V for Vendetta: A film I do not tire of watching

As Guy Fawkes Night has been observed for Centuries because it is imbued with a timeless symbolism, so are certain films which become a part of you — and increasingly relevant — over time.

Like most films, V for Vendetta too is not able to perform highly enough to meet the expectations of its illustrious parent, the book with the same title by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. The occasional attempts to insert mush do not go well with the overall flavour of the story.

Having disclaimed that, it is safe to say that the 2005 movie made by James McTeigue and written by The Wachowskis holds a claim to distinctiveness. It is special enough to make me and my partner watch it when we wish to compensate for being away from our families on festivals.

The film doesn’t fail expectations at all. It is a high tension electric wire running through the audience’s minds and hearts as the anarchist revolutionary V, played by Hugo Weaving, orchestrates a series of events to expose the government, very much in the vein of the Paris revolution’s “No replastering, the structure is rotten.” It is art done elegantly, when a dystopian theme like this could have resulted in a lot of confusion and muck flying around. Its finesse does not gesticulate towards its beauty but rests in its place after it has been created, to be appreciated by those who will.

I believe it settled in some part of me because after I saw it, one of my delirious dreams, conceived during some sickness, was this:

A feminist revolution has achieved the complete eradication of sexism. I know the overthrow has been successful because some of the revolution graffiti is also sent to my new phone as a text message. The first line reads: “It may seem to you an occasion of bereavement but you’ll soon discover that it is one of joy.” I read the message and am immediately reassured that the efforts made by me and my compatriots to bring in equality of all genders have not been in vain.

It awakens unstirred parts of you: vestigial parts that haven’t been used in a while so you can’t immediately locate the vibrations. So you don’t want to talk about the movie after it’s over but close your eyes and wrap yourself around you and listen to those stirrings and eventually act upon them, when you are hit hard by the truth of these words uttered by Valerie, a character V fondly recalls in the film: “Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch, we are free.” I know I want to live each day, no matter what the span of my life, when Valerie’s voice in the film gives credence to her persona in the book: “ . . . for three years, I had roses, and apologized to noone.”

Without pouncing upon you with some cliched declamation, it touches you in places you had not thought of for some time. You see it as a long-forgotten friend but don’t know how your present world will absorb it and so you quietly pull it into a corner and keep it hidden, to visit when no one is around. You know that it is not vendetta that V needs; he needs love and out of that love for him you want him to have his vendetta for isn’t he wonderful and shouldn’t he have everything he desires?

And of course, most of all, the film is about the fearlessness everyone wants, fear being the only real obstacle to living. I had been hugely impressed with the part where Natalie Portman is angry with V for making her go through torture, until he makes her realise that it had been to rid her of her fears. There is solace in the routine of torture because you seem to know more or less when it will be, even if it is every day, and can actually prepare yourself for it, and then be tortured and have even more time to prepare for the next day. This is not in the nature of a calamity, which catches you unawares and demands immediate attention. Isn’t it true that the only way to defeat our fears are to go ahead and meet them, to look them in the eye, rather than to keep looking over our backs all life?

A lot of fans have tried to guess at who the character of V “really” is, to speculate on his relations with other characters. I do not want to do that, to indulge in the “paradox of asking a masked man who he is”. Because I think what the film, and V, wanted us to know and believe was that V is all of us, and that we have it in us to be V if we can go through a fire and come out burnt but not broken.

First published in  thREAD, The Hindu, 8 Nov 2018.

Multiplex

Where the restlessness of our narrow gullies finds respite 
As we breathe in the wintry air locked inside the cinema screen 
Lulling ourselves

Into believing that we, too, residents of the third world,
Struggle with the doubts and dilemmas of the first world,
That beyond scarcity-illness-religion
We are part of the subtle nuances of fine sentiment and existentialism.

First published in Peacock Journal, May 2018.

India's Daughter is proof: Not every film on rape fulfills feminist ideals

In late 2012, the deadly gang rape of 23-year-old Jyoti Singh Pandey on a moving Delhi bus set off a firestorm of widespread protests in India. Her brutal assault and subsequent death exposed a culture of victim-blaming and lack of state and law enforcement protections for violence against women. Director Leslee Udwin's documentary “India's Daughter” explores the case and its aftermath, and was quickly banned by the Indian government after its release this year. While the debates around this measure are important in the context of freedom of expression and legal concerns, it’s also worth exploring whether the film actually brought any of the change it aimed for.

In “India’s Daughter,” Jyoti’s parents share their memories of her with fondness and pride. In a culture where girls are undervalued, they celebrated her birth and spent what little they had to educate her. She was on her way to fulfilling her dream of becoming a doctor, something virtually unheard of in the village her parents left to raise their family in Delhi. These accounts humanize Jyoti, rather than seeing her merely as a rape 'victim.’ But as her parents and her tutor recount her virtues, I can’t help but wonder if the narrative would have evoked less support if it would have been any other 'kind' of girl.

Jyoti had reportedly told her parents she wanted to go and watch a movie because she wouldn't get the chance once her internship began. But what if she had been more like rape survivor Suzette Jordan, who passed away this year – a woman who enjoyed going to night clubs without feeling the need to justify her right to pleasure?

Like Suzette, Jyoti had reported her rape, defying the culture of shame that 'good girls' are supposed to be a part of. One of the rapists, Mukesh Singh, said in his interview that they expected she would be too ashamed to tell anyone about the attack.

It may not have been Udwin’s intention, but “India’s Daughter” fails to look beyond how society and her family perceived Jyoti, painting a sadly one-dimensional picture of her.

The director said she regretted that Jyoti's friends did not agree to talk and share more about her on camera. Still, she could have brought in the voices of other rape survivors in India who have been publicly asserting their individuality beyond being someone’s daughter, sister, mother.

Udwin claims the title “India’s Daughter” was simply a term used by the Indian press, not a patriarchal statement. But just before the end credits roll, the film once again uses the term 'the rape of India's daughter.' If Udwin intended for that to be sarcastic in any way, I didn’t detect it.

Her attempts at humanizing Jyoti instead give way to victimization by the cinematography of an eerie night, blood on the roads and a funeral pyre. These images – reminiscent of news reports of sexual violence, illustrated with stricken, crying women hiding their faces – only add to the notion of women as weak creatures to be either exploited or pitied. In one scene, the tutor seems to commend that Jyoti chose to watch “Life of Pi” instead of an average action movie. But even that is followed by the visual of a snarling tiger from the film, a warning saying, perhaps, that Jyoti's choices were immaterial in the face of circumstances.

 Together with the background score, all this emphasizes the predator-prey relationship, which, once again places men and women in the doer and done-upon hierarchy. The dramatic reconstruction “India’s Daughter” provides of an already devastating incident takes away from the seriousness of the issue and encourages vicarious interest in the film.

The film is replete with misogynist statements from the rapists and their defence lawyers. Socio-political figures like Delhi chief minister Sheila Dixit and NGO founder Amod Kanth discuss, respectively, how girls are undervalued and the circumstances in which juvenile delinquents often grow up. But in light of past instances (of which Udwin probably knew about and was critical of) when they resorted to victim blaming (Dixit) and opposed decriminalising homosexuality (Kanth), their credibility as people with an understanding of gender-based violence seems compromised. The intention of 'holding a mirror to society’ to show that the criminals’ thoughts are commonplace may backfire here. India’s progressive community is already well aware of the prevalence of such misogyny. But it’s those misogynists who consider themselves members of 'civilized' society that won’t see the coincidence of their own views and the rapist’s. And since “India’s Daughter” does not provide a strong and timely counterpoint, so many are likely to miss the condemnation inherent in the film.

 The rapist sounds dangerously 'logical' when saying he had the right to ask Jyoti why she was out with a boy, that they won't have assaulted her like they did if she had not resisted. The audience isn’t stupid, but it has its biases. And if anyone intends to challenge those, they’ll need a hard shaking.

“India’s Daughter” takes its viewer to the time before the rape, when the rapist says he and his friends wanted to party, to enjoy. When he says that they may not have money like the rich folk, but they have 'courage,' I can see the frustration of being born in an underprivileged class. I can see how their sense of superiority is restored by committing violence against women. I can see the ‘logic’, however twisted, of shifting the inferiority they feel to a group they consider to be even lower in status: women. These men feel it’s only by curtailing women's rights to enjoyment that they can exercise their own. But this need to establish masculine power over women and the anger against women – who dare to express their desires and are ready to face the 'risks' presented by the existence of such men –  isn't restricted to men of a certain class, as shown in the film.

When the camera goes into the slums and meets the rapists' families, there is no clear line drawn to say that what might be one explanation of their crime is not the same as being justification, as not all people in the same situation would behave similarly. Zooming in on their poverty, too, makes it appear like just the poor commit such crimes.

One activist speaks for a short duration and there is no voice at all belonging to other young women in the city. Both the Oxford historian's analysis and the Indian activist's statements are recorded in English, which renders them even more ineffective as staunch opposition to the chauvinism expressed in Hindi. There is no introspection on how these views came to be in the lawyers' case; and in the case of the rapists, it stops at linking their crime to growing up in poverty and witnessing everyday violence.

To be sure, films have their inherent limitations - of time, resources and the need to stick to focus areas - but then “India’s Daughter” cannot become the premise for a global campaign that wants to end gender inequality. Its 'exclusive' feature may be the rapist's interview, but the film gives no new information, insight or inspiration. It’s just another reminder to keep the fight against sexual violence going on.

But by not looking deeper into how a traditionally patriarchal culture perpetuates misogyny, the film leaves viewers feeling like this is less of a global crisis and more about one family’s daughter or one country's problem.

First published in The Tempest, 9 Oct 2015.