The Fall Of A Director

"There were issues like empowerment of women, health care and family planning andI suggested domestic violence," said Kalpana Lajmi recently, explaining how theGovernment of India's family welfare department and she came up with the idea of Daman

"I consciously set the movie in an upper-crust background because many tend tobelieve bestiality exists only because of lack of education and civility. Domesticviolence is all about the power we exercise on our near and dears because we think theyare our property. I wanted to send the message that no one has the right to exercise suchviolence."

On paper nothing could sound more promising. On celluloid nothing could be more abject.Would that it had remained merely abject.

Daman, which connives with the worst clichés ofIndian cinema, belies its noble social message of sexual subjugation and sets feminismback by decades. Nothing could, in fact, be more sinister.

We cannot dismiss Daman as a badly made film and leave it at that.

This is a film thatwas shoved down the throat of an unsuspecting jury. A film that was unceremoniously andunanimously given the thumbs-down by the awards panel. A film that got recalled by vestedinterests in the festival fraternity (if backstabbing can ever permit notions ofbrotherhood). A film that, by winning an undeserved prize, denied worthier efforts theirplace in the sun. A film that brought out unseemly battles. Resignations. Allegations ofrigging. Mudslinging in the media. Shocked protests by thespians. Even a rash of awardsbeing returned by winners.

A film that in the end tarnished the name of an annual awards event that has for longbeen held up as a fairly definitive benchmark for popularity and good taste. Till thisyear (despite subjective differences) there was never a whisper of a film's fate beingdecided in advance and being privately toasted as the winner before it was fully reviewed.Till this year, we didn't hear of culture turning saffron, of a name like Durga beingpoliticized.

We cannot forgive this.

Nor can we forget about it because Daman was made by someone called Kalpana Lajmi. Shefell out with Shabana during the making of Ek Pal about an extra-marital affair. She fellout with Dimple and Raakhee during Rudaali, about a bonded labourer and professionalmourner. She fell out with Kiron Kher (if not Tabu) during Darmiyaan about the torments ofbeing an eunuch son of a fading star. But all this never ruined the experience for theviewer. Those films went on to be critical and (except for Darmiyaan) commercialsuccesses. Those films remain distinctive, award-winning but accessible films. Those filmswere clearly made with faith and love.

But Lajmi of late has become a woman in a tearing hurry. She looks allset to usher in a new genre. The quickie art-film. Within a very short frame of time, she has been talking glibly to the Press ofprojects like Singhasan with Madhuri and Urmila, of Govinda playing Laloo Yadav. She hasspoken of creating Sehmat with Aishwarya, and of Checkmate. Then we hear Raveena who isstarring in her CMjee -- on woman power, loosely based on (who else?) Rabri Devi. (Moveover Laloo aka Govinda.) But wait, it is Karisma who is playing Rabri now. Lest Raveenastart sulking, it is hurriedly announced that she is starring in Lajmi's Modh.

And what is that on? Quick, think up a politically correct idea. AIDS. Of course.

Regardless of whether she has the time, understanding or patience to follow thesethrough, Lajmi has been too ready to think up hot actors and topics at the drop of a hat.Burning issues get government sponsorships; oversimplistic treatments cut out oninterference -- they also automatically spell creative death, as some very seniorfilmmakers' disastrous government-backed "socially relevant" films have provedin the recent past.

With her unimaginative government sponsors twisting her tail, Lajmihas lost the old magic. This leads one to conclude that she has now started making filmsfor all the wrong reasons.

Uh-huh.

Faith and love do not figure anywhere.

A serious theme like marital rape and gender dynamics requires a sensitive script, subtle direction, andnuanced characterisation. What we have in Daman are wildly exaggerated stereotypes in amelodramatic musical that makes a mockery of social realism.

Tragedy is conveyed throughmuch breaking and throwing of props, dollops of glycerine, and Bhupen Hazarika's senilenasal bleating in the background. The audience cringes from an assault and battery of thesenses. Breasts heave, hearts seethe, eyes brim, voices shriek. A savvy audience at SiriFort and PVR Anupam is moved -- to laughter. It claps and yawns during the sad scenes.

This makes one very angry. At an opportunity lost. By ceasing to bethought-provoking, by making a farce out of the true nature of domestic violence, Lajmidesensitises an entire captive audience towards an issue that needs urgent addressing.This is indefensible.

We wouldn't have a problem if Daman was quite simply, flat and loud. Itis, of course.But what is scary is that it is made with utmost seriousness. The less discerning, lessemancipated sections in the audiences in the other halls and towns (for whom this film maywell have served as an object lesson) are taking it at face value and coming away withvery cock-eyed views on what constitutes true liberation for a woman.

Since the turn ofthe century, feminists have been fighting against the unfair expectations posited by theIdeal Woman in fiction as an object either of pity or reverence and denied flesh andblood. Daman drags its character (self-consciously named Durga) by the hair and fallssplat into the classic dasi-or-devi trap of unrealistic extremes.

After directors like Mahesh Bhatt (Arth), Aparna Sen (Paroma) and Lajmi herself (EkPal) took so many risks with their women years ago, making something like Daman nowamounts to taking three steps forward and thirty steps back.

This is a movie that pretendsto be woman-centric and progressive. Raveena Tandon's holier-than-thou Durga is alarger-than-life victim, and a very safe one, for she raises no uncomfortable questions atall. She reflects nothing of the smaller, but more real, tales of victimisation infamilies across the country. The problem with having overdone villains and vestal virgins(except for one single act of marital sex under duress) is that real issues of genuineexploitation don't strike home.

In a "progressive" film made in the 21st century, Sita is the last thing weneed. We need a Draupadi. (Significantly, a very tacky Pandavas was chosen as bestanimation film in the same festival because it was Hindu enough, but also because Draupadiwasn't overly forceful.)

But let us be generous and look at it as a masala film.

It has shoddy production values: it was made on a budget of under Rs 85 lakh, shootinground the clock within a few days flat, and it shows. It has inane dialogue and shrillsermonizing: Lajmi doesn't forget for a minute this is a film made with the family welfaredepartment's money. (Of course, there is that one line aimed for the gallery: "Biwikhana garam karne ke liye hoti hai, aur rakhail bistar garam karne ke liye hotihai").

It has sub-par performances: hardly surprising when Dimple and Rekha rejected offersfor the lead role. And if Raima's anorexic frame needs urgent feeding, Shaan, fresh fromchurning out sub-standard albums on "Loveology", suffers from excessiveenthusiasm and terminal silliness as her boyfriend. Small wonder that it didn't finddistributors for a very long time.

It has uninspired music, despite a whole clutch of major singers. Music director BhupenHazarika's trademark wavy voice is at its dreary worst.

So then, let us be kind and look at it as a morally uplifting film.

The seven days of the DurgaPuja tie up with the seven tormented years in the protagonist Durga's married life,supposedly from oppression to emancipation. The last 10 seconds of "emancipation" (she strikes her monstrous husband dead with a trishul) are alittle hard to take, after 99 per cent of the film has been wasted in trembling fear andsilent self-abnegation -- even after a kindly benefactress and a suitably lovelornpoliceman chockfull of integrity magically come to her rescue. What makes this unbearableis that Durga rejects all the other alternatives offered: police intervention, divorce,remarriage, education, career, social upliftment of her sorority of sufferers,independence. It is all of a piece with other films that purport to take up cudgels forwomen but actually remain insidiously anti-feminist and backward-looking beneath all thehistrionics.

After winning the best actress award, Raveena has quoted others as saying that "Myperformance stood out in a film that was technically sub-par. They are right." (Afterthe Kalpana-Raveena mutual admiration society, is she finally saying the film wasn't goodenough for her?). But she looks lachrymose and long-suffering in every take. If she isserious about non-mast-mast de-glamourised roles, she should stick to passionate directorslike E. Niwas who made her convincing in his debut Shool.

The tea plantation owner's spoilt son Sanjay Saikia (played by theatre actor SayajiShinde) is a villain so utterly villainous he ceases to be credible. One shudders at thesubliminal messages being sent to millions of susceptible viewers who -- smug in thebelief that chauvinism exists only when it is outrageously out of proportion, as in thefilm -- will never question their own. Shinde makes threatening noises and waves his hands about and sends things flying for most of thefilm. He rejects his wife on his wedding night for a slut. He bullies his father. Heshouts at his wife. He kicks her. He pours hot wax on her. He paints her face. He rapesher. He rejects his daughter because she isn't a son. He questions her paternity. He triesto get her married off while she is in her teens.

When wife and child run away, he insists she has been kidnapped. When his maidservanttries to set the picture straight, he pulls her hair. Then, when his father wills hisproperty away to his wife and child, he hounds them. Oh, and in between, just in case thisisn't enough, he suspects his wife of sleeping with his brother, and throws him into ariver in spate one stormy night.

There is no development. Only a series of repeated, inexplicable, gross, and henceultimately boring, humiliations. If Durga, the bride from a poor family, alternatelytrembles and weeps, the father-in-law remains helpless and talks far too long to his deadwife. The understanding brother-in-law (rather nicely played by fresh-faced Sanjay Suri, butisn't it time he graduated from squeaky clean second lead roles?) is the only support inDurga's life.Yet he is made to alternately gaze longingly at his bhabi and defend her fromhis brother's wrath. Strangely, the moment the chemistry between them gets too awkward forLajmi, she turns coyly away from its tricky underpinnings of guilt, liberation or denialand quickly kills him off. Why? Lajmi's refusal to explore this relationship confirms adisappointing shift away from her earlier candid takes on relationships.

Raima as the bug-eyed daughter and central focus of Durga's life is lightweight --appearance-wise as well as performance-wise; even her voice is reed-thin. Evidently,according to Lajmi, all that is needed to transform a terrorized village belle to a cockycollege girl are long ribboned plaits before and very skimpy clothes after. In Godmother,Raima's debut, in Vinay Shukla's debut film was unimpressive. In Daman, Suchitra Sen'sgranddaughter directed by Guru Dutt's niece is a disaster.

One can only think back nostalgically of Lajmi till a few years ago, when she couldstill dare to come up with uniquely crafted gems like Rudali, based on Mahashweta Devi'swork.