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| India’s Oscar Entry: A Heart-warming Tale of a Maverick’s Vision | | By PREETI CHANDAN | | | indiawest.com | November 25, 2009 02:34:00 PM |
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LOS ANGELES — Dhundiraj Phalke called his production of India’s first film “a factory.”
“Tell (people) that you work at a ‘picture factory’ (for respectability),” he advised his cast and crew when they complained that they were looked down upon in the Mumbai society of 1911 for being employed in such a “useless” profession.
 How ingeniously ‘Dadasaheb’ Phalke made the movie “Raja Harishchandra” and launched the world’s largest film industry is the subject of Paresh Mokashi’s Marathi film “Harishchandrachi Factory,” India’s official entry to the 2010 Oscars in the Best Foreign Language Film category. It is a heart-warming, hilarious tale of a maverick’s obsession and vision that became the genesis of India’s love-story with cinema.
Little was known about Phalke, even in India, except that the country’s highest cinematic award is named after him. Mokashi’s film (a special screening of which was shown in here last week, attended by India-West), which he says is faithful to Phalke’s biographies and other material he researched, changes that.
So we meet a fortyish Phalke, his wife and two young boys, fallen on hard days after he quits his successful printing business following a quarrel with his partner. Yet the family is glued together, totally trusting Phalke’s entrepreneurial spirit and unfazed despite difficulties. He has taken to doing magic shows with his older son and after one such gig; the two are lured by posters to a tent showing British silent films. The rest is history.
Stunned and thrilled by “moving photographs,” Phalke’s mind is set – he will make movies. He plunges headlong into its study, befriending the projectionist, devouring English film magazines, and borrowing money to make a trip to London where he learns the nascent craft, and returns with a camera.
The funny and grave situations he faces, the resistance he battles, and how he eventually gathers the cast and crew to make the pioneering film is the thrust of the story.
With no precedence to draw from, Phalke has to rely on his ingenuity to put the project together and pull it off. For instance, he makes a time-lapse film of the growing of a pea plant, stunning a potential financier into opening his wallet, and visits Mumbai’s red-light district in search of a female for the role of Queen Taramati because “respectable” women did not act at that time and their roles in plays were portrayed by men.
For a debut film, Mokashi’s work reveals an assured hand and a good grasp of cinematic story telling. He has also written the film. (See separate India-West interview with the director.)
Mokashi tells the story simply, without song-and-dance or stars, yet with such affection and humor that there is not a dull moment. The viewers’ laughter frequently resounding in the theater was testimony that his light-hearted tone works superbly and fulfils the primary function of cinema – to entertain.
The director’s choice to frame just the period of Phalke’s life when he made the first film, instead of a birth-to-death biography, lends it a gripping focus.
A veteran theater-writer in Pune and Mumbai, Mokashi’s plays are critically acclaimed for their vivid and atypical humor which is amply evident in this film.
He mines outdated social mores for hilarity and comes up with gold, delivering it with twinkling dialogue, playful exaggeration and cinematic techniques. He uses the jerky, fast-motion of cinema’s early days to show furniture disappearing from Phalke’s house to fund his obsession. In one scene, Phalke’s friends drug him and cart him away to a mental institution believing it to be the right place for a man so crazed. When Phalke’s eye-sight deteriorates, an old maushi (aunt) pointedly tells the doctor, “(Poor) vision can be cured, but what can you do about the head and what goes on in it?”
Casting unfamiliar faces, even in lead roles, was another good decision by Mokashi because they come without the baggage of an image and seem real. Nandu Madhav plays Phalke with genial understanding. Vibhawari Deshpande as his wife, Saraswati, and the two young actors who play their sons create endearing characters who, prompted by Phalke’s progressive outlook, participate fully in his novel enterprise.
The ambience of a Mumbai chawl is created with light-handed insight giving the feeling that we are standing on the fringes observing the action, or as if we know the people who are part of it.
Phalke turned down offers from the British to make films in London because, he said, “Then how will it get established as an industry in my country?” He went on to make nearly 100 films in his 19-year career.
Marathi cinema has made an impressive leap in recent years coming up with some creative and original films. “Harishchandrachi Factory” is the second Marathi film India has sent to the Oscars following “Shwaas” in 2005. Its performance this awards season will be worth watching. |
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