Having completed a day long hectic training, I made myself comfortable at the lounge of the hotel where I was accommodated. The lounge was aptly called “Unlock”.
A group of five young (younger than me) men occupied a table next to me. They were engaged in a conversation about movies, beers, girls, and politics, of course. No matter who they are and what we do, politics forms an inevitable part of our daily lives and discussions. You cannot ignore our politicians; you can simply hate them. With so much of dirt sprouting out from the numerous scams in the country the wrath is unavoidable.
Soon their discussion turned serious. Reality started to speak after few mugs of beer bloated their stomach. They expressed their anger, forms of punishment they would want to implement for the scamsters, the change they needed (Obamania perhaps), and that they would need to be a part of the system suddenly came like a revelation to them. Deep into their sub-conscious minds they might have remembered the appeals by the age old and young promotee politicians.
However, what I liked about the group was that they still remained intact to their topic of discussion, and now they were talking sense after they took several trips to the bathroom to empty. They had turned their attention to implement something that little easier than joining politics, possibly less expensive, and yet had a larger reach. “We will make movies, documentaries on political satire,” said one. The group seemed to be a movie enthusiast. So was I. And with their due permission, I joined them.
We discussed at length about the movies based on politics. Not many belonged to satirical genre. Most of them were serious – Hu Tu Tu, Gulaal, Rajneeti, Satta, Bombay, Aandhi, et al. None of them had a comical touchup. Nothing like “Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron” was ever made again. Serious movies often get restored on the superficial level of the memory while films like Jaane Bhi… go deep down into our memory – and that is one way to keep the political wrath kindled in us. Movies like Satta and Rajneeti tend to scare people making it look like an impossible preposition for people to enter politics.
While the whole day training may not have been that fruitful the evening session had lot many lessons to teach.
Back in my room, while browsing through the TV channels flooded with news about scams, I felt the strong urge to do something on political satire based movies. But are the satires seriously taken? A suspicion started piercining my brain. For a moment, I thought I should have been from Kerala or Bengal. Movies away from Bollywood and Tollywood are full of masala & make ups, Movies made in Kerala and Bengal have substance. It is because of the high literacy rate keeping ethnicity in tact, I presume.
Awareness about the social issues exhibited throught their life had made the likes of T. S. Pillai, M.T. Vasudevan Nair, V. M. Basheer and many others all the time great writers and periodical like Malayalam Manorama that has been the highest circulating periodical in regional space.
This literature gave us the director like Adoor Gopalkrishnan. He made serious movies based on serious literature.
His two movies out of eleven, I can quote in this space. Swayamwaram (1972) a debut movie written and directed by him based on middle class angst and transition of middle class of Kerala into a modernist society. It was an attempt to come to terms with the disillusionment in ideologies.
Mathillukal (1988) based on a novel by V.M. Basheer depicting an unsuccessful love story due to parting by a jail wall. When freed from jail Basheer asks, 'who needs freedom? Outside is an even bigger jail.'
And as the young boys were talking about the documentaries let me tell you that AG has made more than twenty documentaries and two short fiction films.
And Bengal has the legacy of Satyajit Ray.
Movies manufactured in Mumbai are more about dreams while those from Kerala factory are about reality. Adoor Gopalkrishnan followed the tradition of Ray to base his movies based on classical literature with social motifs. Of all the movies made in India, Malayalam movies have highlighted politics the most in terms of making issue based movies. Tamil and Hindi movies take politics as a subject only to showcase the hero’s valour of one-man-army fighting the system.
When sinking into the bed with drowsy eyes, I had a sense of hope squirting around my lips in form a smile. There is someone, and a younger generation, which is thinking about fighting the political mess in the country, to take the politicians to task, and bring shame to them. There is a wave of change that slowly erupting under the sea wherein everyone is frustrated with the chaos that politicians and power brokers of this country have created.
Not everyone needs to go the Gandhiji and Bhagat Singh to bring about a change. Few can take up what Tilak tried – gathering people through art and culture.
Hopefully that was what that young lot was trying to do.
A group of five young (younger than me) men occupied a table next to me. They were engaged in a conversation about movies, beers, girls, and politics, of course. No matter who they are and what we do, politics forms an inevitable part of our daily lives and discussions. You cannot ignore our politicians; you can simply hate them. With so much of dirt sprouting out from the numerous scams in the country the wrath is unavoidable.
Soon their discussion turned serious. Reality started to speak after few mugs of beer bloated their stomach. They expressed their anger, forms of punishment they would want to implement for the scamsters, the change they needed (Obamania perhaps), and that they would need to be a part of the system suddenly came like a revelation to them. Deep into their sub-conscious minds they might have remembered the appeals by the age old and young promotee politicians.
However, what I liked about the group was that they still remained intact to their topic of discussion, and now they were talking sense after they took several trips to the bathroom to empty. They had turned their attention to implement something that little easier than joining politics, possibly less expensive, and yet had a larger reach. “We will make movies, documentaries on political satire,” said one. The group seemed to be a movie enthusiast. So was I. And with their due permission, I joined them.
We discussed at length about the movies based on politics. Not many belonged to satirical genre. Most of them were serious – Hu Tu Tu, Gulaal, Rajneeti, Satta, Bombay, Aandhi, et al. None of them had a comical touchup. Nothing like “Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron” was ever made again. Serious movies often get restored on the superficial level of the memory while films like Jaane Bhi… go deep down into our memory – and that is one way to keep the political wrath kindled in us. Movies like Satta and Rajneeti tend to scare people making it look like an impossible preposition for people to enter politics.
While the whole day training may not have been that fruitful the evening session had lot many lessons to teach.
Back in my room, while browsing through the TV channels flooded with news about scams, I felt the strong urge to do something on political satire based movies. But are the satires seriously taken? A suspicion started piercining my brain. For a moment, I thought I should have been from Kerala or Bengal. Movies away from Bollywood and Tollywood are full of masala & make ups, Movies made in Kerala and Bengal have substance. It is because of the high literacy rate keeping ethnicity in tact, I presume.
Awareness about the social issues exhibited throught their life had made the likes of T. S. Pillai, M.T. Vasudevan Nair, V. M. Basheer and many others all the time great writers and periodical like Malayalam Manorama that has been the highest circulating periodical in regional space.
This literature gave us the director like Adoor Gopalkrishnan. He made serious movies based on serious literature.
His two movies out of eleven, I can quote in this space. Swayamwaram (1972) a debut movie written and directed by him based on middle class angst and transition of middle class of Kerala into a modernist society. It was an attempt to come to terms with the disillusionment in ideologies.
Mathillukal (1988) based on a novel by V.M. Basheer depicting an unsuccessful love story due to parting by a jail wall. When freed from jail Basheer asks, 'who needs freedom? Outside is an even bigger jail.'
And as the young boys were talking about the documentaries let me tell you that AG has made more than twenty documentaries and two short fiction films.
And Bengal has the legacy of Satyajit Ray.
Movies manufactured in Mumbai are more about dreams while those from Kerala factory are about reality. Adoor Gopalkrishnan followed the tradition of Ray to base his movies based on classical literature with social motifs. Of all the movies made in India, Malayalam movies have highlighted politics the most in terms of making issue based movies. Tamil and Hindi movies take politics as a subject only to showcase the hero’s valour of one-man-army fighting the system.
When sinking into the bed with drowsy eyes, I had a sense of hope squirting around my lips in form a smile. There is someone, and a younger generation, which is thinking about fighting the political mess in the country, to take the politicians to task, and bring shame to them. There is a wave of change that slowly erupting under the sea wherein everyone is frustrated with the chaos that politicians and power brokers of this country have created.
Not everyone needs to go the Gandhiji and Bhagat Singh to bring about a change. Few can take up what Tilak tried – gathering people through art and culture.
Hopefully that was what that young lot was trying to do.
- Amol Redij
