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The future did not seem so distant
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Govind Nihalani's `Deham', screened at the recent Mumbai Film Festival, is not perfect but still has a great deal to offer. UMA MAHADEVAN-DASGUPTA reviews the celluloid version of Manjula Padmanabhan's play `Harvest'.
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Directors Govind Nihalani (left) and John Matthan ... looking for strong scripts and powerful writing.
ONE of the more interesting films screened at the recent Mumbai Film Festival was Govind Nihalani's "Deham", adapted from Manjula Padmanabhan's bleak futuristic play "Harvest". Nihalani has always infused his work with a strange creative passion, and "Deham" is no exception.
The film, located in a crowded chawl in Mumbai in the year 2022, shows us a world that is definitively polarised. The affluent First World has discovered that the secret of longevity lies in buying organs from the impoverished Third World. And so, Interplanta, a forbidding multinational, preys on human life in the chawls of Mumbai.
Even as the fast new vehicles with their aerodynamic designs whizz past on the dark streets, Interplanta's luminous signboard announces, as it turns, that it gives life — but it rotates with a faint sense of menace.
Jaya (Kitu Gidwani) and Om (Joy Sengupta) are a young couple holed up in a chawl room with Om's bitter, cranky mother (Surekha Sikri-Rege) and Om's brother Jeetu (Aly Khan), who is also in the flesh trade, but of a different kind. As Jeetu walks the dangerous streets and cruises in the nightclubs, the childless Jaya waters her little potted plant with the precious water that is so scarce now. Om, meanwhile, has gone for yet another job interview — and this time, alas, he gets the job. Interplanta has taken him on its rolls.
At the outset, one must say that "Deham" is not a perfect film. It is an uneven work with several flaws. The low budget of the film must have been a constraint, and the special effects are really not very much to write home about. While Surekha Sikri as the near-senile old woman and Julie Ames as the bland American organ-buyer are excellent, the others convey a sense more of being onstage rather than on the screen. Though Kitu Gidwani looks lovely, one wishes that her face would express more; and though not her fault, her long pontifications at the end of the film are somewhat unconvincing. That is a weakness of the script itself — the last 20 minutes or so are rather weak and the taut pace, which the film manages to maintain all through, suddenly collapses in the last few minutes, when the agenda is much more visible than the feeling.
Nevertheless, the film has a great deal to offer. The slow movements of the camera around the grimy room, even as it must appear to the intrusive American eyes watching from thousands of miles away, convey a sense of the family's claustrophobia. Even the opening moments of the film inside the dark room are memorable, as Om's hand moves up, fumbles as it switches on the music and man and wife come together in a swift, passionate embrace. But suddenly the mother-in-law's angry voice cuts through the intervening darkness from behind the makeshift curtain, and we shudder at the crampedness of this life.
Kitu Gidwani ... a bit wooden.
From his "Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Ma", based on Mahasweta Devi's fiery work, to the less memorable, wannabe-mainstream "Thakshak", Nihalani's recent work has not been nearly as hard-hitting as his earlier "Aakrosh" or "Ardh Satya". And now, "Deham" comes at a time when splashy Indian films, from "Lagaan" to "Asoka", are trying hard to succeed as crossover works. But "Deham", a film in English and Hindi, with Manjula Padmanabhan's powerful script, raises bolder questions that other crossover efforts ignore. It does not merely say, like other films, "Look at me" — it also says, "Look at yourself".
While, in one part of the world, human bodies are forced to crowd into smaller and smaller spaces, an American face and voice can intrude into the privacy of these spaces even from thousands of miles away. While one half of the world suffers from the indignity of too much contact and too little space, the other half suffers from loneliness and boredom.
Coming at a time when western paranoia about Third World squalor has been increasing, "Deham" shows us how, one day, there might be communication between the two sides of the world only through technology, and not through physical contact. A world where a young American girl is paranoid even about catching a cold is not unimaginable. Today, faced with fears ranging from anthrax in the mail to concerns about the cloning of the human embryo, the world is still unsure about how to use technology for human good. Already we hear of the underground buying and selling of kidneys; but "Deham" shows us how the human body itself can be turned into a tradable, saleable thing, and how it can be controlled, and literally owned — by means of technology. While other works, from "2001: A Space Odyssey" to "A Clockwork Orange", have been more futuristic, the chilling thing about "Deham" is that it seems so very possible, almost inevitable.
And Nihalani's skilful juxtaposition of the outdoor shots, which underline not only the city's dreariness but also the sheer physical pressure of too many bodies, adds to this effect.
What has always been an important feature of Nihalani's work is his belief in, and his search for, strong scripts and powerful writing. From the works of Vijay Tendulkar and Bhisham Sahni to Mahasweta Devi and now to Manjula Padmanabhan, Nihalani has not been intimidated either by the intensity of the writing or by the strength of the political conviction.
Far from it: he thrives on it and translates it into the idiom of film. And however effective or not these cinematic translations might be, they are always worth a long, hard look.
Inside that dark, air-conditioned theatre at the IMAX cinema complex in Wadala, a small and dedicated audience was privileged to see Nihalani's long-awaited film version of Padmanabhan's prize-winning play. And on that Sunday morning, as one emerged from the plush modern cinema, blinking a little at the sunshine outside, the city's reality, with all its noise and dust, surrounded us at once, and the Mumbai of Nihalani's "Deham" did not seem so very far away.
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