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CITIES, SLUMDOG AND DEV D

What is a city, any city, for us - its dwellers and connoisseurs? Eclectic noises, clamor of metals, machines, stacks of dirt, filth, money, perfume, narcotics; enormous reserve and onrush of electricity; water, food and bodies on sale; tall concrete triumphs – how do people draw the life that is pitted against these? And how does one configure the city-experience in his creative adventures? Is there after all a quintessential city experience? Or is it that they are all unique in rarifying what tribal logics they sucked out of their once-boorish grounds?
A city frames its dwellers’ lives, ideally, in a mechanically replicable pattern. Some denominators are, therefore, ubiquitous in the field: cities would not be identified as ‘cities’ if they did not have these common signposts – say, modern physical and mental health supports, a discreetly empowered policing system, a pre-eminence in making statements about Governance, or economic highhandedness. There exists a Concept City from where all borrow.
Unlike a village, let’s note, a city is “planned”, and executed accordingly. The enucleation of the spontaneity of life/chances from within, is latent in the concept of a city. You seldom have plans that expect spontaneous turn-outs – well, that wouldn’t be a plan, then. An ideal ‘well-planned’ city is subject to infallible and constant surveillance, and be therefore resignedly predictable. It must be artless and open to the watcher’s eyes.
Paradoxically, however, the idea of a city prides in its luring promise of privacy, albeit anonymity. ‘No intrusions on your personal life’ is one of the principal grounding comforts in the urban system of living. One is linked to a public network where things fall into prescribed places with the exactness of an industrial production unit. Individuals, privately, are not marked; their ‘individuality’ does not count – the sites that circumscribe an individual’s city-based identity is a dummy place, where another character could pop up and substitute at any given moment, and make no significant difference to the machinery. The conception of a Village differs radically. Characters there, are anchored in individual roles/functions, though (perhaps, because) Village is always already a fantasy. In a city-scape, your possible affiliation with other characters is a matter-of-fact attendance. City is identified with its real population and its potential to hold a larger population, which testifies, as against the case of a village, its knack for anonymity – or the existence of dummy places.
To situate his film against a(ny) city and to be faithful to the experienced city, I presume, roots on the artist with a radical inventiveness. He peruses the surface calm of the city – the plan and the concept of it – for thin ice, tap there, crack it open and let the craze out. The so-called ‘underbellies’, a la mode undergrounds and slums – the failures of the state, as identified in political discourses – indulge in a project of cleaving the hermetically sealed dummy subjectivities: the theoretical intervention of Undergrounds in a city-logic is much more profound than the easy explanations viz. ‘necessary evil’ or ‘natural by-product of urbanization’. Their presence validates a memetic Other for the Plan and predictability. In which case, the possibilities of an imaginative city-film rests on the dabs it gathers from the clash of the Perfect and the sneaky Insurgent present in this system of living. These possibilities extend both backward and forward – as in, the fantasy beyond the city engenders say, science fictions, and the fantasy behind it is stranded in the moral determinism that village is virtue and city vice. What are the possibilities of fantasy at the city?
Art and market revel in a synergic nexus in the clash of city’s polarities (Plan and Chance) - Graffiti, music of revolt, porn industry, drug peddling or prostitution. These tendencies, generally identified as deviant/ underground or dark, rescind the order, neatness and probity that external surveillance structures obsess the population with. Art of the Lived City is established in these disruptions, their unpredictability and the surprise generated thereof, however disgraceful they may seem against the original - ‘perfect’ - schematics.
It was these two city-cinemas - Slumdog Millionaire and Dev D – that I watched last month that bore out the thought I tried to map above. Also, Jayesh was searching for some fundamental explanations in that line.
Possibilities of Fantasy-in-City rest on the metaphoric values of the City. City evokes more than it is. It turns a figure of speech: it means to conceal and at once, express – a fine chance to poise the unpredictable-but-always-predicted turns. Dev D and Slumdog both explore this chance, in their own ways. Danny Boyle has sort of specialized in this craft since his Trainspotting days. In fact, starting from jump-cuts, western film stylistics can boast of a whole repertoire of cinematic devices that capture the craze that the systematicity of an urban site eventually vents out in undergrounds. And Slumdog, all said, is not an Indian film, and therefore neither cuts away from nor agrees with the Hindi film’s way of looking at cities: it is exclusively outside the ways of making a popular film in India. (In fact, on a personal take, I believe Slumdog, technically, is more of a Latin American film, with its racy soundtrack and intense montage seasoned with high drama). It is the second film, Dev D, that really had me hooked – it is rarely that such graphic audacity is displayed in onscreen Indian cities. It felt like living a graphic novel, with its potential fury and unease and the ability to burn right through the pith of usual Hindi film’s city-platitudes, to watch Anurag Kashyap’s version of the story of the perennial loser, Devdas. That it is a re-work is constantly referred in the movie: like a slight, the movie stitches images and videos of Shahrukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit and Aishwarya Rai in its frills. SL Bhansali’s pompous and luxuriously sentimental Devdas fades, but nonetheless works as an efficient foil against this searing drama of love, its loss, desire and betrayal in the loins of a ‘real’ city.
The film is about an escape, or at least the attempt for one. Abjectly humiliated by Dev, Paro decides to agree to the marriage her father cuts with a rich Jhat. Dejected, and more importantly, clueless, Dev ‘escapes’ to Delhi. The city promises him a life that is unmarked, a place where he may forget and start over. However, as money flows limitlessly to establish a religious alcoholism, through the crevices of the Plan, Dev hits the Chances of the city – its underground. The film treats Delhi not as a physical space, it is a mental state, an attitude, it is a theme. The city hosts dejections, humiliations and embarrassment jubilantly, whether it be Dev’s, Chanda’s, or even Paro’s. Consequently, Dev D is never interested in what-is-there-in-Delhi; instead, it is always asking: “what else is there in Delhi?” Awash in attitude, and brimming with terrific energy, this audacious seeking behind the safer clichés of city-life, directs itself away from other onscreen Indian cities, and successfully startles. City is just not where the plots happen, it is also what they mean – a sophisticated corruption, a machinery that gives out junk which in turn, turns into an autonomous, if not reciprocal, machinery. The film does not borrow from the psychopathologies of western cities (as seen in Western movies). It looks to aggressively portray the underground at hand, in all its complexity, as a meaning for the plot. Well, one may say, the film is not great art but just style, and possibly be true. But they would miss the point: Dev D is a ready and fiery youth movie, at the tack of whatever little pop-culture specimens we have. And that is what makes it important.

THE MIDDLE-SLIDE:YOUNG TORLESS

Volker Schlöndorff's Der Junge Törless (Young Torless, 1966)

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It should have been a mere co-incidence that I read Schlink and watched Young TÖrless in just nearly a week’s gap. But this has made more sense than any other recent co-incidences to me, in that the second incident has cast an entire new light on the first and I need to re-consider The Reader now. The essence in Young TÖrless is still stymieing a clear path of thought. Perhaps, it would never consolidate in words, for I think the cinema meant more than just an explainable and satisfactory logic. TÖrless’s eventual acknowledgement and acceptance of the principle of torture, hideousness and shame, in one sense, does relate the film to a rational conclusion. But his passage to this conclusion puzzles me in more ways than one.
The precocious TÖrless observes:
the need to discipline;
the forces that discipline;
the to-be-disciplined;
disciplining;
humiliation;
brutalization;
diabolic leaps of minds;
losing the good in the bad;
Realization of the blurred divides between both,
And finally comes to a stoic acknowledgement of it.
The stark black and white frames put the boys together, in the beginning of the film, on an effete field. They move to a pub, where Basini loses his money in gambling. In a follow-up Reiting insists Basini on returning his money, and in desperation Basini steals from Beineberg’s closet. Next morning, however, it does not take much time for Reiting to put two and two together, and Basini is exposed. Or is he? At many a point in the film, Reiting and Beineberg use 'exposing' Basini to the general crowd as their token to torture him. The moment of exposure culminates the tension in the film, and the damage has been done: the few silver lines that separated humility and humiliation break away. The claustrophobic nature of the military school, and the atmosphere laden with sadistic and homo-erotic tension pulls the cork out for TÖrless. Though he considers himself untrained to adequately express the lesson he has learnt, he understands that he has learnt it. The imaginary numbers that the mathematics professor has been talking about would help in making a real firm and usable bridge, as how the imaginary in the thoughts of the human – the layer that slides betwixt Reason and Psychic urges – the Imaginary where each carry his own values, perennially attempt a coming to terms or compromise with either reason or psychic urges. And in understanding this as “perfectly normal”, there is the lesson that TÖrless grasped.

The Military as a system of pure-logic (of sadism) and the Erotic (closet homosexuality and masochism) installs itself triumphantly inside the structures of the State. In bringing together Reiting, Beinberg and TÖrless under this roof, the clearer symbolism of Bestiality, Fascism and Existential Stoicism apart, Robert Musil and Volker Schlondorff were also giving light to the standing prospects of humans as social/rational animals. Disciplining the criminal is a given; the means to discipline but, turns to be, nothing less than sequestering each of the victim’s (it’s almost naturally that the shift from criminal to victim happens) ‘properties of the self’: his sense of being one with the community (Basini is desperately trying to be so all through the film); his will to action (this is insisted ad nauseum by the perpetrators), his sexuality, and in a wicked twist later in the film, his soul (the hypnotizing scene). All communications of the victim is cut off: internal and external. In being alone, and in being under ‘surveillance’ he should find pleasure by serving the ‘considerate’ punishers.

The court of law is played out in a miniature in the film. The power to punish becomes the monopoly of Beinberg and Reiting as how order is the monopoly of the modern governing machine (and not the people). what separates Basini from the three (TÖrless shall not be considered otherwise) is the latters' access to violence. That’s perhaps the reason why even when he does nothing materially harmful on Basini's persona, TÖrless feels himself more righteous than him (in the beginning. Later the decisions take on a dramatically different mode of reasoning). In the company of the three boys, TÖrless learns a peculiar morale. As I have said earlier this principle is passed over as a feeling and not a concrete or even tenable argument. And when he gives an honest (garbled, nevertheless) attempt at saying this, he is deemed to be mentally unstable and is sent back home. He would not help Basini escape the torture. He would not support the punishers either. He leaves them to their fates. Running away from the school he wanders off, eats at wayside inns, meets up with Bozena one last time (outside her apartment), and tells her that he is done with the school. Meanwhile Reiting and Beinberg record their statements and are vindicated beyond a shadow of doubt, off their behavior. Not that TÖrless cares anymore (as is clear from his statement at the office).
The last scene has TÖrless leaving the Gasthaus with his mother in a horse carriage. He looks out of the carriage as they pull around Bozena’s apartment. In a dash of recollection, we see Bozena under the hanging bright bulb demanding a kiss from TÖrless, having said both he and Beinberg were no bigger than her little kid in the cradle. Frame darkens with the leafless trees at the railway station in sight.

I should have been with Rafael now.

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For a plot-driven analysis of TÖrless, that would help get the point i was tryin to make:
http://www.kinoeye.org/02/10/dietrich10.php

SPACING MUSEUMS: RUSSIAN ARK

Russian Ark (Russkiy kovcheg) (2002) Directed by: Alexander Sokurov

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The intersecting of two secrecies results in interesting, however unpleasant may it be, revelations. When the hidden-away in a museum and the clandestine byways of history overlap visibly, it results in a rather violent exposure of the collective insecurity. Russia has taken much from Europe, like most of the East has done, when it comes to (modern disciplines of) academic/fine arts. In this case, however, there is one qualification: that Russia in itself is considered to be European in essence. Let us return to this point later, but.

Archiving being a modern necessity – as ‘an art of the state’, say – in terms with the sense of nation and people-as-kin, museums hold a veritable mode to relate to what is stored (and distributed) as culture, in the post-industrialist society.

What qualifies some specimens to be inside a museum of culture and what goes into the historiography of the nation are both important nodes of enquiry when thinking about reading the peoples’ consciousness vis-à-vis a museum. Museums are important spots in the map of a city: not-too-infrequently, even the centre of it. Always listed in the places-to-be-visited, regarded as landmarks, and entry restricted with passes or security checks, they make a cult of authority in their sit(e)uation. These buildings pride in imposing architectural feats and the ‘rarity’ of the specimens preserved. A metropolis is incomplete without a museum (or an archive of equable gravity) and the people therein connect to it in much the same way as they connect to public libraries and court circles. Even if they never see the inside of it, for an urban population, the building connotes a space of modernity, a mark of progress, and a record of ‘culture’.

The museum is a reservoir of time. You swish past into the beginnings and flash down into the current, within its space. Inside a real time, vicarious times dangle in tempting threads. And simultaneously, within a real space, tangible records of spaces that existed are pre-served. They belong to the public by belonging to the state. It is always a display, an invitation to think in time, and never a sell-out. You don’t own anything in a museum as a person. Your right over it, as said, is reserved in your being a citizen who abides by the state. The exhibits therein hold its magic over you by being your past and not belonging to you, directly. You will have to link up with nation/kin/citizen/subject paradigms to ‘possess’ it.

Having said that let me come to Russian Ark. The Russia herein is a brilliant spacious block, and not the space of the scantily lit congested wooden-walls of the potato eaters. We, for one, are fetched far from the politics that is Russia (to the Indian leftists, at least) and the inscrutable tongue that is Russian. We are removed from anything unlike the European inheritance in Russia. We are shut out to the toil, revolt, and terror that paved the Karamazov homestead. And we see the pretentious bourgeoisie socials that drove Anna to death, ironically, gaining an elevated splendor here. With bated breath we peep into the intrigues of (bourgeoisie) history, savor high art, and attend studious classical western music.

It is a (Russian) ghost who is taking us through the grand (which is a minor word to describe it) museum of St Petersburg. And very unfortunately, he is accompanying a not-so-Russophile European (Marquis de Custin who authored La Russie en 1839, as we are told in the glosses) who thinks Russia in fact is a veneer of Europe spread over Asian rocks. For Custin, all composers are German and all masters of sculpture and painting, Italian. Being extremely religious, the splendid collection of paintings in the given museum, for him, is a blasphemy, mostly: he shows how the Circumcision of Christ is placed together with the licentious Portrait of Cleopatra, for an instance. And practically terrifies an adolescent who admits that he is not a Catholic. Not being a Catholic, Custin says, it is impossible to appreciate a portrait of Paul and Peter. Custin, sure, is pictured as a very insolent figure and is thrown out from the courtly gatherings almost always. He knows that he would be hurting the feelings of the narrator when he derides Pushkin and is cognizant of his appalling-prank in putting the back of a blind Russian woman against a painting asking her to accost it, but doesn’t stop from doing either.

Starkly in contrast with the rest of the flamboyant cast, Custin wears an arrogant black costume. And considers whoever else in the milieu as mere ‘costumes’ and ‘actors’. The whole of Russian history is a ‘theatre’ for him. And instead of disproving Custin, the drama of Russian Ark stays away from any jolts of reality that can upset his tirade (or the audience's dream-journey). Very significant to this point, at almost the middle of the cinema, the author begs the Marquis to not open a door, which concealed empty painting-frames and snow and a “desperate Leningrader” (cf. wiki) working hard on his own coffin. In yet another scene, situated in the Stalinist phase, we spy the museum officials thinking about renovating certain portions of the museum. The grand ball conducted by Valery Gergiev and the subsequent exit of the whole cast through the front door, winds up the sequence.
But the coda, I believe, is that exit which the ghost takes, where we see myriad specters of fog rising from a frigid sea that surrounds the museum. The ark that is the St Petersburg museum is floating in a frozen sea. In other words, all history outside the museum is dead history, issuing ghosts (like the narrator) that nostalgically live up to the Russian nationalist dream, inside the museum.

The technical achievement in shooting a 90 minute film all at one go, assembling a cast of 2000 and sorting innumerable costumes is the most talked-about aspect of Russian Ark, as I glanced through the reviews. I am not underplaying Alexander Sokurov’s feat by any means. The magical flow of the single shot (canned by Tilman Buettner) does have its place in film history, I understand. Just that, more important to my viewing was the thrill imparted by feeling the cult-space of the museum perpetually challenging the ‘timely-ness’ of any archive.

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For a fuller discussion of the plot and the feat, the review is available at: http://www.kinokultura.com/reviews/Rark.html