Art & Entertainment

Lal Salaam

Why does a man make a film like this? For what? For whom? The answer is that The Bores have completely taken over Art, says Manu Joseph.

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Lal Salaam
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On the third day after the film's release in a Mumbai theatre, there are exactly two women in the hall. And 37 men who look like lifetime members of Imperial Cinema where they show internationally-acclaimed soft-porn with Hindi dialogues like "George, kapade utaro". There is a reason why Lal Salaam, "the hard-hitting film", invited such an audience. 'Meaningful' cinema in India, like 'Partition' dramas, somehow cannot do without rape. When Subhash Ghai shows rudiments of breasts beneath damp clothing, it's exploitation of women. When 'serious film-makers' show a tribal girl being made to shed her clothes (very slowly) by an evil police inspector, it's a manifestation of the exploitation of the down-trodden. It's this crap that has made Lal Salaam in Mumbai get its rightful audience which clapped with one man shouting "well done" when Nandita Das, who plays a tribal girl, is raped by a (very evil) police inspector.

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While there are media reports about how Naxalite bodies are booking tickets for its comrades in the Northeast, in the rest of the nation it's a different story. The film is about a tribal girl whom the vagaries of life and such things make a Naxalite. Her doctor boyfriend, played by Sharad Kapoor, is against such a cartridge-clad fight against injustice. He once encounters the Naxalite commander, a Veerappan lookalike played by Makarand Deshpande, and the two argue in English in the middle of some jungle, because, you see, both are educated. There are songs too in the film. Some sung by Naxalities, angry after an escape from paramilitary forces. That's when men walk out for a quick smoke. But the producer thought he cannot make a Hindi film without songs. What he perhaps didn't know was that songs sung by fully-clothed couples while walking on grass beside white streams do not have the same value-addition as a concept called "item number".

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Though the film has laboured to bring some facts to light, with a decent research on the many nuances of tribal life, there are times in the cinema hall when one wonders why does a film-maker make a film? Second question. Why does a man make a film like this? For what? For whom? The answer is that The Bores have completely taken over Art. Just like they ruined the parallel cinema movement by boring us till they struck oil, the second coming of 'good' cinema will be led by these same bores who will never learn that even the lachrymose Schindler's List has a huge entertainment value. In the final analysis, this is not the kind of film that will make you keep your cellphone off for a long time.

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