BIFFes: Local issues in international cinema

Films from Iran are sharp works of the country’s complex reality while Indian films are simple in nature carrying ‘universal’ message, writes M K Raghavendra

BIFFes, which completed its 13th edition this year, was as interesting as the last two or three years. In terms of the quality of films screened, it remains among the best in India.

Since international cinema is a conduit through which cinephiles learn about the world, the ideal kind of films that should feature would be those addressing the complex realities of their own countries instead of taking tendentious political stances — as Indian films tend to while claiming it to be ‘reality’ — and echoing whatever view festival delegates already have of their cultures. It should be an eye-opener to Indian cinephiles that while Indian reality is the most complex in the world, its films are among the simplest, carrying straightforward ‘universal’ messages without honestly attending to ground level reality.

Evidently Iran’s is not a more complex society than India’s and Indians claim superiority for their own culture over every other. But if the latter is true why is Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero (his best film so far) a more complex work, a subtler picture of his own society, than any film India has produced in the past two decades?

If one were to cite some excellent films that convince us that they are dealing with actual problems faced by their countries ‘Brother’s Keeper’ (Ferit Karahan) is a Kurdish film about pupils in a government-run boarding school, ‘Another Round’ (Thomas Vinterberg, Denmark) about managing oneself in a society with too much license, ‘Where are you going Aida?’ (Jasmilla Zbanic, Bosnia) that sheds light on how ineffective UN peacekeeping actually is, ‘I Never Cry’ (Piotr Domalewski, Poland) about migrants from poorer Europe in the richer West and ‘Dear Comrades’ (Andrey Konchalovskiy, Russia) a recreation of the Novocherkassk massacre of workers in 1962 when Nikita Khrushchev was at the helm in the USSR.

‘Another Round’ is about four teachers living jaded lives. They come across a psychiatric study that suggests that a small quantity of alcohol in one’s bloodstream at all times is actually beneficial, and embark upon an experiment to ‘improve’ their lives. All goes well initially and even their professional lives become effective but things eventually get out of hand.

Evidently, the director can neither take the film to a bad end (which might be preachy) or to a happy one (which would endorse hedonism explicitly). What Vinterberg does instead is to make alcohol inflict an unmanageable change in each of the teachers, being a metaphor for how unrestricted lifestyle choices in a free society could also hurt the individual.

Asghar Farhadi’s ‘A Hero’ is about a man in prison for not honouring a debt being in conflict with his brother-in-law, the guarantor for the loan. Rahim, who has separated from his wife, has a lover Farkhondeh whom he wishes to marry. She has accidentally discovered a bad of gold coins that they wish to sell and settle his debt. Unfortunately, it will settle less than half of the debt and Rahim therefore locates the owner and returns the coins to her, with some fanfare.

When his act receives publicity, he becomes a local hero but some facts are subtly altered — to fit an idea of public virtue promoted in theocratic Iran. An instance is the concealing of the fact that Rahim’s debt was to a usurer since usury is banned. One lie necessitates another but it is virtually impossible to avoid untruths, it seems. Particularly brilliant about the film is its interrogation of the notion of ‘goodness’ but specifically about Islamic law defining this ‘good conduct’ in unviable ways. There is censorship in Iran but one doubts that the film’s subtle critique would be recognised.

Among the retrospectives at BIFFes was one of the films of Volker Schlondorff, one of the big five of New German Cinema, a movement as important to film history as the French New Wave. The other four are RW Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Alexander Kluge. Schlondorff (with whom I was in conversation) is known for his adaptations of literature and won the Best Foreign Film Oscar and the Palme d’Or at Cannes for ‘The Tin Drum’ (1979), an adaptation of Gunter Grass’s monumental novel.

But a film that should get more attention than it actually has is ‘The Legend of Rita’ (2000), about a West-German terrorist Rita Vogt who took refuge in the GDR. The issue here is that while the GDR was sympathetic to left-wing terrorists, it could not officially give them shelter; she was separated from her friends and given an assumed identity, virtually excluding her from any deep relationships. Most interesting is that while Rita Vogt and her friends were Utopian in their longings, she discovered how the envisaged ‘Utopia’ actually worked, with GDR’s citizens hoping for a Utopian life in the FRG. While she wanted never to leave the GDR, her new friends there were being prevented from leaving!

(The writer is a well-known film critic).