Cinema is a gift that keeps on giving. Over time it becomes more than itself— a part of collective and individual memory, personal histories, common language; a phantasmagoria of images that reflect what we know of life, love and loss. There are films we go back to and films that find their way back to us. These journeys also measure the distance we have traveled as people.

The Dreamers

I was an undergraduate in Cardiff when I first saw Bertolucci’s The Dreamers. Set against the 1968 student riots in Paris, the film evoked everything I had learnt to idealize as a child growing up in post-Naxalism Calcutta. It fueled my belief that everything is political, that middle-class morality is anathema to imagination and that poetry is petition. It reminded me that it is important to rebel, to put your life on the line even if it counts for nothing. It also convinced me more than ever that there were answers to be found in the French New Wave and that films should only be seen from the first row. Six years later when I saw the film again it had shifted from being the manifesto of my life to a nostalgic mood piece. I had a more nuanced understanding of the past and of politics by now. This time around I saw Bertolucci less as an uncompromised ideologue and more as an artist who couldn’t tell the follies of youth apart from glory days. It made me question every generation’s need to romanticize its revolutions and wonder if we will ever know the truths of history. It also made me miss the comfort of being able to see the world in solid monochromes.

Pyaasa

I was 13 when I first saw Pyaasa and was instantly in awe of Guru Dutt’s character, Vijay— a great poet first rejected then exploited by an opportunistic, bourgeois society. It was around the time when I had begun to wonder why I identified more with male protagonists in most Hindi films than I did with the women. It must be me, I thought. I am different. Of course I was not. The problem, as I now see, wasn’t with me but with the abysmally shallow portrayal of women in most Hindi films. Even in the eyes of a master director like Dutt, a woman could either be a prostitute-fan or a changeable, greedy heartbreaker— both created as mere circumstances in the hero’s narrative, with no stories of their own. Over time I also began to see through Dutt’s fetishization of suffering, self-pity and victimhood a little.  The world is what it is and it will give you ample opportunities to change your narrative. Ye Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaaye To Kyaa Hai is beautifully written, composed and shot. But it also signals clinical depression, which you ought to take to a doctor. I certainly wish Dutt had.

Casablanca

When I first saw Casablanca at the age of 18 it broke my heart. I wanted Rick and Ilsa to end up together so bad I began to feel the design of its narrative was intentionally perverse. How could anyone walk away from Bogart? For the life of me I couldn’t understand why Ilsa would leave with her husband, Victor. She still loved Rick, she said, then why should anything else matter? In my understanding of things love was one of life’s great causes and true lovers could never separate of their own volition. But of course, I knew very little of relationships then. Now when I see the film I can fill Ilsa’s silences with things she did not say. That romantic love is a luxury, an indulgent pleasure, so inconsequential in the larger scheme of life. That conscience is a greater cause than love. That loyalty has nothing to do with attraction. That the relationships you desire and the relationships you can sustain are usually not the same. That Casablanca is a place we must all visit but hold on to the letters of transit that will bring us back to reality and our larger purpose eventually.

Of Clouds, Stars and… Holy Ryan Gosling, Batman!

There’s a new Meghe Dhaka Tara in town. Alas, Ritwik Ghatak’s masterpiece has not been given the Criterion treatment just yet. Instead, director Kamaleshwar Mukherjee has taken on the life and themes of the great filmmaker and shuffled them into a sort of biopic-via-salute, making lives harder for DVD libraries everywhere by using the name of Ghatak’s best-known film as the title of his own. (Here’s the trailer). The results aren’t exceptional but decidedly thought-provoking: it tries to be I’m Not There but ends up Across The Universe, minus the songs. Either way, big ups to Saswata Chatterjee (yes, Bob Biswas himself) who plays Ritwik compellingly, even though he looks nothing like the iconic master.

For more on Ghatak, here’s Ramesh Sharma’s vintage Doordarshan documentary on the director, and here’s an interesting look at the way he shot automobiles in Ajantrik, one of his most compelling films. A few of his other features can be found in full on YouTube, and so it is to you I present — with a request to take the afternoon off, draw the blinds and silence the phone…

Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (1973)

Subarnarekha (1965)

and, one of my all-time favourite films, Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (1974)

Marvellous.

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One of the most overwhelming cinematic experiences I had in a movie theatre this year came with Pacific Rim, a gargantuan summer blockbuster that dwarfed IMAX screens and made me feel as tall—and as thrilled—as when I was knee-high. But then Guillermo del Toro has a knack for reaching elbow-deep into our nightmares and plucking out something particularly squelchy. How did he get that way? This spectacular New Yorker profile attempts to find out, and unearths a man, a little boy and a monstermaker we should all be grateful for.

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Speaking of monsters, the most fascinating film-related list I’ve encountered recently (and that includes Stanley Kubrick’s own ranked set of top ten films of all-time) is this jaw-dropping collection of visual effects shots, cherry-picked by men in the trade of razing cities to the ground and making alien eyeballs bounce:

http://www.empireonline.com/features/cinemas-greatest-vfx-shots.

It’s a helluva selection, accompanied by the clips in question, and what stand out most are the surprises: Fritz Lang and Michael Powell make it there along with Ray Harryhausen and Steven Spielberg.

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Spielberg, in turn, has famously doomsayed an end for the blockbuster-era, saying that several will come a cropper and that a paradigm shift is in order. His buddy George Lucas, who made movies so popular he made millions off their lunchboxes, agrees. And we’re told Lincoln was “this close” to becoming an HBO series. Here’s that report, but then here’s another fantastic director who doesn’t think Spielberg’s all that brilliant— then again, how many would hold up when compared to Kubrick? Anyway, here’s Terry Gilliam dissing Schindler’s List:

http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/terry_gilliam_on_filmmakers.html

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So there’s going to be a new Superman movie, and Batman’s going to be in it. Finally, that logo from I Am Legend can come in handy and the two most-mismatched combatants in history can have a go at each other. Alas, the film is being made by that guttersnipe Zack Snyder, murderer of true believers everywhere. Fan speculation has begun on who should next play Batman with names like the almighty Ryan Gosling being tossed around.
But what will the plot of the new movie be? Snyder might have the massivest Frank Miller boner around, but studios aren’t going to let Superman turn old and get clobbered this soon. If only they’d adapt Andrew Kevin Walker’s Asylum—a script which could be buffed into a truly solid superhero movie; here’s the full script PDF—but that’s just wishful thinking considering it’s coming to us from the makers of Man of Steel. The possibilities of DC Comics’ Big Two mixing it up, however, are manifold and awesome and, most frequently,very very twisted. Hee.

Either way, those caped lads need to bring out their A-game. Because, clearly, Iron Man can do everything.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

The protagonist of the first segment, the photographer Aaliya, finds some sense of content sitting on a bridge over a mountain stream. In the second segment the protagonist, the Jain monk Maitreya, finds the passage to death much harder than he imagined. After nights of suffering and delirium we are signalled his decision to seek medical help (and a greater decision to return to the world) through a screen filled with lush, green fields. The wind passes through the plants and the breath of self-preservation returns to Maitreya. The protagonist of the last segment, stockbroker Navin, is accused by his activist grandmother of deliberately turning his back to the beauty and grief the world can offer. The widening of his horizons are all signalled by landscape: the cramped spaces of a Mumbai slum, the desolation of rural Sweden, the cramped spaces of a Swedish flat filled with young immigrants. When he returns to Bombay, the narrative loops like the ribbons of a Christmas gift and offers us all three protagonists in Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum at a special screening. Aaliya, Maitreya and Navin sit alongside five other organ recipients. They all received their respective organs: eye, kidney and liver from a man who had been an amateur cave explorer. They are now seated to watch some of his footage from the caves. And for the first time (well, almost— the repetitive halo light effect over characters’ heads also was painful), I found myself thinking: Oh no. And indeed a few seconds later we are heading deep into the caves with the shadow of the dead explorer holding up his camera. Denouement by landscape.

The landscapes are splendid. One can only feel enormous satisfaction from a screen filled with windmills and Quixote-ish monks in white or the rapid Gandhi-in-old-news-footage speed of Maitreya as he walks through a Bombay so beautiful it makes you feel a little bit drunk. But even the splendid landscapes can’t really disguise the on-the-nose plotting, the too-easy deployment of paradox. The blind photographer gets her vision back but is convinced that her post-op photos are not as good as the ones before. The Jain monk is fighting a case against animal testing in drugs and falls ill. How can he now consume the drugs that will make him better?

The last segment—the widening of Navin’s horizons—resists this neatness a bit. He is politically conservative but not a prude. He helps his grandmother pee into a bedpan with brisk efficiency. What makes Navin charge along to help Shankar who had his kidney stolen— particularly after he realizes that the kidney within him is not Shankar’s? Why does he decide to go to Sweden? The film doesn’t tell you and by now you are a tiny bit grateful it doesn’t. (Navin does have a wee bit of that do-the-right-thing going and who is to say when it hits people?) What did baffle me in this segment is the choice of a comic resolution for the other ethical crisis in this film.

While the monk and the photographer are given whole sequences to deal with the betrayals of their bodies and minds, the labourer Shankar’s decision to keep the money the white man has offered is easy, quick, a punch line. Navin in Sweden is stumped in his desire to begin a legal crusade on Shankar’s behalf. Navin’s friend Mannu is stuck between the narrow walls of the chawl— doing a close imitation of the Biblical admonishment that a rich man is as likely to enter heaven as a camel is to pass through the eye of the needle. Shankar is a variation of the old, hoary tradition of the comic servant. As Kantaben is ha-ha astonished by the homoerotic antics of the boys of Kal Ho Na Ho, Shankar is ha-ha fed up with middle-class justice. Unlike even P. K. Dubey of Monsoon Wedding who is allowed pensiveness and Delhi skylines, there are no widening, meaning-filled landscapes for Shankar.

*****

The ‘art objects within art objects’ can often be tricky. You are told that the heroine of the book is a fantastic poet. You read the poem offered and you are embarrassed for the character and the novelist. How can you believe the novelist anymore? When characters in movies are artists I brace myself for embarrassment. Watch out for bad water colours and pulsing Pollocks.

First films and student films have a terrible inclination to pick sex workers and artists as their protagonists. What a pleasant surprise then to see in Ship of Theseus the reasonably interesting work Aaliya produces and her actual artistic dilemma: Should I stage my work? If I just press a button to record unstaged life, am I an artist? While not the most tortuous or original of dilemmas, it is still better than the ridiculous simulacrum of artistic lives cinema usually offers. Once I made the mistake of watching Frida with a leftie from Kolkata. The moment when Frida slides with a Salma Hayek slither into Trotsky’s lap was when my friend lost her mind and left the room.

This same friend also lost her mind when a visiting software engineer flirtatiously said to her: “Oh, you are studying philosophy? My favourite philosopher is Ayn Rand.” The ‘philosophical discussions’ of Ship of Theseus do have the charming adolescent enthusiasms of an 18-year-old Ayn Rand lover. It is disguised by framing it as conversations between Maitreya and his quasi disciple, the school-boyish lawyer. I decided that the filmmaker’s way of telling us that Maitreya is a truly great man was his forbearance in not swatting at him and saying: “This ain’t moot court, bro.”

*****

On the subject of Aaliya’s work, Bombay is home to a whole school of blind photographers trained by photographer Partho Bhowmik. Bhowmik was inspired, he told me once, by Evgen Bavcar whose elaborate, costumed and plumed work Aaliya was sure to have liked.

Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan (English title: Alms for a Blind Horse), directed by  Gurvinder Singh and produced by the National Film Development Corporation of India, has proved to be a breakthrough in Punjabi cinema. Released in 2011, this is the first Punjabi film from India to have travelled to several international festivals. It premiered in the ‘Orizzonti’ section at the 68th Venice International Film Festival. It bagged one of the Black Pearl Awards (the $ 50,000 Special Jury Award) at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. It has also been shown also at the 55th BFI (British Film Institute) London Film Festival and the 16th Busan International Film Festival. And it won awards for Best Direction and Best Cinematography at the 59^th National Film Awards, as well as the award for the Best Feature Film in Punjabi. Anhey Ghorhey…, based on a 1976 novel by the Jnanpith Award-winning Punjabi novelist Gurdial Singh, is set in a Dalit village near Bathinda. It begins at the point where an old man’s house, on the outskirts of the village, has been demolished to make way for a factory (the landlord, who owns the village plots the contract farmers derive their livelihood from, has sold them to an industrialist). At dawn, the elders of the village, march silently to the spot to offer their condolences. The old man’s son is a cycle-rickshaw puller in a nearby town and is involved in a strike which turns violent. In such a setting, Anhey Ghorhey… follows a day in the life of a family. Through slow and studied camera work (by debutant cinematographer Satya Rai Nagpaul), stunning compositions, and the portrayal of villagers by non-actors whose weather-beaten faces tell stories of years of suppression—more with silences than with dialogue—the film takes an unbiased look at the struggles of the landlord, and the Dalit labourers in the farms and in the cities. Although it has won much critical acclaim, this was not a film the masses could relate to. Possible reasons for this could be the poor quality of average Punjabi films and also the stark offbeat treatment by Gurvinder, who had acclaimed Indian filmmaker Mani Kaul as a mentor, whom he dedicates the film to.

Khamosh Pani (English title: Silent Waters), made in 2003 and directed by Sabiha Sumar, is another offbeat Punjabi film from Pakistan that is a Franco-German production. The film tackles issues like religious fundamentalism as well as the plight of women in Pakistan. Set in 1979, during the dictatorial regime of Zia-ul-Haq, the film tells the story of a widow Ayesha and her son Salim who live in the village of Charkhi, in Pakistan’s Punjab. The peace of the village is shattered by the arrival of two radicals seeking recruits for the jehad and, while many of the village elders are cynical about their cause, they find supporters among the young. Salim is increasingly drawn towards religious bigotry and, despite his mother’s discouragement, joins the fundamentalists. Tensions are further heightened by a state sanctioned visit from Sikh pilgrims which unveils a long-held secret. Yet, despite all its twists and turns, Khamosh Pani refrains from over-dramatization and delves into myriad issues with great subtlety and poignancy. The film contains an excellent performance from Kirron Kher as the protagonist. Khamosh Pani won the Golden Leopard, the top prize at the 56th Locarno International Film Festival held in Switzerland. Also, Kher received the Bronze Leopard for Best Actress.

Marhi Da Deeva (The Last Flicker) was a 1989 film made by Surinder Singh and based on Gurdial Singh’s classic 1964 novel of the same name. This was the first Punjabi novel to feature a Dalit labourer as protagonist. The Dalit protagonist Jagseer’s story is set in the late fifties, the post-Nehruvian phase of independent India, which saw many dreams die. Within a decade of freedom, there was a great deal of disillusionment with the professed model of socialism. Jagseer’s despondency symbolizes the mood of the nation. Hailed as the first Punjabi novel of social realism, widely translated in Indian and foreign languages, Marhi Da Deeva—which literally translates into ‘the lamp at the grave’—remains till date the most discussed and debated work in Punjabi literature. The novelist’s triumph lies in bringing to centre-stage a low-caste oppressed man and telling his story in so humane a manner that it becomes a part of the collective psyche. The film remains faithful to the narrative in the book and forwards its ambitions. The cast includes some well known names like Raj Babbar (who plays the protagonist), Deepti Naval, Parikshit Sahni and Pankaj Kapur in important roles. The film’s music was composed by Mahinderjit Singh. Marhi Da Deeva also received the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Punjabi.

Chann Pardesi, directed by Chitrarth Singh, was a unique Punjabi film released in 1980. Unique, because it won critical acclaim (and the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Punjabi) and was also a commercial success. Unfortunately, the fine standards set by it could not be met by the shaky post-Partition Punjabi film industry. The star cast includes names like Raj Babbar, Om Puri, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Amrish Puri, Rama Vij and Rajni Sharma. The plot of the film, a saga spanning two generations, revolves around recurring Punjabi film themes of love, revenge and separation, culminating in penance, and a final coming together of key characters. Shot in rural Punjab, it had songs set to lilting, folksy music by Surinder Kohli.

Nanak Naam Jahaz Hai is another National Award-winning film directed by Ram Maheshwari and released in 1969. It stars Prithviraj Kapoor, I.S. Johar, Nishi and Vimi. This was the first major Punjabi ‘hit’ in post-independent India. The film is a family drama with an underlying devotional theme. The plot revolves around a family in, a newly independent India, that gets divided and eventually reconciles. Its music, by S. Mohinder, with playback singing by Shamshad Begum, Asha Bhosle, Manna Dey and Mohammad Rafi, is popular to this day. The film has shots of some of the most prominent gurdwaras in India. When the film was released, Punjabi Sikhs were rapturous. They distributed prasad in the cinema halls and women covered their heads on occasion while watching the film. Nanak Naam Jahaz Hai spawned several films in the religious genre, such as Mann Jeete Jag Jeet, Dukh Bhanjan Tera Naam and Nanak Dukhiya Sab Sansar. However, the response to the first remains unbeaten till date.

Of undeserving kings and the problem with Patriot Games

More than thirty years after he made The Maltese Falcon, the legendary John Huston adapted a Rudyard Kipling short story about two British soldiers serving in India who leave the army and the country to head to the neighbouring—and, indeed, interestingly named—Kafiristan where they plan to crown themselves kings. In The Man Who Would Be King, Sean Connery and Michael Caine star as the two sacrilegious anti-heroes, while Christopher Plummer plays Kipling himself and our very own Saeed Jaffrey shows up as Billy Fish, a most quotable local character. It’s a rollicking entertainer, but only on reading the immaculate screenplay (by Huston and Gladys Hill) a couple of days ago did I realise how well the film stands up even without those great leading men being so marvellous. Great, great words. Here’s a scene I’ve always loved, and here’s the link to the whole script.

Speaking of short-story adaptations, here’s a look at Mobius Trips, Mukul Sharma’s mischievously named short story that was recently adapted into Kannan Iyer’s Ek Thi Daayan. As I said in my review of the film, the screenplay falters significantly in the second half when the film sadly moves away from the beautiful what-could-have-been ambiguity of an enchanted world viewed through a child’s eyes and descends (quite literally) into a rabbit hole crowded with cliché. Published on his own blog, here’s the eeriness as Sharma—the man who wrote that fascinating Mindsport column in the Times Of India, and Konkona Sen’s father—first saw it.

With the newspapers so full of a certain man all set for his own coronation, it is a fine time to revisit Rakesh Sharma’s searing documentary on the 2002 Gujarat Riots, Final Solution. The 2003 film was immediately banned in India, and then distributed through a pirate-and-circulate campaign which encouraged everyone who watched it to make copies and spread it further. You can read more about the film here. Final Solution is a harsh indictment of Narendra Modi’s government, and should be watched as soon as possible— before it is yanked off YouTube as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APrJ9dfvxjQ

George R. R. Martin always knew which bad guys were worth being villains, as is more than evident by this fan-letter Martin, at 16, had sent to Marvel supremo Stan Lee. The Game of Thrones creator loved his comic books, and it’s most amusing to see which villains he considers worthy of the Fantastic Four—a comic he clearly loves—and which are the weak foes he believes deserve “eternal exile”. Off with their heads, eh George?

“If you’re going to invite me to a dance, you gotta let me dance.” This and other awesome assertions are thrown up during an afternoon where the late Dennis Hopper, easiest rider of all—and the first choice to play the tip-loathing Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs—swung by at Quentin Tarantino’s place to share a conversation while the director was editing Pulp Fiction. The entire conversation can be found here, and it’s gold. Tarantino compares Pulp… to Monty Python, Hopper throws up Satyajit Ray when talking of Éric Rohmer, and the two clearly love each other’s work. As a bonus, here’s the Sicilian scene in True Romance that QT wrote and Hopper dazzled in, alongside Christopher Walken.

Over on Twitter, @clownasylum pointed me to this 1990 interview in which Steven Spielberg talks about how he regrets passing on Rain Man— to go ahead and do Indiana Jones. It’s a Barry Norman interview, so you should naturally go see the whole thing. It also reminded me of just how Spielberg is a true virtuoso of the close-up, which this smashing video essay justifiably dubs the director’s signature stroke. Amazing.

And finally, paanch. (No, not that one. But here you go.) No, I speak of five short films that come from the Anurag Kashyap stable, fast turning into a school for talented youngbloods. The five films here, in my order of preference, have been made by Neeraj Ghaywan, Anubhuti Kashyap, Vasan Bala, Shlok Sharma and Gitanjali Rao— but I implore you to watch them all. Collected back to back thus, they make for very intriguing viewing, and I can’t wait to see each of them making features. Peddlers, Bala’s film that earned plaudits at Cannes last year, should be hitting theatres within the next two months.

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Oh, and do reach out with your movie effluvia: I’m @RajaSen on Twitter. Add a hashtag #filmflam to your links. Happy clicking, and may the broadband be strong with you all.

Movies take us to places where we have never been and perhaps will never be. Sometimes movies insist on telling us where to go—Switzerland, a particular spot in Goa, Spain—and we go faithfully. We complain but we go. We make fun of the movie which has a handbag as a central character but we still go. Is it a natural and inevitable progression that movies will also tell us how to book discounted tickets to the places we have never been? The new Ayan Mukherjee film Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani seems to think so, gleefully promoting an online travel company at every chance it gets.

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The protagonist of Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani Bunny aka Kabir Thapar (Ranbir Kapoor) works in the crew of a Fox Traveller show. The central crisis of the film, apart from Pritam’s music, is Bunny’s attraction to Naina (Deepika Padukone) a girl who loves staying put as much as he loves moving. Naina is a doctor. Bunny’s old friend (Aditya Roy Kapur) owns, and struggles to run, a bar. Does Bunny’s old gal pal Aditi (Kalki Koechlin) have a job? It’s not clear. She does have a really warm, loving relationship with a bumbling, non-suave yet destination wedding type groom (Kunaal Roy Kapur).

This is the old social circle into which Bunny returns to have very tepid emotional crises before the denouement in which Naina teaches him that together is better than alone. While all manner of logic dictates that this movie needs a humungous wedding (and who is to quarrel with that?), it really didn’t need so much humungous wedding and could have had a whole lot more of its young, moderately interesting and deliberately non-melodramatic characters. What is it like to be these people with these lives? We never know. It is as if they wandered in from another set at Mehboob Studios and decided to stay for the wedding out of politeness.

Movies have a way of turning foreign places and foreign lives into postcards. The odd thing about a movie like Yeh Jawaani… is that it turns the familiar into flattened postcards as well. From the hotel room interiors of the wedding Naina’s defence of all that she loves sounds like the script of a 30 minute show that Fox Traveller may run next week: DDLJ at Maratha Mandir, Mahendra Singh Dhoni at Wankhede, mutton biryani…

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The first third of Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, when the protagonists go on a trip to Manali, is a rather tragic reminder of DDLJ (Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge), the mother of all rail romances. It begins at the station. Where DDLJ’s Simran began her ditzy career by dropping a bra, Naina brings along a Ganesha of dimensions which makes you suspect that she is as new to piety as she is to trekking. This is going to be annoying, you suspect and in many ways, it is— the random insertion of vampy, clueless girl, Naina’s stunned expression when faced with anything new, or worse, ‘cool’.

In other ways Yeh Jawaani’s Naina and Aditi are products of their times as much as Simran was a product of her time. Naina is competitive, fit and has not a trace of coyness. She doesn’t drink because she doesn’t drink but when it’s freezing halfway up a mountain she has no problem asking for a swig or two. Aditi stays friends with Avinash long after she has fallen out of love with him. To our shock, the movie also passes the Bechdel Test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test) by dint of Naina’s one affectionate recounting of her friendship with Aditi at the wedding.

I have a renewed affection for Deepika Padukone (and decreased nostalgia for Simran) after encountering her calm Naina. This despite the earliest segments in which she and director Ayan Mukherjee seem to have confused “focused medical student” with “in need of focused medical attention”.

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Aurangzeb promised to be a movie that took us to a specific place too: the dark, jewelled navel of Gurgaon. And what a great name! An evil Rishi Kapoor! With the rather excellent and hirsute Arjun Kapoor! And Amrita Singh’s sleeves!

Alas, Atul Sabharwal’s juicy, messy script seems to be a television series accordioned into a feature length Yash Raj production. The whole point of a double role movie, the moment when one twin becomes the other, when Sita becomes Gita, when Manju becomes Anju, is skimmed over in half a scene with the not-badtameez Arjun Kapoor walking into Amrita Singh’s office and taking charge. N. Srinivasan showed more bloody-mindedness than Arjun Kapoor in this scene.  Prithviraj Sukumaran does yeoman’s service with one lip-curling expression and flips from one camp to another. Somewhere there is also an exchange of dialogue which ends in “Tera baap mera baap hai.”

Most annoyingly, we get as much of a sense of Gurgaon as we get of Nainital. What I now know is that when Arjun Kapoor is a twin separated at birth and goes to Nainital he likes to wear V-necked sweaters.

Unless otherwise told, assume that all Hindi movies are in Bombay, a film critic once told me. And we were quite content to go to these movies without places. And on the rare occasion we went to Darjeeling or Switzerland or Goa, we went as tourists with no compulsion to do anything but go boating and wear monkey caps.

Newer movies feel the compulsion to answer the old question: main kahan hoon? Dibakar Banerjee thus became the Prince of Place (even though he really did Shanghai us that one time shamefully).

Newer movies shove place at us the way they market item numbers. The same way they sell air tickets. Book Now! Discount! And then surprise, the ticket is cancelled, we are still in Bollywoodland.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

Sometimes the lost possibilities of a movie are more depressing than any poignancy the movie set out to achieve. There is a half hour stretch in Ek Thi Daayan in which everything comes together to show you the movie it could have been. Bobo (Emraan Hashmi) has the feeling that the hauntings have begun again and goes to a therapist he knew as a child. Under hypnosis he remembers a time when he lived with his younger sister and nerdy college professor father (Pavan Malhotra). 11-year-old Bobo (Vishesh Tiwari) uses parlour magic to charm adults and entertain his adoring sister Misha. He is curious, chatty and quite confident. He plays around with an old lift to see whether hitting ‘6’ three times would actually take him down to hell, and only succeeds in scaring the pants off himself and his sister.

Into this wonky life comes Diana (Konkona Sen Sharma) who Bobo immediately suspects is Diana-the-daayan. Why? Just. For a while a delicious tension ensues while Bobo tries to protect his family from the double whammy of Diana’s sex appeal and maternal pretensions. Is she really a witch or is Bobo just terrified of stepmothers? Is his father just happy to be getting an afternoon quickie or is he under a spell? It’s all quite tantalizing, primarily because young Vishesh is superbly convincing. Also, I’ve never liked Konkona Sen Sharma as much as the fork-tongued moment in which she says to Misha, “So sweet. I could just eat you up.”

There is a kind of goofy-yet-thoughtful Wes Anderson air to the flashback (where young Bobo thinks viciously in the backseat that his father in the driver’s seat needs a roundhouse kick to stop letching at Diana, or when his curly head bobs disembodied above a fish tank) which is very appealing. If the register of this flashback had been the whole movie, director Kannan Iyer would have had the kind of movie that terrified generations.

The problem with the rest of the movie is not that Hashmi, (who has that Keanu Reeves blank canvas persona, which makes him quite replaceable but not objectionable) replaces Vishesh. The problem with the rest of the movie is that it is just not scary. It does not tap into any lode of fear that we carry around with us.

The irrational, ancient fear of the stepparent or any manner of attractive cuckoo (such as Diana/ Daayan) that will ruin the picture-perfect family has genuine power. Rising divorce rates in India bring us new versions of this terror. Aatma recently made a ham-handed attempt at exploring the fear of custody battles. The exorcist that Maya Verma (Bipasha Basu) consults to get rid of the ghost of her ex-husband tells her that she can only fight her husband Abhay’s (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) attempts to kill their daughter (from beyond the grave) with love. In one unintentionally hilarious sequence Bipasha finds her tiny daughter Niya on the railings of the balcony of their high-rise apartment. Her homicidal ghost husband at ground level is holding out his arms and urging Niya to jump. Bipasha is edging towards Niya begging her not to jump. Meanwhile Niya is bargaining with ghost daddy: “Mujhein Barbie Doll nahin milin. Main nahin aaoongi.” If Doyel Dhawan, who plays Niya, was a better actor (like Sara Arjun who plays Misha in Ek Thi Daayan), her mouthing the jealous, possessive insults of her dead father would have genuinely creeped parents out. Sadly, Doyel is not scary even when making demonic leaps for her mother’s throat.

An unscary child in demonic possession is an achievement by itself given how pop-culture has trained us to be scared of children (Witness this Spanish Candid Camera style show which plays a brilliant trick on hotel guests with a child actor). Really, the only moment in Aatma which is worth it is when the dead Bipasha gives dead, evil, yet hot husband a jolly good shove across the railway tracks. Why hasn’t anyone made a superhero movie with Bipasha Basu? She could save my life anytime.

But back to the missed opportunities of Ek Thi Daayan which for most of its running time wanders about. And loses an excellent cinematic head start it had in Bobo’s adult career: high-octane, spectacular magic. In one of his opening tricks in front of a huge audience, Bobo sends his assistant up a very high, mildly phallic rope and sets it on fire until she apologizes for coming late— all part of the act. His lover Tamara (Huma Qureshi) is the producer in a glass cubicle enjoying his prowess but also watchful so the show is on track. We never quite return to the flair of this sequence or ever use the exciting world of the magician to plumb our fears. What is adult Bobo scared of? Women with long plaits. I wondered whether the long plaits would resonate again in the sinuous, braided rope he makes his assistants perilously climb, but no luck there.

It is too much to expect Ek Thi Daayan to be the kind of psychological thriller that Malayattoor Ramakrishnan’s Yakshi was— where the hero disfigured by an accident wonders whether the only reason a beautiful woman is in love with him now is because she is a blood-sucking yakshi. The movie could have explored (a tiny bit) the life of a man with a difficult childhood, still stuck with his juvenile nickname (Bobo’s real, adult name Bejoy Charan Mathur is mentioned only once), who hides his fear of women under his shiny shirts, and sexy backchat with his girlfriend. Since he must be the only Hindi film hero whose dead mother does not make an appearance even in a framed photo we would have been (a tiny bit) interested.

This is a country where women and young girls are regularly murdered after being branded witches. It is a widespread, violent paranoia that the movie fails to plug into, regardless of what the Censor Board thinks. The movie instead just has a kind of mealy-mouthed, ambient fear of women that only seems like a variation of the money-grubbing, husband-oppressing viragos of Indian television ads. They can’t be zapped with credit cards but those sinuous, threatening braids can be cut off and then they will be dust. Ek Thi Daayan just mucks about in unreconstructed pentagram-waving, candle-lighting waffle about witches who return on lunar eclipses on Februrary 29 in leap years. Who knew that even Indian witches functioned according to the Gregorian calendar and had a Judeo-Christian Satan? The rules of this fictional universe are so sloppily tacked down, there is no chance for our terrors to take root. (Unlike Ragini MMS with its Marathi-spouting daayan which scared the atavistic pants off me, without ever losing its grip on the Zeitgeist— a young, horny girl, her smart-talking, horndog boyfriend, a dirty weekend away in a lonely house. And the daayan disapproves. Specific. Funny. Terrifying.)

In the one of the last sequences we see Bobo and his adopted son (Zubin, a son acquired without Bobo mixing genes with a woman) doing that ultimate act of cinematic male bonding: barbecuing outside. Bobo tells Zubin that everyone has power in them and we just have to choose whether we use it for good or evil. Sadly, Bobo’s recapturing of his inner power under a full moon and defeating of the many avatars of the daayan, in this less than enthralling context, again seems like an ad for some forgotten branch of the 1970s Men’s Movement, which practised primal scream therapy.

***

I must confess I was often distracted from the collective hotness of Bipasha Basu, Huma Qureshi and Nawazuddin Siddiqui by the alternate-universe real estate on view in these two movies. Did anyone track the square feet of Bobo and Tamara’s aalishaan bungla? Or the size of Maya Verma’s flat (“change the font and background on this design” must be a very well-paying job)? And when someone offers to pay Rs 2 crore in white, by cheque, for a Bombay flat you should call an exorcist.

filmflam is a new monthly column on the most exciting things to do with the movies online: photographs, art, writing, blogs, websites, trailers, films, tutorials, archival material. Our custom-made curation of cinematic coolth. 

Ebert on a shirt, hot wheels and Punjabi pixies

The Roger Ebert Review I’d Like To Wear On A T-Shirt

Ten days ago, Roger Ebert left us for that great aisle seat in the sky. It’s hard to speak about the impact Roger had—on all of us who read about film—and the Internet is justifiably flooded with eulogies, tributes and lists quoting from his extensive library of reviews.

This piece from Forbes, for example, sharply highlights what makes Roger’s legacy so vital while (perhaps too snarkily) putting down other obits. And this bit by Jim Emerson, who worked closely with Roger on his website, provides some telling detail about the man— most importantly that he’d prefer we not gush maudlinly about his passing.

So we should smile. At Roger’s deliciously heady and unbelievably profane ‘interview’ with Lee Marvin; at a slugfest of an interview Playboy did with Ebert and Gene Siskel; and at that 2010 Esquire profile of Ebert which filled us with hope and wonder while snapping our collective hearts like twigs.

Like I said, there are lists everywhere: of his best reviews, his meanest putdowns, the best of his sentences, and yet more of his harshest. Heck, you probably have your own lists. We all do.

Which brings us down to my pick for The Roger Ebert Review I’d Like To Wear On A T-Shirt.

It’s for a 2004 movie called Shaolin Soccer.

You remember Shaolin Soccer, don’t you? It was that hyperkinetic Stephen Chow film about a ragtag bunch of misfit loony tunes who could make the X-Men feel unspecial. I don’t love the film (and feel Chow’s next, Kung Fu Hustle, was far more stylish and satisfying) but Roger did. But that’s not why I think this is one of his most important reviews.

I think this review matters massively because in it Roger breaks down that bane of a film critic’s existence: the star-ratings system. A film we rate three stars isn’t automatically better than a film we rate two stars; it’s apples and oranges; films are rated not merely on a sliding scale, but on one that bends and timewarps and shapeshifts and rollercoasts.

Like Roger says while giving Shaolin Soccer three stars, “it is piffle, yes, but superior piffle. If you are even considering going to see a movie where the players zoom 50 feet into the air and rotate freely in violation of everything Newton held sacred, then you do not want to know if I thought it was as good as Lost In Translation.”

It’s priceless. Trust me, if there is only one movie review you read today (and then pass along to everyone you know), make it this one. Here you go.

This subjectivity—of how there are different standards for different films—is something most people who read reviews fail to understand, and it kills those of us forced to boil our paragraphs down into an empirical ranking. (How I can possibly rate, for example, three episodes of a television sitcom better than the year’s Best Picture winner on my annual English movie list, for example.)

In 2008, Ebert wrote wonderfully about star-ratings again, unashamedly putting down purely personal reasons for giving “too many stars”, before pointing us towards a truly inspired visual rating in The San Francisco Chronicle that he called the only system that works. And, as was the norm, Roger ended the piece immaculately.

~~

Trailer of the month: Rush

(Or, if you so prefer, Thor-mula One)

I can’t believe I’m this kicked about a film directed by Ron Howard. Look, I’ve nothing against the guy; I dug Happy Days hugely in the day and think he’s incredible as the deadpan narrator of Arrested Development. But to queue up for the man who made The Da Vinci Code and Cinderella Man?

Yup.

Because this time he’s taking on Formula One. And, from the looks of it, he’s on the right track. (Sorry). In Rush, coming to theatres this September, Howard takes on one of Formula One’s most dramatic, most scintillating true-life battles: the fight between James Hunt and Niki Lauda for the 1976 World Championship. The word ‘epic’ comes to mind… and then exits mind immediately for not being nearly bombastic enough. It’s a scorcher of a story.

The film stars Chris Hemsworth as Hunt, the most glamorous and eccentric Formula One champion in history, a true character. And opposite him is the stoic Austrian hero Niki Lauda, played by Daniel Brühl, who most of us remember from Inglourious Basterds.

Perhaps most importantly, Howard’s got the right guy to write the film. British playwright and super-scribe Peter Morgan, the man behind The Deal, The Queen, The Special Relationship and—the last time he collaborated with Howard—Frost/Nixon. Oh yeah.

Shot by the ever-striking Anthony Dod Mantle (Dogville, Slumdog Millionaire, Antichrist), Rush is looking mouthwateringly good. Here, after all that ado, is the trailer: the US version gives away a bit too much, so try not to click on that, but the international version is delicious. Vroom.

~

Tumbl this: Vol 1

There are too few truly incredible tumblrs to do with Hindi cinema. There’s a smattering—Paagal Subtitle is grand, and moments of genius can be found at the irresistibly titled Feminist SRK—but all in all, the insanely amazing, amazingly insane world of Bollywood is woefully underrepresented on Tumblr.

To that end, I propose to suggest one Tumblr topic each month. One with enough meat on it so you guys can roll with it and turn it into something flabbergastingly great.

Here, then, is the one this month, taking a cue from a review I wrote a couple of days back for a trashy film. You all know what a Manic Pixie Dream Girl is, right? (Okay, it’s a highly overused character archetype, one who sassily storms into the hero’s mostly sedate existence and whirlwindily brings him to life.)

What we need to look for? The Manic Punjabi Dream Girl.

Like Kareena Kapoor’s Geet from Jab We Met. Like Kajol from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.

Basically everything a standard MPDG is, just dialled up louder, with an exaggeratedly heavy accent and (much) flashier clothing. Go on, bring forth thy kooky kudis.

Let’s get a few things out of the way right at the start.

First, I have no sympathy for Sanjay Dutt. He violated the Arms Act in 1993 by his purchase and possession of a gun. He was arrested, tried and sentenced for that offence. Yes, the process took years. But that’s the way trials go. It took a few more years because Dutt appealed his sentence— which the Supreme Court has just upheld. That his time behind bars will result in losses for Bollywood, that other Bollywood stars are saddened by this news, is so much irrelevant gravy.

Second, let’s remember that Dutt was not found guilty of involvement in the bomb blasts of March 1993. The crime he has been convicted for is the possession of a deadly weapon. Period. Of course, a hundred others were found guilty for the blasts after a lengthy trial. The two prime accused, Tiger Memon and Dawood Ibrahim, were never even arrested, because they are “absconding”.

Third, Dutt is a rich and famous man. But being so, he only feeds the shibboleths we like to mouth even knowing how empty they are— “nobody is above the law”, and “the law will take its own course”: you know, corny stuff like that. He’s a scapegoat for the truth we simply don’t want to face up to and accept: the really powerful people in this country never get punished for their crimes. Never.

Those three done and dusted, here’s a short recap of what has brought Sanjay Dutt to where he is today and his curious fandango with a political party called Shiv Sena.

On March 12, 1993, a series of bombs went off in Bombay, killing over 250 people. While investigating that atrocity, the police arrested and questioned two film producers and distributors, Hanif Lakdawala (also referred to in various reports as Kadawala and Kandawala) and Samir Hingora. They told the police that they had sold an AK-56 assault rifle to Dutt.

This is why Dutt was arrested in April that year, why his home was searched, and why he was tried over the next dozen odd years.

Immediately after his arrest, the Shiv Sena’s leader, Bal Thackeray, declared a “ban” on his films and his party activists began disrupting their screening, especially the just-released and ironically-named Khal Nayak (Villain). The ban did not last long. In May, theatres resumed screening Khal Nayak. Naaz, on Lamington Road, did so with a sign in front acknowledging the “kind permission of Shri Balasaheb Thackeray.” Two years later, when Dutt was still behind bars and under trial, Thackeray attacked the CBI for being “vindictive” and keeping this “innocent young man” from a family of “patriotic Indians” in jail. There had, after all, been reports of visits by members of the Dutt family to Thackeray’s home. Thackeray was also worried about the loss—Rs 20 crore, he said—the film industry had suffered because of Dutt’s incarceration (as you can see, this trope of loss has a long pedigree). Soon after, Dutt was released on bail. From his jail cell, he went straight to Thackeray’s home to pay his respects. But the renewed bond was also temporary. In 2002, transcripts came to light of Dutt’s phone conversations with the gangster Chhota Shakeel. Thackeray now pronounced that the actor should not be defended “at any cost”.

But the fandango goes beyond this on-again, off-again game of footsie between the Dutt family and the late Sena supremo. Let’s go back to April 1993, and Hingora and Lakdawala. Here are two excerpts from news reports that month:

* “Top stars, MLAs got arms from Dawood” (Afternoon Despatch & Courier, April 12, 1993): “The Bombay Police have stumbled upon the names of several film personalities, MLAs and corporators, who owned illegal arms allegedly supplied by the underworld don, Dawood Ibrahim. The arms were either gifted by Dawood or sold to these persons at cheap rates. Interrogation of suspects… has thrown up names of film personalities such as Sanjay Dutt [and also] Shiv Sena MLA Madhukar Sarpotdar among nine politicians who acquired arms from the D-gang or his henchmen. The arms were mainly sophisticated revolvers.”

* “Sanjay Dutt arrested” (Indian Express, April 20, 1993): [Chief Minister Sharad Pawar told the Maharashtra Legislative Council that] “the suspect who named Sanjay [also] revealed several other names including that of Madhukar Sarpotdar. But we have not pressed charges against all.”

Writing in When Bombay Burned, the Times of India compendium of reports from the 1992-93 riots and blasts, the film critic Khalid Mohamed also recounted Pawar’s statement, adding: “Sarpotdar’s house was also not searched.”

Digest this: the same investigation—the very same one—that implicated Dutt, also implicated the prominent Shiv Sena politician Madhukar Sarpotdar, and in precisely the same way. No less than the head of the state government announced this, and in the state’s Assembly. Dutt has spent twenty years on trial for his offence. Sarpotdar? No charges under the Arms Act. Not even a search of his home.

Tell me about nobody being above the law.

There is more. On January 11, 1993—possibly at the height of the carnage during the Bombay riots, and two months before the blasts—the Army stopped a car that was roaming the city streets. Also from When Bombay Burned, here’s how journalists Clarence Fernandez and Naresh Fernandes reported this incident:

* “[T]he Army detained the Shiv Sena MLA Madhukar Sarpotdar in the troubled suburb of Nirmal Nagar late on Monday night and searched his car to find two revolvers and several other weapons… Travelling with Sarpotdar was his son Atul, carrying an unlicensed Spanish revolver. Though [Madhukar] Sarpotdar had a license for his gun, he too was breaking the law by carrying it during the riots. Also [with them] was one Anil Parab. [T]he police commissioner [refused] to indicate whether this man was the notorious gangster of the same name, the hitman of the Dawood gang.”

More to digest: Dutt’s offence was the illegal possession of a gun. Sarpotdar was also found in illegal possession of a gun. So it’s not just that Hingora and Lakdawala sold guns to both Dutt and Sarpotdar. No, Sarpotdar openly toted guns during the riots, and he was captured doing so by no less an authority than the Indian Army.

Yet Sarpotdar was never tried for this offence. Far from it. In February 1995, he ran for election as MLA and won. In 1996 and 1998, he ran for election to Parliament, winning both times. As if to drive home the irony, he stood and won from the same constituency that Sanjay Dutt’s father, Sunil Dutt, represented, that his sister now represents; more appalling than ironic to me personally, this is my constituency.

Forget being tried for violating our laws. For years after 1993, this man was actually making laws for us all. (For what it’s worth, the Dawood hitman Anil Parab himself was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and other crimes, only weeks before Dutt was convicted).

What was that again about nobody being above the law?

There’s plenty more to say about Sarpotdar, including his shifty appearance before the Srikrishna Commission that inquired into the riots. Unfortunately, delving into all that will need a book, not just several hundred words on TBIP. Let’s leave it at this: Sarpotdar died in 2010, gone to the great riot in the sky without having spent a day in jail. That, and not Dutt’s sentence, is the really accurate measure of how justice and law operate in India.

What do we learn, looking back at the two decades Dutt has spent in trial? In no particular order, here are some of my takeaways.

* This has little to do with left or right wing politics. Instead, it has everything to do with power. The Shiv Sena has grown into an entity that nobody can touch; this is itself the fount of its power and appeal in Maharashtra. Thackeray is now gone, but his legacy is not one, but two equally virulent Senas. Sarpotdar is also gone, but his party is filled with others with similar records of public service.

* Thackeray actively drew prominent film stars into his fold. Ever wondered why Amitabh Bachchan, for example, has never suggested that Sarpotdar be treated as Dutt has been?

* Sanjay Dutt will do his time. I now don’t doubt that. But I have no illusions that this punishment will rid us of terrorism, or even slow it down. Because as long as we hide behind shibboleths, as long as we shy away from punishing the guilty whoever they are, we nurture terrorism.

In a song in Sanjay Dutt’s Lage Raho Munna Bhai, listen for these words aimed at a certain Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi: “Jhoot ka badhta jaye raj, O Bapu/ Apne hi ho gaye dhokebaaz.”

Think of it as an entirely telling epitaph for the fandango of Sanjay Dutt, circa 2013.

The question one has to ask oneself is: If Sanjay Dutt was arrested for the same offence, and it had no connection with the Bombay Serial Bomb Blasts, would the Court’s verdict still be the same?

On Thursday, the Division Bench of the Supreme Court of India confirmed the conviction of Sanjay Dutt, and two of his other accomplices, but reduced the sentence awarded by the Special Court by one year. Sanjay Dutt, who has already spent 18 months in custody, after the verdict has roughly three and a half years of jail term left to serve. Should Sanjay Dutt because of his background and stature in society, or because of his Munna Bhai avatar, be treated differently for the offence which he has been charged with and found guilty of? The obvious answer is no. But still there is a sense of unease in accepting his condemnation.

Sanjay Dutt was charged with offences under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) for the terrorist act of causing serial bomb blasts in Mumbai in 1993, its conspiracy, abetting; harbouring and concealing terrorists; and the membership of a terrorist gang. In addition to this, he was also tried for offences under the Indian Penal Code, the Arms Act, the Explosive Act, the Explosive Substances Act, and the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act. However, the Special Court, formed under the TADA, found him guilty only for the offence punishable under Sections 3 and 7 read with Sections 25 (1-A) and (1-B)(a) of the Arms Act, 1959 and sentenced him to suffer Rigorous Imprisonment (RI) for six years, along with a fine of Rs. 25,000 (in default of which he was to further undergo RI for a period of 6 months). It is relevant to mention that the findings of the Special Court have not been challenged by the State and, therefore, Sanjay Dutt has been acquitted of other charges under the TADA, the IPC, the Explosives Act, the Explosive Substances Act, and the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act.

Conversely speaking, if we accept the Special Court’s verdict, Sanjay Dutt had no role whatsoever in the Bombay Serial Blasts, or was aware of any conspiracy hatched by other accused persons. What the apex court had before it were the offences relating to the possession of unlicensed weapons on a particular day which was during bad times (in the months after the infamous Bombay Riots).

The court’s verdict raises two primary legal concerns. Firstly, Sanjay Dutt’s conviction is almost entirely based on his confessions and the confessions of the other accused. Almost half of the 147 pages of the verdict are devoted to the court discussing the confessional statements made by the accused persons and the law that pertains to this. Article 20(3) of the Indian Constitution declares that “no person accused of any offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself”, thus, incorporating the principle of protection against self-incrimination under duress or otherwise. However, under the TADA, which now stands repealed, confessions made by the accused before a police-officer are admissible as evidence in the trial.

A five judge bench of the Supreme Court in Kartar Singh vs. State of Punjab (1994), has upheld the validity of the provision that allows for confessional statements to be admissible as evidence. However, we need to remember that confessions as a form of evidence in trial can be extremely dangerous. There are several situations under which an accused can confess to a crime which he has not committed. The obvious objection to the use of a confessional statement is the use of torture by police officers to obtain confessions from the accused persons. However, recent research shows that people confess for many other reasons (eg. duress, coercion , intoxication, diminished capacity, mental impairment, ignorance of the law,  the threat of a harsh sentence, misunderstanding the situation etc) and not just because of torture, or its threat.

In Sanjay Dutt’s case too there was a confession, to a police officer, which was later retracted by him but, since the retraction came many months after the confession, the Supreme Court refused to remove it from the evidence against him.

But even if we are to assume that Sanjay Dutt’s confession was true, that it was made out of his own volition, the fact remains that the confession was made under the provisions of the TADA, for which he was acquitted. The senior counsel arguing on behalf of Sanjay Dutt correctly pointed out that the confessions made under the TADA cannot be used to convict Sanjay Dutt under the Arms Act, especially when he has been acquitted of all terror charges. He further pointed out that if a confession to the police becomes admissible irrespective of the fate of the TADA charge, then it would lead to invidious discrimination between the accused, who were charged (but acquitted) under the TADA along with other offences and those who were accused only of non-TADA offences.  However, the Supreme Court rejected this contention based on the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case’s reasoning (State of Tamil Nadu vs. Nalini, 1999) and held that confessions made under the TADA would continue to remain admissible in the case of other offences, under any other law, which were tried along with the TADA offences, no matter that the accused was acquitted of offences under the TADA in that trial.

The second concern with this verdict is the sentencing. The question of what makes for an adequate yet appropriate sentence has always been a very difficult question. Sentencing, in India, is mainly on the discretion of the judges. There are several, often competing factors that must be taken into account before arriving at a just sentence. The Constitutional Bench in Bachan Singh vs. State of Punjab (1980) has held that in fixing the degree of punishment or making the choice of sentences for various offences including one under section 302, the court should not confine its consideration principally or merely to the circumstances connected with a particular crime but also give due consideration to the circumstances of the criminal.

Various theories of punishment, from deterrence (for the accused and the public at large) to rehabilitation to reformation to re-absorption in the society, need to be adjusted in a libertarian Constitution. The objective is that the accused must realize that he has committed an act which is not only harmful to the society of which he is an integral part but is also harmful to his own future— both as an individual and as a member of the society. (This view has been confirmed by the Supreme Court in the landmark case of Goswami BC vs. Delhi Administration, 1973).

Sanjay Dutt was held guilty of offences under the Arms Act for which the maximum sentence prescribed is of 10 years, and the minimum sentence of 5 years, and he shall also be liable to fine. In a way, while passing the verdict on conviction the hands of the Court were tied and they could not have gone beyond the statutory prescribed jail term. However, what the Supreme Court could have done is given him the benefit of the Probation of Offenders Act. To clarify, putting an accused on probation does not mean he is not guilty of the offences he has committed, in fact it is the recognition of the doctrine that the object of criminal law is more to reform the individual offender than to punish him (Rattan Lal vs. State of Punjab, 1979). When the Court decides to put an accused on Probation, the Court can prescribe any condition (like regularly reporting to the probation officer or informing the police station when leaving the country etc.) and give a chance to the accused to reform himself. If the accused does not fulfill the conditions he can be recalled and sentenced as per the provisions of law.

In Sanjay Dutt’s case, and in my respectful disagreement with the verdict, I think the Court overlooked the idea of reformation as an objective of punishment. His offence is an offence which has no victim, and all the charges of being a terrorist have been done away with. In fact, even the State agrees with the findings of the trial court and has not appealed against the acquittal. There has been no previous conviction of the accused, which means that this instance is his first ‘offence’. The verdict further records that there has been no complaint either from the lower court, or any subsequent criminal offence committed by the accused during the period of trial. In such a scenario, the accused deserved the benefit of probation. There is no doubt that the court has discretion in deciding whether to give an offender the benefit of probation or not. In deciding so the Court has to give regard to the circumstances of the cases, including the nature of the offence and the character of the offender. However, in the absence of any set objective standard the discretion of the judge becomes subjective with each case.

Recently, in Sunder @ Sundararajan vs. State Tr.Insp. Of Police on February 5, 2013, the Supreme Court confirmed the death penalty of an accused for killing a child for ransom. While upholding the death penalty the Court observed, “Kidnapping the only male child was to induce maximum fear in the mind of his parents. Purposefully killing the sole male child, has grave repercussions for the parents of the deceased. Agony for parents for the loss of their only male child, who would have carried further the family lineage, and is expected to see them through their old age, is unfathomable.” Whereas, on January 28, 2013, Mohinder Singh vs. State Of Punjab, commuted a life sentence where a man, already convicted of raping his daughter, killed his wife and daughter in the most gruesome manner after breaking parole. What I am suggesting here is not the death penalty for the latter case, but a set objective and mandates for crucial decisions like sentencing, parole, or probation.

In Sanjay Dutt’s case there was need to observe in a more reasoned manner the nature of the crime and also the implication of a conviction that would come almost 20 years after. The right to speedy trial is a fundamental right of every accused. A verdict of conviction without any probation after over 19 years of trial, for an offence which had no victim, especially when the main accused for the serial blasts of 1993 have still not been apprehended, is a sort of harshness, not justice.