Almost Perfect

This was written more than a year ago and buried under my drafts and in other people’s emails. So, thought of posting anyway. On To Kill a Mockingbird, book and film.

The phrase “impressionable age” may have come to be used in a throwaway fashion now. But it still packs in deep meaning and context with respect to the human psyche. We are often shaped by people, surroundings and the atmosphere around us. The self-made man in all his literal definitions is more of an exception than norm. The sensibilities associated with the self would often carry a legacy to an inextricable past, tangible or intangible, ranging from family, friends, neighbourhood, society, city and country. These could be positive and negative, stemming from an invisible tutelage of carefully constructed character or destructively sown but seemingly invisible prejudice. One such story was told of a young girl named Scout Finch in the old town of Maycomb, Alabama that became an instant classic, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Harper Lee.

To put it plainly, there is no hot news to offer you on To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960. Widely regarded as a masterpiece, the only regret it left in the minds of everyone is that Lee never published another book. A semi-autobiographical account of a part of Lee’s childhood, To Kill a Mockingbird, with its eclectic choice of narrative devices drives home a strong message, without the apparent weight of a moral science lesson, and also doubling up as a book written extremely well and enjoyable to read. It won’t be wrong to say that To Kill a Mockingbird owes its thematic notions and with a bit of generalization, its geographical setting to Mark Twain’s classics. As Owen Wilson’s character in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris affirms, “I think you can make the case that all modern American literature comes from Huckleberry Finn“. Truer words have never been said. What more, To Kill a Mockingbird has been revealed to be Superman’s favourite book!

The narrative works as a grown woman recalling her memorable childhood with her father, brother and people of her small town and also as an allegory within the broader context with one of her neighbours – Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley. The mysticism that the Radley house holds for the kids and the neighbourhood stands as a testament to the racial tension and apparent apathy to an alternate point of view in the sleepy town of Maycomb. The issues surrounding the Tom Robinson trial and prejudice affecting the Southern town are symbolic of the bugaboo – of which Boo Radley is an obvious derivative of – in the room that everyone shows great interest in albeit for small talk. There is a beautiful symmetry in Lee’s writing that reveals itself in the end when the Robinson trial reaches its tragic denouement while the allegorical narrative ends with undertones of comedy. As tragicomical as the tale is, the conceit and the eventual lessons behind them feed off each other. It’s Boo Radley’s point of view that Scout regrets not to have considered, while it is the sort of innocent enthusiasm for Boo’s life that the kids had, that the parochial people could have done with. The entity that bridges the gap between these two compelling stories is the anchor – Atticus Finch.

The character of Atticus Finch has always stood for everything right in this world. So much so that it is considered to be more an ideal state than a practical one. Frances McDormand playing Elaine Miller in Almost Famous, exults in pride, “I can’t believe you wanna be Atticus Finch. Oh, that makes me feel so good.” when her son, William, claims he is a fan. That’s the sort of impossible moral standards Atticus Finch was always considered to be a symbol of. As a single father he is the guiding force for his young children and as the lawyer defending Tom Robinson, he is the last man standing up for the rights of the “colored” people of Maycomb. In many ways, Atticus Finch is the steadfast Gandhian that you can ever dream to come across. This can be interestingly anachronistic because Atticus Finch walked around in Gandhi’s shoes at a time when Gandhi’s collective consciousness was still seeping through parts of India. It’s probably right to say that we haven’t got the hang of it yet, and probably never will. On the other hand, far from being an anachronism, Gandhi and Atticus Finch existed somewhat in parallel universes that have had incredibly congruent timelines. Just two years after the book was published, Atticus Finch was immortalized on screen by Gregory Peck in a film that does full justice to the book it is based upon.

 The book could have very well been a screenplay within itself. Not to undermine the writing (Horton Foote) and direction (Robert Mulligan) but the film pretty much jumps out of the book as you read. It still required once in a lifetime performances and these come in the form of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and Mary Badham as Scout. Scout is the narrator and the one who remains in the sidelines as a diplomatic observer, and this is sketched exquisitely with the children’s actions. It’s always Jem and to an extent Dill who run to the courthouse, eavesdrop on proceedings, invade the no man’s land that is Radley porch. Scout follows them into these adventures but her reactions are more often than not incidental. The precociousness of Scout Finch acts as an antecedent of her behaviour that has a disarming innocence associated with it. The episode of Atticus Finch braving the mob that arrives to lynch Tom Robinson demonstrates this trait as much as serving as a parable contained in the larger story. Scout’s seemingly harmless questions for Mr. Cunningham discomfit the mob and they go away. But this is a perfectly natural attribute for a six year old kid like Scout. This demanded an innocent coming of age portrayal from Mary Badham and she doesn’t miss a note. The twitch of the face just before throwing a tantrum when Jem denies her something, the nervous excitement before first day of school and her tomboyish charms out in the open with other students – there was a reason Gregory Peck, while remaining in touch with Badham for the rest of his life, forever referred to her as Scout. There is also a method to Peck’s acting here. Apart from all the effortless underplaying, it is his use of props. It’s in the way he adjusts his glasses and eventually lets go of them before aiming at the mad dog. It’s how he meticulously picks up his lamp and book to go guard Tom Robinson through the night from the mobs. It is the way he picks up his papers and files and arranges them into his briefcase before walking out of the court. The aforementioned Gandhi-sque idealism that comes across when he remains stoic after Bob Ewell spits on him and his only frustration – much later outside his porch – showing up as an incomplete half-hearted dismissal with his hands.

Last year (2010) was the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird. A number of events were organized around the town of Monroeville, Alabama, the town that Maycomb is modelled on. There were readings, tours and plays organized around town. The courthouse in Monroeville, whose replica was created for the film, stands to this day as a museum for the book. A play based on the book, entirely community produced is shown in the museum that runs to packed houses even today. As we continue to revisit the phenomenon in all its forms, there will be one lasting set of frames from the film that will stay in our minds. Rev. Sykes pats Scout in the courtroom – “Jean Louise. Jean Louise, stand up. Your father is passing.”

In The Name Of A Legend

This was written more than a year ago and buried under my drafts and in other people’s emails. So, thought of posting anyway. On Shehan Karunatilaka’s Chinaman.

As Rohit Brijnath often asks, why do you watch sport? Howdo you explain the joy when a gifted athlete puts his bat to a ball and drives it past the covers or when a prodigy defies established tenets of a sport to hit a single handed backhand winner from an impossible position? Where in your body, or soul, do you tap into to find the energy to support a team when they are 0-8 and two series whitewash down? What makes you pick up your bags and travel afar following that team? Why will you watch a moment of play for the millionth time or listen to its commentary on a pocket radio, like Brad Pitt playing Billy Beane in Moneyball, years or in some cases decades after the event? How hard will you try to search for an unsung Greatest of All Time that no one has heard about?

Shehan Karunatilaka’s novel ‘Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew” pretty much waddles through all those existential questions, directly or indirectly. In a beautiful way. Shehan’s madness for cricket, Sri Lanka and its greatest player according to him – Pradeep Mathew – knows no bounds. There is a passage in the end where his stand-in – W.G. Karunasena – tries to explain to his wife in his head why sport is above and more important than life. If you are a fan, it reminds you of the beauty of sports, and even if you are not, the unbridled love comes through. A key scene in the Spanish film El Secreto De Sus Ojos has two federal agents – struggling to find a rape-murder suspect – in a bar indulging in an expository sequence from a fan of a local club that forms the basis to not only their solving of the case but also of that ingredient immutable in every man – passion. Pablo, one of the agents asks, as I paraphrase, “What is Racing to you, even after nine years without a championship?” The fan gives only one word – “Passion”. In the film this simple philosophy is part of something greater. In similar fashion, in Chinaman, the passion of Karunatilaka and thereby WG, is something far greater than sport and cricket – it is about Sri Lanka and its history.

The ghost of Hunter S. Thompson freely treads all through Chinaman. Alcohol floods through the pages as much as it floods through WG’s blood stream. This makes Pradeep Mathew – the greatest cricketer to have played for Sri Lanka as Karunatilaka never fails to remind you at every step - more mythical than he is already. It also makes the real events from the cricketing world all the more surreal, no matter that we’ve lived through each and every one of them ourselves. WG, as a journalist and a man closer to the scene, bends, shape shifts and reconfigures cricket viewing, especially Sri Lankan cricket, as we know it. The spirited prism throws kaleidoscopic images of sports mad people, match fixers, mysterious gangsters, corrupt ministers, dysfunctional families and sultry damsels in distress and if you are into cricket, there is little to complain about. Chinaman is probably the first Gonzo-esque re-imagination of cricket and the kind of unconditional love it has demanded all over the world.

The book does have an inclination for the dramatics from time to time. The digressions and the ramblings can be seemingly worlds apart but are quite apparent in some cases – like how the parallels between the boggling mystery of the Duckworth-Lewis method and WG’s best friend and companion Ary Byrd’s detective skills are woven. As with David Foster Wallace and his writings on tennis, Shehan Karunatilaka is really in his elements when he describes cricket matches and their intricacies. It’s entirely possible to visualize his memory to be this huge library where he props up a ladder at the last but one section and goes up to retrieve the choicest details. Among the tedium of the theatrics associated with the search for Pradeep Mathew, I longed for more such gems in the book. But nothing unforgivable considering what an inscrutable genius Pradeep Mathew is conjured to be in your head.

Inside Shehan Karunatilaka resides the very same sports megalomaniac that resides in all of us. The one that hopes for one last Grand Slam for Roger Federer, beating Nadal and Djokovic. The one that has the recurrent pipe dream of Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman winning a Test series in Australia. The one that wishes for graceful retirement – whatever that means – for all the great sportsmen. It is through his vision of Pradeep Mathew that he lays bare all his affection for Sri Lankan cricket, the people and their struggle and the heartbreaking politics within. Pradeep Mathew might be the unsung legend of Sri Lankan cricket, but what he represents is far greater than the sport itself. It is Sri Lanka, stripped off its Baila induced stereotypes but the hangover intact, its characters and figures so true to the heart that it won’t have been surprising if this was titled – Synecdoche, Sri Lanka.

On Baradwaj Rangan’s ‘Conversations With Mani Ratnam’

I am no guy to talk about books.

But then this subject is just too close to heart. Baradwaj Rangan’s Conversations With Mani Ratnam is everything you expect it to be. It’s at once a window into the mind that has made all those great films and also a casual walk and talk routine about his decision making, love for cinema, and his craft.

Each chapter is dedicated to a single film, and as much as it keeps the discussion focused, it also has the occasional segues that bring up something related to grammar of film making, ideas and a similar quality or a contrasting quality with another film.

I don’t know if the discussions too happened in the chronological order but the comfort between the two keeps getting better and better. At first, Rangan’s reading of the films bothers Mani Ratnam more than usual but then he gets around to it in the later discussions. This might also subconsciously suggest the growth in ambition of his films over the 90s and the 00s, and thereby lending more conveniently to these sub-textual readings. In fact, Ratnam does this quite often himself, and only in a few occasions Rangan retorts smugly (for having been in the receiving end in the earlier chapters)! These are some of the most fun parts. The Thalapathy chapter especially ends on such a note.

Delightfully, the Nayakan chapter default answer is “All Kamal.” Well, I am exaggerating but this is one chapter where the actors/cast in his film are heavily discussed. Satyam notes how not discussing the actors was a mild issue for him but this wasn’t as big an issue for me. It’s probably Iruvar, the only chapter you wish had had that angle. As Rangan notes in his Introduction (an elaborate reworking of his Madras Male article), we never raised an eyebrow with casting choices in Anjali because for us, the real hero was Mani Ratnam. And that’s the idea behind the book. It’s about his creations, his decisions on paper and the sets and some people.

The book gets better and better as you read and mostly because – in my opinion – his films have gotten better and better. Of course, there is the warming up factor with respect to conversations. A very notable aspect is how Rangan knows when to painfully (not for us!) persist on some of his questions and when to let it go and let it be hanging there. It gives a very listening/watching quality to this book. A big surprise was the Alaipayuthey chapter, as we get to see the thought process that has gone into what is essentially categorized as “light” film. Nayakan might predictably top the list but the ones on Alaipayuthey, Kannathil Muthamittal and Raavan(an) are most fascinating. You’ll also find out why Ayutha Ezhuthu turned out to be the much better film in that bilingual. Absolute must read.