look back in anger...

this article has been written by an unsually sensitive n intelligent person called sumit..who is working as a soft-ware professional in mumbai..n also engages in theatre as his hobby. i am still reeling under impact of this perceptive analysis. ..read it for urself...

I was very confused about this “The-cause” and “art-for-cause” thing. Here, I am just pondering over what I have seen and gone through and trying to find an answere to the doubts in my head…

दुनिया न जीत सको, तो ख़ुद को न हारो तुम,थोड़ी बहुत तो ज़हन में नाराज़गी रहे(Even if you don’t win the world, don’t loose yourself,Just make sure you preserve some anger in your soul)

These lines by nida fazli describe jimmy porter, the prtagonist of Look back in anger the best. Its a 1956 play by John Osborne which was later made into film in 57,I havnt seen the film, here I am just talking about the play that I have read
Jimmy, wanted to be the part a revolution and change the world. He wanted to fight for a cause in the post world war England where the rich were becoming richer and poor poorer. The rich complained that so much has changed and the poor that nothing has. The crumbling economy of state after the world war had filled the educated youth of England with angst, specially the ones who belonged to middle or lower middle class families. Thats what happens with the middle class people, they are learned enough to see whats going on, to identify the real trouble and the trouble makers but at the same time their own own financial condition stops them from reacting. In the end they are left with their angst ridden poetry against the system in which they are halfheartedly trying to make a living. That Half heartedness is eighther becuase of their cynicism or out of their contempt for themself for not having fought for the cause, the real reason, they themselves dont know. That cynicism lead jimmy to finally screwing up his own personal life, his relation with his wife who belonged to the upper strata of the society.

What I loved about Look Back in Anger is the way it portrays a man caught in the difficult times, in the conflict of being a hero of war and a survivor in the real world. His wife says about him, “Jimmy wanted to be the knight in the shining armor, its just that his armor didnt shine too much”. Now when I look at DJ of RDB, I think what was he ,A Kind of a Jimmy porter, who becomes a part of a war and achieves heroism. But the problem I see with those 4 reactionaries in RDB is, all through they were disillusioned, purposeless fellows whiling away their time and life, living in the world of “magnets and miracles” which the safe boundaries of their college provided. And after they do this film on Freedom fighters, they seem to have found a cause,a purpose in life. We all are actually looking for a war to fight for, a war where our abilities can make us win and be a hero. But then these 4 guys are the ones with no evident particular ability, and thus being a revolutionary becomes the easiest thing to do. Thats being unkind on my part but thats the truth for a lot of people who joined the naxalite movement,not all of them were as brilliant as charu Mazumdar who started it. A lot of people who join NGOs and so to say FEEL for a cause are the ones who are looking for a purpose, a CAUSE, a war where there limited abilities can be put to use to make them heroes. In every movement all the people who are a part of it are not focussed men-of-action, most of them are wannabe-martyrs seeking redemption from their confused lives, and they are the people who end up screwing the revolution, their own life and the life of dear ones. If you look at RDB on paper and pen without that wonderful background score, without the camera you actually feel this about those charecters but the problem is that somehow we are not ready to talk about non-heroes. I am not denying the existence of heroes who do change the world but then if I have to look at people like those 4 guys in RDB, I would like to look at them cynically. Well, ofcourse it was Rakesh Mehras take on it, what I am saying here is my point of view. Now if I narrate the story of the film to a friend of mine who hasnt seen the film , I would say, “Its a strory of 4 people who dont know how to look straight in life, who are utterly confused and in an effort to prove a point these young disilusioned guys kill the defence minister because they thought that killing one minister will change the system, and finally even they get killed. Well thats what happens when you dont use your upper story for a long time in life, you end up screwing your life and the life of people around you”. I look at these four charecters with cynicism, I wont sing the song ROOBAROO to underline their heroism.

It just makes me feel that craft helps you in passive lying, what appears contemptible on pen and paper becomes deified when put with AR rehmans composition.
Thats why look back in anger becomes so special, its a story of a waana-be warior who is now living a screwed up life. Probably he is what sidhart tayyabji from HKA will be after the film is over, he will be an anger ridden cynical man with guilt-soaked morality for having screwed up the revolution and his relationship with Geeta. Thats what Jimmy was, except they both belonged to different economic stratas. This is why I find HKA and look Back in anger more honest efforts than RDB.

I thought, why would some one spend crores of rupees and 1 year of his life to make RDB,… to change the world? well, I dont think so. I wondered what did Rakesh mehra tell his team when he started making the film..”Lets change the world” or “We have a product which will sell for sure”. Now if anybody is making films for changing-the-world, then I would suggest him to put his effort and money in making a political party, fight elections and get into the assembly, that will be a more rational and effective way of doing it. Passouts from IIT are doing it, they have a party named Paritrana.

Digressing a bit here into my personal story to ponder over this art-for-cause thing…then I will get to Black Friday
During my B.Tech 1st year I made a play with my seniors on the life of AIDS patients and during the whole process, everybody claimed how much we FEEL their pain and how we wanted to work for the CAUSE. Well, I never felt their pain nor did I work for the cause, I just enjoyed working with one of the most talented people I had met till then, I enjoyed writing the script, I enjoyed writing the poems on the posters,I enjoyed playing the charecter. But all that claim of CAUSE-thing by my revered seniors left me confused. I felt that something is wrong with me, probably they feel something I am not capable of feeling. I was 19 then, trying to figure out the purpose of my post IIT entrance life. Some time later theatre-gang from my college did a lot of street plays to collect money for Tsunami relief fund, I abstained from it. I had put my contribution in the charity box but I was accused of running away from the responsiblity of a theatre person…”this is why theatre is done” kind of thing was told to me. I didnt agree with it. My reason for not being a part of their endeavours was that they all were not doing it in a very creative way. But again I was perturbed, I felt that I lacked some kind of sensibility which others seem to have.

Later I read a play “sir..Sir..Sarla” and I fell in love with the charecter of Fanidhar. I decided that I will direct it but then all those questions started haunting me. What does society get out of it? what social statement am I making? what change am I attempting in the world around me? what insight do I give about the social-political-economic state of our time? And then I asked my self, Do I really want to change anything around me? The answere was difficult to accept, it was NO. I felt guilty about it but I went ahead with sir.. sir.. sarla all the same. After the end of the show, I realised what I have got from it. I played the role of fanidhar, a clumsy, diffident, massochist, martyr-lover filled with rage against the person whom he treated as god for not having helped him in getting the woman he loved. All the time I felt I was just playing myself. And the knowledge of being a fanidhar, this identification with fanidhar stopped me from being a fanidhar. Its like the heisenbergs-uncertainity prinicple in physics, the moment light strikes the elctron to pass on the information about its position, its momentum changes. The time I realised I was a FANIDHAR, I stopped being one. The lover-martyr in me died after the play was over, thats how the play contributed to my life, I dont know how it contributed to the lives of my audience, that was not my botheration eigther.


Coming to Black Friday, Anurag Kashyap has written in his post ( http://passionforcinema.com/black-friday-insecurities/ )
“is that why you made the film mr. kashyap..didn’t you make the film so people will call you a great filmmaker..so they will applaud you,so they will praise you..i don’t know..you gotta know..why did i made the film..i was affected by the book greatly..i had no notion of greatness..hell i just wanted to do it right..half the time i was insecure about my own political maturity..i made life hell for Arindam..i had so many constant doubts that he started getting doubts..at one point we were exchanging letters..showing it to other people for reassurance..there was so much pressure to be right that what seemed wrong was deemed wrong..there was no room for mistakes..”
thats how I felt for the AIDS play…”so people will call you a great, theatre artist”. Anurag has given a wonderful answere which satisfies a lot of questions, he says “I was affected by the book greatly”. I think thats all, thats reason enough. He never said that he felt the pain
of Badshah khan, or the victims so much that he wanted to change the world. Well the film does sympathise with Badshah khan but it also says to him “Tiger memon made an ass hole of you, because you are one.” Its the same thing, “if you dont use your upper story, you get screwed nd end up screwing a lot of other people”, thats the story of a lots of reactionaries, lots of DJs, lots of Sidhart Tayyabjis,lots of Badshah Khans who FEEL_FOR_THE_CAUSE. I asked him once, how has Black Friday affected you and he said “Gulal was just a romantic film when I had written it before Black Friday, later it became a politcal film”. Anurag himself admits that he was insecure about his political maturity during Black friday, perhaps this is what the film has given him, a more mature understanding of the set up he is living in, and I think thats what your art form does to you, in a way it redeems you. A physics proff once said to me that a student should do science only out of curiosity, only if he is curious to know how it all happens. Now I have come to believe that its true for art also. Its your own curiosity to understand the world you live in, to explore how this place runs and because of this you dig deeper into the system to figure out the political, economic, social truths. Perhaps that is the reason behind Black Friday or Hazaron khwaishein Aisi orthe creation of acharecter like Jimmy Porter. I dont think there was a Feel-for-cause to create them, it was satisfying their own curiosity and enjoying the process of creating it. After watching HKA, I tried to find out about the naxalite movement, about charu Mazaumdar and that 70s time.Tthats what I got from it, curiosity. Same is true for Black Friday.


So, if you keep making films about “pyaar mohabbat coca cola” or about gang lords then it means you are not curious enough to find more about the world you live in.
Now coming to all those people who feel for the cause like DJ and the people who WANT to make people feel for the cause through their art form like Rakesh Mehra. They both share a very interesting relationship. The Rakesh Mehra’s of the world create the real DJ’s of the world and for this they get paid heavily. A lot of romantic patriots were born after watching the film and quiet a few RDB style protests happened, but the only difference was, that during their protests AR Rehman was not playing the background score!!Again I am sounding a bit cynial but I dont intend to offend the subhash chandra bose’s of the world who are very clear about what they are doing!! I find this whole thing of FEELING and making-others-feel very dubious. In a documentary on fidel Castro, one of his friend says about him, “He always said that he wanted to be famous and powerful”. Perhaps we need to look at the movement , the cause behind the movement and the people behind the movement at different levels. The purpose of the movement and the purpose of the people are two different things, we tend to see them as one.


The way we feel and the way we claim to feel is most of the time very different, but calling this difference- hypocracy would be very cliche, I think it is our ignorance of ourself. Forget the revolution, even in terms of human relationships, this difference is there. There is a scene in Five Point someone where Neha is crying infront of her BF Hari, while she talks about how her brother committed suicide and Hari is thinking that “this is a good time to kiss her”. That was being brutally honest!! Never in a film I have seen the meanness of a lover who at the same time is really in love. This meanness is there in every relationship, for a split second a thought crosses your mind that if your mother did die, your life would become easier for you, but then you shudder on it. Unfortunately no one captures that split second thought or that shuddering in a film, in a film mother-son relationship is always heavenly.”Riding the bullet” is one film which does this upto a level.


The whole idea of feeling “love” the way we are supposed to FEEL, gets question marked there. And if you start thinking too much, you end up thinking that all your life you keep feeling things which you thought you were supposed to feel and this sickening thought can drive you crazy, you start feeling that what you feel is not for real.
I never felt like how a revolutionary is supposed to feel, I dont know that feeling at all. Forget the revolution, I have always been accused of lacking compassion by people who confided in me, specially by the women who treated me like a confession box, they always felt that I treated their grief-stricken narrations like interesting stories and when my interest died I wasn’t caring enough. It was initially disturbing to know that I am not “Sensitive”, but now I have come to believe that nobody is, its just that some are good actors and some are not, and not being actor enough while I am being an audience is what hurts me now.

So, with all the doubts on my sensibility and curiosity, I continue to find a purpose behind what I am trying to do…