JOIN USThe Cannes festival celebrated 100 years of Indian cinema over the weekend with a digitally restored screening of Satyajit Ray’s 1964 film ‘Charulata,’ and new cinema from India was all over the place.
The filmmaker and producer Anurag Kashyap presented ‘Ugly’ as part of the directors’ fortnight section. Amit Kumar’s ‘Monsoon Shootout’ was screened at the Palais des Festivals and Ritesh Batra’s ‘The Lunch Box’ was shown at International Critics’ Week. ‘Bombay Talkies,’ a collection of shorts by four directors, was also shown.
The young directors making these films are not part of Bollywood. They represent a new generation of filmmakers who have been trained at organisations like the Film and Television Institute in Pune, India; the Sundance Institute in the United States; and the Femis film school in Paris.
Kashyap, who last year had success with ‘Gangs of Wasseypur,’ was a co-producer of ‘Ugly,’ ‘Shootout’ and ‘Lunch Box.’ Both Kashyap and Kumar focus on the mean streets of Mumbai. Kashyap said he was influenced by Martin Scorsese and Fritz Lang. “'Fury’ is a great film, but I love even Lang’s bad movies,” he said.
‘Ugly’ is a thriller about a small girl kidnapped right under her father’s nose. The hunt that follows reveals the weakness and corruption of everybody, from the child’s family to the police in charge of the case. “I am 40, I’ve seen enormous change over the past 20 years,” Kashyap said. “Mumbai today is miserable, people are living in cages, neighbours don’t know each other or look at each other. What we call love is not what we had then or what our parents had. Our homes are not the homes you see in the movies of Satyajit Ray or Mrinal Sen.”
“Ugly” is built on personal emotion, he added. “In 2006, I was alcoholic, separated from my wife, and my first and second films had been banned,” he said. “The first was about sex, drugs, and rock 'n’ roll and the second was very political.” Under the divorce settlement, he could see his little girl only in his former wife’s house. “I had anger against her and the world, and my little girl had a fight with me. All of this is in the film,” he said.
“India is a place for people who want to steal kids,” he added. “There are sexual predators who kidnap them for begging. More than 30,000 kids disappear every year; few are found. There is cynicism throughout the police system and bribery.” He said he wanted to show the changes in the city. “So many shopping malls, gadgets – everybody wants everything,” he said.
Slightly different
Kumar was raised in Africa and came to Mumbai as an adolescent. “I have feelings of being an outsider, even now,” he said, “and I see things at a slightly different angle from most people. And my main character in ‘Monsoon Shootout,’ a rookie cop, is an idealist, an outsider in the system.”
The director’s father, an engineer, took a job in Zambia and several years later went to Botswana. Perhaps because Kumar returned home at a crucial time, he feels very Indian, he said. “I came back to India in 1984 after Indira Gandhi was assassinated,” he said. “I was 16 and had a strong urge to fix things. I was passionate about this crime. So my parents let me go.”
“Monsoon Shootout” is about innocence and corruption. It involves a young cop and a cynical killer, and covers a series of possible scenarios. The story he has told is a drama of conscience, set against the three-month monsoon season. “In Mumbai, there’s no way you can stay dry,” he said. “The rain is going to get you, and I feel the same way about the system, the corruption. You can try and avoid it, but it’s going to get to you.”
Batra’s ‘Lunch Box’ tells a more subdued and melancholy story of Mumbai today. The director was a fellow at the Sundance Institute, and his debut feature is showing at Critics’ Week, the Cannes festival section for first- and second-time filmmakers.
‘Lunch Box’ is about a Mumbai programme that delivers eight million home-cooked lunches to people at their workplaces. A mix-up connects a young Hindu woman with an aging Christian widower who is a civil servant in a dreary claims department. The young woman is losing her father, and the civil servant is losing his job to a brash young man.
Batra has made a film in which even the colour tones are soft, train rides are crowded but not rough, and relationships are nuanced. This is Chekhov, not Scorsese, country. Both characters are drawn to memories of the past, to telling stories and sharing pleasures.
If you don’t share a memory, one character says, you lose it. Batra’s film is a reminder of the pleasure of shared stories in crowded places.