"It has been said
that the logic of this story is the logic of a dream, of a
nightmare."--Orson Welles in the opening voice-over narration
"The confusion is impenetrable."--the Advocate (Orson Welles) to Block (Akim Tamiroff)
"Does that sentence the entire universe to lunacy?"--Josef K. (Anthony Perkins) to Hastler
No Smoking
A rediff.com reviewer describes No Smoking in the following terms:
‘The movie unfolds like a bad dream and spins into a downward spiral that's unreal, incomprehensible, and leaves you dazed.’
Not bad. It is an apt appreciation that defines the essence of the movie. He has got it right yet he trashes the film. What an idiot? Bhagwan mil gaye hain lekin inhe pata bhi nahin.
A bad dream is an important human experience, probably more enchanting than a whole lot of commonplace happenings around us. The great existential writers, painters, poets, and other creative workers reveled in such dreams, and created stunning artistic masterpieces that are unreal, incomprehensible in the conventional sense, and leave us dazed.
It is not easy to recreate bad dreams as films. It is a demanding task, and those who succeed even partially, are the best among the practitioners of cinema art and craft. True that a whole lot of computer graphics and digital intermediate processes have made the task a little easier. But you cannot work without a basic experiential vision.
Even to nurture such a vision is a criminal venture in the Indian film industry. The
fact that Anurag Kashyap dared to do it and John Abraham, Kumar Mangat,
and Vishal Bhardwaj stood by him, calls for a grand standing ovation.
Bravo. Hats off to them for this act of subversion and for defying the box office, trade pundits, Khalids, Nikhats, Sandipans, and a whole lot of cinematically illiterate blockheads. Look at the irony. They are showering stars over a crappy non-film like Jab We Met. How can they be so obtuse and daft? Or is it the well-known crabby mindset of Indians at work again, creating hurdles in the path of an emerging talent?
Bravo. Hats off to them for this act of subversion and for defying the box office, trade pundits, Khalids, Nikhats, Sandipans, and a whole lot of cinematically illiterate blockheads. Look at the irony. They are showering stars over a crappy non-film like Jab We Met. How can they be so obtuse and daft? Or is it the well-known crabby mindset of Indians at work again, creating hurdles in the path of an emerging talent?
I don’t know if Anurag set about to make a film about promoting non-smoking. If there are traces of that in the film, take them as its negative. Bipasha’s item number was another negative. But these are a few negatives among a whole lot of positives. And the only yardstick to judge the effectiveness of a film of this nature is if it delivers you the disturbing sense of a surreal dream through the use of strong visuals, unusual performances by actors, and its non-linear narrative and editing structure. You cannot and must not delineate various cinematic elements to be able to appreciate such cinema. It is the final impact that matters.
The problem is we invariably seek an intellectual and psychological explanation for a seemingly incomprehensible and unusual artistic expression. Why do we do it? Why don’t we bring our intellect into play in oft-repeated tear-jerking scenes that are inserted in a film’s narrative to make us cry? Why do we put our intellect into a doghouse while watching a hot steaming music video? Is it some kind of a learning disability? Yes, it is. Why should we worry too much about why a film leaves us dazed otherwise? We should enjoy the new experience of being left numb, dumb, dazed, enraged, and exasperated instead of seeking deep intellectual meaning in scenes and sequences of a film about a bad dream.
Look at the way Nikhat refers to Kafka's The Trial* as the struggle of Joseph K against authoritarianism. Who says it? Some literary critic? Kafka didn't say so. The Trial can easily be a novel about the inevitable fate of an individual. The strength of Kafka's writing does not emanate from intellectualized summaries and critique of his work. It lies in how he transports his readers to a relatable dreamlike plane of consciousness. This is the beauty of all existential work. It can really make a Murga out of intellectually inclined and well read aficionados and critics. Now, it is quite possible that No Smoking is a film that roots for the cause of smokers, who are hounded by the 'no smoking' zealots like K's wife, Baba Bengali, and Ramo Doss. You can interpret it in all sorts of ways. Why do you do it? The film makes you do it. What does a fake film like Jab We Met make you do, intellectually or otherwise? Nothing. It is a waste of time and money. You have far better escapist fare on offer. Watching an old Dev Anand movie hundredth time on TV will be a much more enjoybale past time. If not, you can sit at the Juhu beach and count the dirty waves of the Arabian ocean.
Can you explain everything that happens in a dream, good, bad, bizarre, gory, pleasant, unpleasant, and scary? Can you explain why you see yourself in a dream, walking in the nude in the bazaar where none notices you and suddenly an old woman comes in your way and starts giving you a blow job and then the old woman turns into Bipasha, who is kissing you all over? It goes on an on and on till you wake up and find your wife caressing your thing, at three o’clock in the night. How would you explain this? If you intellectualize it too much, your will lose your wife and Bipasha would still be with John.
No
Smoking is probably the first Indian film that has explored an
existential theme with such fluidity, adeptly using technical
elements without going overboard. Anurag has also controlled his penchant to stuff hackneyed college humor into his scripts. The
best of Indian filmmakers could not tread this path with confidence. It
is a welcome breakthrough and a milestone for our cinema. It is an
Indian masterpiece. Let us celebrate it.
Anurag Kashyap has clearly demonstrated with this film that he has the capability of being a world-class filmmaker, provided he is ready to dump all the stuff he has picked up from all over, the traces of which can be easily seen in No Smoking. He must not pay tributes to old masters through his films any more if he has to grow beyond them. Let this be his last training exercise.
And for all those who love cinema art, No Smoking should be on their list of MUST WATCH films unless they want to miss a significant event in the history of Indian cinema.
*Here are a few observations about the film The Trial, which was based on Kafka's novel, and made by Orson Welles in 1963, to educate critics like Nikhat Kazmi about the unimportance of logic and the importance of confusion:
RKS
