From the Editor's Desk, February 2008

Now that all the formalities that a New Year entails are over, let us go back to what we do best… screen films for the larger public. Well, for us, the EFL public WAS large enough. But that was before. Now the EFL University Film Club is looking towards a brighter and definitely a BIGGER future.
The Film Club has arranged interactive sessions with directors before. But this time it is going one step ahead. The EFLU Film Club in collaboration with the Azad Reading Room is organizing an exciting weekend of films—feature and documentary. The Organization is headed by Mr. Said Shah who has promised the Film Club an array of films ranging from the USA’s complicity in the destruction of democracy in the eastern Caribbean, the failure of the US government to provide relief to victims of hurricane Katrina, and to charter the depth and spread of corruption between politics and decision making in government and corporate activity.
The Club had seen hard times and even had to shut down its counters, due to reasons manifold. But instead of harping on that we look back towards the month that has gone by. We successfully screened films like Letters from Iwo Jima, Flags of our Father, The Piano Teacher, Gaav– the cow and of course Black Friday, appropriately screened on January 26.
We appreciate the effort that all our volunteers take to keep the Film Club running and oh, how can we forget our members!
Hoping for better feedbacks, we sign off!

02-02-08 Innocence
08-02-08 Syriana
09-02-08 Paradise Now
09-02-08 The Vertical Ray of the Sun
10-02-08 Capitol Crimes
10-02-08 The Agronomist
16-02-08 Abar Aranye
23-02-08 Eyes Wide Shut

Innocence
(2005/117’/ colour/ French)
Dir: Lucile Hadzihalilovic
A parable about the lost paradise of girlhood, specially those prepubescent years before a girl surrenders to the inevitable bumps and fluids. The film marks the directing debut of Lucile Hadzihalilovic, whose seemingly plotless story centers on an all-girls boarding school in a thickly treed forest of the sort usually inhabited by hungry wolves and little wayfarers in symbolic red hoods. Hadzihalilovic based her screenplay on a relatively obscure text by the German playwright Frank Wedekind called "Mine-Haha, or the Corporeal Education of Young Girls." The fealty of Ms. Hadzihalilovic's translation of the Wedekind text notwithstanding, the dubious vision of utopia put forth in this film finds the girls engaged in an almost militaristic pursuit of physical perfection without commensurate attention paid to their intellect
February 2, Saturday, 6:00 pm

Abar Aranye (In the forest...again)
(2003/123’/colour/black &white/Bengali [ subtitles]/India)
Dir: Gautam Ghose
In the `60s, four young men went to the jungles of Palamau for a vacation. This was in Satyajit Ray’s Aranyer Din Ratri (Days & Nights in the Forest). 40 years later, three of them decide to return to the forest. Things have changed. One of them is dead, while another is dying of cancer. They are accompanied this time by their family. Even the forest is different for Palamau, now infested by Maoists, is unsafe for tourists. They drive to the picturesque forests of North Bengal. The three protagonists have traveled from wild youth to successful, and not so successful, middle age. They are looking to relive the past. Yet, the unknown keeps intruding through their offspring. Among them is a young woman who has lost her Turkish lover in the World Trade Center. Lost and lonely, she flits between the effort to relate to family and friends and the slide into personal sorrow. With no memories to haunt them, the rest of the younger crowd lives vacuously in the present. Nostalgia keeps the older crowd afloat and its familiar warmth is comforting because it challenges none of the truths with which they lead their lives. The one who is dying and is desperately trying to forget the ultimate reality of death strikes the only discordant note. There is nothing else that upsets the even keel of the outing except for a night of hard drinking of the country liquor brewed by the tribal communities that live on the fringes of the forest. It is a moonlit riverbed and it is all very picturesque, very pretty, almost unreal. Reality strikes in its own unusual fashion. The young woman goes missing and a ransom note is discovered…
February 16, Saturday, 6:00 pm

Eyes Wide Shut
(1999/159’/English/Colour/USA)
Dir: Stanley Kubrick
A doctor (Tom Cruise) becomes obsessed with having a sexual encounter after his wife (Nicole Kidman) admits to having sexual fantasies about a man she met and chastising him for dishonesty in not admitting to his own fantasies. This sets him off into unfulfilled encounters with a dead patient's daughter and a hooker. But when he visits a nightclub, where a pianist friend Nick Nightingale (Todd Field) is playing, he learns about a secret sexual group and decides to attend one of their congregations. However, he quickly learns he is in well over his head and finds he and his family are threatened
February 23, Saturday, 6:00 pm

AZAD READING ROOM SCREENINGS

The EFL University Film Club in collaboration with Azad Reading Room is screening a mixed collection of feature and documentary films. The screenings are free and each screening will be followed by an interactive session with Mr. Said Shah, a septuagenarian and a film enthusiast from USA, whose been traveling across the country screening a host of films which deal with issues ranging from Hurricane Katrina victims, to corruption in the legislative procedures in the White House. There are also films which sensitively portray the various aspects of human relationships. Here’s a sneak peek of the summary of the films that the Film Club has decided to screen over a three day back-o-back screening starting from Friday, February 8, 2008 to Sunday, February 10, 2008.

Syriana
(2006/128’/Emglish/USA/colour)
Dir: Stephen Gaghan
The title of the film refers to the way 'think tanks' in Washington, D.C. describe the re-shaping of policy in the Middle East to suit US interests – control of oil & regional geo-politics. The film story depicts an ageing CIA operative who is
manipulated by his handlers' (Pentagon, NSA, CIA) to de-stabilize corrupt local regimes in order to strengthen US corporate interests. A well acted, filmed and tightly edited film delivers a powerful cinematic experience.
February 8, Friday, 6:00 pm

Paradise Now
(2006/91’/Arabic/Israel)
Dir: Hany Abu-Assad
Filmed on location (Palestine/Israel) under dangerous conditions, the cinematic experience is both realistic and artistically fictional. The story centers on 2 friends who decide to become 'suicide bombers'. Excellent characterization, sensitive
photography and careful direction are combined to produce a memorable film.
February 9, Saturday, 4:00 pm

The Vertical Rays of the Sun
(2000/112’/colour/Vietnamese/Hanoi)
Dir: Tran Anh Hung.
Acclaimed director Tran A H has set the film in contemporary Hanoi. The story is about relationships between 3 sisters and the men in their lives. Honour, loyalty and fidelity as aspects of the relationships are sensitively portrayed, beautifully filmed which combine to deliver a strong & humane drama. The sound track bringing together Vietnamese with western music creates an appropriate atmosphere
of sensual experience.
February 9, Saturday, 6:00pm

Capitol Crimes
(2006/90’/colour/English/USA)
Dir: Bill Moyers
The film documents the depth and spread of corruption between politics and decision making in government and corporate activity. Specific case studies and the
'lobbying' system are used to illustrate criminal behaviour in contemporary USA.
February 10, Sunday, 4:00 pm

The Agronomist
(2005/90’/colour/English/French/Creole)
Dir: Jonathan Demme
Jonathan Demme has crafted a powerful film based on the real life & death of Jean Dominique – agronomist and the founder of Radio Haiti Inter. Through interviews and news footage the evolution of Radio Haiti Inter is dramatized to expose the brutality of the Haitian government as well as the complicity of the USA in the destruction of democracy in the eastern Caribbean.
February 10, Sunday, 6:00 pm

A-Maze of its own...

Ask any Malayali, which is his or her favorite movie, the one movie that will inevitably pop up is the 1993 Mohanlal and Shobhana starrer Manichitrathazhu directed by Fazil. With the fascinating, well scripted story by Madhu Muttam and brilliant performances from the star cast, the movie is a landmark in commercial Malayalam cinema.
This is the story of a couple Nakulan (Suresh Gopi) and Ganga( Shobhana), who come to stay in their ancestral home, which according to legends, is haunted. The eerie happenings in the house and the chain of events which unfold when Ganga opens the forbidden tekkini room, form the crux of the film. Suspense and comedy, two seemingly incongruous elements, form an integral part of Manichitrathazhu.
On one hand, Mohanlal has you in splits with his hilarious performance as the eccentric psychiatrist. On the other hand, the psychological, almost supernatural element in the film has the audience constantly on the edge of their seats. Who has heard the song Uru murai vandu parayo for the first time without getting goose pimples on their skin?
Today, however, Manichitrathazhu is better known as the film which inspired the Tamil film Chandramukhi and more recently, the Bollywood blockbuster Bhool Bhulaiya. Having watched both these remakes, one cannot help comparing them with the original.
In Chandramukhi, the entire story has been adapted to place the focus on superstar Rajnikant, who plays the role of the psychiatrist in the movie. Chandramukhi opens with Rajnikant whereas in the original, the psychiatrist comes in only in the second half of the movie. The plot itself becomes secondary as the film showcases Rajnikant’s superheroism.
Priyadarshan’s Bhool Bhulaiya, stays faithful to the original except for changing the setting to a North Indian background. So much so that every scene seems similar to the original and every dialogue seems a translation.
Whether films should be remade or not, is an ongoing debate. Many feel that just as reading a translation is never the same as reading the original; no remake can ever reproduce the essence of the original. On the other hand a remake may help the film to reach a wider audience. If a film is being remade, due credit has to be given to the original and if it has to be adapted to suit the taste of a particular audience, it should be done without destroying the entire concept of the original.

-Amritha G.K
MA English

1993, Once Again...

The ambient sounds turn mute as the camera moves closer to the glass panes with a sense of premonition. The next few seconds affirm
it all in a scene of terrifying verisimilitude. Dramatizing this act of memory, the film progresses with its depictions of human actions of reckless hate. It staggers bourgeois complacency striking at the indifferent rhythm of life and the small lifespan of public memory. Partly resemblingSophoclean audience the viewers are aware of the fallout of the incidents being depicted. However, as we re-live those moments of horror and ask “why”, somewhere we find ourselves transported to the days when the newspapers and television channels were reporting the incidents. The emphasis of the film is on the human response and the de-humanization that becomes a consequence of the entire process. Justice crosses into the realm of vengeance, the idea of “law” is deconstructed, reason surrenders to perverted passion in a world that is almost phantasmagoric in its manifestations. The scarred psycho-social set-up is also interspersed with the moral dilemmas of the individuals involved. Both Badshah Khan (a conspirator) and the anguished investigating officer Rakesh Maria (Kay Kay Menon) grapple with ethical issues.

Screened aptly on the Republic Day, the movie challenges, even dismantles the holiest facts of Indian nationhood and Indian-ness. The stories related are not static, getting transfigured to patterns identifiable in various cities, this city included. Demolitions, riots, blasts, are they the reactionary responses of a regressive society? It is true that certain things cannot be forgotten or even forgiven, but the blood can stop; or we shall remain imprisoned within this vicious cycle till our identities as Indians and our entity as human beings dissolves to mere words.

The Piano Teacher

“[My films] are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus.”
-Michaek Haneke
The Piano Teacher ends with a sense of incompleteness. As Erika stabs her own chest and walks away through the corridor, our received notions of a film-ending fail to recognize a resolution. This unconventional ending is true to Haneke’s intentions, of distancing and defamiliarization.
Based on the novel by Elfriede Jelenik, The Piano Teacher (Dir. Michael Haneke) narrates the story of Erika (Isabelle Huppert), her love-hate for her overprotective mother, and her attempts at petty transgression of her interrogating eyes, and her sadomasochism as she tries to play it out with her student Walter (Benoit Magimel). A story told through the eyes of the female lead, the narrative subverts many of the visual pleasures. This makes the final “non-resolution” an intrinsic part of the whole narrative, rather than an abrupt ending.
Erika is a pervert, but according to Freudian thought, perversion is basic to sexual pleasure. Given that, some acts of pleasure, appearing as normal, is then characteristic of our cultural coding. It is these cultural coding that Michael Haneke wants to foreground by the endeavor of making this film.
Erika is abnormal, not so much for her acts of perversity but for her being the subject to many of the commonsense assumptions that are distanced from the viewer. The film does not allow a relaxed intake of pleasure. It rather confronts us with unfamiliar images, unsettling the culturally coded viewing of the subject of cinema that is in us.
The “sado- masochism” in Erika plays out through her constant denial of Walter’s pleasure. Her unnatural demands upset not just Walter, but also the viewers’ worldview. The brief moments of Walter’s superiority--the moment of rape, depicts the coming back of the natural patriarchal order. At this point Erika’s own demands appear painful and non-pleasurable to herself. The fact that her demands were non-pleasurable is not by virtue of it being against nature, but because the demand was made by the ‘Other’ of the existing order. Erika by being able to dictate the movements of Walter (who would be the protagonist in a conventional narrative) in interests other than serving the pleasures of the male, thus disturbs the viewing subject. According to Laura Mulvey, the viewing subject identifies with the male hero, and subjects the female to his gaze.
The friction in the film finds its source in the narrative’s restriction of the viewer from occupying Walter’s position with ease. This is a result of two causes -- that Walter is in an inferior position of power, and that the story is told through Erika’s eyes. By the virtue of being able to override the powers of gaze, Erika then suggests a split between the screen and the audience. In conventional narratives, while the screen stands for female and the audience identifies with the male, the former two are objects looked at by the latter two. The gaze of the spectator is subsumed in the gaze of the male actor. Thus making the actor’s gaze not just his but also that of the spectators’. But in the absence of a strong male character who can subject the female to his gaze, the screen then attains a life of its own.
It is the property of this divergence that makes the film look incomplete and freaky. But had we accepted Erika’s worldview, the film would have ended with, “…and she lived happily ever after”.


-Md Shafeeq K
M.Phil., English.

JOHNNY GADDAR: A TRIBUTE

If you sneaked in a copy of James Hadley Chase in your school-bag and read it on the sly, then Johnny Gaddar is a must watch for you. It’s a tribute to Vihat Anand and James Hadley Chase. It almost takes you back to the Hindi suspense thrillers of the 70s. Teesri Manzil, Jewel Thief, Parwana. The title itself is derived from Johnny Mera Naam. Johnny Gaddar takes us back into an era of film-making that many of us now look back at with perhaps a feeling of nostalgia. It does sp by weaving clips from the 70s suspense thrillers into the narrative. Even though these clips take the narrative ahead, the use of clips from other popular films does not give Johnny Gaddar a polyphonic quality. Rather the spectator’s engagement with the film is primarily an engagement with the narrative. The genre being always fore grounded, one cannot be aware all the time that one is watching a thriller. And the film, like a good narrative film should effaces all signs of intended-ness such that the story seems to simply unfold in front of you. Acting and dialogues are the two areas this movie cannot bank on.

Vinay Pathak and Zakir Hussain were great. Neil Nitin Mukesh was a little stiff at times but considering it is his debut film, I have to admit that he fares better than most. My only disappointment was Dharmendra and his delivering English dialogues in his patent “kutte-kamine” style. As for the dialogues, “It’s not the age, it’s the mileage”, the less said the better.

Koel Bannerjee, M.Phil., English.