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Images of another world Masterpieces
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Emotions, propaganda and culture. Cinema Club of Coimbatore’s film festival had them all, writes K. Jeshi
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Photos: M. Periasamy
Love in the time of politics Di waits to catch a sight of her beloved in Road Home
It is love at first sight for young Zhao Di in the Chinese film Road Home. When she meets Luo Changyu, the young school teacher sent to her village, they exchange glances. The courtship is interrupted when the teacher is summoned b
y the new communist government because he is deemed as a ‘Rightist’. But he returns to the village forever for Di.
The intense story also takes you on a journey into the culture of China, the road to development and touches upon the political background of the anti-Rightist Movement.
The French film The Dream life of Angels captures the status of women in modern French society, where women live without a family structure. Penniless Isa and Marie become friends, and Isa moves in with Marie, who’s flat-sitting for a comatose mother and child who are in hospital following a car crash.
Heartbreak
Isa exemplifies the positive aspects of women liberation. She begins to visit the girl in whose flat they live, and reads to her. Marie presents the negative sides; she falls for a rich youth and begins to dream he is her love. When he dumps her after a few days, she jumps to death from her window.
Paradise Now (Arabic) is a political film which highlights the Israel-Palestinian issue. Two close friends, Palestinians Said and Khaled are recruited by an extremist group to perpetrate a terrorist attack in Tel-Aviv by blowing themselves up. Things go wrong, and they are separated. The film deals with human emotions, how situations push individuals into terrorism and how their situation is exploited by others.
Italian film Malena deals with so many things; it gives one a sense about fascist Italy, World War II, coming of age and a woman’s struggle to overcome gossip and jealousy to create an honest life for herself despite hardship. Malèna, a beautiful, silent outsider, moves to Sicily to be with her husband Nico, who promptly goes off to war. Twelve-year-old Renato is smitten by Malena, his first crush. As Renato grows toward manhood, he watches her suffering, loneliness and grief when her husband is reported dead, her poverty and search for work and her humiliation.
“We wanted to bring a slice of different cultures through the international film festival,” says S. Kamala Kannan, President of the Cinema Club of Coimbatore, organisers of the event. They did a lot of legwork to get in visual communication students in the city for the festival and their effort paid off. The venue, Corporation Kalaiarangam in R.S. Puram, was teeming with youngsters, an indication of the changing perception towards cinema.
“We visited eight colleges in the city and the students went back with lessons on how to read films,” says Kavignar Puviyarasu of the club. “The festival was a platform for them to understand the themes handled by international filmmakers and their presentation,” he adds. Variety ruled and the festival was a potpourri of culture. What more, the students also got an opportunity to learn the nuances of filmmaking from director Ram, who has made his presence felt with Katrathu Tamil.
Road Home was everyone’s favourite. The film begins in black and white in present day China when city businessman Luo Yusheng returns to his village for the funeral of his father, village teacher Luo Changyu. His mother insists upon following the tradition of carrying the coffin back to their remote village by foot so that her husband’s spirit will remember its way home. As a narrator, the son recounts the magical story of his parents’ courtship, so famous that it gained the status of a legend in the village, and the film turns into vivid colour. The son fulfils her wish and before he returns to the city, fulfils his father’s dream and teaches a class in the old schoolhouse that was central to his parents love story.
When the audience expressed that the adulterous scenes in The Dream life of Angels could have been avoided, the organisers said those elements were part of international cinema. “Malena is not just about an adolescent boy’s infatuation, it conveys bigger political messages. First, he supports Mussolini, opposes the Germans, and later supports the U.S. It reflects the attitude of the society which is driven by emotions. And, the complete lack of rational thinking,” observes Kamala Kannan.
MASTERPIECES
The Road Home (2000) - Yimou Zhang. 12 awards, 4 nominations
Paradise Now (2005) - Hany Abu-Assad. 9 nominations, including an Oscar, 13 other wins
The Dream life of Angels (1998) - Erick Zonca. 16 awards, 10 nominations
Malèna (2000) - Giuseppe Tornatore. 15 nominations, including two Oscars, and another 3 wins
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