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ELVIS D´ SILVA (Mumbai, India)

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Most Difficult Film of the Year

To pretend that I made a significant dent in the consumption of global cinema this year by watching whatever I could would be to kid myself.

If I were to devote all my waking hours to the business of simply watching movies I would still have to go at too punishing a rate to truly make it through the continued evolution of the art-form I have chosen to adopt as my own. Still, there were some interesting experiences for me as far as movie watching went and I cannot complain for having been able to watch the works of people at the top of their game from the comfort of my home or the nearest multiplex.

There are people that say, “you must watch everything, the good and the bad…only then will you understand what it takes.” I disagree, sort of. I need an overpowering reason to go watch a movie (or rent it even). It can be something as superficial as the marketing (or a hot woman in the trailer) or it could be a stray comment on an online forum or a mention on a specialty website. I’ve actually bought DVDs based on online-only recommendations [Carlos Reygadas’ Batalla en el cielo (difficult movie, sex scenes notwithstanding); Confession of Pain (Takeshi Kaneshiro rocks, the movie not so much) and Protégé (thought I’d like Pain more but this one was the better of my two Asain buys. It also feels like a total RGV film, from the good years).

I’ve also resisted the films with all the hype surrounding them because nothing I saw told me to go to the theatres and check it out. I suspected Chak De! India would be the only worthwhile movie out of Yashraj this year and I even tried to watch it a couple of times on the big screen (house full, so it did not happen). Finally watched it on DVD and I was impressed initially and then disappointed when the film sank in. I realised that the movie could have been great, with a little pre-visualization and better design of shots and moments. The film could have been a powerhouse of lump-in-the-throat moments like the one when the first girl steps forward and says she plays for India. It boggles my mind to wonder how much more successful that film could have been if it didn’t have such a slapped together feel. The truth is no production house (studio) is going to go that extra mile until they see the value in better production design. Chicken/egg? Does it really matter? I think it does but I might be the only one.

Which brings me to the most difficult movie I watched this year. Seeing as this post will appear on this website, it loses some (maybe all) of its credibility but this needs to be said so I’ll go ahead and say it. But first, a confession.

To begin with, when the initial ‘making of’ blog and all the attendant hype surrounding an Anurag Kashyap production began to filter through cyberspace I was very resistant. I do that sometimes (a lot?) – a word out of place or an idea whose time (I think) has not yet come turns me off an entire enterprise. So it was with No Smoking. I couldn’t see what the big deal was. I had my problems with Black Friday and I didn’t like that it was a critic-proof film. It’s like racism in America – you cannot put down an artistic expression about racism without being yourself branded a racist. Which is bullshit. Criticism must be able to step back and take an aerial view. Though it is hard, critics cannot perceive themselves as the common man and try and make friends, or worse, try and ingratiate themselves to certain sections of the artistic fraternity. That does everyone a disservice. But I digress.

So the hype surrounding No Smoking happened and I pre-judged the movie as not being worth much. Didn’t prevent me from participating in the poster contest though Good thing that I did because as some of you may know, I won a prize. Which in turn may devalue what I’m trying to say here but I hope people are evolved enough to see beyond that…

Then I went and picked up my prize and chatted with Anurag for a bit. To watch the man at work is to be awed, terrified, angered and more than a little confused. He exhibits clarity of vision and a dispersal of thought in the same moment. It’s really difficult to tell whether he sees you or right through you. I’ve met him thrice (I think) and apart from asking when I’ll make my feature film he doesn’t seem to register much of what I say. But he was friendly enough and meeting John Abraham (whom I went to college with for a year) was a humbling and mildly depressing experience. Way back when we were living a Summer of ‘69 kind of life (the song, not the year) John already had a vision of who he wanted to be. Me, not so much. As I drove away in my six-year old hatchback that afternoon I saw his giant black Audi SUV waiting to pick him up and I wondered what I had made of my life. So far, so conflicted.

I finally watched No Smoking on a Monday afternoon (in the second week) in INOX. I had a cold and I was hoping my coughing would not disturb the six people in the theatre. Turned out I recognized two of the people at the show – a couple I’d previously seen at press screenings for Hollywood releases in India. I messaged a friend (the only guy I truly bitch Bollywood with) and told him he needed to watch the film. Of course by this time the movie had already been written off and I had read a lot of the stuff that was said for (very little) and against it (you all know how much). I sat there in that darkened theatre and as I watched the movie I felt myself die a little with every passing moment.

Anurag Kashyap had done me both a favour and a great disservice. He had put together a movie that was a sum of so many moving parts that gave me the same feeling I had got from interacting with him. K is not Kashyap, No Smoking is.

In my first ever meeting with him he had talked about how the skies in Allwyn Kallicharan would be red all the time and that the world of that movie would be stylized and require exceptional special effects. I didn’t believe him then because I thought everybody in the system promised you something ‘different’ and then delivered more of ‘the same’. It was only when I saw the visible and invisible effects delivered in No Smoking that I realised that the man knew what he was talking about. And he knew how to get what he wanted. Which is no mean feat when you see what passes for SFX in Bollywood.

Of course there are flourishes in the film that seem to fly in the face of the underlying logic and they are the bits that really bug me. Like I feel the scene with Rawal and Takia on his ‘operating table’ were there simply so that Kashyap could put in the ‘are you saying I’m wrong’ portion of his Baba Bengali-as-Fuhrer part of his argument. Of course the ’system’ sometimes questions its right but it happens in a more organic manner than was depicted in the film. For that one scene Kashyap went Hollywood and in so doing put cracks in the structure of the entire edifice.

Still, No Smoking did not become the most difficult movie I watched this year for lack of other movies that made me envy a filmmaker’s craft or style or ability. It is my Most Difficult Film of the Year because no other film served as a bigger wake up call for me.

I decided I wanted to make movies in 2001 and until now, all I’ve managed is a series of no-budget short films. When I was starting out, I decided that I wanted to make English language films that told exciting stories in the language we speak everyday, instead of the broken Hindi I operate with cab drivers, fruit sellers and the cops. I thought there was a market for well-rendered stories in any language and therefore English was as good a language as any other. I also decided that I didn’t want to have anything to do with Bollywood.

As the years passed I realised that Bollywood wasn’t interested in me, or anyone else. The cog had to go to the machine, which chugged on whether the cog deigned to spin within it or not.

Last year around this time, my friend and I actually convinced a fairly major studio of the value in our ideas and got the man in charge to commit his interest in not one or two but three ideas. We were so thrilled and relieved we felt no guilt at all about taking a vacation to Europe at the end of last year with our wives. We had fun, we came back, we called the guy and called and called and called…

Nothing.

Radio silence.

There were other people. Other meetings. Other conversations.

A couple of weeks ago I spent two days in a roomful of producers from Mumbai and London and I heard people say all kinds of things. Most of these things I’d heard before:

It’s very difficult to get a movie made.
Money is tight.
Talent is hard to find, and corral, and coerce into cooperation with the overall process.
Make a film in English and you’re talking to only five percent of the total market.

I was a naïve young pup who thought the reason we didn’t have interesting cinema is because nobody had seen my stories yet. Arrogance is my sin. I admit it. I didn’t think there was anyone really willing to make the kinds of movies that challenged people. I watched two in the theatres this year that evaporated that particular theory: Manorama – Six Feet Under and No Smoking. Both these movies were everything I wanted to do with my own storytelling. Be innovative, original, exciting and fuck with people’s minds a little.

That those two movies came out in the same year is the first sign that there might be hope. Or at least some amount of fight left inside some filmmakers. Will this prove to be Indian cinema’s 1857 or 1947? Time will tell. Also, it is inevitable that our 1947 will come. But when it does, will we be united or will indie cinema exist as Pakistan? And on which side will I go to live?

No Smoking – it made all the difference in the world and it made no difference at all. An arrogant female producer said to one of her confidantes at that confab I attended, “Anurag Kashyap is doomed.” I hope she is wrong and I hope I get to tell her that some day. Will it matter? Probably not. Until then, I have to figure out what I’m going to do with the information I now have about trying to make the movies I believe in.

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