Goa

Cast: Jay, Prem Gi Amaran, Vaibhav, Sampath, Sneha, Music: Yuvan Shankar Raja, Direction: Venkat Prabhu

There’s another film that deserves social criticism, not for the same reason. Though Goa scores high on certain aspects of filmmaking departments and, on occasions, high comedy, sociological approach would better suit the content.
Venkat Prabhu came with a fresh perspective to Tamil film storytelling that had not existed, the perspective that’s going to inspire very many filmmakers of today and tomorrow. One of his stock tricks, of identifying an old, usually nostalgic, song with each of the characters and playing it in bits at strategic points in the story is clever and funny. He also has a semi-spoof tendency where his characters often enact famous scenes and characters from other films. Many filmmakers do that for comical effects but Venkat Prabhu does it to progress a story or conclude a sub-plot. That is used to a great effect (and humour) in Goa when he brings in Simbu in the form of the psycho from Manmadhan character together with psychologically disturbed Sneha with a cheeky caption ‘Corrected Machi!’ Is it also a coincidence that Sneha’s estranged husband subsequently meets Nayanthara? Is there another layer to that?

Now coming to the sociological perspective, it’s worthwhile to question how much the audience understood the story and also appreciated its boldness. It is the first Tamil film to portray an ‘ordinary’ gay couple and arguably the first Indian film to use them non-judgementally. The Indian public can’t just be considered homophobic but homo-ignorants, people who were not even aware of the existence of communities with different sexual orientation. To them, the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) are the people who are genuinely ‘queer’ to the public and are not just disapproved but even considered ‘outside’ of their normal lives, like lepers. In this respect the homophobia is at a stage higher than in other countries. This, combined with classic Indian tendency to reject anything that’s not part of their culture (that’s mainstream contemporary culture) has relegated homosexuality to the farthest of the backbenches. Till about mid-noughties, they were referred to as strange ‘beings’ spotted in the dark corners of the beach at late nights or the corners of obscure restaurants, and spoken in the same delight and astonishment accorded to a Bigfoot or Yeti.

Bridging this divide would have been immensely challenging for the sponsors of the subculture, whose attempts began in the mid-noughties with none other than the then health minister who openly made a statement about legalising homosexuality. His context was mainly about the AIDS epidemic and the need to control it and he thought that by bringing the gay community out from the underworld would be the first step towards his goal. Whatever may be the aims, coming from such an authority did create some ripples, but not enough to be of any significance. There is one thing to be remembered here though: that something becoming a ‘law’ really means nothing to an ordinary Indians. Hardly any law is respectfully obeyed and adhered to and subsequent governments, both state and central, have lost even a superficial inclination in trying to enforce it onto their billion plus citizens. In that chaotic, yet incubate environment, many counter-cultures thrive, queer being one of them.

Hence it becomes important that more than the law, an acceptable depiction in the mainstream culture becomes necessary and nothing is more dominant in Indian psyche than the influence of cinema. That’s where Goa’s achievement becomes momentous. As mentioned earlier, Goa attempts to portray a gay couple without judgement. Although it make fun of them (a few of the jokes being really crass) the fun element clearly comes from Venkat Prabhu is inherent nature of ridiculing just about everything rather than aimed at queerness disparagingly. Goa also could be the first film to look at homosexuality beyond ‘sexual overtones’. In this film the couple are endowed with normal relationship-emotions, such as love, jealousy, companionship, and they even dream of gay weddings. Though homosexuality is no longer illegal in India civil-partnerships are still far from reality. In this context, Goa goes beyond even what could legally be achieved however irrelevance that is to the filmmaker’s objectives.

The crucial question is how many people really understood what’s being portrayed? Venkat Prabhu never openly identifies them as ‘gay’ even though he graphically depicts their relationship using gender symbols. Funnily enough, it escapes attention since not many movie-going audiences in Tamil are aware of these international symbols. His success could be in providing such depiction convincingly but his failure may have been that it did not garner much attention. In other words, not many people may have understood what was happening on the screen. Personally, I believe that Venkat Prabhu may have anticipated some controversy but I’m not sure whether he was relieved or disappointed at not having generated one. In any case that doesn’t diminish the sincerity of his ambition.

It is difficult to say how much impact this film will have on people’s attitude towards sexual orientation. It is also confusing to see the society being so progressive at certain and so primitive on the other avenues. Movies like Angadi Theru (a review of this will be made shortly) that portray the residues of the society in bare disillusionment to shocking effect whilst Goa portrays a clubbing, doping crowd with assimilationist tendencies. In both films a group of disillusioned and desperate rustic venture out onto the bold and promising urban life. While one end up in streets to sleep with urchins, in other they party joyously and end up bagging beautiful women. Both have humorous overtones. Both happen in India. And that’s what’s confusing.

Singam

Cast: Surya, Prakash Raj, Nasser, Radha Ravi, Anushka, Music: Devi Sri Prasad, Direction: Hari

Some movies deserve rave reviews and some don’t deserve a review. However tempting, segregating Singam in the latter category would be unfair to the filmmaker. It must be admitted, albeit embarrasingly, that the film is immensely entertaining as it was fun to watch the ‘hero’ thrashing up the baddies to pulp, especially when the ‘hero’ happens to be Surya who delivers every punch with passionate energy with suitably accessories of his toned biceps and six packs.

Having said that, the question remains as to whether Singam deserves the ‘regular’ review. An art can be analysed in different critical approaches. A formative and structural analysis would mean looking at it from the filmmaking point of view. A sociological review will approach it from a different viewpoint. This review takes that approach for reasons that will soon become evident.

Singam tells the story of a sub-inspector from a south Indian village. Durai Singam is intelligent, honest, righteous, aggressive, strong, humble and charming. The last two qualities come handy in wooing his woman who hopelessly falls head over heels. However the first few qualities are obstructions to any police officer in India who wants to progress in his career. But he does get promoted and transferred to the capital city. The promotion is sponsored or ‘engineered’ by a city-based mafia gangster whose path crossed sub-inspector’s previously when the gangster got humiliated by the SI. The gangster believes that by bringing the SI to the city - his own bastion - will help in avenging his humiliation. Then what happens consequently forms rest of the story. The story in itself provides interesting cinematic possibilities for entertainment and the director Hari amply delivers all of them. As mentioned earlier, that’s not our main contention, nor our focus of this review.

What kind of the policeman is this Durai Singam? We were told he is honest. We would have believed it even if we were not told because he is the ‘hero’. I invite readers to observe my conscious use of the word ‘hero’ and not protagonist which is my usual preferred choice. When Singam hears that a girl is being ‘eve teased’ and subsequently harassed by a group of thugs in a cinema hall he gets incredibly enraged. So much so that he takes out his motorcycle (with the girl in the pillion, of course), personally visits the cinema hall and beats up the gang to no ends. There’s a curious aspect to this scene. Before he begins to bash up, he challenges them to show up (because out of fear they hide behind the rest of the cinema going public). One of the thugs shout from behind the crowd that they will show up only if the SI can lay his gun aside. The SI, valiantly, unfastens his gun and hands it over to the harassed girl. Now he is ready to face them.

What were they worried about? That the SI would shoot them? And for what crime - eve-teasing? Technically no police inspector can use a firearm without an order from the collector. Not least on eve-teasers, with or without collector’s orders. Then in a fight scene that ensues, Singam beats up each one of the guys in front of the cinema hall with full crowd watching. The crowd too watches the action nonchalantly. After the fight is over, one woman in the crowd evidently remarks, ‘These guys should have known what would happen if they played foul with a policeman’s wife.’ What would happen if they played foul with an ordinary man’s wife is not explained.
Have our people been so desensitised enough to not understand the apparent absurdity of the action? Or because of the constant behaviour of our callous, corrupt, and increasingly violent police, have our public come believe that the job of a police officer is to beat up bad guys? And ‘bad guys’ according to whose belief? What would our public do if another officer decides to beat up a ‘good guy’ because the ‘good guy’ was being a thorn in the police officer’s fraudulent flesh? How many movies have we seen where the ‘hero’ is not a police officer but an ordinary civilian who gets arrested and beaten up by the corrupt police officers in collusion with the equally corrupt politicians?

Even in this movie, the ‘honest’ police officer Singam fabricates charges on the guys who frustrate him. He sets up a trap for the gangster’s brother and murders him (for a good measure Singam calls up the gangster and puts the phone on loudspeaker so that he could hear the raining bullet shots). Later, the honest inspector arrests the police commissioner who was found assisting the gangster and later releases him stating a strange kind of logic that if the press gets to know of his arrest, it would sully the reputation of the police department.

The police department is being repeatedly portrayed in two extremes in our films. They are corrupt, merciless and violent or honest, intelligent and straightforward. The former are villains and the later are heroes. In both cases they are aggressive and violent. When the villain policemen are shown to be violent it is seen as horrid because the violence is usually aimed at good guys. But when the hero policemen are shown to be violent it is celebrated because the violence is shown to be aimed at bad guys. The violence in itself is not scorned at and the conviction that policemen are violent is not questioned. In a way, again in a crude sense of logic, we can’t find fault with the director because he was indeed portraying what we see in everyday life. The trouble arises only when the film appears to celebrate it. Policemen violating the law or turning violent is bad for the society. That it is indeed being violated by a good cop is no excuse. Films like Singam that glorifies police violence does much more harm to police department than films that portray them as villains or buffoons.