Two disquieting cinematic portraits of outwardly serene but severely splintered Indian outposts where life and sanity hang by a frayed string, generated a fair buzz at the 35th Toronto International Film Festival.
The films in question — Aamir Bashir’s Harud (Autumn) and Sidharth Srinivasan’s Pairon Talle (Soul of Sand) — raise sensitive social and political questions that have rarely, if ever, been adumbrated with such precision and pluck on the big screen.
Kashmiri actor-turned-filmmaker Bashir’s mournful, minimalist essay on the vacuity of life in the Valley is a plea for the return of normalcy. Harud is a plaintive ode to a land where peace and hope are but empty words wilting under the perennial shadow of overbearing military presence and its tragic fallout.
Delhi-based writer-director Srinivasan’s Pairon Talle is similarly
politically inflected. It is a deeply unsettling study of the brutal culture of violence that has lately engulfed the national capital’s fringes — the much-touted NCR, a shimmering symbol of the India growth story.
Apart from the relevance of the themes addressed here, the most
remarkable aspects of these two daring films are their pacing, framing and aesthetics. Rooted firmly in Indian reality, Harud and Pairon Talle, belong to zones that are far removed from the familiar.
The Harud idea germinated in Bashir’s mind in 2003, the year mobile phones were introduced in the Valley, a government decision that triggered a veritable scramble among the people. “The desperation to acquire the device was best exemplified by Kashmiris who paid migrant labourers to stand in queues on their behalf. People thought mobile phones would change their lives. But nothing changed,” says the director who left Kashmir in the early 1990s to pursue higher studies in Delhi and then a career as a television host and actor in Mumbai.
Bashir, whose film revolves around the plight of a Srinagar family grappling with the tragic disappearance of a young member, says: “We started with a 55-page screenplay. It went through a process of distillation, of constant paring down of the dialogues. The idea was to feel rather than understand.”
After his elder brother, Tauqir, a tourist photographer goes missing, a listless Rafiq makes an abortive attempt the cross the border into Pakistan. Like his ageing parents, Rafiq has little to look forward to and goes through the motions of life like an exhausted automaton.
As he meanders about aimlessly, he stumbles upon his brother’s camera with a roll of undeveloped film. It provides him a window to the past and a means of coming to terms with his present and future.
“The Valley has for years been in a state of magnified insecurity, a situation that causes great psychological damage especially among the youth,” says Bashir, explaining a complex situation in a nutshell. “I visit the Valley occasionally only to feel rootless. I cannot return. Similarly, in Mumbai, I am an outsider,” says Bashir, who essayed a crucial supporting role in Neeraj Pandey’s terrorism drama, A Wednesday.
The cast of Harud is headed by Iranian veteran Reza Naji, seen in Majid Majidi’s Children of Heaven and The Song of Sparrows.
Says Bashir: “Naseeruddin Shah was my first choice but once he pulled out of the film, I decided not to cast a local actor in the role of the old father. An actor of that age from the Valley would have come with a lot of baggage. Naji’s face is extremely expressive and cinematic. It is like a mirror capturing the reality of the place.”
Srinivasan, who, like Bashir, graduated from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, hit upon the idea of Pairon Talle when he returned to his city after spending some years in Mumbai. “This was the time when the satellite townships of Noida and Gurgaon were hit by a wave of shocking crimes. This film is my reaction to the changes that had occurred in my city while I was away,” he said.
“In the National Capital Region,” says Srinivasan, “tradition and modernity, custom and commerce are on a collision course as land ownership rapidly changes hands against a backdrop of rapid urbanisation.”
Pairon Talle, shot on HD cam, is set in an abandoned silica mine in the Aravallis. A watchman stands guard over the property although there is nothing left to protect. The watchman is subservience personified. His master, a middle-aged, pot-bellied man, exploits the situation to the hilt. Left to her own devices, the watchman’s young wife surrenders to the master. Her rebellion triggers a tragedy of enormous proportions.
In this surreal, eerily beautiful landscape, a contract killer is on the prowl and a young couple in love is on the run. Behind its seemingly unruffled exterior, Pairon Talle is an angry film. The narrative is punctuated with moments of startling violence. “I wanted to bring in genre elements into what is essentially an epic drama in the mould of classical Greek theatre,” says Srinivasan.
“The issues that the film addresses — land acquisition and honour killings — are burning issues today not just in Delhi but in other parts of the country as well,” says Srinivasan, whose first feature, 2001’s Divya Drishti, fetched him a clutch of awards, including best film, in Pakistan’s Kara Film Festival.
Pairon Talle, featuring Dibyendu Bhattacharya, equates the local people’s relationship with land with the widespread perception of a woman’s body as an asset. “Land is sold indiscriminately. Jats and Gujjars, who have traditionally enjoyed a deep bonding with their land, are making money but losing their souls. In this void, violence is always waiting to erupt,” explains Srinivasan.
That is the flip side of the India story. A constant fear of violence hangs over the land, be it a Valley seeking azaadi or the outskirts of India’s capital city sliding into chaos. Bringing this reality to the big screen calls for gumption, skill and integrity. Bashir and Srinivasan bring all that and more to the table.
— saibal.chatterjee@gmail.com