IFFI 2014: Battling a rotten system and the dilemma of an Asian father

As the 45th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa​ inches towards a close, the crowds have started getting bigger. Every hall and every show has two serpentine lines of viewers waiting to be allowed into the halls. The ticket holders are allowed inside some 10 minutes before the scheduled showtime. But the Inox clocks are running 10 minutes late and festival buffs are aggrieved they cannot enter the cinema hall a minute earlier. The moment all the ticket holders in the queue get admission and the show begins, the others start streaming inside, creating quite a disturbance. The non-ticket holders have to enter the theatre in the dark, stumble about to find vacant seats and inevitably lose a few minutes of the movie. Surely not very conducive to a festival ambience. 

Till last year, there used to be Q & A sessions with the director and other crew members of the films. There used to be some spare time between consecutive shows in which you could exchange ideas, find out the opinions of critics present and so on. A festival of an art form must necessarily be a platform where you get to meet artists, listen to experts and exchange impressions with other enthusiasts. It is silly to go on watching movie after movie, have a hurried lunch, tea, dinner, even gulps of water and go to bed with bleary eyes and a cluttered mind; without indulging in arguments and counterarguments about the merits and demerits of the movie fare presented. The success of a film festival cannot be measured by the number of films shown. The variety, quality, interaction between artists and viewers, presence of viewers from across all corners of the subcontinent and also from other continents, all make a difference. Those who attend the press conferences, miss the films and there is hardly any opportunity for the viewers to satisfy their doubts.

As always, there are those who complain that the class of the films shown is steadily going down. This could either be true or be the result of ever-improving sensitivity. For me, the geographical, social and cultural variety that I get to see is enough. I enjoy making my own philosophical extrapolations on the basis of my observations. For example, I see (in the films) that the country houses in Western Europe are pretty secluded. The roads are deserted. And I ask myself, why doesn't that make the men and especially the women apprehensive of a physical attack? And I answer myself: A system in which houses stand at a distance from one another has evolved and has stabilised; meaning that the society lays a premium on personal safety of the individual. If the general citizen was not comfortable with such an environment; it wouldn't last. So, it follows that they have developed a culture of good law and order security as a sort of precondition to lonely living. Maybe it is the result of the lower population densities, especially in the countryside. 

My conjecture may not be true and what I see may simply be an illusion, just as the social side of the country, cities and people that one sees in most Indian films are illusory. But it could also be that the pressures of economic inequality are lower in Western Europe. However the cultural beliefs, the ethical values reflected in the story or in the characterisation are certainly enlightening. The drunkard in Russia (The Fool) beats his wife and his daughter black and blue till they bleed because he feels one of them has stolen the money he has stashed away for his morning-after drink, to buy food. The wife from Azerbaijan (Down The River) slaps her husband in a fit of rage and he controls himself and does not hit back. But, as I said, this does not go to show that the Azerbaijani women are liberated and those in Russia are not.

Both Russia and Azerbaijan were a part of the Soviet Union, but culturally, the Russia of St. Petersburg and Moscow is Europe whereas Azerbaijan is Asia. In The Fool, you see adolescent boys and girls sitting together smoking pot; you also see a teenage couple engaged in sex on the top of the building where they live. This is very different from the distinctly Asian setting of Down The River. In this film, a physical trainer father (Ali) with a canoeing team which has chances of winning a major tournament. He sacks his son from the four-member team and the team emerges a winner. His frustrated son disappears the same day and the father single-mindedly tries to find the boy's body since he is presumed dead. Ali has an affair going with the girls' trainer who is Polish and she keeps egging him to leave his wife and make a fresh start in life with her as his life partner. The affair is known to all including the wife. Ali is almost ready to dump his wife but holds back on account of his son. But when the son disappears, the heart-broken Ali realises that he cannot abandon his equally grieving wife.

The Fool depicts the plight of an upright engineer-to-be. In a world full of corrupt government servants and officers, he refuses to tow the line and tries to earn a living as a government-employed plumber. He inherits this uprightness from his father who keeps repairing a wooden bench which the children in the neighbourhood keep breaking. Though the wife maintains a silence, the mother rants about the foolhardiness of the father and the son. The wife too derides his sincere studies; she knows he will not be promoted unless he bribes higher officials. Then, on a chance, he finds out that the building he has just inspected to repair a burst pipe, is going to collapse within 24 hours. Against the advice of all his family members, he decides to disturb a hard-drinking revelry involving the mayor and all the senior government officers and warn them of the impending disaster. Though they are not actually concerned about the lives of the hundreds of tenants living in the building, they know that the scandal would endanger their position, their security and even their freedom. There ensues a match of recriminations but little decision making. In the end, our poor honest man goes all by himself to get the tenants to evacuate and in response, gets thoroughly lynched by them. The movie had the potential to be a scathing comment on the rotten State system, but the depiction of the corrupt officials weeping over their misdeeds and then sermonising their own pack, looked extremely naive. Also, the movie simply wouldn't end long after the message was amply clear. 

As has been during the last three years, the first half of the festival was disappointing, with some movies better than others; but none that can really be termed as being outstanding.