Of a safe place to be dangerous

Published in The Bengal Post on 09.03.2013


Being an actor in suburban London was never easy. A sense of failure would embrace you even when you knew that you have chosen something that you love enough to give everything for. West End would be hard on you, with their notions and tacit principles about the foundations of the art form; and then if you happen to be an Irishman, well, then you didn’t just get used to the London weather, you became one and the same thing. So during the late 80s, as soon as he realised that acting was what he wanted to do, Daniel Day-Lewis decided to become just that. Cold sometimes, with unexpected warmth, and occasionally, just a little bit hope, but mostly, a very cynical sense of overcast days when it would rain for no rhyme or reason. All equipped to face the city he grew up in yet never feeling at home, he opened the door of the silly excuse of a house he was living in one fine morning, and received a bound script for a feature film. It was time for the unexpected warmth, he realised.

It was of course My Left Foot, a film adaptation of the autobiography of Christy Brown, a painter and an author with cerebral palsy and he was to play the title role. It was sent to him by Jim Sheridan, another Irishman who was also paddling through the shaky waters of cinema in the hope to be caught by a suitable tide. And both of them had one thing in common - they had no money. “It didn’t matter though,” Lewis said once, “the very idea of making such a thing, and the challenge that lay ahead of us, was trigger enough under the circumstances, to go all out.” Talking about which, “go all out” as a concept can be an extremely relative term. Actors do strange things to make their art better. Marlon Brando put grapes inside his mouth to look and talk in a certain way while he played Vito Corleone in the Godfather, Tom Hanks lost almost 30 kilos to look the part of an AIDS victim in Philadelphia and there are many such examples of strange, yet intimidating stories of dedication to “look the part”. Now picture this, Lewis went and spoke to several people with disabilities at the Sandymount School Clinic, where incidentally Christy used to visit from time to time, and then, he decided to lead Christy’s life, almost literally. Taking the much discussed and debated ‘method acting’ into a level that is seldom seen, Daniel Day-Lewis sat on a wheel chair, started speaking like Christy even off the camera, and stopped using most of his body parts for his daily chores, except for his left foot. “Going all out”, as a concept, suddenly started to mean something completely different.

That he won an Academy award and a BAFTA for his role is really inconsequential. For the sort of man Lewis is, awards really never mattered. In cinema, acting is like a camouflage of the actor who would completely vanish in the layers of the story. The viewer should in fact, irrespective of a sense of logic, forget that what he or she is watching is staged and not real. As romantic it might sound, Daniel Day-Lewis comes eerily close to giving you such a feeling. For you would cry for him when he struggles with his weakness (My Left Foot), pray for him when he is desperately trying to get justice for being convicted of a crime he didn’t commit (In the Name of the Father), and want to rip his guts out as he unleashes hell as a heartless butcher (Gangs of New York). Every one of his performance is a study in commitment, and the work that’s put behind each character is there for all to be seen. It’s almost like watching several people, as you forget what he did in the past as you watch him perform something in the present. Something, even Brando couldn’t really achieve. No wonder then that he does such less work, because for him to play the part like he plays, he needs to be close enough to the character to actually be it.

Of course he is a bit of a recluse, and of course he does unexpected things like go absconding for five years to do wood work in some nondescript corner of Italy for reasons he refuses to tell anyone, and of course these are all stereotypes of an artistic genius; but then when you are one, you are one. What he is not, however, is aware of what he has done and what he can do. As unbelievable it might sound, Daniel Day-Lewis is probably one of the last remaining geniuses who is so deep into the clutches of self doubt that he would perhaps be never sure of his work. “There is a certain sense of precariousness that is invigorating,” he once told New York University film professor Richard Brown during a rare one on one. He went on to talk about the absolute indispensability of the inherent sense of doubt that’s needed to create great art. “Some of the most talented people I have met, stopped in the track almost paralysed by that sense of doubt,” he said, and it is that sense of doubt that makes him so painfully choosy about the kind of roles he would take up. It is that sense of doubt, that natural feeling of restlessness that has of course led him to do a lot of other things in his life as well. Like he makes no bones of the fact that he hated, and still hates, his days at the Royal Shakespeare Company as a young actor. The self importance that was so much the quintessence of the classical dramatists smothered him to a level that his disillusionment soon became anger. He recalls that one blizzard ridden winter when he played Romeo in Romeo and Juliet and how creatively challenged the entire experience was. “They took me in the first place because I had the correct nose for classical drama,” he quips. As a lover of acting, stage should have been his home and it frankly was, but under the walls of archaic rigidity, Lewis realised he needed to escape in order to breathe.

Being under the influence of that pleasant precariousness has always been the trigger that has made him go that extra step to bring his characters alive. It didn’t matter if he had a job or not, what mattered was if he were to express, he would do it for the things he believed in. “I loved theatre, but what those people at the Royal Shakespeare could not digest was, I also loved films,” and that was something that was too big at that point of time to ignore. For classical dramatists, cinema has always been the lesser art that exists to ‘lure’ people towards ridiculous money and fame. But then, in the midst of such ideologies, Lewis was also watching Mean Streets and On the Waterfront. He was also falling in love watching Charles Laughton portray the Hunchback of Notre Dame with such ferocious intensity and yet innocence that it didn’t take him long to gauge the tremendous scope this medium of art could open up for the volcanic actor that stayed leashed within him. So he dived in with nothing to lose as so many actors have often done, and found wings to fly. Yet, what kept him company was still the ability to question, whether he was good enough.

As a boy mothered by an actress who was quite popular in the British play circles, Lewis grew up staring at a theatre (now the famous Greenwich theatre) that was re-built from ground up after being destroyed during the Second World War. It was through that theatre that Lewis came in contact with a lot of actors and realised that actors were very gentle people, something that was somehow very important to him. His tryst with acting, however, was an uncanny result of his naughtiness and even a penchant for petty crimes. It was the same reason he spent some very bad years at a boarding school, which, fortunately had a dramatics room. In his own words, “That was the only place I found to be forgiving of people like us, so it became a congregation of reprobates in a manner,” and he started acting in small time plays. Soon, that restlessness came back in a different form, as he realised the classist nature of London’s society. He told Brown that even if by culture he is an Englishman, he never really felt at home there. And it was then, through his father who was also a poet, he realised how much Dublin beckoned him. For unlike England, Ireland never gave him a sense of alienation from his own society, it was his fatherland; it was where he was always meant to be. And that comes across in his trilogy of Irish films, be it My Left Foot, Boxer or In the Name of the father, Lewis portrays the rage, disillusionment, sorrow and pain of the Irish society with so much ease, as if this was what he was meant to do.

His method is so intense, that with every character he plays, it takes away with it, a little bit of him. And by the time he was finished with a handful of films, he escaped to an indefinite hiatus. It would have perhaps remained the same way if his favourite director Martin Scorsese himself didn’t pursue him to come out of it to play the Butcher in the Gangs of New York. It is actually amusing to watch him talk starry eyed about the director, like a boy who just saw his favourite superhero. However, he would still be unsure. He would try and find excuses to say no to the role he is offered, and once he runs out of them, he would finally gather the courage to take it up. And once he takes it up, directors find it very difficult to differentiate where the actor ends and the character begins. Ask Stephen Spielberg and he would tell you “working with Daniel Day Lewis is an experience in itself” and you would know why, when you see him as Abraham Lincoln slouching near his window staring at the moon and fighting with the demons that plague his mind. You would know why, when he would make you smell the oil on his skin playing an oilman on a ruthless quest for wealth with an erratic shift between fatherly care and heartless coldness, as he ravages a young priest saying “I will drink your milkshake!” in There Will be Blood. You would know what heartache feels like as he quietly stares at the window of the woman he has loved all his life and walks away anyway in The Age of Innocence and you would know why Daniel Day Lewis is beyond awards and accolades. You would realise that the self doubt that he fiercely embraces, is perhaps the trepidation that lends him a muted courage to take up journeys that no one would dare to take. You would realise, if you watch him closely, why after every role he portrays, he comes out a more humble man than before. He must be feeling drained as the character leaves his body like a successful exorcism; he must be feeling a fierce lonesomeness that no amount of accolades or recognition can replace.

At a felicitation ceremony recently, his co star Sally Field said Daniel Day Lewis gave her a safe place to be dangerous. It is something a lot of his co stars and directors also share; which leads one to wonder, how much courage he must need to create that safe place around his co stars. For he himself has no such place, and he becomes a fortress that allows defiance to take wings within the limitless boundaries of his talent. He perhaps has an idea about that limitlessness, so he disguises it with trepidation, disgruntlement and doubt. He knows about that limitlessness, and that’s why he was shaking as he received his third Oscar, winning it more than anyone else, living or dead.

For now, he continues to be like the weather, swinging from the dark to the sunny, so others can dance in his sun and rain and be dangerous doing so.

The ‘almost’ love story of kitsch and Bollywood

Published in The Bengal Post on 2nd February 2013.


Irrespective of the general dislike you have for the over exaggerated and melodramatic numbers dished out by Bollywood, it would probably be difficult for you to completely ignore the poster of Rowdy Rathore. A digitally painted Akshay Kumar wears glares to hide the arrogant rage of his eyes, fingers tightly in a fist. In the background are confident brush strokes of crimson, black, yellow and orange, in an explosion of colour. You get enthralled by the raw energy of the poster, the rustic mode that almost gives you a sense of adrenalin. It’s loud, but you do not mind, it’s an antithesis of anything that’s suave or classy, but you somehow feel more drawn to this than anything else. Little do you realise, that in a way, the poster is the same melodramatic exaggeration that you have come to associate Bollywood with. You end up loving it anyway, for sometimes, it’s very difficult not to, when it comes to kitsch.

The dictionary meaning of kitsch is succinct – ‘characterized by worthless pretentiousness’. A few others describe it as excessively garish or sentimental art; usually considered in bad taste. What’s more, its etymology also is quite in line with what it has come to mean in the general sense of the term. It’s a word that entered the German language in the mid 19th century, and often was referred to as a synonym of the word ‘trash’. It came in the common tongue in the 1860s and 70s in the art markets of Munich describing, as stated above, loud art of the very cheap taste. So to begin with, ‘kitsch’ was never something that one would have ideally aspired to pursue in the aesthetically sensitive world of art.

However, it was made of stronger character. Much like the black sheep who rose against all odds in an unsuspectingly underestimating family, kitsch slowly found a very interesting space of its own in art. Mainly for its populist appeal, it became a very effective medium for the artists to use it as a statement against the elite; so ironically, it became a popular art form which, in a way, was also existential. In the mid 20th century, it was utilized to describe both objects and a way of life brought on by the urbanization and mass-production of the industrial revolution. So it touched a very complex topic about the mass culture and commercialisation of art in the society. What started off as garbage art for the less intellectual, became a counter movement to anything that was avant-garde.

The trouble with kitsch though, lies in its adaptation in other forms of art. While in painting, it can make an all encompassing statement, almost celebrating melodrama and thick sentimentality by loud colours and superfluous rendition of anything that is utterly mundane (Andy Warhol’s Banana for example), the same principle often ends up creating a less amusing appeal and more of just bad art if one tries it with cinema. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Bollywood seems to be prescribing right now. “Cinema is a different art form, and hence, utilisation of certain aspects becomes different,” says cinematographer and filmmaker Anirban Lahiri, saying that kitsch is something that can actually enhance a film with proper utilisation. “It should be used like salt is used in cooking, if you give a lot of it, it would become too salty to taste, but the correct amount would enhance the dish.”

This underlying utilisation in the two different forms explains the difference of the quality of the posters of Rowdy Rathod, Khiladi 786 or Singham and their respective films. While their posters are impeccable illustrations of finely produced kitsch art with a generous use of colour, drama and emotion, the problem with these movies is the fact that their narratives are just that. “Kitsch in films should ideally be a means to the end,” says Avishek Mukherjee, a screenplay writer, stating that if used intelligently, it can be really interesting. Interestingly, that is something that Dabbang did very well. The tackiness was markedly shown more as a parody than it giving the impression of taking itself more seriously than required. Lahiri, a professor of film studies at the DA Film School, makes the point that one of the reasons Dabbang was intelligently made was the fact that it was, in a way, a return of the angry young man, only in a funnier avatar. “So people who have grown up on the Bachchan films of 70s and 80s were reminded of those films through Dabbang, more in a fun way than making the very same thing. And for viewers of 18 or 19 years who weren’t exposed to those films, it was a new experience altogether,” he says. Chulbul Pandey was loud, crass, disrespectful and dishonest, he was angry, but also funny at the same time, and so were the film’s colourful villains. It never really gave an impression that even for a moment, Dabbang was taking itself seriously, and that’s how kitsch works.

In sharp contrast to that, the unnecessary blowing up of cars, or the roar of the tiger to announce the arrival of an extremely angry Ajay Devgan in Singham, is neither here nor there. For Singham never really makes up its mind as to how it should be seen, as a serious action story or an over the top parody. It ends up taking itself a little too seriously than it should have and becomes neither. It’s a different matter altogether, that it is also a reproduction of something that has already worked in the south so an effort to carve out an original identity of the film itself was never the issue. Then there are movies like Son Of Sardar that misuses kitsch in other ways. SoS is something that exemplifies Lahiri’s analogy of making salt the main ingredient of the dish rather than a supporting element. It is nothing but two hours of garish content with absolutely no reason or continuity or meat or even a proper story, which might sound very unique, but at the end of the day, if those elements become the crux of the film, then the film becomes just that, jarring and garish.

Why then, do these films work? As records would proudly tell, that both Singham and Son of Sardar were able to keep the cash register ringing. And it wouldn’t be unfair of someone to come out and say that if so many people like them, then what’s so wrong with over utilisation of kitsch in films? “If you put a certain concoction of spices in a particular dish and people happen to like it, then they wouldn’t mind having the dish over and over again,” says Lahiri. Dabbang paved the way for a certain kind of films which had a serious Dabbang hangover, and people would not mind that for a while. But the problem lies with the fact that soon, they would become what they are, the same thing in different packages and something new will have to be thought about. It happened with the revenge stories in the 70s, family dramas of the mid 80s and romance in the 90s. The unfortunate part about the whole matter in the context is, as Bollywood moves on to some other tried and tested concept to overuse, it would also do a great disservice to kitsch as a potential form in Bollywood cinema. For it’s not rocket science to realise, that the both are made for each other.

Czech writer Milan Kundera once said, “"Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see the children running in the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running in the grass! It is the second tear which makes kitsch, kitsch." And it is this second tear that Bollywood has historically loved to cry. “One of the best kitsch films of Bollywood is Om Shanti Om. For it covers all the basic aspects of kitsch and at the same time uses it as a tool to tell a certain kind of story, in a certain way,” says Mukherjee. Om’s almost laughable melodrama with his even more melodramatic mother, the tribute to the cheesy song sequences of 60s, 70s and 80s, the deluge of colour in every scene reminding us the underlying lightness of the story no matter how serious the scene is, are all examples of how wonderfully Bollywood and kitsch can come together. As a classic instance of losing the plot though, OSO’s maker Farah Khan went ahead and crossed the line in Tees Maar Khan; where she decided to make the colours and the loudness and over the top drama the main elements of the film, disregarding the story completely. She used her film to express kitsch, and not the other way round, and the result was there for us to see. All TMK became was a ridiculous waste of money with nothing but stupidity to talk about.

This is the fine line that Bollywood commercial filmmakers should not cross if they want the art of kitsch to revel in their cinema. “Ideally, the characters should follow the story, but today in Bollywood, the story follows the character,” observes Lahiri, “which is fine. But when the characters themselves are not complete and are just a kitschy assemblage of certain traits, then we have a problem.” Directors often end up doing that when they make kitsch the end itself. One of the most striking memories of the 1992 film Rangeela was the bright yellow clothes that Aamir Khan wore to take his lady out on a date. We remember it not so much for the fact that it was ridiculously yellow, but because what that yellow did for the scene, and how it helped explaining the character’s inherent insecurities and also the desires that he could not express. It was garish and loud, and yet, it said much more than just that. It was of conventional bad taste, yet, that same fact very subtly took the narrative forward. That’s what kitsch can do to cinema.

Whitney Rugg from the Department of Art History, University of Chicago, observes, “Kitsch does not analyse culture but repackages and stylizes it. It reinforces established conventions, appealing to mass tastes and gratifying communal experiences.” Hence it is more like an adornment than the body to be adorned and that is something filmmakers often forget. The west has gotten over its mental blocks and has started celebrating kitsch as a respected art form. In fact, with the advent of post modernism in the 1980s, the gap between kitsch and high art has blurred further and today, much of pop art celebrates the basic ideas of kitsch. With a little awareness and effort, we can make some serious contribution in the evolution of this exciting form. It would be interesting to see whether Bollywood takes the much needed step towards more interesting content, or it loses kitsch in its characteristic sands of stereotype.

Picture courtesy: lensenth.wordpress.com