Veena Bakshi's film The Coffin Maker was given a special screening today, apparantly by 'public demand', where among those present were the Governor of Goa, and Environment Minister Alina Saldanha.
The story of the film is an unlikely one: apparantly Anton Gomes through force of circumstance has to become a coffin maker, apparantly a despised profession in Goa. (Or so the film maker thinks). He is terribly depressed about this and tries to dissuade his son from joining this profession. He says morosely that he is already dead even if he is alive. And so a character called Death comes into his life ... Now the point of this story is not whether it is believable or not. It is reasonably credible if one is a total ignoramus about Goa. But the way the characters in the film are portrayed makes one sick. The Goan characters are made to swear and utter obscenities every sentence or rather fragment of a sentence they speak, and there is not a single line of correctly spoken English ascribed to them even from a character who was once a teacher. There is some Konkani in the film but most of it in the dialogues also happens to be obscenities such as Maimzovnech (sic), Bainzonvnech (sic), Materchudh (sic)... spoken both by Catholic men and women. The only decent Konkani were the songs sung by Hema Sardessai. Goan Catholic boys and girls were portrayed as constantly making "goo-goo eyes" at each other - in other words being promiscuous. The men keep drinking all the time. Their women are shown to behave like harridens and shrews. This is not untypical of the films which Bollywood makes. But the point is that this is not a typical Bollywood film but one of the alternate types of movies which tour the film festival circuit. It has even won a prize at an Italian festival. This is worse in a way because whereas people might take Bollywood with a pinch of salt such films are thought to be authentic as one Punjabi Canadian female averred later in the Q & A session. After the film there was a Q & A session where the director and producer were present. But instead of the laudatory comments which the film people expected, the intellegentsia in the audience launched into them with a fury that left them stunned. To begin with writer, teacher and researcher Dr Savia Viegas using the sandwich meathod of criticism doled out her two slices of bread about how the cinematography was good and the direction was competent but then inserted a piece of bacon in to say how the film stereotyped Goans. Minister Alina Saldanha who claimed to have seen the film twice pointed out how more liquor flowed in the film than the waters in the rivers of the Mandovi; and how the word 'men' as 'Wot men' was used more times than ... I also laid into Veena Bakshi who by this time was reinforced by Hema Sardesai who sang some songs in the film and who tried to defend the film tooth and nail. She said she would not apologize for the film but apologized (apparantly to the filmmaker that some Goans were hurt by the film). I wonder if Hema would have said the same things if the things which were attributed to the Goan Catholics were similarly attributed to the Goan Saraswat community. I wasn't ready to accept the point that Bakshi made that all films stereotype and that was inevitable pointing out that the Japanese film Departures shown at IFFI, which was about a similar theme of discrimination against embalmers in Japan, because they deal with an 'unclean' profession. The respect with which that film depicted its characters was such that the audience also ended up respecting them and their motivations; unlike The Coffin Maker where a community was held up to ridicule - in a lovable way perhaps - but ridiculous none the less. By this time the film people had had enough and wanted to rush out as soon as was possible as they realized that ther excuses of 'creative licence' and 'truth to characters' and so on were running thin. So I left at this point. Best Augusto -- Augusto Pinto 40, Novo Portugal Moira, Bardez Goa, India E [email protected] P 0832-2470336 M 9881126350
