Search the Internet           Tips

Two unusual movies were released last week. Both, inscrutible. Both, impossibly self indulgent. Madhuri Fida Husain's Gajagamini and Sunhil Sippy's Snip.

Gajagamini is actually all about the Dixit's gorgeous derriere, now alas somewhat more substantial than it used to be in its heyday. Yet stunning enough to launch an entire armada if not a squadron of Sukhois as well. However, to give the film its artistic pretensions, Husain has brought in Kalidasa, Leonardo da Vinci and Mirza Ghalib. As well as Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi and Mohan Agashe. While Shahrukh Khan and a literally larger than life Shilpa Shirodkar try to add desperately to its commercial potential.

But the halls are bereft of audience and I do not, quite frankly, blame those who have shunned what is undoubtedly the most mysterious film to have ever emerged out of Bollywood. In fact, so mysterious is the film that even Madhuri has stayed away from its public viewings and premieres on specious pretexts. Perchance she be asked to explain it.

There have been many occasions when I have defended Husain against charges of gimmickry and pretentiousness. The Shwetambari show at the Jehangir art gallery in the eighties was one of them, where he littered the floor of the huge auditorium with torn newspapers and hung long white sheets of mercerised cloth from the ceiling to convert the entire gallery into an installation that one could walk through.

I found the show testing but stylish. It challenged the conservative definitions of art and poked fun at the stiffnecks who review exhibitions with the mindset of Torquemada's inquisitors. I also enjoyed his first film. The quirky one with the black umbrella that won him his first award in Berlin. A Golden Bear if I remember right, in the late sixties.

But this? This is not an experimental film at all. In fact, it is a compromise film if you ask me. Some very boring songs filmed in a very filmi manner, stilted dialogues, choreography that would embarrass a platipus with its feet tied to concrete, and a script that gets you nowhere. Not even into the dark conundrum of your own psyche to search for a few quick answers to life and creativity.

If this is an artistic film, my great grandmother was the Battleship Potemkin. It is a pretentious nonstarter, badly thought through and made with precisely the kind of love that a butcher has for his pet heifer. It is bad art, attrocious cinema, rotten commerce. What surprises me is that Yash Chopra, who is supposed to have an eye for the beautiful, chose to release this film. Perhaps he wanted a tax shelter for Mohabbatein.

Snip is equally quirky but has the definitive touch of a serious film-maker. Sippy may not have made a great movie but you can see through its despairingly whacked-out screenplay that here is a 29 year old trying to be heard over the cacophony of commercial cinema. The problem is Snip lacks a consistent screenplay. It lacks the all embracing vision of a good director and, much as he tries, young Sunhil does not exactly succeed in fitting the pieces of the jigsaw together to complete the delightful film he set out to make. But you see him struggling. You see him trying, trying very hard.

There is no intellectual smugness here. There is no pretentiousness. He fails because he does not know how to put together his truly clever ideas to make a film that works in its entirety. Yet look at his choice of actors. Look at his choice of Sophiya Haque and Saurabh Shukla and you can see the amount of risk he has taken. He was trying to find his own voice and even though the film may not have set the Arabian Sea on fire it does not diminish him.

Yes, he is self indulgent. He tries too hard at times. But that does not make him look silly in the way Husain looks silly with Gajagamini. Of course, he has youth on his side. The film exudes raw energy, fun, delight. Even an outrageous sense of humour. It shows that Sunhil has the makings of a fine director even though he may have turned up a lemon in his first attempt.

The music is delightful. The camerawork is neat. The look of the film is very stylish. Here is a young director who has come to stay. He is not a dilettante. He is not stacking up stars to get an initial at the cinema halls. He has no Golden Bear or Silver Bull to back him. He is just a new kid on the block who knows that he wants to make a different kind of fun film. Whether the film succeeds or not, he has demonstrated his ability, his skill, his determination to challenge the existing language of commercial cinema.

That is the difference between Gajagamini and Snip. Both may be playing to empty halls. But one is a tired old man's vision of The Great Bottom. Tantalising as it may be, The Great Bottom (even if it happens to be Madhuri's) cannot hold your attention for all of two hours in a dark auditorium. The other is a young man's attempt to find his own creative landscape.

While the old man is weighed down by his fame and success and comes through as tired and pretentious, the young man has nothing to lose and therefore swashbuckles his way into your heart with a film that is both gutsy and delightful. Both the films may have failed in the marketplace but there is an essential difference between the two film makers. One falls flat on his face. The other can get up, dust the back of his jeans and try again.

Pritish Nandy

Tell us what you think of this column