The Cheeky Guide to Instant Art-House Success

- Anand Gandhi

Prologue

“All Artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn how to Draw?”

– Banksy

This essay is long.

It’s highly opinioned.

It even has opinions about itself.

It’s arrogant, irreverent and generally sarcastic.

It aims to be an academic essay, but can’t be, because of the cheek.

So it aims to be cheeky.

It also aims to reason, but sometimes just runs out of patience and infers.

The sentences are much shorter and lesser complex than Baudrillard’s, so don’t complaint.

This prologue falls a little short of being a disclaimer – it’s too unapologetic.

The article is alternatively named – The Clichés of What We Know as World Cinema and of Scholarly Film
Criticism and Look, I’m So Cool.

Chapter One – The Art House Cliché

“Where are the snake charmers? Where are the elephants?”

“In the zoos. Where do you keep them in London?”

- Bombay Boys

Every niche has its own cliché – it’s the stereotype that keeps the niche alive and commercially viable for
artistes to cater to. So whether you are into filmmaking or film studies, you do need to acknowledge the
existence of this stereotype and choose whether or not cater to it at some level. That is not to say fresh
grounds cannot be broken – but to accept that it’s a phenomenon that meets any success much rarer
than we’d like to imagine.

After all, how many Iranian films have you seen that are about the urban Tehranian elite and their
problems – as against films about vulnerable, poor and golden hearted villagers, small-towners, and
people of the working class and those living on the brink of or below the poverty line? How many
Mexican or Brazilian films have you seen that are not about poor kids, repressed youth, and suppression
induced crime and are not entirely or partly based in favelas? How many African films have you seen
that are not about labour exploitation, AIDS, drug abuse, riots, crime, repressed tribes and are not
entirely or partly based in Kibera? How many Eastern European films can you remember that are not
about political or religious ideology or the fragmented / alienated lives of low income groups in a
conspicuously war-ridden / post-war / communist / post-communist society?

The answer, with a few groundbreaking exceptions is generally, NONE. If there was ever a world cinema
match-the-column it won’t take any self respecting cinema lover longer than it takes to say mise-en-
scène to connect Palestine and Israel with the subject of Suicide Bombers and Religious / Political
Introspection.

That’s not to say that other classes, types of people, cultures and their issues do not exist in these
societies, nor does it mean that good films exploring these “other” subjects are not made. What it
means is that Western Europe and the US are not very interested in them (an alliance that pretty much
rules our imagination). All pragmatic observation clearly points to one plain fact – when it comes to the
“rest-of-the-developing-world”, the West is more than mostly interested in its poor – not a real-life
interest as much as the curious interest in an amusing hunger artist (an interest, it invariably and
ironically, manages to rub off on the rest-of-the-world). The reason behind this fascination is an entirely
separate branch of philosophical anthropology or world history (the latter largely concerns itself with
invasion, imperialism, guilt and lot of QT-style blood and gore).

We’d rather limit our examination to the recipe of instant international recognition and arthouse
success. You’ll find in the following chapters the right ingredients and tried and tested readymixes with
straightforward microwave usage instructions.

Chapter Two – The Art of Flattery

“Sir, we have a Broken Arrow situation”…

“I don’t know what’s scarier, losing a nuclear weapon or that it happens so often there’s actually a term
for it.”

- Broken Arrow

Human condition, generational conflict, minimalism, anti-plot, loss of innocence, doppelganger and
identity, non-linear narrative, multi-perspective, alternative realities, collective amnesia, social
schizophrenia – the very fact that these terms exist, bears witness to the fact that these themes and
forms have been observed so often in films that there is a need to categorically define them.

Every time an academician invents a new term, a new phenomenon comes to existence, the same way a
disease taking lives for generations only comes into existence only upon laboratory classification.
Multiple observation and definition thereby makes the world of unknown suddenly accessible,
understandable and therefore, manageable and no longer scary. Corollarilly, it implies that the more
lexis you flex (themes, categories, genres, imagery, memes, theories, phenomena, allusions and
generally interesting sounding adjectives in English language), the easier it is for you to pass off as a
serious film scholar, without having to spend thousands of dollars at NYU or change your last name to
Bazin.

After noticing an obvious lack of anything remotely interesting in a clearly over-celebrated film (IMDB >
7.5 / Rottentomatoes meter > 80% / Top 100 Lists / Golden Palm, Lion, Ape / Film School cult / Master
Director’s new work / Acclaimed masterpiece – in its ascending order of peer pressure), you might
sometimes find the honesty and instant enlightenment to see through the film’s bluff and call it so.
Sometimes, however, you might just be too scared to be honest or too unsure or both, and left with
only one option – to lie – for all you know, you are just a part of the emperor’s vast audience and
they’ve all sung songs about his new invisible-to-others clothes. So you won’t be able to get away by just
lying and calling it “awesome”, oh no. You’ll have to talk about its visual poetry; hunt for three shot sets
of sequences to call them haikus or compare its broken imagery to the poetry of T S Elliot, look up the
net to find if the acting style is Noh or Kabuki, neo-realist or if it has roots in the French revolution. Is the
form Brechtian? Goethian? Kafkaesque? Self-reflexive? Is it structured like a fugue? Or simply go for
extremely generic and cool sounding infallible terms like “meditative” and “introspective”. You might
want to talk about the myopia induced by social alienation in a post-war / post-industrialisation urban
setup.

You’ll have to intimidate your readers / friends into believing that what they saw as illogical, stupid,
regressive, pointless, or out rightly boring is actually the deeply self analytical nature of this redemptive
deconstructive examination of the human condition.

Here’s a cookbook of some readymade phrases that you can freely plagiarise in your critiques, using a
little common sense and a little Wikipedia –

Urban dystopia, social collective memory versus individual perception and the fickleness of both, loss of
innocence and alienation, toll of war and isolation, poetic imagery, human frailty, soulful examination,
moral code, ethereal atmosphere, eviscerating intensity, understated beauty, profound insight,
impossible to describe with words, intimate, intensely personal film on the process of healing and
catharsis, dark comedy about obsession, revenge, redemptive drama, replete with subtle irony, cerebral
and not corporal, poignant and heartbreaking portrait, haunting exploration of, paradoxical, self-
reflexive, profoundly moving testament, allegorical, metaphorical, momentary abstraction, hyperbolic
character study, chiaroscuro, mise-en-scene, montage, catharsis, doppelganger, dénouement,
intelligent, comprehensive, deconstructive, postmodern, idiosyncratic, magical realism, collective
amnesia, articulate, fluid, lucent, illuminating critical evaluation, contemplative introspection of the
subversive, transgressive, confrontational, and provocative…

You won’t be surprised when people will start noticing things that even the makers failed to.

Chapter Three – The Choices

“There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they
have never happened before.”

- Willa Cather

And so do camera angles, montage techniques, narrative forms, acting styles, etc. Innovation is the most
abused term in the English language after love. Conformation is often mistaken as innovation –
conformation to the norms of alternative, independent or high art so that the elite audiences of these
arts can easily decode it and appreciate it and pride themselves for being among the very few
connoisseurs with the ability to do so.

Yet every once in a while a filmmaker writes in a handwriting so refreshing that it feels like a new
language that we can immediately speak. Yes, reinvention is always possible. The same overused
themes are revisited with such brilliance of craft and mastery of art that your temporary suspension of
disbelief threatens to take over your permanent world view – and sometimes it does! Unfortunately,
genius is an item number played not to often. Found often is a code of symbols taught by artistes over
years, till the audiences no longer require the babel fish of an analyst in their ear for comprehension.
Code becomes language and a pattern emerges…

Themes

Repression, suppression, exploitation, poverty, violence, handicap, the human condition; loss of
innocence, the toll of war, the holocaust, the apartheid, communist censorship; memory, perception,
illusion v/s reality, amnesia, schizophrenia; alienation, isolation, ennui; generational conflict, renewal,
fate, chance, co-incidence, redemption and religious fundamentalism.

Subjects

Terrorists with histories, the spirited otherly abled, incest, child abuse, dysfunctional families, racism,
immigrants, displaced peoples, depression, lots of pointless sex shot extremely naturally and casually,
criminals produced by social forces, suppressed poor with golden hearts and nowhere to escape, the
alienated, urban dystopias, the choice of one’s sexuality, schizophrenia, amnesia, dreams, an artiste’s
introspection, identity and identity crisis, teenage confusion, teenage angst, Nazism and the holocaust,
aprtheid, riots, the two world wars, wars, tryst with death, the chaos theory, generational conflict,
religious motifs, religious allusions and imperialism.

The Script

No or very little dialogue, Non-linear narrative, Multi-plots, Multi-narrator narratives, Flashbacks and
flashforwards, Self-reflexivity, Ambiguous endings, Extremely cynical endings, Multiple / alternative
endings, Obvious irony, Parallels – characters and stories, Stream of consciousness, Uninhibited use of
expletives, Film within film, Delusions – dreams, hallucinations and lies, Pretentious poetry, Ponderous
absurd dialogue, Random conversation, Alternative possibilities…

Cinematography & Editing

Shot in black and white; high contrasts; obvious colour tints; story specific colour tints in case of multi-
plots, low key lighting, long deliberately boring shots with nothing happening for a long time; tracking
shots of the character just walking, long pans / POV revolving pans encompassing all elements of the
environment in the shot – the wilderness, the empty spaces, the concrete jungles, etc. – sometimes,
before finally making the character enter his / her own POV; long mildly smoky close-ups; jump cuts,
montage sequences, time lapse sequences, visual metaphors…

Acting

Deliberately underplayed poignant expressions; Lots of pregnant pauses; Exchanges of meaningful looks
between characters; Meaningful looks used as a device to get rid of dialogue; Exaggerated theatre forms
with roots in exotic regional cultures; Bad acting covered up by calling it a deliberate experiment…

Casting and make-up

Weirdly handsome men; Unconventionally beautiful women; High cheekbones; A mild stubble;
Deliberate uglyfying of otherwise beautiful people with make-up.

One can go on and find many such repeated motifs in other aspects of films as well – for example, the
other day when I was watching a film about suicide bombers with my friends, we unanimously predicted
that the blast in the end will be depicted with an abrupt silence and a blank screen – and eureka! It did!
Chapter Four – The Four Varnas

“Mera naam Phoolan hai, bhenchod! (My name is Phoolan, sisterfucker!)”

– Bandit Queen

There are four broad subject categories (The Divided, The Downtrodden, the Divine and Bollywood) for
Indian films that will definitely receive a Western nod:

The Downtrodden: The mother of all clichés – the Holy Grail of the Indian arthouse export – the staple
diet of world cinema – infallible, if politically correct and emotionally manipulative enough, its success
resting in the extremely perverted human need to feel sorry! Social repression, abject poverty, drug
abuse, exploitation, reaction, low income groups, the handicapped, slum dwellers, orphans, sex
workers, child labour, child abuse victims, people living below the poverty line, criminals produced by
social forces, repressed castes, repressed sexualities, eunuchs, rape victims, the marginalized, the under
privileged, the suppressed, the ultimate underdog. – some examples – Salaam Bombay, Bandit Queen,
Water, Fire, Dharavi, Meghe Dhaka Taara, Bhavni Bhavai, Ankur.

The Divided: Religious fundamentalism, social division, partition, riots, class politics, terrorism, racism,
casteism, victims of the state, social reform activism, religious orthodoxy v/s spiritual renewal. A sub-
category of this genre works very well among the Indian arthouse audiences, but not as much abroad –
Political divisions –Corruption v/s integrity, idealism v/s reality, communism v/s state supported
capitalist forces, labour v/s factory owners, etc. – some examples – Khamosh Paani (Pakistan), Train to
Pakistan, Drohkaal, The Terrorist, Parzania, Fire, Black Friday.

The Divine: Spiritual exotica (and erotica) and cultural Exotica – Kamasutra, Khajuraho, Himalayas,
Dharmashala, Ladakh, yoga, kumbh melas, colourful melas, karma, reincarnation, Krishna, Buddha,
Shiva, ritualistic theatre, the old order, mythological renderings, kitsch art (truck art, firecracker package
art, matchbox art), folk music, rajasthani deserts, benares, the Ganges, spiritual journeys – Siddhartha,
Kamasutra, The Warrior (UK), Samsara, Utsav, Himalayas, Ayurveda.

Bollywood: Bollywood as we understand it and as the West perceives it are two different things. It’s the
amusement from the entirely brainless and the novelty of the entirely pointless, out right stupid and yet,
so uninhibited and celebrative, that fascinates them. Smart Indians have cashed on the kitschy fad and
made the song and dance routine more accessible to the West – either by spoofing or quoting. Eg.
Monsoon Wedding, Bollywood Hollywood, Bend it Like Bekham, Bride and Prejudice, Bombay Boys,
Bollywood Calling.

Dénouement

“Everything in this book could be wrong.”

– Richard Bach