|
 |
|
People, above everything else, are the most interesting, unpredictable entities under the sun. They never cease to surprise you. You form ideas about certain characters, images culled from impressions, readings, and then suddenly they turn the table.
I thought of this recently in Bangalore while attending the 2nd Bangalooru International film Festival. The venue of the Festival was less crowded, more relaxing than the one in Kolkata during the annual festival in November. The audience had a good smattering of salt and pepper heads. I made friends with two elderly ladies who untiringly sat through three to four screenings a day. “Just a housewife but interested in films,” one introduced herself almost apologetically. “Oh! I’m a sister, you know,” the other informed. Come again? Well, she clarified, “I am a Sister of the church.” She amusedly shared her earlier experiences when she went to see films in her “uniform.” While people around looked at her curiously, even the ticket seller at the multiplexes used to suggest if a particular foreign film she was going for was an appropriate one for her and perhaps she would prefer a more ‘homely’ one in the next hall? “Well, there’s nothing wrong in nudity. A human body is the most beautiful creation of God. If somebody sees something obscene in it, it’s in the mind of the person,” she said matter-of-factly. Well, there went my image of a prude ‘Sister’, not too unfairly perhaps if I think back on my school days in a Catholic institution. Both of these interesting ladies are, I discovered, great fans of Satyajit Ray and ‘anything Bengali’ and have a desire to visit Kolkata during the film festival.
Organised by Bangalore’s Suchitra Film Society in collaboration with the state government, at the helm are a group of film lovers who are trying to make the IT capital a hub of film appreciation through this international film festival. Girish Kasaravalli, the renowned filmmaker, steered this year’s festival as the director.
Films are, of course, about people. But even then some are etched in memory for the ‘surprise’ element in human psychology. The concluding film, The Lives of Others , a German film, for example, which won the best foreign film at the Oscars last year. It portrays a grim picture of East Germany before the Berlin Wall fell. Everybody was under surveillance by the administration. Stasi, the fearful secret police, particularly targetted intellectuals, always suspected to be subversive. Even a moderate playwright like Georg Dreyman eventually gets disillusioned when he discovers the sham in the system and secretly smuggles out write-ups on the state of affairs to the West. But the most interesting character is Capt. Gerd Wiesler, (Ulriche Muhe in an award-winning performance), a Stasi high-up who wires the writer’s flat at his boss’s order. Through his surveillance he knows everything about the writer and his mistress, a beautiful actress, but doesn’t pass it on to his boss. His humourless, stern persona gradually softens through these voyeuristic encounters of the humane side of people and he even saves the writer when his house is raided by Stasi. He pays a heavy price, of course, losing his job! But that’s how people are. They don’t conform to straight-cut images.
Or take Four Minutes, from Germany again. A piano teacher who teaches at a women’s prison has a most violent student, a social outcast, but she is also the most talented one. The hostility between the two slowly gives way to an appreciative understanding, to the point when the austere 80 plus teacher even smuggles out her student so that she can perform at a piano contest.
But that’s how people are. Unpredictable. Never the ones to be cast in the mould.
|
){kind=link}