Apu’s World

Do parents always have the best interests of their children at heart? What then, of the horror stories one hears of child abuse (sexual abuse, violence, neglect etc) at home? Is this always the result of pure evil or can the desire to do good itself play out in twisted ways when it is backed up by fanatical or other screwed up ideologies?

‘The Apple’ (’Sib’ in the original Farsi) is an Iranian movie based on the real life story of two young girls who were locked up by their parents and never allowed to venture out of the house at all. In the movie, the girls are 12 by the time concerned neighbours complain and a social worker arrives to help the children, who are found filthy and uneducated, unaware of how to interact with anyone.

One of the things about movies with children in them is that regardless of the movie itself, the children are often a pleasure to watch. I’m not talking about the cutesy, precocious children of most Indian movies until recently; even in movies where the children’s world is shown as far from an idyllic one (as in ‘Taare Zameen Par’) - the children are very likeable. And this is one of the hardest things about ‘The Apple.’ It refuses to allow us to feel good somehow by showing the two girls as little birds soaring in the sun as soon as their cage is opened.

Instead, the movie is uncompromising. Even as the girls enjoy their new found freedom, there is no question that they have been deeply damaged by their incarceration. They run awkwardly, like a two year old child out on the road. They don’t know what a friend is. When two other girls on the road invite them to play and teach them hopskotch, they enjoy playing with them and yet, think nothing of hitting them with apples. It is not so much that they have become antisocial. They are simply unable to understand what being sociable entails. They cannot understand that things they want need to be paid for. At the most basic level, they cannot even talk in any manner that is understandable to others.

On watching these girls, the heart and mind are pulled in two directions. One knows that these are the victims of horrific abuse and as such, deserve every kind feeling. Yet, it is not easy to like them. If anything, they are highly irritating and the director (Samira Makhmalbaf, who made the movie when she was 18) makes no effort to make them likeable. There is happiness, but there is no sense that this is a problem easily resolved.

On the other side is a blind mother (who is curiously uninvolved most of the time) and the father who claims to love the children very much (and is indeed somewhat demonstrative) but justifies the incarceration on the grounds that the mother is blind and therefore he needs to shield the girls from harm that could occur if they were to go out. So entrenched is this belief that in his mind, it is the neighbours who are villainous and destroying his ‘family honour’. While agreeing with the social worker that imprisoning the children is bad for them, he simultaneously justifies it and it is evident to the audience that deep down, he is absolutely convinced of his rightness.

The film doesn’t make any explicit judgements, and in fact, constantly keeps the viewer’s sympathies shifting, unlike most movies where we would be led to cheer unreservedly for the underdog. It is deeply thought provoking and worth a watch simply to understand how abuse can arise not just from evil, but even from ordinary human beings with notions of good, gone awry.

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When I watch an Iranian movie (or atleast an Iranian movie of a certain kind, say one directed by Jafar Panahi or Majid Majidi), my heart is in my mouth. Not that these gently ruminative films are in the least scary, but I cannot help but fear that something very bad is about to happen. Even in a movie like the Children of Heaven, which is all innocence and centres around children, there is the shadow of sorrow lurking around. In a movie like The Circle, where things already begin on a sombre note, you know that something even worse is in store.  

Which is why, when I began watching The Song of Sparrows, (Avaze gonjeshk-ha in the original), I found it hard to let go of my trepidation. Even though the movie is set in the beautiful rural surroundings of Iran and the camera captures it lovingly. The Song of Sparrows turned out to be a very interesting experience for the reason that although ‘bad things’ do happen in the course of the movie, the focus is not on them as transforming events. Instead, it dwells on, very subtly, on the changes that a person’s mind can go through and the effects on everyone around him or her. 

Broadly, the plot is about Karim, a rural worker on an ostrich farm, who is fired and goes looking for work in Teheran instead. When the movie begins, his mind is set on earning enough to find a hearing-aid replacement for his daughter, Haniyeh. A resourceful and hard-working man, Karim soon finds success in Teheran and begins to earn more than what he’d ever expected. Not just money, he also gains access to many discarded items such as old doors, windows, frames and other odds and ends which he starts bringing back home. 

As Karim’s storage dump grows larger and larger, Haniyeh’s hearing-aid seems to grow further and further away in his mind. I’m not going to give away the rest of the plot here, but one scene which I thought was amazing, both for the beauty with which it was shot and for the way it really captures the entire movie in that one shot -

Karim has acquired a blue door which his wife gives away to a neighbour. He rushes to the neighbour’s house and takes the door back. As he carries the door on his back across the fields, from above, the camera focuses on the door. Soon, all we can see is that rectangle of blue dwarfing the man beneath. While the man appears to be hauling the door, he is really bound to it, powerless under its bulk. Against the backdrop of the fields, the blue is more vital than him. And that tells us something about the kind of man Karim is becoming. 

That is a perfect example of a scene which almost makes the rest of the movie superflous. 

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I went in to watch Slumdog Millionaire fully expecting to see a movie “about life in the slums”. What I didn’t expect was that though the slums and the poverty were very much there, the movie wasn’t really about them. Rather, it was a good story about a boy from the slums who makes it big and really, most people watch movies because they are good stories, not so much because they teach us anything or tell us about specific places. 

Which is why, I’m quite surprised about those in India who would slam Danny Boyle and the movie for showing a side of India which they’d rather keep hidden. For one thing, the movie isn’t half-way realistic. How many slum kids do you know who get to be on Kaun Banega Crorepati? The story of Arvind, the boy who is blinded and forced to beg in a subway is probably more “real” than that of Jamal, who not only manages to get on to the show but also wins a 2 crore thanks to a lot of luck, some coincidences and a bit of thinking. So, no, Slumdog Millionaire isn’t about India’s reality, even if one were to assume that there is any One Reality to portray.

After watching the movie, I am still unable to decide which of these is really annoying people. 

A. All Western film-makers want to see in India is its poverty, so that the entire first world can laugh at us = chip on shoulder about how the white man sees us, constant pathetic need to prove that we are on par with “them”
B. This reality isn’t the only one; what about executive India, what about the fancy cars, the multi-storeyed buildings, the middle class schools, the MBAs = Reality is only what life is for us. I wonder if the millions in India who live in slums or even on the roadside should object to Karan Johar movies because it doesn’t showcase “their” reality? 
C. The film is only getting noticed because it is being made by a Western film-maker = Well, Indian film-makers, for the most part are not interested in these subjects, but still, shouldn’t they generally give us an Oscar anyway? Also, huge failure to understand that the Oscars aren’t really about world cinema, inspite of the foreign film category. 
D. All of the above?

The truth is that Slumdog Millionaire is neither a terribly insightful look into India’s poverty nor is it a white-man-slum-touristy look at India. Poverty is the backdrop for Jamal’s story, but that is not all there is to it. Infact, to me, one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the story was when little Jamal gets taken up in the orphanage van by Maman who is clearly A Very Bad Man, but to Jamal and his friends riding in the van, it is as though they have been promised a slice of life in paradise. The naked optimism in their eyes is killing, because you know so well that they are going to be let down cruelly.

Slumdog Millionaire works because of moments like this where we get caught up in one individual’s story and root for him to succeed, and it works inspite of a downright unreal last 15 minutes which are a disgrace to the rest of the movie. Slumdog Millionaire works inspite of its occasional deviations from reality simply because it is one of the oldest stories in the world told well; the underdog story that most of us can never resist.

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Occasionally, one comes across a movie that is both an exceptionally clear mirror to the society it is about and an extremely fine work of art. The Circle, only the second Iranian movie I’ve seen, I believe falls into this category. (This first one was Children of Heaven). 

The Circle, (’Dayereh’ in the original Farsi) doesn’t really have a plot, unlike most films. Rather, it is a peek into the lives of a few Iranian women, and this is the interesting bit - we enter their stories neither at the ‘beginning’, nor at the ‘end’, but at some unspecified point in the arc of their lives. What is common to all of them is the challenges that they face, mostly as a result of being women in the highly repressive society that is Iran. 

Three women have been released (or escaped) from prison, it wasn’t clear to me which. One of them gets re-arrested for some reason while the other two struggle to collect some money to send the younger one of them home. She manages to get a bus ticket with great difficulty, since a young woman without a student card or a guardian isn’t really allowed to travel alone. After much persuasion, she gets the ticket, but abandons the journey when she realises that police are around and fears detection. We don’t know what becomes of her ultimately. 

Another woman who has also been released from prison is kicked out by her family and goes searching for other friends she had made in the prison. Soon, we realise that she is pregnant and urgently needs an abortion. She goes to meet an old friend, who is now a nurse and has successfully concealed her time spent in prison from everyone, including her husband. Her hopes of getting some help from this friend are soon dashed. Society will neither let her have a child as a single mother, nor let her abort it. 

We see her walking around despondently when one of the most chilling scenes of the movie occurs - a poor, single mother trying to abandon her child so that someone else would take her in for a better life. Finally, the movie comes back full circle to one of the first stories, and this woman is now in prison. In none of the cases do we see a ‘happy ending’ or even an unhappy one. Throughout the movie, I kept having this ominous feeling that something terrible was about to happen and though there is no such ‘event’, in a sense, all the stories are quite terrible. Yet, the movie didn’t feel like an immersion in misery. 

The camaraderie among the women, the palpable affection, the occasional laughter, even optimism among some of them, made it seem lighter than the dark story that it really was. For, when one thinks that there really are such places in the world for women; the reality is depressing. 

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