TEAFF 22: The very good, the good and the not so good films

TEAFF 22: The very good, the good and the not so good films

Missing out on the second day of screening, being indisposed, I resumed viewing on the third day, committed to seeing all five films screened that day.

Deal at the Border (Kyrgyzstan: Dastan Zapar Ryskeldi)

Part of the country focus on Kyrgyzstan, this was a gem of a movie. How often do you have a protagonist who is an expert boxer, works for a drug Mafia, but does not use any violence whatsoever? Working in a team of two, he finds a traumatised girl hiding in the bushes where he has gone to hand over contraband. She tells him that she and her mother, and many others, are working as slaves in the neighbouring country, and that she somehow managed to escape. His heart melts, because his own mother went missing many years ago, and he decides to take the girl back with him. His best friend and partner-in-crime protests, but he does not budge. While they are in the process of carrying her across the river, border guards appear, and open fire, killing the girl. Now, the mission of the hero is to get her back to her family and give her body a decent burial. Terrific performances, taut screenplay and perfect locales. The film would have surely won a prize had it been in the competition section.

Rating: *** ½

Mayasabha (India: Rahi Anil Barve)

When you read the synopsis, the film makes a lot of sense. A paroled security guard and his sister meet Vasu, the 18-year-old son of former steel tycoon and film producer, Parmeshwar Khanna. They go with him to his eerie house, where his father, now a destitute, lives a paranoid life, battling mosquitos with a giant fume-sprayer. It emerges that there could be 40 kilos of gold hidden in that mansion, where you could shoot any horror film without the need of an art director. Rahi Anil Barve directed the much-acclaimed Tumbbad. Here, he casts Jaaved Jaaferi as the father, an AI, ghostly version of Rumpelstiltskin, who spouts profanities at the drop of a mosquito. Jaaved’s make-up and get-up will be hard to forget, but Mayasabha might be difficult to remember/digest/understand. Unlike the synopsis, the film does not make a lot of sense, though it does educate you with nuggets, like, “Fish are the last to recognize water.”

Rating: **

Pappa Sanga Kunache (India: Santosh Pathare)

A 79-minute documentary about Arun Sarnaik, who dominated the Marathi film scene in the 60s, 70s and early 80s, the film is produced by Sarnaik’s daughter, Savita Naiknavare, and directed by the TEAFF Director, Santosh Pathare. Known for memorable roles in films like Mumbaicha Jawai and Sinhasan, Sarnaik died at the age of 50, in a road accident, along with his wife and one of his two children, while he was going from Kolhapur to Pune, for first day of his shooting of the movie, Pandharichi Vaari, in which he was cast in the lead role. After his sudden death, the movie was completed by offering the lead role to another artiste. However, in another film, he had completed the shooting and only the dubbing was yet to be done. But Sarnaik had such a distinctive voice (he was a singer and musician too) that the makers decided against getting his voice dubbed, and retained the dialogue from the studio/location sound track, at the cost of clarity. Since his death came before the advent of video, very little material was available

to Pathare to make a compilation. Moreover, almost all his contemporaries were no more when work started on the film. Yet, we have Leela Gandhi and Nana Patekar eulogising the late star. The film derives its title from the song picturised on Sarnaik, who sang his own lines, and two children, in the film

Gharkul, inspired by the English song, Papa, he loves Mama (Donald Peers with Janet Osborne, 1960). Watchable, especially by fans of Marathi cinema of yore.

Rating: ** ½

Uttar/Answer (India: Kshitij Patwardhan)

AI meets Aai. Aai, in Marathi, means mother. Uttar, an entry for the Best Marathi Film Award category, raises the question of realising what a mother, or a relative, or friend, means to you, while they are alive, and not clinging to their memories and replicating their presence after they are dead and gone. An IT wiz kid is brought up by his widowed mother. There is an emotional disconnect, as the son is immersed in science while the mother, a former popular radio presenter, runs the home, taking care of all his needs. She knows him, his traits, his needs and his entire persona better than himself. As part of a competition, the son persuades his mother to participate in an experiment where he would be able to create a robotic virtual mother, just like her, voice and all. The son is so taken-up with transactional relations that he gets irritated when his girl-friend tries to get cosy with him. He is looking for an answer to his question, ‘Can technological immersion can substitute human intimacy?’. But, unknown to him, his Aai is counting her days and will not live to see the completion of the project. Artificial Intelligence is the burning topic of the day, and there is great fear that it will take over human feelings and activities. Patwardhan’s film offers hope, but at a great narrative cost. Renuka Shahane is endearing as the mother, using both, her million-dollar smile, and her serious side, to make it look all so easy.

Rating: ***

Franz (Czechia/Czech Republic, Germany, Poland: Agnieszka Holland)

Polish film-maker, Agnieszka Holland, is one of Europe’s most reputed directors. Here, she is bringing on screen the life and times of Franz Kafka, the German-language Jewish Czech writer and novelist born in Prague (now in Czechia), in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1883 and died in 1924. You might have heard or read the word Kafkaesque, used to describe situations like those depicted in his writings. His best-known works include The Metamorphosis (1915), The Trial (1924) and The Castle (1926). His work has widely influenced artists, philosophers, composers, film-makers, literary historians, religious scholars, and cultural theorists, and his writings have been seen as prophetic or premonitory of a totalitarian future. Okay, so I was all set for a film that would stimulate my grey cells and get to know the man who was sometimes quoted in conversations about films and drama. Nothing doing. I could barely survive 15 minutes of this 127-minute film, which consisted of headless wonders, images without context, rapid cutting, jump cuts and no narrative at all. Sorry, Ms. Holland, but I had to walk out of your film, to end the evening on a sane note.