The Long Weekend
All That Breathes//Call Me By Your Name
This last week has been daunting - I procrastinated on my projects big time! The last weekend I was working the whole day to push out something of value - had to write a history book review on white violence, and an administrative law paper on essential legislative function. Of course, history was better (duh!). Sometimes I wonder what I am doing in a law school. Can you even compare the dry doctrine of administrative law to thinking about tradition and modernity and feminist writing and subjectivity in a history class?
Anyway, I completed my projects by Wednesday because I really wanted to go to this film screening on Thursday. The award winning documentary, creative non-fiction film All That Breathes was being screened at the Bangalore International Centre. It was one of the most fun evenings I’ve had in a long time. I go to BIC often, and they usually don’t require a registration but this time, apparently some 500 people had registered for it. So when we reached there, we were made to stand in a queue, then taken out of it, and then, in typical desi style, told that the chairs were full but if peeps were okay with sitting on stairs, they could run and grab their seats. And ran we did! Towards the auditorium. Along with my friends, I watched the entire film from the stairs - and it was wonderful!
As for the film, I wanted to write a review on Thursday itself but this is what happens - when I watch or read good stuff, I feel so overwhelmed and small, that I doubt if I can write anything of value, which is why I don’t write at all. Even this thing I am writing right now — I have written two paragraphs but not yet come to the point. The film was the one of the best things I’ve ever watched. It was unreal, and that’s saying something for a documentary. It is about two Muslim brothers in Delhi who save kites - cheelein. As the title suggests, the film is about life - all that breathes. It is about the love that can transcend boundaries of biological taxonomies of species. The brothers go out every day to rescue birds, bring them back to their claustrophobic garage, and perform procedures. In the backdrop of the film, there’s subtle political commentary. The wife of one of the brothers asks him if she can go to the gathering where other women had come (referring ofcourse to the Shaheen Bagh protest but never naming it). The brothers tell the audience that when they had first taken a kite to a vet in their childhood, he had refused to treat it saying it was a “non-veg” bird. The kite, in some senses, becomes the symbol of what it means to be Muslim in this country today. The air of Delhi which suffocates and kills the kites every single day becomes a running commentary on the palpable and gross hate that we consume every day. But while there are the brothers to save the kites, the film does not answer the question of who will save them. The brothers, for one, say, “we started saving the kites, but ultimately it is they who saved us.” I have made this sound too political even though the movie is not visibly or intentionally so. The movie is about grey skies and birds and flight and love. But for me, it is in this sad, and grey commentary on life that it is so deeply political. It ends by saying, “sometimes, life itself is a form of kinship” - kabhi-kabhi, zindagi hi ek kisam ki baradri ban jaati hai.
Yesterday, I watched Call Me By Your Name. I had listened to the audio-book in the metro rides of Delhi last October when I was interning, and had wanted to watch the film ever since, but it wasn’t available on any platform. Yesterday, I was just surfing through Netflix (borrowed from my brother) when I saw the banner, and immediately switched off the lights and clicked play. Set in northern Italy, in a beautiful countryside, this is a story about a 17 year old, young boy named Elio growing into adulthood, discovering himself. An American student - Oliver - comes to their house for a month, to study under the boy’s father. The movie is about this one month in Elio’s life - his struggles with his attraction towards Oliver and his confused thoughts. Elio and Oliver have a short, destined to be fragile, relationship in this month which allows Elio to understand himself better, and experience heartbreak. Nothing much happens in the film - so don’t watch it if you want action. It is like a prolonged hum you cannot get out of your head - the scenery of Italy, the piano in the background, the daily swims and cycling, the once in a while sexual tension between Elio and Oliver, the relationship between Elio and his mother, and the predictable heartbreak. You don’t really understand when the film begins and when it ends. But you want to watch it again!
The regret I have about watching good films and reading good books though is that the moment of awe does not linger for too long a time. You watch the movie, you feel impacted, you feel sad or elated, but then it’s gone. Next thing you know, you are sitting in a fancy restaurant with your friends talking about who’s doing what at college. I see why this is necessary. This is important to preserve sanity - otherwise one will never be able to get over things one watches. But then, should we get over them so easily? The sadness after watching All That Breathes about the precarity of the lives we are living and the hate we have fueled does not translate into anything; the happiness and hope that comes from Call Me By Your Name will also get drowned in the next set of project subs. This sense of non-accomplishment, of not really doing anything about things that matter is what is perturbing me more and more as I think about my possible career trajectory. I am realising, increasingly, that my love for theory and pure social sciences is simply unmatchable, and as from what it looks like now, I will probably end up not doing law. Yet, I ask myself - the impact you can have by defending someone’s rights in court, getting them a bail for example - how could you ever have that impact thinking about the nature of modernity and thinking in abstractions? I am still figuring that out. But in the meantime, go watch these two movies!
Feel the same. I'm changing colleges for better opportunities in law but deep down i know if my socio economic conditions had been different i wouldnt have even thought of joining law as a career
Great going Manhar ! Always a pleasure to read your blogs.