Fleet Foxes' Shore, Kurt Vile's Speed Sound Lonely KV: Album review

On 22 September, Fleet Foxes dropped their new album, Shore, on YouTube. Along with it came an hour-long film directed by Kersti Jan Werdal, which had the album’s 15 tracks set to long, often static shots of the outdoors: the ocean, fields, mountains, streams, animals, birds, and the odd human. The release was timed to coincide with the autumnal equinox—a very Fleet Foxes gesture, at once folky and arty, organic and somewhat precious.

If the opener, Wading In Waist-High Water, sounds like typical tasteful unplugged Foxes, it’s the second track, Sunblind, which suggests their sound might be headed in a slightly different direction this time. Pecknold sounds his familiar self on this warm tribute to singers departed, recent deaths like David Berman as well as influences like Elliott Smith. But the stabbing of the piano leading into the chorus is new, and the chorus itself is as close as they've come to structured pop songwriting.

Shore is the fourth album by Fleet Foxes. The first two were near-perfect batches of artisanal folk: jangling guitars, ethereal harmonies and Pecknold’s searching voice. They added a choir and strings on their ambitious third album, Crack-Up (2016), a deepening and darkening of their sound. It’s a beautiful, stormy record but, with its baroque touches and esoteric song titles (Third of May/Ōdaigahara, – Naiads, Cassadies), not outside the realm of affectation.

Perhaps Pecknold decided there wasn’t much further to explore in that direction. On Shore, he strips the Foxes’ sound down to something winsome and bright. He recorded the album himself, with the help of guest musicians like Grizzly Bear’s Daniel Raphael Rossen and Christopher Bear. None of the Foxes’ other members feature on it; as Pecknold explained in a note, the studio albums are “predominantly my work and vision”. It’s surprising to hear pronounced drums on track after track—conventional percussion has never been a Fleet Foxes staple. But it’s a positive move, the sort of opening up a well-regarded band can afford to make on its fourth album (in the late 1980s, R.E.M followed three superb, moody records with the exuberant Life's Rich Pageant).

The song lengths are back under control too—no rolling eight-minute epics—and the titles aren’t tongue-twisters. It’s the old Foxes sound, but streamlined and accessible. Whatever experimentation is there is subtle. Quiet Air has a modal breakdown at the end; Going-to-the-Sun Road has lovely elegiac horns. Young Man's Game takes advantage of the steady beat to include driving harmonies that one might not have got on an earlier album. Pecknold is in fine, relaxed form, making even the mainstream balladry of Can I Believe You memorable, stretching the ‘you’ over three or four syllables, his voice ringing high and clear like Rick Danko in It Makes No Difference.

One of the artists Pecknold mentions on Sunblind is country-folk legend John Prine, who died in April. Prine recorded a cover of his 1979 song How Lucky with Kurt Vile at the end of last year. Over a fingerpicked guitar figure, Vile and Prine trade verses, then sing one together. The track, and a cover of Pine’s Speed of the Sound of Loneliness, feature along with three other songs on Vile’s new EP, Speed Sound Lonely KV, which was released on 2 October.

Vile is a prolific singer-songwriter, with eight full-length albums and 18 EPs since 2003. His mix of indie fingerpicking and dreamy electric psychedelia has changed very little since his breakthrough, 2011’s Smoke Ring For My Halo. No other major artist today, with the exception of Canadian power pop savants The New Pornographers, has so stubbornly stuck to such a simple and well-defined sound over time. The new EP veers towards country—it was recorded in Nashville—but is still recognizably Vile, full of his tricky guitar riffs and lackadaisical, philosophical writing (“I ain’t lying/just being a little exotic”, he sings on Dandelions).

Change carries risk, of course, but in this age of reinvention, with a listening public vying to be on the cusp of the new, it’s also a surefire way to indie cred. Fleet Foxes deserve credit for tweaking their sound and producing an excellent album that’s true to their ethos. And Kurt Vile should be recognized as the modern master of not fixing what ain’t broke.

This piece was published on 20 October 2020.

Jatin-Lalit, the sound of the '90s

 It’s a balmy October evening in Mumbai. Lalit Pandit is on the phone; he’s singing ho gaya hai tujhko toh pyaar sajna.

I had mentioned how the differing tempos in the verse and chorus make it sound like two separate songs. “There were two different songs we combined to make one song,” he confirms. “Na jaane mere…it’s slightly fast. The energy and rhythm of the two pieces is Indian-Western. The ho gaya hai dholak break is amazing. Laakh kar le tu inkaar sajna, dildaar sajna, hai yeh pyaar sajna.” On the last “pyaar”, his voice does the upward lilt made famous by Lata Mangeshkar, who sang this and three other classics on the Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge soundtrack.

Aditya Chopra’s film celebrates 25 years on 20 October. It was, at the time of its release in 1995, one of the biggest commercial successes in Hindi cinema, setting off a trend of outwardly youthful, secretly conservative romances to woo the NRI community. It’s still watched and referenced today, so much a shorthand for Bollywood romance that Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (2020) used it as a framework for its gay love story. Central to the film’s appeal is the music, composed by Lalit and his brother Jatin: seven songs, each of them intimately familiar to most Indians alive today.

When the duo was first called in by Yash and Aditya Chopra, they didn’t know the name of the film or who was in it. They presented some of the tunes they had at the time, including early versions of Mehandi Laga Ke Rakhna and Mere Khwabon Mein Jo Aaye—enough to get them the job. Later, after a detailed narration, veteran lyricist Anand Bakshi told them, “This picture will be great, give it your all.” “The biggest thing was that Lataji was going to do the songs. Millions of fans crazy about her, and you get a chance to make her sing…” says Lalit, his voice trailing off as if he still can’t believe it.

They worked on the film for four and a half months. Ruk Jaa O Dil Deewane was created in the image of Rishi Kapoor stage songs like Bachna Ae Haseeno. Mehandi Laga Ke Rakhna, originally intended for Khiladi (1992), then for a Firoz Nadiadwala film, found its rightful home. “Of course, we were the captains, but our collaborators were exceptional,” Lalit says. “Humein phoolon jaise upar utha diya (they lifted us up like flowers).”

Jatin-Lalit’s music was the bedrock of Hindi film in the 1990s. Theirs was an inviting sound: clean, uncluttered, with an emphasis on melody. Not for them the distinctive dolour of Vishal Bhardwaj or the aggressive rhythms of A.R. Rahman. Akshay Manwani, author of Sahir Ludhianvi: The People’s Poet and Music, Masti, Modernity: The Cinema Of Nasir Husain, says the duo brought “melody and a certain propriety” back to film music. “The Hindi film song had really hit its lowest in the 1980s,” he says on email. “Jatin-Lalit emerged in this backdrop. I wouldn’t say they were exceptional or ingenious or anywhere near as brilliant like Rahman, but they brought an element of decency back to the film song, which is their single largest contribution to Hindi cinema.”

As a child of the '90s my primary allegiance was to Rahman, but I consumed more Jatin-Lalit than any other composer. Emanating from movie screens and cassette players and countdown shows on TV, their music seemed to reach out a hand. I had my favourites, of course: Tu Mere Saath Saath from Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman (1992), as seductive a vision of social mobility as anything in Rangeela; Jaana Suno from Khamoshi (1996), which transforms Paul Anka’s laborious Bring The Wine into a soaring ballad; Main Koi Aisa Geet Gaoon from Yes Boss (1997), with that wild violin break; Zindagi Maut Na Ban Jaaye from Sarfarosh (1999), a qawwali-style number movingly rendered by Sonu Nigam and Roop Kumar Rathod.

They came from an illustrious musical lineage, the Mewati gharana. Their uncle, Pandit Jasraj, was one of the revered classical singers of the 20th century. The siblings were trained by their father, Pandit Pratap Narayan. Jatin, nine years older than Lalit, went into films first with their elder brother, Mandheer. They worked without much success for 15 years. Mandheer bowed out and Jatin-Lalit teamed up. Success came almost immediately, with their first film, Yaara Dildara (1991), yielding the disco-lite hit Bin Tere Sanam. The track was actually a repurposing of Le Ja Mera Dil, from their album Rhythmic Love (1989). Dil Kehta Hai, from the same album, would later become Chaand Taare in Yes Boss.

By the time Bin Tere Sanam became a hit, Jatin-Lalit were working on Mansoor Khan’s Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar (1992). Unlike Yaara Dildara, this Aamir Khan-starrer was a hit, and so was the soundtrack, especially the piano duet Pehla Nasha. “Udit Narayan practised the song for almost one and a half months, every day,” Lalit says. “Sadhana (Sargam) would come in, so would Udit, we would finish the day’s work and rehearse with them.” Like all Nasir Husain productions, the sound was Western pop-influenced. The verses in Yahaan Ke Hum Sikandar are similar in metre and melody to The Who’s Pinball Wizard, and Naam Hai Mera Fonseca is a remake of Chuck Berry’s rockabilly classic Johnny B Goode.

It was on Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman that an era-defining partnership was formed. There are few things more quintessentially ’90s than Jatin-Lalit songs for a Shah Rukh Khan film. They collaborated on Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa (1994), Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Yes Boss, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), Mohabbatein (2000), Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani (2000), Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001) and Chalte Chalte (2003)—memorable soundtracks all, as well as some of the most successful Hindi films ever. The reason they meshed so well with Khan’s image is because they were the right composers for that era. The slick romantic drama had a resurgence in the ’90s, which suited their clean, bright style better than the naked emotionalism of Nadeem-Shravan, a more traditional sound which ruled the early part of the decade. “We had a clarity of sound that you couldn’t hear in anyone else,” Lalit says. And it’s true that in a Jatin-Lalit song, everything—voices, horns, strings—is in balance.

Jatin-Lalit’s most famous works are the Shah Rukh romances but they composed for other actors and genres too. Their filmography includes Vaastav (gangster film), Khiladi and Ghulam (action), Sangharsh (psychological thriller). The cop film Sarfarosh yielded the popular Jagjit Singh ghazal Hoshwaalon Ko Khabar. Ghulam (1998) had the monster hit Aati Kya Khandala, delivered in tapori fashion by Aamir Khan. And there was Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s musical drama Khamoshi, their most rounded work, which alternates typical Jatin-Lalit melodies like Aaj Main Upar with uptempo rhythm-driven pieces like Huiya Ho and Gaate Thhe Pehle Akele.

Lalit counts Bhansali as one of three directors he worked with who really understood how to use music (the other two are Aditya Chopra and Aziz Mirza). “I could make out that even though it was his first film, he was asking for something different,” Lalit says. “He would tell us, I will take money out of the film if needed, but I want my music.”

I ask Lalit if he ever felt competitive with his contemporaries. His reply is immediate: “I always felt, and now I feel ever more so, that our music was far beyond anyone at that time.”

As beloved as Jatin-Lalit’s music is, many would likely disagree with this statement. One could make a case for elevating the duo above Nadeem-Shravan, Anu Malik or Vishal Bhardwaj, but in terms of creativity and seismic impact, this simply wouldn’t hold for Rahman. To make an inexact comparison, they were Rahul Dravid to Rahman’s Sachin Tendulkar: technically sound, dependable, great at what they did but not once-in-a-generation talents. It’s telling that they never won a Filmfare or National Award for best music director as a duo (Lalit and Sajid-Wajid won the Filmfare in 2011 for Dabangg), despite averaging more than one hit album a year from 1991-2001.

After 2001’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, Jatin-Lalit started fading. More than Rahman’s dominance, it was perhaps the rise of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy as dependable (and more sonically adventurous) hit-makers that rendered the duo superfluous. Fanaa (2006) was their last hit album, after which they split up. They have worked separately since. In an industry where the great composers have careers spanning three or four decades, 10 years seems like a relatively short time. But those 10 years belonged to Jatin-Lalit.

This piece was published on 18 October 2020.

'Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story': Review

In the bull market that is Indian streaming TV, Scam 1992 arrives to scratch a specific itch: a show with a journalistic bent. The gold standard is David Simon’s expansive productions, not just The Wire but also Show Me A Hero and The Deuce. These shows vary tonally and in subject matter, but their basic impulse is towards longform storytelling. The same can be said for Hansal Mehta’s series (streaming on SonyLIV), which tracks the rise and fall of Harshad Mehta, for a while India’s most famous stockbroker, then its most notorious scamster.

When Harshad (Pratik Gandhi) first steps onto the floor of the Bombay Stock Exchange, he’s frozen in delight, even though everyone around him is frantically buying and selling. He’s found a home—and yet, his place isn’t among the shouters. He wants to be the one who makes them shout. Because he has no wealthy backers, he establishes contacts in trade unions to keep track of management decisions, and uses that to bet on stocks (in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, still the best film in this genre, Bud Fox also got a leg up by providing insider information). Soon, Harshad is on the rise, calling the shots in the stock market, then in the money market. But his instinct is always to game the system, and eventually the system turns on him.

Scam 1992 is linear, detailed and dogged. It isn’t shy about peppering its conversations with finance talk and market jargon, but co-directors Hansal Mehta and Jai Mehta and writers Sumit Purohit, Saurav Dey, Vaibhav Vishal and Karan Vyas find inventive ways to dress up the exposition. I was encouraged by a detail in the show's first scene. A nervous whistleblower (Sharib Hashmi) arrives at the Mumbai Times of India office looking for an editor. The first person he comes across, under a large cutout of the Common Man, is cartoonist R.K. Laxman (happily, the show uses actual names, from Reserve Bank of India governor S. Venkitaramanan to prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao). They have a short exchange and Laxman deposits him in the editor’s office.

There were any number of ways that man could have ended up in the office but I can’t think of a neater solution than this. Similarly, a scene with three of Mehta’s detractors discussing the market takes place in a dance bar, not unlike Sean Parker in The Social Network yelling over the noise of a club to Mark Zuckerberg. Other scenes are constructed around cricket and golf games, over dessert in a restaurant. It’s not quite The Big Short subbing in Anthony Bourdain and Margot Robbie to explain financial impropriety, but it’s definitely a dose of sugar where none would have been fatal.

The ordering and drinking of tea is a recurring motif. Harshad first talks of insider trading over chai outside the stock exchange. Later, when he wants to show how financially sound he is, he gives instructions to all the local tea-shops to bill him for his fellow brokers’ expenses. In the State Bank of India office, as the '92 scam threatens to break (he’s taken ₹500 crore of their money), he's offered tea by the office boy without the boss saying anything—testament to his stature. He pronounces the tea bitter; later, when he returns their money, he says it's sweet. Tea also figures prominently in the meetings of Sucheta Dalal (Shreya Dhanwanthary), the reporter who breaks the story, with her sources.

Gandhi's sunny performance suggest how Mehta’s charisma could have overridden the ethical concerns his investors and creditors had, while Dhanwanthary’s Dalal is a closer approximation of a doughty journalist than anything Hindi film has managed in recent years. But it’s the supporting performances that really sing (credit to Mukesh Chhabra's pinpoint casting as well). There’s an excellent rogue’s gallery: Satish Kaushik as a foul-mouthed seth, his three minions like a Greek chorus, Nikhil Dwivedi and Shadaab Khan as smooth, smarmy bankers. Rajat Kapoor seems to enjoy himself playing a blunt instrument of a CBI investigator (“Surprise!” he shouts cheerfully when Harshad opens the door to a raid). Anant Mahadevan is wonderfully dry as the RBI governor, and Chirag Vohra, as Mehta’s long-time associate, is a tremendous study in moral weakness.

At 10 episodes of 50 minutes each, there’s enough time for the show to stretch out and introduce incidental characters and subplots. My favourite passage involves a SBI employee named Sitaraman (Jamini Pathak), who’s given Mehta the 500 crore and left for his son’s mundan in Palani, Tamil Nadu. Once the story breaks that Mehta is using bank funds to play the market, the SBI head sends employees to personally bring Sitaraman back. In a shorter series, this semi-comic interlude wouldn’t be possible—it’s not even necessary here. There are dozens of scenes like this, which give the impression of a whole complex world, not just whatever’s going on with Mehta.

Towards the end, there’s an attempt to say, look, Harshad might have been wrong but so was everyone else. Yet, for most of its running time, the series manages to balance its admiration for him with a clear-eyed view of the devastation he caused. Some of the most incisive acting on Gandhi’s part is the look of utter incomprehension when Harshad tries and fails to bluster his way through his problems in the later episodes. It’s rather poignant that he’s the last to realize he’s not the messiah, he’s just a very naughty boy.

This piece was published in Mint Lounge on 13 October 2020.

Sudhir Mishra and Nawazuddin Siddiqui on 'Serious Men'

Between Sudhir Mishra and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, there's been plenty of memorable Mumbai-centric cinema made. The director has given us the searing Dharavi and the underrated gangster film Iss Raat Ki Subah Nahin. And Siddiqui has played Mumbaikars of all stripes, from politician Bal Thackeray and serial killer Raman Raghav to the gentle strivers of Bombay Talkies and Photograph.

Mishra and Siddiqui have collaborated for the first time on Serious Men, an adaptation of Manu Joseph's 2010 novel about Ayyan Mani, an ambitious Dalit man whose dreams of lifting himself out of poverty cause him to run a risky con involving his young son. The film will release on Netflix on 2 October. Over a video call, Mishra and Siddiqui spoke about how cities leave their mark on you and why the film is indicative of a new India.

Had you read the book prior to coming on board?

Sudhir Mishra: I did. I normally don't read books in order to make films but I really enjoyed it and it's quite brilliant in a lot of ways. I've been a big admirer of this tangential mind called Manu Joseph.

It's quite an accident that suddenly my writer and my co-producers said they'd like to take the rights and asked me if I'd make it. I read it again. Then I said yes, but it took us 8-10 months to transform this brilliant book to a film. We managed to take some of what we found interesting, and we always kept Manu aware of what we did. It's a whole different thing, the characters, the themes of the novel along with my mind, which has its own influences, and is a gentler mind.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui: I attempted to read it but didn't get beyond two pages. I'd have to sit with a dictionary. So I thought it was better I read the script. But I'd heard of Manu Joseph, and about this novel. It was a beautiful script. Sir (Mishra) gave me an idea of the film first. It was always my wish to work with him, for 20 years.

You tweeted about how you almost worked with him on 'Calcutta Mail'.

NS: Chhoote-chhoote reh gaya main Sir ko (he remained just out of reach then). (Laughs)

How did you decide which parts of the book to leave out?

SM: You can't transform a whole novel. Different things work in a book; mediums also choose their subjects. Often when you say the book is better than the film it is because the film is trying to mimic the novel. You can't shoot thoughts—you have to create something else.

We have removed a lot and kept it to Ayyan and his son and Acharya (director of the science institute where Ayyan is employed). Manu was there throughout the shoot; he loved the fact that we didn't mimic the book. Even V.S. Naipaul has said, once I give my book to a film I forget about it.

How did you end up casting Nawazuddin?

SM: Sometimes you're working and someone comes to mind. Luckily, Nawaz said yes. On certain projects, the right subject matter creates the right energy, passes to all the right people, they say yes, a good film happens. Sometimes, despite the problems, there is something in the basic nature of the film that almost summons the good energy.

The messiest production I've been in was Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi. But every mistake improved the film. If you didn't get a location, the second location you got was better. If one actor didn't do the film, the next actor who came in was better.

What was your approach to Ayyan Mani?

NS: We had discussions before the shoot regarding the character. Using that and whatever instructions Sir would give, you get a feel that this is the correct path to take. You add your own interpretation but what the director has in mind is very important, because you're looking out for your character while he's looking at the whole film.

Do you see Ayyan as a typically Mumbai character?

NS: It isn't like that, there are people like this everywhere. But some cities do have a particular effect on the people living there. If I was in my village right now, I'd be the same person but some things would change. The city demands something. Your nature changes. Like right now, I'm at ease, but as soon as I come to Mumbai I'll be like, let's get this and that done.

You made 'Dharavi' in 1991, about a man trying to lift himself out of poverty in Mumbai, just like Ayyan is doing here. Do you think there's a greater chance of success now than there was then?

SM: I think so. I think there's an assertion. There's a major transformation, a new India. It may be emanating in ways that we don't like but these are all necessary eruptions in a society that's been constricted for too long. Ayyan Mani believes his son needs a leg up. Adjustments, jugaad, call it what you want. Mani knows things are not possible without this. I don't think he's wrong. It's the desperation of a man who wants to do well for his son.

That can exist only in modern India, the confidence that a lot of people now have. And a lot of other people don't like that confidence, whether it is an anger against English-speaking people or some other elite.

This aspect reminds me of 'Iss Raat Ki Subah Nahi', when the high-society folk brush up against the gangsters.

SM: There is a scene where the junior gangster is watching the upper-class people dance and tells his boss, yeh style, yeh izzat, apan ke naseeb mein nahi hai (we can never have this style, this respect). And Raman Bhai breaks the alcohol bottles, because he realizes he'll never get this kind of class or suaveness.

Does Ayyan Mani thinks he's doing the right thing?

NS: In their own mind, every man feels they're doing the right thing, even a gangster. I think after whatever Ayyan has seen with his father, his forefathers, he just wants to take a leap of a generation or two through his son. People who aren't privileged, they have to do a little jugaad. He won't do anything hardcore, he just has this wish.

What sort of look were you aiming for?

SM: We went to BDD chawl. I wanted to shoot in most of the actual locations, because you can't replace that, the constriction of that life. But I wanted to shoot it like an upper-class house. You live long enough in a chawl and you take it for granted. I tried to bring out the normalcy in the place.

This piece was published in Mint Lounge on 5 October 2020.

Leftist classic 'Amma Ariyan' remains unmatched

I first heard of John Abraham's Amma Ariyan while watching Shivendra Singh Dungarpur’s documentary Celluloid Man (2012), which has a scene from the Malayalam film. A camera careens down a long line of people standing in line for rations, an incredibly kinetic vision in grainy black and white. I tried to seek out the film but couldn't find a DVD version, and though it had been uploaded on YouTube, the picture quality was abysmal. The search for a decent version of Amma Ariyan finally ended this August, when a very watchable transfer with English subtitles turned up on a YouTube channel called The Potato Eaters.

Amma Ariyan released in 1986—if released is the word—some months before Abraham died. The film was produced by the Odessa Collective, a group which the avant-garde director founded with a few peers with the aim of taking cinema to the common man, bypassing regular means of funding and distribution. It was crowdsourcing in its purest form, funded with small contributions by individuals and film societies, and then shown to people in small towns and villages (Odessa stated its intention to “distribute good films in 16 mm through the length and breadth of Kerala”).

The film begins with a spoken manifesto: “Odessa tries to communicate the reality of how a film cooperative can reach out to people.… We must help each other sincerely by creating new standards of social awareness.” It isn’t the most inviting start, but Amma Ariyan balances the polemic and the artistic like few other Indian films have. It’s a road movie of sorts, which starts with a young man, Purushan, who is leaving home for a job in Delhi. On the way, in Wayanad, the jeep he’s travelling in is stopped by the police, who commandeer it to transport the body of a man who has died by suicide.

The dead man looks vaguely familiar to Purushan. He immediately puts Delhi aside—bluntly and somewhat cruelly informing his girlfriend, who was supposed to go with him— and makes it his mission to find out who the man is and to go and inform his mother. This takes him on a journey from the local police station and the morgue, where the man is identified as tabla player Hari, and then from town to town across Kerala, meeting Hari's friends and associates. It ends in Kochi, where they finally meet Hari’s mother.

Amma Ariyan is not so much informed by as constructed out of the leftist politics of the time. Hari was picked up by the police for being involved in Naxalite politics and his playing hand brutally crushed. We arrive in Angamaly in the midst of a medical workers’ strike. This was an actual strike, and though Abraham couldn’t film it live, he caught the charged spirit of it (in a discussion about the director on the same YouTube channel, Amma Ariyan’s editor, Bina Paul, says, “It’s not a fiction film at one level but it is a fiction film at another level”). The same goes for the dramatic mill workers’ strike shown in the film. This had happened two years prior to filming in Kottapuram. Abraham and his crew spoke to people who participated and then recreated it for the film.

There are several references to revolutionary art and politics. Purushan recites Pablo Neruda’s Nothing But Death (“It is the tongue of death looking for the dead/ the needle of death looking for the thread”). A man reads from Che Guevara’s diaries as the camera pans past posters of Che, Karl Marx and Mao Zedong on the wall. The lyrical black and white photography, dramatic compositions and mobile camera are reminiscent of Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1964 classic, I Am Cuba. The film also owes much to the Third Cinema of the 1970s, stylistically as well as ideologically (Odessa’s aims are strikingly similar to those put forward by the movement’s progenitors, Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino).

Abraham won’t let the viewer settle down. The rhythms of the film are choppy, the narrative mostly linear but fragmented. The score comes and goes: flute pieces, percussion, devotional song, reggae. Everything is in motion: the camera, the people walking or in jeeps, buses, boats. As Paul recalls, “The whole crew journeyed together from one place to another…. The energy of the film is that spontaneity. It could not have been scripted in a sense.” Apart from the famous shot I mentioned at the start, there are other wonderful isolated moments: a group of men training in karate on the beach; a demonstration and a song of revolution, the lit torches of the protesters reflected in the water; Hari holding his battered hand in front of his face, as the tabla he will never be able to play is heard on the soundtrack.

Women are a peripheral, somewhat deified presence in the film. Their function is limited to handing the boys money, singing, praying, telling them to write home, asking them not to leave. The sense of purpose is limited to the boys, talking in terse sentences, always walking rapidly.

In the 1990s, non-commercial Malayalam cinema was synonymous with arty festival titles by directors like Shaji N. Karun and Adoor Gopalakrishnan. In the last few years, an energetic, more easily digestible strand of Malayalam film—enabled by streaming—has become popular across the country. Amma Ariyan lies between the two iterations, a thrilling medley of sound and image with a raw political edge.

This piece appeared in Mint Lounge on 1 October 2020.

Seeing brown, singing gori: Hindi film music's colour problem

By the afternoon of 7 September, Khaali Peeli was in trouble. The film's first music video had just dropped, a dance number called Beyonce Sharma Jaayegi, composed by Vishal-Shekhar and picturized on Ishaan Khatter and Ananya Panday. The refrain went: “Tu jab kamar yeh hilayegi/Tujhe dekh ke goriya, Beyoncé sharma jaayegi (when you shake your hips/watching you, even Beyoncé will blush)".

Without the comparison to Beyoncé, it’s possible the goriya (fair-complexioned woman) that precedes it might have flown under the radar, like the thousands of other goris and goriyas in Hindi film songs in the last 80 or so years. But lyricists Kumaar and Raj Shekhar made the mistake of name-checking the most famous singer in the world—someone who’s celebrated dark skin in her music and art. Suddenly, Indian Twitter was screaming racism. The face-saving also left something to be desired—six days later, the song was retitled Beyonse Sharma Jaayegi, which only brought on more ridicule. Finally, it was changed to Duniya Sharma Jaayegi and the original video removed from YouTube. Director Maqbool Khan said, "We assure you that the lyric in question was never intended racially. In fact, the term 'goriya' has been so often and traditionally used in Indian songs to address a girl, that it didn’t occur to any of us to interpret it in the literal manner."

That Hindi cinema has a colour bias is not even up for debate. Darker-skinned actors continue to be rare—a Radhika Apte here, a Nawazuddin Siddiqui there. Worse, fairer actors are often darkened when they’re playing roles associated with a lower economic class or oppressed caste. The fascination with white skin dates almost to the beginning of cinema in the country. In Mother Maiden Mistress: Women In Hindi Cinema,1950-2010, Bhawana Somaaya, Jigna Kothari and Supriya Madangarli write that, in the 1920s, “It was white-skinned actresses... who were more popular and in demand, with advertisements of plays often highlighting the presence of a ‘Gori Miss’ (white lady) or ‘houris’ (fairies) from paradise."

Hindi film music has, often unwittingly, perpetuated this colour bias. The word gori and its variants appear in countless tracks over the years, from folk numbers to item songs. The list is endless: Gori Zara Hans De Tu (Asli Naqli, 1962), Go Go Go Go Gori (Baadal, 1985), Chura Ke Dil Mera Goriya Chali (Main Khiladi Tu Anari, 1994), Gore Gore Mukhde Pe (Suhaag, 1994), Gori Gori (Main Hoon Na, 2004) and hundreds more have the word in their title, thousands have it in the lyrics, and there are cross-language variations like Chittiyaan Kalaiyaan—literally, ‘white wrists’ (Roy, 2015). “I don’t think the usage of gori and goriya is intentionally a racist slur," lyricist-screenwriter Kausar Munir told me over the phone. “There’s a long tradition in our Hindi-Urdu poetry of using these to praise a woman’s beauty. Having said that, that doesn’t make it right, especially in the modern age."

Sometimes there’s a poetry to the use of the word that merits its inclusion, like with Gulzar’s Mora gora ang lai le/ Mohe shaam rang dai de/ Chhup jaaungi raat hi mein, from Bandini (1963). Most of the time, though, it’s dropped in as an unthinking term for a beautiful woman. Munir calls it a default setting and gives another example: sanam. “It actually means statue," she says. “But it has developed the connotation of 'beloved'."

Lyricist-screenwriter Varun Grover says that history, caste, poetics and gender are “interlocked in various proportions in this innocuous-sounding word". “In many Hindi songs, gori is not even an adjective anymore but a proper noun (goriya chura na mera jiya) which could just be a mindless (but in-meter) replacement for any other term of endearment like jaaniya, sajna, piya, saiyyaan etc. It's a blind spot aided by culture and cliché." This is the problem in a nutshell—the word continues to extract a heavy toll in society but is largely shorn of its original meaning when placed in songs, which encourages its widespread usage.

Most actresses in Hindi cinema are on the fair-to-‘wheatish’ spectrum, but even when they aren’t, they’re apt to get addressed as gori. A much-quoted instance of this is Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhein from Baazigar (1993), in which Shah Rukh Khan sings “yeh gore gore gaal (these fair, fair cheeks)" to Kajol, a relatively dark-complexioned actor. The same can be seen in Chitchor (1976), with Amol Palekar singing “gori tera gaon bada pyara" to the dusky Zarina Wahab. And in Lagaan (2001), Aamir Khan stretches goriya over three elongated syllables singing to Gracy Singh, who, ironically, is jealous because he’s spending time with the 'gori mem' who’s teaching the villagers cricket.

Sometimes the problem is in the visuals, not the words. Hum Bewafa from Shalimar (1978) had extras dressed up as tribal people, faces darkened, in skimpy clothes, shouting “jhingalala". So many have tried to block out from their happy memories of Mr. India (1987) the sight of dancers in blackface in Hawa Hawaii. The popular Amitabh Bachchan number from Laawaris (1981), Mere Angne Mein, is a fascinating example of Hindi cinema’s ease of othering dark skin. In the comic song, Bachchan suggests the virtues, in turn, of a tall, short, dark and fair wife. He appears as the wives himself, in drag—all except for the gori one, for which the camera settles on actual women. Drag and blackface for the kaali biwi are fine but poking fun at fair complexions is apparently a bridge too far.

Gore Gore O Banke Chhore, from Samadhi (1950), applied the fair-skin standard to the man. But heroes rarely had to be gora, and Hindi heroines almost always had to be gori. There’s a mythological underpinning to this. In most tellings, Radha is fair and Krishna is dark. In fact, shyam (dark-hued) is another name for the god, and is imbued with appropriately desirable qualities. The charming Shyam Rang Ranga Re in Apne Paraye (1980), picturized on Amol Palekar and sung by Yesudas, is from the perspective of someone intoxicated by Krishna’s dark hue, “as Meera was, as Radha was".

Shyam also turns up in the Bumbro number from Mission Kashmir (2000). A reworking of a popular Kashmiri song, in it the groom, or bumbro (bumblebee), is 'shyam rang'—though some versions have it as shaam (evening) rang, also meaning dark-hued—while the palms of the bride's hands are gori. A more emphatic placement of darker shades in song is Kaala Re, a moody track from Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) written by Grover. Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s gangster is in the coal business and everything about him is kaala—his clothes, his words, his heart and his skin. The word is sung 43 times, as if to make up for the paucity of black in Bollywood lyrics. Grover said he “just wrote a song celebrating a man who did illegal stuff in a coal-town". “Not all art is subversive by design," he added. Six years after Wasseypur, the Tamil film Kaala used the colour to celebrate Dalit-Bahujan identity and subvert notions of purity associated with white.

While no one's writing lyrics like "hum kaale hain to kya hua dilwale hain (so what if I'm black, I have a large heart)" anymore, it will be a while before gori leaves Hindi film music. The debate stirred up by Beyonce Sharma Jayegi might be a good conversation-starter, Munir feels. “We can’t put everybody (who’s used gori) from time immemorial in the katghara (witness box)," she says. "But in today’s day and age we have enough knowledge to, if nothing else, just be careful." There is, however, one usage of gori we can get behind. In Aao Gori Aao Shyama, from Tansen (1943), a woman calls her grazing cattle home at dusk. Charmingly, Gori and Shyama turn out to be a white cow and a black one.

This piece appeared in Mint Lounge on 20 September 2020.

Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare: Review

There’s a simple but effective directorial touch 40 minutes into Alankrita Shrivastava's Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare. Kaajal (Bhumi Pednekar) is speaking to Pradeep (Vikrant Massey). She works at a gift shop that employs women to talk to horny men through an app and sell them chocolates and plastic flowers. Pradeep is a client, but she’s falling for him. Pednekar is shot in dreamy red shades almost throughout their conversation, till the point he asks her real name. She almost tells him it’s Kaajal, then recovers and says it doesn’t matter. For that one moment, we see her in the white light of a call centre office.

Kaajal’s just falling in love and already her rose-coloured glasses are slipping. This kind of return to reality is becoming a signature Shrivastava move. Both Lipstick Under My Burkha (2016) and this film turn on moments when the scales fall from its protagonists' eyes and they start seeing things for what they are. The wisdom is almost always hard-won. At the film’s start, Kaajal tells her cousin Dolly (Konkona Sensharma), whom she lives with, that her husband, Amit (Aamir Bashir), is handsy with her. Dolly laughs it off, telling Kaajal it’s probably because she’s attracted to him. Dolly isn’t ready to explode her family life yet—she has rose-tinted glasses on too.

Kaajal moves out when she gets the job at the gift shop, leaving Dolly to confront problems she’d rather keep buried: the delayed work on the new apartment they’re trying to purchase, her stalled sex life, and her young son’s fascination with dolls. She's in some ways similar to the supressed housewife Sensharma played in Lipstick, who finds unexpected joy in taking up a sales job in secret, though Dolly is more assertive, even in denial. Kaajal, meanwhile, is negotiating being a single girl in Noida. There’s the telling detail, familiar to so many broke young people working jobs in big cities, of her piling her plate high with food at the office—likely her only real meal of the day.

A date in a graveyard. Virginity lost in an under-construction building. Shrivastava’s films are about the messiness of desire, the way it overwhelms and disappoints and races ahead of good sense. Kaajal falling for her smooth-talking client isn’t sensible but Pednekar, in a beautifully open turn, makes it seem like the only possible course of action. Similarly, Dolly’s attraction to a polite delivery boy, Osman (Amol Parashar), is clearly heading towards complication. Yet, they jump in, Kaajal head-first, Dolly more warily.

As the film switches between the two dovetailing stories, a list of small and large rebellions are recorded. Dolly starts sneaking drinks. Her son insists on going to the doll museum with the girls in his class instead of the rail museum his school is sending the boys to (Dolly’s curiosity about her own tomboyish nature as a child leads to a jagged, fascinating scene). Kaajal eases into her job and lets her hair down in the company of the supportive Shazia (Kubbra Sait). The film also spends time detailing the restrictions these people are trying to escape. Dolly is stuck in a civil but emotionally abusive marriage, her husband having convinced her she’s frigid. Kaajal is nearly raped on an evening out, but somehow even more shocking is her second “romance" call, where the client switches in a second from talking about his pet cat and making tea to addressing her as "saali" and masturbating loudly.

Sometimes the film piles on more conflict than it can properly reckon with. A scene with goons harassing lovers to the accompaniment of an angry rap number comes out of nowhere. A similar scene towards the end is worse, seemingly inserted to resolve loose ends. Kaajal saying she belongs to a backward caste—to Dolly, who would know that—feels like a way to add to the list of obstacles the character has faced, but little else. Osman being Muslim does lead to something, but it’s not clear the film needed that either.

With two storylines to deal with, instead of the four of Lipstick, Shrivastava’s writing is more relaxed. It ties up a little too neatly, but there are memorable turns of phrase—Dolly gushing over a “modern nalka" in her otherwise unconstructed flat, Kaajal’s boss saying “Changa tha, buddy" after she ends a call—and moments of supreme discomfort. When Dolly asks her estranged mom why she abandoned her as a child, the response is brutally honest: “I wasn’t happy with my life. So I left, that’s all." This is echoed in a later scene where Kaajal confronts her cousin with the emptiness of her life. She calls her existence napunsak (impotent)—which, given Dolly’s worries about her frigidity—stings her badly. This word was famously used back in 1983, in Govind Nihalani’s Ardh Satya, about a volatile and emotionally repressed young man. It’s quite something to see it turn up all these years later in a film about women trying to break free.

This piece appeared on 18 September 2020.