The Great Indian Kitchen

After ~3 years of its release, I watched "The Great Indian Kitchen" yesterday. I knew what it was about, yet I was still unprepared for how uncomfortable it was going to make me. I liked a lot of things about this movie. Below is just a list of things I loved about it in particular. There is going to be a huge number of spoilers.

 

Editing:

I dont have that much familiarity with film technicalities. Generally I dont notice most of the things that reviewers are talking about. But I really noticed how fast the movie was moving in the first hour. One of the most important reasons, why I am not watching that many movies now a days, is because of the time it takes for the setup. The makers tend to take their own sweet time, trying to show us all the variables in the movie. More recently, I am reading the book, Ponniyin Selvan, and it is driving me crazy how the crux the plot hasnt even started, even after 23 chapters.

But in this one, the movie wastes no time in the setup. The movie starts with an arranged marriage meeting, and within 10 minutes, shows us the marriage, the initial phases of romance and lands us in the kitchen ( the main arena of the film ). And no detail is omitted. We know what the ambition of the woman is, we are shown that the husband got a dowry in the form of a car.

For every day, we are shown what is being made, who is eating it, and how. Who cleans the house. The nitty gritty details of the work that is going in for every special requirement in the food, and yet all of it moves so fast without missing any details.

One friend of mine once said that "Nolan movies generally have some scenes where the dialogue of the next scene starts before the end of the previous scene, because even after all that his movies takes 3 hours to complete. There is so much to show.". This movie does something similar, there is so much to see and they didnt want to bore us in the process.

Framing:

Most scenes here are static shots. But a lot of those shots, tell a story themselves. I especially loved 2 shots. 

 

One where the women of the house are shown to be cleaning the gigantic house in the background and the father in law sleeping in the foreground. The shot lasts for a mere 5 seconds, and the change of focus between these two, tells what we need to understand about the scene.

The other scene comes near the end, where the female protagonist is walking away from the home, and we are being shown the state of the rest of the village in a side angle running shot. This particular woman has found a way to free herself, but the women in the rest of the households, are still stuck in the same situation, and also manages to show a bunch of women protesting against the very judgement that is trying to provide them the rights they are being denied.

 

Visual story telling: 

I am a sucker for visual story telling, be it games or films. This film knocks this one out of the park.

The way we are being force to notice the monotonic nature of the life of the woman.  "Show, don't tell" is one of my favorite guiding factors when I have to decide how good a movie is. This movie just takes it to the extreme in the first hour.

 

All the struggles that the woman is going through is shown, without much dialogue directly addressing them.  Being from a similar household myself, I could easily predict what the other conflicts are going to be ( like handwashing clothes ). The repeated shots of the sink, filled to the brim is painful to watch, especially because I have started cooking recently. The mess that is being created when men eat or cook, and the complete lack of acknowledgement of it. Most of these is not mentioned in dialogue anywhere.

Dialogue

This one uses very little dialogue to move the story, but the ones it chooses to use are so dense with subtext, it makes the information theory nerd in me, jump in happiness. Some of my favorite moments are, when the FIL casually says "your job is more important than the bureaucrats and ministers out there". I am sure everyone who was in this situation has heard that line, and they understand clearly what that means.

Another one is the dialogue where the girl's mother says "you should be grateful for having the chance to be in such a household". Every single one of them is used precisely to deliver the most impact possible. I don't remember seeing such efficient film-making anywhere else.

Even apart from all this, the movie just smashes it in other parts. Inclusion of the issue of Supreme court judgement about women entry into Sabarimala temples, is a masterpiece. This reminds me that, I am yet to see even a single non-toxic Sabarimala Aiyappan devotee in my life, and I count 7 of those people. The movie made me squirm throughout the entire length of the movie. The decision to make the male characters not obviously evil, is also brilliant, as most of us don't even realize the terrible things we do in our own houses. In conclusion, like blue satta maaran said in his review for the Tamil version of this movie, This movie is a reminder to every woman to run away, as fast as possible, if they find that an alliance is from an overly orthodox Hindu family.

Centrism in Politics ( மையவாதம்/நடுவுநிலைமை )

The following is yet another rant about a thing that has been torturing me for months now. So it might be even more incoherent than my other stuff.

Before starting this, I had to google what is the word for Centrism in tamil and the word for நடுவுநிலைமை in English. It is மையவாதம் and Impartiality respectively. My intuitive understanding of these two, were that they meant the same thing, albeit in different contexts.

But this changed, when I watched the teaser of the movie Nenjukku needhi ( The remake of the excellent movie Article 15 ).

The last dialogue piqued my interest a lot. I am still yet to watch this though. If it came from anyone else, this wouldn't have made me think for more than a second. The dialogue goes like

என்னை பொருத்த வரை, நடுவுல நிக்கிறது இல்ல சார் neutral, நியாயத்து பக்கம் நிக்கிறது தான் சார் neutral.

this roughly translates to

As far as I'm concerned standing in the centre is not neutral, 

Standing with justice is neutral.

To be fair, this is a very good dialogue and a very good point.

But what made me write this, was who said it. No... not the character. The person playing the character. Tamilnadu is known for its leaders coming from Cinema background, and famously using it to their advantage. This person is a standing MLA in the TN assembly, and the son of the current chief minister. The party he represents ( DMK ) is infamous for behaving like their opinions are the only correct way to handle things ( Example: their handling of NEET, LTTE issues ), and that everyone else is wrong, just like how BJP handles it in the centre. So when he says this in the movie, he obviously means standing with DMK is neutral.

But thinking about it, don't everyone think that they are in the side of justice ? If that is the case, then everyone should say they are centrists/neutral. This is where I realized I got the definition wrong, and possibly the writers of that dialogue also got some things wrong.

The mistake I made was conflating the political position ( Centrism ) in the political spectum, and Impartiality as equivalent things. 

Centrism

Centrism is the position where one doesn't identify with most qualities of the right wing and the left wing either. They get kicked from both the sides, and basically almost never get elected in the Indian context, as there is almost always a party which represents either extreme position, and both sides vote for their group, leaving centrists almost with nothing.

Centrism is also difficult in my opinion. I identify as a centrist, and for every new issue it is a constant battle when picking sides. Because, the key problem with centrists are is that, they beleive in some issues from the right and the left. But the issues other centrists beleive in, might not be the same. So one has to spend much time trying to weigh in extreme opinions from both sides to come to a conclusion, whereas a left/right wing person, can just use their side's arguments and accept it as it is, as anyway they straight away deem the other side irrelevant from the word go ( This might seem like an exhaggeration, but a person who proudly brags to me about not reading this blog EVER, behaves like this all the time, and just completely throws away any argument from the other side, saying it is their agenda. )

Impartiality

The key part where impartiality differs from centrism, in my opinion, is that now a person has to throw away his beleifs and decide every issue based on its merits. This is a tougher problem. The reason it is difficult for most people is, they cant fathom that the other side in the issue, might have a reason ( valid or not ) at all for opposing something, completely ignoring Hanlon's razor.

 

DMK as a party, always beleives in badmouthing political opponents about their political standing, and most times, dont even try to reason why the opposing beleif is wrong, but just keep repeating their beleifs over and over again. So a top leader in that party saying that dialogue is the most hilarious part. But also, they have clearly confused both centrism and impartiality, just like me, because if that is not the case, then the entire line is meaningless. Citing my previous rant about useless things, If everyone will claim they are standing with justice regardless of their opinion/political position, then everyone is a centrist/neutral whatever, now the word neutral as political position, completely loses it meaning. Why even have a word for something meaningless ?

Also, as a hilarious side note... when I was thinking about political sides and trying to fit parties into these sides, I realized that one of the few centrist parties in TN is hilariously NTK. Just that they managed to pick extreme opinions from both sides somehow and managed to form a political group from it ( Being so ready to form a nation out of a language identity is trademark right wing... whereas all the bullshit about his version of the self-sustainable economy mostly sounds like communism to me. )

Thrillers and the overuse of shock value

 One of the blogs i wrote was in praise of the web series called Suzhal-The Vortex. The thriller element of the story was liked by many including me, but a small group of people criticized it for its story. Some people felt it was too easy to predict who was the actual culprit in the plot. Maybe I was dumb enough for the obvious plot points to fly over my head. But it is an interesting point to ponder.

The main talking point of that particular web-series was its shocking reveal, which happens at the very end ( maybe thats one of the reasons, why it is one of the major talking points. ). But eventhough one can like it for many of its other virtues, like mostly organic reveals, foreshadowing, unreliable evidences and narrators, seemingly parallel but interesecting stories , it will be always be remembered as the series with the shock reveal.

This raises a problem. If too many shows/movies do the shock reveal, wont the audience learn to ignore the obvious cues and only make note of the ones that seem ( deliberately ) irrelevant. Seeing in this light, a lot of popular but unpopular ( with the hardcore critics ) makes some sense. One such movie comes to mind immediately. Dhuruvangal 16 ( D16 ) was very famous with mostly simple movie watchers like me, who were blown away by the twists. But lately I have been noticing a lot of very strong criticism of that movie, attacking its direction and story. Honestly it was a bit surprising to see critics bashing such a movie. There are many reasons why it got flak, but here, I am just going to think out loud about one such problem I see with these kinds of thrillers. Deliberate lack of information and over-reliance on shock value.

Dont get me wrong. I love deliberate misguidance if it fits well with the flow of the movie. In Suzhal, I felt most misguiding information are part of a natural deduction process. And there is a part in the series, where there is even commentary about it. But it is a problem when the audience has no chance of knowing anything about the impending twist, because nothing relevant was revealed. D16 is heavily guilty of this. For most of the movie, we have absolutely no idea about the character that ends up being the culprit. One very good movie called Raatchasan, also does this to some extent. Until the culprit is revealed, we have no clue about the culprit. In Suzhal, eventhough we know about the culprit from the beginning, most of the important give-aways are deliberately hidden from the audience, just to prevent the suspense from revealing itself accidentally, which is just very dishonest to the viewer. Imagine preparing for a mathematics exam day in day out, and receiving an art question paper in the exam hall!

 So lets look at movies which dont do this and still shine at being a thriller. Raatchasan here again. After the murderer is revealed, and most details about him are revealed, it still manages to be haunting till the very end. The Usual Suspects, I beleive is the best example in this regard. We know the person from the very beginning, and we completely hear his story, and still it is a surprise when the twist happens. Just googling "Best suspense thrillers of all time" reveals some of them. Psycho, The Departed... Looks like I havent seen that many thrillers. :/

Shock value helps greatly in thrillers. But like all good things, there is a right way and a wrong way to use it. Shock works greatly when the audience isnt expecting one. It already sounds contradictory to my previous point. How does one shock the audience, even after revealing most of the information ? Well, I think thats what good, non-lazy writing looks like. Please point me to movies, which look like that in the comments, will you ? Also welcome, are good counter-examples, where a movie manages to surprise us without revealing much information, but it still doesnt feel like cheating.

Small worlds and denser stories

I recently watched the web series Suzhal - The Vortex, and was blown away. It stayed with me for a long time. Two days went by, and I was stuck relistening to its soundtrack and scenes from youtube. I felt far more connected to the plot, compared to the ones which involves International Intelligence, A global terror plot etc. 

I love huge open worlds in games. Typically when i used to choose games , acreage was one of the big factors considered. Huge worlds means lot of things to explore right !? Thats true to some extent, but then there is only so much a game/story can fit in before hitting the hard stop. Huge maps were my goto when I open a new map in OpenTTD ( Not Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam. Transport Tycoon Deluxe ). It took me a while to realize why i typically get bored after sometime with large Open worlds.

This video by Razbuten and one from GMTK ( This channel never stops giving. ) opened my eyes to why this strange phenomenon was happening. 

We typically tag a game/movie as a huge world when it involves lots of characters/ multiple cities, countries etc. But what we ultimately care about when we experience a game or a movie is the content. Our brain strengthens a neural pathway when we recall the memory related to that path. Something similar seems to be happening with stories. In a small world, there are not many characters/places to write the story with. So the entity is reused for other purposes. This seems to not only keep the entity from fading into irrelevance, but to strengthen our connection with a story.

With interactive media aka Games though it seems it is a weird mix. The number of meaningfully different interactions matter. The entity doesnt matter. But if the story has to stay then the entities have to be limited. In Deus Ex, eventhough it involves a global conspiracy and all those good stuff, the game was engaging and never allowed me to relax. There is always something to find in Deus ex. And to add to that, like mentioned in the GMTK video, the lack of a dynamic map adds to the necessity of learning the landscape better to do anything. But the story of Deus Ex consists of too many important characters, which after a certain point just renders everyone except a select few useless ultimately.

How then can we get games which are good at both ? A near perfect example is A Short Hike. The map is tiny, the characters are few. But at every nook and corner you are bound to find something. Some of the characters have multiple dimensions. What do i mean by dimensions ? In A Short hike, sometimes a single NPC can be involved in more than 1 thread of quests. In Witcher 1 , A trader can be involved in a robbery, a murder plot, a conspiracy against the king simultaneously, and asks you to fetch some flowers from an island. All almost simultaneously. Not of all of them are linked. The story feels real. Typically in open world games, all characters are very very single dimensional and they want/do one thing.

Video games have limits. Since there is a limited amount of resources, the size of the map and the content available tends to be inversely proportional all else remaining same. That is maybe why in most GTA games above san andreas, there is always places where nothing interesting is going on with repasted buildings.

Coming back to where i started from, Suzhal does this excellently. Seemingly everyone has multiple angles. Some people I talked to, about this series, were critical about some plot threads which dont lead anywhere, and the plot could have done without those threads. But in my opinion, thats real life. Not everything is relevant to the biggest plot point. And it adds one more layer of mystery. If something juicy is revealed, it remains to found whether it is actually relevant to the outcome, in addition to how it is relevant. From a shear mathematical POV, it allows the mesh density to be even more. Infact in Suzhal masterfully uses misdirection to effectively use these unclosed threads.

I used to be put off by stories with very limited scope. But with an overload of grand stories, stuff like Before Trilogy , The Man from Earth and 12 Angry Men captivate me and from time to time shape who I am.

Any other small worlds which stayed with you for a long time. Please mention in the comments. I am looking for movie/game suggestions anyway.

Thank you.