Sunday, March 23, 2014

Quick notes on Rajat Kapoor’s Ankhon Dekhi

“Haan, main mendak hoon,” says Bauji (Sanjay Mishra), the aging protagonist of Rajat Kapoor’s Ankhon Dekhi, “apne kuay ko samajhne ki koshish kar raha hoon.” (“Yes, I’m a frog in the well, but at least I’m trying to understand my well.”) Bauji’s “kuaan” is a marvelously realised Old Delhi setting with crumbling houses in which joint-family members squabble and talk past each other for much of the day, but have relaxed rooftop soirees once in a while. Young people try to find a measure of independence, middle-aged men take out their frustrations on their families and feel bad about it soon afterwards, hospitality and goodwill are measured in glasses of “rooh-abja”. Working in a small travel agency, Bauji is surrounded by clocks that tell the time in far-off countries, but he appears to have rarely ever left this neighborhood.

Though his world is a small one, there is a lot he still has to comprehend about it, even at his age. His daughter Rita has grown up and is in a romance with a boy who may or may not be a rogue. His younger brother Rishi (played by Rajat Kapoor himself) is becoming distant and wants to move out with his family after decades of living together. The basic affection between Bauji and his wife (Seema Pahwa, brilliantly channeling the many facets of a loud-mouthed but soft-hearted woman harried by events) is usually overridden by the little trials of everyday life, and casual chat is rare. “Kya hua?” she demands when he asks her to come and sit with him. “Jab kuch hoga, tab hee aaogi?” he replies.

Something does happen though: Bauji has a personal epiphany when his relatives turn out to be wrong about his daughter’s boyfriend. This gets him thinking about the need to look closely at the world and make up one’s own mind about what is real – it is as if he has been reborn, or at least grown a new pair of eyes. Soon he is sharing his insight with other people, trying to convince them that they too must
rely on their own observations and discover their personal sach. But what might the cost of such a project be? Could it mean letting go of unquantifiable things, such as one’s complicated relationships with family and friends? As he will learn, being untethered could mean soaring above the world like a bird (or like a frog that has escaped its well), but it could just as easily mean crashing down to earth.

Or perhaps he will find that everything is an illusion anyway. The studio behind Ankhon Dekhi is Mithya Talkies, and Kapoor’s Mithya, one of the best Hindi films of the last decade, was about an actor who is hired to masquerade as someone else and ends up fitting all too well into his new role; in the tradition of other fine films about stolen or borrowed identity – The Passenger, Plein Soleil and Kagemusha among them – notions of selfhood become confused and perhaps even irrelevant. Bauji’s story isn’t as dramatic, but he is often in danger of losing touch with reality in the very process of defining it. Trust only what you can see, he tells a group of apostles, even as one is constantly reminded of the impracticality of such advice. (Some of the followers react by blindly accepting what he is saying, which may be a wry comment on how organised religions come into existence.) He speaks about the importance of truth – going to the extent of leaving his job because how can he sell the virtues of cities he has never been to himself? – but ends up concealing things from his family and gets involved with an underhanded gambling operation.


There have been a few films with Old Delhi settings in recent years, and like most of them Ankhon Dekhi emphasises authenticity in character, dialogue and production design. It has many nice touches, from Bauji’s wife’s weary exclamations of “Arre bhaiya!” (even when she is addressing a prospective son-in-law who has shown up unannounced) to the improvised wedding vows that a bride and groom are made to recite, to the pleasing but unexpected candour of a scene where Rita shows up at her boyfriend’s house and makes herself comfortable. There is overlapping dialogue and a ear for conversation, and it is all wonderfully performed by Mishra, Pahwa and a cast of fine supporting actors including Brijendra Kala and Manu Rishi.

But plot-oriented though this film appears to be, it is - again like Mithya - formally deceptive, with a few detours into strangeness (a young boy suddenly turns into an idiot savant, spouting high-sounding gibberish for hours on end, and is then “miraculously” cured) that may reflect the main character's state of mind and his inability to pin down what is real or verifiable. Kapoor dedicates Ankhon Dekhi to his “masters” Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani, and that should tell you something about his often-abstract filmmaking sensibility. It is a sensibility with traces of nihilism - a cold, detached view of the absurdities of our condition - but it also gently observes and acknowledges the little things that can make life bearable. Watching this film made me want to return to his earlier work, and in particular roused my curiosity about his unreleased 1990s film Private Detective, which Naseeruddin Shah half-seriously described as “a very bad combination of James Hadley Chase and Mani Kaul, who go together like rum and whiskey”.

In any case, the point of this rambling post is to say: do try to see Ankhon Dekhi. You could do a lot worse with your time this week. 

13 comments:

  1. Hi Jai,

    Watched the movie, loved it and agree with your comments - most of them anyways.
    One area that i am struggling with is the ease with which Bauji accepts that goodness of the satta don, whose goons have verifiably beaten up his son. He turns a blind eye to the innate corruption his satta joint bring about - why does he abandon his sense of right and wrong here?
    It does not seem to fit in with the overarching theme of the movie.

    The other piece which is'nt so clear is why he stands at the busy traffic roundabout holding the placard?
    I mean i understand that the message on the placard bears out the movie's theme, but then what's driven him to take that step? Why take up this mission to enlighten people with his point of view?

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  2. Can't say this with any certainty but the satta den is where he's compelled to start speaking again to save his son. To me it suggested that the more you try to break free the more life ties you up in knots. By this time Bauji is just drifting along. Can't imagine his getting particularly involved with playing cards or with the money, though it probably helps get his daughter married. It's intriguing and that may be the motivation. If he really doesn't belong to this world then i suppose he's equally untouched by its wrongs by virtue of his detachment...

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    1. Hi Deepa,

      Are you equating Bauji's stated intent to get to know his world with an accompanying jettisoning of his moral compass? Its evident that he has not cut himself adrift from family and society until the end, so how do we explain his interactions with the don?

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    2. @Anonymous,
      Thats again a part of movie's theme. Playing satta is Bauji's Truth. Its immoral and wrong in your point of view, but for Bauji and his follower's , its pure mathematics. Bauji started playing the game out of sheer joy and was offered money later on. The followers even played the game when there was no money involved(remember the night of marriage). Bauji never endorsed the game to anyone, but played to find out his own truth. If others say playing cards is bad, Bauji wants to find out why? --just my thoughts

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  3. This movie is a true example of a proper ensemble cast in my opinion. Even though one may mistake Sanjay Mishra to be the lead in the movie, every character ends up having their moment in the movie. One of my favorite sequences in the movie is when Bauji rushes to his nephew's school to confront the Math teacher. As for Private Detective, I recall watching it 7-8 years back, and I must admit, it is easily one of the weirdest Indian movies I've ever seen. But yeah, it is worth seeking out, just for one's satisfaction.

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  4. Stray thought: Are the frog references and the balcony scene a nod to Om-Dar-Ba-Dar? If that is the case, I must say I found Ankhon Dekhi to be a more cogent, not to mention amusing, take on the absurdities of the human condition.

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  5. Haven't seen it, but a big fan of Mithya. So nice to hear you say that it's one of the best films of the last decade. :)

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  6. Glad to see you ranked Mithya among the best movies of last decade. I remember watching it and being so impressed with its general gloomy and riddle like feel to it.

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  7. Watched the movie, loved it !!!!

    Nice to see you ranked Mithya in this movie.

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  8. This movie is not about giving you any life lesson or a sense of right and wrong. It is about the mental condition of schizophrenic person. Yes, Bauji is suffering from schizophrenia - distortions of reality and disturbances of thought and language and withdrawal from social contact. Remember the last scene and you will understand !!

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    1. Schizophrenia not necessarily, schizoaffective disorder many be, if you want to view the film in an organic manner. However, the movie is a metaphor. It is an abstract painted to tease out the layers of perpetual human vacillation between real and unreal. The end signifies the flight of fancy.

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  9. Frnds I can't understand the end of the movie its very confusing..

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    1. We are born in a family, we have friends but still we have to live life on our own. There are paths we have to walk alone. Bauji got his daughter married, settled the debt of his son and took his wife on a vacation. Now free from all his responsibilities, he is ready to live his own dream. His dream of flying. He is going to jump off from a cliff. He is going to die but before his death he will fly for few seconds. He is going to enjoy it even if it is for few seconds. For we all should enjoy and celebrate small things we have in our life. Because our life is sum of small and big moments. Even a miss of small event makes our life incomplete.

      Jumping of Bauji from cliff is LIFE in short. Just like a newborn baby cries, Bauji screams initially. The resistance from air is nothing but the struggles we face in our life. When we are old and wise from our experiences ,we are calm just like the smile of Bauji in the end. Watch this movie to understand or spare a thought for such random Bauji kind people who we come across sometimes in train, markets or on road. What could be the backstory of such people.

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