Release date:
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November 20, 2015
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Director:
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Abhinav Shiv
Tiwari, Anu Menon, Nalan Kumarasamy, Hemant Gaba, Pratim D. Gupta, Q, Raja
Sen, Rajshree Ojha, Sandeep Mohan, Sudhish Kamath, Suparn Verma
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Cast:
Language: |
Rajat Kapoor, Anshuman
Jha, Huma Qureshi, Radhika Apte, Swara Bhaskar, Aditi Chengappa, Usha Uthup, Bidita
Bag, Gabriella Schmidt, Neha Mahajan, Parno Mitra, Pia Bajpai, Pooja Ruparel,
Richa Shukla, Rii
Hindi, English, Tamil,
Bengali
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SPOILER ALERT: I’M TOO CHEESED OFF TO AVOID THEM
Have you ever been bored
and angry with a film at the same time? It’s an awkward mix of feelings because
one robs you of the energy to express the other.
Boredom dies down once
the film in question is over though. The anger I felt against X: Past Is Present, however, is still
very much there.
Remember that spoiler mentioned at the start? It
is in the next paragraph.
X
made me furious because beyond that lethargic pace and pretentious storytelling
style (barring two segments), this is a film that takes sexual violence
lightly. To use rape as the suspense element and nothing more in a purportedly
thought-provoking film is no better than cracking a rape joke in a stupid
comedy. Actually, the former is worse, because when you position yourself as
something to be taken seriously, you had bloody well not trivialise such a
grave issue.
The problem is not that
this film uses sexual assault as the big revelation behind why a character
behaves the way he does throughout the story. The problem is that the assault
has no role other than being that big revelation, a rabbit pulled out of a hat
by a too-clever-by-half team of filmmakers and writers in what appears to be an
effort to elicit awe and admiration from us for them rather than shock,
disgust, revulsion against the act and empathy for the victim.
The lack of compassion
is not in the scene of the attack itself, but in the run-up to it. The build-up
is so filled with an effort to impress us with technique, that by the time the
depiction of the violence rolled around, I was left cold by it because I did
not care for the character.
This is a pity because
on its own, this part of the film – directed by Nalan Kumarasamy who earlier
made the acclaimed Tamil film Soodhu
Kavvum – could have yielded so much. Placed within X though, it seems like a post-script written on second thoughts.
That said, the film has
emerged from a concept that clearly had potential. X has been put together by 11
directors. It is not an anthology.
Each director has handled a different segment in the same story. On paper, that
sounds intriguing. Now that I’ve watched the film though, I can tell you that
except for Nalan and Q (who earlier made Gandu),
the rest are similar in their storytelling style here, including the ones who
have been vastly stylistically different in their previous work.
For instance, if the
credits had not told me so, I would not have guessed that Anu Menon and Rajshree
Ojha were among the group of 11. Anu earlier made the sweetly romantic London Paris New York starring Aditi Rao
Hydari and Ali Zafar. Rajshree made the Sonam Kapoor-starrer Aisha, a breezy retelling of Jane
Austen’s Emma. In X, their approach to their segments is
indistinguishable from the rest, complete with shadowy spaces and pointless
camerawork. What purpose then was achieved by assembling so many directors for one
project?
Incidentally, X is the story of a director called K
(Rajat Kapoor) who we first meet at a film fest party where he bumps into a
much younger woman (Aditi Chengappa) with evidently amorous intentions towards
him. Soon they discover that K might have been involved with her mother. As
they chat, K is disturbed by visions of the many lovers he has had over the
years, through a series of flashbacks to 10 ladies either with Rajat or with
Anshuman Jha playing a younger K.
Except for Nalan’s
segment, in the rest of the flashbacks we barely see K. What we’re given instead
are his voice or over-the-shoulder and other partial shots of him while the
women are in focus. Perhaps the point being made is that in those moments of
his life, he was not the central character, they were.
This cinematographic choice
makes little sense though, since K seems to be focused on himself for the most
part. It particularly works only in Q’s segment where a frenzied,
alcohol/drug-ridden K discusses writer’s block with his housemaid.
Since the camerawork
does not match the script, it is distracting and comes across as being pompous.
It’s as if the filmmakers were keener on style than substance.
Then in a village in
Tamil Nadu the camera gives us a complete view of Anshuman when K meets a
sexually adventurous local woman (Swara Bhaskar). This segment is like visual
sunshine compared to the rest of X,
but it should not have been part of this film because the subject it deals with
is too crucial to have been given a mere passing mention. This is Nalan’s story.
In terms of acting,
Swara, Rii (as K’s household help) and Radhika Apte (K’s feisty wife Rija) are
the only ones who somewhat make a mark. The rest, including the otherwise
dependable Huma Qureshi, are either done in by the stilted writing or consumed
by the film’s pretentions to being something it is not.
Among other things, X should spark off discussions about
film reviewing since four of the project’s directors are or were film critics. Critics
are influencers in ways that even big commercial producers do occasionally
acknowledge. This translates into clout. If at some point in your career as a
critic you realise your true calling is filmmaking, is it ethical to continue
reviewing films by people you may simultaneously be approaching with your script/s?
Irrespective of the precise
route taken by the gentlemen critics involved in X, this is a debate we must have. Because their career move gives
fuel to film industry folk who assume that reviewing is usually a stop-gap
arrangement for aspiring filmmakers; and allege that film critics misuse their
power.
As for another point
made by some filmmakers, that making a film is the ultimate test for a critic,
I humbly submit that that’s a silly contention. A critic is a consumer of
cinema and a creator of literature on cinema, not a creator of cinema. The two
jobs require different skills that a single individual need not possess. If I
write about problems I experience on a flight, would the airline be justified
in telling me to shut up unless I am capable of running an airline myself?
Filmmakers often try to discredit film critics by claiming that those who do
not make films are not qualified to comment on them. Don’t fall for that line.
These are matters worth
discussing whether or not you have seen this film. Before that let’s wrap up
this review: X emerges from an interesting
experimental concept that comes to naught.
Rating (out of five): *
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CBFC Rating (India):
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A
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Running time:
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106 minutes
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This review has also been published on firstpost:
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