India is back in Cannes after a seven-year hiatus. But should the world’s most prolific movie industry be celebrating the putative breakthrough? Vikramaditya Motwane’s Hindi-language debut feature, Udaan (Flight), a coming-of-age tale set in small-town India, has made the ‘Un Certain Regard’ cut entirely on its own steam. No brownie points for Bollywood.
In fact, left to the Mumbai movie industry’s own devices, this film, shorn of box-office stars and the usual trappings of Hindi cinema, would never have been made. But let’s be thankful for small mercies — an industry that churns out nearly 1,000 films a year has finally managed to get a solitary entry into the world’s premier film festival.
But then, even Republic of Chad, one of Africa’s poorest nations, has a film — Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s A Screaming Man — in the main Competition this year.
It’s Asia, and not India, that could spring a few surprises this time around.
Unveiling the official selection of the 63rd Cannes Film Festival in a Paris hotel on April 15, delegate general Thierry Fremaux asserted that the line-up that his team had put together was proof that cinema is “a planetary art form, not just an American-European dialogue”.
He could have gone a little further and named the world’s largest and most populous continent for 2010 could well be the year of Asia in Cannes (May 12 to 23). Of the 18 films in the main Competition, six are by Asian directors, including one by past Palme d’Or winner Abbas Kiarostami. In percentage terms, Asia has never had stronger representation in the Cannes Competition. Significantly, only one American film, Doug Liman’s Fair Game, is competing for the top prize.
The Asian films in the mix will be up against eight European entries, including three from France (veteran Bertrand Tavernier’s The Princess of Montpensier, Xavier Beauvois’ Of Gods and Men, and actor-turned director Mathieu Amalric’s Tournee), Palme d’Or winner Mike Leigh’s Another Year and Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov’s Burnt by the Sun 2: Exodus).
Among the Asian entries competing for the Palme d’Or this year are two films from South Korea, Im Sangsoo’s The Housemaid and Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry. Also in the fray are one film each from China (Wang Xiaoshuai’s Chongqing Blues), Thailand (Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives), Japan (Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage) and Iran (Kiarostami’s Italian and French-produced The Certified Copy, starring Gallic actress Juliette Binoche).
Although Asia has consistently figured in the Cannes sweepstakes over the past decade, the continent hasn’t won the biggest prize since 1997, the year that Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry shared the Palme d’Or with Shohei Imamura’s Unagi.
Asia’s best year since then has been 2000. With seven films in a field of 23, it scooped up several prizes that year. China’s Jiang Wen’s Guizi Lai Le (Devils at the Doorstep) won the Grand Prix, while Taiwan’s Edward Yang was adjudged the Best Director for Yi Yi. In addition, Iranian filmmaker Samira Makhmalbaf picked up a jury prize for The Blackboard. But the Palme d’Or eluded Asia. It went to Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark.
The following year, Asia returned to the Croisette with an equally strong complement of films but its filmmakers had to return home virtually empty-handed. Films like Imamura’s Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Millennium Mambo, Tsai Ming-liang’s What Time is it There and Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Qandahar were edged out of the reckoning by Nanni Moretti’s The Son’s Room (Palme d’Or), Michael Haneke’s Le Pianiste (Grand Prix) and Joel Coen’s The Man Who Wasn’t There and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (joint best director).
However, filmmakers from Asia have kept the flag flying thanks to both the range and depth of their cinematic visions. Directors like Weerasethakul, whose Tropical Malady won a Cannes Jury Prize in 2004, Park Chan-Wook, whose Old Boy was a Grand Prix winner the same year, Brillante Mendoza (Best Director for Kinatay in 2009) and Wang Xiaoshuai, among many others, have over the past few years given film lovers and festival programmers around the world plenty of joy.
The decline of quality Indian cinema in the global arena has coincided as much with the steady rise of other Asian streams of filmmaking from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Iran and Thailand as with the growing clout of the profit-driven ‘sheer entertainment’ ethic of Bollywood. India was a regular fixture in the Cannes Film Festival’s main competition up until the 1980s. Back then, Japan was the only other Asian nation with a meaningful worldwide presence.
The Cannes appeal is easy to define. What separates this film festival from others is its constant unpredictability. Even as it celebrates Hollywood glitz and glamour, it revels in showcasing steadfast auteurs and in-your-face mavericks. It constantly spots and pushes fresh voices from around the world. If India continues to get ‘officially’ left out of this jamboree, the loss will be wholly ours. The world will move on and an insular India will be left celebrating Bollywood mediocrity.
So, will Udaan mark a new beginning for India in Cannes? It could but only if our filmmakers can come up with the right kind of follow-up efforts and tell powerful local stories with a sharp global vision. Is that too much to expect? In 2002, the Cannes Film Festival hosted a special screening of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas. Aishwarya Rai survived the fallout, Indian cinema didn’t.
Significantly, Udaan is not the only Indian film that will be officially screened in Cannes this year. Also in the official programme are Mrinal Sen’s Khandhar and Ritwik Ghatak’s Titash Ekti Nadir Naam, both of which are part of the sixth edition of Cannes Classics, a section that showcases newly restored or rediscovered masterworks. The Ghatak film, the third part of his famed ‘Partition trilogy’, has been brought to Cannes under the aegis of the World Cinema Foundation, promoted, among others, by Martin Scorsese.
Khandhar was made a year after Sen’s Kharij came tantalisingly close to winning the Palme d’Or in 1983, losing out to Imamura’s The Ballad of Narayama. Kharij won a Jury Prize bestowed by a panel that was headed by American novelist William Styron and included Robert Bresson, Bruce Beresford, Peter Weir and Nagisa Oshima.
Sen’s presence in Cannes could be an inspiration for Motwane as his film takes on 18 other Un Certain Regard films in a competition that runs parallel to the race for the Palme d’Or. Udaan might not win anything but the very fact that a first-time filmmaker from India will be occupying the same space as one of the true legends of world cinema, Jean-Luc Godard, constitutes a major feat. Godard’s new film, Film Socialisme, is in the running, and so are 102-year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira’s The Strange Case of Angelica and Chinese “sixth generation” auteur Jia Zhangke’s I Wish I Knew. If nothing else, Udaan is in great company. If its dream run could culminate in a Cannes trophy — the last Indian feature to bag a prize here was Murali Nair’s Camera d’Or-winning Marana Simhasanam — the flight would only get a tad headier.
— The writer is a noted film critic.
saibal.chatterjee@gmail.com