Black Friday (2004)

Director: Anurag Kashyap
Writers:  Anurag Kashyap, Hussain Zaidi
Cast:       Kay Kay Menon, Pavan Malhotra, Aditya Srivastava
Language: Hindi

Black Friday is a film about the investigations following the 1993 serial bomb blasts, told through the different stories of the people involved-police, conspirators, victims, middlemen. It is based on the book, 'Black Friday- The True Story of the Bombay Blasts', written by Hussain Zaidi. Widely considered as Anurag Kashyap's masterpiece, it was not allowed to be released in India by the Censor Board for two years. 

The film begins with a quote from Gandhi: 'An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind'. It is then followed up with the actual bomb blasts on that particular day and the investigating officers gets an immediate breakthrough by getting hold of a few un-exploded vehicles. The suspects are drawn up pretty quickly and rounded up one by one. This part of the film is problematic for me because of the slow pacing coupled with the fact that I really didn't care much for the stream of names that they come up with since they are just foot soldiers involved in execution. It also involves a 12 minute foot chase to capture a suspect through the slums and this scene is said to have inspired Danny Boyle while making a similar foot chase in his Oscar winning shitfest, Slumdog Millionaire. I found Anurag's intentions on this scene just to be as a show-off since we are not at all emotionally invested with any of the characters involved, be it the Police or the suspect, to actually care about it. 

The film picks up with the introduction of the character, Badshah Khan, who is another one of those foot soldiers. He takes a north Indian tour under the orders of his boss, the chief schemer. Over the course of it he falls out with him as he gradually come to realize that his boss does not care much particularly about his fate and he finally gets caught by the Police from his village. This part takes significant screen time but it doesn't matter because we get emotionally invested with him and his frustrations give credibility to his decision to become a state witness. We get the entire planning involved in executing the blasts through him and details about the involvement of Tiger Memon. It then gets on to other characters who fills in on other details like how the RDX and firearms got into their hands and how Pakistan and ISI were involved with the same. The precursor to the blasts, the destruction of Babri Masjid and the ensuing riots in Bombay where Muslims were killed in large numbers by Hindu mobs, are shown in the final sequence. The bomb blasts were retaliation for the same and the film manages to condemn both sides in an ambivalent fashion without going overboard. The quote from Gandhi is shown again at the end and the message seems to be that there are around 600 million Hindus and 200 million Muslims in India. You don't have much of a choice but to coexist peacefully unless you want to fulfill the said quote. 

Overall it is good watch but the first hour of the film is really poor and uninteresting. He could have easily made it in about two hours and seemed to be just lazy with the editing since two and half hours is not that long by Indian film standards. I had the same problem with Gangs of Wasseypur as well. The performances are very understated, which is good, and the scenes involving Dawood Ibrahim were kick ass. The lead investigating officer is the main character in the film and his performance is particularly excellent as is the case with the guy who plays Tiger Memon. Good on Anurag Kashyap to humanize all the characters involved. The docu procedural style does not work uniformly well but the second half of the film largely salvages it by compensating for the drab first half.

Rating: 3.5/5

                                                                   

Final Solution (2004)

Director: Rakesh Sharma

The Final Solution is a documentary directed by Rakesh Sharma about the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat that arose as a response to the Godhra train burning incident on February 27, 2002, where 58 Hindus were burnt alive. According to the official figures , the riots resulted in the deaths of 790 Muslims, 254 Hindus and further 223 were reported to be missing (unofficial figures are much higher). 2500 people were non-fatally injured with many instances of rape, children being burned alive and a widespread looting and destruction of property. The current prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, was the chief minister of Gujarat during the riots and many have accused the state for initiating and condoning violence. He was cleared of complicity in violence by a Special Investigation team (SIT) appointed by the Supreme Court.

The title for the film comes from Nazis' euphemistic term for their plan to annihilate the Jewish people. Such euphemisms were the norm for Nazis when communicating about their plans about murder. Before the War starting in 1939, their persecution of Jews involved intimidation, expropriation of their money and property and forcing them into living in Jewish Ghettos. In this documentary, Rakesh Sharma draws parallels with what happened to Jews under Nazis then with the situation of Muslims in Gujarat during and after the riots in a non-explicit manner. The overt references to Nazis is restricted to a couple of references about shocking inclusion of mutual admiration in Gujarat State's school text books. That is not surprising since RSS, the Hindu nationalist organization which exerts considerable influence over BJP and Modi, are known for its admiration for European fascists during its formative years and their ideological demand of India being re-branded as a Greater Hindu nation should sound familiar. 

Film begins with George Sanatayana's quote: 'Those who does not remember the past are condemned to repeat it'. It becomes even more significant these days with the resurgence of Hindutva ideology at  the national level. This is something that is alluded in the documentary at the end with a footnote saying that BJP were comprehensively defeated in 2004 National elections when they ran on the development agenda and that would make them put their Hindutva ideology again at the forefront. The documentary consists mostly of interviews with both Muslims and Hindus, of multiple generations and sexes, asking them their views regarding what happened, causes, justifications, as well as their prospects for the future. The first section of it is titled 'Pride and Genocide' which is largely the footage taken during the time of Modi's 'Gaurav' Yatra before the assembly election in late 2002. The second part titled 'Hate Mandate' documents the actual poll campaign showing the exploitation of Godhra incident by the right-wing propaganda machinery. Film ends with a tragic set of interviews featuring a couple of Hindu and Muslim children which reveals that they are indoctrinated beyond belief.  

The version I saw of it from Youtube was 150 minutes long but IMDB lists its running time as 218 minutes. I thought even the version that I saw could have been cut down significantly to under two hours without much loss to its power-fullness. It was initially banned in India in 2004 and the ban was lifted after a sustained campaign by October 2004. It involved a 'Pirate & Circulate' campaign in protest against the ban with the condition of 'Get a free copy only if you promise to pirate and make five copies'. It is yet to be shown on India television but several international broadcasters like BBC, NHK, DR2 etc have screened it and it won Special Jury award at the Berlin International film festival.

Rating: 3.5/5

                                                                         

Gitarrmongot (The Guitar Mongoloid) (2004)

Director: Ruben Östlund
Writer:    Ruben Östlund
Cast:       Mikael Allu, Bjarne Gunnarsson, Erik Gustafsson
Language: Swedish

The film marked the feature film debut for Swedish director Ruben Östlund and it is about different people living outside the norms in the fictional city Joteborg which not much different from real-life city of Goteborg. Even though it is not a documentary, most of the people seen in the film are non-actors more or less playing themselves.

Östlund has directed four feature lengths film so far and I found the other three to be great. So I watched this with pretty good expectations and was really disappointed with it. I found it totally uninteresting. The film is supposed to be a criticism against the boredom of normal Swedish films and all I did watching it was getting bored. I think it is more of a case of making a mockery of the audience which is suggested by the last scene. The boy in it connects several bin bags filled with air and let it fly from a cliff. As it passes over the streets,  several onlookers speculate on what it is with some suggesting it could be an advertisement or some sort of weather balloon. It kind of disrupts their otherwise normal looking day for just a few seconds. Maybe Östlund is speculating that viewers of the film would give more meaning than it deserves to make their time watching it worthwhile, when in fact it is just a waste-filled bin bag of a film.

Östlund trademark like long takes using static camera is already present in the film which shouldn't surprising since he already had considerable experience as director of skiing videos.Overall it is one to avoid but people might want to watch it if they are fans of his other works like I am.

Rating: 1/5

Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism (2004)

Director: Robert Greenwald

Documentary on reported Conservative bias of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News Channel (FNC), which promotes itself as "Fair and Balanced". Material includes interviews with former FNC employees and inter-office memos they provided.

It is not news that FNC is a propaganda machine for Republican party and Rupert Murdoch himself. As a Liverpool fan, I don't need a documentary piece to become aware of this slimy conservative cunt who goes by the name of Rupert 'fucking' Murdoch. The slanderous coverage of Hillsborough disaster by Murdoch owned 'Sun' which prompted  LFC supporters to start the 'Don' Buy the Sun' campaign have over the years also attracted support from other people who have been the victims of NEWSCORP's version of journalism- reaching a peak during the 'News of the World' scandal. It is a shame that I have to depend on his STAR group of channels to watch the LFC matches and all I can do is avoid watching their shitty punditry during the game coverage. I guess something is better than nothing. Same is true for the LFC supporters in UK where Murdoch owned 'SKY' have got a sort of monopoly on football coverage even though BT Sports is making some inroads.

Having said all that, I don't have much problem with the way FNC operates. They are so obvious and consistent in their propaganda that only people with very low IQ could not see through it. They are anyway going to vote Republican so it doesn't matter that much. I think what he is doing in some other places like UK is much more dangerous. There he owns many different newspapers/tabloids which he uses to curry favor with politicians as well as blackmail them. His support is not always consistent to a particular party and in this form it is much more effective for him and dangerous to the public. As someone in the documentary says, propaganda is much more effective when the people who are being subjected is not aware that it is going own. 

I had read an article in Economist a while back which discussed the idea that a media organization should be unbiased is a very recent phenomenon. When news media outlets started they were operating on a subscription model and it was more profitable for them to cater to their own particular audience and be biased to suit that. It was only when advertising became the major revenue generator that they started trying to appeal to a more broad audience and all this hoopla around unbiased coverage began. Now with the advent of Internet we are again going back to the niche model of catering to a narrower target audience. I actually prefer this model since there is no danger of being deceived since you already know from what angle they are coming from and we won't take everything as gospel. India is still  dominated by newspapers which gives you their own propaganda under the veneer of unbiased coverage- Times of India when it comes to India overall and Malayala Manorama group in Kerala. It is interesting that India is the only country in which Murdoch failed to get a foothold in the News business. It is not a testament to the quality of coverage by Indian media but a case of them being as good or even better than Murdoch in own game of shitty journalism.

One of the main issue that they highlight in the documentary regarding FNC coverage is them passing their opinion as news. That is of course dangerous if people are not aware of it. But in general I am not really a fan of listening to what the traditional news media covers as news these days in their 24x7 frenzy. Most of it is just noise which doesn't add any value. I prefer spending time reading opinion on different subjects than news, but one should always be aware about the biases that creeps into these opinions. I stopped reading newspapers in print around five years back and if at all I get my hands on a newspaper these days I only care for the editorial/op-ed pages and the local cinema listings. I depend primarily on twitter these days for news/opinion and there I follow traditional media outlets like 'The Hindu', 'The Economist', 'New York Times etc as well as new age things like 'Vox', 'The Daily Beast' and 'Slate'. When you are using twitter you just browse through your timeline and save for reading what interests you and most of them tend to be either opinion articles or things that just gives the background details regarding the news item. Still you have to be aware that your timeline essentially replicates your own biases around the issues and since I am a centrist/leftist liberal my timeline kind of reflects that.

Another issue that the documentary highlights is the coordinated way in which the propaganda is delivered by FNC. They take their cue from Republican party on the issue to be highlighted during that particular and you get a coordinated attack. This is something that I have observed in Malayalam news channels. It is a very fertile space with more than eight 24x7 news channels by my count covering this small state. The prime time is filled with debates on some issue and the issue tend to be same for all the news channels almost every day and so are the people who get interviewed. I don't think it is a healthy practice since your are not really getting diversity of opinion despite the numerous coverage on a particular issue. It just becomes a big echo chamber with the only scope for differentiation being the quality of anchor who takes center stage. Don't get me fucking started on Arnab Goswami.

What FNC have essentially done by their coverage and financial profits is that they got other channels in US aping what they are doing. The other channels should have stuck with the adage:         'Don't argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience'. Concentration of news media into a very few groups and the corporate ownership of the same is a big issue in US. India is also gonna face the same issue with things like Reliance takeover of 'Network 18' group and paid news scandals already cropping up. I think even if that happens if people are educated enough they will start looking for alternate sources from Internet. It is a lot of ifs and funding for ground level reporting is still a major issue. Internet outlets are still depending on traditional news media for basic ground level reporting since it is a very expensive business. 

Overall the documentary is a very good watch and it is useful to understand the techniques that FNC uses which you can also find in several other news outlets. The director Robert Greenwald is no relation to Glenn Greenwald of the Snowden leak fame. 

Rating: 3.5/5