Filmosophy: Barfi! vs Gangs of Wasseypur

I get very anxious when a highly anticipated movie is about to release. I fear that it will be ruthlessly panned just because it was wrongly or excessively marketed. Consider Blue for example. Had it been made without Akshay Kumar or Kylie Minogue in it, it could have saved a lot of money that was spent in buying these "brands". They could have spent it on better special effects and a better writer for that matter. But it seems they were not concerned about the quality anyway. They just wanted to sell a sub-standard product in the name of a big star. And I still don’t get it, why do these actors have to promote their movies to such an extent? Their presence is big enough an incentive. Such a waste of money for one big man’s stupid insecurity!

Think Jaws, but crappier.

Expectations, they spoil half the movies for me. They spoil more than half of your life. The concept of cognitive conditioning explains this phenomenon. Let’s say you watch an Alfred Hitchcock picture, a grade A thriller. And let us say it was your first thriller movie experience. You love it. You love the way the characters speak, the way the camera moves and the way the plot reveals itself seductively. You decide that thriller movies are your kind of movies. You then expect all thriller movies to the same for you, make you sit on the edge of you seat. So the next week when you buy a ticket for that seat, you do not expect yourself to slump on it halfway through the movie, bored. Now while nothing happens on the screen, you have the time to contemplate. Why would you think that this movie was going to be as good as the one you saw before? Did the plot promise that to you? Even if it did, why would you think that this director was as good as Hitchcock? And even if it was a Hitchcock movie, why would you think that this movie of his would be as good as his earlier work? Answer= because you did not think otherwise. Your experience(s) conditioned you to expect certain results and response when certain stimulus was inducted into the situation.

It is because of this that most movies are hated and panned, directors with a different vision of the genre- discouraged and shooed away. Scared of this, the businessmen funding these pictures coerce their writers to write something that is not very new, something that won’t find it hard to be accepted by the audience. It is because of our expectations we get exactly what we expected. And before long we start hating them for producing clichés. But what happens when we start expecting something new? This expectation is also based on an old experience. Maybe in the past, you were wooed by a movie that had attempted something new. This complex and fragile space in your mind, is what is targeted by the genius writers/directors of cinema. This is the only way they can survive while the producers still get to bank millions from their box office collections. This is the only way we all get to be happy. Sadly, these geniuses are few. What is good is that Indian cinema seems to have two latest examples- Anurag Basu and Anurag Kashyap.

Look at him smile. That talented bastard.

The theatrical of Barfi! was literally jaw dropping. I couldn’t help but admit that it belonged to international standards and no less. So, my expectations for the movie piled up, the factors being- the impressive cast, the experimental director and the big production values. Finally the time came when was finally sitting in the hall, waiting for the movie to start. After various jewellery commercials and well-timed theatrical teasers, the UTV montage finally made its appearance. The next thing that usually comes up is the silent and boring presentation of brand logos and media partners. But for the first time in my life I was happy and laughing my ass off during the logo presentation. Why? Because I was listening to an innovative idea of a song that told me what to expect from the movie. Before the actors came on screen, hell, even before the film title came on screen; the movie had won people’s hearts and a hard earned applause. The song is called “picture shuru” (the picture begins), which set the mood for the movie and as fellow movie buffs would agree, it celebrated the idea of watching movies in cinema halls. You won’t enjoy that moment on DVD or cam-prints, trust me.

Barfi! tells the story of a bubbly guy residing in Darjeeling. He is deaf and dumb, but definitely not dumb. He understands life more than we do. His disability gives him an opportunity to live life in silence and peace, to contemplate how he wants to live his life. The character makes us people feel stupid. Do we really need to talk so much? Do we really need to listen to people’s advices? Won’t life be much better the other way around, his way? Eyes speak a language more profound and in that manner, Barfi is a very talkative guy. And what happens when a guy like that falls in love? A wonderful experience of a movie, that’s what happens!

You have complaints? Well he can't hear them. (Yeah, we went there)

There were risks involved here- A non-linear screenplay, a Bollywood film-star acting deaf and dumb and one of the sexiest showgirls of the industry, acting autistic and not surrendering to item numbers. But they pulled it off. Why? Because they wanted to tell a simple story and you don’t really have to dance naked to do that.

The week after watching Barfi was spent enjoying the hangover, which also included listening to Pritam’s music, but then it was obviously not his, so I can forgive myself for that. It was then that a video went viral, accusing Barfi! of plagiarism and proving it. It was evident that Barfi! had incorporated scenes from Charlie Chaplin flicks and a few Korean movies. The video broke my heart. Not that I didn’t know those scenes were from Charlie Chaplin movies, just that the Indian audience is not prone to the concept of references in movies. And even if I believe that the scenes were "copied", I have to credit the movie for being so touching and moving. Surely, you cannot say the performances were plagiarized.

CNN. Reporting the Iraq war in a biased manner, asking reasonable questions about Indian cinema.

It’s been sometime since its release now. The Indian board has selected the movie for the foreign film category of the Oscars. And that is where the problem starts. The films running in competition were some regional films and mainstream Bollywood films, Kahaani, Gangs of Wasseypur and Heroine (why?!). Marketing helps. It provides a better chance for a movie to be taken seriously by the jury. So when you have good big budget movies, just because they earned well and were marketed better, they are preferred over the regional films, which are most of the times better. Makes sense to me. We are being realistic here.

Let us start with Kahaani. Supported by a terrific performance of the ever-awesome Vidya Balan, It was a first-rate thriller. But was it a great film? No. It was the kind of film which will be and should be the staple diet of Indian film goers in the near future. Genre-based films hardly make it that far and above in India, so that’s what the film needs to be applauded for.

Now let us talk about Fashion, oops Heroine. And let us end it here. (What? It was just another seasonal dose of Bhandarkar’s pessimism. Surely you don’t want me to discuss about characterless, weak girls who get caught up in the whirlpool of a deceptive and money-minded showman’s industry, where they have to sleep with people to get their bills paid. Forgive me, but the plot is so new I haven’t done enough homework to discuss it.)

He's going to the bank.

I have always felt that horror and gangster are the genres where you can experiment a lot in areas of technology and making. But when it comes to story, it has all been done. Scorsese, De Palma, Francis Ford Copolla (and even Guy Ritchie) have delivered the most and the best you can get from the genre. Bollywood’s tryst with gangster flicks hasn’t been bad either. Ram Gopal Verma, in the good old days, churned out some really gripping and ahead of its time crime cinema. Be it Satya, Company, Sarkar or even the recent Rakht Charitra for that matter, his cinema has always been about his style and he exploited it to the core. Now he overexploits it just because he’s got the moneys. Then it was Vishal Bhardwaj who rebooted Shakespeare’s Othello as a gangster drama of Hindi cinema. Omkara was a huge hit. Its star-cast, which was more prone to commercial cinema, made the movie famous with both Bollywood and niche audiences.

Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur is not in the same league. It’s better. Set in a chaotic little town in Bihar, this tale of gangsters has everything that a gangster movie needs- the golden days, the conflict, the violence and of course the swearing of revenge over the killing of a loved one. All this happens in the first half an hour of the movie. Now we are all set to enjoy the stylish slow motions, the making of strategies and the shocking deceptions. (Suddenly you say to your friend, “Wow this is going to be amazing! F*** you, I'm not going outside to buy popcorn! Not now!!”). The shocking deception is that the movie never does any of this. Yes, these bastards swear revenge and they just keep mentioning it every 15 minutes before slumping back into their car seats and driving around the town, looking for random people to kill. And that is the masterstroke.

The characters in Wasseypur are a bunch of losers who are wannabe gangsters. Unlike Puzo’s mafia, this sorry class of criminals is not born with a macabre mindset, but has learnt the notion of style from Amitabh Bachchan movies. Gangs of Wasseypur is a good movie if you look at it from a first timer’s point of view. Let’s go a little deeper. The gangsters here are not educated, they have nothing to do but satisfy their lust for violence and sex. Their family members are more concerned about the sitcoms based on family drama set in rich households: where women burdened with jewels walk around the house, hunting for trouble, which may sometimes be as grave as cold milk served to their husband by their daughter in law (who by the way is always dressed in an impeccable attire when it comes to serving breakfast to jobless people. Some family…) Anyway, I don’t want to go all Nolan in this article, fiction-in-a-fiction shit. Hey, what about the revenge? Yes, it is there in the back of their minds. Someday, when the opportune moment presents itself, they will take care of it.

There are different reasons for people loving a movie. For example, I doubt Barfi! is a success for its story, direction and depth of performances. No, I think its winning all that money because Ranbir Kapoor’s in it. Put a newcomer in his role and you would have never seen the movie climb the stairs of success, from the box office’s point of view. And it is the same for  Gangs of Wasseypur, people are loving the movie because it got a standing ovation in Cannes. Why did it get that ovation? That’s the real reason to love the movie.

Gangs of Wasseypur is full of humor. There is one whole chase sequence consisting of an intense dialogue about fruits. It could have been a stupid moment in a serious movie, but hey when something like this happens, it is not a serious movie. It’s based on real events and this shit is so damn real! I can imagine myself in that chase sequence, contributing my share of knowledge… about fruits. In another breathtaking chase sequence, we see a fat man in hot pursuit of a guy who just attempted to kill the fat man’s friend. This pursuit is carried out by sitting on a dilapidated, poor scooter. Then the chaser and the chasee both run out of fuel in their vehicles and the next moment they are both refuelling at the petrol pump, just looking at each other while their poor vehicles take rest. Isn’t that just hilarious? If not, wait till you watch it. And do watch it.

Two-wheeler sales have been down, Kashyap wants to give the market a boost.

Gangs of Wasseypur talks about revenge in a very real manner. People in this movie have no other motive but revenge. And that is their only motive of life, because they are good-for-nothing fellows, whiling away their time in a town that’s poor and undeveloped because it has given up to the whims of violent people with stolen money. Revenge is the protagonists’ ultimate motive and they would have nothing to do after that. Therefore it has to happen later.

The 5 hour epic saga is about people who can be called plain stupid by us educated lot. But what are we measuring them against? Against us? Do they even exist in the same world? They did. And they were not gun toting stylish mafia of the north, but a pitiful lot who drowned in their own stupidity, pulling down with them, a whole world of their own…  a world full of twisted ideologies about ethics, family and Bollywood.

Gangs of Wasseypur is not a better movie than Barfi! It’s a more distracted one. It is a more stupid one. It has far too many characters than it can handle. It has a screenplay that doesn’t satisfy its plot. And it is about people who don’t look remotely beautiful and as for their thinking it is far from beautiful. But I think that it would have been an ideal choice for the Oscars. Why? Because it’s more Indian than Barfi! is (I am not talking about plagiarism here). Gangs of Wasseypur is not a better movie than Barfi! It is just as good. But when it comes to a jury that looks at foreign films, Barfi! could be a film about anywhere. But Gangs of Wasseypur can only happen here in India, amidst its crooked politics and the mass psychology that is ignored. The film plays as a gangster movie, works as a family drama (also a comedy at times) and leaves you with anger in your heart, that you are too cheap for this world because there are just too many like you trying to ruin it. Simple economics.

Finally, it is common sense that if the Cannes jury appreciated it by giving it a standing ovation, surely the Oscar jury was also looking forward to watching Gangs of Wasseypur. But no, we had to take a chance. Now let us hope that they will forget India’s old friendship with plagiarism and treat them scenes as intelligent references. Highly unlikely? Cheers!

I pray to Morgan Freeman.

But then we all have a different way of looking at stuff. There will be many of you who might despise the film right from the beginning and shut it off in the first 20 minutes. That’s because you hated its character, its personality. Well, at least it has one. A good film must be judged on the basis of that. I could never watch Anurag Kashyap’s Dev-D in one go. Rather I think the movie is a pain. But I admire the movie for it never wanted to be anything else but that. It was supposed to act as a hangover, as guilt for the wrongs you committed, the medium was an old flawed character called Devdas.

The Indian audience has to do more than just criticizing the run-off-the-mill contemporary material that sucks to the core. We decide if we are intelligent enough to avoid films like Rowdy Rathore. Why then do we settle to watch it, just because there’s Akshay Kumar in it? Why do we go and watch Tees Maar Khan, for its item number “Sheila ki jawaani”? You see even if you criticize the movie, you do it after watching it. The producers are still earning their money back. They will make another piece of crap for you to analyze. You will pay them to analyze it. Analyze that. We pay the same amount of money for both Rowdy Rathore and Barfi!, then why do we get different levels of satisfaction out of them?

Admittedly, Akhsay Kumar would look funnier doing that.

Maybe, we are too busy earning our money, so we don’t give much of a damn while spending it on a no-brainer, thus wasting it. Settling to watch a bad movie for an item number is like buying a car with good seat covers but no steering wheel.