The Silences of the Century | By Premchand

Politics tells us that India is shining in the world map. In that shining, Kerala is boiling. Perhaps, the state is going to

witness the lowest water levels, the greatest darkness and the most scorching heat. However, even as it tries to

hold its head up in pride for having completed a hundred years, has our cinema depicted the land that we live in, in

any form, on the silver screen? Which land does it try to sketch for us? Whose India? Whose Kerala?

It’s true, we have a lot to be eloquent about when it comes to heritage. Many streams that speak many languages,

originating with Dadasaheb Phalke: Satyajit Ray, Ritwick Ghatak, Guru Dutt, Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal, Adoor

Gopalakrishnan, Girish Kasaravalli, Rituparna Ghosh… they are countless. According to the rational awareness and

interests of the historians, the number of deities in this list may increase or decrease. However, there are a million

people in our land who make a livelihood through cinema. Rs. 50,000 crores have been deposited in cinema. There

are over ten thousand movie halls, and 15 million viewers every week. The countless crores of rupees that flow in

unhindered even while discussing losses amounting to crores make cinema a magical world. It’s a world where the

financial figures can only be guessed. It has stars that earn nothing as well as those who earn a hundred crores.

Cinema makes every viewer dizzy with claims that tower above ticket sales figures. Here, history rests under the

feet of money. Because cinema is unlike any other art form. It’s an art that is possible only with money.

‘Have You Seen The Arana?’

‘If an arana bites, death is immediate’, goes the proverb. In the old Kerala, in the time of (OV Vijayan’s) ‘Khasakkinte

Ithihasam’, the arana thus filled the images of dinosaurs in children’s minds. Where is that arana today? With the

question ‘Have You Seen the Arana’, Sunanda Bhat, a woman director from Karnataka, had participated in the last

Goa International Film Festival. This documentary unveils the horrendous face of the Malayali’s changing life

through the changes that our Wayanad has seen in the agriculture, landscape and weather in the last 25 years. The

new generation has neither seen the arana, nor has it heard of it.

‘Have You Seen The Arana?’ leads one to shocking realization that a society that has destroyed natural farming

through the excessive use of chemical fertilizers, is actually killing its own biological body. It’s not a Malayali who

has produced, funded and directed this film by toiling through five years of battling various odds. During this period,

not even a single Malayalam film has been able to portray the scalding truths that Sunanda Bhat from Karnataka has

made. So, what are we talking about? It is here that ‘Arana’ becomes the representative of an unseen truth. It’s not

only the arana that goes missing. Our cinema has not realized that a hundred living beings have perished. It does

not represent women, who constitute half of our society. It does not even understand what a Dalit’s life means.

The interests of the capital are subjugating everything else. Looking at contemporary cinema, it is obvious that this

cinema is using its forgetfulness as a weapon against the public. It’s moved a long distance away from history,

heritage, culture and memory. In fact, it is manufacturing a collective amnesia in a commercial basis. Such amnesia

provides excellent manure for the lust for power to flourish.

This is not a phenomenon that happened one fine morning. The very growth of Indian cinema had happened during

a period of intrusion, even as censorship was inflicted upon it. Its very existence has been under deference to

censorship. It has rarely fought against the establishment, though some lone voices have managed to sneak

themselves across the barrier.

The general mission of the silver screen is not to go deep into the world we live in, mine out its core and show us; it

is to make us feel compelled to forget.

Its craft isn’t about memory… it’s about making one lose one’s sense of reality.

Cinema is always under a state of emergency – an emergency imposed by power and money. Even though each

film has its own politics, Indian cinema’s preoccupation with being apolitical displays its own slavery to the system.

This is the reason why a filmmaker like Krzysztof Zanussi has been saying that censorship is the biggest obstacle,

since the dawn of Soviet cinema. The old Communist order and the new capitalist one have the technology to polish

and shape cinema at the very content. Media such as poetry, novel and news journalism have developed the tactics

to circumvent such interventions.

However, since film requires capital, such tactics have proved mostly ineffective. Capital silences all rebellions. In

the history on Malayalam cinema, only one film has defied capital. It was John Abraham’s ‘Amma Ariyaan’, a film

created with money collected from people, under the aegis of a movement called ‘Odesa’. This film also underwent

censorship, earned a good certificate, and won the embrace of a special award. This means that, in this movie, John

Abraham did not require to exhibit truths that would amaze or ruffle the ruling establishment. Since cinema needs

to play out within the ambit of ‘compromised freedom’, it needs to practice certain silences; it is these silences that

have chiseled it into the art of forgetfulness. The silver screen, which turns money into a stage that can even sell the

soul to make a living, creates an arena to celebrate a century of Great Silence. In this context, cinema’s future is not

filled with hope. It will drown people in its visual deluge. The challenge that a century of cinema raises before public

is about how not to get drowned.

English Translation of an article that appeared in the Mathrubhumi on 03rd May 2013