BOYCOTT OF PAKISTANI ACTORS / FILM FATALE: COLUMN PUBLISHED IN THE HINDU BUSINESSLINE

HEY, RIGHT-WINGERS, LEAVE THE ARTS ALONE

The post-Uri demand for a boycott of Pakistani actors calls for a crucial debate. One rider: let’s ditch the cliches in the current liberal discourse on freedom of expression.

By Anna MM Vetticad

So a once-popular singer — I will not sully this column by naming him — has expressed his ‘nationalism’ by tweeting thus about Bollywood director Karan Johar’s association with Pakistani actor Fawad Khan: “Another #lovejihad .. Mehbooba #KaranJohar is in depression ..pak lover fawad ditched bechari Mrs @karanjohar khan” (sic). The comment is designed to mock Johar for his assumed sexual orientation and for a brush with ill-health that he discussed in a recent interview.

Homophobia and inhumanity are apparently the new measure of patriotism in India.

This salvo was fired just days after the Indian Motion Picture Producers’Association (IMPPA) called for a ban on Pakistani artistes and technicians in response to the recent terror attack on Uri that killed 20 Indian soldiers. IMPPA’s decision came shortly after the right-wing Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) reportedly issued an ultimatum to Pakistani artistes to leave India within 48 hours.

It is not this column’s contention that people do not have a right to their boycotts. The question under discussion here is the right of individuals and organisations to coerce others into following suit.

IMPPA, for instance, should not curb filmmakers who wish to work with Pakistanis, MNS should be punished for acting as an extra-Constitutional authority, and its veiled threats of violence ought to be condemned. Hindustan Times reported on September 23 that the party has “kick-started protests against Karan Johar’s film Ae Dil Hain (sic) Mushkil as it stars Pakistani actor Fawad Khan... MNS vice-president Shalini Thackeray said wherever shooting for films or tele-serials with Pakistani actors was on after the deadline, MNS activists would go and stop them.” Anyone who knows their track record knows what that means.

Let us be very clear about one point: freedom of expression includes the right to boycott artistes you are politically 
opposed to for reasons unrelated to their work, however illogical, irrational or even foolish your approach might be. Unfortunately, liberals in India have become so used to violence-prone religious and political bodies targeting art over the years, that now every critical response to art or an artist is being mindlessly described as an attack on freedom of expression. It is not.

Since abuse, personal attacks,
 threats and violence against artists are second nature to fundamentalists, it has become a reflex action for liberals to cry “free speech” in response to every move involving artists, even non-violent moves, by extreme right-wingers. This has brought the discourse on free speech to an all-time intellectual low in recent years, following the mainstreaming of fundamentalist forces in Modi’s India.

So when the Hindutva brigade uninstalled the Snapdeal app in droves to protest brand ambassador Aamir Khan’s observations on intolerance in India, some liberal journalists went to the extent of dubbing their campaign “commercial terrorism”. Actually, for a change, these right-wingers were acting within their rights. Their indifference to Aamir’s concerns was inconsiderate, and their communal epithets for him were repulsive, but they did have a right to boycott brands he endorses. All pressure tactics cannot be deemed coercive and the word “terrorism” should never be used lightly.

This unthinking stance by liberals has harmed the very causes they seek to uphold. And so it was that when some writers opted out of the Bangalore Literature Festival 2015 because one of the festival organisers had, among other things, decried the award wapsi campaign, the writers were dubbed “intolerant” by the same media. “Intolerant”? Because they exercised a democratic right to withdraw from an event?

I am not getting into a debate here on the value of India-Pakistan cultural exchanges. Our artistic ties have played a role in maintaining goodwill among the citizenry even when political forces have tried to breed hate, but that is a separate discussion. This column is simply a reminder that each of us should be free to non-abusively, non-threateningly, non-violently protest – in  political, social and cultural matters – in whichever way we deem fit, and that neither IMPPA nor MNS should impose their choice of protest on us.

I love my soldiers, but I do not know how they gain if we reject Fawad Khan. This is a talented actor who, though a foreigner, made a remarkable contribution to India’s social evolution this year when he played a gay man in Shakun Batra’s uncommonly sensitive Kapoor & Sons, a role that had been rejected by several Indian stars. When I asked him about it in an interview in June, Fawad said: “By not doing such films we simply shut it (homosexuality) away rather than trying to understand it... Besides, with the kind of difficulties we’re facing as a global society where we’re having trouble getting along, if anything this is just more love in the system rather than adding conflict.”

This is the man you wish to shun because terrorists murdered our soldiers? The argument that he has not made a statement on Uri hardly holds water since Indian film artistes usually stay silent on political issues, and those who have spoken up – like Aamir – have been harangued for doing so by the same ideological group largely behind the demand for a comment now from Fawad. 

So let us make a deal: feel free to deprive yourself of Fawad or any other Pakistani artist you choose, just make sure you do not bully the rest of us into doing so too.

(This article was first published in The Hindu Businessline’s BLink on October 8, 2016.)

Link to column published in The Hindu Businessline:

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/watch/hey-rightwingers-leave-the-arts-alone/article9196949.ece

Previous instalment of Film Fatale: It’s Not “Regional”, Dammit, It’s “Indian”

http://annavetticadgoes2themovies.blogspot.in/2016/09/the-politics-of-term-regional-cinema.html

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/KapoorAndSons/

REVIEW 436: MIRZYA

Release date:	October 7, 2016
Director:	Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra
Cast: Language:	Harshvardhan Kapoor, Saiyami Kher, Anuj Choudhry, Art Malik, Om Puri, Anjali Patil, K.K. Raina, Iteshyam, Anuja, Shourya Pratap Singh Shekhawat Hindi

Once upon a time there was a man called Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra who lived in the Enchanted Forest of Imagination and Splendour.

One day, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra decided to make a film on the Punjabi folktale of Mirza and Sahibaan, setting it in present-day Rajasthan.

It was a story of love, faith, hope and betrayal, rocks and hard places, Scylla and Charybdis, devils and deep seas. It was a story that lent itself to the kind of epic scale and magnificence that Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra was known for in the Forest and the many lands of Far Beyond.

And so Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra went about gathering the best team in the Forest for his film. He roped in Dadasaheb Phalke Award-winning stalwart Gulzar for the screenplay and lyrics.

And Gulzar did not let him down with the songs. He wrote with wistfulness, of a little boy mooning after a girl, of a woman torn between her family and her lover.

In the Village on the edge of the Forest there lived a Critic. She was filled with hope for Mirzya for she thought Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Rang De Basanti released in 2006 was one of the best Hindi films of the 21^st century, and though some folk in the Village said his Bhaag Milkha Bhaag in 2013 was over-wrought, she did not agree with them.

When Gulzar’s words for Ek Nadi Thi, put to tune by the formidable Shankar Ehsaan Loy, sung by the Nooran sisters and K. Mohan, rose up from the screen, a feeling of warmth enveloped the Critic. “Ek nadi thi dono kinaare / Thaam ke behti thi / Ek nadi thi… / Ek nadi thi koi kinara chhod na sakti thi” (There was a river who embraced both her banks / There was a river… / There was a river who could not leave either of her banks). A picture began to paint itself.

It was clear that Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Noorani and Loy Mendonsa had poured their soul into Mirzya. The melodies, the instrumentation, the choice of voices – it was oh so beautiful.

Most beautiful of all was Daler Mehndi, whose full-bodied rendition of that evocative title track got the Critic’s pulse racing each time.

In the same Forest there lived a cinematographer called Pawel Dyllus, who bathed Mirzya’s present in burnished tones and the blazing sun, while drenching the past in a dreadful steely gray. Pawel Dyllus’ canvas was large, and every frame was a museum piece, not counting some close-ups of the lead actress Saiyami Kher in which her make-up was screaming out at the viewers – a folly indeed.

The music, the lush landscapes and shadowy interiors, Mirzya’s art design and narrative structure were designed to build up a haunting atmosphere. There was foreboding in the air. Great sorrow would befall these people – the Critic knew that, not only because everyone in the Village had read of Mirza and Sahibaan, but because she sensed it in the air of the Forest.

Mirzya was related as a fantasy fable, juxtaposing the ancient saga of Mirza and Sahibaan against the contemporary account of H.R.H. Prince Karan, his one true love Soochi – daughter of a top policeman in Rajasthan – and the stable boy Adil. There was much promise in this idea.

But Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra made a big mistake. He strayed from the Path of Golden Rules, he did not chide Gulzar for writing a screenplay with many strong pillars but no rooms, for constructing a fascinating frame with no interiors, for outlining characters that could have been interesting if only he had filled in his lines with colour and life. Perhaps that was not possible. After all, Gulzar, as the people of the Village well know, is a legend.

There were moments when the Critic thought, “Ah, this looks and sounds so good. Maybe soon the life blood will flow?” And she waited, and waited, and waited. But it did not.

No doubt Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra had aimed his film at intelligent, well-read Village dwellers. He infused it with literary references, but mostly with the words of an old English wizard called William Shakespeare. Then though, he doubted the knowledge of the Village people and felt driven to mention the names of Wizard William, Romeo and Juliet, just in case the Critic and her Village did not quite get it.

It was a film with few dialogues. In the Enchanted Forest, words are precious. Yet Mirzya squandered away its limited number of spoken lines with clunky writing. Such as when a father and a fiancé pun on the word “samaan” (property, possession, thing, stuff) to refer to the woman they love and the luggage she has brought home from her travels.

Now in the roles of Mirza and Adil, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra had cast young Harshvardhan Kapoor (son of actor Anil Kapoor, brother of Sonam Kapoor, nephew of Sridevi Kapoor and producer Boney Kapoor, cousin of Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh). Harshvardhan was a debutant so sweet of countenance, with eyes of such boyish innocence, that the Critic wanted to reach out and embrace him, and whisper, “Come child, I will protect you from this film. For it does look like you could be better employed.” Some scenes hinted at a fluid face of a million possibilities, but for some reason Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra had given him an under-written role. He had little to say, the camera rarely dwelt upon his face and in his one big moment in the film, when he filled the screen and turned around to look at a figure of treachery, he deadpanned.

Saiyami Kher fared no better playing Sahibaan, but as Soochi, she got enough space to display her smart personality and innate pizzazz. Saiyami Kher, so the Village crier said, was the granddaughter of Usha Kiran, an actress of yore, and the niece of Tanvi Azmi.

Oddly enough, the central character written with most empathy was neither of these two, but Prince Karan. And actor Anuj Choudhry stepped up to the challenge, making a mark despite the frigid film within which he found himself.

Moral of the fable: all the packaging and grandeur in the world, all those artistically writhing bodies doing a sexual dance as a backdrop to Mirza-Sahibaan and Soochi-Adil-Karan, all those pretty costumes and young actors with potential, Shankar Ehsaan Loy and Daler Mehndi, they all add up to nought if the heart of your story does not beat. 

Early on in Mirzya, a character quotes a moonstruck Romeo’s monologue on Juliet: “She speaks yet says nothing.” It is an unwittingly apt description of this film. It speaks, yet says nothing.

Ah that Wizard William, he whose works in which you will find passages relevant to every given situation all these centuries later.

The Critic thought: all is not lost, for in Harshvardhan Kapoor, Saiyami Kher and Anuj Choudhry, Mirzya has presented to us, three newcomers who may give the people of the Village great pleasure in the coming years; and forgiveness ought to be offered generously to the man who made Rang De Basanti.

So the Critic embraced that thought and slept peacefully that night, remembering that in the Village and in the Forest in every tale, they always all lived happily ever after.

Rating (out of five): **

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	129 minutes 45 seconds

A version of this review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/mirzya-review-saiyami-kher-harshvardhan-kapoors-sweetness-is-squandered-in-a-frigid-film-3039128.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirzya_(film)

Harshvardhan Kapoor & Saiyami Kher’s photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/Mirzya/