In Federico Fellini’s masterpiece, La Dolce Vita, the wistful faux intellectual, Mr. Steiner remarked – “I am too serious to be a dilettante, and too much of a dabbler to be a professional.” Lets call him and his ilk ‘serious dabblers’ for the sake of convenience. This sentiment echoes among many of the privileged class of my generation. A class which grew up witnessing economic liberalization, cultural glasnost, breaking of traditional mores of defining ambition, profession, gender and relationships – it was promised that sky was the limit, at least till you ‘grow up’.

And this is the sentiment which lies at the point of departure between the swathes of serious dabblers on one side and the career dilettantes and professionals on the other side.  The protagonist of Tamasha is a true itinerant at heart. He is a wandering story teller fascinated by the tales of war and conquest, love and heart break, of epics and myths. But like Naseeruddin Shah in Monsoon Wedding, Boman Irani in Lakshya and Balraj Sahini in Waqt, our protagonist’s father is a child of India’s partition. Partition was a bitter tragedy which instilled a diehard spirit of self denial, hard work and zealous enterprise among those who started lives afresh. Such enterprise scoffed at wooly ideas of philosophical self discovery – an indulgence reserved only for the unambitious and unworthy. It is no accident that the high-achieving father in the movie is domineering and judgmental – an overpowering authority whose slightest disapproval is like a death knell to the son. In the face of such scathing scrutiny the son gives up.

With the automated monotony of what we call ‘growing up’, his creativity gets stifled and he finds himself in a corporate desk job. He makes soul crushing power point presentations using cliché after cliché to disinterested clients. His gift of inventive story telling falls flat in the face of regimented corporate speak with its punctilious rules of grammar, syntax and economy. His boss, once an entrepreneur, is now a happily risk averse corporate head who likes predictability and a market beating computed annual growth rate of profitability.

The protagonist has convinced himself that storytelling is an inferior calling. He is firmly ensconced in the corporate straitjacket and has throttled his original self. At a subliminal level he knows that the limited liability of the corporate form is causing him limitless pain but he has deliberately rendered even his gentle iconoclasm comatose. Till one fine day an old flame who had once witnessed the free spiritedness of his rolling stone days jolts him out of his hypnotic trance. So a ‘dilettante’ turned ‘professional’ was confronted with the fact that he has become a turncoat. This desperate awakening triggers a disturbing bipolarity in him. He is not sure where he belongs. He is too scared to pursue his passion and yet too revolted to turn up at the gut wrenching guillotine of creativity at work.  How he reverts to pursuing his childhood passion is a delightful process of self realisation and I strongly urge you to watch the movie.

But coming back to the scourge of the serious dabbler. Blessed are those who have a passion, are convinced that they are good at it and have the luxury to pursue it – like our protagonist. Or those who love the stability of a corporate life – the smooth income stream, promotions and bonuses and the appearance of success by association with the entity they work for- like the boss of the protagonist. The ‘serious dabblers’ are ailing. They dislike the ritual of turning up at work. They have read enough facebook posts and buzzfeed articles to know they are not alone in this state of disquiet. This brews a growing discontent and false sense of entitlement that they are cut out for something else – something more meaningful and rewarding which they will stumble across one fine day. But either they lack a passion or the conviction to pursue their passion thereby getting drawn into a vicious cycle of longing and self pity. More often than not, the happy resolution for them is the realisation that they have missed the ‘follow your passion bus’ and are making decent money in any case. So they follow the words of Ramadhir Singh, the pragmatic ganglord in Gangs of Wasseypur – “apni bhavnaon ko dalon apni gand mein..’ (i.e. stuff your feelings up your ass, and just get on with it). But for those who are unable to reach this convenient compromise, life can be like that of the forlorn Mr. Steiner.

Ranbir Kapoor has become the quintessential vagabond – the ‘khanabadosh’ of our times. However unlike his grandfather Raj Kapoor, the original wandering tramp of Bollywood, Ranbir Kapoor’s characters do not come from rural poverty or urban squalor.  They grow up in Golf Links or Pali Hill, have rich parents and privileged childhoods. Therefore the personal conflicts that they face can seem elitist compared to those faced by millions in the country who struggle to live a life of basic human dignity.  It reminds me of the poignant scene in Richard Linklater’s masterful ‘Boyhood’ where the rich white kids of a well off family are struggling to ‘find themselves’ whereas the poor immigrant Mexican kid who did odd jobs to pay for night school finally bags a white collar job and is thrilled to bits. You could either take the father’s side on this one and command the vagrant son to dutifully climb the corporate ladder, or choose to be sensitive and respect the subjective relativity of each ones’ personal demons – the call is yours.

But in this trichotomy of being a dilettante, a professional or a serious dabbler, please avoid being the third. Because it didn’t end too well for Mr. Steiner.

Why is IP regulation required for jokes?

Certain expressions are already copyrighted. The copyright may be claimed over the specific performance (videos) or the collection such as in case of books. However, this post aims at focusing only on the content of a joke. We may, in principle, agree on the premise that when a comedian puts some creative efforts, his creative skills should be protected. Whenever we face an object that can be regulated, law seems to be the obvious regulator. However, the question that arises is, should this regulation be based in law? Lawrence Lessig, in his book, Code 2.0, suggests that essentially, there are four regulators: Market, norms, law and architecture. In this post, I adopt this very framework of regulation discussed by Lessig to understand the regulability of jokes.

Market and evolving architecture of jokes

In early 20th century stand-up comedy, the jokes mainly comprised of one-liners which were considered to be the common property. Later, the creation of jokes itself became more important. This can be attributed to the market where competition required the generation of joke content and not just performance. Therefore, comedians found themselves more invested. This was also affected by several changes in comic markets which furthered the demand for content.  This market demand also changed the structure of jokes in stand up comedy. The jokes, which earlier took the form of one-liners, were now divided into set-up and punch line. This shows the interaction of market and architecture as regulators of stand-up comedy industry. In the following sections, I will discuss the relevance of market and architecture in evolving norms and legal rules.

Evolution of norms in Stand-up comedy

Some of the classic writings on jokes considered the protection purely in terms of copyright. However, the later studies have argued that due to the existence of the norms in the industry of stand-up comedy, there is no need of legal protection. The norms governing the industry, though informal and without any legal backing are effective and extend from ostracism and badmouthing to at times, physical violence.

Earlier, when the jokes were mainly one-liners, the repetition of jokes was more acceptable and the rights of the creator existed in performance rather than in the joke content. However, a study conducted by Oliar and Sprigman shows that with later changes in the structure of jokes, the norms that exist in the industry of stand-up comedy no more recognise joke-theft justified. Further, the norms of the industry no more recognise the jokes themselves as commons. Therefore, these market changes also affected the change in norms of stand-up comedy industry.

Law as a regulator of IP rights over joke

A joke is essentially a literary creation like a poem, story etc. Therefore, at least in theory, it will merit copyright protection. However, the theoretical protection itself is not sufficient to sustain a substantial legal claim. This is because of the idea-expression dichotomy that lies at the heart of copyright. Copyright law protects the expression and not the idea. Another important, though not doctrinal concern is the costs attached with litigation. Sometimes, the costs may just overwhelm the market value of joke. Though not through copyright, the issue of joke stealing has come up in front of courts in several different forms. For one-liners, the tort of passing off may be claimed, if that one liner is an identifier line for the comedian. One such claim was also successfully made in in Foxworthy v. Custom Tees, Inc. (879 F. Supp. 1200 (N.D. Ga. 1995)). In some instances, the cases have also been filed under the claim of misleading advertisement.

No property regulation can ensure the eradication of theft, but it should ensure that enough protection to property is given that investing in property remains worthwhile. At the same time, we should be careful in expanding legal protections to every creative activity. This also works with jokes. Therefore, the essential question that will have to be asked is: whether the regulators other than ‘law’ are sufficient to protect the creativity? As demonstrated above, market, architecture and norms collectively provide sufficient protection to creativity in context of jokes.

Jon Stewart’s retirement last week restarted discussion surrounding the United States’ dependence on satirical news programs. Much as Jon Stewart might have liked to call himself a person who merely made jokes, the fact remains that he was one of the most trusted voices in the media. And he’s not the only one. The US has a pantheon of such satirists- Stephen Colbert, John Oliver and Bill Maher, to name a few. Intentionally or not, Arnab Goswami makes a mockery of the news. In all seriousness, AIB has, on occasion, forayed into commenting on the political space, as has Justice Katju in his inimical manner.

America’s reliance on ‘infotainment’ made me wonder why we prefer getting our news from comedians. It struck me that America is not the first such country- monarchies through the ages relied on ‘fools’ or ‘jesters’ to be honest with the king along with providing entertainment. Jesters have been recorded in Europe, China, America, India, Japan and Africa. Jesters played a vital role in royal courts because most people were afraid to be honest with kings. Quite often, the task of delivering bad news was left to them.

The methodology used by John Oliver is actually strikingly similar to that of one of the most popular jesters in Indian history- Birbal. Oliver not only humorously lampoons the government and institutions, but often also instigates trolls to do things like crash the FCC website. This reminded me of one of the more popular Birbal tales in which Emperor Akbar believes that a man survived a winter night in a freezing lake by relying on a fire miles away. He accuses him of cheating and doesn’t reward him for completing the challenge. In order to make Akbar realize his mistake, Birbal invites Akbar for lunch and cooks his biryani from five feet above the flame. Jesters, modern and old, rely on witticisms to prove a point.

Jon Stewart often joked that it was a shame that people relied on him for news. And I agree. Effective as Stewart’s methodology might have been, he is no substitute for news. Nor is John Oliver. I can understand the rationale behind the existence of court jesters. They lived in an age when you could be whipped, beaten or worse for saying a word against anyone of note. These were men who were either ‘naturally fools’ or appointed and licensed to speak their minds. Their contribution to courts was significant in terms of addressing the information asymmetry that that naturally existed as a result of the court structure. America, on the other hand, considers itself a bastion of democracy and free speech. Freedom of the media has been extended to include fears and potential harms in the form of the chilling effect doctrine. The media and the ballot, not comedians, are supposed to be checks on institutions.

However, it is undeniable that they have a huge impact as this article suggests. And this isn’t because they are the only ones saying what they do say. John Oliver was certainly not the only one talking about net neutrality, as the various clips in his show demonstrate. And yet, he was the one who managed to make the FCC sit up and take notice. The FCC has no responsibility to either him or any news outlet. It is, however, accountable to public opinion. The fact that John Oliver did what several newsmen failed to do, speaks volumes not about the state of governance, but the average television viewer. Do we, the people, the new sovereign, also need jesters to tell us things we don’t want to hear? The jester must speak, not because no one else may, but because we wouldn’t care if they did. The jesters of old thrived on fear; jesters of the day thrive on apathy.

The inspiration to write this post has arisen in response to a ‘dare’ given to freshly enrolled first year female students at my university during one of their early courses, urging them to resist the ‘temptation’ of wearing the Little Black Dress by the end of their first year, among other sinful temptations. In the spirit of the thought provoking and eye opening discussions I fondly remember from my own first year, I would like to present a differing opinion; one endorsing the merits of falling for that temptation, and donning that Little Black Dress with pride.

I shan’t dwell much upon the fact that female students, or for that matter women anywhere, should be able to wear whatever they want, be ‘tempted’ by whatever dresses they want, and should not be harassed or judged for the same.  It’s a simple point that’s been made often enough, and I daresay will continue to be made, as it should.

I shall, however, dwell most seriously on the positive need for us to embrace the little black dress, not purely for its appeal to the eye, but for all that it represents. The Little Black Dress or the ‘LBD’, as it is fondly called today, was an expression of more than just the designing genius of one Coco Chanel.

For beginners, it was black. Today this constitutes a bland observation. But back in the early 1900s and well into the 1940s, black was strictly relegated to widows and servants. For up to four years after her husband’s demise, a widow was strictly confined to all-concealing, unalluring black garbs. And because it was positively scandalous to be seen in black unless you were a lowly servant, widows were further confined to their rooms or houses and isolated from any public life or company. As legend goes, when Coco Chanel lost her paramour in a tragic car accident, she felt ‘black’ in grief. But she was not a widow, and she definitely didn’t intend to stay confined anywhere for four years – her business was booming, and she had already begun her own revolution for women’s liberation through her designs (which included introducing pants for women and doing away with oppressive corsets during the First World War). And so, she decided it was time the world around her embraced the colour black.

Coco wasn’t an aristocrat or even a genteel. She was a seamstress who had rubbed shoulders with the black-clad servants since she was born. And she had smashed the glass ceiling to dress the crème de la crème of Parisian society, who vied for her appointment despite her humble origins. So when she brought out her Little Black Dress, made immensely popular when it was endorsed by Audrey Hepburn, it added a very decisive nail in the coffin of ostracising the colour black, and those who had been ostracised with it.

Secondly, the little black dress was, well, little. This naturally raised quite a furore in a society where the flash of an ankle was generally the subject of the week’s gossip or the plot of heartrending romantic literature. But over the decades, it became a staple in most women’s wardrobes, worn at parties, to formal events or even to work. Today we bemoan the attitude of those who claim that the length of our skirts determine our character, who believe that our appearance if ‘tempting’ enough erases the requirement of consent and that ultimately, women and the treatment they deserve is based on what they decide to wear.

But the Little Black Dress, with its history and its function, stands tall against such attitudes. It was created by a woman who changed the rules of clothing for women, who freed them from social and historic confines and a woman who broke down barriers of classes with her creations. The Little Black Dress is worn by women all over the world today, who stride into workplaces, enjoy themselves at parties and don’t believe that the length of their skirt determines anything about their personality or sexual availability.

So I say that we all fall for the ‘temptation’ of an LBD, if we find it alluring enough. Coco Chanel’s creation is obviously more than just another fashion output to enhance physical allure. It is the result of her personal rebellion in sync with a historic purpose, revolutionary in its function and empowering in its effect. And I urge those first years to lose that ‘dare’ and be tempted by the LBD. Rest assured, the truth of your substance is definitely not resident in the length, colour and design of the dress you wear. So the next time you wear a fabulous Little Black Dress, or any dress for that matter, and are made to feel badly about it, just glare back and stride on. Because that’s what Coco would have done.

Sharwari Pandit

While this second-order question itself is an interesting one, it is beside the point. For me, the legal intern’s question was symptomatic of a film that, like a trainee lawyer whose mind is filled with half-baked thoughts, is fundamentally unsure of the questions that it is asking. This is not to suggest even for a moment that I wanted easy answers or resolutions at the end of the movie so that I could go back home feeling vindicated much like I did after watching Dabangg. Quite to the contrary, my expectation was more modest— the questions that the movie-makers wanted us to think about, the ones that its characters and the stories were attempting to develop through their own journeys and complexities, should have been clearly depicted and more powerfully etched. As it was, at the end of the movie, I was walking down the steps of the theatre towards the exit with a bewildering array of muddled thoughts which congealed into a serene nothingness as I stepped outside. It’s been a day since and twenty-fours have only concretised the extant nothingness, neither clarifying the deep philosophical questions that the movie is meant to be asking nor striking a delayed emotional chord through the three personal stories the movie tries to tell. And before you say that muddled thoughts are good and making me think about random questions such as the definition of celibacy is itself testament to the intellectual prowess of the movie, let me just say this— a bad argument doesn’t become a good one because it confuses you and makes you think why it doesn’t work.

Problematically, the philosophical premise of the film which lends it its title is the ship of Theseus paradox, is a category error (Henceforth, I use Ship of Theseus to refer to the movie and ship of Theseus to refer to the paradox). In philosophy, the ship of Theseus has been a long-standing paradox because the question of identity of the ship each of whose planks was removed and replaced by other planks, could be seen as contingent either on the continuity of form (the argument was that though its planks were removed, the new planks put together constitute the same ship because it had the same form) or the identity of original parts (this issue was made acute by Thomas Hobbes who put forward the situation that the old planks were put together to make another ship, which arguably was identical with the original ship of Theseus). Today, it is widely acknowledged that continuity of form is a sufficient and non-defeasible condition of identity. It is specifically non-defeasible in relation to the identity of parts condition.

Irrespective of the philosophical merits of the view (see here and here for more on this), the question of identity is an issue for the ship of Theseus because of complete disassembly and consequent replacement. This question of complete disassembly does not arise in the situation presented by Ship of Theseus at all. The closest we come to such disassembly is when we are told at the climax that it was a single brain dead hobbyist cave explorer, eight of whose body parts were now donated to others. But in this case there was no replacement of these parts because the donor was dead. On the contrary, where there was replacement, in the bodies of the three protagonists, there is no disassembly. For example, if you give your watch whose minute hand is broken for repair, and the minute hand is replaced by the repairer, because of the replacement of a minute hand, the watch does not lose its identity. Since it maintains the continuity of form it is still your watch. So if the ship of Theseus had only one plank changed with another it wouldn’t have been the paradox that it is today. On the contrary, if The Ship of Theseus, had a few planks changed, well…

What is most baffling is that irrespective of the questionable philosophical premise, the treatment of the actual changes that are caused by the organ donations in the lives of the protagonists is surprisingly slipshod. The first track of the blind photographer was pregnant with possibility about how vision changed her identity. But apart from a scene where she wilfully blindfolds herself to find inspiration and the final scene where she seems to have finally found some visual inspiration, this possibility is left largely unexplored, perhaps even sacrificed for the sake of an overly intricate character development. The third track, where such change in identity is dealt with head on as a kidney recipient makes a forced kidney recipient’s struggle for justice his own, loses steam, trying to grapple with too many incidental issues—the kidney racket in India, the familiar tale of the poor and their satisfaction with material well-being as opposed to real justice (perhaps unwittingly portrayed as a plaything of the rich) and the use of large amounts of money as a means to assuage guilt. Most bafflingly, the second track of the ascetic, beautifully shot, does not deal with the question of change and identity at all curiously stopping with the monk’s equally baffling volte face to suddenly agree to a liver transplant when the set up led you to believe that he was fasting unto death. Perhaps it’s best to leave questions of petty causality out when discussing a movie that deals with big philosophical tropes.

More than the movie which left me intellectually dissatisfied, the parroting of the movie’s supposedly path-breaking philosophical enquiries by large numbers of go-to movie reviewers, left me deeply doubtful of the quality and competence of the professional movie reviewing class in India. While certainly, I take no objection to the fact that personally they may have found the film tasteful, beautifully shot and worthy of compliment (though I’m very inclined to saying that they’re entitled to their opinions but they’re wrong), to call it ‘brimming with sharp and original interpretations of age-old philosophy (Mint), ‘a richly emotional, intellectual and sensory experience’ (CNN-IBN) and ‘one of the finest Indian films of recent times’ (NDTV), is inexplicable without casting substantial doubt about their own calibre. Perhaps I’m being too uncharitable and each of them may be right in some way- Ship of Theseus is brimming with original interpretations of age-old philosophy except that such interpretations are plainly flawed, which is why they are original; it is a richly emotional, intellectual and sensory experience, which made me feel emotionally indifferent, which in turn led to an intellectual enquiry (indifference is surely an emotion, or is it not?), which in turn led to a strong sensory urge without which my humble intellect cannot function: Hunger. (This in turn, led to another question as to whether hunger despite being not one of the five senses we’re taught can actually be a ‘sensory’ urge(?) and thus the virtuous cycle of emotion, intellect and sensory experience continued).  And finally, this actually may be one of the finest Indian films of recent times that the NDTV reviewer had seen, which is not testimony to how good Ship of Theseus is but just how bad the other movies he has the singular misfortune to watch and review are. That the universality of praise in these inexplicably over-the-top reviews had something to do with the fact that the film had won widespread international recognition and was cleverly marketed as an offbeat, low-budget film that you must praise if you want to be seen socially as a cultured, thinking reviewer is a hard conclusion to dismiss. As is the conclusion that the professional reviewer in India needs to develop balls, or at least some brains, though a combination of both would hopefully not be asking for too much.

In a new India where people are more attracted to Twitter than literature, T-20 cricket than test matches and mindless Bollywood than serious cinema, with the Ship of Theseus Anand Gandhi boldly tries to reverse this trend. For this he must be widely applauded. He is undoubtedly a director of great potential, with a wonderful eye and a propensity to think deeply about things around him. Unfortunately in translating these skills to celluloid, he tries too hard to win our hearts with human stories while tickling our brains with purported philosophical paradoxes. In the process of attempting to win both heart and head, Gandhi gets stuck somewhere in between—like an unsavoury taste in the mouth.

]]> http://www.criticaltwenties.in/mediapopularculture/ship-of-theseus-2013/feed 21 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/mediapopularculture/pacific-rim-2013 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/mediapopularculture/pacific-rim-2013#comments Wed, 17 Jul 2013 17:22:54 +0000 Alok http://www.criticaltwenties.in/?p=5433
(Note-some spoilers ahead, but if you’re watching Pacific Rim for the plot, I can save you the trouble and tell you that obviously the humans win in the end- Alok)

The best boxer in the world would probably last 10 seconds as a coherent mass of flesh in the ring with a silverback gorilla. The fastest swimmer in the world would be shredded meat in a race with a shark. And Usain Bolt at his fastest cannot outrun any of the big cats on open ground. As prolific and widespread as we think we are the total weight of ants on the Earth is greater than the total weight of humans on the Earth. Cockroaches will probably outlive whatever calamity befalls our race, from our own hands or through a twist of fate.

At some level, we know how puny and very destructible we are at an individual level. So when 200 foot monsters come roaring out of the deeps to eradicate every last one of us, the fairly neutral observer (if there is one) will most likely put money (if he or she is of the betting type) on the kaiju.

Pacific Rim is at one level purely a 10 year old  boy’s fantasy given 150 million dollars to work with and turned into a summer blockbuster. It works because nothing appeals more to the average 10 year old boy than wanton death and destruction, and giant robots. It works because at 10, before we become adults and after we have something resembling a functioning brain, we become very aware of how small, puny and utterly helpless we really are. As adults we forget about it as the cares of the world overtake us or deny it  as the imperatives of masculinity require. As infants it doesn’t really register.

So we make up our stories (perhaps the most uniquely human aspect of ourselves) where we are gigantic and all powerful, battling mosters just as gigantic and powerful as we are on equal terms (the pre-teen age is perhaps the last stage of our lives where our fears and terrors are more tangible than intangible). Guillermo Del Toro, bless his soul, has stayed true to his inner 10 year old self, and possibly helped some of us remember or rediscover.

Disaster movies of the scale and size of Pacific Rim perform two functions – classic catharsis where heroes and heroines much like ourselves face numerous challenges imposed upon them by cruel fate or global warming; and giving us the feeling that even in the face of total destruction, we’re not utterly helpless, that we can and sometime do find a way to survive.  Whether it’s planting a nuke on an asteroid/comet in space or building giant “arks” in the Himalayas, or as in the case of Pacific Rim, building monstrous, nuclear powered Jaegers with 40 foot flexi-blades operated by mind-melded pilots (still more plausible than the “virus” Jeff Goldblum created in “Independence Day”). These make us believe, as we want to, that we can “cancel the Apocalypse” as Idris Elba’s pre-battle  St.-Crispin’s-Day-type speech would have you believe.

In contrast to the superhero genre so pervasive these days, the hopes of humanity in “Pacific Rim” doesn’t rest on the shoulders of one or even a select few gifted individuals. The Jaeger programme involves much research, development and incremental improvement like a real world weapons systems and is not overly dependent on one person’s genius or superhuman ability. Jaegers and theirs pilots to some extent, affirm the other great human trait that is often ignored – the ability to communicate and cooperate.

Pacific Rim also works as a solid science fiction film in the good old fashioned Golden Age science fiction sense. Real science fiction is not just robots, lasers and spaceships but a story where the protagonists attempt to solve a problem applying scientific methods and scientific principles in a given situation. It can be worked into many genres – the adventure story, the detective story, and even, why not, romance. The problem, of how to stop the kaiju attacks, is cracked by scientists working on the problem through the course of movie and the internal physics of the movie seem to make sense and not utterly implausible. The heroes are not infallible super-men or -women but flawed and almost broken individuals doing what they can in difficult times.

Don’t look for much emotional depth though. It is hard to fit in drama in the middle of city smashing destruction on all fronts. And that’s not Del Toro’s intention anyway. Idris Elba is as close as we’ll get to a solid actor who, despite the fact that the script almost practically calls out for it, doesn’t ham and rage but gives the restrained performance of a man with the troubles of the world on his shoulder and much worse. Far more than even Charlie Hunnam and Rinko Kikuchi, the ostensible “leads” Elba is really the central character of the movie, the stable point around which the action and mayhem seems to proceed. The movie really rests on its epic Jaeger-kaiju battles and the few moments of backstory or emotional backdrop feel very much like filler.

A few words about the kaiju. No Ron Perlman is not one of them though is cameo is as delightful and enjoyable as anything Ron Perlman does these days. The kaiju are of course a tribute to Japanese anime but somehow possess a Lovecraftian feeling of being deep and abiding horrors that we cannot as humans, relate to in any human way. Whereas King Kong could appreciate beauty, and Godzilla was a creation of mankind’s, kaiju come out of a deep interdimensional portal with only the object of eradicating humanity as so much vermin to be cleared out of planet Earth. The CGI, I thought, captured that sense of unimaginable strangeness and alienness of the monsters. We cannot see them in any way but monsters.

If you want to give the inner 10 year old a chance to have a day out, Pacific Rim is the movie. In a season of rather dull and predictable summer blockbusters filled with sequels upon sequels or big name duds, Pacific Rim is a welcome change.

A film that begins with an insurgent being tortured into revealing crucial intelligence? Surely they follow that with one of the characters making a speech about the wrongness of torture? What, there isn’t so much as a single line about the futility of torture but instead they portray the torturers sympathetically, as non-sadistic people who take no visible pleasure in their task? There must have been a scene where the victim of torture is revealed to be utterly innocent at the very least, right? Nope, he’s responsible for a terrorist attack. Then there can be no other conclusion except that Zero Dark Thirty is a pro-torture film! 

Special Chabbis takes this very human yearning and fleshes it out into easily Bollywood’s best “heist” film of all time. Very loosely based on real life incidents, it’s a story of four rather ordinary people who, using their wits and guts, outsmart the real thieves and thugs of our age – crooked netas and businessmen – posing as CBI cops or taxmen. The premise is as simple as it is brilliant; target someone who will never file a complaint and who’ll unhappily write it off as a business loss rather than explain the source of the income. It’s a modern day Robin Hood tale that appeals, at some level, to our sense of justice.

Where heist films in the past have contrived to add glamour and good looks (think Ocean’s 12 & 13, Bunty aur Babli, and ugh, the Dhoom movies) to a rather thin plot, Special Chabbis adds character and emotion to a rich and layered plot that gets its vice-like hold on you and doesn’t let go for two-and-a-half hours straight. Ajay (Akshay Kumar), Sharma (Anupam Kher), Iqbal (Kishore Kadam) and Joginder (Rajesh Sharma) are not supposed to be people you’ll necessarily remember for the rest of your life. In their “regular” lives they’re battling concerns that anyone can identify with – a seemingly doomed love affair, a daughter’s wedding, a nagging and demanding wife, or a large family to take care of.

Yet, once every two months or so, they get together, put on their costumes, forge documents, plot meticulously, and pull off a stunning caper against someone rich with lots to hide. Whatever else they may be, for those few days, they strut in immaculately pressed clothes, speak in clipped accents (dipping into the vernacular only when strictly required) and fearlessly slap people of any rank. Though set in pre-liberalization India, it’s the ultimate wish-fulfillment of post-2G India – break the corporate-government nexus with half a dozen well timed whacks on the faces of the smug bastards. Oh and also steal all their ill gotten gains in the process. (It’s obviously fantasy because in the era of round-tripping, tax havens and corporate structuring, no one actually keeps large bundles of cash in easy reach anymore. As certain tax officers found out recently.)

The “Special Chabbis” of the title comes from the twenty-six bright (and not-so-bright), (mostly) young men and women who sign up with the Gang of Four, believing them to be CBI officers, to help them with their biggest and last heist – robbing the biggest jewellery store in town (based on the real-life Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri Jewellers heist in Bombay). To be part of the Special Chabbis is a once-in-a-birth chance to be part of the CBI elite by going through an interview, a written test and a “practical” (which is, needless to say, the actual heist). When an ad says that the CBI is recruiting and is looking for someone – who just might be you – for action, adventure and adrenaline, wouldn’t you jump at the chance, brush up your CV, clean up your looks, and practice your best tough-guy/girl-naivete thinking it makes you look formidable?

Never mind that the actual CBI has actually laid out a trap for you.

(Obviously there’s a stunning twist ending which I’m not going to reveal here!)

*****

Neeraj Pandey, with Special Chabbis, joins the happily growing list of Indian directors who’re hitting that sweet spot between utterly crass commercial and the snooty inaccessible art-film circuit. A group of directors which includes Zoya Akhtar, Dibakar Bannerjee, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Anurag Kashyap, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Gauri Shinde among others who thrive in the multiplex viewer market with tight scripts, well cast and directed films that don’t equate entertainment with dumbing down of content. May their tribe (and output) increase.

While Neeraj Pandey’s work so far consists of only two movies, “A Wednesday” and “Special Chabbis”, located as they are in two very different genres, they address the same theme; the common man fights back against a seemingly insurmountable enemy in his own little way, using his wits and superior intelligence, sometimes against the forces of the law which are supposed to do this in the first place. It is fantasy of course, asking us to imagine that somehow your everyday guy will be able to access cutting edge technology to beat the government or have the necessary intelligence gathering skills to plan an elaborate fake raid. Yet, it’s a fantasy firmly rooted in a reality – present day Bombay in the case of A Wednesday and 1980s India in Special Chabbis – that makes us suspend our disbelief enough to believe in it. (Neeraj Pandey’s 1980s India is also a hipster’s delight – sweater vests, typewriters, vintage Marutis and Lambrettas, all awash in an Instagram-esque sepia. )

*****

On the face of it Akshay Kumar seems obviously miscast among a lot of fine character actors. Yet one doesn’t actually mind since he seems to be back doing what is obviously his forte – comedy. Akshay Kumar is at his comedic best not when he’s trying to be funny (all his disastrously unfunny “funny movies”) but when he plays it straight allowing the situation and the circumstances to bring the laughs (Hera Pheri and his cameo in the otherwise idiotic Om Shanti Om). Here, there’s no slapstick, no weird bodily quirks, no linguistic deformity or any other contrived attempt at humour – he allows his body language, the situation and the dialogue to bring the humour out.

Anupam Kher, while hilariously miscast as the no-nonsense top cop in “A Wednesday”, returns to playing a somewhat hassled, on-the-verge-of-retirement-middle aged man caring for his ever-growing brood – in other words pretty much everything good that he has done in the last 15 years or so (Khosla ka Ghosla, Bend it Like Beckham, Speedy Singhs) Yet, give him the lines, give him his crew and his cream coloured bush-shirt and corduroy pants, and he suddenly becomes a no-nonsense government official of unimpeachable integrity and titanium strength testicular fortitude. (On a side note, it would be beyond brilliant if in a weird comic-type crossover, Sharma of Special Chabbis was actually Khosla of Khosla ka Ghosla!)

Every good heist film has a dogged representative of the law who, despite his many limitations (lack of imagination, foresight and charm) proves a formidable foe through sheer persistence and doggedness in never giving up the chase till the end. Manoj Bajpayee’s Waseem Khan is a CBI officer and all about what actual police work really is – doing the dull, obvious things until you get a breakthrough, and in the Indian context, the threat of torture to obtain information. He is, in some ways, the polar opposite of Tom Hanks’ Carl Hanratty in Catch Me if You Can - menacing, self-assured, and charismatic and yet, at the end of the day, a proper family man who gives his kid a joy-ride to the school bus and worries about paying his bills. He could easily be Sardar Khan’s less-lecherous long-lost brother, just on the right side of the law this time.

As with the leads, Pandey gets most of the casting of the supporting roles spot on – witness Tiku Talsania’s Porky Pig act as the  owner of the targeted jewelry store in Bombay. Jimmy Shergill, who always seems to have the burden of the world upon his shoulders anytime he’s required to carry a film, fits neatly into his small-ish role that though has him appearing throughout, though it gives him rather little to do on screen most of the time.

Like with “A Wednesday”, Neeraj Pandey has little space for women in Special Chabbis. In both films, they’re usually in the periphery or background – a side track to the main story about the tussle of wills between clever/devious men. Maybe it’s a serious flaw in his directorial ability and vision or perhaps he hasn’t yet found the right script with strong female characters. Either way, one hopes Special Chabbis turns out to be a runaway hit that allows him to do something slightly different just as well, the next time around.

Coda:

1. Actual raids are far depressing and less entertaining, as I’ve written before.

2. The real-life Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri Jewellers heist has never been solved.

]]> http://www.criticaltwenties.in/mediapopularculture/special-chabbis-2013/feed 5 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/mediapopularculture/the-vishal-bhardwaj-interview http://www.criticaltwenties.in/mediapopularculture/the-vishal-bhardwaj-interview#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2013 12:08:34 +0000 Arghya http://www.criticaltwenties.in/?p=2939 [As Vishal Bhardwaj's new offering Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola releases today, an interview with Vishal for CriticalTwenties, conducted after his last movie]

In a film industry where conformity to a tried and tested formula has long been a recipe for success, Vishal Bhardwaj dared to defy the odds. With a penchant for doing things differently, be it situating Othello in the badlands of Uttar Pradesh or weaving seven short stories into a single script, Vishal today has carved a unique niche for himself as a cerebral film-maker who has achieved both critical and commercial success. In a free-wheeling interview to CriticalTwenties, Vishal, amongst other things, talks about his last offering Saat Khoon Maaf, why he loves the movies of Quentin Tarantino, the current state of Bollywood and movie-going audiences in India and how a certain someone got him into music composition and the movies in the first place.

What was it about Susanna’s Seven Husbands that made you want to make it into a movie?

The dark side of the story…the dark humour. I find dark humour very fascinating- it instigates something in you- it scares you, disturbs you but is funny at the same time.  When Ruskin Bond gave me the story, I immediately found the title very fascinating- why would someone have seven husbands?  On reading it, I was deeply intrigued by the character of Susanna, killing her husbands, not out of hate but out of love. It was a powerful story which I tried to tell in a way that I believed would capture its dark comedic aspects.

In Saat Khoon Maaf, it was apparent that Susanna’s husbands, who were responsible for moving the plot, were essentially evil characters. Even in some of your other films, a central role is played by an evil character- say, Langda Tyagi in Omkara. Is there anything particular about evil characters which fascinates you?

I strongly believe that we all have evil within us. It’s just that we don’t bring that evil into action every time; we get evil thoughts at some points of time, and sometimes we act on them and sometimes we don’t. It’s interesting to see when man is moved to his evil side and for what reasons. Through portraying these characters, I try to understand human beings. And the reason for portraying the husbands in Saat Khoon Maaf as having shades of evil is so that the audience could swallow their murders a little easily; as six murders of perfectly reasonable people may have been hard to handle in the space of one movie that was not a murder mystery!

Any particular story in Saat Khoon Maaf was your personal favourite?

Annu Kapoor’s track as Keemat Lal, the police officer turned fifth husband. He starts off as a lecherous police officer, sexually blackmailing Susanna and allowing her to remain scot free despite having murdered her husband if she does him sexual favours. But, then there is a remarkable transition and he genuinely falls in love with her. And that’s where their paths collide since she was never in love with him and never wanted to be with him. I was very taken in by this transition that occurred in Keemat Lal’s character. And of course the way Annu Kapoor played the role was masterful. He is a tremendously talented yet under-utilised actor and it was wonderful seeing this performance from him.

Let’s talk a little bit about your leading ladies. Nimmi in Maqbool and Susanna in SKM- if you had to marry one of them who would it be?

(Laughs).. I wouldn’t marry either!

But if you had to…

Well, in that case I’ll convert to Islam and marry both so that one can take care of the other!

Having said that, I don’t think there is much in common between them as they are very different people; what Nimmi was doing in Maqbool was for greed and lust; Susanna was doing it for love, she loved her husbands so much that she killed them; besides I changed the basic characterisation of Macbeth, by making Nimmi the wife of the King and Maqbool’s mistress which showed that the intentions that motivated her actions were not born out of love.

Moving on, you’re a man who wears many hats- writer, singer, director, music director. Which do you enjoy doing most?

Music gives me a sense of peace; it’s so personal and so satisfying once you compose a song; the peace it gives is unparalleled. The highs come from writing; and the sense of power comes from directing; you have created a character and you personify the character on set and then you edit it; if you don’t like one or two extra scenes or even if the character says one or two extra words you can cut them out; this ability to edit I think is immensely powerful. Besides the fact that people feel emotionally moved by a story you tell is a great feeling as a director.

So what was it like in Ishqiya, which was the first film that you wrote the script for but was directed by Abhishek Chaubey?

Abhishek has been with me since my first film; it was like giving a break to a younger brother; I definitely disagreed with some of the performances; that is fair because the film is the medium of the director; the writer may write a scene but the director must interpret it in his own way; but Ishqiya is very similar to what I would have done but certainly there are some differences and that is how it should be.

As a director, who have been your influences and whose movies you enjoy watching?

Kieslowski, the Polish-filmmaker inspires me greatly, though I have yet to make a film of the tone that he made. Quentin Tarantino too- he works on the basic themes of love and revenge, executes it in a classy manner yet plays perfectly to the masses. He is, I think, extremely juicy as a filmmaker. Also Takeshi Kitano, who has an extremely unique style. In contemporary Bollywood, there are very few filmmakers who excite me. Of the few there is Anurag Kashyap and Sudhir Mishra. In the commercial space there is Raju Hirani, who makes movies for the masses and does it in an extremely witty and engaging fashion.

When you do see a movie, do you see it through your own eyes or are you constantly thinking as a director, on what could have been differently, what was the background thinking that went into a scene etc?

I try to watch lots of movies and it’s a very funny feeling I get when I watch them. The success of the film-maker lies in the fact that he/ she makes you forget your own craft; that’s where a good film starts- if I forget I am a director, technician or whatever else I am and get absorbed in the story that’s the mark of a good film; if the film does not hold then I start thinking as a director, on how I would have done things differently.

So when you start thinking about a movie, whether an original screenplay or an adaptation, do you start with the basic plot or essaying the characters and weave a plot around it?

For me, the most important aspect of a movie is the conflict. For a good movie, there must be a powerful conflict and it must be resolved in a nice manner. If a movie manages to do this, I think it will be successful. And by conflict, I do not necessarily mean a fight or misunderstanding or a traditional antagonism between people; the conflict could even be a disease or something of that nature; every movie has an inherent conflict and it is the nature of that conflict and its resolution or lack thereof that I think determines its success and failure.

And are finances a consideration in choosing a project?

Two things. First thing, as a filmmaker, I am not opposed to stars. I think the gulf between stars and actors is decreasing as stars also good actors nowadays. Second thing, I think various kinds of audiences exist nowadays, so if I want to make an experimental movie I have to think about the audiences very carefully and not be entirely absorbed by my own idea. This is something that I need to work on and I must adjust the expectations I have of the film accordingly.

Is this what you always wanted to do- get into the movies?

I always had a basic lust to be a famous man. Now fame does not come through education. So it has to be through movies or sport. So movies were an obvious choice (smiles)…

And music- we heard you started out in college to impress your wife?

Yes, my wife was an excellent singer then as she is now. We were in college together. I was not a good composer then and so I decided to take up music composition seriously to see if I could make an impression.

Given that you’re happily married today, clearly your music left its mark?

(Laughs)… You can say that.

Do you see any significant changes in Bollywood from the time you started?

Yes, lots of changes. All the developments in the last 10 years are inter-related. Earlier, the conditions of theatres were terrible, people who had money didn’t go to theatres, now with multiplexes the crowds are coming in. At the same time, with cable and satellite television, people have been exposed to all kinds of world cinema; their sensitivities have changed and there is much greater scope for experimentation. The Censor Board is getting mature, the kinds of films they have been passing shows a change in sensibilities. We are of course far away from the ideal scenario of self-censorship since education levels in the country are still poor, but we are headed in the right direction. Perhaps one important change which needs to be made is with more scientific ratings for movies; we need 12+, 15+ and even XXX ratings to come in; the Censor Board says they have been working on it, I hope it gets implemented as it is needed as audiences and their levels of maturity are changing.

So do you have your next project lined up?

Well, I am toying with two or three ideas; one of them could be an adaptation but I have not made up my mind yet. Especially after the reception Saat Khoon Maaf got both from audiences and critics, I am taking it very easy (laughs)…

And is there a chance of a return to Shakespeare anytime soon?

Yes, Shakespeare I have to do, but not so soon; I would definitely like to complete a trilogy of tragedies following on from Maqbool and Omkara with Hamlet, King Lear or Richard III. But first I would like to get out of Shakespeare. And you will hopefully see me return to it sometime in the future.

[With inputs, research and questions by Mukul Sharma; Originally posted on May 12, 2011]

Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy was not perfect– it was disappointing when Faramir went through that weird evil phase or when the hobbits did not get their moment of bravery in the end, but LOTR is tricky source material. Tom Bombadil hey-derry-dolling through the Old Forest would’ve raised eyebrows among Tolkien novitiates. What is important is that PJ’s vision and devotion to the books was true and that’s what makes the trilogy eminently rewatchable (I am one of those rabid fans that rewatches it annually). So you can imagine how excited I was when there was talk about making The Hobbit into a film. I signed the “Let the Hobbit Happen” campaign; I spent hours and hours scouring TOR forums for casting news; I wrote anxious blog posts about the studios’ inability to shoot the movie; I must’ve rewatched the film trailer a few hundred times and yes, in the darkest moments, I doubted PJ’s decision to split the book into three movies.

What I am building up to is the fact that I wrote this review before the film was even made, nay, in that moment when the stars were scattered into space. I utterly loved this movie. I am sad that there will be only 3 and I have to prepare to say goodbye to Middle-earth once again. I am also a little surprised that this film only has a 65% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Too much space has been wasted on discussing the “nausea-inducing” 48 fps format (who ARE these absurd, endolymphically challenged people anyway?). Was it somewhat jarring? Yes, for about 20 minutes. It is mostly forgotten by the time Bilbo is entertaining his dwarf guests. The way these critics have been carrying on about it, why you’d think it signaled the end of the world! The only thing that makes me less angry is that history does not remember the breast-beating Luddites who rued the end of the cave painting era (“Say what you will, but papyrus just doesn’t smell like cave wall”).

Among the many complaints about the LOTR films was how little background was given to the sad story of the Elves and minor characters being left out. Peter heard us. This time around, he gave the dwarfs a rich and textured history. We can no longer think of them as blundering, blustering ale-quaffing comic reliefs. We also finally begin to understand why dwarfs and elves mistrust each other.

A lot has also been said about how the Hobbit is only a 200-page book and how three movies cannot possibly made. See, this is why you shouldn’t trust the critics. Apart from the fact that the film draws from the LOTR appendices, what people don’t realize is that, in the book there are several crucial plot points that are dealt with in less than a paragraph. Take the Necromancer for example: in the book, there is barely any discussion about him even though he is so important to the tale. Can you imagine Gandalf saying, “There’s a Necromancer who has never been mentioned that I have to go defeat or something. Okay toodles have fun on your quest! Try not to get killed!” In a good book you can say, “He was evil and everybody was afraid of him.” In a good movie, you have to show it without saying it.

Is it a detailed and faithful adaptation? Yes. Is it overlong and plodding? Hell no! And I don’t just say this as a Tolkien fan: the movie was well paced with several exciting battles and meditative scenes which raised this film above “action flick” status. The Goblin Town escape and the rock giant scenes were superb (and looked much better in HFR format, might I add). And Andy Serkis had better be nominated for his heartrending portrayal of Gollum. I realized that I had never really understood the line “But mercy stayed Bilbo’s hand,” till I found myself crying in the cinema hall.

A few liberties have been taken (the grave of the Witch-King and Azog, for example) but these only served to make the plot more cohesive. In fact, the film-makers’ eye for detail was obvious by how well they tied the LOTR films with this movie. The best part was how this film was barely about Bilbo and rightly so, because Bilbo takes some time to fit into his role as burglar/hero.  And Thorin! What a glorious heroic dwarf! Never even in my wildest dreams did I think that some day I’d have wild dreams about Thorin. True, Thorin and Co’s avarice has been slightly downplayed; their intention to return to Erebor has been made more noble but if one reads The Hobbit, one does not get a complete sense of how revered Thorin was among the dwarfs. He’s not a very pleasant character; Tolkien merely refers to him as “decent folk”, “arrogant” and of “Durin’s line” and we never understand what that means till the end of the book. It is in LOTR that we understand Thorin’s sad history so I am thankful to PJ for treating these characters with so much respect.

My only concerns are that the dwarf Rings ought to have been mentioned by now and Balin as the Venerable Voice of Wisdom, seeing as Balin was the foolhardy dwarf who rushed off to reconquer Moria with a laughably small army a few decades later. Then again, people change and there are two whole movies left so I’ll save my questions for the end of the class.

I can see why some have said that this film is inaccessible to non-fans. Gondolin blades are bandied about without telling us what Gondolin is; we aren’t told why it is shocking that Belladonna Took’s son should good-morning Gandalf. But these little things are meant for the enjoyment of fans and do not materially affect the understanding of the plot. It is possible that the reduced plot exposition may have left some moviegoers puzzled but I don’t care because PJ made this film for me. If people refuse to improve their lives by reading Tolkien’s books, they don’t deserve this film.