TRUTH BEING TOLD, NOT WORTH IT

DIRECTED BY ANG LEE 

STARRING: SURAJ SHARMA, IRRFAN KHAN, ADIL HUSSAIN, TABU, RAFE SPALL, SHRAVANTHI SAINATH and GERARD DEPARDIEU 

Let me tell you a story. There’s this family of four that relocates to Canada from India, selling their zoo off and taking along a couple of dozen species on a cargo ship as a livelihood option. The Father, the Mother, the Elder brother and Pi. The cook on board is French and compulsively mean, and there’s a Buddhist who offers rice with plain gravy – meat is murder, the family maintains; the cook would kill for food that he serves on the ship. It is a cycle, we presume, only one turn of which we get to see. 

The family goes to sleep. Pi doesn’t. Not only are thunderstorms sources of entertainment, they also save lives. Pi becomes the sole survivor of a shipwreck, illustrated in what could be the most glorious shot since that of the Titanic sinking. 3D brings the dark out in the spectacle – we see only 50 percent of what Pi would’ve seen. Ang Lee shows us that the beauty of disaster lies not in scale-up but a close-in: You feel what you experience, you experience what you’re put in a boat with. A cook, a staunch Buddhist and your Mother. 

Besides the fact that Pi Patel (Suraj Sharma) has too much water in his life than his lungs can hold, besides the fact that he, when 12 years old, throws his ‘soul’ around like the goats offered to his highness, Mr. Parker; besides the fact that there are so many little details we brush aside to get to the ideological depth of the movie – like how Pi is clean-shaven, Italian mafia-styled, after months at sea with his follicles active everywhere else; like how the faux-Tamil accent, the most ridiculous thing in the world, is used to establish overdone stereotypes – the Father, the Mother, the Older brother, the Dancer girl whom Pi likes and who likes him back... 

Besides all these things mentioned above, ‘Life of Pi’ is the story of a human coming face to face with the spectacle - Pi, before the world, and you, the viewer, before the film. Now, let me give you more of the story before I proceed to comment.

The Buddhist breaks his leg and badly with his jump onto the boat. Its decay is disintegration of whatever humanness might’ve existed otherwise. And it brings the Cook out – the pointless racist, a man who is considered pure evil. Brotherhood is as Brotherhood does, and the Buddhist becomes a three-course meal that Pi and his Mother take no part in as, obviously, they are vegetarians. It’s only about time that the Cook turns to the other two on board, both willing to throw their lives down for the other. 

Anyway, if the Harry Potter books have taught us anything, it’s that a Boy needs to suffer the guilt of having survived to become a Man who doesn’t care for survival – it’s the dawn of morality. The Mother goes down fighting, the Man is unleashed at that. “I did to the Cook what he did to the Buddhist guy,” Pi recounts to the people from the company who, after 227 days of life at sea, aren’t willing to buy this plausible an explanation. “It’s too simple,” they say. “We want an experience, not an excuse. A spectacle, not a solution. We want bizarre – not boring.” I’m paraphrasing, of course. They call it the ‘truth.’ They seek it. 

So he tells them another story, like Poirot does in ‘Murder on the Orient Express.’ The Cook becomes a Hyena, the Mother becomes an Orangutan; the Buddhist becomes a wounded Zebra, and Pi becomes Richard Parker, the Tiger, whom he watches from the side and encounters as both adversary and thickest friend. This time, there are whales, flying fish; a carnivorous island populated with nothing but meerkats. The people from the Company buy it – if Romanticism was truth, they’ve had their share. They leave happy with Pi distraught at having watched the Tiger, a reflection of his own self, disappear into the wilderness without a growl to say goodbye. 

Pi narrates this story as an adult to a writer, a version of Yann Martel, the author of the Booker-winning novel. He is played by Irrfan Khan, an exciting actor (except that his accent butchers language) who paints both sides with performance you can buy. The question, as it seems, is what you choose to believe. Like on the Orient Express, one story has the power of sequences to back. The other is a monologue with the camera closing in, where, in delirium brought out by grief, we see genuineness. On the Orient Express, they choose to ‘decide.’ Is it a decision? If it is, then the film has achieved what it aspired for – to be as ruthless as the Cook in a man-eat-man world. Life has been thrust upon us, it says. So are you, I’d say in return. 

Pi asks the writer what he chooses to believe. I do not think his answer would be the same as that he used in ‘Life of Pi.’ It is not merely a flip of sequence and monologue – it is a decision. Romanticism against bitter truth, which, nonetheless, is also Romantic. The road never forks. ‘Mulholland Drive’ is ambiguous – ‘Life of Pi’ isn’t. The stories cannot be inter-changed unless you have decided to, and your decisions shall suffice. The stories are redundant. ‘Life of Pi’ wastes your time. It is not argumentative. It double-sells a stance that it has already taken.

After having taken the pains to open the oyster, you don’t find the pearl where you’re told its absence is wisdom. Much like this review of mine – after almost a thousand words, I have given you nothing. Except for the fact that I shall take a stance but also tell you about it. It doesn’t make my argument stronger, but I believe it’d make the experience comforting. 

Like the 3D in this film. ‘Life of Pi’ is probably the best of its kind; an incredible human adventure as a Boy who, I think, represents you and does well at that. It is sincere with its rendition of an irksome narrative that wins your attention but doesn't deserve it. It’s a choice made in full awareness of an existing argument happening elsewhere, in a different story. And after two hours invested, you’re a survivor yourself and I’d think you deserve that story. Not this one.

WHAT'S IN A NAME

WRITTEN BY THOMAS BLOM HANSEN

Jason Bourne is a well-trained CIA assassin who, as goes the plot of the series, tries to find out who he really is. What is he looking for, really? In ‘Bourne Identity,’ we find he has a dozen passports under a dozen aliases and a whole world insistent on taking him down for reasons he isn’t aware of. As he looks into why this is happening to him, he goes on a deeper, much more profound quest – for identity. Identity, here, is a question of legality and closure, where Bourne would like to see himself as a citizen again with a single legitimate passport and pertaining documents, a place of residence, perhaps, and people once close to him, whom he would rediscover in the process. 

The journey with Bourne is organic. There is a human being fleshed out even in the ruthless assassin he is, a character that we find we can empathize with and root for. And three films down the line, by which time we get familiar with and fond of Jason Bourne, we, along with the man himself, discover that he actually isn’t Jason Bourne. He is, in fact, called David Webb, an army man adopted by the CIA for an operation and ‘converted’ to Jason Bourne in a training module, where Bourne is a character, an identity that is created and ascribed to the man that Webb had become. 

Now, there are two points where his identity becomes problematic as I see it. The first is when David Webb becomes Jason Bourne, a process illustrated as a classic example of CIA brainwashing. The second is Jason Bourne coming to terms with the fact that inside the Bourne machine is a man who once lived – someone, he learns, is called David Webb, who was ‘transformed’ to Jason Bourne through an excruciating set of initiation rituals. 

Aside from, or perhaps even including, the set of characteristics he had been force-fed with, Jason Bourne is still who he is. Or isn’t he? So he is, in our heads, where we had gotten more than accustomed, through piggy-back rides on his shoulders in chase sequences where we bonded on adrenalin rush. To us, he is Jason Bourne; we shall not be swayed that easy. To himself, however, we can’t say. 

Thomas Blom Hansen, in ‘Violence in Urban India: Identity Politics, ‘Mumbai’ and the Postcolonial city’ writes that the ‘proper name’ is something that, when replaced by a set of characteristics to describe the thing in question, just doesn’t work the same way. The term “a grumpy, cynical, almost worn-out archaeologist with an eye out for adventure and a knack of handling it,” doesn’t do as much justice as calling him ‘Indiana Jones,’ or ‘Indy’ for that matter. But it could very well be because we had been conditioned this way, to an extent that we find comfort in representing him through his name and an uneasiness otherwise. 

I’m aware that my examples have been individuals (and fictional characters, that too!) so far, and I understand that a city can, in no way, have an individual for a metaphor on the lines of the ancient Greek theory of society as an organism. But then I believe the problem has been put on the table, alongside Blom Hansen’s theory on the proper name. For an entity as vast and of indescribable diversity as a city, a proper name or, more simply, the ‘right name’ is practically impossible. You get used to a name through its constant reiteration, most of which has got to be authoritative, as Blom Hansen claims. 

The name, in case of representative naming, is both cause and consequence of what it signifies. In case of a city, as much as the name, if it has to be ‘proper,’ needs to represent the space, historical context and, if possible, the collective(?) identity of all its people, it also would go on to define the same for its people. ‘Mumbai,’ for instance, is not just (‘not even,’ as Blom Hansen would say) a consequence of the ‘Maratha pride,’ but also serves as a cause for the same. As he rightly quotes Zizek here, “the identity of an object is the retroactive effect of naming itself – it is the name itself, the signifier, which supports the identity of an object.” Jason Bourne is aware that he is Jason Bourne, where ‘David Webb’ comes in to confuse. As is, unless I’m terribly mistaken, the case with Bombay and Mumbai. 

The fundamental argument of the book, which Blom Hansen spoon-feeds to us, is made clear in the first few lines in a sub-heading called ‘the Argument’ that he writes in the introductory chapter. Let me quote him word-by-word so as to not deprive you of the full blow of his statement that, I believe, I would take away in an effort to paraphrase. 

This book analyzes the historical formation of the political discourses, the identities and the conflicts that changed Bombay from being the preeminent symbol of India’s secular, industrial modernity, to become a powerful symbol of the very crisis of this symbol.

I think he does a world of good in putting across the core idea of his book in four (three, here) lines that give the reader the requisite amount of clarity in proceeding further with it. And he does himself a disservice in that he isn’t being elusive about it. 

As the statement puts across, we find ourselves up against two facets of Blom Hansen. One is the historiographer/storyteller who, like an old mariner, mixes stories of the state and the city with stories on how he collected those, meshing them into a compelling narrative as perceived and told through the perspective of one who was as beguiled as he was startled by what he saw, read and heard about. 

On the other, we have the critic, who could weigh the information he gathered and who doesn’t hesitate to take a stance, as he unabashedly says so himself. In his persuasion to see things the way he’d like to see them (which he has averted to a substantial degree, the fair amount of neutrality that, I think, he has achieved), the critic might have hit a few blind spots, but the historiographer never loses track. There’s a story in hand, it’s compelling, and he’s delightful in his rendition of it. 

All through my reading of the book – and I shall, first and foremost, admit to an equal ignorance of both scenarios – I couldn’t help but try to put Mumbai and Chennai in a tabular column. Both were ‘Presidencies’ during British rule. Post-Colonialism, thus, applies to both, as does the conflict on the ‘proper name.’ Again, I shall restate my ignorance in the lack of an argument to support the existence of such a conflict, but I am, mildly, aware of an amount of nostalgia in the former that has people only grudgingly accept or merely become accustomed to the latter. For instance, I come from an institute that still continues to call itself ‘IIT Madras.’ So does ‘IIT Bombay,’ for that matter, actually. The reason here, however, is a certain pride that the institution insists upon keeping close to. And the ‘brand.’ 

Another similarity I find is in the concept of a Tamil nation (a concept I wouldn’t entirely dismiss either), not far from the situation in Maharashtra, with the identity of the ‘Maratha’ and the heroic notion of Shivaji that has been naturalized through the ages. Tamil, the language, has been the rallying point for political parties as the DMK and more aggressive fronts like the MDMK and the PMK, and even though I wouldn’t peg them alongside an entity as severe as the Shiv Sena, there’s still a certain level of manipulation and opportunism that’s definitely comparable. The cause is indefinite as Blom Hansen’s idea of identity based on language; and trust is a first-class ticket for a plane that won’t take off. 

It’s like the man who feigns drought in Summer in a village so he could make a Rain-God and become priest in a quest for control. If anything, the policy has been Machiavellian; the idea of a ‘Maratha’ is loose, and harmful in that it is exclusive of a whole bunch of people, which becomes problematic in a cosmopolitan environment and, more importantly, in the making and existence of a city of multiple identities that can’t be put in a single bracket. A Tamil nation, in this way, implies the same, where settlements of any other linguistic group will have to be excluded and/or marginalized. Of course, the whole idea is combative against existing or imagined discrimination, but the solution is not as simple as a ‘Do not enter’ sign – which, in the case of exclusionary policies, is implied and not even explicitly stated. 

It’s here, perhaps, that I was most disappointed in Blom Hansen. A collective identity of a city on the whole might be practically impossible. But is it not necessary? Like I said, ‘Indiana Jones’ is not “the rogue archaeologist who wears a hat and cracks a whip” – he is ‘Indiana Jones.’ What can ‘Mumbai’ be, then? ‘Bombay’ was, in no way, better, as has strongly been stated. Under the veil of elitism, modernity and aspirations were intense social, cultural and political anxieties that burst out with the press of a trigger. And ‘Mumbai’ did nothing to make it better, if not intensify it further. 

I agree that Blom Hansen has done well in presenting us with the problem – understanding is the first step towards change. But has that step taken us any closer? 

‘Violence in Urban India: Identity Politics, ‘Mumbai’ and the Postcolonial city,’ deconstructs the name to be an inadequate signifier, at least in the case of calling Mumbai ‘Mumbai.’ Perhaps we have reached the state where we number cities and not name them, with an excuse of ‘starting from scratch’ to tackle the problem of space, historical context and collective identity. But then again, there’d be a section of society that comes up and says that the digits don’t add up the way they ought to. And another that gives a new number that represents them better. The argument is endless, my review is not. I stop right here.