The camera, as anticipated by Orwell’s 1984, slowly becomes the tool of intimidation through its ability of documentation. It is a living proof. It is technology, and thus, accurate. It is a machine, and thus, free of prejudice

————————————————————————-

The most essential question earlier was: Why digital video in the first place?

As we teeter on the verge of the eleventh anniversary of the phenomenal success that was The Blair Witch Project, however, a more urgent interrogation emerges in the focus, a more pressing matter that demands immediate attendance. Digital video has become the all pervading ether of Isaac Newton’s universe; its residence as undisturbing for the modern world as an old painting on the wall. It is inconspicuous by its presence. More precisely, no one cares anymore whether a camera is switched on in some corner anymore, as long as it doesn’t intrude into their most vulnerable, basal, and human spaces.

As a result, the updated question that revolves around each film that employs the digital video is : Does each film that uses digital video have to justify its use? Should a format merely be an aesthetic choice, or does it also have to be a moral one? The answer, I believe, would vary according to the context. It would be futile to ask a mumblecore filmmaker from America about his decision to use digital video to shoot his movie, for he has converted a compulsion into an aesthetic principle. However, when a filmmaker from within a mainstream industry, perfectly capable of procuring adequate funds for a conventional release, chooses to acquire production support from a producer known for her expenditure in the preservation of the conventional; it is an interesting decision, and one which begs the question : Does the format justify itself? Infact, we may even have to restore the original question and ask : Why digital video?

The answers to these, in Dibakar Banerjee’s third film Love, Sex Aur Dhokha, are grudging, not forthcoming, and non-committal. His film is mostly too self-conscious of its own achievement, too smug about the novelty of its format to realise that a brave decision is only a means to an end, and not an end unto itself. Therefore, even as his employs cheap digital video to shoot his film, he cannot transcend the rather lucrative trappings of the scandalous; consistently misunderstanding cinematic bravura as the ability to bypass the archaic censor board and bring to the Indian multiplex screen scenes of pixelated intercourse, or generous expletives, or better still, decapitation. While no one can deny him the moral victory over a stagnant culture, it is not difficult to locate transparency in his cinematic intent.

The film is divided into three chapters, with each chapter infused with each of the three elements from mthe film title. The only time Banerjee commits himself to a contemplation of the digital format itself is in the first chapter (or vignette) of the film, which is about a clandenstine love affair between an aspiring filmmaker who idolises the Aditya Chopra school of filmmaking, and the daughter of an influential figure. The filmmaker enters the house of his lover on the pretext of making a film starring her, called ‘Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna’, and as we go, the love develops. Banerjee, with the mastery of a cautious cynic, tongue-firmly-in-cheek, interlaces sequences from within the film by the aspiring director, with corresponding scenes from within his own film. For instance, he lets a scene where the young filmmaker and the girl profess their inability to stay apart from each other in front of a makeshift make-up room mirror, hugging and rubbing their bodies with each other; immediately follow a scene from within the film-within-the-film, where Raj runs towards the camera in slow-motion, shouting the  heroine’s name, chewing his scenery, and beating up the goons. By placing scenes with the same emotional intent – one constructed in the manner of the old Bollywood film, and one just being candid footage on a digital camera that was left on – Banerjee not only mocks the outdated Bollywood love story aesthetic, but also makes an effort to anticipate its nature in the future.

The culmination of this chapter, as with the other two chapters, is rather predictable, and you know where the two lovers and headed once they elope, marry and then decide to tell the father of the girl their location. But what clearly deems it superior to the remaining two chapters is the accidental presence of the digital camera at the site of events it was never intended to record, and the presentation of its characters as human beings, and not as caricatures to participate in one more shocking act. The only manner in which a filmmaker may transcend the gimmick of the digital is by still letting it be about normal people. Banerjee crosses the threshhold of a gimmick and makes his first chapter a truly affecting story by a simple cut – one inspired by Cloverfield’s final shot – wherein the shot of the lovers speaking into the camera, anticipating their marriage, and celebrating it – becomes a source of irony, as well as tragedy because of what you know about their eventual fate.

As we enter the second chapter, the promise is huge. By placing CCTV cameras in a small town supermarket, Banerjee makes an important statement about the nature of film in this nation. It is as if he is claiming an accessibility to spaces, people, and concerns that no mainstream camera gaze can reach, but he can, with those small cameras. It is an important acknowledgement of a small town’s frenzy, of its interwoven insecurities resulting from a dark complexion or the automatic respect which is a yield of an MBA. However, even as Banerjee attempts to allow his cameras to capture these minute intricacies that are so sorely overlooked in our cinema, thereby enabling them to record a genuine human gesture; and even as he picks actors from the streets and gives them lines more apt to a neighbourhood argument; you cannot let go of the feeling of there being the presence of a rather conventional narrative setup in place – with its cause, effect, and resolution firmly decided – and the actors merely playing out whatever parts are necessary to attain each of those stages. For even as Banerjee uses the camera setup of four strategically placed static cameras that could record life as it is – he ends up setting the entire second chapter around a rather predictable event – a sex scandal. He fails to dissociate the candid camera with sex, or sleaze – which is the most conventional association – as if to say that at his most primal – the man is a slave of sex. It is at this point that he falls prey to the Madhur Bhandarkar or even, at certain times, Anurag Kashyap (co-incidentally used a MMS scam in his Dev D.) school of filmmaking, where issues are discussed without much insight. Even as the characters aimed for far greater achievements than producing a sex tape in his earlier two films – they did not remain unaffected by their own actions – plagued often by guilt, or remorse, even apprehension, sometimes gratitude – but with the second chapter in Love, Sex, Aur Dhokha – they experience none, except a suggestion of guilt – mostly just becoming vehicles to carry the story forward. Because even as the male protagonist attempts to get the female protagonist to have sex with him, there are tragic implications involved that our CCTV cameras could have captured in empty supermarket corridors.

The camera, as anticipated by Orwell’s 1984, slowly becomes the tool of intimidation through its ability of documentation. It is a living proof. It is technology, and thus, accurate. It is a machine, and thus, free of prejudice. It is a record, a document of truth. The camera as a gun – cinema as God itself. In his second feature, Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, Banerjee featured a stark criticism of media’s fascination with a common thief – with Love, Sex, Aur Dhokha, he refuses to let the criticism be so subtle anymore – going all out, and discussing at length the digital camera’s intrusion into private spaces. However, as with the second chapter, Banerjee prefers the rather uninteresting contrived tale of a starlet’s revenge over a pop superstar rather than a discussion of the potency of the camera itself. By constraining his chapter so strongly into a narrative, thereby setting a pattern for his film to flow in, he deprives the small digital camera of its ability to capture the spontaneous, the accidental, the unassumed, and the unanticipated – instead using the digital camera just like the film camera – with actors performing well-rehearsed scenes in front of it; to the extent that there is even a shot-reverse shot camera setup in the penultimate scene of the film. With REC, a cinematic predecessor of Love, Sex Aur Dhokha, the director Jaume Balgeuro choreographed actions and let them happen without letting most of the cast know about them, so as to extract spontaneous reactions. While such a move is possible also with the film camera, the digital camera lends itself better to such an intrusion of the most unguarded and spontaneous of human reactions – and to not use it in a film specifically designed to capture them is criminal.

The sad part remains, it is not as if Banerjee is not capable of such inquiry, being clearly the most intelligent director working within the mainstream setup right now; but it is just that it requires a better rationalisation of a film’s foray into a format as novel as this – and no, digital cameras do not enhance realism – they may create that illusion of authenticity because of the similarity of their images to news footage – but once that effect wears of, the digital format is still a mystery that requires more effort to unravel than just juvenile impulsive association to scandal.

PIC:  Film Stills, Poster, Love, Sex Aur Dhoka.

Tags: Dibakar Banarjee, Love, Sex Aur Dhoka

Posted By Anuj | Saturday, March 20th, 2010 | Filed under News, Reviews