Kerala 2008 – Press Mentorship Program

Day 05

Manish Golder: Dissonance and Harmony (Tokyo Sonata 1)
Sithara Vijayan: A Broken Note (Tokyo Sonata 2)
Gargi H.: A Pleasant Encounter
Amathul Wardha: The Destiny Continues (Adventurers)
Vaibhav Vats: Hand of Emir (Maradona)
Rima Mathew: The Flooded-Out (Fernando Birri)
Swetha Antony: Poetry of Female Bonding (Flowers of the Sky)
Rohini Kumar: Exhibition on the History of Malayalam Cinema
Ananya Dutta: A Spectacle, But Not Spectacular

"Tokyo Sonata" (1):
Dissonance and Harmony
By Manish Golder

Kiyoshi Kurosawa has etched out on screen a touching family drama in his latest film Tokyo Sonata. Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa), a chief administrator in a medical-supplies company before he is fired, finds it difficult to adapt to his unemployed status. With the gradual dissolution of social prestige, Sasaki's domestic authority is threatened as his elder son Taka (Yû Koyanagi) joins the American army while his younger son Kenji (Kai Inowaki) wants piano lessons. His wife Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi) is alienated and unhappy and unable to negotiate her emotional needs. Sasaki embarks on an arduous and, at times, absurd trip along with his family in distinct trajectories in an effort to "start over."

The film is shot mostly under cold, grey skies and the dying sun; the frames are mostly bled of colour — echoing the bleakness of urban Japan. The train rumbles past the middle-class neighbourhood screaming life waits for none — Sasaki and his like are isolated in their misery. The long queues of the jobless and the free food line; the games of deceptions Sasaki plays with his old school friend Kurosu (Kanji Tsuda) — the abject moral delinquency is a cruel reminder of the suppressed crises. Kurosu's daughter Mika is party to the secret, as is his wife — a contrasting but foreboding analogy of Sasaki's own household.

The dissonance of the Sasaki household is resolved in Kenji's sonata, as he performs for a Junior High School audition. Kurosawa uses familiar cinematic techniques to create visuals as potent allegories — the red chalk "national boundary" in Taka's room; the tangled web of electric cables and disorganized books and CDs mirroring Megumi's confusion and pathos. Kurosu says, "We're like a slowly sinking ship… The lifeboats are gone, the water's up to our mouths," recognizing the seeming ineluctability of their fate. The lone star, which appears momentarily above the sea at night, portends the ephemeral intangibility of Megumi's escapade and wishful thinking. The sand tracks of a car driven into the ocean at dawn denote the end of a trail, and Megumi, Sasaki and Kenji reunite at the dinner-table.

Kurosawa's Tokyo Sonata tracks the dichotomy of and the parallels between music and life — in their capacity to yield beauty and rhythm in the most unusual circumstances. It is also a less-than-simple tale of hope and reconciliation. 

Manish Golder
© FIPRESCI 2008

"Tokyo Sonata" (2):
A Broken Note
By Sithara Vijayan

Tokyo Sonata, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, was screened at the 13th IFFK 2008 in the World Cinema category. The film is a powerful family drama probing the dark territories existing in families. Kurosawa exposes, develops and recapitulates the issue, providing it with a transnational identity.

Sasaki, a man at his elemental best when ordering about everyone, finds one morning that he has been laid off from the job he was very proud of. The shock is so profound that he tries to hide the truth from his family and begins to act as if nothing has changed outwardly. The tension builds up, making the whole family masquerade in deception, tragically losing touch with each other.

The film is a poignant reflection of the uncertainty and dejection spreading among the people of Japan. The unemployment dilemma aggravated through outsourcing is dealt with throughout the film in a subtle way. The library where Sasaki whiles away his time is filled with similar people, a clear indication of the gravity of the problem. The same unemployment forces young Japanese men to join the American army and to fight under the Americans.

Kurosawa delves deep into the ugliness and darkness affecting the family. The monosyllables uttered at the dinner table, even with the whole family assembled together, show emotional detachment and loneliness. Monetary loss has led to the disintegration of relationships and crisis, which luckily forces the family to rethink the situation and to start over. 

A typical Japanese situation portrayed in a rich, funny way, prompting the viewers to reflect on their life and to start all over if the situation so demands.

Sithara Vijayan
© FIPRESCI 2008

A Pleasant Encounter
By Gargi H.

This is the 13th International Film Festival of Kerala. But what really happened to this place with the film festival? Did it change something? Did it change anything? I think it did. And a real lot. The number of people changed. The kind of people changed. This time, we can clearly see that it's just not the "intellectual" crowd that comes here to watch movies. From Day One, I have been among a crowd of people with different nationalities and varying interests.

But then, when I am thinking what is happening, standing in the lobby of Hotel Horizon, having come here for a workshop, I see a lot of people who are staying here, who have come to represent their films from their countries far away. When I see this man among this whole lot, holding an instrument that looks almost like a swan, I'm suddenly interested. It's about music.

I felt apprehensive about talking to him. I was thinking, one doesn't really know how these people are. They might be highly celebrated people whom one might not know how to approach. Will he be interested or intrigued, or will he just ignore me. But talking to him was as easy as a cheesecake. He easily smiled, and said he was Faizal from France and the instrument is an oud. No, never heard of it. And slyly I try to ask him, how and when can I hear this play. Before that question really affects him, someone calls him from behind and he leaves in a flash.

The next time I meet him on a lift. I tell him in real urgency that I really want to hear your instrument play. He says come over, now I can play for you. I get off on his floor, stand in front of his room for two seconds after he opened the door and while he is waiting for me to enter, with this certain Indian mental block of entering some stranger's room. But it's too bad of me to even think of it that way. A musician with a musical instrument inviting me just to listen to him is more than an honour.

The music the oud played was something absolutely new to me. It is a classical string instrument, more like the sarod which has an undertone of sadness, whatever raga you play. The moment he started playing, I remembered having heard it in Arabian contexts.

For some minutes he took me through many levels in my own self. It was absolutely beautiful to hear him play. He reminded me of emotions, love.

Yes, a film festival is not just a film festival. It is a venue where you get to know people from everywhere. It is a place where many currents meet. Happy to be here.

Gargi H.
© FIPRESCI 2008

"Adventurers":
The Destiny Continues
By Amathul Wardha

Adventures are inevitable in human life. A smooth-going life is the dream that everyone has. But the outcome of adventures depends on how an individual deals with it. Luckily, the protagonists of Béla Paczolay's debut film Adventurers (Kalandorok) have enough courage to overcome their difficulties with their easy-going mentality.

A comic road movie that follows the lives of three generations, the film reveals the gravity of unemployment and the economic crisis, along with their devastating effects on the intimacy required by a family. The main character, a trumpet player whose life falls through, asks his son to go with him to visit his grandfather. Their cross-border journey through Transylvania brings them together and gives them the maturity they need for survival.

The rolling Transylvanian landscape is brilliantly captured, adding authenticity to the road trip formula. Music is aptly used and makes the film moving, and it also gives the viewers a mood of a picnic.

The climax leaves something to the viewers to ponder on. Will the maturity the characters gained make them excel in future life?

Amathul Wardha
© FIPRESCI 2008

"Maradona":
Hand of Emir
By Vaibhav Vats

If director Emir Kusturica had just compiled random footage of Maradona and allowed it to play, Maradona would have been a far better film. Instead, so obsessed is Kusturica with stamping his own touch, to drawing attention to his own presence, that his contribution is more a burden to the film than anything else.

What Kusturica forgets is that in any documentary about the Argentinean legend, the story is Maradona himself. The film tries to flow at its own pace, but is regularly interrupted by the banal commentary of Kusturica, in a mostly incomprehensible accent. It also becomes clear that the director is ill-equipped to offer any new insights into the vigorously documented life of Maradona. Without this intellectual orientation, the director's background voice only serves up tiresome platitudes.  

There is also the criminal trivialization of a serious, emotive subject as tasteless animation is introduced before the start of each section. Here we have Maradona (in animated form, of course) squaring up with a ball against the likes of Thatcher, Blair and Bush, eventually heaping some form of cheap insult. If any humour was intended, the audience watching at IFFK couldn't find any.   

What saves Maradona, in the end, is Maradona himself. Diego Maradona is such a lively, engaged subject that he manages to light up a film, even with as many problems as this one. In the interviews that the director conducts with the legend, Maradona is the incredible character he is, witty, honest and emotionally charged. Maradona compares the Hand of God goal to 'pickpocketing an Englishman's wallet', calls Bush 'human garbage' and talks about his love for Latin America. These are, by far, the most riveting moments of the film.

Even here, Kusturica is not content to allow Maradona a free run on the stage, the camera focusing on the director an inordinate number of times.

Then we have the extraordinary canvas of his life, filled with anecdotes and miracles, incredible heights and miserable depths — a treasure trove for anyone who wishes to tell a tale. Kusturica often uses footage of Maradona's audacious goals, intermittently in the narration. These are goals of such breathtaking beauty, of Martian brilliance, that they mostly send the audience into delirious convulsions of joy.

The best parts of the documentary footage are the sequences related to the Church of Maradona, a religious sect named and conceived in the footballer's name. Another poignant moment is the beautifully shot scene of Maradona singing a song written about him, in one of Buenos Aires' nightclubs.

Yet these are rare moments where the director's agency leads to beneficial results. Usually his interventions stifle the rhythm of Maradona, which had enormous potential, if only Kusturica had allowed Maradona to reign on the stage, just like on the football field.

Vaibhav Vats
© FIPRESCI 2008

The Flooded-Out
By Rima Mathew

Flooded Out (Los Inundados, 1962) is a social political satire about the marginalized in Argentina. Fernando Birri, considered to be one of the fathers of the New Latin American Cinema, is famous for his films — feature and documentary — portraying the life of the poor in Latin America in the 1950s. His work is strongly influenced by Italian neorealism.

"The wily story, not flowery but sincere" starts when an underdeveloped area of Santa Fe is flooded by an overflowing river. It's election time, and the flood victims, after being taken to the city centre, are provided with more food and clothes than they need by the different competing political parties. But all these fraudulent efforts last only till the election, and the day after, the flood victims are again discarded. One morning, the family of Dolorus (Pirucho Gomez), which had found shelter, like many other families, in an abandoned train, discovers that the train cars have been hooked up to a locomotive and driven to a much more prosperous area. For the first time, they live a life they have dreamt of. However, it won't last, since the government decides to shift them back to their own village.

The film is a tender and picaresque comedy, played by non-professional actors. It reveals the allegory of the oppressed and dispossessed through resilient Dolorus, his wife who runs the family, their numerous children and a daughter who falls in love with a rich young man. The cynical and duplicitous politicians trying to score votes, the tactful reporters who want to impose their viewpoints on the exploited, and the sluggish government deliberately delaying the orders — all these images are familiar and unfortunately, at least in developing countries, still the same until today. The ups and downs of life, the ingenuity for survival, human foibles, are all shown through humorous incidents. The film keeps intact its freshness and enthusiasm throughout.

The film lacks a well-knit composition in the long run. The countless issues which the flood victims encounter in their odyssey make the film a little cluttered. By the end of the film, even though we, along with the victims, realize that the situation is the same as before, we are much comforted. Finally they realize that complaining is no use. I could easily familiarize with this…

Rima Mathew
© FIPRESCI 2008

"Flowers of the Sky":
Poetry of Female Bonding
By Swetha Antony

"You were my enemy. I lost my enemy when I became a mother. Now I'm free." These are the unspoken words of a daughter addressed to her mother that conclude Prasanna Vithanage's Flowers of the Sky (Akasha Kusum). The dimensions this outpouring opens out are many. It is not easy to put in words the nuances that go into a mother-daughter relationship.

It may be a theme that is worn out, but this film stands out for the chemistry it creates through composition, precise dialogues, evocative use of silence and very controlled performances from the actors, especially Malini Foneska, who plays Sandhya Rani, an actress who was once the darling of the silver screen but is now lonely and forgotten. Married at a young age, she was forced to leave her daughter and join the film industry to feed her family. Now she makes a living renting out rooms to film and television stars, which brings Shalika, an upcoming actress, into her life. When Sandhya Rani gets a call from the police about someone who claims to be her daughter, a new portal into her past is thrown open. Now it becomes Shalika's turn to support her, and they go on a search together.

The narrative progresses through static but poetic shots. The pace is built up not through dialogues or action, but through the shades of expressions captured by the camera. Medium shots with shifting focus help convey what is left unspoken. In almost all the frames, women are placed such that they both contrast as well as complement each other. Weaving into its narrative the many roles played by women, this film is an ode to female bonding both off screen and on. Flowers of the Sky is also an introspective look at the medium of cinema and what it does to human lives, especially those of women.

Swetha Antony
© FIPRESCI 2008

Exhibition on the History of Malayalam Cinema
By Rohini Kumar

A film festival is not just an occasion to view films, but also one to remember and bring to life the past of cinema. This is exactly what the retrospective and homage sections do in a film festival. As an attempt in a similar direction, as part of the IFFK 2008, the Kerala State Film Development Corporation (KSFDC) and the Kerala State Chalachithra Academy (KSCA) have jointly organized an exhibition of photographs on the history of Malayalam cinema. The exhibition was inaugurated on the 13th of December by the eminent  Indian film director and jury member of IFFK, Dr. Jabbar Patel, at the Kanakakunnu Palace in Thiruvananthapuram.

The exhibition displays memorable images of stars and celebrities, photo stills from landmark films, shooting stills, and the albums of events from the past IFFKs, providing us glimpses into the history of Malayalam cinema and IFFK. There are also exhibits describing the timeline that maps the long and colourful journey of Malayalam cinema. In addition, also on display are some of the earliest pieces of equipment used in filmmaking, like the old 10 KB lights that were used in studio floors, a 16mm camera, the once very popular Mitchell camera (the one that was used in the making of the Malayalam blockbuster of all times, Chemmeen, 1965), a slide projector, a Moviola editing device, and so on.

The arrangement of photographs takes the viewer on a journey through history, one that begins from black-and-white images and progresses to the colourful images of the near present. It is a nostalgic trip through the various facets of Malayalam cinema that also captures those great narrative moments through the luminous expressions of great actors. For the admirers of  Adoor Gopalakrishnan, there are some impressive working stills from his sets.

Undoubtedly, putting up such an exhibition is a very good way to familiarize cineastes with Malayalam film history, especially on the occasion of the film festival. But unfortunately, the way it is organized leaves much to be desired.

Though more than 50,000 pictures are on display, the majority are from the festival albums of previous years. One would have expected more and more varied images from different spheres of Malayalam cinema. Another shortcoming is the lack of bilingual captions. Even in cases where they are provided, the information given is sparse, typically just the year, the title of the film and its director. A few captions also mention the names of the actors. More detailed captions would have been of great benefit to film lovers and students of Malayalam cinema, and even for the general film viewer. Even the exhibits dealing with the various achievements of Malayalam cinema are written only in Malayalam. Another drawback is the remoteness of the venue of exhibition from the theatres where the festival films are screened. This could be one reason for the low turnout of visitors to the show.

Despite all these shortcomings, the exhibit is a significant attempt and something to be pursued and expanded in the coming years.

Rohini Kumar
© FIPRESCI 2008

A Spectacle, But Not Spectacular
By Ananya Dutta

You would find them in long queues — holding a pen in one hand and juggling the festival schedule and synopsis hand-book in the other — or else you'd spot them sitting on the steps of the theatre entrances in large groups strategizing how to catch as many films possible — if not there you'd see them at the tea-shop near the theatre discussing the finer points of the films they've just seen. These people are the life of any festival — the visitors.

The Kerala International Film Festival has close to 6,000 registered visitors out of which about a hundred are international viewers. The diverse viewership is divided in their opinions on everything — from the selection of films at the festival to the facilities available.

Most of them seem to agree that the selection of films at the festival has improved as the years have gone by. They enjoy the variety that has come to the festival. Most visitors look forward to the foreign films and were pleased to see that films from as far as Latin America, Japan and Indonesia were up for grabs. But altogether too many people are complaining that they are yet to see an extraordinary film.

They pick and choose their films in different ways. The competition section is perhaps the most attractive destination for most. "There is something more thrilling about watching a competition film," feels Kripa, "And then there is always the fun in casting your vote."

Dr. Nair on the other hand prefers to catch up on the world cinema section or relies on recommendations from friends and other cinema lovers. Arya finds the festival hand-book insufficient and likes to do her research on the Internet before she ventures to a screening. Nostalgia is what attracts M. Harikumar to the retrospective and contemporary masters' section films. Melissa, a delegate from Canada, likes to catch some of the good Indian films that are being screened.

Till 6th day of the festival Blindness; everyone has either already seen it or has been strongly recommended to watch it. At its second screening on Wednesday, visitors had to be turned away as the theatre was full. Some of the competition films including Postcards from Leningrad, The Photograph and Refugee have also created quite a buzz.

As far as the organization of the festival is concerned, the newly introduced reservation system is being hotly debated and there is a clear divide between those for it and against it. While some have learnt the ropes and reserve their seats in advance, others find fault with it. Dr Nair makes sure he books his daily three shows. "You should have seen the long queues and almost stampede situation at busy theatres like Sree or Kairali last year," he says.

K. Gopalakrishanan on the other hand finds the reservation system "foolish". He thinks letting the crowd half an hour before the screening instead of just ten minutes before the beginning would take care of the queues. S. Menon asks us to spare a thought for the older generation who are not as familiar with the computer and find it difficult to make bookings.

Arya thinks that all this talk about reservations is much ado about nothing, "It's the new thing at this festival so naturally everyone's talking about it." Speaking of innovations at this year's festival, Aparna has complaints about the dedicated auto-rickshaws that were introduced this year. "It's not working out, they're difficult to find and don't always go where you want them to."

The turnout at the cinema houses has been incredible and at times too much to manage for the organizers. Even though most people are still waiting for an awe-inspiring film that would define this festival, and despite a few glitches with subtitles, projectors and blackouts during screenings, everyone seems to be having fun.

Ananya Dutta
© FIPRESCI 2008

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