A Potpourri of Vestiges Review
By Murtaza Ali Khan
According to Wikipedia, “Metacinema,
also meta-cinema, is a mode of filmmaking in which the film informs the
audience that they are watching a work of fiction.” In other words, it often
references to its own production, thereby working against the narrative
conventions that aim to create an immersive experience for the viewer. Now,
some filmmakers go to great lengths to ensure that the viewer completely
forgets that he/she is watching a film. Take, for example, the case of
Christopher Nolan who consciously changed the setting of a key scene in Batman Begins to an opera house instead
of the cinema hall setting in the original text in order to ensure that the
attention of the viewers is never drawn to the idea of watching a film in a
cinema hall while watching the scene. Similarly, we also have filmmakers like
Woody Allen who take the completely opposite route and go meta every time they
see the creative possibility. Vikramaditya Motwane, in his latest film, AK vs AK, which recently premiered on
Netflix, too opts to take the meta route. Presented in a style that closely
resembles a fly-on-the-wall documentary, AK
vs AK follows a brash film director (Anurag Kashyap, as himself) who
kidnaps the daughter of a movie star (Anil Kapoor, as himself) with the aim of
filming the star’s desperate search for his daughter in real-time as his next
blockbuster.
Now, meta-films aren’t new
to Hindi cinema. Over the years we have seen films like Guru Dutt’s Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959), Hrishikesh
Mukherjee’s Guddi (1971), Vidhu Vinod
Chopra’s Khamosh (1985), Sudhir
Mishra’s Khoya Khoya Chand (2007), Zoya
Akhtar’s Luck by Chance (2009), and Maneesh
Sharma’s Fan (2016). But, apparently,
what’s different about AK vs AK is
how it adopts a fly-on-the-wall documentary style to tell a story that’s highly
fictional in nature, despite featuring several characters which are based on
real people from the Hindi film industry. But, it’s nothing we haven’t already
seen in world cinema. Here one is first
and foremost reminded of Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave classic Le Mépris (1963), wherein the legendary
German film director Fritz Lang plays himself. But, perhaps, a more interesting
example is Abbas Kiarostami’s documentary and fiction hybrid Close-Up (1990), the film tells the true
story of a cinephile named Hossain Sabzian who while impersonating the Iranian
filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf conned a family into believing that they would cast
in his next film. Kiarostami makes actual people play themselves, including Makhmalbaf
and Sabzian.
Spike Jonze’s Adaptation (2002) is another film that
cannot be overlooked while discussing the subject of meta-cinema. Written by
none other than the meta-master Charlie Kaufman himself, Adaptation follows a screenwriter struggling to adapt a book. Interestingly,
Kaufman’s own struggles while trying to adapt Susan Orlean's book titled ‘The
Orchid Thief’ became major influence behind writing the screenplay for Adaptation. Another very fine meta-film that comes to mind
is E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of the
Vampire (2000). The film begins as a fictionalized documentary account of
the making the legendary German filmmaker F. W. Murnau’s classic vampire film Nosferatu (1922), but, fascinatingly, it ends up becoming a spine-chilling vampire
film in its own right. In his recent film Pain
and Glory (2019), the Spanish master filmmaker Pedro Almodovar takes the
autobiographical route by telling the poignant story of a filmmaker resembling
himself. In the final scene of the movie, the camera zooms out to reveal the
crew along with the shooting equipment. The
Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky did something very similar in his
1973 Mexican surreal-fantasy film The
Holy Mountain. And who can forget Billy Wilder’s film noir classic Sunset Blvd. (1950) which takes the idea
of meta-cinema to nigh unattainable heights when it ends with its lead
character Norma Desmond, a long-forgotten silent film star, walking down the aisle
and commanding the legendary American filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille (playing
himself), while facing the cameras, “All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my
close-up.” Here, I would be remiss not to mention Mani Ratnam’s 1997 political
drama Iruvar which is inspired by the
friendship and rivalry of writer-turned-politician M. Karunanidhi and
actor-turned-politician M. G. Ramachandran.
So now that we have
discussed various examples of meta-cinema in Indian as well as world cinema, let’s
try and closely analyze AK vs AK and
try and figure out where it stands in comparison. Now, a major drawback of the
film is that it takes so many things for granted. The viewers are supposed to already
know that Anurag Kashyap is asthmatic and that his younger brother is also a
film director. They are also expected to know that Anil Kapoor’s daughter Sonam
is a fairly successful actor in Bollywood while his son Harshvardhan is a flop
actor who is out of work. And that Anil’s elder brother is a film producer. Isn’t
Netflix’s content meant to be watched internationally? Interestingly, some
unsuspecting critics have praised AK vs
AK for its boldness and innovation. But, frankly, it offers little novelty,
whether one speaks of content or form. While we should certainly welcome
storytelling experiments, it is equally important not to take such pretentious,
self-indulgent films too seriously. Netflix India really needs to raise the bar
before it greenlits the next project.
A version of this article was first published in The Daily Guardian.
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