Our Basterds

Aaand, in a completely uncharacteristic move, Sauce! presents it's first actual film commentary, which basically is hardselling Vishal Bharadwaj's Kaminey in a respectable disguise. The man should be sharing his spoils with me.

The first question my mum asked when I came home from the film and praised it sky high was, "So what's the story?" And that's the stroke of genius--or at least the beginning of it. There is no story. Or none that one would notice. 'Mistaken identity flick with identical twins' is a category/subgenre description, not a plot summary. When Bharadwaj set out to make a chartbusting Bollywood film with all the trimmings, he set out to make a chartbusting Bollywood film with all the trimmings. Of Kaminey it may truly be said that iss film mein drama hai, comaydee hai, rrromance hai, akshun hai, traagedy hai... aur kahani bilkul nahin hai [this film has drama, has comedy, has rrromance, has action, has tragedy...and has no sustainable story whatsoever]. And to top it all, it has a Happy Ending. And only if you've been watching the the impishly clever little subaltern current of subversion throughout the film will you wonder whether it's a bona fide H.E.

I shall not dwell here on the excellent of the camerawork and the texture of the film--the brilliant use of light/shade/shadow/motifs... because I understand precisely zilch about those things. What I can tell you about is the sheer vitality, wicked humour, excellent performances, and a unfortunately, a couple of Very Serious iroksomenesses of the film. But most of all, the vitality.

Because, boss, Kaminey sparkles and almost sloshes at the sides of the screen with it's barely contained aliveness. This is a film where stuff happens, and unlike films full of mad car chases and crazy heists and getaways, it doesn't deafen you with it's one-track obsession with speed plus loud gunfire plus showy glossiness. Kaminey is all action, but it's also all quirky subversive humour, and so if you think you can safely visit the loo while the film is on and come back to pick up the plot right where you left off (and no one would blame you, because after all Bollywood has trained it's plotlines to play dead for two and a half of its three hour runtime), Kaminey is not your best bet. You'd come out confused, wondering where the mad capers came from and where they went, and what you, the poor paying audience, had done to deserve it.

Before we went to see the film someone mentioned the Bangali aspect of the film (there are three Bengali actors in the film, of which Rajatabha is completely wasted). What I didn't expect was to have it drag Feluda and my school Bengali teacher to mind even before half-time was stylishly announced. An association for which my teacher wouldn't thank me, and neither, if I know my fictional characters, will Mr. Mitter. But it's impossible not to compare Kaminey plot elements with the "hit formula" Feluda outlines for a Hindi potboiler to Lalmohonbabu in Bombaier Bombetey. And Kaminey is word perfect, if we substitute a Sholayesque group of dacoits with the most eclectic collection of underground 'businessmen' any Bollywood flick can boast of. Too bad the 'international' villian Tashi doesn't have pet sharks and crocodiles. But then again, Bharadwaj spares us the torture of "designer" clothes for the entire cast and ostentatious locations whose only point is being tastelessly ostentatious, so I suppose it balances out.

Second, our Bengali teacher. Mrs. D was convinced that not more than two girls in her class of eighty anglicised brown girls (or, as she would say, ei shob deshi memshaheb) actually knew a thing about their mother tongue, and that even fewer cared. And therefore it was surprising how much effort she put into teaching us the subject, and how brilliant she was at it. It's thanks to her, entirely, that I am aware of a rhetorical device called the jomok olonkaar (based on, yes, the concept of twin meanings of the same word or phrase), that very clever use of language where one apparently says something on the surface, but means precisely the opposite. Or, if not precisely the opposite, then mocks a certain idea while at the surface seeming to approve of it wholeheartedly. And Kaminey does exactly that to standard Bollywood tropes. Estranged goodtwin-badtwin with over-emphasised signature traits, homegrown and imported villians, family drama, villians' family drama, good cop-bad cop, young virginal maiden in luuurve, you name it.

So if you want to watch Kaminey, watch Kaminey. Some of the cleverness is so in-your-face you couldn't possibly miss it. For example, when Guddu walks out on a pregnant Sweety and locks himself in the graphiti-covered communal loo, and Sweety hammers on the door. The scrawl just above Sweety's pounding fists read "Apna haath Jagannath". Particularly effective, since it accompanies Sweety admitting that she is an ethnocentric sectarian politician's sister, which makes her and Guddu's continued intimacy almost impossible. And then there's Tashi's brilliant and completely inaccurate line, "Why do war for no reason? Am I America?" And yet there's Chandan Roy Sanyal's (credited, I notice, with his surnames clubbed together as Roysanyal) wonderful innuendo of an endearment, "Mukhta ektu kholo dekhini, shonamoni". Open your pretty mouth, sweetheart. When one takes into account that the addressee--Charlie, the bad-boy twin--is without doubt his partner in matters more than professional, the sentence acquires a whole new *nudge nudge, wink wink* meaning. Also, don't forget to note the conspicious absence of any mention of weepy mothers in the film (a dead father gives proxy for parent-as-conscience instead). Alas, Nirupa Roy, have we finally laid your ghost to rest?

But despite all the fabulous performances (where did Bharadwaj find the debutants? Tenzing Nima is very good, Roy Sanyal as the flamboyant mafia chhotokorta perennially high on cocaine is brill, and thank you for bringing back Amol Gupte!), there are two major and one minor thing I had serious problems with. One is when Guddu refers to an abortion within the first month of pregnancy as murder. Boss, does becoming a global citizen imply buying into the worst aspects of American mass culture? Since when is abortion in the first trimester murder, and isn't it a bit rich coming from a boy who absolutely totally doesn't want the baby, isn't prepared to marry the mother and therefore socially acknowledge the child, and doesn't even want a marginal role as an unwed father? And for those of you who think opposing abortion is "religious" or "traditional", I suggest you read up on your Hinduism (given Guddu and Sweety's roots) and not merely take Ekta Kapoor's word for it when she makes her characters screech, "Yeh mahapaap hai!" And what's with making Charlie marry a girl in the end? Enforced heteronormativity, eh?

All right, I'm prepared to consider the idea that Bharadwaj meant to show how most gay men are still required to act if they want to be 'accepted', and how Charlie twists even that to his advantage by marrying a beautiful girl clearly made of money. And I'm even prepared to agree that a 'modern' urban man mistakes popular ritualistic faith and media-propelled pop ethics for religious beliefs, and that is where Guddu's accusation of murder comes from. But those momoents still stick out like sore thumbs in what is an otherwise brilliant film, and I wish Bharadwaj hadn't taken the easy way out. Not that I don't understand why he had to, but nonetheless. And finally, why take on an actor as brilliant as Rajatabha and then not bloody use him, boss?

But. Pliss to be seeing Kaminey. It is the tewkewl film only.