Category: 2020

Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

I am writing a review on a movie that has me super stoked. I saw Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan yesterday night. It lived up to its hype in my head. Of course, I have seen better movies dealing with gay issues and gay lives. But most of these movies come from abroad. We have had brilliant movies like My Brother, Nikhil and Aligarh that touch upon LGBTQIA lives sensitively, but an all and out romantic comedy that deals with a very proud, out-of-the-closet gay man – never! Very recently, we have had Ek Ladki Ko Dekha To Aisa Laga, with such a brilliant script and supporting cast. But let’s admit it, though I have the greatest respect and admiration for Sonam Kapoor who takes on the role of a lesbian, and makes her the lead in a movie dealing with queer love and coming out, I just don’t like her acting.

So, that brings me back to this no-holds-barred out, gay love story! The movie deals with two boys, Kartik and Aman, who fall in love in Delhi and have to make a journey to Aman’s hometown to attend his cousin sister’s wedding. Aman’s dad finds out about his son’s sexuality and the resulting dynamic between intolerance and acceptance forms the crux of the movie. I won’t lie and state that the movie didn’t see things through the utterly rosy lens of a romantic comedy. It does however deal with a lot of issues, that become the winning formula of any Ayushmann Khurrana movie.

It is very important that an A-lister like Ayushmann has taken up a role that almost no one in Bollywood would touch. Homosexuals were to be made fun of, to be derided. How can I forget John and Abhishek in Dostana? But there was not a moment in this movie that was cringe worthy. Kartik, played by Ayushmann, is a bold, vibrant, out homosexual man, who leads the movie out through the messy mind of homophobia.

Most people find the first half of the movie appealing, but for me, it was the second half that held weight. It has a brilliant dialogue between Kartik and Aman, when Kartik asks Aman to stand up for himself and not get married to a girl. This is the most important conversation for me, because what one must always realise, or make very healthy attempts to, is the truth of who one is. One must always be true to who he or she happen to be. That is what Kartik tries telling Aman. To love yourself before you can ever possibly love anyone else.

Ayushmann had my heart when he wore the rainbow flag and gave a speech on the dangers of homophobia. The whole scene is over the top, but which self-respecting gay man hasn’t had to say these words to someone in their lives? Well, maybe not shirtless, but hey, who can say that hasn’t happened either? Ayushmann’s Kartik is where LGBTQIA people reach after a while: being sure of who they are and what they want from society. It is Jitendra Kumar’s Aman Tripathi’s shoulders that the movie stands upon. The small town boy who knows he is different, is in love, but cannot face up to parental pressures. This is his story. His journey.

Ayushmann and Jitendra have done lovely work. Many situations in their lives corresponded to either my life, or varied stories I have heard from the lives of my queer friends. Everything that Kartik says in regards to sexuality I have said at some point or the other. It was like hearing myself speak at times. The most important thing is when he tells Aman, twice, in the course of the movie, to completely and deliberately disregard what his father is telling him to do, because he must listen to his own heart. This is not Romeo telling Juliet to disregard convention, this is a Romeo telling a Romeo to understand biology. It’s a very important factor, that most of us do not notice.

Jitendra Kumar took on a role no one really wanted. But he has done lovely work with it. He has beautiful eyes and the vulnerability in them speaks volumes. He is the everyday, desi homosexual who is caught between his biology, his love and his family. And what a family! The supporting cast has done such a fantastic job! Gajraj Rao who plays Aman’s father, Shankar, and Neena Gupta who plays Aman’s mother, Sunaina, have outdone themselves. Their back story has such a layered sensitivity that again is briefly touched upon – having made choices ruled by convention instead of their own hearts. Some people may find Bhumi Pednekar’s cameo confusing, but being gay, one realizes how many of these incidences happen with straight girls and gay boys. (And it’s a nod to Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, their earlier movie together.)

The time given to this movie was too short. It moved too fast for me, especially whilst bringing in so many valid, heavyweight issues and dealing with them quickly. Most of the situations that needed a serious tone were made to seem totally flippant, like the scene where Shankar beats up Kartik. Homosexuals have been killed due to homophobia, and in this case, it was comic fare. I will also very grudgingly give this leeway, because to make something so serious occur would change the entire tone of the movie. Laughter is always easier to digest than tragedy – well, at least for me. I want a happy ending.

I left the theatre feeling good. I know the script had flaws. I know it isn’t a brilliant movie. But it worked for me, because of the very fact that the issues the LGBTQIA community faces were not made into a trope. They were given due importance, without sounding too preachy. And even if it did sound too preachy, it’s necessary, concerning certain audiences are seeing soemthing like this for the first time, in this kind of light! The movie even gave power to the girl who Aman is to marry. Strong women abound in the movie: women with voices, be it Sunaina or Goggle, Kusum or Champa. Everything fell neatly into place – nothing like real life – but if Raj can have Simran, then Kartik should so definitely have his happily ever after with Aman, too.

1917

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

I have seen how directors pour in beauty in a war film. One only has to watch Spielberg weave his mastery in Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and War Horse and a certain realization grips you. It’s poetry. Sam Mendes tries this with 1917. He attempts and succeeds to create a great dignity to the genre. I loved the film for itself, because it has such poetic moments! But it also left me wanting – I shall let you know exactly what.

The movie starts with this shot that starts with wildflowers and seems like a seamless shot of artistry in film making. The shot goes on and on and it makes you realise that the tunnel the protagonists are walking in is like this endless horror stream. The shot IS the tunnel that the Great War was based on. Sam Mendes takes you into the horror that was tunnel warfare during that Great War that made Tolkien write his epic fantasy. But I digress.

Each shot had artistry that made you want to pause each frame and look at the detailing given to the scene. It is estimated that 484,143 British horses, mules, camels and bullocks died between 1914 and 1918. And many hundreds of dogs, carrier pigeons and other animals also died on various fronts. And Mendes brings this poignantly to the screen. You are taken into the muck and are laid down with the bodies of horses and dogs in the very first scenes of the movie. The way he portrays death: it’s like you can smell the rotting of the carcasses, and feel the blood-soaked rats creep over your shoes.

Mendes takes the “one-shot” format and hypnotises your senses, it feels as though if you blink you will miss something really important. And it really does work, because within this tableau of breathless war chaos he stretches the one-shot effect to feature length. There is this feel of a continuous cinematic POV. But I will state what my partner who is an avid gamer stated just as we were leaving the theatre after the film ended. He mentioned that the movie made him feel as though he was in a video game and he was seeing everything from the first gamer perspective. And that hit me hard – it was true.

I don’t know whether that made me wonder why it made me feel so immersed into the action… but I will also state that though I was immersed in the action, I could not feel any of the emotional connect with any one character that I had felt while watching Schindler or Ryan or Joey. 1917 then seems to be involving for sure, but it is also seems impassive as it leads the viewer through the battlefields of northern France. But on hindsight, if one would like to read between scripting sensibility, the impassivity could also relate to the lead character’s dejection. I immersed so deeply into the movie’s environs that I felt what he was feeling. A loss of hope and complete passivity towards the situation at hand.

George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman are cast as Schofield and Blake, the lance corporals recruited to get into enemy territory with a message for fellow troops waiting to launch a potentially catastrophic assault. The Germans have seemed to pull back from the front lines, suggesting that they are retreating. But, in fact, they’re lying in wait, armed and ready to repel the planned British push. Together, Schofield and Blake must reach their comrades, amongst whom Blake’s brother is one, and halt the attack.

Production designer, Dennis Gassner, has recreated the war imagery to such astonishing detail that one can actually feel the utter barbarity and chaos of the war. The surreal cinematography by Roger Deakins takes you on a slow roller coaster ride, shifting between muck and death to the gentle falling of cherry blossoms. The pathos of death comes randomly, sometimes with such stark jolting horror and other times with adequate preparation. Make no mistake, death lingers in every frame of the movie. Even where there is hope, the inevitability of it filters through George McKay’s eyes. The scenes that remain seared in my mind is that of a burning church, covering the screen in a surreal yellow haze, a dead dog lying on its side in wind-blown grass and a well-fed rat wanting human food.

The movie may not reach to the heights of human pathos as some of the movies I mentioned earlier have. Probably, because, except for the main characters brotherhood, the journey doesn’t let us bond with the affliction of the other secondary characters. It lacks this element that seems to me to be a fatal flaw in a movie that deals with war. It is not just death that one must deal with, at the uttermost edge of the precipice, you do not just see the abyss below but also the sky above.

McKay tries bringing this elemental humanity within his character. However, his meeting with other living beings is so fleeting that he can only show relatability to the minimum. We see human resurrection in the saving of a child, the concern of a wayfarer and the grace of a superior officer, but these are fleeting. And if I must play the Devil’s Advocate, I would perhaps mention that hope is not just a dangerous thing, as Colonel MacKenzie states, it is also a fleeting thing. This depiction is perhaps what makes 1917 epic.

And if that isn’t enough to make the movie a worthy watch, then it would be the song I heard Johnny Cash sing such a long time ago, which has been sung by a Devon soldier at the final stages of Schofield’s journey. The Wayfaring Stranger resonates into our hero’s senses as he walks out from a river he has fallen into. The song is a resurrection in itself as he arises cleansed of his wounds in icy water. The movie touches a spirituality that only those who recognise empathy feel. It forms the crux of peace that so many war ravaged hearts ache for. After the tumult of war and death and loss, the voice of the soldier is like a balm that most movies that deal with sadness require.

And if you are like me, where the allusion to religion and salvation isn’t really a matter of hope, then the penultimate scene is Schofield’s dash across the line of control with bombs exploding to try and stop the attack. It is a mirror of the silence and death of the first scenes which is a fait accompli and what could actually transpire again if the message isn’t delivered. The movie takes you back full circle. I was relieved.

Albus Dumbledore and the Convenient Closet

Published on by Harpreet Chhachhia1 Comment

I have always been a fan of fantasy. Before I began my journey with the books of Tolkien, Rowling, Paolini, Guin, Pullman, I devoured Enid Blyton, Tintin, Asterix and then historical romances. Yep, I am a sucker for a happy ending and knights in shining armour. Then you have Strider, blazing through the North and rescuing Frodo. Gandalf the Grey standing at the bridge of Khazad-dum and yelling, well, you know. And then when I turned 23, at the pinnacle of heart break, a friend gifts me my first Harry Potter. In it, he inscribes, “to magic your pessimism away.”

I will never forget that. Twenty-two years later we still reminisce on that moment. But twenty-two years later, Rowling tweets, “Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?” With this she declared herself firmly on the side of a transphobe who refuses to acknowledge that people born as men can transition into women and vice versa.

There are so many things wrong with the world today. Too many to count. I have been disillusioned and crestfallen at the plight of humanity. Through the years, though I have been allowed to build certain notions about certain people. People who otherwise seem woke. I mention this because I have people whom I love and cherish, who love me in return, but who have blinded themselves to certain political stances that abuse basic human rights. These are people I live with and break bread with.

So, I understand that everyone has a right to their own opinion. But some opinions are just – so against open-minded thought. How can I not say that the opinion is wrong? One of my friends, who is well-versed in mythic structures, tells me how the west, rooted in Abrahamic thought, sees things as absolutes. These are black and white pillars, with not a shred of grey in between. And I would argue with him about Tolkien and Rowling…

Irrespective of the fact that Sauron is all evil, I point out that Gollum is an amalgamation of grey. Irrespective of the fact that Voldemort is purely black, I point out how Harry and Ron both show tendencies of the negative. For the sake of what I am feeling, I will restrict this piece to Rowling. She helped me leave the world that seemed so bleak, at a time when my heart broke by the shattering of a first love. She took me into a flight of fantasy that I had not felt since I understood Tolkien. I loved Hedwig and I loved Hermione and I loved Dumbledore.

I have been effeminate growing up. I have been ridiculed and harassed and bullied. I have been beaten and terrorised by my own father, for being a boy who was understanding a different sexuality. I learnt to behave in a certain way through fear and conditioning by my peers. I never thought that I needed to transition. I was asked this once by a very dear aunt. I knew I liked boys then, I knew I was gay and I did not want to transition into a woman. But I followed all stories of any alternate sexuality and I felt a bond with them, like most of us who are searching for camaraderie and similarity, in a world that doesn’t make sense and that is bent on rejection, instead of acceptance. I learnt that the world is built from many, many colours and mine could be my own and I could allow it to be different, at different times.

Life is fluid.

When I read Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone, I wondered why this stark differentiation between Slytherin and the rest of the houses? Would all Slytherins prove to be negative? When I read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I identified with Remus Lupin. But Rowling had other plans for him with Tonks. Then I realised something unexpected was afoot, when Dumbledore takes Fawkes and disappears from his office in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. “He’s got style” could be said of so many queer people, after all. The hints of his relationship with Grindelwald made me squirm with joy. But nothing was ever – ever – overtly mentioned. I made arguments on the reason for this. I stood up for her writing.

As I read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I was so consumed by the brilliance of Snape, I avoided the horror that was the portrayal of Voldemort. The dark in the villain let in not a shred of light. He became Palpatine, he became Sauron. There was nothing fluid there. It was just a void. That was the only book of the series that I read only once.

After the series ended, after the Deathly Hallows broke its records, after the hoopla died down, she calmly mentioned that Dumbledore was gay, in 2007. When I heard the news, I was over the moon. Gradually, I heard the arguments of how she had kept Dumbledore in a closet according to convenience and how she outed him as per similar suitability… of course, I once again had my arguments ready. She didn’t need to explain his sexuality when she had hardly mentioned anything much about his past in the first place. And Dumbledore was hardly a happy character, he was manipulative, a recovering fascist, a person who believed in ultimate sacrifices from those who could only be conceived as ‘casualties of war’. Although there was one question, I never really asked –

Would it have made a difference to me, as an out, proud, gay man? All those years ago, while getting over a heart break, and worrying about society, and coming out and father figures letting me down… would it have made any difference to read if someone I admired in a fictional work, that was breaking records all over the world, that was bringing children back to the written word? Would it have? Would it have made a difference knowing that the Dumbledore, I grew with in the course of a decade, was gay? That Dumbledore who had a twinkle in his eyes, who wore outlandish clothes and said the most bizarre and beautiful things, who helped the main three at every turn, who so, so many looked up to, was gay?

Simply put, yes.

On a blog, a writer stated, Rowling “has fetishized Dumbledore’s gay pain so much that she is unwilling to write any healing for him.” Which is a complete fact. Both the homosexuals, in the series, suffer and probably, justifiably, but there you have it – crime and punishment. Where is the rising above? Where is the buoyancy of spirit? Where is the resurrection? Where is the coming out – if not of sexuality, of love? Queer identity, by its history, finds momentum by acts of bravery and expression. But I forget, that happens in the real world, in my world.

On 19th December, 2019, I read Rowling’s tweet. At first, I thought I mistook the meaning behind what was written. Then I searched for context. I found it. I understood it. Then read the tweet again. I was shaken. At that point in time, I understood that she did not understand. She, like so many others in life, did not comprehend the beauty of difference, of diversity and the spectrum of existence. None of us can know it all. Most of us try. She was not one of those. Hermione Granger would probably look at her creator and cringe … because irrespective of the fact that Harry Potter and J K Rowling share the same birthday, to my chagrin, I find that Rowling has more in common with James Potter.

That being said, a writer I value a lot, a mentor, realised how I was feeling. He appreciated my perspective and tried to help me align world views. He quietly sent me a WhatsApp message: “Someone who hates Nazis can be awkward with homosexuals. We don’t have to punish her. Why does she have to carry a flag for gay people, when it’s not her lived experience. She did her best. We can’t love people when they do ‘approved’ behaviour.” He ended, “The jackfruit does not bear grapes.” And I felt as though I was Harry, at the end of one book, in the series, and he was Dumbledore, (a confident, wise, out gay man) talking to me of the lessons I needed to learn after experience.

I have wondered what the ones with alternate sexuality who are also fans of the series are feeling. When someone with a voice as big as Rowling’s speaks out against one’s identity, how does one consign to the fact that hers is just one voice? But that is just what we have to remember! No matter how big or dynamic it is, another voice should have no impact on who you are or who you wish to become. It is a voice, with great power, but we have to understand, it speaks from its own limitations and experiences. Every human being is flawed. Dumbledore is flawed. Rowling is flawed. And so, ultimately, the voice that you have to listen to must always come from within you and based on your own experiences.

Edited: 29 November, 2024