It looked like a scene from a movie. As the Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI) attendees queued up in front of Regal cinema, last Sunday evening, the sky decided to open up, sending down hard, persistent rains. It was going to be a long wait — around two-and-a-half hours — for this was a “walk-in” queue, comprising attendees who couldn’t get up at 8 in the morning to book tickets for the next day. But nothing deterred them — the umbrellas and handkerchiefs had come out in full force; some clustered under shades, and no one was going home.
This atonement perhaps made sense, for they had lined up for a movie by Martin Scorsese, a filmmaker familiar with guilt. The buzz was strong; the first screening of The Irishman, last evening at the same venue, had elicited strong praise and admiration. And even though the film would stream on Netflix next month, the MAMI attendees couldn’t wait. I was one of them.
Once inside the theatre, they wanted to channelise their anticipation and broadcast their excitement. The rain had its say; now it was their turn. The ensemble of Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci stirred something in them. Cinephilia and devotion, juvenility and elation, the Regal single screen, with 1,200 film fans, had it all. The moment Netflix’s logo appeared on screen, the crowd (quite bizarrely) cheered and applauded. Robert De Niro’s entry? Same reaction. Ditto Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, to the extent that it was difficult to hear dialogues. A few shouted “Bharat Mata ki jai” after the National Anthem was played. I wanted to know their reaction when, five minutes into the film, De Niro’s character opened the backdoor of his pickup to take out beef.
But no film festival is complete without a few audience eccentricities — and great films from the world over. Although the 21st MAMI’s line-up was the weakest in years — the Palme d’Or winner, Parasite, was missing, so was the Queer Palm and the Best Screenplay awardee at Cannes, Portrait of a Lady on Fire; besides, films such as Joker, Jallikattu, and Diego Maradona had already released — denting the immediate feverish excitement, there were still enough films, over the course of seven days, that kept the festival attendee busy. I saw 24 of them. My favourites, in alphabetical order, are listed below:
Atlantics: Directed by Matt Diop, the first black female filmmaker to be nominated for the Palme d’Or, Atlantics is an unlikely love story, with a supernatural element, which details the simmering rage of the Senegalese working class — a story whose reverberations can be felt across cultures and countries.
Bacurau: A weird Western that won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, Bacrau is set in an eponymous fictional Brazilian village, in the near future, where a few American tourists, in collusion with the local politicians, arrive with unsavoury intentions. Made in the regime of the recently elected far-right Prime Minister Jair Bolsonaro, Bacrau is a seething political commentary, with retributive violence reminding you of the finest Quentin Tarantino films, which tells an urgent story with disturbing precision.
Bombay Rose: “Youth is wasted on the young,” says a retired schoolteacher, while reminiscing about her past, at one point in the film. It’s a line that accurately encapsulates this wonderful animated feature, by Geetanjali Rao, which burns with desires for an interfaith couple, sights and sounds of days gone by, and a generous city — Bombay, the film’s raison d’être, the recipient of Rao’s love letter — silently witnessing the everyday bustle and mayhem.
A still from ‘Bombay Rose’.
Also Read: ‘Bombay Rose,’ a Significant Debut, Is Not Just Another Film Set in Mumbai
Hail Satan?: Is the US a “Christian nation” or, as the followers of the Satanic Temple believe, a “pluralistic society”? A fascinating, hilarious documentary probing a relevant, political issue — the separation of the Church and State — Hail Satan? profiles the Satanic Temple, a group promoting religious freedom, social justice, and egalitarianism, as its members ask discomfiting questions of the American Right. Coinciding with the rise of vicious right-wing regimes across nations, Hail Satan? is a timely piece that depicts the pitfalls and universal parochialism of religious conservatism.
Pain and Glory: Spanish master Pedro Almodóvar tells the story of an ageing filmmaker, Salvador (Antonio Banderas) — beset with mental and physical anguish — in his most personal work yet. Salvador, quite evidently, is a stand-in for Almodóvar, and as the protagonist reveals his past and present, we understand that this drama is a poignant filmmaking confession: a director talking to his audiences, reflecting on his choices and paying tributes to those who shaped his life in crucial ways. If you’ve grown up with Almodóvar’s films, like I’ve, you’ll be comforted by the warmth of Pain and Glory — the homecoming of best kind.
Sorry We Missed You: Veteran filmmaker Ken Loach, in the 52nd year of his career, has made yet another affecting drama on the lives of the English working class. Loach’s career has undergone a heartening revival over the last two decades — with The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) and I, Daniel Blake (2016) winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, making him the ninth filmmaker in history to receive that honour twice — and his latest, Sorry We Missed You, a drama about the gig economy, shows Loach at his finest: zooming hard into a hapless English family, whose members start drifting apart from each other for no faults of their own.
The Irishman: Martin Scorsese returns to fine form with his epic crime drama, The Irishman, which explores the relationship between an Irish Catholic mobster, Frank Sheeran (De Niro), and a renowned labour union leader, Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino). The first three hours of this sprawling 209-minutes crime saga charts the rise of Sheeran with disturbing violence and biting humour and, just when you think you’ve figured the film out, it takes a clever detour and starts getting increasingly reflective — a drama about gangsters, without heroes, and yet one not devoid of moral reckoning.
The Kingmaker: This documentary is centered on the bizarre opulent life of Philippines’s former first lady, Imelda Marcos, who, with her husband, amassed an incredible amount of wealth at the expense of taxpayers’ money, further widening the income inequality in an already impoverished country. Filmmaker-photographer Lauren Greenfield has devoted her entire life documenting the fascinating screw-ups of the rich, and The Kingmaker — a funny, disturbing documentary examining the privilege and remorseless rise of Philippines’ most powerful family — is a vital addition to her impressive oeuvre.
For Sama: A mother, a daughter, and a war-torn country — that’s what For Sama is all about. Unfolding as a quasi-epistolary documentary — a mother (filmmaker Waad-al-Kateab) talking to her newborn baby, Sama, amid the violent Syrian crisis — For Sama declutters the commentary around war to reveal its most vulnerable victims, children, who are forced to inhabit a terrifying world that threatens to unsettle every aspect of their lives: their innocence, their dreams, their childhood. For Sama could have done with more political nuance but its emotional power, making the documentary heart-wrenching and frequently discomfiting, is undeniable.
Also Read: Movie Review: ‘Saand Ki Aankh’ Offers New Gateways for Mainstream Reinvention
The Report: This American docudrama tells the story of a US Senate investigator, Daniel Jones (Adam Driver), tasked with interrogating the role of CIA in the systematic torture of 9/11 terror suspects. Dismantling the self-aggrandising myths of CIA, layer by layer, The Report shines a perceptive light on human rights abuses in the name of national security, showing the thin, blurring lines between the vicious terrorists and the ‘noble’ law enforcement officers. It is also a much-needed account of a conscientious, investigating officer who, much like a sniffing bloodhound, gets fixated on following a trail and, in the process, compromises all he has: his personal relationships, professional security, his sanity.
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am: Toni Morrison would have preferred to be remembered as a writer — just that — someone who crafted beautiful sentences and told complex stories, without the baggage of labels that, more often than not, serve to distract than inform. The documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am never loses sight of the person but, while detailing her literary journey, also melds the personal and the political, placing a great American writer at the centre of her country’s troubling racial, political history. For anyone who has been intrigued and moved by Morrison’s works, this documentary is an essential primer on a beloved American writer.