NAANU AVANALLA…AVALU, TRANSGENDERS IN FILMS & MAINSTREAM SOCIETY / COLUMN PUBLISHED IN THE HINDU BUSINESSLINE

SHE, HE, THEM AND US

Sanchari Vijay’s sensitive performance as a transgender in the uplifting Naanu Avanalla...Avalu ought to be seen by mainstream audiences outside Karnataka

By Anna MM Vetticad

The audience breaks into applause as the central figure on screen snubs a self-righteous stranger on a train.

The actor in question is Vijay, but not that Vijay whose face is plastered all over Tamil Nadu. The character in question is the film’s lead, yet not the now-cinematically-cliched Angry Young Man for whom such wolf-whistle-worthy dialogues are usually written in India. As she dispenses her lines to an antagonistic fellow though, viewers cheer the way they usually do for mega-starrers filled with song ‘n’ dance, melodrama and bombast.

I look around me, pleasantly surprised by this reception for the Kannada film Naanu Avanalla…Avalu (I Am Not He…She) in a large hall at the International Film Festival of Kerala in Thiruvananthapuram. Although festival crowds are often more open-minded than most, I was expecting some degree of conservatism and discomfort in response to this film about a transgender called Madesha/Vidya. Quite to the contrary, the audience here reacts with positivity and plaudits.

Director B.S. Lingadevaru’s Naanu Avanalla…Avalu is the story of Madesha, born a boy in rural Karnataka. He is a bright student but his peers are too busy mocking his effeminate demeanour to appreciate his classroom acumen. As he grows older and becomes more aware of himself, he begins to feel like a woman trapped in a man’s body. In a journey that takes him from his village to Bengaluru, Pune and Cuddappah, Madesha earns an MA degree and joins the hijra community living on the shadowy margins of society, ultimately asserting a female identity complete with women’s clothes, the name Vidya and castration (termed “nirvana” in her circles). She then experiences discrimination in her quest for a mainstream profession.

The film is about Vidya’s refusal to let this social bigotry force her into a life of begging and sex work. It is about her determination not to allow the chauvinism of others to dictate her life choices. Except for one difficult sequence dealing with the unhygienic conditions in which castrations are conducted underground, this is a truly uplifting film. What makes it even more so is the realisation, in its closing moments, that Naanu Avanalla…Avalu is drawn from a true story, the autobiographical I Am Vidya: A Transgender’s Journey by Chennai-based NGO worker and theatre activist Vidya a.k.a. Living Smile Vidya.

Naanu Avanalla…Avalu earned two National Awards this summer: Best Actor for Kannada theatre artiste Sanchari Vijay’s restrained performance as Madesha/Vidya, far removed from the caricaturish portrayals of transgenders in Indian mainstream cinema; and Best Make-up. The film has also been screened at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne in August and the International Film Festival of India, Goa, in November. It got a limited theatrical release in Karnataka on September 25. It ought to be seen by mainstream Indian audiences outside Karnataka too.

The public tends to assume that films with such subjects would be boring, heavy and/or hard to watch. In truth, the lasting memory from Naanu Avanalla…Avalu is of Madesha’s smile when he realises for the first time that there are others like him out there, and of Vidya’s compassion, spirit and fire.

Such as the scene mentioned in the opening paragraph, that flash of controlled temper she displays on a train during her brief tryst with mendicancy, when a passenger dismisses her as being uneducated and too lazy to work hard for a living like everyone else. Vidya openly challenges him, pointing out that she is, in fact, a postgraduate who society is unwilling to employ.

These are scenes so commonplace in parts of India that we barely notice — hijras seeking alms, hijras barging into weddings to sing, dance and demand money, hijras blessing newly-weds and new-borns. Yet, transgenders are a rare sight in the mainstream. Shabnam Mausi being elected to the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly for 1998-2003, dancer-actor-activist Laxmi Narayan Tripathi appearing on the reality show Sacch Ka Saamna in 2009 to dispel myths about hijras, and the Supreme Court’s landmark 2014 ruling recognising transgenders as the “third gender” have all been uncommon developments.

Over the years, mainstream cinema has lampooned anyone who does not conform to traditionally accepted notions of gender or at best has treated such persons as a source of comedy and little else. Films like Mahesh Bhatt’s Tamanna (1997), with actor Paresh Rawal playing a pivotal character who is a hijra, have been unusual.

Vijay’s National Award for Naanu Avanalla…Avalu has come in a year in which the media has reported other significant milestones: Madhu Kinnar was elected India’s first transgender mayor in Chhattisgarh’s Raigarh Municipal Corporation this January, and last month, the Madras High Court paved the way for K. Prithika Yashini to become the country’s first transgender police sub-inspector.

For the most part though, India’s transgenders remain an object of ridicule, contempt, discrimination or, at the very least, apathy.

Even the well-intentioned among us usually sweep away such issues into rarely visited nooks and crannies of our minds where they are unlikely to give us a pang of conscience or an attack of basic human decency. Naanu Avanalla…Avalu drags every discomfiting question out of those dark corners into the light, compelling us to confront them and our own role in perpetuating prejudice by, if nothing else, turning a blind eye to it.

(Anna M.M. Vetticad is the author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. Twitter: @annavetticad)

(This column was first published in The Hindu Businessline newspaper on December 19, 2015)

Original link:

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/watch/she-he-them-and-us/article8000655.ece

Photo caption: Sanchari Vijay as Madesha/Vidya in scenes from Naanu Avanalla…Avalu

Photographs courtesy: MD Niche Media Consultants

Previous instalment of Film Fatale: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/watch/chemmeen-marks-a-golden-milestone/article7899728.ece

REVIEW 361: DILWALE

Release date:	December 18, 2015
Director:	Rohit Shetty
Cast: Language:	Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, Varun Dhawan, Kriti Sanon, Varun Sharma, Mukesh Tiwari, Pankaj Tripathi, Sanjay Mishra, Boman Irani, Johnny Lever, Vinod Khanna, Kabir Bedi Hindi

There’s something about age that does wonderful things to people. Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol have always had great on-screen chemistry, but the 22 years that have passed since they were first seen together in a film have added an unfathomable, heart-wrenching element to their pairing. Team Dilwale should send up a prayer of thanks for this saving grace, because this is the first time the two have been called upon to carry a film through on the strength of nothing but – absolutely nothing but – that chemistry.

If you draw a sketch of the basic plot points of Dilwale, you will see the promise there. How the lead pair meet, the misunderstanding that leads to a parting of ways and the seemingly improbable circumstances that reunite them are all believable and potentially entertaining. The problem with the film though is that the threads used to weave these plot elements together are so disparate, so jumbled and so loosely put together, that the result is a bland, lifeless film.

Rohit Shetty, whose previous works could be accused of many things, but never a lack of energy, seems to have fallen asleep – perhaps with boredom? – in the director’s chair while making this film. That is one possible explanation for the lackadaisical nature of the storytelling from a man who in the past has given us Chennai Express and Singham (yeah yeah, I know it’s terribly unintellectual to say so, but I enjoyed both). All those cars careening about the screen cannot compensate for what feels like his own lack of interest in this project.

Dilwale suffers from limp writing and unenthusiastic direction. Even its clichés and stereotypes are too dull to be infuriating – like that distasteful and decidedly unfunny scene in which Johnny Lever pretends he is about to assault Kajol’s character; or the disappointingly medieval mindset which makes the film’s writer think, even in the year 2015, that there can be nothing more terrible than ladkiwaale who want their daamaad to live with them after marriage; or the regressive, populist monologue about the high cost of dating women these days by Varun Sharma’s character, while his girlfriend stands by unquestioningly, clearly never having heard of going Dutch on a date; or Sanjay Mishra’s character who forever spouts nonsensical rhymes in conversations, such as this one addressed to his sister: “Bol mere ghar ki laado, Rolex Rado.”

Hain?

All this fades into insignificance though each time SRK looks at Kajol. Not the clean-shaven, supposedly younger version of Shah Rukh in the film, but the older, wiser, bearded man whose role acknowledges his age with dignity and grace.

When he gazes at her or even just throws her a fleeting glance, and those eyes we’ve been seeing now for almost 27 years brim over with love and longing, tedium recedes into the background. It is a look that makes you want to reach out and hug him, to reassuringly pat him on the shoulder, to tell him that all will be well, to scream out the truth so that she realises that it was all just a misunderstanding.

The return of the Kajol-SRK pairing five years after My Name Is Khan was supposed to be this film’s USP. As it turns, it is the film’s OSP – only selling point.

Shah Rukh in Dilwale plays a gangster in Bulgaria called Raj Randhir Bakshi a.k.a. Kaali. Between shootouts and car chases during the course of his underworld activities, he meets Meera Dev Malik (Kajol) and they fall in love. A tragedy causes them to split up. When the film opens, the story has fast forwarded to the present in Goa where Raj runs a car modification workshop with his younger brother Veer (Varun Dhawan) who, at some point, falls in love with a pretty restaurateur called Ishita (Kriti Sanon). As you can imagine, circumstances cause Meera to return to Raj’s life.

Dilwale’s primary characters are surrounded by a bunch of comedians who are occasionally amusing (Mukesh Tiwari and Pankaj Tripathi are hilarious in a scene in which they try to cover up Raj’s past in the face of Veer’s probing questions) but mostly not.

Varun is sweet but really needs to give that cutesy dialogue delivery a rest. Kriti is given little to do, which is a pity because she has a striking, intelligent screen presence and was perhaps the only one worth watching in Tiger Shroff’s debut film Heropanti.

Even the songs by Pritam are, for the most part, a damp squib. The music director redeems himself though with Gerua (in Arijit Singh & Antara Mitra’s voices) from which Amar Mohile borrows several bars for his background score. Both serve to play up the SRK-Kajol hotness to searing effect.

SRK himself is magnetic and charming as the older Raj. He should seriously consider keeping that beard forever. Kajol is radiant, pretty and, with much less screen time than the hero, effective, though she should seriously consider junking those awkward high heels in future. It also feels sad to see how much she has whitened her skin from what it was when she began her career (he seems to have done likewise, though to a lesser extent).

There is not much in the writing of Dilwale that could help these two recreate the sparks that flew between them in their earlier films, but they do radiate warmth for each other, a warmth that wafts off the screen and floats about the air in a sigh-inducing fashion. Each time Shah Rukh and Kajol are together in a frame, you can almost forgive Dilwale for everything else that it ought to have been but is not.

Rating (out of five): **

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	165 minutes

This review has also been published on firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/dilwale-review-even-shah-rukh-kajol-chemistry-cannot-save-this-disappointingly-boring-film-2552178.html

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/DilwaleTheFilm

REVIEW 360: BAJIRAO MASTANI

Release date:	December 18, 2015
Director:	Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Cast: Language:	Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone, Priyanka Chopra, Tanvi Azmi, Vaibbhav Tatwawdi, Milind Soman, Mahesh Manjrekar, Raza Murad Hindi-Marathi

Bajirao Mastani is almost everything the world has come to expect from a Sanjay Leela Bhansali film. Almost. It is a ravishing spectacle, the costumes are lush, the jewellery dazzling, the sets extravagant, the cinematography brilliant, the frames painterly, the lead cast more gorgeous than you would imagine human beings could be. For this alone, it is worth watching.

There is more to it than that though. The director’s latest film is told as a fable about the love between the 18th century Maratha warrior Peshwa Bajirao I and his second wife Mastani. The tone is trance-like and dreamy even when it is operatic and melodramatic, like a whisper passed down through generations and swirling about somewhere in the mists of a distant, mythical time.

This is an interesting narrative choice considering that the two lead characters are in fact historical figures and their romance is not an apocryphal story. It is a choice (made no doubt with the goal of not offending any community or angering historians) that permits the storyteller to be poetic, to fictionalise and dramatise to his heart’s content, even while staying as faithful to history texts as it is possible while chronicling the intimate lives of public figures.

Bajirao is a skilled soldier, a great leader and Peshwa (prime minister) to Chhatrapati Shahu of the Maratha Empire. Mastani is the valiant daughter of Bundelkhand’s Maharaja Chhatrasal with his Muslim queen Ruhaani Bai. Since Bajirao is already married when they first meet during the course of one of his battles, he returns home alone to his much-in-love wife Kashibai. But Mastani pursues Bajirao and they later marry.

The film is about the two simultaneous battles subsequently fought by one of the greatest warriors known to this country, the first one to expand the Chhatrapati’s empire and the other to gain acceptance for Mastani among his family. 

From the start it is evident that Bajirao Mastani is Bhansali’s ode to K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam, the folktale about the love between the Mughal crown prince Salim (later to become Emperor Jehangir) and the slave girl Anarkali. Yet, it is unlike that iconic 1960 film, or its precursor about the same legend, Nandlal Jaswantlal’s Anarkali (1953), or even the story of the prince’s father Akbar’s political-romantic alliance with his Rajput Hindu wife Jodha Bai recounted by Ashutosh Gowariker in Jodhaa Akbar (2008). The difference from these three memorable films lies in the fact that Bajirao Mastani doesn’t deify its pivotal romance by making it seem like its central male character is committed to just one woman or by brushing aside uncomfortable questions about male infidelity and the fleeting nature of this particular hero’s feelings.

Bhansali doesn’t evade this tricky territory, instead giving Kashibai a crucial scene in which she asks Mastani about the reliability of Bajirao’s heart that is set on one woman at one time, another at another time and who knows who next. Mastani clearly has no answer besides her own affection for him. She does not bat an eyelid when Bajirao impregnates Kashi without feeling conflicted about his emotions or actions. And she does not see his relationship with her as faithlessness towards Kashi who he describes as not just his wife but also his friend.

While the film makes it hard for us to be out-and-out angered by Bajirao’s hypocrisy, it certainly calls out the hypocrisy of his family and advisers who, as he points out, would have been willing to accept Mastani as his concubine but not his wife.

Equally special is the way the film negotiates Hindu-Muslim equations. Many of today’s Hindutvavaadis hold up the 17^th and 18^th century Marathas as flag-bearers of a Hindu Rashtra, as antagonists of Muslims and as a people who fought off “Muslim rule” in what they believe is “Hindu India”. Bhansali’s starting block with this film is in itself a position against their interpretation of history since he chooses to tell the story of a Maratha’s love for a Muslim. He takes it further with the Peshwa’s open declaration that his battle with the Mughals is restricted to his desire to extend the Chhatrapati’s territory and has nothing to do with their religion.

These then are the most fascinating aspects of the film: the unromanticised envisioning of Bajirao as a good man with shades of grey; the refusal to sidestep a first wife’s pain even if her husband is the film’s hero, and his relationship with his second wife is what folklore has placed on a pedestal; and the telling ambiguity about who is opposing Mastani out of affection for Kashi and who out of disdain for her being Muslim.

These elements are further augmented by the excellent principle cast – Ranveer Singh as Bajirao, Deepika Padukone as Mastani and Priyanka Chopra as Kashibai – supported by a bunch of talents, most especially Tanvi Azmi as Bajirao’s formidable mother.

Though Kashi gets less screen time than the titular characters, Priyanka makes the film as much her own as theirs, shining with grace, poise and restraint each time she comes on screen. She also slips comfortably into the role of a Maratha woman, tweaking her body language to fit the part and going well beyond the crutch of that sparkling nose ring and those lavish outfits.

The camera is occasionally distracted by Mastani’s luminous beauty, but Deepika still manages to lend depth to her character. She also reminds us of her penchant for action in one of the film’s best scenes, in which she single-handedly fends off a group of attacking swordsmen.

To stand out in the presence of these scintillating ladies takes some doing, but Ranveer achieves precisely that, reaching into himself for this character to deliver his best performance till date. In a break from the assembly-line uniformity of most male bodies in Hindi films these days (and his own over-muscled torso in the otherwise-lovely Ram-leela) he also gets his body right for the role. Hard though it is, with Bajirao Mastani he actually makes us forget that boy who stormed into our lives as the fabulous Bittoo who did “binness” on debut in Band Baaja Baaraat.

The use of language in the film too is neatly done. I’m not an expert on Marathi but the dialect that these characters speak blended with Hindi flows with natural ease. Thankfully, none of the actors is ‘doing an accent’. Instead, their speech is nicely nuanced in its intonations.

If Bajirao Mastani falls short of being what it might have been despite these positives, it is for two reasons: the songs (Bhansali’s compositions are a let-down); and the smattering of self-indulgent scenes that slow it down especially in the post-interval portion, with spectacle subordinating all else. Like the unwell Peshwa’s elongated, feverish hallucinations; or when Bajirao swishes and swings a chuttuvaal in each hand and barges solo into an enemy force. This whip-like sword with a flexible blade is used in Kalaripayattu, the martial art form from Kerala in which Ranveer trained for this role, and the actor looks amazingly at home with it. But the scene itself is no less silly – despite the more stylised presentation – than Sunny Deol single-handedly taking on the entire Pakistan Army with a hand pump in Gadar.

This is also what ails the relatively pretty-sounding song Pinga featuring both leading ladies. The women dance impeccably yet the focus is so much on the look that the feel is lost. That electricity Bhansali conjured up in the Dola re duet between Madhuri Dixit and Aishwarya Rai in Devdas (2002) is missing here, and Pinga ends up looking like a me-too and an also-ran.

In the rest of the songs, the choreography is heart-stopping, the dancers energetic or elegant as required, but the tunes are unremarkable. This is why Deepika’s dance to Deewani Mastani in the luxuriant Aina Mahal looks stunning yet does not match up to a number that it is evidently paying tribute to: Mughal-e-Azam’s Pyaar kiya to darna kya in which Anarkali challenged Akbar through words, music and dance in another unforgettable hall of mirrors.

Still, there is more to love than lament in Bajirao Mastani. Note the scene in which a mob of shadows seems to march towards the Peshwa before the camera raises its head from the floor and we realise that they come from a band of purposeful Brahmins. Note the many other scenes in which diyas, mirrors and silks shimmer like liquid gold. Note too Bajirao’s secularism, his reminder to us that all religions preach love yet love has no religion, his open defiance of the clergy, Mastani’s courage and passion, Kashibai’s dignity despite her limited choices, and that lovely moment of bonding between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.

Despite its shortcomings then, this is a brave and beautiful film – beautiful to look at, beautiful in its position on religion, brave in its take on history, brave in its unwillingness to paint religious groups or its primary characters as black or white.

Bhansalified history, as it turns out, makes for good cinema.

Rating (out of five): ***

CBFC Rating (India): U  Running time: 158 minutes

This review has also been published on firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/bajirao-mastani-review-theres-more-to-love-than-lament-in-this-beautifully-brave-film-2552146.html#disqus_thread

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/bajiraomastani/