Striking Gold

Traditionally, Golden Goble awards are supposed to the predictions to the Oscar as the Globes have a spotty record of predicting the Oscar winners. It happened with movies like Shakespeare in Love, American Beauty, Gladiator and Chicago.

However, since last two years the Globe seems to have lost its soothsayer abilities. In 2004, The Aviator was Globe’s best drama. Million Dollar Baby took the honours at the Oscars. And 2005 it was Brokeback Mountain, which lost to Crash.

What’s in store at this year’s Oscar night? Is Martin Scorsese finally getting a piece of uncle Oscar? The mystery can wait till Feb 25. For now, it’s the who’s who at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globe awards.

Best Motion Picture – Drama
BABEL
An array of characters in Morocco, Tunisia, Japan, Mexico and suburban America find themselves in a series of desperate situations in this drama that flows between different storylines and different languages as well. Starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael Garcia Bernal.

Other nominations
Bobby
The Departed
Little Children
The Queen

Best Actress — Drama
Helen Mirren — The Queen
When Princess Diana died, everyone went ahead to criticise the royalty for her death. But none ever gave a thought about the Queen’s concerns. Mirren portrays the human side of an institute, caught between tradition and family duties.

Other nominations
Penélope Cruz – Volver
Judi Dench – Notes On A Scandal
Maggie Gyllenhaal – Sherrybaby
Kate Winslet – Little Children

Best Actor — Drama
Forest Whitaker – The Last King Of Scotland
Playing a soldier is his forte (Platoon). Here, Whitaker is Idi Amin, the brutal Ugandan dictator, seen from the eyes of his personal physician during the 1970s. And Amin is reincarnated!

Other nominations
Leonardo DiCaprio – Blood Diamond
Leonardo DiCaprio – The Departed
Peter O'Toole – Venus
Will Smith – The Pursuit Of Happyness

Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy
DREAMGIRLS
This dazzling and energising adaptation of the Broadway musical rockets at warp speed from Detroit to the stratosphere, boosted by the performances of Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson as singers left behind in soul’s crossover to the pop charts. With Jamie Foxx and Beyonce Knowles as figures inspired by Berry Gordy Jr and Diane Ross.

Other nominations

Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan
The Devil Wears Prada
Little Miss Sunshine
Thank You For Smoking

Best Actress — Musical or Comedy
Meryl Streep – The Devil Wears Prada
Streep is Miranda Priestly, a ruthless and cynical editor of New York’s biggest magazine, playing the boss to the boots to a naïve Anne Hathaway. Streep’s biggest and bestest comic adventure since Death becomes Her.

Other nominations
Annette Bening – Running With Scissors
Toni Collette – Little Miss Sunshine
Beyoncé Knowles – Dreamgirls
Renée Zellweger – Miss Potter

Best Actor — Musical or Comedy
Sacha Cohen – Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan
Cohen plays a buffoonish Kazakhstan tele-journalist who travels to America, offends everyone, and tries to meet, and marry, Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson. Hilarious to the hilt, a ‘clowning’ glory of a performance.

Other nominations
Johnny Depp – Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
Aaron Eckhart – Thank You For Smoking
Chiwetel Ejiofor – Kinky Boots
Will Ferrell – Stranger Than Fiction

Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Jennifer Hudson – Dreamgirls
From American Idol to the Golden Globe, it’s a dream journey, to say the least. Hudson plays Effie White, a struggling Soul singer trying to make it big as a pop star. She gets to sing and act and she dazzles.

Other nominations
Adriana Barraza – Babel
Cate Blanchett – Notes On A Scandal
Emily Blunt – The Devil Wears Prada
Rinko Kikuchi – Babel

Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Eddie Murphy – Dreamgirls
He is James "Thunder" Early, a popular R&B star

Other nominations
Ben Affleck – Hollywoodland
Jack Nicholson – The Departed
Brad Pitt – Babel
Mark Wahlberg – The Departed

Best Animated Feature Film
CARS
When cars takes human attitudes. Lightning McQueen is a cocky, rookie race car. Speeding on his way to a big race, he crashes into Radiator Springs, destroying lots of the inhabitants belongings. In order to make up for what he did, the cocky roadster is sentenced to community service, where he learns about life in a hard way.

Other nominations
Happy Feet
Monster House

Best Foreign Language Film
Letters From Iwo Jima (Japan, United States)
Clint Eastwood completes the story of Flags of Our Fathers telling the Japanese version of the Iwo Jima war where the Japanese army fought and died to the last man.

Other nominations
Apocalypto (United States)
The Lives Of Others (Germany)
Pan’s Labyrinth (Mexico)
Volver (Spain)

Best Director — Motion Picture

Martin Scorsese – The Departed
Scorsese remakes an old film and makes it better than the original, a thriller complete with fast moving intense action, great usage of smart humour, fantastic acting, good character development, and the brutal Scorsese violence as usual.

Other Nominations
Clint Eastwood – Flags Of Our Fathers
Clint Eastwood – Letters From Iwo Jima
Stephen Frears – The Queen
Alejandro Iñárritu – Babel

Special Mention
Cecil B DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award to Warren Beatty

Spotlights

Babel, was a hot favourite with seven nominations but lost in every race except for the last and the best one.
The power of cinema is universal," director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu said. “This is a very meaningful award, not only for us, but for the Mexican film industry.”
DreamGirls girl Jennifer Hudson was the verge of tears: “Wow,” she said, “I have always dreamed but never, ever this big.”
The Song of the Heart, from the animated Happy Feet, was named best original song in a motion picture. The award for best miniseries or TV movie went to HBO’s Elizabeth I.
The award for best TV series drama went to Grey’s Anatomy, while the best comedy prize went to Ugly Betty.
The event kicked off to live television coverage from the Beverley Hills Hilton after stars like Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Sheryl Crowe, Sienna Miller, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Reese Witherspoon, Beyonce Knowles, Hilary Swank, and Jamie Foxx strolled down the red carpet.

When the curtains part

Dibyajyoti Sarma attends the Chorus Festival and is charmed by the magic of Ratan Thiyam’s theatre

Ask any magician and he’ll tell you. The basic trick is to make your audience believe. Spectators know that it’s a trick, yet the way the magician performs it compels the audience to suspend their disbelief and willingly follow the magician into his conjured up world.

This is what Ratan Thiyam does, and with such flamboyance! No, he is not a magician; through we could very well call him one. What was it then if not magic that made us spell-bound for four wonderful days last week as the city saw not one or two but six magnificent performances by the Chorus Repertory Theatre of Ratan Thiyam at the Chorus Festival!

Presented by a renowned actor-director himself Amol Palekar (we sincerely thank him for that), the Chorus Festival brought together two trilogies of Ratan Thiyam, representing some of the best works by the genius from Manipur, both old and new. Though the Mahabharata Trilogy is an old production, the Manipur Trilogy is brand new, especially the play titled Prologue, which was actually premiered on Sunday in Balgandharva. Thus, the festival was a retrospect of the best of Ratan Thiyam, and after watching these six plays, it’s not very hard to decipher why Thiyam is considered one of the greatest exponent of modern Indian theatre.

It’s very difficult to make a distinction between drama and theatre. But you can confidently conclude that Thiyam’s productions are not drama, but theatre in its full glory, grand without being ostentatious, larger-than-life without being lavish, and effective without being eloquent. As he himself argues, his theatre is non-plot oriented; you may call it abstract theatre if such a thing exists.

What Thiyam does is he takes up a theme and then conjures up a number of images to highlight it. In its totality, his theatre turns into a sort of pastiche, a collage of moving images. This is especially true of his latest productions, the plays in the Manipur Trilogy. For example, in My Earth, My Love the basic theme is the never-ending cycle of war and bloodshed. To highlight this theme, his collages range from traditional war dance, to Hitler, from Hiroshima to Cambodia, from Europe to closer home Manipur, different expressions of the same emotion.

The production brochure reads: “Thiyam’s work has an epic sweep, at the same time its pathos becomes personal as a sonnet.” Epic, yes. In his hands, the measured stage turns into limitless space where dust rises from the battlefields of Kurukhestra, or a fighter plane flies across the sky! And yes, though the issues are about the death of Abhimanyu or Jewish genocide or military barbarity in Manipur, it echoes with a personal anguish.

And here lies the magic of Ratan Thiyam. He conjures up a world before you and even though you know that it’s only an act, you go ahead and believe it, or rather relive the experience before you and be an ally to it.

But how does he achieve this?

Since his themes are abstract, his medium of expression is abstract too. But this abstractness has its root in the folk tradition of Manipur, rich in its cultural heritage. Thiyam utilises these traditional art forms with a modern approach and with the help of costume, choreography, lighting and other stage devices creates such an ensemble that it surpasses its locality and becomes universal. In the Mahabharat Trilogy, for example, his characters are traditionally attired, they dance according to the steps of Thang-ta (martial art), but the emotions, Abhimanyu’s question on honour and sacrifice in Chakravyuha, or Balaram’s anger in Urubhangam are entirely universal.

It is the ensemble where Thiyam’s magic is most powerful, especially the sheer physicality of the scenes he creates. With few brilliantly choreographed steps and innovative lighting, he can recreate the battle of Kurukshetra, he can make doves fly on the stage, makes a fighter plane, makes his protagonist ascend to heaven. In Thiyam’s ensemble a dance move tells a thousand stories, a fluttering piece of cloth define a character, and shade of light change the entire perspective.

This simply is the magic of Ratan Thiyam’s theatre.


Gems of wisdom

I am not a playwright. I do not concentrate on the writing, but try to create a performance text. My aim is to experiment with the techniques of theatre. There is no writing for writing sake. What I am interested in is the issues. Encounter with situation is important to me. The cycle of the history is very compelling. I am looking for a futuristic approach to theatre. I am searching for my perception of theatre. I really don’t know what theatre is. Whatever I do, it’s my technique of expression.

Theatre as such is a means of communication. The situation in Manipur (everywhere for that matter) is very fragile. That is handled by the politicians. But the emotional aspect is missing. I try to bring that in my theatre.

My theatre needs concentration. But it’s different from other theatres. There is no advice, no statement in my theatre, only a few questions. Therefore, language should not be a hindrance (answering to a question whether subtitles should be used in his theatre in order to explain the content since his productions are in Manipuri language). Subtitles are distractions. My theatre is non-plot oriented theatre. There is only the basic content and how the content is presented. It’s abstract. (Therefore language as such plays a very minimal role.)

What is important for me in the theatre is how the energy flows on the stage. The camera is not sufficient enough to cover the entire stage. Therefore, the energy goes missing if the performance is filmed.

Theatre includes everything, literature, music, dance, lights, painting and other art forms. Yet, by combining all these, it creates a different art form.

Music in my theatre depends on the kind of work I am doing. The theme dictates other elements. In theatre music is not real, but time-bound. Music can create so many images.

Tradition is not only the history but also the wisdom that this history imparts. All civilisations come to an end one day. The remains turn into museum pieces. The question is how to communicate with these pieces of history.

I cannot please everyone (on the question of ornate expressions and violent themes in his productions). I do my own presentation. And I am not following anyone.

The colour black is very important to me. I want to paint in a black canvas. You paint and then erase it; you paint again and erase it again. Soon a layer appears after all these erasures. This is the approach I follow.

I am expecting joy in my heart. If I get it, I’ll present a happy play (on asked why his plays are tragic).

Manipur is not about one single issue, there are several. It needs to be looked at in its entirety. My plays are based on issues but it is aesthetically done.


(Ratan Thiyam shared his views in a question-answer session at the Balgandharva Rangamandir on Jan 14)


The plays

The Mahabharat Trilogy

Chakravyuha
The story of the tragic death of Abhimanyu in the battle of Kurukhestra.

Urubhangam
The final duel between Duryodhana and Bhima where the later commits a foul play at Krishna’s insistence. This angers Krishna’s brother Balaram.

Blind Age (Andha Yug)
The aftermath of Kurukhestra war, the futility of pride and power, where Gandhari curses Krishna for not stopping the battle of Kurukhestra.

The Manipur Trilogy

Prologue
The story of the man from the creation to the collapse of the civilisation. The present is marred by violence. History is the only solace.

My Earth, My Love
The continuous cycle of war and bloodshed through the world. Yet, there’s still hope.

Nine Hills One Valley
At the wake of the collapse of civilisation, the strife of violence of bloodshed, the seven elders who created the world returns back to offer us rays of hope.


The Chorus Festival

Apart from the two trilogies, the Chorus Festival also saw a host of other events. On January 13, theatre personality and screen actor Makarand Deshpande was awarded the Amrish Puri Award for his contribution to theatre.

On January 14, a symposium was organised, attended by former NSD (National School of Drama) students, namely Om Puri, Rohini Hatangadi and others. The topic of discussion was the contribution of NSD to Indian theatre.

(The best part of the festival was the informal set up, especially in Jan 14 at Balgandharva Rangamandir where it looked like a marriage ceremony with Amol Palekar playing the host to the hilt. The city owes him for this spectacular event. This was the third time that Palekar hosted a theatre festival based a single artist’s work, the earlier two instances being Badal Sirkar and Vijay Tendulkar. Hoping Palekar continues this for years to come.)

Teen-age confessions

Dibyajyoti Sarma reviews the novel The Year I Turned 16 by Deeptha Khanna

I am trifle wary of so-called chic-lit. The same goes to teen fiction. And when these two are combined, it’s a bad idea even try to read the book. This was my initial reaction when I was given the book for a review, very scrumptiously titled, The Year I Turned 16, by a first-time writer Deeptha Khanna.
Having finished the novel, I am wise to know that you can’t generalise books; each of them are good or bad in their own right, and yes, I confess, I liked the book.
As you can expect from the tag ‘teen fiction,’ the book narrates the story of a teen-age girl, Vinita Sharma, precisely, 15 going on 16. Vinita tells her own story simply because her teacher had asked her to keep a diary for the summer holidays, and what a fifteen-year-old girl write in her diary except for her immediate life and her teen fantasies. And mind you, she’s no Anne Frank!
So Vinita introduces us to her family, her loving father, her ‘great cook’ mother, and her brother Vinay with overactive hormones and his cricket practices; her friends—the angelic Naina, Jaggu the house clown, Ashley the inscrutable, bold and seductive Gargi, and the American Marcus; and her secrets—her first love Shah Rukh Khan and her second love… Oh well, let’s not spoil the fun!
Summer vacation begins and from there on it’s the usual routine (Remember Enid Blyton and the Famous Five!). Here, it’s Vinita and her friends, their families and the immediate neighbourhood, their studies, their adolescent aspirations, and the experience of growing up in 1990s India—economic growth and the beginning of MTV!
What saves the book from being a ‘heard it before’ stuff is the breezy, candid way Vinita writes her diary. Though it is her first novel, Khanna shows maturity in handling her material, especially in presenting the details, it’s a smooth sail, in matter and in language, so smooth that sometimes you wonder whether a 15-year-old girl can really write like this! The packaging is fantastic, where chapters are divided into weeks, and where each chapter carries a pictures—ranging from Shah Rukh Khan to underwear—to highlight the dominant theme of the chapter. This certainly helps Vinita’s cause as it makes the characters come alive and coaxes us to know about them.
However, what impressed me more is the confidence through which Khanna has recreated the time, 1990s Delhi, to be precise, the year cable television came to India and changed our lives (personally, the time when I was a teen), a time which feels so recent, yet so different from the present era of globalisation. The scene, where Vinita watches the TV at midnight with keeping the volume mute and is mesmerised by Michael Jackson, took me back to my own teen.
The Year I Turned 16 is not a masterpiece or something but it fulfils all the criteria of a teen fiction. If nothing else, the book can just be a ‘no frill’ ticket to your teen! Happy journey!

Published by: Puffin (A division of Penguin)
Page: 156
Price: 175
Rating: 3 1/2

This Ratan sparkles

The news is not about another theatre festival. It’s not about experimental theatre, it’s not about a world renown repertory group performing. The news is, Rantan Thiyam is in Pune, simple

and effective. And this should be the reason enough for us to head for Y B Chavan Natyagruha.
For the starters, Thiyam is a theatrical institution himself, running his group ‘Chorus’ for 30 years now, creating about 40 performances, each of them a gem in its own right; that too in a place like Imphal, where life itself is a struggle. To create theatre there and to infuse the charm and struggle of the soil in that theatre, it itself is an achievement!
And yesterday’s performance of Chakravyuha was the proof of it all.
For those worried about the ‘Manipuri’ part of it, it was an eye-opener yesterday, how the sheer physicality of a performance, body language, facial expressions, (not to mention the lights!) can make it universal.
Finally, the forte of drama as a medium is its universality. Isn’t it? And for us in Pune, as Sai Paranjpe mentioned so forcefully yesterday, drama is in our DNA.
However, Paranjpe was also quick to point out how the commercialisation of the entertainment industry has taken its toll and how more and more people are running after big money and the glitter of the silver screen. But all is not lost, adds an optimistic Paranjpe. New people soon come forward to fill the vacant space, and drama again rises from its own ashes like the proverbial phoenix!
But she asks a very pertinent and valid question: Why more and more new Marathi plays are named in English, such as Cigarette or Lose Control? Is it that our language do not have the adequate equivalent or the force of English? Now, answer that!

Bole toh… its my English

My friend is a worried man. His only son, the apple of his eyes, is in class six in a convent school. No, he’s very good at studies. That’s not the worry. The issue is he does not speak English whenever he can afford to. He will eventually, I assure my friend. “No man,” he says, “he has started taking in a language, which I don’t really understand.”
And my friend teaches English in a local college. He is basically the son of the soil (how he hates the expression!) who struggled hard in life, and had acquired English late in life, but diligently, with a passion. It is the language of his vocation and he has tremendous respect for it.
Never mind the post-colonial hangover, English is the language of India tomorrow. A greater credit for the economic boom happening in India right now goes to English. My friend opines. Forget the debates about Marathi versus English. There is no logic in it. How can you compare English with any other language? My friend is in the mood for an argument. You cannot use one language instead of the other. Marathi and all other Indian language have their own place. But these languages should not plan to topple English, because they can’t.
I agree. I try to calm him down. The entire argument is misplaced. Why are we against English? Because English is a foreign language and because their was a time when the native speakers of that language ruled over us? Does this mean that we gained our political freedom, but failed to achieve linguistic freedom? So far as English is concerned we are still the colonised.
Even this argument is misplaced. My friend shows me an recent article by Pritish Nandy, where the writer claims that English is no longer a foreign language in India, but a language of our own. Forget the ethnic divisions among the population. Right now there is only one thing that divides India, those who know English and those who do not.
No offense to Marathi and other Indian languages. Marathi must survive, and flourish. But not at the expense of English. My friend gives an analogy. Marathi is the language of heart whereas English is the language of mind. Can we survive without either the heart of the mind? No. the same way, both Marathi and English must co-habit. This is certainly not an either or situation.
You know, how I learned English? My friend asks. I don’t know. He tells me the secret. I did my schooling in vernacular medium and I was voracious reader. So, I picked up the nuances of Marathi very fast, and trust me, it helped me a lot in acquiring English. Finally, the essence of all the languages are same. It tells, it communicates. And as long as you can communicate every language has its worth.
However, the topic of our discussion was not English versus Marathi, but about using English. What does it mean when we say that the English we use in India is our English? My friend smiles. This is a tricky question. I agree we don’t use British pronunciation (unless you are working in a call-centre) and sometimes we do play around with the grammar a bit. But does it mean that we can say anything and pass it as ‘our English?’
My friend tells me an anecdote. Two college-going was traveling in a crowded bus. One of them got a place to sit at the end while the other one stood by the railing on the front. When the conductor asks the girl at the back for ticket, she shouts to her friend: “hey, did you ‘remove’? The friend replies: “No, I’ve not removed.” The girl answers: “Ok, I’ll remove then.”
My friend burst into laughter before I could comprehend the joke. Poor girl, she literally translated the words: ‘ticket nikala.’ But she tried to speak English, you bet!
That’s the reason I send my son to a convent English. At least he would learn to speak English in a right way. But this is not the case. Where does he speak English? His teachers are all half-educated themselves, I mean, they surely need a training in spoken English, no? My friend laughs again. See, I also got their influence, ending a question sentence with a no. Man, this is not English. Is it?
And then my son, he speaks Hindi with his friend. All his friends are Marathi speaking. He can speak at least Marathi with them. No, he won’t. Hindi is a macho language, where as Marathi is the language of the mothers. He talks to his mother in Marathi. But I force him to speak English in front of me. This time my friend gives me a melancholic smile. You know, the father is always the culprit!