Of dystopian tales and biopics at Cannes

Manto relevant in post-truth era: Das

Seeking to inspire: Actors Rasika Dugal and Nawazuddin Siddiqui and director Nandita Das at the 70 th Cannes Film Festival.

Ten days into the Cannes festival and two things seem settled.

The most hated competition film has to be Jacques Doillon’s plodding, pedantic and wearisome biopic Rodin . Clay sculptures of a variety of nude models kept getting made even as French sculptor Auguste Rodin’s relationship issues with assistant Camille Claudel and wife Rose played on the side. There was some heavy-handed talk on Rodin giving significance to women’s sexuality and also a perverse threesome he indulged in but things still refused to get exciting.

The most harrowing ride so far has to be Sergei Loznitsa’s

Krotkaya (

A Gentle Creature ),

a Ukrainian film that is anything but gentle. Like Ken Loach’s 2016 Palme D’Or winner

I, Daniel Blake , Loznitsa’s film also looks at an individual battling heartless bureaucracy but his vision is far more heightened and off the wall. It’s a dystopia where people get locked in the prison for not doing any crime. They disappear into thin air without any answers given to the next of kin.

When her parcel to her husband, serving a sentence, is returned, a “gentle” woman seeks answers. Her quest proves to be a trip to hell, peopled with gangsters, singers, police and prostitutes.

Gloom and doom

In the midst of all the excesses, the woman remains resolutely sad and glacial, a picture of tiredness and desperation. It’s a world that considers the prison as its church; a place where violence is everyday and banal and menace is omnipresent. The film presents an irredeemable situation of gloom and doom, powerfully rendered with a bizarre and gut-wrenching finale to boot.

Earlier in the week, Nandita Das unveiled the poster and played some clips from her upcoming film Manto at the India Pavilion. The film stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Saadat Hasan Manto and Rasika Duggal as his wife, Safia; both the actors were also present at the event. A live script-reading session with Siddiqui was conducted in the HP Studio in Le Majestic hotel.

Global potential

There is an obvious “international” potential being perceived in the project, which will have the last leg of shooting wrapped up mid-June in Mumbai. A clutch of curious Pakistani delegates, besides other international representatives, showed up to see the clips.

When asked what Manto would have made of this aggressive marketing and promotion of a film based on his life, Das was quick to point out that he was a non-judgmental person. According to her, an attempt has been to portray him as honestly as possible: “We have told the story with full integrity. We haven’t put him on a pedestal, he was a fallible guy like anyone else.”

He was derided as a pornographic writer and clown but he was also a husband and father and a feminist who helped his wife in household chores. This domestic aspect, the camaraderie with his wife Safia, her attempts at coping with what life got her through him have all been depicted.

Das first narrated the idea of the film to Siddiqui at Cannes on the steps of Palais de Festivale at an earlier edition of the festival. And he was sold. For him, the most outstanding aspect about Manto was that he always dared to speak the truth. Das says the film is significant in today’s “post truth” times when “we are questioning truth, giving alternative ‘facts’.”

Manto continues to be relevant in the times when freedom of expression and identity issues are up for debate, she says. “At a time when everyone is self-censoring we need such a voice that can inspire us.”

For Das, the other important aspect about Manto was the “redemptive power of the written word”. Even in his worst phase he kept writing.