Mira Nair has put together Jaago, a haunting collection of four films on AIDS directed by four masters Farhan Akhtar, Vishal Bhardwaj, Santosh Sivan and one by Mira herself. While the first story ‘Migration’ directed by Mira concerns the sexual and emotional upheavals of a wife (Sameera Reddy, looking so much like Smita Patil!) trapped in a marriage to a closet gay, the second moving story ‘Positive’ by Farhan Akhtar (arguably his career’s most sensitive work) is about a quietly strong wife (Shabana, imbuing an extraordinary dignity to her ‘grief’ role) of a philandering photographer (Boman Irani) and their not-so-quietly resentful son (a striking debut by Arjun Mathur). Vishal Bhardwaj's  ‘Blood Brothers’ takes a stunning surreal  journey through the bizarre labyrinth of circumstances that   bond two men, one Siddharth (brilliantly poised) who suspects he’s HIV positive and the other (Pavan Malhotra) who knows he’s got the virus. Finally Santosh Sivan’s ‘Prarambh’ in Kannada, quirky kitschy but compelling a look at the bond that grows between a truck driver (Prabhu Deva) and a sensitive little child (how effectively Sivan works with child actors in all his  films from Halo to Asoka to Navrasa to Prarambh) is a road film which tries to cram too many ideas, some of them openly propagandist, but nonetheless manages to be effective on the strength of the director’s integrity that furnishes a lucidity even to the ‘potboiler’ portions of the short-film.

Remarkably, each of the four films possesses its own profile, mood and rhythm. And apart from Sivan’s film, none of the films get aggressively preachy about the HIV message.

The production values  and performances, specially Irrfan in ‘Migration’, Siddharth in ‘Blood Brothers’ and Shabana and Arjun Mathur in ‘Positive’ elevate the  quartet of films to minor albeit blemished classics.

Some of the plotting devices are not quite convincing. In ‘Migration’, a migrant worker (Shiney Ahuja) barges into the desolate housewife’s bedroom, has passionate sex with her and vanishes. ‘Blood Brothers’ is based entirely on a filmy coincidence—a lethal mix-up of blood reports—a device straight   out of Balaji serials. In ‘Positive’, Boman dying of AIDS, suddenly comes to passionate life to reprimand his son before going into his semi-vegetable state again. And ‘Prarambh’ is carpeted with filmy devices including a saucy tart who offers Prabhu Deva some ‘protection’. And we aren’t talking about hafta vasooli. Such poetic liberties lend added life-like vigour to the presentation.

Mira discusses the opulent omnibus:

What plans for your wonderful bouquet of films on AIDS?
 Our series AIDS Jaago, will be seen in more than 30 international film festivals worldwide, and was released on national Indian television  NDTV on World Aids Day on December 1.

Did  you expect such a rousing reception?
DVDs of the omnibus of all 4 films are in high demand and being distributed to activist organisations across India. In addition, we will add each of our film to the DVD releases of each of the directors’ new commercial films next year.

Any plans of releasing these films in theatres?
There is some interest in a limited theatrical release in multiplexes since the quality of the directors and the movie stars in our films is pretty remarkable. 

There’re brilliant performance by Irrfan and others. Were these your first choices?
It was sort of a round-robin of actors, to be honest. I’d first asked Saif to do Shiney’s role, but Shiney really wanted the labourer’s role. Once that was ascertained, Irrfan was my first choice to play the husband. Sameera gives a brave performance as Irrfan’s languishing wife.

I was at first speaking to Vidya Balan to play the wife’s role, but her dates couldn’t work. Then I saw Sameera’s explosive performance in Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Kalpurush, and cast her immediately.