Movie Review : A Death in the Gunj (2017)

Konkana Sen's Directorial Debut and much awaited film from Indie circuit finally released in India for theatre audiences this Friday after winning hearts at MAMI, TIFF and BUSAN International Film Festival. The film not only opens up a different genre for cinema in India (or revisits a lost one) but could also be considered as one of the best directorial debuts from India.

'A Death in the Gunj' keeps you engaging throughout the journey which starts with a bunch of cousins, friends and old parents going for a family holiday to the countryside (called 'Gunj' here). The film is set near Ranchi in Bihar (now Jharkhand) in 1979 and everyone in the film is still very much in the 'Colonial Hangover'. The house is an old and huge one which would have been constructed during the colonial times for the very purpose of holidaying.

The film is essentially the story of  twenty-three year old 'Shutu' who though a grown up man but is bullied, unknowingly and knowingly, by his elders. He is 'treated as a girl' for not being able to toughen up as a man. His bullying ranges from being physically beaten to as subtle as the elders telling him to do petty tasks for them while he is busy with something else ( 'Shutu, get me my shawl', 'Shutu, get me a cup of custard', 'Do this' or 'Do that'). While Shutu tries to ignore their bullying and spends most of his time with the eight-year old daughter to his cousin, the others remain ignorant to Shutu's feelings.

'A Death in the Gunj' is a beautiful story with the essential depth that's present in only the good literary works. There is always a sense of mystery and spookiness throughout the film due to it being shot in the coutryside. It's the same feeling you get when you visit such a place for real. The extent of mystery and spookiness never overgrows to overshadow the aspect of realism, which is very rare for a stroyteller. There is no narration in the film but it progresses in way that you feel it is being narrated.

Personally, watching this film was an experince similar to watching a Satyajit Ray film or reading a Rabindranath Tagore story. It's a film to be watched and celebrated. Also watch Aranyer Din Ratri by Satyajit Ray if you come to appreciate this film as much as I do.

35 Best Movies from 2015

"If you were Cinema, I could watch you forever"

Even if you're not an Oscar-person, you gotta accept the fact that an year officially ends for Cinema. only after the Oscars are awarded. 2015 ends here and what an year for films and cine-goers. With this end, I share 35 of my personal favorites from 2015 ranked in order, irrespective language or Nominations in various Film-Fests.

PS : The good news is that it includes 6 movies from India. Watch out!

1. Son of Saul

2. The Lobster

3.Spotlight

4.Victoria

5. Inside out

6. The Revenant

7. The Big Short
                                                   
8. Beasts of No Nation

9. Talvar (Guilty)

10. 45 years

11. Court
                                                   
12. Room

13. Mad Max : Fury Road

14. The Diary of a Teenage Girl

15. Sicario

                                                    

16. Masaan (Fly Away Solo)
                                                   

17. Dheepan

 

18. Anomalisa

19. Steve Jobs

                                                   

20. Carol
                                                     
21. Irrational Man

                                                            
22. Brooklyn
                                                            
23. Killa

                                              
24. Me, Earl and The Dying Girl
                                                             
25.Titli
                                                              
26. Creed
                                                              
27. The End of the Tour
                                                          
                                      

28. Bridge of Spies
                                                          .
29. Piku
                                                           
30.  The Danish Girl

                                                           

31. The Gift
                                                           
32. Tangerine
                                                           
33. Mistress America
                                                            

34. Love
                                                             
                         
                     
35. The Hateful Eight
                                                             

Of Death : An Absurd Perspective

              "Everyone jabbers about human rights. What a joke! Your existence isn't founded on any right. They don't allow you to end your life by your own choice, these defenders of human rights."  - Milan Kundera

Right to Die :

In machines, we give inputs and receive outputs. In the same way, for life the input is the basics we require to live and outputs are the amount of happiness, pain or satisfaction we get in return. And if the inputs are too hard to feed and the outputs are not worth the effort you have put in, isn't it your right to end the system?

The problem with this wonderful, wonderful idea is that ever since the origin of humanity, death has always been associated with evil, with pain, with hell. We are so obsessed with life that somewhere death has always been cornered, even considered as taboo in many of our cultures. On the contrary, death is a part of life itself.
Death is simply like you're asked to choose one of the 3 doors and you don't know what's behind each door. No one can tell what's after death but if you don't believe in a fairy tales and you don't believe in the Buddhist philosophy of re-incarnation, you may simply say it's the end, peace!

3 After-death Possibilities :

1. Heaven: This is simply not possible. A space for tens of billions of people that provides them with everything they need. And who are the fairies then who do all the work? And why is the heaven for some hell for them? Even if we assume that all the work happens on its own, this violates a lot of scientific principles. Newton and Einstein up there can't take it. It would make them unhappy and in the heaven you can't be unhappy. So, it's impossible to find a place which would make everyone happy.

2. Hell: If there were people who burnt the bad people, the third law of Newton would make them equally bad. And if that person who burns people all the time ever sat contemplating on what he is doing and what his life is about, he might as well burn himself.

3. Re-incarnation: The population of world has more than doubled in past fifty years. If re-incarnation were a truth, where are the new souls coming from? The world started with Adam and Eve, right? Two souls to start with. How did we become 6 billion?

Of Personal Space & Solitude

"There is a Voice which does not use words. Listen."

                                                                                                           -Rumi

Solitude is not the fate of men until chosen by men themselves. Men choose their own fate, the firm believers in existentialism say. Self-esteem is to men, what is beauty to women & for them, the disrespect of their personal space and the need to listen to their inner voice paves the way for solitude.

Great wars have been fought to preserve the self-respect of 'great men'. But every man need not be 'great' & every war need not kill bodies. The lazy ones prefer to burn the souls. Their war is not the 'great' war. Their war is not merely about the material existence. Theirs is the little war within themselves. The little war to create the fine line between what they want and what they don't at every stage of life, the little war to figure out who they are and who they aren't, the little war to have an ideological control over their emotions & the little war to always remember and follow the outcomes of their deep introspection and contemplation.

Milan Kundera, through his fictional work in the masterpiece "The unbearable Lightness of Being" introduces the rule of three. The Novel circles around a divorced libertine, Tomas who falls prey to the feeling of compassion for one of his preys or sensual partners as he prefers to call them. Tomas' rule of three dictates that you either see them (his mistresses) over a long period of time but must allow three weeks to pass between consecutive encounters, or you see them up to three times in quick succession but then never again. Such vast are the boundaries of his personal space that he came up with such an algorithm that his lust for the personal space appeared to overshadow his lust for women & left him in solitude in the eyes of the world but should men that strong, with such strong endeavor, with such firm resolution care if they appear weak in the eyes of others?

The story of Religion : After the creation of modern nation states

"I can not believe in god who wants to be praised all the time"

                                                                                                                                             -Friedrich Nietzsche

Throughout the History of mankind, philosophers and intellectuals have always hoped and tried for peace and prosperity through various means. The earlier ones discovered religions & god and called themselves messengers & prophets to further strengthen their claims to spread the fear of god and the fear of ending up in hell. It may not be true that they must have really wanted themselves to be called messengers but that is how common men have always been fooled to achieve the greater goals. Unfortunately, majority of mankind has always been stupid and this has been our way to deal with them.

Towards Nationalism 

After Renaissance, people started questioning the very basis of religion even if they had to suffer harsh atrocities at the hands of these institutions. By the start of 19th century, the concept of nationalism caused another revolution and people even started discussing if we even needed religion for the purpose was being served by nationalism. Various countries made idols to personify the nations and people started worshiping them. So, what was the logic behind nationalism? 

To start with, the societies had become so diverse, specially in the Americas, that the only uniting force was the concept of nationalism. When the thirteen colonies of America united in 1776 to form the USA and overthrow the British imperialists, nationalism was conceived in the modern era.

Towards Secularism

When democratic nations were being formed and constitutions were being framed, various threats to democracy were being analysed. And one the biggest threats was religion, of course. So, the term secularism was coined. Secularism, a belief system that rejects religion, or the belief that religion should not be part of the affairs of the state or part of public education. After all, modern states couldn't be and shouldn't be run based on religions which for centuries have said impractical things and narrated stories of men flying and beasts talking. 

Is secularism already dead?

The christian countries were all successful in eliminating religious extremism. Some Muslim countries like Turkey and Iran were doing fine too till Shah was overthrown in 1979. For others, they had communism. The communist North Korea went as far as to ban the Bible and even reject the much practiced concept of relating years with respect to Christ's birth. But the rising religious extremism around the world in recent years shows something is wrong with the implementation of secularism. If you look carefully, secularism died the very day UN decided to create a Jewish State in 1945. It was followed by the "Two nation theory" given by the British government in 1947 to divide India. UN has been unable to solve the India-Pakistan & Israel-Palestine conflicts till date. After the cold war ceased, the Islamic extremism in the Middle East & these two conflicts alone have accounted for the majority of the terrorist incidents throughout the world. 

Present Scenario

For centuries, the radical Islamists are chasing the mirage of creating an Islamic state and have always failed to do so only to kill their fellow Muslims. The absurd concepts of Jihad and Sharia have been used to whitewash the brains of millions just to gain political control. The situation has become so worse that the protesters have demanded Sharia even in countries like Germany, Britain & Canada where the same people sought refuge after they ran away from their countries when failed to keep up with the same absurd demands. What an irony!
In India too, the rise of Hindu extremist groups is a perilous situation. I won't be surprised if it takes the shape of Taliban in another 15-20 years. Again, the very thing they pretend to oppose. 

Conclusion

We need to do away with bigots and religious extremists seeking Sharia in western nations pretending to be victims of the western culture. If you really want sharia, why not go back to Saudi Arabia or Syria and live as their slaves. It should be understood that religion has nothing to do with politics or how people want to live. Religion is a personal choice and it can be a moral guide for the weaker ones who have lost the ability to think rationally but such bigots should stay away from exercising power. Further advocating rationality, I would say that for a better society, bigotry should be discouraged, be it any ideology. At the end of the day we should not be so religious or nationalist as to kill someone who speaks against religion or nation and at the same time so secular that we should kill someone who speaks in favor of it. Extremism is also the extreme end of humanity. 

A Solution to the Kashmir Problem : A Story

Logical Assumption :

With China, India and Pakistan possessing nuclear arms, it is close to impossible for any of the neighbors to occupy each others' territory in Kashmir without a nuclear war. 

Ingredients :

1.Securing the LOC (Army & BSF)

2.Securing the inner regions (RAW & State Police)

3.Zero tolerance to terrorism in the area

Key : 

Destroy the name of the state Jammu and Kashmir on the lines of Nizam's Hyderabad and by completely dividing the area into different states depending upon the ethnicity/language and create new states.

Eshtablishing this :

Jammu and Kashmir, as India calls it, has to be stopped being called Jammu and Kashmir. We will have to see the state handed over by Maharaja Hari Singh to India more closely. The state handed over had five major regions : 

1. Gilgit-Baltistan or the Northern region : At present occupied by Pakistan

2. Azad Kashmir : At present occupied by Pakistan

3. Kashmir Valley : At present occupied by India

4. Jammu : At present occupied by India

5. Aksai Chin : At present occupied by China

A Similar Story from the Past : 

The state "Hyderabad" was forcefully annexed into the Indian territory in 1948. The state of majority of Hindus was ruled by Nizam of Hyderabad, a Muslim. If Hyderabad were to be left as how it was in 1948, the problem of insurgency and independence movements would have continued to occur till this date but it was very tactfully handled by Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, Home Minister of India back then. He divided the state of Hyderabad into different regions and merged these with different states based on linguistic lines. 

1.Gulbarga and Bidar had Kannada speaking majority, so it was united with Mysore and other regions to create Karnataka. 

2.The Marathi speaking areas were merged with Maharastra 

3.The Telugu speaking areas were united to create Andhra Pradesh, leaving behind Hyderabad as a small city.

Procedure:

On similar lines if the currently Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir is divided into three states:

1.Jammu : With Hindu Majority and most people speaking Hindi & Punjabi

2.Leh-Ladakh : With Buddhist influence and most people speaking Ladakhi, Tibetan.

3.Kashmir Valley : With Muslim Majority.

And removing article 370 and AFSPA from the first two states, then the current problem of Jammu and Kashmir reduces to just the Kashmir Valley. Further, Kashmir Valley can be announced as a special territory just like China gives a special status to HongKong. 

Result:

The worst that can happen would be the problem of Kashmir would still prevail but at least, that would just remain in the valley. 

The best that can happen is that India will powerfully control the other two areas having vast potentials in tourism and energy sectors. Looking at the development in the neighboring states, Kashmir Valley, over decades, may itself be willing to remove the article 370 and as a gesture of goodwill, AFSPA may be lifted in a few years. 

PS :

 I don't write political columns or draw political agendas. I am a story-teller and this is my version of one of my stories about the Kashmir problem.

An Open Letter to Anurag Kashyap

What's wrong with Bombay Velvet?

"A Period Crime drama set in 1960's: directed by Anurag Kashyap, starring Ranbir Kapoor, edited by Thelma Schoonmaker and music given by Amit Trivedi."
The marketing line should have been enough for any cinephile to get goosebumps. Atleast to me, it looked like Martin Scorcese and Robert-de-Niro are getting together for the first time. If this combination isn't enough , what more could a cinegoer want! Atleast, the day-1 would have been exploding at the Box-Office.
But No! Flop! Biggest flop of the year. This is what you get Mr. Kashyap. The problem with the indian audience is that the dumb people are all for Khans and Item songs and the intelligent ones are too obsessed with the content. They don't care about your 200 vintage cars, 25,000 kilos of costumes, antique trains, trams, fascinating sets, realism, live-recorded jazz music from Prague. They would have never noticed the extent to which you went into detailing. They never looked at the collars of the shirts your actors were wearing, Tommy guns from Germany! Who cares!

Mr. Kashyap,
In a country where Chetan Bhagat is the Best-Selling Author and Chennai Express and Kick are the biggest box-office hits, you can't expect them to appreciate a movie like that of yours! Even the intelligent ones here are no better than mediocre ones in other countries!
Mediocrity prevails here! I go to the book-stores, I leaf through the best-selling books, I get upset. I go for the movies, I am upset with the 95% of the movies which come out. I remember you talking about Paanch in one of your interviews, where you talked about how a producer talked to you about "Darkness" in the movie (To other people: He meant that the lights were not good!). And this is how, most of our people are!

The other thing Sir, is that your movies in general are dark. There is violence. Censorship is not the only thing you face . You face frustrated people who won't pay you to watch your content. Gangs of Wasseypur did well because you spent less. Fantom's Huterrr did well for the same reason. On one side when we say that the Indian audience is changing, you have to realize that not only a section of it is changing but the people who are changing are only giving chance to movies like Queen, Lunch-box & Piku. These movies have some sort of realism which people relate to, in terms of acting, dialogues and locations. The scripts are good. But the main thing is that these movies have emotional touch and soft comedy as key elements. So, people know these are good movies and at the same time, there is no violence or sex, so they can watch it with their families.
For Example: When I go to watch a movie like Piku, I can carry my whole family along with me and the children too. But when I go for Bombay Velvet I go alone or with someone outside the family. So, Piku earns 1200-1600 bucks from my family while Bombay Velvet just earns 200.

On top of that, the narrative in Bombay Velvet is very experimental. If you could have gone with Rosie Naronha or the Police Officer (played by Kay Kay Menon) narrating the story, as in Gangs of Wasseypur, the movie would have still done a better job. Mr. Kashyap, in India you can't be creative with 120 Crores on board. The creativity which the audience would appreciate and understand here would be only till your last low-budget movie.
I had expected a revolution in the industry with this movie. I guess it just got delayed. A great try!

बाप जी के चरण स्पर्श ।