Banarsi Babu

I leave tomorrow for a couple of weeks; the highlight of my trip will undoubtedly be my four or five days in Varanasi (pictures to follow, of course), a city I have never been to, and one which promises a "singular" urban experience, even in an era when ever more places have come to resemble places one already knows...

Recent Bollywood films that have featured Varanasi: Bas Itna Sa Khwab Hai, Bunty aur Babli (I don't think the relevant scene made it into the final cut, but you can watch it among the deleted scenes in the DVD; the only trace in the film is a shot of the lead pair fleeing in saffron robes, presumably pursued by those they have scammed), Laaga Chunari Mein Daagh, and the turgid Benares. The last-named was the most Varanasi-centric of the lot, but its city was also the Kashi of postcards, all Ganges ghats and not much else. Goldie Behl's directorial debut, Bas Itna Sa Khwab Hai, was also quite ghat-centric, but in a self-consciously "down home" way: the young Abhishek Bachchan goes for his morning run along the banks of the river, Behl no doubt conscious of Abhishek's claim to the chora Ganga kinaare waala legacy, returning home to dream of making it in bigger, more worldly cities. Pradeep Sarkar's vision partakes of both of these visions of the city in Laaga Chunari Mein Daagh . His Varanasi focused more on what the city might be like than with Benaras' concern with the sweep of the Ganges and the space it opens up -- a dominant and striking motif in Pankaj Parashar's otherise plodding film. Sarkar's attention to the city's genteel mansions that have seen better days, is especially noteworthy. Undoubtedly his is a Yashraj-ized cityscape, populated by beaming, helpful shopkeepers (but, and this is an un-Yashraj touch, also with scheming relatives and a desperate longing for the brigh lights of Mumbai), but more vivid, more plausible than the city of Benares.

UPDATE: abhishekr and abcd tell me that more of Bunty aur Babli was shot in Varanasi than I had believed.

Saw The Wrestler last night...

What a memorable performance by Mickey Rourke as a crumbling, near-wreck of a man, yet very much determined to preserve some semblance of dignity by way of the only life he knows. This is a demanding, courageous, and accessible performance, and while I haven't seen Milk, one can't help but feel Rourke was hard done by on Oscar night. A superb turn by Marisa Tomei as well: the desperation in her eyes as the ageing stripper eyes the club floor after a series of rejections by patrons who presumably want younger flesh, is great acting at its wounding best.

The film itself spans a few months in the life of a professional wrestler, now two decades past his sell-by date and struggling to make ends meet. Director Darren Aronofsky does well to capture both the sheer weirdness of professional wrestling. and the love affair its practitioners have for what can only be called a way of life. His strip club too is not the essentially complicit representation that is par for the Hollywood course, but a far more precarious world, unsettling to the viewer -- especially when Tomei's character is seen by day, out of her element as it were (Rourke is similarly discomfited, and singularly incapable of coming up with a simple compliment when he sees her away from the club). It is this refusal to let the audience feel at ease that makes The Wrestler , in a sense, a rebuke to "safer" films, for, in representing the wrestling world (or rather, the underbelly of even the wrestling world), Aronofsky is truly in a "marginal" realm: not the hip marginality of the exotic and edgy "other", but one so liminal all notions of cool and good taste appear foreign to it.

Blast from the past: A discussion on VIVAAH

LINK