After running at myriad film festivals all over the world, the Telugu film Vanaja is opening as a commercial release in New York this weekend; it will be opening more broadly around the U.S. in the next month.

Vanaja is an art film, which is to say, the director, Rajnesh Domalpalli, doesn’t come out of the “Tollywood” world of commercial Telugu cinema (he actually has an M.F.A. from Columbia, and the script for this film was submitted as his Master’s Thesis). Domalpalli’s primary actors are nearly all amateurs — people he found on the street. Carnatic music and Kuchipudi dance play important, but not overwhelming, roles in the film, and even there, it appears the actors actually spent months training in these rigorous arts.

This is a film about caste and class relations in a village setting, but Domalpalli doesn’t take the familiar route seen in many other films about village life (i.e., villagers are exploited, landowners are inherently evil). Here, the rich people, though they do not always behave sympathetically, are as human and complex as Vanaja herself. I don’t want to get too bogged down in plot, but suffice it to say that the romance in the film follows a surprising course.

Throughout, Domalpalli pays very close attention to details, including sets and staging, and the result is a film that feels very natural, yet is full of visual pleasures. The colors are rich, though not unrealistically so, and the acting is much better than one would expect from an all-amateur cast and a novice director.

I’m very curious to know how this film might be received in India, in particular in Andhra Pradesh. Unlike the films of, say, Deepa Mehta, who I’ve now come to feel makes her movies primarily for western audiences, Domalpalli’s Vanaja might actually be popular with Desi viewers. (My mother-in-law, who is visiting us from Bombay, liked it.)

One other thing, since Anna (rightly) wants us ignorant northies to learn a bit more about South Indian culture, the set of cymbals on the right side of the photo above is called a Nattuvangam. (The word of the day is Nattuvangam. Say it. Good.) Though I’m a little confused, because this site defines Nattuvangam a little differently; I gather that “Nattuvangam” refers both to the cymbals and to the act of conducting the dance by playing the cymbals? Continue reading →

Also out in the U.S. this week: Anupama Chopra’s King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema. As the title suggests, King of Bollywood is a full-length book meant for a general readership, looking back at the life and career of Shah Rukh Khan — aka, the “Badshah”. Chopra traces the various changes in the Bombay film industry in the 1990s, and argues that Shah Rukh is in many ways the face of the new, Yuppified, transnational Bollywood. From earlier conversations on SM, I know that some readers are a bit sick of Shah Rukh, though I would argue that Amitabh Bachchan has been far more over-exposed in the past few years (Shah Rukh has been only doing about one movie a year). The question Chopra is interested in isn’t “is Shah Rukh Khan a great actor,” it’s “how and why has Shah Rukh been such a success in the Bombay film industry given his outsider status?”

Derived nearly entirely from face-to-face interviews, there’s a lot of factual material about Shah Rukh Khan in Chopra’s book that I didn’t know — and I suspect that all but the most diehard fans won’t know most of it either. Continue reading →

As many readers probably already know, actor Sanjay Dutt was just sentenced to six years ‘rigorous imprisonment’ for possessing illegal weapons, including an AK-56. Last winter, he was cleared on more serious terrorism/conspiracy charges relating to the Bombay blasts of 1993. My first thought was, oh well — no Munnabhai 3, I guess. (Or, who knows? Intezar karo, Munnabhai?)

But then there are more serious questions — one might be, is it really a fair sentence? Readers, what do you think?

In my view, even if, it’s legally a reasonable sentence, Sanju does have an explanation for owning a weapon in 1993. For one thing, as a film star (and as the son of two very famous actors), his family was a target for the criminal underworld; I’m sure he wasn’t the only one to have these kinds of weapons in his possession at the time. Secondly, as of 1992/3, the Dutts were also apparently getting regular death threats from communalists following their humanitarian work on behalf of Muslims in the areas affected by the 1992 riots. Given the total lawlessness in Bombay at the time as well as his family’s own prominence, both on screen and in politics, one can understand what he might have been thinking.

On YouTube, you can watch a BBC Channel 4 Documentary on Sanju, called Sanjay Dutt: To Hell and Back, that talks about the Dutt family, Sanjay’s troubled youth (did I mention he was a heroin addict in the 1980s?), and the events surrounding the trial. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. (Part 2 is the section that deals the most with the events leading up to the arrest.)

I also think the fact that Dutt has had this trial hanging over his head for fourteen years is pretty severe punishment in itself. While I respect the court’s judgment, today I feel bad for Sanju. The Bollywood actor who should really be in jail is probably Salman Khan: Sanjay Dutt may have been a bad boy, but at least he never killed anyone, eh? (Ok, allegedly killed anyone.) Continue reading →

Though some were quick to declare a flop, Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart is actually pretty good. There are strong performances and interesting characters, and a sense of suspense in the plot that took me by surprise. The standout from my point of view is Irfan Khan’s performance as a fictional pseudonymous Pakistan CID investigator, who pursues Danny Pearl’s kidnappers with a strong sense of purpose and efficiency. Irfan, whom we last saw in The Namesake has a certain presence about him; when he’s on, he owns the screen. (Angelina Jolie also gives a surpsisingly compelling performance.)

Politically, the film does give the wonks out there some interesting bits to chew on. Perhaps the most interesting issue that came up was the obvious schizophrenia within Pakistan’s government in January 2002, during the 10 days of Pearl’s kidnapping. The Pakistan Interior Minister at one point flat-out tells Mariane Pearl (played by Angelina Jolie) that Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping is an Indian plot to discredit Pakistan’s ISI (I haven’t confirmed whether this actually happened or not). Meanwhile, other Pakistani officials are much more helpful in the investigation; even Musharraf, whose televised statements are replayed in fragments in the film, seems to be on the ball.

Visually, the film has a strong desi feel. Most of the exterior shots were done on location in Karachi — which looks suitably chaotic and lively — while the interior shooting was done in Pune, Maharashtra. Also, something like 1/3 of the dialogue is in Hindi/Urdu, which might be a draw in itself. (There’s even a little joke about ABD accents at one point.)

I’m not terribly bothered by Asra Nomani’s criticisms of the film, which seem mostly personal: she wants the film to be a portrait of her friend Danny Pearl, while the filmmakers decided to make a film mainly about his kidnapping and the investigation that followed. Nor am I particularly up in arms about the fact that Angelina Jolie, who is white, is here playing Mariane Pearl, who is biracial (her father is Dutch and her mother is Cuban). For me, the criterion is believability, not finding a direct racial match. (See criticisms of Jolie’s casting at Racewire: here and here)

In fact, my biggest objection to the film was the way it glossed over the apparent use of torture in the investigation of Pearl’s kidnappers. It’s especially jarring given that the message of the film is the urgency of the need to propagate a sense of shared humanity across political and cultural divides. The film seems aware of the torture question — there are montage references to the statements that Pearl’s kidnapping is retribution for the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay — but it doesn’t actually take a stand on it. For me, that doesn’t work: either we support the use of torture, or we are against it. Continue reading →