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 November 23, 2002 
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Taking Sides
Promising lineup at Mumbai's 5th International Film Fest
Hungarian Istvan Szabo's Taking Sides opens the festival

Deepa Gumaste

The presence of Bollywood heavyweights like Yash Chopra, Aamir Khan, Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Ashutosh Gowariker and Amrish Puri at the inauguration of the ongoing 5th International Film Festival of Mumbai suggested that at least a few people from the Hindi film industry are interested in the cause of promoting good cinema.

The festival, which has had mixed fortunes since its inception in 1997, has managed to survive with some support from the Government of Maharashtra and the benevolence of corporate sponsors. Although it is an independent event with no competitive sections, the selection of films this year is far superior to the offering at the International Film Festival of India that was held in Delhi a few weeks ago.

The week long festival opened with Hungarian filmmaker Istvan Szabo's English film Taking Sides, which released last year and was the closing film at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival early this year. Szabo, who was the guest of honour for the inauguration, said, "This film is about the responsibility of artists or intellectuals in difficult times."

Taking Sides is based on the life of the controversial conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Wilhelm Furtwangler (Stellan Skarsgard) who lived and worked in Nazi Germany. After the war, he was under investigation by the American Denazification Committee.
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The film has Major Steve Arnold (Harvey Keitel) grilling members of Furtwangler's orchestra to establish his links with Hitler and his party. His mandate is to prosecute the conductor ruthlessly and he goes about the task with great vigour.

In Furtwangler's defense is the fact that despite his alleged proximity to the Nazi party, he helped several Jewish musicians escape from Germany. Director Szabo consciously refrains from taking sides. Yet Arnold who seems to stand on a moral high ground and Furtwangler comes across as a helpless old man unable to defend himself adequately. Both these positions are augmented by the body language of the two actors. While Keitel is aggressive and sometimes self-righteous, Skarsgard looks every bit the fallen hero who cannot admit his weaknesses.

Says Szabo about filmmakers of his ilk, "In Europe, we have had a very difficult 150 years behind us. The lives of our parents and grandparents have been destroyed by politics and ideologies. This film is only one of a 100 others made by us to describe our experiences in 20th century Europe."

Szabo, who has been nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar award four times and won it for Mephisto, says it is a lot easier to find producers for English films than it is for films in European languages. "I think it has to do with the fact that American films do better at the European box-office than films in local languages," he says.

And he categorically states that while he enjoys the entire experience of filmmaking, it is a medium meant to communicate something to its audience. "My audience is very important to me. There is something I have to say to them and hence it is important that my films reach them. If nobody listens, it's my fault."

The Festival has a special retrospective of Argentinean director Jorge Polaco's films. The first film in this package was Diapason, a vulgar, exhibitionist film about the life of a self-destructive couple who heap miseries on one another (sexual, emotional, physical and every other form possible) and on the hapless audience.

A still from Taking Sides A total contrast was another volatile film from Hungary called An Island Of Their Own, directed by Miklos Szurdi. The story of four friends who escape to a secret island away from the city each year, their tranquil paradise is under constant threat from their individual crises and a strong undercurrent of interpersonal problems.

The thread of civility snaps when a Yugoslav sailor parks his barge just off their island and unwittingly gets into a squabble with the four friends that leads to a gruesome turn of events. The transformation of these men from being 'normal' citizens to becoming uncivilized savages is a dramatic assertion of how unpredictable and dangerous human beings can become at the slightest provocation.

On a different note, Wang Ping's Chinese film, Falling Stars In The Fall seemed close to the tradition of romance in Hindi cinema. The story of railway policeman Ai Xin and the impoverished Chen Yao who is still trying to recover from her painful past is a pleasant, feel-good love story. It even has shooting stars and a teary railway station reunion you'd find in dozens of authentic Bollywood films. Guess love is the same emotion in any language.

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