn about the ‘skateboard’ community that hangs around the Paranoid Park. The officer repeatedly refers to it as the ‘skateboard park’ while the students rectify his mistake: it is “PARANOID PARK”. What looks like skateboarding to adults is in reality a paranoid ritual, the hyper-active, hyper-alienated oscillating mimicry of the futility of life. No one is ready for the Paranoid Park; life always shocks. The cool alienation of the teenagers is so intense and profound it might give you a chill. Van Sant’s world-view closely resembles that of Jean Baudrillard (at least I think so); he is one of the very, very few film-makers who can really feel the pulse of the post-modern situation. “Paranoid Park” is a landscape of the post-modern teenage alienation.

The film can be read in other ways as well; it alludes to the train-hopping generations of the old Great Depression days, it discourses on certain sexual politics. By being slow and introspective and by avoiding conclusive scenarios, it leaves a discursive space for the viewers, a time-&-space that enables us to think freely. There are many viewers who prefer a definitive and conclusive story instead; they should not feel proud of that, -- aesthetic backwardness, gullibility and pseudo-innocence are not virtues.

However, this is neither a prefect film nor a great one. There are hitches; the gory train accident scenario looks out of place, as if someone is trying to insert a Takashi Miike film within one by Ingmar Bergman. Despite its non-cathartic staunchness, the end effect feels a little too small, little too tame. It does not pack a hefty punch the way “Elephant” did. But then, small things have their own intrinsic values we often tend to neglect: Beethoven’s Sixth is by no means inferior to his Fifth or Ninth. However, when I compare it to such ‘small’ films as Kieslowski’s “A Short Story about Love”, it falls just a little short, feels just a little shallow. Then again, films like “A Short Story….” happens once in a blue moon; it is futile to expect such miracle every time. I am detecting these faults only because it comes from the hands of the man who made “Elephant”. For anyone else of lesser caliber, it would have been a resounding victory.
The music of the film is interesting, to say the least. Unlike the ascetic and minimalist score of his previous “Elephant”, here he throws the whole kitchen sink at us; he uses Beethoven symphonies, oldies, bluegrass, country, acid-rock, and an abundant amount of musical quotations from Fellini’s films (mainly from Nino Rota’s score for “Juliet of Spirits” and “Amarcord”). At first, I was shaking my head, “no, no, this is all wrong”. Yet, the music was simultaneously disturbing and arresting my attention. It took me a while to make sense of it: Van Sant is using it as a discordant note. He places a part from Beethoven’s Ninth right after playing a country song, and just about when you are on the verge of recognizing the symphony, he abruptly cuts it off. Watch that beautiful sequence where we see Jennifer (played by Taylor Momsen), Alex’s girlfriend, is being ditched by Alex; we see a close-up of Jennifer talking incessantly while the only thing we hear is a beautiful, French-like nocturne by Nino Rota. The satire is devastating; you have to see it to believe it. There are those quintessential Van Sant moments that are so profound yet completely inscrutable; watch Alex’s younger brother recount a part of a film verbatim to his brother. Watch the slow-motion shot where all the skater kids of the school stride down the hallway like a slightly unhinged, teen-age “Wild Bunch”. Watch the mesmerizing sequence shot with an 8mm handheld where the skaters skateboard at Paranoid Park. Watch the title scene: it has no direct link with the narrative, yet it is what the film is. If you can make sense of the first shot after watching the film, then, don’t worry, you have got the feel.

I will rate this 4 & 1/2 because it is a Gus Van Sant’s film. I am giving this a 4 & ½ because 5 is for “Elephant”.

2007 has been a great year for teen movies. With such commercial efforts like “Juno”, offbeat-s like “Tracy Fragments” (I’ll review this film next), and with such mature films like “Paranoid Park”, the teenagers are finally getting a depth they deserve in films. Who knows, may be we are watching the birth of a new genre here, the “Neo-Teen-Drama” genre. There is a possibility that the cosmopolitan hyperreality of our postmodern times is seeking its expression through these films. Films like “Paranoid Park” are ultimately significant due to this final reason, because there is no time more important than the present.
                                                                        BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI

Michael Clayton by Tony Gilroy (2007); Rating: 4 & 1/2 in 5

In recent decades, the film fraternity (forgive the word) has started to take the question of genre seriously. It signals good health: finally, we are out of the mist/mystery of the celluloid sheen. It means we are treating film-making as an exercise and not as a personal whimsy. Of course, our genre-awareness is a definitive product of our ever-increasing obsession with Hollywood, THE play-ground of genres and sub-genres. Very interestingly, genres came into existence almost always due to the financial “dark underbelly” of cinema as an art-form, but we will not get into that here; let us not digress. Within this area of genre, I often came across a nigglingly incommodious term: Neo-noir. Noir, as we all know, is an urban, American genre that used to rule the silver-screen during the 1940s and 50s. A perfect example of this genre would be Polanski’s “Chinatown”. Anyway. But what is “Neo-noir”? Is it a distinct genre? I never found any evidence to that. Is it a sub-genre? What exactly is “neo” about it? Deeply suspicious, I have always denied this term its existence; for me, it was always noir and that’s about it. Michael Clayton, the 2007 film made by debutant director Tony Gilroy, for the first time, has made me aware of the possibility of the existence of something called Neo-noir; -- that is my grateful indebtedness towards this film. However, I am still not flattered by the term; --- it does not signify a separate genre, or a sub-genre, it simply means that the essential requirements of the original genre, the Noir, is stripped down to the bare minimum. Out goes the detective, night chiaroscuros, femme fatales that always make the wrong choice; only the troubled masculinity, empowered (a very nasty word, but I am using it due to the lack of acceptable alternatives) women who always pay the price at the end. From that perspective, Michael Clayton is a perfectly executed Noir, and that’s no meager compliment: Noir is the mother of all “New Wave” cinema movements ever experienced by us.

Strictly speaking though, Michael Clayton is a legal/court-room thriller, a genre that has grown on John Grisham novels and Michael Douglass characters. At the centre of the narrative, there is this typical American pharmaceutical company named U-North that is facing a huge lawsuit filed by hundreds of small farmers who have been suffering from cancer due to the strongly carcinogenic content present in a certain U-North product. At the court, U-North is being represented by Kenner, Bach & Ledeen, one of the greatest law farms in the world. The case was being handled for six years by Arthur Eden (played by Tom Wilkinson), the senior-most and the most brilliant litigation lawyer and a partner of the farm. He is a manic-depressive and a close friend to Michael Clayton (played by George Clooney). Clayton is the “hidden ace” of the farm; he is the “miracle worker”. By definition, he is a janitor, but he is so great in his job, he can be compared to those too-famous-for-their-own-good heart surgeons: they all get cases with 5% survival probability! What exactly is Clayton’s job? Cleaning up the mess: a client hits a man on the road, he is there to clean it up with the police in ten minutes. He is a realist; he enjoys breaking the illusions of rich clients that they will be cooed and soothed for what they have done, they will be told they have “options”. He has ‘connections’ all over the country; he used to be an Assistant District Attorney during the eighties in Queens, New York. He has a big debt of 75,000 dollars he will have to pay within a week, and he is bust up to the wall, although he looks prosperous. Following a bad advice given by his alcoholic, druggy brother Timmy, he bought a restaurant that went up into smoke even before he could utter the word “restaurant”. He would not let it reflect on his brother though; he is determined to pay it back by himself. He has a dark side: he is a high-roller in poker played at a certain basement in Chinatown.

Arthur Eden is skipping his medication, and losing his grip on reality. During his six years of research on the case, he has gathered evidence of the tremendous crime U-North has been committing for years, the crime he is paid to protect from exposure. In his manic righteous zeal, he decides to go against U-North all by himself. While the testimony from a plaintiff was being taken, suddenly he starts to strip, offering his clothes to the plaintiff, whom he calls “perfect Anna”. U-North is horrified at this turn of event, and at the forefront of the reaction is Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton in her Oscar-winning role), the Chief Legal Advisor at U-North. In Arthur Eden’s briefcase, she finds something so incriminating that she realizes the future of the company, and with that, her own, is on the line. Thus starts the cat-&-mouse game; bodies pile up, cars get blown into pieces. Enough of the plot for now. You have to watch the film for that.

The first good news about this film: -- it is NOT a message film. I cannot describe my relief when I realized it is not so: there is absolutely nothing worse than a message movie. I would rather watch a B-movie than a message film. [Anyone with enough brains will be able to figure the reason of my repulsion out, but still, I will present a short explanation. The so-called ‘message’ is actually a ‘preferred reading’ films often force upon their viewers; it teaches us the ideology (most often and most obviously, it is “Love America”) of the ruling class, nation, or party. For example, Spielberg’s “The Terminal” ‘teaches’ us that, does not matter how much terrorism threatens and how barbaric the Americans really are, by mimicking the ‘eternal goodness’ of the Americans, everyone from the Third World can ingratiate themselves with the ‘civilization’ a.k.a America (hence, mirroring the politics of Frank Capra); his “Munich” clearly tries to revisit 9/11 (a signature American death drive/wish), while willfully obscuring the boundary between the Palestinians and the Israelis, a difference that enables him to keep his democratic position intact (and thus no becoming completely a Bush’s pet), while remaining American. Of course, all films carry, to different extents, the propagandas of the rulers; however, ‘message’ films do that without an iota of shame.] In fact, the corruption of U-North is openly shown from the very beginning; it is not a matter of revelation. The chief conflict in the film is between a powerful woman masquerading (have you seen anything more unabashedly masculine than Chanel suits?) as a masculine symbol succumbing to the dark sides of the power structure, and an equally powerful man, all too aware of the ruthless compromises, who is trying to go against the stream just this once. Femme fatale loses noir-man wins. However, as feminist critics have often pointed out, noir is a genre that exposes the weaknesses of masculinity more potently than almost any other genre. Should we read it as a film that ‘justly’ punishes the ‘wrong’ woman who tries to control masculine power; or should we read it as an exposure of the patriarchal corporate power-structure that forces a woman to ‘become’ a man and do its dirty business, and then ‘punishes’ her exactly for that? The film, clearly, can be read in both ways without using too much imagination. The responsibility of the reading will lie upon us, and not on the director; choice of the version is completely ours, and it will only expose our own hidden politics as a viewer. Those that will read it merely as a morality tale or as a thriller will do it at the peril of being exposed as a closet misogynist. The mise-en-scene is the true protagonist here: it is all about the inner ugliness of the patriarchal corporate structure.

Michael Clayton is the quintessential noir-man, sans low fedora and colts under armpits: his morality is not exactly top-notch (he does not show any qualms while covering up the road accident early in the film), he has troubled personal life, -- divorced, no girlfriend (apparently), trying hard to keep in touch with parenthood, loosing a lot of money because of a brother. He is not macho in any, even far-fetched, way; in fact, like a lots of corporate people, he is so cool that he looks and seems asexual. He is not in control of his life: his daily, expert dabbling with high-stake issues forces him to enjoy danger and risk in some small, albeit very harmful, way, by gambling away serious amounts of money. Like the noir-man, all he has is his job, the offices, leased Mercedes and Lear jets. There is one big, thwarted love in his life, a love that will finally become the crisis of his life: his friendship with the manic-depressive Arthur Eden (a hint at homosexuality? Clayton is closest and most personal with Arthur; in fact, one of his messages sound like the apology from a lover; also, eight years earlier, he had seen Arthur through his first attack of manic-depression). It is for Arthur Eden he puts everything on the line, although he does it still pretty reluctantly, only after his own life is threatened. Karen Crowder is the mirror-image here: what Clayton misses in life (being back in the litigation team), what he could have been, what he escapes from (being caught red-handed), what he truly does (play the ruthless game of percentages). As the name of the movie suggests, the film is also a character study, with no hero, or a villain.

The first big strength of the film comes from the script: it is trim, non-judgmental, terse, precise, without bravado dialogues while refusing to become drab; in short, effective. The script is written by the director himself, and he is a star scriptwriter; his scriptwriting credit includes all the three Bourne movies, Extreme Measures, Proof of Life, and Devil’s Advocate. As a director, however, it is hard to judge him by this debutante film. To his credit, he is economical, and prefers the classical slow tracking shots, understating the presence of the camera and thus heightening the tension between the characters. Working with the gifted cinematographer Robert Elswit (“Syriana”, “Magnolia”, “Good Night & Good Luck”; I specially enjoyed the last one), he managed to create brooding establishing shots (one memorable one would be where Karen Crowder is introduced. We see Tilda Swinton sitting on the commode of a claustrophobic cubicle while she discovers that her shirt is wet with sweat at the armpit), perfect ambiances, color palettes, and hues that works perfectly in this film. I found the background score pretty run-of-the-mill though; James Newton Howard provides a score that barely manages to work fine. However, these do not prove the mettle of this director; we see no sign of a style or idiosyncrasies. For now, he is a competent ‘director’ but not yet a film-maker for me. Let’s hope he will not become another Ron Howard (before going to bed, I pray to God every night, “do anything to me, I’ll not mind, but please, please, don’t make me watch another “Da Vinci Code” again. I’ll not survive the ordeal!”). It is always better to be optimistic.

The best thing about this film is its acting and casting. The quartet, around which this movie revolves, ---- George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, and late Sydney Pollack---- gives brilliant performances. Switch these four, and the film will collapse. Tom Wilkinson, the veteran character-actor, portrays the manic-depressive Arthur with a tremendous gusto and unabashed, zany, manic incoherence; his performance is like the insane force we experience while listening to Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue. He has the difficult task of delivering long and precarious voice-overs, and he passes the exam in flying colors. Tilda Swinton, although unknown to Hollywood, has done enough work in British cinema to remain forever among the great British leading ladies (she was the fetish-star for late director Derek Jarman, one of major directors belonging to the queer cinema movement, and certainly a British great). However, Hollywood is famously incestuous; only after this film, let us hope, it will start noticing this brilliant actor. There is something unnerving in the way Swinton portrays Karen Crowder. She is a tremendous physical actress; her merest body movements will tell you the story, most of them will invariably give you a slight unease. Her low-key, sugary viper-voice is mesmerizing. She manages to make her character touchingly three-dimensional within very little screen-space: she manages to remain simultaneously steely, and twitchingly nervous within every single frame. She absolutely deserves her Oscar and many things more.

I am terribly late at reviewing this film; it has already become a thing of past. However, one of my intentions behind writing this review was to pay my tribute to the great actor, director, and producer Sydney Pollack, who has just died from cancer. In this film, Pollack plays Marty Bach, the head of the law farm, under whose direct orders, Michael Clayton operates. In this character, Pollack gives a strong, assured performance that will look authentic from miles away. Pollack as a director has never been an auteur in the true sense, but he has been an excellent middle-brow director who believed in that ancient Hollywood tradition of no-frills story-telling. He showed that honest middle-brow films like his “Out of Africa” and “Tootsie” can be quite as effective as Indies. Hollywood will sorely miss him; his dedication and involvement was complete, he never preached banalities, never left ‘messages’ through his films. With this Spielberg-Lucas-influenced Ron Howard generation, the ancient Hollywood tradition ------ starting from King Vidor to the Sydney Pollack-s of our days ------- of honest middle-brow story-telling is facing extinction. We would prefer a Sydney Pollack thousand times over a Spielberg or a Howard. Directors like Alexander Payne will, let’s hope, keep this tradition alive.

And, here at last, we come to George Clooney. Clooney is one of those tragic actors: horribly typecast by the industry, and having too big a persona to be not typecast by the studios, he is still desperately struggling to find original and challenging roles. After a few initial debacles, he has resolutely avoided typecast roles with one notable exception (the Oceans franchisee), acting in films like “Solaris”, “The Good German”, “O Brother, Where are Thou?”, “Syriana” etc. As a director, he has impressed me; although “Crash” took the Oscar home, “Good Night, & Good Luck” was, by far, the second best film of that milieu, coming second only to “Brokeback Mountain”, which is undeniably a great film and an exceptionally brave love story. Unlike other male heart-throbs, George is a thorough actor: he knows how to remain within the role and not become bigger than the character. There is a scene in the movie, where Clayton, at the crack of dawn, stops the car by a hill and sees three horses standing at the top of it. He comes out of the car, and slowly makes his way towards the horses. The scenario is precarious: it runs the risk of becoming horribly mystic (which would have ruined the noir suspense), or a mere vehicle that showcases the charm and charisma of the ‘big star’. While watching the scene, I was thinking what other big, Hollywood heartthrobs would have done with this scene. Brad Pitt, he would have invariably tried to show existential angst, looking broodingly eccentric and orgasm-generating-ly dangerous, chewing his nails, and then, suddenly, flashing his million-watt smile that comes right out of “Legend of the Fall” (Brad Pitt is a good actor, but he has become ensnared by his public image). Tom Cruise would have lit up the screen with his over-enthusiastic histrionics and dental brilliance (those teeth! My god, there are the worst thing that has happened to Hollywood since Stallone’s mumbling speech and Arnie’s Biceps!); Johnny Depp, although always unpredictable, is fundamentally too mannered to be a good noir-man. In George, we have a method actor good enough to to carry out such precarious scenes; if you are a student of acting, watch the dour face of Clooney during this scene, and learn what cinematic acting is all about: under-acting (you can also watch Gabriel Byrne in Coen Brother’s “Miller’s Crossing”, another tremendous example of the noir genre). If he had done one notch more, it would have become the worst scene of movie and marred the complete effect. I sincerely hope that the teenagers and tabloids will forget him quickly and, finally, he will be able to enjoy the status of a genuinely good actor.

Now, I must rate the film. Before I rate it, I must speak a word of caution here. In this page, if a film gets a 5 and another gets a 4 & ½, it does not necessarily mean that the first one is better than the second. I judge the film within its premises, its set expectations, its details, its genre, and its predecessors. When Todd Haynes is making “I’m Not There”, he is following the monumental examples of Frederico Fellini and others; I gave him 4 & ½ while comparing the film with those unforgettable ‘prefect 5’ films such as 8 &1/2.

I will give this film a 4 & ½. It is not exactly a great film, but it works very well within its limitations.

I started this article with Neo-noir; I will end at that note too. I am still flummoxed: what is Neo-noir? It seems to me to be a supra-disciplinary exercise. For example, this film is the exercise of the barest minimum specifications of the noir genre within the broad structure of the legal/courtroom thrillers. Similarly, Coen Bother’s brilliant film “Miller’s Crossing” (1991) is the exploration of the noir principles within the broad framework of the gangster genre. But is that it? That’s all? What gives this term the legitimacy to stand alone and distinct? What is so “neo” about it? I am still deeply suspicious of the term. If any of you have any input that can help me get the idea, please send it to me. That will be really helpful.
                                                                                             BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI

Great Films:All About My Mother; by Pedro Almodóvar (1999)

Pedro Almodóvar’s “All about My Mother” ends with this dedication:

"A Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, Romy Schneider.... A todas las actrices que han hecho de actrices, a todas las mujeres que actúan y se convierten en mujeres, a todas las personas que quirren ser madres. A mi madre." [To Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, Romy Schneider….To all actresses who have played actresses. To all women who act. To men who act and become women. To all the people who want to be mothers. To my mother.]

They represent the best short description of this film: it is about actresses, mothers, transsexuals; women in general.

Pedro Almodóvar is certainly the most famous son of La Mancha, Spain after Don Quixote. Son of an illiterate villager, and completely self-educated in the craft of film-making, Almodóvar is the proof of the miracle called cinema. His directorial career has been one roller-coaster ride, where he has succeeded to break down almost all the taboos imaginable, transgressed every norm of film genres. He is, by far, the most significant ‘women’s director’ alive and working among us: despite the plethora of women directors in the scene, none have achieved the extent of womanhood Almodóvar has encompassed as an Auteur. His films constitute the canon we must study to understand the ‘feminine position’ of our time. His films are replete with homosexual and transsexual characters, who, unlike the Hollywood stereotypes, are quite happy and well-placed within their own sexualities. His films exude a florid joyousness that is truly his own. But, enough of Almodóvar for now. Let us get back to the film. “All about my Mother” [Todo Sobre mi Madre, 1999] is arguably his most mature and poignant film to date that deals with womanhood, motherhood, sexual identity, and existence in general. It garnered more awards and honors than any other film in the Spanish motion picture industry; Almodóvar won the Best Director award at Cannes, the film won Best Foreign Language Film Award in the Oscars, and it was a surprise to everyone that Cecilia Roth, the lead actress of the film, did not win any awards at the festivals.

The film tells the story of a nurse named Manuela (Cecilia Roth) who works in Madrid and lives with her teenage son Esteban, who never knew his father, and wants to be a writer. One night after watching a stage production of Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Esteban is running after the car of Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), the actress who plays Blanche DuBois in the play, to get an autograph when he is hit by a car and dies. Manuela sees the accident and, despondent, leaves Madrid to visit her son's father, Lola, who is a transvestite and a prostitute in Barcelona, and inform him of the existence of the son he never knew existed. While in Barcelona, Manuela reunites with an old friend, a warm and witty transsexual prostitute named Agrado (Antonia San Juan), named so apparently because she wants to make everyone else’s life agreeable, chiefly by telling quirky jokes and giving blowjobs. She also meets and becomes deeply involved with Sister Rosa (Penélope Cruz), a young, pregnant nun suffering from AIDS who has been impregnated by Manuela's ex-husband; and with Huma Rojo, the actress her son had admired. In typical Almodóvar fashion, the film moves through segments of unabashed melodramas, yet never losing the grip, never becoming cheap, and never overdoing the sorrow. It is almost magical to watch Almodóvar making these tight-rope walks again and again, and succeeding in making something that cuts still too deep. Almodóvar, in his use of melodrama, does not expose, but de-centers it, not allowing the narrative to reach its cathartic climax. The end result is a fragmentary landscape of human emotions that feels heart-rendingly sincere.

This is the second Almodóvar film I have seen; the first one was Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios). Unlike the earlier hilariously funny, sarcastic, internationally acclaimed film, “All about my Mother” is far more serious in tone. I certainly liked this film more than the first one. The mise-en-scene of Barcelona, the color schemes, the theatrical interludes works almost damn perfectly. This is as perfect as such idiosyncratic film can get.

The mothers of this film are not like the American ones, dropping their children at school and making French toasts, wearing their veritable Joan of Arc faces like enchanted talismans. Here, motherhood is a desire, a source of light that breaks through tremendous amount of pain and suffering. There is something Beethoven-like in the way Almodóvar expresses the joyousness inherent in womanhood through layers of deep agony. Yet, his treatment is not that of Beethoven, it is rather Schubertian in texture.

Yet, what is even more present through his absence is The Father: in the film, Manuela’s son writes in his notebook,

“This morning I looked through my mother’s bedroom until I found a stack of photographs. All of them were cut in half. My father, I suppose. I have the impression that my life is missing that same half. I want to meet him; I don’t care who he is, or how he treated my mother. No one can take that right away from me.”

In Almodóvar, the father is the supplement, the absent presence that haunts everyone. Sometimes the father may seem to be an utopia, even, but in totality, Almodóvar manages to keep a very subtle balance. In fact, the greatness of Almodóvar lies in his almost inhuman sense of balance: balance between utopia and dystopia, between melodrama and its extreme opposite, between feminism and its opposite. Only if every one had the subtlety to be so!

Cecilia Roth is simply brilliant as Manuela; standing among many exceptionally well-acted female characters, her character seems to be the strongest, one closest to the heart of the film, yet vulnerable and fragile like any other mother going through the loss of a son. An actress of lesser skill and understanding would have overdid the sorrow of this character and marred the film; on the contrary, Cecilia manages to show the humor, the strength, the intelligence of the character within that realm of sorrow. In short, I have discovered here in Cecilia Roth, an Argentinean actress, an able actor of flawless potential. Early in the film, after Esteban, Manuela’s son, is hit by a car, we see Manuela running towards him in a perspective shot. It represents the most difficult and the most pivotal moment of the film: although treated in a conventional albeit technically brilliant manner, it conveys something so intimate and passionate that seems disturbing. It represents the precarious chance Almodóvar takes by placing utmost importance on the acting skills of actors. Marisa Paredes, Penélope Cruz, and Antonia San Juan, deliver tremendous salvos of acting prowess, creating rounded characters that not only carry the film, they create it. In our days, there is rarely another film director who puts such weight on actors' abilities.

There are many more things to be said about this film: it has the potential to be widely discussed in cinema study courses across the world. But that will entail more exposure of the plot, and that will mar the delicious exuberance of this film. It is a great film, a near-perfect film, I can say this without any hesitation; it represents the pinnacle of one of the most original directors of our time. Recently, the film has been adopted for stage in London; people are flocking once again to savor the marvel of this narrative. The film is available in India through pirated Penélope Cruz collections; if you get a chance, DO NOT miss this film. It will be an unpardonable sin.

BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI

A DESPERATE CAUSE: AMERICAN HOMOGENIZATION IN FILM DISTRIBUTION

What I write today is not an article or a review, but a desperate plea to the cineastes around the world. This is but a small, insignificant voice, and dreaming of any palpable result to come out of this would be an act of sad delusion. But, since, as a cineaste, I tend to experience a pang of conscience every now and then, I will, with little hope, try to expunge my misgivings. Please do not take it as an attempt to wash my hands off through words and persuasions: I am no Pilate, and my position is not so comfortable. I am only striving towards a small pocket of resistance in my own undersized, even ridiculous way against a dangerous trend of homogenization recently seen in the field of film distribution that will, in the long run, prove to be disastrous for films.

Even the most hard-core film enthusiasts tend to overlook the production side of a film. We do not realize how the success, and even more significantly, construction of the text of a film, depends on how it is produced, how it is distributed, when, and where. We tend to overlook the wide variety of tastes that exist across the apparently homogeneous region of America and Western Europe. The fact is, the Continental and the British film industry, to certain extent, has provided a niche for some of the most idiosyncratic and original film directors of Hollywood. Woody Allen acknowledges that he “survives” on European market:

“In the United States things have changed a lot, and it's hard to make good small films now……….. The avaricious studios couldn't care less about good films – if they get a good film they're twice as happy, but money-making films are their goal. They only want these $100 million pictures that make $500 million" [From a 2004 interview. See http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,1278451,00.html].

Films of Woody Allen, Wes Anderson and others still exist and are being made because there is a culturally superior space called Europe. From a broad perspective, third world countries still strive to make good, personal films in hope for recognition from the European continent, especially from the festival circuit. It is these recognitions bestowed by the festivals that generate a small, niche market for such films. Of course, they can be criticized for such Eurocentric attitude, but we cannot deny the fact that we, as nations, generally fail to provide a market for such films. In short, without the European market, the existence of Iranian or East European films will be in terrible jeopardy. There is more in stake here than most of us can imagine: the whole phenomena of ‘cinemas’ depend on such markets. If they collapse, we will see only ‘cinema’ the way personal computers mean Windows and Microsoft to us.

By now, I might have made you impatient. So, what exactly is this story about? It is about a Hollywood attempt to break down such distinct and individual markets, and create one big, shopping-mall-&-Christmas-movie market throughout the world. I agree that this is an old story that has been going on for some time, but now it has reached an acute stage never experienced or imagined before. Let’s start with some examples.

From January 1, 2007, United International Pictures stopped functioning in 15 key countries across Europe. What is UIP? UIP was established as a European film distribution conglomerate by Paramount, Universal, MGM, and United Artists in the year 1981. It might sound strange that three of the major, fiercely competitive Hollywood powers had agreed to work together, but their reasoning was sound and simple at the time. Before the Age of Digitals ---even before the faxes were efficient—maintaining a distributing office in Europe was costly. They needed expertise to judge the pulse of the European cine-going audience. For these, and other practical reasons, such as, dollar exchange rate, they launched UIP. For last twenty-six years, UIP has been distributing American films in Europe. Its distributing choices have been according to the European taste, where a Sylvester Stallone movie has less chances of achieving the same scale of success it generally achieves in the States. They also distributed niche films from Europe as well. Now, both Paramount (with its acquisition of DreamWorks in 2006) and Universal feel (with MGM being sedate for quite some time) they no longer need such an operation. Both the companies have already opened their branches in the Continent, releasing films simultaneously in USA and in Europe. The logic is simple: since the overseas market is the biggest income-source for Hollywood studios at this point, why not try to hit as many targets as possible with one, big publicity campaign? We are not far from seeing a “Paramount Asia”, or a “Universal India”, but the problem is, they will only be “Universal” or “Paramount” a la United States only.

It does not look all that scary at first glance, does it? You need to look deeply then, mate. Ever heard of something called ‘cult films’? They are typically films that got panned by the audience at first, but then, slowly but steadily, through peer-to-peer recommendations, they got known, seen, and appreciated. With this uniformity in film distribution and release, such peer-to-peer recommendations go down the drain. With several hundred prints opening simultaneously at major locations of the world, movies will have only a week to prove themselves. Have enough glitz and spectacle in the movie, or land in the scrapheap with the speed of an unfortunate asteroid. This spells doom for small films, risk-taking etc. Without big movers backing a film, there is no future in experiments any more. Now, does it look scary? This is only the tip of the iceberg.

Let us read between the lines. What gives the confidence to these studios to directly handle a potentially alien market, such as, Europe? I think there are sufficient signs in the market to convince the studio Moguls that the European market has become similar enough to the classic USA market to risk such a venture. Hollywood, for some time now, has been as closed and as make-belief an eco-system as Disneyland or Wal-Mart is. Hollywood, by a thumb-rule, works on the lowest common denominator, seeking out the surest and drabbest movies of all. What is truly scary is the fact that audiences throughout the world are demanding such drabs with alarming intensity now-a-days. This is the debilitating disease of cultural globalization: it has the omnipotent power to glamorize the lowest dregs human civilization has ever had the misfortune to produce. Jean Baudrillard must be nodding up there in heaven, saying “I told you guys. You didn’t listen”. We never listen. Not until it is too late.

Like any other art-form, cinema is thwarted by homogeneity. It is the death of all art-forms. Yet, because Cinema is more market-oriented than any other art-form, it runs the risk of becoming homogeneous all the time. Thus, film criticism has a bigger role to play: it has the imperative duty to construct taste. Taste is about difference and diversity. Without a niche out there in the market where such differences can flourish, there can be no future to cinema as an art. Yet, such niches are detrimental to the economic aspirations of a big producer. A producer does not need many ‘small’ films, he needs a Jurassic Park, so unlike a film that show it at a science show, and kids will believe it’s a school project! This conflict between commerce and art has been going on for ages, and the burden lies on the audience to decide which side he/she is on. We live in a radically dangerous age, where every image we see on the TV, every word we read on the web can be propaganda to render us into Wal-Mart shoppers, big-film worshippers, tasteless zombies looking for spectacular voids. The whole communication system is such a huge ideology-proliferating machine that we fail to realize it is so. It is immensely difficult for us to distinguish such snares, and still crave for diverse tastes. We must be paranoid about accepting any 'given' truth on its face value. The onus is on us.

Big studios don’t need differences, they can simulate them. They will tell you that their film is not a run-of-the-mill action film because it has a ‘humanitarian message’, and you will gobble it up gladly! There are enough indications around us to prove this to be the truth, and not some wishful nightmare. Studios have been trying to infiltrate the Indian film market for quite some time now. Indian film-makers have been vying for such attention: the Sanjay Gupta-s of Bollywood are making films that can be sold as American B-movies without much dubbing. Once the studios start controlling our market, we will seldom see films like “Manorama 6 Feet Under”, “Mitthya”, and “Swaas” etc. No one will take such risks. Elite film-makers such as Belá Tarr and Buddhadeb Dasgupta-s will retain their positions: they are specialized and elite enough to not disturb the globalizing process. In fact, cultural globalization needs such film-makers to simulate a prop to prove that ‘difference’s within the film market still exists. It is the Woody Allen-s, Gus van Sant-s, Sudhir Mishra-s who will forced out of the business.

Still, there is a hope, small, but not yet impossible. The sheer bulk and repressiveness of such global homogenization creates pockets of resistance at the fringes. Video films, independent animations (as shown in Japan), B-films contain the germ of this resistance. Subtle subversions of the studio rules by great and brave film directors from Hollywood (like the Coen Brothers) contain the germ. As a film audience, we must keep our faith in such marginal efforts, such ‘virus’es, such subversions. Subversions are our goal. Margins are our homelands. If we fail to recognize the necessity of doing that now, the future will be bleaker than imagined in psychedelic nightmares.

For this article, I am greatly indebted to Nick Roddick of Sight & Sound; it is his regular column "Mr Busy" that made me aware of what was happening to UIP, and set my thoughts on the run. For his article, see Sight & Sound, June 2006, page 12/6.

BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI