Jio MAMI Day 1: Hansal Mehta's 'Aligarh' and American indie film 'Tangerine' save the day

By Tanul Thakur

The first day of the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival went according to plan for exactly the first three hours. One of the more popular films of the first day, Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth, where I found myself, began 15 minutes late, but that was it. As soon as the film got over, we were looking forward to the next film, one of the most talked about movies of the festival, Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster, a science fiction dark comedy starring Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz and Léa Seydoux, which screened earlier this year in the main compeition section at the Cannes International Film Festival.

However, at 1.40 pm, five minutes before the film was about to begin, we were informed that The Lobster’s show, at PVR Juhu, was cancelled. When your local multiplex usually cancels a show (presumably because you were the only one who turned up for an indie) you go home; when the show at a film festival gets cancelled, you remain at the venue and panic. Which is what everyone did. “It’s a film festival,” you tell yourself in situations like these. “I have to watch some other film instead.” (This feeling is not very different from Crime Master Gogo’s one-liner from Andaz Apna Apna, “Aaya hoon, kuch toh le kar jaunga (I have come here; I can’t return empty handed).)

But what would be that Some Other Film? Others were as clueless. There were two films playing at PVR Juhu at the same time: Krygstan’s Oscar entry, Heavenly Nomadic, and the British drama Sunset Song. Most had heard about neither. So the final choice came to this: Which film has a shorter runtime? When you are watching four to five movies a day at a film festival, runtimes acquire a totally new meaning. Because there’s only as much art house cinema your eyes, mind and heart can ake. And although this was only the second show of the day, the dissapointment of The Lobster’s cancellation made sitting through some other film already tedious.

I chose Heavenly Nomadic over Sunset Song because the former was 80 minutes long, the latter 135. And was I wrong or… was I wrong? Even at 80 minutes, Heavenly Nomadic felt substantially longer than a three-hour movie. Revolving around a Kyrgyzstani family, coming to terms with their familial loss, Heavenly Nomadic is beautifully shot and reasonbly engaging for the first hour, even though nothing major happens in the film during that period; however, it’s the last 20 minutes (or they could have been more than that), where the film becomes terribly one-note and you want it to finally get going, or come to the point, whichever is sooner, because, you know, even beautiful mountains, rivers, foals, filmed in static long takes, can be endured only for so long. It’s not a good sign when a film gets over, and you heave a sigh of relief, but Heavenly Nomadic made me do that. It’s by no means a “bad” movie, but it’s funny how the yardstick of judging a film at a festival, at times, markedly differs from a regular moviewatching experience.

Thankfully, the next show of the day, the American indie Tangerine, which garnered much acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, a film entirely shot with three iPhone smartphones, turned out to be exactly the kind of film you crave when your spirits are low: smart, brisk, brazen, and very, very funny. Tangerine, a film centered on the lives of people on the fringe of American society — sex workers, taxi drivers and transvestites — is alternatively both a funny and sobering take on the grim realities of life in seedy Los Angeles. However, even though clocking only 88 minutes and unfolding quickly, the film still felt slightly longer, and that knowledge unsettled me for a bit — have Indian films really knocked the patience out of the movie fan in me?

Meanwhile, news came in that The Lobster would now have a new screening of its cancelled show at nine in the night. This news would have ordinarily placated me but it didn’t for the following two reasons : a) That show was clashing with the film I had already booked, the festival’s opening film, Aligarh, and the fact that I wouldn’t be able to book the show of The Lobster again, because once you have booked a film at the festival, you can’t do it again.

Huffing and hoping that I don’t miss the last film of the first day, I reached Regal just in time for Aligarh. But, as it turned out, there was a lot of time. There was no indication of the film beginning at nine; and people made ample use of it by, you know, clicking pictures. For a few minutes, it was difficult to assess what was really going on. More than the film not starting on time, it was the mood inside the theatre that felt off — anticipation had been replaced by boredom and nonchalance. Surely, an Indian film opening an Indian film festival deserves better. But as Aligarh began, the audience soon made it clear, through loud applause at various points in the film, that they had put behind the disappointment of a delayed opening and were here to give a fine, and a refreshingly earnest, Indian film its due.

Tanul Thakur is a Mumbai-based film critic and journalist. He’s on Twitter as @Plebeian42

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