Once Indian Panorama was a ticket to movie festivals in some of the most exotic cities. Indian films travelled to Moscow (when it had its allure), Karlovy Vary, Venice, Rotterdam, Berlin and even Cannes. But as Bhupendra Kainthola, Director of the Indian Panorama in the Directorate of Film Festivals admitted “Panorama entries are no longer a hot favourite outside the country”.
Let me add, they are not exactly popular even within India. And the reason is obvious enough. The Panorama – meant to showcase the cream of India’s fascinating plurality and a platform for talent hunt – attracts bad movies. Or, mostly so. This year, 105 films were sent for possible selection, and the seven-member jury (of which I was a part) found it extremely difficult to select the mandatory 21 movies. (The other five were nominated by film bodies.)
However, there were some entries that touched my heart with their lovely stories or gripping narrative style or brilliant realism. Take, for instance, Laxmikant Shetgaonkar’s Paltadcho Manis (The Man beyond the Bridge), the first Konkani film ever to make it to the Panorama. Told with disarming simplicity, the plot zeros in on a poor widowed forest guard left to rot in a remote region. One night, when he finds a filthy, mad woman at his doorstep, little does he realise that this would be the start of a fulfilling relationship - and the end of his ties with an uncaring, pretentious village across the river. In a move that is serenely symbolic, he breaks the narrow wooden bridge that ties him to so-called civilization. There are no decked-up dolls here, no macho men to grapple with an army of sinewy bodies, but an ugly insane, woman and a shabbily attired guard who place humanity over the humbug, and win our hearts by their humanism.
Another work that I would easily give five stars is Suman Ghosh’s Dwando (which in Bengali means Conflict). Satyajit Ray’s find, who went on to become a master himself, Soumitra Chatterjee plays an old, cantankerous, but extremely skillful neurosurgeon. On a stormy night at home with his drink, a young woman interrupts his quietude with her ethical predicament. The doctor is furious at first. But he relents later when understands that he could possibly save a life, an innocent one at that. For most of its 90 minutes the movie is but a two-way dialogue between Dr Ashoke Mukherjee (Chatterjee) and Sudipta (Ananya Chatterjee) where he subtly manoeuvres her towards a resolution of her extra-marital affair and the resultant pregnancy. Chatterjee, despite his own ill-health, performs with panache, and Ananya as the desperately dilemmatic woman is equally wonderful.
Avantika Hari’s Land Gold Women is a powerful indictment of honour killing in Britain. The director tells me that thousands of women are murdered every year by their own families out to uphold their warped concept of tradition and culture. One such is Hari’s Saira with a university professor father whose broadminded idealism is for the rest of world, not for his loving family. When Saira, raised in Britain to Indian émigré parents, falls in love with an English boy, heavens come crashing down in a debut work that scores with its neat script.
Also of immense social relevance is Gabhricha Paus(The Dammed Rain) in Marathi by Satish Manwar, who paints the haplessness of cotton farmers trapped in debt and drought. The enormity of the tragedy is dramatized through the lives of a young couple and their child. Sonali Kulkarni as the wife essays the angst of the times, living on the edge, fearing what the next minute has in store for her. When she forces the child to follow the father in an attempt to stop him from committing suicide, like so many others in her village, we realise the wretchedness of a system that cares little for the have-nots.
Again, let us look at the bus conductor in Ek Cup Chya (A Cup of Tea), helmed by Sumitra Bhave and Sunil Sukthankar, who is harassed and humiliated by the State after being slapped with a huge electricity bill for his hut of a home. Again, it is not very different for the autorickshaw driver’s wife in Nandita Das’ Firaaq, whose house is torched in the days following the Gujarat carnage and she herself is driven to a torturous existence.
Aijaz Khan’s The White Elephant has a novel story to say. Set in a superstitious Kerala village, the film places poor, drunkard Shabari in a quandary, when a holy elephant chooses him as its new keeper in an annual ritual. Shabari’s struggle to feed the elephant and his family has been deftly captured by Khan, and despite a few unnecessary twists, The White Elephant triumphs with its pluses rather than its minuses.
Also making a mark on the novelty angle is Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Janala (The Window). When Bimal in a touch of nostalgia decides to replace a broken window at his old school with something ornate, he runs into problems: men who cheat him that in turn forces him to steal from his own girlfriend, Meera. In the end when the school refuses to accept his gift, he finds that his window has no takers. Poetic in the classic Dasgupta style, Janala takes us back to a time when men took joy in giving and an alma-mater was an integral link to a beautiful past. In Bimal’s case, it takes a hugely symbolic significance that drives him towards mishaps. The auteur interrupts his narrative with several asides: Bimal’s boyhood, a thief who harasses him and Meera’s frustration at her call centre. But we seldom lose track of the love story or our sympathy for the young lovers.