E-CineIndia April-June 2020 ISSN: 2582-2500

Article Manoj Barpujari Effects of Pandemic and Cinema

In the worst nightmare of the 21st centu- OTT platforms while many film festivals have ry befalling mankind, the world has become gone online. This suffocating atmosphere has aware that a pandemic has exposed a number also signaled a new challenge to INOXs and of weaknesses and in some cases reinforced PVRs which were largely instrumental in those weaknesses, as economist Joseph Sti- bringing back audiences to big screen some glitz proclaims. The neo-liberal economic years back. Part of the responses to a global model has been a glaring failure, the health- crisis has obviously been how to bring movies care system itself cries for help, government to the home market – to release films on home functionaries grasp for ways to fulfill expecta- entertainment media without or simultaneous- tions, and the entertainment industry becomes ly with theatrical debut. static instantly. With strict guidelines set by In this backdrop, an idea of drive-in open air governments for lockdown, cinema became theatres is mooted and some of the renowned worst sufferer as the fate of the workers were festivals join hands to showcase a select few left to private charity and a few superstars’ from old and new archives. The curators, pro- mercy, while workers in regional and margin- grammers and presenters are in a spot now. al film industries were left to rot. As theatres A much-hyped 10-day long ‘We Are One: A were closed and organizers of film festivals Global Film Festival’ in YouTube met with had to face unprecedented financial crunches, modest success, as it didn’t feature promi- some makers opted for releasing their films on Page 1 E-CineIndia April-June 2020 ISSN: 2582-2500 nent films that were earlier screened in major on cinematic language more than any other festivals or those set to premiere in coming cultural forms – in his latest book ‘Pandemic! festivals. However this arrangement made Covid-19 Shakes the World.’ possible by minimalist contribution from 21 different festivals has set the ball rolling for futuristic models of film viewing amid Covid-19 pandemic. The independent film-

DOTs

After the novel coronavirus pandemic caught the world off-guard, filmmaking continues to suffer a heavy toll. Following several phases of lockdown, shooting for films resumed cau- Contagion tiously, starting with prohibiting bodily touch- makers couldn’t sit idle at home howsoever; es between actors. The norms probably mean a few have worked from home, using sever- that literature and cinema have to reinvent al platforms and social media tools to make themselves for the time being. How surreal digital films with innovative ideas of online will it appear? How the filmmakers adapt to talks between men and women. One such film the newly designed production and exhibition DOTs (2020) by Singapore-based indepen- guidelines, while keeping in mind safety and dent director Shilpa Krishnan Shukla led a protection of workers will be a matter of pro- line-up of films having world premiere online. found introspection. Throughout history, art Mainstream Bollywood movies are now get- forms, not excluding cinema, tell stories of ting release via different OTT platforms: Am- death from epidemics and resilience against it. itabh Bachchan starrer Gulabo Sitabo, Vidya From spatial to temporal arts, these stories are Balan starrer Shakuntala Devi to name a few. relayed truthfully and vividly by writers and All four South Indian film industries too are artists of all hues. Didn’t Shakespeare live his catching up fast. No doubt, things are expect- entire life in the shadow of bubonic plague? ed to gradually return to normal, but the crisis In the years between 1606 and 1610 – the is feared to drag on, at least if we believe what period when ‘Macbeth’, ‘Antony and Cleop- the Slovenian philosopher and cultural theo- atra’, ‘The Winter’s Tale’ and ‘The Tempest’ rist Slavoj Zizek says. Zizek studied the pres- were written – the London playhouses could ent crisis from a different perspective with ex- be opened for less than nine months, as social tensive references of films – clearly a reliance distancing was in force. With change in the Page 2 E-CineIndia April-June 2020 ISSN: 2582-2500 weather the epidemic had slowly waned, but set of rulers: Trump, Modi, Bolsonaro and after an interval of a few years the plague re- Netanyahu may fit well in a selfish world. turned. As a shareholder and sometime actor But there are the likes of Jacinda Ardern, Ka- in his playing company, as well as its prin- trin Jakobsdottir, Pinarayi Vijayan and Justin cipal playwright, Shakespeare had to grapple Trudeau in the opposite. The virus of ideol- throughout his career with these situations, ogy, as termed by Zizek, is responsible for a and often in expressions of rage and disgust dogma that acts against the notion of going referred to epidemic disease in his characters’ for an overhauling of systematic response to speeches. Covid-19 as the UN fervently appealed for universal solidarity.

Be that as it may, unconditional solidarity on a global scale is highly doubtful, with the US defunding the World Health Organization amid present health crisis. Noam Chomsky, arguably the most celebrated thinker and po- litical dissenter of our times, in a salvo of ac- Pandemic. cusations against ‘the sociopathic buffoons who are running the government’ in Wash- ‘A plague on both your houses’, ‘plague-sore’, ington, has put the blame squarely on the ‘a plague upon it when thieves cannot be true ‘colossal failure of the neoliberal version of to one another’, ‘a plague upon this howl- capitalism’ for its approach to the coronavi- ing’, ‘a plague of these pickle-herring’ and so rus challenge worldwide. Under conditions on – all that make the acceptance of plague of pandemic, seeking recourse to the idea of as an inescapable feature of ordinary life in herd immunity by reopening the markets pre- Shakespeare plays. Who would deny that the sumes that the strong enough can endure the plague and the fear of infection played a cru- virus and develop immunity. Social Darwin- cial role in the tragic suicides of both Romeo ism is thus coming to the fore as black and and Juliet? One passage in ‘Macbeth’ vivid- brown minorities in the world’s oldest democ- ly conveys what it must have felt like when racy ‘count as vulnerable or not destined to the whole population of a country fell into the survive’, as alleged by American philosopher grip of plague: ‘Where violent sorrow seems Judith Butler. Writers in their dystopian fears / A modern ecstasy’. But Shakespeare seems already imagine today’s Wuhan as a typical to have focused his attention on a different of the future cities. Post-apocalyptic movies plague too – the plague of being governed by are in rising demand now. Those Hollywood a morally bankrupt, ruthless, and self-destruc- movies like Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach tive leader. Juxtapose this with the present (1959) dealing with a nuclear fallout, later Page 3 E-CineIndia April-June 2020 ISSN: 2582-2500 remade in 2000 by Russell Mulcahy keep- this type of film is that a virus is a kind of ing the same title with a twist to the original zero-level life, i.e. not the elementary form of screenplay, and even a South Korean flick life, it is rather purely parasitic. Thus viruses like Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan (2016) replicate themselves through infecting more showing a city with most of its population developed organisms; when a virus infects wiped out by not aliens but microscop- humans, people simply serve as its copying ic threats transforming humans into living machine. dead are no longer considered ludicrous or It may sound naive to sense a conspiracy of removed from the reality. depriving the civil society of their basic and constitutional rights through the social distanc- ing norms during a pandemic. But a check of chronology of events may appear interesting too. The year 2019 saw uprisings across the globe. People were up against corruption and incompetence of the political class, demand- ing equality and workers’ rights and so on. But The Decameron the Covid-19 epidemic has suddenly changed Although a sci-fi like Pandemic (2016) the scenario. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin showing a New York doctor leading a group Netanyahu invoked an ‘emergency decree’ to to Los Angeles to find survivors of a world- authorize the security forces to deploy sur- wide pandemic is tailored as a thriller by veillance technology normally reserved for John Suits, it hardly rises above the cliché of battling ‘terrorists’ to track Covid-19 patients. a zombie action movie. This particular can- ‘Over the skin’ surveillance is a known meth- on of survival dramas also seems to have put od of tracking, monitoring and manipulating forth a definition viruses are attached to. As citizens, told in George Orwell’s novel pub- studies suggest, viruses are either non-living lished in 1949, later adapted for a dystopian chemical units or living organisms: so they sci-fi by filmmaker Michael Radford also -ti are neither alive nor dead in the usual sense tled as 1984. Now ‘under the skin’ surveil- of these terms, they are a kind of living dead. lance technology is developing at breakneck This ‘living dead’ is a popular subject for the speed – biometric monitoring may soon be a horror film genre: likePandemic , where there reality that would make individuals to register are level 1 to 5 occurring in the human body not only health data but also compromise at when infected by the virus and people with ideological level while toeing the dictates of level 1 infection are taken into the facility for the all-powerful state. The celebrated Israe- treatment, otherwise shot dead for being too li historian Yuval Noah Harari has a word of violent and turning man-eater. The premise of caution: ‘A big battle has been raging in re- Page 4 E-CineIndia April-June 2020 ISSN: 2582-2500 cent years over our privacy. The coronavirus by the epidemic. Truly, there was a kind of crisis could be the battle’s tipping point.’ intended magnanimity in Tavianis’ Wondrous Boccaccio (2015) which drew a grim picture of the deadly plague and appalling misery it brought to ordinary people as prelude to five stories shared by a privileged few taking shel- ter in a grand farm house.

Five years after release of Wondrous Boccac- cio, the world came to a halt coping up with The Plague a new pandemic situation. Was the film -an Radicals are wary of strict lockdowns that other premonition to an impending danger, would make solidarity with the striking peo- one may wonder! Perhaps Tavianis wanted to ple, camaraderie and mass campaign for po- show that only the financial elite could afford litical change absolutely difficult. The corpo- to escape the epidemic into a safe zone and ratized state would make the most out of it by cozily amuse themselves by telling stories of employing regressive measures by manipulat- love ranging from the erotic, illicit and funny ing labour laws and refusing to furnish crucial to the tragic, albeit as a way to deal with a data. Some on the Left see the measures as xe- precarious mortality. The filmmaker duo who nophobic and therefore, in a world of rising of recently amazed by The Lark Farm (2006), a the Far-Right, insist on continuing social in- painful reminder of the very less spoken Ar- teraction which is still symbolized by shaking menian genocide, might have taken a calcu- of hands. But who will be able to shake hands, lative decision to drift away from Pasolini’s except the privileged few as presented in The flippant eroticism of 1971 The( Decameron), Decameron? Giovanni Boccaccio’s compen- and the theatrical simplicity of 1953 by Fre- dium of stories was narrated by a group of ten gonese (Decameron Nights), or the playful young men and women of rich families flee- naughtiness of a 1962 film Boccaccio ( ’70) ing the city of Florence haunted by the plague. directed by four masters from the era of Ital- Sheltering in a secluded villa during the mid- ian neo-realism – Monicelli, Fellini, Visconti 14th century, their stories proved alluring to and De Sica. Later in an interview the Taviani the celluloid as from Pier Paolo Pasolini and brothers said that the modern world had been Hugo Fregonese to Paolo and Vittorio Taviani facing, in their words, ‘numerous plagues, carefully chose to make period dramas while specifically spiritual and economic’, so the Monicelli, De Sica, Visconti and Fellini adapt- Decameron idea in a new frame was meant to ed them for the 20th century ambiance. But connect with the idea of escaping the ailments except the Taviani brothers, they had pictur- of contemporary society through the power of ized the stories minus the devastation caused storytelling and love. Page 5 E-CineIndia April-June 2020 ISSN: 2582-2500 There is no dearth of films to cite as closely an unprepared migration criticized as ‘geno- connected to what can be claimed as spiritual cidal’ and ‘huge catastrophe in the making’ by and economic plagues. The humanitarian cri- no less a person than Chomsky and termed as sis following coronavirus lockdown in ‘the greatest manmade tragedy in India since rekindles images from ’s Ashani Partition’ by historian Ramchandra Guha. Sanket (1973) and ’s Akaler Shandhaney (1980) – two masterpieces on the tragic Bengal of 1943. The effects of the famine accounting for more than five million deaths caused by starvation and ep- idemics are examined in Ray’s film through Ashani Sanket the eyes of a young doctor-teacher and his The indelible scars left by the Bengal Famine in the conscience of subsequent generations were aptly scrutinized years later in Akaler Shandhaney. A filmmaking unit in their se- lect rural location confronts penury of the lo- cal populace. Though their intent is to make a film on the famine, the recreated past exposes 1984 uncomfortable connection with the present. The feudal class is non-repentant for robbing wife, as the rhythms and norms of a village the poor villagers of their lands during the life break down under the pressure of scarcity famine, and they get nervous at the slight- and soaring prices of essentials. The narrative est reference of the past circumstances in the economy of the film is soaked in dramatic ep- film-within-the-film script. During the sched- isodes in everyday life of the villagers, who ule, the unit members realize the ever-present after initial hesitation resort to looting and starvation and exploitation of the poor: they rioting, go miles for wild edibles and a little mistake still photos of starved people from kindness, selling their modesty by all means. 1959 and 1971 for the famine of 1943. Ulti- The camera often catches the jolly good nature mately under stiff resistance from the - influ around to transport a meaning that the trage- ential locales they are forced to pack up and dy is entirely manmade and nature cannot be leave. The film ends with a scene of villagers blamed for it. Images in Ashani Sanket got on course to unknown destination vilifying refurbished by the unfolding miseries of mil- the urgency to migrate en masse. lions of people during coronavirus lockdown. People were forced to face horrors of death in Apparently, when a tragedy of an epic dimen- starvation, accident and exhaustion owing to sion strikes the humanity, its unfolding takes Page 6 E-CineIndia April-June 2020 ISSN: 2582-2500 place at multiple levels. Mere production of It is ironic that, 40 years after its release, a vaccine is unlikely to put an end to all this, Akaler Shandhaney remains strikingly rel- unless the world makes its approach to the evant as a pandemic exposes the gulf be- problem a holistic one. The artists’ work will tween social classes, between the castes, be- go on in exposing the fallibility of the soci- tween cities and villages, between centralized ety, the callousness of the system in spite of growth and grass-root reality in India. When being aware of their own limitations. Mrinal Sen was asked about the essence of the film, Sen said: ‘We can’t do anything by making a he couldn’t hold back his sense of dejection film, there’s no magic wand.’ The stark reali- telling that ‘there’s no magic wand’ to bring ty haunts the human conscience, unsettles the about a social change. Salman Rushdie is poet philosopher and the celluloid poet alike. ruthlessly eloquent about this sense of gloom, It appears that the past is evocative if not over- as he spoke on the global calamity unleashed shadowing the existing reality and acquires by coronavirus: ‘The best thing that can come ominous proportion. Following a world war, out of this is that we learn that we have the when the Spanish Flu cost 50 million lives, T. strength and resolve, as individuals and as S. Eliot wrote “The Waste Land” as an expres- communities, to survive it. Beyond that, the sion of a bewildering mélange of misery. The voices asking for the emergence of a kinder, fragmentary, melancholic, maddening poem gentler, less greedy, more ecologically wise, gives a picture of the world at large; and the more inclusive society are, I think, indulging pandemic of 2020 has given a similar dose of in Utopian thinking.’ Uh, really! Outrageous reality. What ‘The Waste Land’ in 1920 had recent images of a baby Gangetic dolphin described holds true for today as well, as El- suffering at the hands of men or a pregnant iot said: ‘One must be so careful these days. elephant dying due to men’s stupid act have / Unreal city… / I had not thought death had caught attention via social media. The salt of undone so many.’ truth is that even a pandemic fails to bring many of us humans to better senses. Virus in- fections, deforestation, global warming didn’t deter the powerful from destroying the Am- azons of the earth. The coronavirus is ‘not a comet trailing socialism in its tail’ according to Rushdie who spoke from his office in Man- hattan. The benefactors of the social and be- lief systems are unlikely to alter or relinquish what benefits them.

And above all, if racism is a pandemic for the Train to Busan American citizens, communalism is a pan- Page 7 E-CineIndia April-June 2020 ISSN: 2582-2500 demic for Indians – they just refuse to leave warded in the prevailing anarchy out of which the mind-set of those who misuse and abuse Hollywood must be preparing ideas for their power. In the wake of former athlete George incubator by now! Floyd’s death, caused by four white police of- ficers on a Minneapolis street, Hollywood’s actor-turned-director George Clooney dared to declare that the ‘greatest pandemic is an- ti-Black racism’ in the US ‘and in 400 years we’ve yet to find a vaccine’. The incident ‘is just a reminder of how little we’ve grown as

Wondrous Boccaccio It is sad that a time like a pandemic hasn’t quarantined people from vices like commu- nal and racial bigotry, greed for wealth and power at any cost. A cinematic presentation Akaler Shandhaney of Albert Camus’ novel ‘The Plague’ wisely a country from our original sin of slavery’, gave a study of people’s instinctive characters Clooney said. It immediately became a rea- emerging during passing of a deadly plague: son of anger and protests notwithstanding the but those characters are not as blunt and mo- strict prohibitory orders in view of a world ronic as today’s! Titled The Plague (1992), di- chart-topping figure of Covid-19 deaths. In rected by Luis Puenzo, the film is set in 1990s the ensuing pandemonium, cities across the and focuses on a South American city that is States witnessed the largest uprising since the cut off from the rest of the world following an Los Angeles rebellion of 1992 and gestures of outbreak of the bubonic plague. The key char- multiracial solidarity too. Meanwhile against acters include a French tele-journo, her cam- an implicit or explicit policy of ‘non-physical eraman and a fearless doctor and the whole violence’ – ‘of neglect and discrimination’ in city is declared a containment zone with the the words of Judith Butler – the black Amer- army surrounding it. In contrast, the novel icans die of Covid-19 at far higher rate than was set in 1940s as a plague was depicted to any other races in the States. So, though herd have swept over an Algerian city; the story is immunity does not contain in itself a death focused on a courageous and self-sacrificing verdict, its implementation would mean that doctor, though told from the point of view of certain sections of the population ‘are consid- an unknown narrator that gives Camus’ dis- ered as on their way to death anyway’ which tinctive style with its larger philosophical prompted Butler to coin the term ‘violence themes of engagement, sacrifice, escapism of neglect.’ The conditions for it are fast for- and different humanist problems, such as love Page 8 E-CineIndia April-June 2020 ISSN: 2582-2500 and goodness, happiness and attachment. to introduce a vaccine to arrest the existential threat. Hadn’t a pandemic left the artists and writ- ers with a better understanding of misfortune But, given all the concerns that rattled the befalling the humanity, the details of a virus world, will the overall outcome ring hollow? breakout couldn’t have been so near-accurate The responses and reactions to the economic in Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion (2011). and spiritual plagues are mixed. The unam- A renewed popularity of the film in 2020 is biguous war rhetoric is doing the rounds. The accounted for resemblances to the pandemic profit-mongers are having a heyday. Assault depicted in the film. It dwells on a fictional on the role of the free press is in high gear that virus which causes up to 30 percent mortality makes it a challenge to keep the government among the infected. The fictional strain’s or- accountable and the public informed. Fascist igin was based on the bat-borne Nipah virus snarl is unmistakable. The humanity is poorer that caused outbreaks in Asia and the film’s by the absence of the welfare state here and first victim is infected by a dirty chef in Hong there even in the time of a pandemic. The UN Kong, China. A rumour of bioweapon is wise- is rendered obsolete. So pathetic! Irony is that ly debunked by the top rank in the American there is every fear of new dimensions to the center of disease control. Scenes establish that diabolic corona virus. Amidst the din, Zizek everything in the world is a potential vector warns that an early return to normal may turn for the virus: from handshakes to doorknobs out to be a fake one. Yet there are rooms for and whatever an infected person touches in optimism. ‘There’s always a reason to hope’ – day-to-day life. Quarantines are imposed as in the midst of all the gloomy mise-en-scene one billion people get sick in a matter of three of today’s world Rushdie is hopeful, for: ‘The months worldwide. Sanitization of public human race is a species that displays immense places, mandatory masks and gloves, deserted resilience and ingenuity when it is threatened. I airports and garbage-filled roads, law-breaks, expect that those qualities will see us through.’ curfew, and so on form the narrative of a bro- This is presumably not a blind faith, rather a ken social order. Soderbergh ended his film faith that transcends barriers, as a character in on an optimistic note as the pro-active WHO Woody Allen’s Manhattan (1979) says: ‘You eclipses an inadequate federal preparation as have to have a little faith in people.’ the scientist community successfully battles

Mr. Manoj Barpujari is a Member of the FIPRESC-India.

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