Wild Strawberries
Bergman's fascination with Sjostrom's directorial venture The Phantom Carriage is obvious, something that must have deeply influenced his faith in Sjostrom to play the 76-year old Professor Isak Borg, the principle protagonist of Wild Strawberries.
The film covers Borg's unplanned road trip from Stockholm to Lund where he's to collect his honorary doctorate being conferred upon him to celebrate the golden jubilee of his distinguished career as a medical scientist. During the journey, Borg also visits a few fast-fading markers of his past viz. his family summer home, a sleepy pastoral town where he earlier practiced as a general physician and the antique collection of his old mother.
Borg's introspection is further accentuated by the respective realities and conflicts of his co-passengers. The most significant of the lot is Marianne (Ingrid Thulin is simply brilliant) his level-headed daughter in law whose forthright appraisal of Borg's insensitivities plays a crucial role in his sedate awakening that in turn helps Marianne herself reconcile with her husband Evald towards the end. A weird couple highlights his own troubled marriage with his now dead wife. A chirpy wanderer called Sara reminds him of his childhood cousin Sara, a lady he loved, who became his elder brother's wife. (That both Saras are lookalikes seems needlessly dramatic, like it did in the Hindi film Gharonda where Sreeram Lagoo's deceased wife and second wife were both played by Zareena Wahab)
All triggers evoke different memories, conscious recalls as well as dream-state awareness that influence him to dissect his revered peripheral stature in the diffusing light of his personal trials and tribulations. Ironically, he's a bacteriologist by qualification whose principle job is to identify specimens under the microscope. Unlike the professional probe, the realization here is discernibly prickly but with every effort that he makes towards accepting his frailties, he comes closer to the footpath of pacific reconciliation.
The moment he uncovers a few veiled truths of his nature, he sees some of them mirrored in his mom's conventional diktats and son's rebellious traits. He also detects a sense of social alienation wrapped in his intellectual progression, a fact that now hurts him most in the final years of his life. The new realization makes him actually yearn for a peaceful co-existence between the son and daughter in law.
While the opening horse carriage dream highlights the inevitability of death through its surreal negation, (the Borg inside the coffin has come to claim the Borg floating aimlessly in a zone of lifeless blocks and handless clocks) the concluding dream of a tranquil family outing by the lake conveys a subtle sense of closure in Borg's soul searching voyage en route many diversions, much like the creeping growth of wild strawberries through forests, fields and lawns.
It can't be a coincidence that the protagonist of Wild Strawberries shares his initials with the film's director. Borg's true-to-life predicament comes from Bergman's personal contemplation of life's larger issues. No wonder, this film has inspired a host of Woody Allen movies and even Satyajit Ray's Nayak.
Every time you watch Wild Strawberries, the furrowed face of veteran actor-director Victor Sjostrom seems to convey something new, indeed befitting for what was his last screen performance. Bergman keeps him centre stage throughout and with such delightful upshots that have enriched the cinematic medium like never before.
IKiru
Loosely based on Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Kurosawa's Ikiru is the poignant tale of Kanji Watanabe, an ageing section chief at the Tokyo City Council who's been diagnosed with an incurable gastric cancer. In his 25 years at office, Watanabe has never missed a day and yet his presence has hardly been felt by anybody including himself. He rubber stamps his hopeless authority on piles of papers with unfailing regularity only to nourish a mounting pile of no consequence. His colleagues do the same in their individual capacities but unlike Watanabe, they are a boisterous lot, ceaselessly engaged in evading public grievances with scornful smiles ahead of bureaucratic lassitude.
Watanabe's cancer forces him to take a good look at his hitherto unexamined existence and that's where his uneventful life takes a new turn, not in dramatic fashion but through gradual insights emanating from sore discoveries concerning his personal and professional equations as also the futility of his distinguished civil service.
He embarks upon a selfless mission of constructing a children's playground in a deprived area infested with filth and mosquitoes. Our transformed section head now moves from pillar to post like a man possessed, pleading before numerous municipal heads across different sections, only to bring the larger cause to fruition. Ironically enough, his first and only bureaucratic feat is cherished only after his demise but proves lasting in its significance. The children's park has become the world's playground in every sense.
Watanabe's story unfolds in nomadic fashion from the point where he's vaguely made aware of his cancer at the doctors clinic. Every episode thereafter helps him take stock of his squandered life in some way or the other. Relieving his bank account of 50,000 yen, he sets out on a wayward search for redemption.
Led by a sympathetic small-time novelist, he gets a glimpse of Tokyo's nightlife and tries to drown himself in women and wine for a while but to no avail. He tries to strike a chord with his only son but the latter's insensitive and dismissive stance brings a dead end to the journey even before it begins. It takes another partially vain attempt - to befriend a happy go lucky erstwhile office colleague lured by her gay abandon - that indirectly leads him towards a befitting purpose." When I make toy-rabbits, I feel I am playing with every kid in Japan, why don't you do something similar?" She remarks innocently and hesitantly, more to escape the uncomfortable gaze of his languidly probing eyes. But her casual suggestion sets him thinking what could he possibly make anything, meaningful or otherwise, in his bureaucratic office of all paper and no action? And eventually his focus turns to the proposed kiddie park, withheld all this while thanks to the civic apathy and the inaction that follows it.
One can't but marvel at Kurosawa's deftness in harmonizing the poignant content with stylistic presentation. The film begins with the symbolic image of an X-Ray when the voice over informs us of the protagonists cancer as also the fact that the latter is yet unaware of the fatal ailment. Subsequently, Watanabe is led to the clinic and left alone to lock horns with the episodic adventures. The voice over returns midway, this time to inform us about Watanabe's demise. Thereafter, he surfaces solely through the vague and prejudiced interpretations of his inebriated colleagues assembled at his funeral service. It is through the maze of their clumsy conclusions, astutely flashbacked at times, and the successive visits of Watanabe's unlikely admirers from the local populace that we come to terms with his tragedy and triumph, both intertwined with each other. Kurosawa refrains from worshipping Watanabe as the God sent harbinger of change and urges you to join him in studying the deep rooted customs, rituals, hypocrisies and vested interests that collectively colour Watanabe's seemingly weird transformation from a taciturn bureaucrat into a citizen activist. Every scene, every dialogue, and every transition delicately helps us join the dots of Watanabe's turbulent life and its larger significance, best viewed than reviewed.
Takashi Shimura's portrayal of Kanji Watanabe remains one of the best ever in world cinema to this day. No wonder, he was a Kurosawa regular having played contrasting roles in the eleven films he did with the master filmmaker. His enquiring eyes, his feeble mannerisms, his progressive stoop and the fag-end croaking voice have immortalized Watanabe for a worldwide audience.
Given the heart-breaking story line, Ikiru could have so easily drifted towards garish melodrama but Kurosawa's creation has no room from empathy rooted in pity. His drama is highly intense but never sentimental; his message is profound but not judgemental. And unlike the popular filmic plots revolving around the dreaded disease of cancer, the protagonist's ailment is not at the forefront, it's merely employed as a life-threatening trigger for the life-changing transformation that follows it.
Ikiru instinctively moves us on different plains as we travel with the protagonist from start to end, albeit not in sequential fashion: we lament the tragedy of a wasted life, we laugh at the absurdity of civic affairs, we question the endurance of family ties, we inspect the worth of working relationships, we rebel against the impotent establishment and we celebrate Watanabe's fag-end achievement but most important, we are inspired to re-examine the meaning of our own lives in the guiding light of his example.
Khandahar (The Ruins)
It's interesting how Sen was drawn to the story in one faltering-turned-decisive moment of a sleepless night. Post Kharij, the beautiful film on the impotent sense of guilt typical of the civilised world, Sen was on the lookout for the next theme. His producer was as keen on the next venture and ready with money too, a rather comfortable situation for an offbeat filmmaker but this motivation didn't make the search any easier.
Mrinal Sen is among the very few filmmakers who care to share their innermost feelings concerning their film making. For me to come up with an appropriate subject at the appropriate time had always been a nerve-wracking exercise he says without reserve in his aptly-titled memoir Always being born. Coming back to his given search, he woke up with a start in the middle of one pensive night and walked towards a large wooden cabinet packed with books. As he was eyeing the treasures inside, one book seemed to be staring at him more than the others, an anthology of Premendra Mitra stories. In one particular story that he had read countless times before, he suddenly found cinema hidden in and between the lines. This story was Telenapota Abishkar.
The fascinating discovery made way for a peerless screen adaptation hats off to Sen for the way in which he transformed the fantasy of the original story to conceive a modern-day tale of fascinating intrigue and poignant resignation. Accordingly, the angler in Mitra's tale of a fictional place called Telenapota became a professional photographer Subhash in Sen's film who, at the behest of his friend Deepu, sets off to the ruins, taking a chance break off the rig ours of city life.
Once a sprawling mansion of Deepu's ancestors, the royal estate is now a decrepit structure of peeling crust and crumbling walls, nevertheless home to an intriguing mother-daughter duo. The bed-ridden mother is blind and paralysed but not yet bereft of hope, that a distant nephew will come to fetch the daughter to honour a yesteryear pledge. The daughter Jamini knows the truth that Niranjan, the man in question, has consciously reached the point of no return he's long married and settled elsewhere.
The city visitors inadvertently add depth and dialogue to the drama when the mother mistakes the photographer Subhash for Niranjan and instinctively weaves a relieving tale of fruition in her mind. Subhash wont dare to correct the old lady's illusion, trapped that he is in a delicate moment of reckoning. The abrupt chaos makes way for heated debate among the three friends on their supposedly moral and practical positions in the matter. It's only the final, fleeting encounter that subtly highlights Jamini's towering maturity, a poignant contrast to the run down environs. Even before Subhash can explain his plight in as many words, she's quick to relieve him of his awkwardness while locking horns with the reality of her life with grace and dignity. Subhash gets back to work and a photograph of Jamini, clicked against the backdrop of the ruins, consequently becomes his prized studio possession.
Shabana Azmi who played Jamini won the National Award for her portrayal. She was wonderful as ever but needlessly underlined her act in umpteen scenes like the one in which she says in her typical now muttering, now stuttering fashion "photo to li hi nahi abhi tak maa ki"(you haven't clicked my mother's snap as yet?) unlike the brilliant scene in which she shouts back at her mother "Halla gulla karke khana bana rahe hai, banane do na ma" (They are relishing their cooking extravaganza, do let them please) Ever since Satyajit Ray appreciated her superlative act in Benegal's Nishant, Azmi has consistently escaped a scrupulous critique in most of her subsequent offbeat films.
The support cast of Khandahar deserves special mention. Gita Sen was simply outstanding as the ailing mother, her heavy accent and laboured gestures beautifully conveying the psyche of the forlorn mother: anxious for her daughter's wellbeing and unknowingly a nuisance herself. Naseer was inimitably terrific as the photographer Subhash. Can we ever forget his introductory monologue right after the photographic paper reveals a young woman amidst the ruins whom we later come to know as Jamini? His baritone does full justice to Sen's astute direction and Bhaskar Chandavarkar's lingering background score. Pankaj Kapoor stood out as Deepu, despite the fact that there was little opportunity for him to demonstrate his prowess. Annu Kapoor was impressive as the third friend (zillion times preferable to the Antakshiri-inflicted caricature of current times) but lent a certain negative shade to his nonchalance which his character could have done away with. In contrast, Rajen Tarafdar was absolutely brilliant as the forsaken man Friday, his resigned mannerism perfectly rhyming with the desolate surroundings.
We just thought the scene of Subhash mistaken for Niranjan appears a tad theatrical if not unconvincing; what with the mother repeatedly interrupting Dipu and Jamini the moment they try to unveil the truth. One also fails to understand why should the well-meaning Dipu blame Subhash for the goof up in hindsight, one that he and Jamini triggered in unison appears somewhat forced in the otherwise awesome narrative.
Almost every scene comes alive on screen most realistically a team effort under Sen's able stewardship and screenplay including K. K. Mahajan's cinematography, Nitish Roy's art direction and Bhaskar Chandavarkar's music. We moralize among ruins, said Benjamin Disraeli but Mrinal Sen's Khandahar tells us more: that we often moralize among ruins to no avail.
G Aravindan: The Poetic Pragmatist
Kerela, like Bengal, was a remarkably secure home to meaningful cinema for several years, amidst the regular rattle of over-the-top commercial films in both states. Of course, several directors contributed to this miracle but two names clearly stand out, as much for their cinematic brilliance as for the quiet dignity with which they went about their work. Bengal of course had the legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray and Kerela was blessed with Govindan Aravindan and his unique brand of lyrically incisive films.
Like Ray, G Aravindan was a man of few words and many contrasting facets: painter, cartoonist, composer and writer on one hand and a Kerala Rubber Board administrator on the other. No wonder, his initiation into the world of films was entirely self-driven, collectively fuelled by the rich character and imagery of his native Kottayam, his folk theatre roots, rubbery stability of his Board job besides a chance encounter with Kurosawa’s ‘Rashoman’.
Long before he ventured into films, he had already achieved considerable fame with his ‘Mathrubhoomi’ cartoon series titled ‘Small Men and Big World’, a humorous account of an idealist grappling with everyday realities, named Ramu after his own son. The cartoon sketch paved the way for the destined canvas of cinema when Aravindan found a sensitive and devoted producer in his long time theatre peer and cashew merchant Ravindran Nair. Thus began an enduring tryst of lyrical creations purposefully adorned with inventive music and vibrant imagery that raised the bar for Malayalam cinema, essentially through a daring and decisive departure from established norms.
Here was a director who for the first time let the idyllic nature play an integral part of his films and his cinematic approach called for an equal involvement from actors and the audience – almost simulating a stage on screen. His camera was only a tool for detection, never an instrument of projection. Like nature, his music was an element of freewheeling introspection ahead of wary interpretation. Even so, the social activist in him was fully awake to the larger cause, just that he chose largely redolent expression to service it, discarding the abstract symbolism that was popular among the offbeat filmmakers of his time. And this ingenuity was well employed, in the sheer diversity of his chosen themes.
‘Uttarayanam’ brought to the fore harsh post-independence realities seeped in incidental opportunism and discarded idealism. The contemplative ‘Kanchan Sita’ humanised Lord Ram as an individual tormented by his wife’s needless loss, lurking behind the righteousness unfurled only through external pressures. ‘Thampu’ was a compassionate probe into the trials and triumphs of transient relationships embodied through the desolate lives of circus artistes. ‘Kummatty’ was a fantasy genre that placed a popular myth at the centre of reality. ‘Esthappan’ exposes the frailty and diffidence of human interpretation shown through desperate attempts to unravel the mystery surrounding an eccentric spiritualist called Esthappan.
‘Chidambaram’ studied man-woman relationships, individual culpability and caste differences. ‘Oridathu’ is set in the 50s, in a tiny, remote village, a humorous take on the impending darkness of imminent electricity, highlighting the elusive complexities of human mind. While ‘Pokkuveyil’ traced the life of a young man wrestling with contrasting personal conflicts and social encounters, his last film ‘Vasthuhara’ looked at the problem of refugees. His superb documentaries included ‘The Seer Who Walks Alone’ on the philosophy of J Krishnamurti.
G Aravindan, like Ray, held a discernible edge over his peers both in style and substance but again like Ray; he was too busy to stake claims or seep in adulation. From ‘Uttarayanam’ to ‘Vasthuhara’, he was relentlessly focused on the task at hand.