road, movie-- on the open road..

The open road—

Warning—Contains spoilers—

Its a very clichéd saying this these days, but honestly, its been 4 hrs since I watched the movie but still have not been able to stop thinking about it. By this review, I am still trying to decipher myself why I feel so.

On the surface, road movie is about Vishnu, whose father owns an oil business in a city in Rajasthan, and who wants his son to join the business too. The movie begins with the father telling his son in a dimly lit room by taking some oil in his hand “ Vishnu, sungh use, ye tera future hai”. But the young man chances upon an old truck to be delivered to a far off city, and volunteers to do the work of delivering the truck, mostly trying to run away from a “settled” oil selling salesman life his parents dream he will live. And the truck also is ‘Chalta phirta cinema’, with Victoria projectors fitted in it along with few reels of films.

On the way he chances upon a boy who is running towards some city where he hopes to find a job, an older man who is going for a ‘mela’, to mostly relive his life from the memories, and also helps out in keeping the truck alive by acting as a part time driver and a gypsy women, whose husband was killed and she is now searching for water. For a brief moment in time, these 4 people share a truck and their lives, till destiny takes its turn.

Below the surface, this film is probably the most metaphorical movie I have seen in a long time. Throughout the journey, a group of women armed with small pots singing local songs and looking for water in the desert keep crossing the path of the truck. For me they were a symbol, for the journey Vishnu is also making internally, and India as a country is making philosophically.

As the 4 people cross the dead desert, looking for water and the mela, they encounter a cop, who forces them to show villagers a movie o the projector or hang upside down in the dingy cell in the middle of nowhere, or it’s the water stealing mafia gang whose leader explains how he is better off then the blood sucking mncs privatizing water. There is a hilarious scene where Vishnu trades off his fathers oil bottles with which the mafia don (seemingly a spoof on the gabber type hindi film characters) becomes a ‘mard’ and gives water in the exchange of oil.

On a deeper level, the movie is about a lost civilization of the rural India, which is getting more and more desperate and going away from the global India. Its about how the people in rural India, who amongst the barren lands of India, in between dier poverty still have the spirit to forget the worries and loose themselves in the world of fantasy of films, even if for a few hours. As the group reaches the mela and shows the cinema to the people gathered there, Vishnu sees the people dancing and enjoying themselves in the moment. It’s a philosophical ride, as to how the urban India and the world with all its materialism and money is unable to find the innocence and happiness which the rural folks still latch onto in the few hrs of watching cinema and merry making and the mela.

The great thing about the film for me was it did not end up being motorcycle diaries part 2. It is little close to into the wild but still very different. It Did not go melodramatic. It did not build any false hopes. Like a charles bukowski poem, it only tried to find beauty in the deadly deserts of the place and people by beautiful photography and background score. It showed people as they are. On the journey, Vishnu starts liking the gypsy girl and even sleeps with her (or did he?), but by the end they go there separate ways, cause they are not meant to be together. That was how long they as a couple, and they as a group are supposed to be together, like in life. In life one meets people, who form an impression and there are exchanges of all kinds, and then people move on.

The editing and direction are brave. Dev benegal is devoid of most tools which a normal director has at his disposal. For most parts, the truck is stranded between the desert with nothing around for miles, and all he has is the actors. He uses silence, reactions and helplessness of characters to great use. Only a film maker will know how brave one has to be, to make a film the way he has does here. There will be a lot that will be said about photography which is very good, but in my books it looks that good cause that’s how benegal allowed it to come across, taking his time, cause it may easily backfire.

Lets face it, there is no mainstream hindi actor today, who would have done this role, forget do so well except abhay deol. Film after film, he does not give the feel that he is acting in films, he is just there as Vishnu, like all his other characters, feeling what the character is going through and reacting. The find of the film is the young child actor, totally uninhibited and fearless, with some very funny lines. Satish kaushik shows how his potential has not at all been used in most of his hindi films. As he sits in the desert and eats all the food of Vishnu, he uses his so called physical drawbacks as brilliant tools to generate character arch. And peeping through the rajasthani saree, tanishtha is brilliant & beautiful as the gypsy women, portraying the fragile yet strong women with much ease and grace.

I would really like to write a post on this movie again after few weeks when I can fully comprehend all the things I thought the movie was telling me as a viewer. But for now, the movie told me how beautiful the world and its people can be, and how pointless materialism is if you don’t know how to be happy and sensitive in life. The most amazing part about the movie was the way it played with the definition of the word ‘beauty’ itself. It not only displays the urban rural divide, but about divide in general, when in the era of internet which was supposed to bring people closer, people are moving farther and farter away. When character of Satish kaushik laughs with tears in his eyes on watching the old black and white Charlie chaplin which he probably watched while growing up, and he drops dead with a big smile on his face while watching it, something else dies with him too. That thing is probably a phase in human cycle or a part of humanity in a way, in an era when things were simpler. In the start of the film, Vishnu listening to an ipod and walking in a concrete city has an angry bored expression on his face, at the end when he on a bike, travels into the desert he is filled with an optimism and a strange determination to continue the journey of self discovery by traveling externally. As a viewer, I felt the same. I wonder how many movies which deal the most pessimistic truths about humanity, can achieve such a high level of optimism.