Celluloid Garbage

DECEMBER 1996 - Chasing an elusive friend the other day led us to the mob-infested streets of Lahore’s Lakshmi Chowk where between dozens of ‘karahi gosht’ outfits and an equal number of Butt-variety ‘desi’ sweet shops, are the pigeon holes which pass for offices of the country’s film distributors. Surrounded by lewd and bloody posters of the industry’s hot favourites and waited upon by a disturbingly large contingent of Klash-toting gringos, we waited for our fabled distributor friend to surface.

He did, surrounded by an army of supplicants. Everyone wanted him, or so it seemed and he was being pulled in a dozen directions at the same time, while dodging phone calls, swinging his mobile about, posing for a photo-shoot with a ‘party’ and dashing down a seedy restaurant where a dozen party-goes waited for him to join them. While all this chaos was unfolding around us, he disappeared into a bathroom and from there into another room, a waiting car and to the screening offices of the country’s censor board. However a man in a garish checked ‘shalwar-kameez’ bundled us into another vehicle and eventually after much persuasion allowed us to use our car to reach the censor board -- and our elusive friend. Apparently today was the censor show of Neeli’s latest block buster and without his consent, nothing was going to happen.

Sandwiched appropriately between offices of the Agriculture Department and the Miani Sahib graveyard, is a pokey little run-down projection room, where a dozen men preside over the fortunes of those who have sunk huge amounts of money into producing three hour films, replete with violence, flesh, miracles and melodrama. On the trail of our friend, we slid into sofas and watched the screen where a swimming pool sequence was unfolding in gory detail. As Neeli, in black cycling tights and a gold, two sizes too small dress, gyrated to the ear-splitting beat of a song and left no doubt as to her intentions regarding the black-jeaned, wooden faced hero, the camera crazily moved about so that Neeli’s hefty posterior all but obliterated the wide-angle lens. ‘My how she’s grown,’ was all we could think of as she rolled around, shook her butt and other ‘unmentionables’ and all but raped the hero, who sauntered about quite, quite indifferent to so much flesh thrown about at him.

Mercifully, after the swimming pool extravaganza was finally over, the scene moved to the hero’s long suffering mom and ‘Nek Parveen’ sis and their house where every flower pot was of a different colour and every light fixture a chandalier or some grotesque jingle-jangle that adorn most light shops in our cities. A pale Nadeem playing, of all things, a retired judge and a disgusting cameo appearance by Rangeela who is more unbearable than ever before were the highlights, before Neeli jiggled some more flesh and shook from top to bottom and east to west. In between, the retired judge’s second wife threw three tantrums, the boorish family that had come for the hero’s pristine sister’s hand in marriage, also threw a tantrum for good measure and walked out after being assaulted by the hero who, we luckily discovered, had a pretty awful temper. The finishing touch was provided by the hero’s grand-mom having a right royal heart attack, the severity of which we could only gauge by the stone-faced doctor (with stethoscope but without spectacles and the regulation Fench beard) who appeared at the balcony of the house, large enough to house the Allied forces of World War II, but said nothing except a most meaningful shake of the head.

Earlier, we and the censor board members were treated to sweet cups of tea and even sweeter ‘chum-chums’ though beef sandwiches would have been the appropriate dish, while on screen, the hero and his loyal band of four pals accosted the evil lord of the underworld, a snarling, shouting ear-ring laden lout by the unlikely name of Lion Kong. As the hero and Lion King karated, kicked, punched and clawed each other’s brains out with the hero humiliating the war lord by breaking his leg, wrapping him in a coffin-cloth, dressing him with garlands of roses and pouring scented water over him, we ate the ‘chum-chums’ in silent awe. Since there is an Almighty after all who governs things including the errant film industry of Pakistan, there was a power failure and in the ensuing darkness, we fled from the projection room.

This was one of the latest releases and it filled one with complete despair, because the industry’s poor standards have surely plummeted to an all-time low. Apart from the absence of virtually any coherent story line or God forbid, any meaningful statement, this was a film devoid of all production values. The sets were nightmares and the work of morons who deserve to be put away, the sound atrocious and out of synch and beyond human endurance. Even the fights were arranged by amateurs, with fists flying six inches away from jaws yet producing the most fearsome crunching sounds. The dances were singularly vulgar and the moves, utterly devoid of any grace or rhythm. The costumes were the macabre creations of ‘designers’ who deserve to be locked away. As for camera work, the less said the better. Even a rank amateur could produce better footage. Editing, continuity or pace, and for that matter any of the things that make a film at least bearable if not memorable, were totally missing. Even the colours were terrible. All in all, it was one complete, unmitigated disaster, which in terms of the market would mean that it is destined to be a runaway success.

Like everything else around us, good cinema has decayed and died, taken over by low-grade and crass work that lies at the very bottom of the cess pool that passes for national talent. Is it the low taste of the public that encourages producer after producer to spew out garbage or is it that because garbage is all that we can produce, the battered public taste has been grounded into accepting in passive silence all that is hurled at it ? Who knows ? Sufficient to know that if this movie -- the name of which thank God I don’t recall, is any indicator, we are in for more mindless and cheap celluloid crap. Not a happy or hopeful scenario, but then with the caretakers losing credibility at the speed of light, is it any surprise that the silver screen too is rusted, corroded and shattered. And yet shady organisations appear out of the woodwork daily awarding the same “artistes” again and again.