I have spent the weekend watching the two most powerful films made by two men who belong to this very woebegone and insensitive society that we have become. Let me start writing about the films with some reactions from the theatres. Parzania. Catcalls, laughter, giggles, Accha..! Oh ho! Black Friday. Why don’t you go away to Pakistan? Jai Shri Ram, more catcalls, more laughter, jeers…the works. The discerning Indian audience that we keep gloating over is nothing short of a brute, incongruous, pathetic, jingoistic, fundamentalist, fascist group of individuals. At least that is what my experience of watching these films in a social melee has been. Not surprising then that while Parzania has not seen the light of day in the one state that needs to see the film more than anyone else, Black Friday has been released without a hitch in the same state. The reasons are not hard to find.
I
Parzania not only indicts the Sangh Parivar for the 2002 genocide in Gujarat, it showcases the pain of one family to exemplify the scars of a society. What transpired in Gujarat was not only a blot on the face of Gujarat, the birthplace of Gandhi, an iconoclast of peace, it is a black chapter in the history of contemporary India. A human failing of monolithic proportions, the society in Gujarat is polarized beyond compare. Parzania says it all and much more. The film begins, and rightly so with a paen to the Almighty in the background that can be translated loosely as ‘What happened to the land of Gandhi?’ What really happened in the land of Gandhi? Parzania shows us what exactly.
The neighbourhood banter, the gruesome bloodletting, the pain, the anguish, the agony of living in relief camps, the inept, corrupt, and communalized police force, the spiritual quest for answers when all else fails is captured in vivid detail. The rioting mobs prepared with saffron bands, tridents, swords and petrol bombs converging on the Mohammadi Mansion, Muslim men calling up the police to be told ‘We have no orders to save you!’, the young Parsi mother screaming ‘I am a Parsi’ to avoid being attacked, the Hindu neighbour refusing to open the door to take the Parsi children in only because they were not Hindus pose a few vehement questions. That the VHP went door to door flagging Hindu houses and businesses leaving out the Muslim establishments to make things easier for their foot soldiers, listing out families by name, religion and caste a few days before the Godhra train burning incident, stockpiling LPG cylinders and other inflammable items for quick combustion with the active participation of women is common knowledge which is trumpeted as an attempt by whiny secularists to inflict insult upon Gujarat’s wounds by the right wing zealots in power in the state.
The film is woven together by the enraged renditions of an alchoholic American research scholar, in Ahmedabad to discover Gandhi. His dilapidated typewriter becomes the slate on which Gujarat’s bloodiest month get etched for posterity. The facts are there for everyone to see. Parzania does not make any illegitimate claims, it does not digress from the moot point, finding the lost boy Azhar Mody (Parzan Peethawala in the film), it does not tells us anything we don’t already know. Rahul Dholakia has only brought it all together to tell a story that needs to be told today to avoid perpetuating hate in future. The story of the Mody’s needs to be told because they represent the Gujarat of today, a silent tinderbox. One can only guess when the next riot will break out. A genocide of the kind that took place in 2002 can happen again. Cities and towns in Gujarat are strewn with markers of hate and mistrust. ‘Welcome to Hindurashtra’ say hoardings and placards along the railway line that runs through the state. The Bajrang Dal has succeeded in keeping Parzania out of theatres in the state. Can the next genocide be far away?
II
Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday, based on S Hussain Zaidi’s book by the same name is an audio-visual documentation of the meticulous planning that went into the 1993 bomb blasts in Mumbai that ripped the city apart, searing the metropolis to its soul. However, this is not what makes Black Friday an example of good film-making. Black Friday is one of the finest films to hit the marquee in the history of Indian cinema because of the following reasons:
It does not shy away from taking names. No names have been changed. The characters are flesh and blood. And more importantly, they are true to the story.
The film makes no bones about what actually led to the blasts. The Babri Masjid demolition, the riots of January 1992 in which a disproportionate number of Muslims were butchered, the inability of the police to punish those responsible for the Bombay riots, the collective angst of a battered and bruised community are all there. The fact that Tiger Memon vowed to avenge the burning down of his office by bringing the city down to its knees is startlingly captured by what the director has called the hidden camera – a particularly effective style of film-making. Black Friday stands testimony to that.
The film makes no attempt to gloss over the real provocation for Memon, his aides, and underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. The Masjid demolition footage is brilliantly interwoven into the screenplay. Kashyap’s film is candid, as candid as Badshah Khan who rattles away his reasons for participating in the conspiracy. Khan becomes the epitome of Muslim anger.
The police is not glorified. The fact that third degree torture methods were used to gather information and crack the case is established and known. The film only reiterates it. The fact that hundreds of innocent Muslims were detained without reason, beaten up, the women humiliated and molested to make the men sing is portrayed vividly. Just so that the viewer knows that ‘an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.’
The actors are brilliant. I for one thank Anurag Kashyap for not inflicting stars and their starry airs on the audience in a story that would have lost steam. It has been noticed that a film derails weighed down by the million dollar stars that have made Bollywood their haven. Underrated and underpaid, character actors often carry a film on their shoulders. Kay Kay Menon, Pawan Malhotra, and Aditya Shrivastava (Naseeruddin Shah and Sarika in Parzania) just did. They are so real, one can almost feel the raging anger, the fear, the trauma.
Everything works for the film. Despite two particularly long chase sequences, Black Friday succeeds in its mission. The director is telling a story here. A story that jolted the nation out of deep slumber. The seething fury in the voice of Tiger Memon is infectious. The understated silhouette of a brooding Dawood Ibrahim is used to good effect. One cannot just miss the striking resemblance the actor bears to one of the most feared men in Bombay.
Black Friday remains till the end true to most details of the case and the book with humour, though dark thrown in for good measure. Kashyap thus has made a film that other film-makers would find hard to replicate. If you think Madhur Bhandarkar is the king of reality cinema, go watch Black Friday. It will shock and shake you. If this is what the cinematic medium can do, it is a pity that its potential has been underutilized for so many decades in an industry crowded by a surfeit of fake and artificial icons, their families, and offspring.
