A Peep(li) into New Age Neo-Realism

The Italian Neo-Realist Movement of the 1940’s was a product of necessity. De Sica, Verga, Rosellini, Visconti filmed the reality of their days under the tough times of the 2^nd World War. They told stories about the man on the streets because they were sick of the idealistic, upper class cinema of the “telefono bianco” type (the white telephone was a symbol of the Italian rich). They reused old film, picked up non-professional actors and shot on location in Italy. The result was the birth of classics like Umberto D., Shoeshine, Bicycle Thief, La Terra Trema and Rome, Open City.

The necessity has arisen again. P. Sainath, in his ‘India's Farm Suicides: a 12-Year Saga’ reminds us that 16,196 farmer suicides were registered in the year 2008. And this was the year of the loan waiver. In times like these, “Bollywood” has still been producing darling little films like I Hate Luv Stories, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, Kites, Pyaar Impossible and the one that is never too old for jokes, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. The last one of course tries hard to present Kajol as an example of the urban poor. In Manish Malhotra clothes.

In times, exactly like these comes Anusha Rizvi’s Peepli Live. Now I would hardly pin Rizvi as the new De Sica…but for a first time director with not much movie-making experience, she does supremely well. Her actors have the natural style of non-professionals and the film has a raw, unfinished look that makes Italian Neo-Realist films seem real.

Peepli Live follows the story of Natthadas Manikpuri, an ordinary farmer who is at the bottom of the social pyramid, about to lose his ancestral farm land. A randomly suggested idea by a local neta turns things around for the whole village of Peepli as Nattha decides to commit suicide and inadvertently invites a carnival of media persons into his life. The film deftly kills two birds with one stone. On the one hand, it innocently nudges you to look at the lives of these farmers, on the other, it makes a biting critique of the media frenzy that occurs in this country over the smallest of things.

The script is often reminiscent of Brecht, with dialogues and imagery that present the contradictions of the situation most accurately. For instance, when Nattha’s brother tries to show him the bright side of the situation by showing him how much respect he could gain out of this, he simply asks what use the respect would be if he were dead. Similarly, the elaborate gag that ensues when Nattha sneaks out to take a crap, the witty lyrics of the Mehengai Daiin song as well as the ingenious premise of the “Laal Bahadur” reminded me extensively of Brecht. 

 

Without giving away too much on the plot, it is the technique behind Peepli Live that I want to discuss here. The regular camera work is mingled with shots from hand-held cameras that capture the point of view of Nattha and his family, isolated, even among crowds of news reporters. But Rizvi’s expertise is in the way she deals with images. Ultimately, when you leave the cinema hall, it is these images that you take away: Nattha and his family with hardly any place to sleep in, in the midst of TVs, domestic appliances and other useless gifts they will probably never use; the lone farmer who keeps digging relentlessly to sell his soil to brick makers; the small pool of water eventually found at the bottom of his pit; Nattha in a colored shirt on a bridegroom’s horse, riding away; empty plastic bottles and trash left after all the media OB-vans have left and the final images of Nattha which bring you out of the theater wondering what is in store for him next.