Art and lies

Forever Godard? No, it cannot be the cry rising above the chaos outside the film theatre. The French master, who is arguably the Picasso of ...

Forever Godard? No, it cannot be the cry rising above the chaos outside the film theatre. The French master, who is arguably the Picasso of twentieth century cinema, is aware of his own diminishing market value. Let8217;s go for Terminator 4 8212; goes a disappointed voice from the queue in Forever Mozart, the Godard film shown at the 29th International Film Festival in Delhi. The Siri Fort auditorium was almost houseful, despite the famous Godardian subversion of narration. For the proverbial festival-goer, seeing Godard is a religious act. Perhaps as religious as watching the late night show of The Rainmaker, the Francis Ford Coppola adaptation of a John Grisham legal thriller. Hang on. Out there, someone, maybe an art house veteran, is protesting. Godard and Coppola? Okay, okay, agreed, lots of difference, and who8217;s not aware of that? An international film festival triumphs when it overcomes that difference through a celebration of good cinema. The Rainmaker is good cinema, good Hollywood cinema from a very good Hollywood director. The Delhi festival was rather dull and disappointing because between Godard and Coppola, you had the good, the bad and the plain pretentious. Those very good were purely accidental, like an oversight in an otherwise well planned festival.

What really saved the festival from becoming a disaster were those films which sought to come to terms with the defining motives of a morally endangered world. In this department, the French are really good. They can narrate a morality tale with aesthetic elan. Even their didactism is bearable for it is conveyed through well-sculpted mise en scene. The Assassins for instance. Isn8217;t the assassin the man of the century? Even Wim Wenders, another festival must everywhere, may agree. But his The End of Violence has failed to match its maker8217;s noble intentions. A moral rejoinder to the merchants of viewer-friendly violence doesn8217;t mean that you can redeem Hollywood by preachy pretence. And in pretence,nothing could rival the pseudo-philosophical India-Argentina co-production, The Garden of Fruits. So take refuge in such accidental pleasures like Marius et Jeannette, a French political film narrated with a great deal of fun, and Character, a gripping psycho-drama from the Netherlands.

True, the Sarajevo package was a timely addition. Especially so since The Perfect Circle was there, a tale of frozen conscience. Though a Carlos Saura film is always a pleasurable experience, an Andrzej Wajda retrospective is more suitable for a film institute course. For Wajda, whose historical or artistic greatness cannot be disputed, today evokes only academic interest. But aren8217;t you so familiar with him? You are quite familiar with Govind Nihalini too, and such a big yawn called Hazaar Chaurasia Ki Ma, the so-called highlight of the Indian section, says it again: if you want to be diadactic, do it with more craft. Ha, it is a question of representation, as Godard says. It is a questionmeant for both the film-maker and the organiser.