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Kannathil Muthamittal

My Land

Khamosh Adalat Jaari Hai

Earth

Shubho Mahurat

Ramchand Pakistani

Rockford

Firaaq


            Bombay 1946: Amidst the freedom struggle against the British Empire and the forewarning of India being partitioned, Saadat Hasan Manto, a well-established short story writer works in the glittering world of the Bombay film industry as a scriptwriter. Although Manto has a tenuous relationship with the Progressive Writers' Association, many of its members are his close friends, including the feminist writer, Ismat Chughtai. They are both acquitted from the charge of obscenity for their respective works. Manto has many admirers and friends in the film industry. The closest is Shyam Chadda, a charming budding actor and Ashok Kumar, a famous actor, director and producer. But, his biggest supporter and the unwavering pillar of strength is his wife, Safia.Soon after, India gains independence on 15 August 1947 and the new nation of Pakistan is born. Safia leaves for Lahore to attend her sister's wedding. Despite flaring Hindu-Muslim tensions, Manto decides to stay back in his beloved city of Bombay. One day, Shyam, on hearing that his family was forced to flee Pakistan because of a Muslim mob attack, tells Manto in anger: "I could have even killed you." Shocked and anguished, a non-practicing Muslim, Manto suddenly becomes conscious of his religious identity and the vulnerabilities that come with it. He impulsively makes the unimaginable decision of moving to Pakistan.Lahore, 1948: A melancholic city full of refugees, forsaken property, and burnt buildings becomes Manto's new home. He is left grappling with a growing sense of isolation and a deep sense of betrayal. As he struggles to come to terms with his new reality, he spirals into a state of perpetual drunkenness. Though Safia continues to stand by him, their marriage begins to feel the strain. Relentless and long-drawn court trials alleging obscenity in his story Thanda Gosht. Literal meaning: Cold Meat) take a severe toll on his health and finances. His statement in defense of literature and free speech is met with a conviction. Despite this, he continues to pen some of his sharpest and most courageous works.His compulsions to write and drink are in direct conflict with his desire to see his family - wife and two daughters, happy and secure. His failing health makes him hallucinate. Unable to see his family suffer any longer, he finally admits himself into the alcohol rehabilitation center in Lahore Mental Hospital.The main narrative is seamlessly interspersed with five of his poignant stories. The last one being his most famous story - Toba Tek Singh. Manto begins the story with, "two or three years after Partition, it occurred to the governments of India and Pakistan to exchange their lunatics like they had exchanged their criminals. The Muslim lunatics in India were to be sent to Pakistan and the Hindu and Sikh lunatics in Pakistani asylums were to be handed over to India." The Sikh protagonist, who has vowed to remain standing until he finds his village, lies in death in no-man's land, between the two nations. Manto's predicament is not too different.
    

Manto

Neer Paravai

Azhagi

Fire

Podokkhep

The Young Rebel

Bawandar

Ek Alag Mausam

Dhaad

I Am

Punaradhivasam

Zwigato


            Set in 1930s southern India against the backdrop of a growing nationalist movement, Before the Rains is the English language début of Indian director Santosh Sivan. An idealistic young Indian man (Rahul Bose) finds himself torn between his ambitions for the future and his loyalty to the past when people in his village learn of an affair between his British boss (Linus Roache) and a village woman (Nandita Das).
Before the Rains is adapted from Red Roofs, the longest of three unrelated stories in the Israeli director Dany Veretes 2002 film, Yellow Asphalt, which explored the collision of modern customs and tribal traditions in contemporary Israel. In that movie a wealthy Jewish farmer who has an affair with his Bedouin housekeeper forces his assistant, a Bedouin tribesman, to initiate drastic damage control once the relationship is detected. With a screenplay by Cathy Rabin, Before the Rains has been to moved to colonial India in 1937. The transition from one culture to another is seamless.
Moores, played by Mr. Roache with a cunning charm that masks an authoritarian severity, is carrying on a passionate affair with his housekeeper Sajani (Nandita Das), a beautiful, naïve woman who commutes from the village to work at his nearby ranch. One afternoon they are accidentally spied making love at a waterfall by two young boys from the village, who report seeing Sajani with an unidentified man.
When her husband, Rajat (Lal Paul), interrogates her, Sajanis evasive replies drive him into a fury and he savagely beats her, which under tribal law is within his rights. Since Mooress wife, Laura (Jennifer Ehle), has recently arrived from England with their son Peter (Leopold Benedict), Sajani has already become someone to be kept hidden, although Moores still swears he loves her.
But when Sajani shows up wounded at his door in the middle of the night, he insists she leave as soon as possible. The next day he hands her money and entrusts her to T. K., who is ordered to make sure that she leaves. Before departing, she asks Moores one last time if he loves her, and after a pause, he coldly answers no.
Before the Rains doesnt dawdle in sentimentality. As much as you sympathize with Sajanis hopeless plight she is a pariah with nowhere to go the film is a dispassionate study of how power, when threatened, ruthlessly exercises its prerogatives. For as long as he can get away with it, Moores lies to his wife about the reasons for the escalating turmoil. Nowadays its called stonewalling.
The movies most compelling figure is the unfailingly loyal T. K., who is instructed to violate native customs in a desperate cover-up. A stoic, taciturn man who loves his boss too much, he is a lost soul who has foolishly imagined he could keep one foot in the tribal world and the other in the modern.
But for all his ability at navigating between the two, T. K. is as naïve in his way as Sajani. The movie is too sophisticated to make Moores an evil caricature. He is simply the embodiment of the kind of power that when endangered reveals its true nature. The serenity and calmness of the locations are charming and the background score is impressive.(updated March27 2009 by swati-verma@hotmail.com)
    

Nandita Das

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