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Transcending time
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Biffes was a good opportunity to watch films of different sensibilities
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LIFE IN ADVERSITY Soran, in Turtles can Fly, is the enterprising leader of the children who gets them to clear landmines
Even stories that survive beyond their time are those that have been born into a time and space. Talk as they do of everyday lives, of human relationships, of struggle, of failure… they cannot repudiate a historical, political and social baggag
e. However, they do renounce a specific time and space by the manner in which the vibrant human spirit transcends these changing, temporal dimensions.
Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi’s Kurdish language film “Turtles can fly”, screened at Biffes, is at once both these. The film is set in a Kurdish children’s refugee camp on the Iraq-Turkey border that awaits a war declaration by US on Iraq. The film opens with stark images of an arid land and an equally desolate life. Children, living lives on the brink of death (they collect unexploded landmines), enliven the parched landscape with their spirited activity, oblivious to the tragedy of their existences.
Ghobadi in his controlled narrative brilliantly blends contradictory elements, reinforcing their undeniable coexistence, even as it throws open the possibility of a multiple telling. Beginning from his amazing juxtaposition of comic moments even in a life of gnawing disaster to the opposing elements in the characters of Soran and Henkov itself, what Ghobadi achieves is quite striking. While Soran (he’s nicknamed Satellite), the 13-year-old leader of the children, is a complete votary of modern technology, Henkov, who has lost his arms to a mine explosion, is a forecaster. Soran has to install a satellite dish to foresee doom, and Henkov does it without any external agency.
In Henkov’s little sister Agrin who has suicidal tendencies, Ghobadi packs in a compelling motif: of death as liberating. The deep scar of the past (she has been raped by Saddam Hossein’s soldiers) has propelled her into a present and has determined her future too: it is irredeemable.
Even as Ghobadi, in this heart wrenching film, raises pertinent political questions, he also asks deep philosophical questions on suffering, on sacrifice, and in a narrative that has no trace of religion. Like a critic rightly observes: “Ghobadi’s sensibility transcends the ebb and tide of politics. His characters are simply the latest generations of Kurds whose history has been mired in mendacity and betrayal.”
Shariar Assadi’s cinematography and Housein Alizadeh’s haunting music adds intensity to the film.
“Shevri”, the Marathi film by Gajendra Ahire, has the texture of a short story. This short film is bold and radical for the manner in which it looks at man-woman relationship and the institution that binds it.
Ahire, begins his story in the reverse: he opens the film by speaking of oppressive-hierarchical nature of relationships, even in the life of this “modern” woman (played by Meeta Vasisht), and that too when it is not bound by an institutional framework. Vidya, her room mate, is forced to spend a night on the streets of Mumbai, and as she waits restlessly awaits daybreak and hops in and hops off buses and taxis, it is a recap of the events that led to her divorce.
The balanced film, which doesn’t have the urgency to make villains out of any of its characters, radically declares marriages can end out of sheer “boredom”. It comes as a blow to the woman – for someone who defined herself by her familial duties – but discovers that there is no complete relationship, not with her mother, and not with the son she dotes.
The film is important for the manner in which it interrogates our notions of “tradition” and “modernity”.
What sets out as well-defined compartments, convincingly transforms into not just overlapping units, but also as contextual responses. Even with small moments of disagreement, “Shevri” is well told, with all its complexity.
DEEPA GANESH
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Dealing with the theme of tender memories, haunting passion and death in the face, the White Ballad by Stefano Odoradi attempts to capture the necessities and inevitabilities of life, with European history as its backdrop. Not to forget that it is fr
om an Italian perspective.
Director Stefano Odoradi speaks of the life of an old couple and their memories of childhood, adolescence and middle age and their immediate physical and psychological problems. However, the delineation seems contrived, both in terms of realism and imagination.
The plot is about the husband completely aware of his wife’s imminent death and the wife’s life as it revolves around the awareness of her approaching death.
The commentator holds the key to the life of the film. The narrative technique punctuated by a the commentator’s observations, reminds the Indian audience of the Sutradhara.
It provides freedom and space for the narrator to convey and comment on the inner aspirations, disillusions and differences of the protagonists. The director intelligently integrates subtle questions on longevity of political power, glory of empires and destination of humanity in the hands of time.
Despite excellent and insightful treatment through silence, incisive dialogues and symbolism, Odoradi fails to control his zeal to regulate the destiny of his characters even to the extent of their body language.
This results in death pervading the overall ambience and puts a hold on the urge to live.
K.N. VENKATASUBBA RAO
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