INDIAN
(1996, Tamil, 184 minutes.)
Directed by Shankar. Lyrics by Vairamuthu. Music by A. R. Rahman.
Enough happens in this big-budget, three-plus hour Madras extravaganza
to leave one feeling that one has lived through an entire purana,
one of those rambling anthologies of myth, folklore, and ritual praxis
characteristic of medieval Hinduism. The myth, one might say, is the now
larger-than-life saga of the Freedom Struggle (which forms the basis for
a long emboxed narrative filmed in glorious newsreel-toned sepia), specifically
its violent subbranch during the Second World War, involving the Indian
National Army under "Netaji" Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose embraced
the Arthasastra's realpolitik dictum that "my enemy's enemy is my
friend," sided with Hitler and Hirohito, and challenged the British
stereotype of the effeminate upper-caste Bengali by sporting jackboots
and field marshal's uniform. He is now one of the deities in the nationalist
pantheon—the militant dark twin of the non-violent, maternal Gandhi—and
appears repeatedly, in the first part of the film (set in the present),
as an image on the wall of government offices, where he gazes down on
the appalling bureaucratic corruption that, fifty years later, his fiery
struggle has spawned. He also appears as an actor during the flashback
narrative, rubbing shoulders with the principal hero Senapathy (Kamal
Hassan; his character's name means "general" or "leader
of the army"), who has fled India—and the beautiful woman he
rescued from dishonor at the hands of leering Brits—to become one
of Bose's lieutenants during the INA's aborted effort to liberate India
through a Japanese-backed invasion launched from Southeast Asia. Though
the historical Bose died in a mysterious plane crash, the fictional Senapathy
(barely) survives the INA's defeat and eventually returns from a British
prison camp to wed the woman he loves in a now-independent nation.
The "folklore" element is urban and contemporary, supplied by
the frame narrative of a stagnant and callous government terminally addicted
to bribery. It centers around another "hero," the pragmatic
Chandru (also Hassan), himself a corrupt Drivers License officer in the
Transport Department in Chennai, who dreams of rising to the exalted rank
of Brake Inspector (this consistently comes out as "Break Insprector"
in the fractured English subtitles) so that he can marry his girlfriend
Aishwarya (Manisha Koirala), an animal lover who lives amidst a menagerie
of birds and beasts (including a spirited baby camel who plays, pardon
the pun, a bit role). To accomplish this goal, Chandru must hand over
a small fortune, and also render repeated demeaning acts of service (including
the purchase of sanitary napkins and other embarrassing things), to the
family of his boss, whose daughter Sapna (Urmila Matondkar) also has her
eye on him. Despite the surrealism of much of the surroundings (Chandru
holds court and dispenses favors from the driver’s seat of a rusted
Plymouth convertible), there is manic inventiveness in the constant, humorous
allusions to contemporary culture (at one point the heroine is poetically
described as "a computer designed by Brahma") as well as spot-on
accuracy in the portrayal (through both comic and tragic episodes) of
the kind of frustration and callous mistreatment that average Indians
endure on a daily basis in their "license Raj."
This feeds into yet another subplot: a feel-good revenge narrative of
a mysterious serial killer of bribe-taking officials, who leaves notes
signed only "Indian," and who is, in fact, a dignified rural
septuagenarian (Hassan yet again)—indeed, the now-aged Freedom Fighter
Senapathy. Who is also Chandru’s estranged father. Oh yes, he's also
an exponent of a nearly-dead but way cool Keralan martial art involving
deadly manipulation of the vital breath (prana), which he uses to immobilize
his victims prior to disemboweling them with a curved dagger he wears
concealed in his belt. Like Michael Douglas in FALLING DOWN, the dignified
but spry Senapathy, as the average guy pushed too far by a corrupt system,
mobilizes the rage of the audience, which can relish his mayhem even as
it enjoys the high-tech ingenuity of the dogged police inspector who seeks
to bring him to.....er, justice. And of course, viewers may anticipate
that at some point idealistic, veshti-wrapped, bribery-hating father is
bound to encounter cynical, polyester-clad, bribe-taking son....
The third element is the ritually de rigeur music and dance sequences,
which continue to push the envelope on exotic spectacle and digital effects,
a realm in which Madras filmmakers regularly trump those of Bollywood
in sheer visual inventiveness; these numbers are only barely linked to
the plot and seem meant to be enjoyed purely for their own sake. Another
toe-tapping A. R. Rahman score (accompanied here by lyrics in his mellifluous
mother tongue) backs up an array of eye-popping sequences, including a
supposed rehearsal for a college "fashion show" that quickly
morphs into a disco-driven phantasmagoria of surreal costumes and multi-tiered
sets. There's the obligatory (and obligatorily unexplained) overseas interlude,
in which Chandru and animal-loving Aishwarya frolic in Australia amid
herds of bouncing kangaroos, get formal on the steps of the Sydney Opera
House, and make love in 18th century costume on a moonlit Tall Ship. There's
a flag-waving salute to Independence in 1947, all aglitter with auspicious
oil lamps and bursting fireworks. And there's a video-game-like fantasy
in which Chandru, as a magician-hero, breaks into an evil king's palace
to woo his beloved; this song matches coyly erotic lyrics to imagistic
overload as the hero transforms digitally into a flame, lion, stallion,
throne, bird of prey, etc. etc.
Transformation, indeed, seems to be the main "message" of the
film: the transformation of India from idealistic republic to corruption-driven
consumer Raj, of heroes to villains and vice-versa, of a field of rice
into a digitalized map of the Motherland (cf. the famous sequence in MOTHER
INDIA), and (perhaps above all) of the versatile Kamal Hassan, a Southern
hero-with-a-thousand-faces (he once played five characters in a single
film) into the literal embodiment of all of this: the corporeal summation,
celebration, and condemnation of who we are, were, and might be.