The Hindu : 'Devdas' creates excitement at Cannes

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, May 21, 2002

International

International

'Devdas' creates excitement at Cannes

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

CANNES MAY 20. India's Devdas, by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, has kicked up a frenzy at the ongoing Cannes International Film Festival if a magazine report is to be believed. Screen International has written in one of its festival dailies that this movie "has been billed as Shakespeare in Love meets Moulin Rouge. Devdas is one of the most in demand at Cannes this year."

Devdas is yet to be screened; it is part of the festival's official section termed `Special Screening'. One has to wait for the screening to find out the reception it will get. And some well known directors have been booed down: the respected French auteur, Oliver Assayas, found his work, Demonlover, being shouted down and whistled at by critics and even his long-time fans.

An intriguing corporate thriller, it eventually — and unfortunately — spins into the uncharted realms of cyberhell and pornography.

Usually known for his sombre or period pieces, Assayas makes a complete fool of himself in his latest effort, though some of his characters were compelling enough to keep the detractors in theirs seats till the end.

B. Lenin's market entry — which is outside the festival — Ooruku Nooruper (Hundred people for a town) seemed like another sensitive director making a mess of a very powerful subject. He deals with capital punishment and has borrowed a Jayakanthan story. But the 10-member audience soon whittled down to even less. The film appeared coarse, the acting stagy and loud in an exaggerated theatrical style and Lenin seemed to have lost his touch.

Obviously, there is much that Indian cinema needs to learn from movies made in other parts of the world. Indian cinema tales are boringly clichéd; how many times we have seen a Devdas. There is little novelty left in such ventures, and if the West has an interest in Indian cinema it has more to do with curiosity rather than anything else.

Three works may be cited as classic examples of what cinema should be, and what strangely Indian cinema is not. Abbas Kiarostami from Iran gives us a marvellous piece of celluloid. He calls it Ten, and presents 10 episodes of a car journey. The driver is a woman, but her passengers change. The first is her very young son, who is quarrelling with his mother for having divorced his father. This is the longest of the scenes, and the camera is focussed on the boy for the first 15 minutes. The woman's other companions are all women, and Kiarostami, not usually known for his female characters, does a splendid job by having the fairer sex as his protagonists and by courageously confining the picture to the inside of a car. And there is not a single dull moment in the entire 90 minutes that Kiarostami takes us on the ride.

Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention is pure cinema from Palestine. An autobiographical story, it features the director himself in a family drama and love story that spotlights three people: the helmer, the women he loves and his father. The scene shifts between Jerusalem, where Elia is staying, and Ramallah, where the woman is living. She is Palestinian, barred from crossing the Israeli Army check post between the two cities, and so the lovers have to cuddle up inside their car to snatch some minutes of intimacy. An extraordinarily restrained movie that had critics applauding.

Atom Egoyan's Ararat may be a contemporary tale of two estranged families, but it is also a historical re-enactment (a movie within a movie) of the Armenian genocide in eastern Turkey between 1894 and 1896.

Egoyan narrates his script through the mouths of an aging Customs Officer and an 18-year-old lad, and what unfolds is gripping to the last frame, coming as it does from a director who gave as classic works such as Felicia's Journey and The Sweet Hereafter.

And as Hollywood Reporter states, the highly anticipated pictures lie ahead. Roman Polanski, Ken Loach, David Cronenberg, Aki Kaurismaki and others will showcase their creations in the days to come.

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