A man on his phone next to me at the concessions said, “Things have definitely taken a turn for me, today. I’m now four feet away from Salman Rushdie.” In an unusual act of altruism only found at Telluride, author Salman Rushdie has championed the small Indian movie, Firaaq. He is introducing the screenings with the first-time director and acclaimed actress Nandita Das, and he’s conducting the Q&A afterward. This, of course, is helping an unknown movie with no big stars draw a crowd.
Firaaq (translated: Separation) takes place in the immediate aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat riots, where as many as 2,000 people–mostly Muslim–were killed. The riots were a hindu backlash to the Godhra train burning where Muslims were accused of burning up a car with 58 Hindu pilgrims inside. Made with an ensemble cast and intersecting storylines, it’s a day in the life of would be neighbors right after the riots are over, the anger and fear still dense in the air.
There’s a rickshaw driver whose house was burned down, his wife who suspects her Hindu friend did it, a gravedigger wanting revenge, a Muslim priest whose remained oblivious to the conflict outside, a secular shopkeeper married to a Hindu wife and another Hindu woman married to a man who was a perpetrator in the riots. Their lives loosely intersect to reveal they could be a community but for an age old hatred made fresh by the killing, raping and burning of the last month.
A frequent pitfall of movies made this way is that the stories are only skimmed lightly and characters are forced to say exactly what they’re thinking (Crash) because they have to get out of the way for another storyline. Firaaq, at times, is didactic, but where it wins is in delivering on concept.
A little discussed fact of massive violence is that it’s not over when the fighting stops. It’s just smoldering like a volcano returning to dormancy after an eruption. There’s a haze of fear and loathing still thick in the community. It happened with Jews who survived the camps trying to return home after WWII only to find they weren’t anymore wanted then they were during the war. The enduring displacement was maybe the biggest reason for establishing Israel, which shifted the war to a smoldering tension, and occasional eruption, with Palestine. It’s the same five years after the Gujarat riots between hindu and muslim Indians.
If Salman Rushdie is any indication, I think the movie will be well received. There’s a reality that many of us will be oblivious to human suffering happening around the world unless it’s in a movie. Which is why filmmakers continually turn to movies to connect political action with human emotion and why, on some level, it continually works.
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SpoutBlog » Paul Moore