Subir Roy: Two films and a nation

Two films, Asha Jaoar Majhe (Labour of Love) and Bajrangi Bhaijaan, both released recently, could not be more different. The former is an art film that has played to very limited audiences. Even in Kolkata, where Bengalis like to see themselves as connoisseurs and patrons of high art, the film had a tough time securing a slot at the main hall of the state-owned Nandan cinema complex. The latter, on the other hand, is an out and out big budget commercial venture which has become the second highest grosser ever with more to come in.

The former marks the sparkling debut of Aditya Vikram Sengupta as a director and has won him two awards - as the best debut director in Venice Days (the independent fringe event to the Venice Film festival) and the best first film of a director at the National Film Awards. The latter is one more hit starring Salman Khan in his decades-long film career and who, also the producer, has won his prize where it matters, at the box office.

It is difficult to call the former a Bengali film because it is totally without dialogue, except for the single instance of a voice in the background from a radio referring to the hard times of a recession. But what dominates the movie is the vividness of the varied sounds captured which has won it a national award for audiography.

Asha Jaoar Majhe is the story of one day in the life of a very ordinary lower middle class couple, tied down to the schedule of their respective jobs which allows them virtually no time to be with each other and whose love really falls in between their coming and going, something the Bengali title captures.

The climax of this film, in which nothing happens and which explores the minutest details of the most humdrum of things around us, is the few moments the couple spends together in an idealised early morning. The sensitivity of the romance captured in the woman putting on a bindi and the man setting right her sari pinned to her blouse is reminiscent of Satyajit Ray's depiction of his heroines in similarly muted romantic settings. What is extraordinary is that at the end you realise you have sat totally engrossed through 85 minutes, watching absolutely nothing happening in a celebration of the utterly mundane.

Bajrangi Bhaijaan, on the other hand, is boisterous and jolly, capturing the cacophony of Indian daily life in Delhi's Chandni Chowk and complete with dance numbers - must for any commercial Hindi movie. The story, a carefully crafted vehicle for a potboiler, centres around a cute mute Pakistani girl of six who gets separated from her mother while on a visit to India, latches on to a good-for-nothing youngster who cannot shake her off and eventually realises to his utter conservative Hindu horror (he is a faithful devotee of Hanuman) that she is not just a non-vegetarian Muslim but a Pakistani to boot who cheers for the Pakistani cricket team on television.

Eventually there is nothing for the naïve young man to do (oh yes, in between he and the attractive Kareena Kapoor get romantically attached) but to go to Pakistan to locate the parents of the mute girl who cannot help show the way. Quite naturally he is taken to be an Indian spy and hounded by the Pakistani security forces.

Perhaps the most realistic and well-done part of the film is the accomplished Nawazuddin Siddiqui playing the role of a TV news reporter who thinks he has the story of a lifetime in the young man-little girl duo, only to be fobbed off by his newsroom which loses interest when it becomes clear that the young man is not really an Indian spy. Eventually, in desperation, he uploads his footage of tracking the two onto the internet where the story goes viral and plays a role in tracking down the girl's mother and home.

What sets apart this commercial movie from its genre is there is virtually no violence and very little of a romantic angle. It is neither a love story nor one where the super hero (a staple for Salman Khan) bests the violent villainous. Instead it plays up to popular emotions by latching on to a sweet little lost girl who loves to cuddle sheep. Its major departure is to discover the Good Samaritan hidden underneath so many Pakistanis who are routinely negatively portrayed in popular Indian cinema.

It is a commercially slick production that is stereotypical in terms of its building blocks but breaks new ground by making a commercial success out of the offbeat sentiment - be human, forget political boundaries. Time was when India had its art films but its popular cinema was light years behind Hollywood - utterly inadequate both technically and in carefully crafting emotional content. Today the nation has quality in both art and popular cinema. Bollywood is still second to Hollywood but turning out to be a good learner.

subirkroy@gmail.com