Ishq will tear us apart

[muckefuck]

A week after I finished it in a bout of quasi-insomnia, monshu's finally watched Waris Shah: Ishq da Waris to the end. We rented on my whim and the recommendation of a Sikh cabbie without much in the way of expectations, and, in the end, I was pleasurably surprised.

Waris Shah is considered by many to be the greatest Panjabi poet of all time on the basis of his epic poem Heer-Ranjha. Heer-Ranjha is a moving tale of star-crossed lovers, and so is Waris Shah. Although this may be the most-favoured plot in all of history, it's never been one I've been particularly drawn to; as far as Shakespeare goes, I'd rather watch each of the history plays twice before I'd sit through Romeo and Juliet once.

But any story is worth watching when done well, as this one is. Its notion of passion coincides with my own: Something that shows up unexpectedly and fucks up your life. None of the principals in this drama end up getting what they want; their lives are perhaps richer for the disruption that follows from a Sufi poet's arrival in town to compose his romantic masterpiece, but they're sure not happier for it.

That's not the only way it defies some of the conventions of Indian filmmaking. Contrary to princeofcairo's dictum, not all the men are tools. Waris himself is shown as virtuous and honourable; although far from perfect, he actually gives the women a run for their money in the contest to suffer most nobly for love and art.

More importantly, the musical numbers are organic for the most part. There's an obligatory big giddy female dance number among the eight chief songs listed on the disc, but the others are more modest. Particularly effective are the Sufi-inspired numbers sung by Waris' pir on the way to the scaffold (and--to the amusement of our guests Friday night--from beyond the grave) and by Waris before the Mughal governor in an attempt to prevent himself from suffering the same fate.

But, for my money, the best musical performances didn't even make it onto to the soundtrack. Waris Shah is depicted as literally singing his poem into existence, to the extant that there is more sung than spoken dialogue for a good two-thirds of the movie. The raag is the traditional one used to recite Heer-Ranjha up into the present day, and it is haunting; to my ears, it has a great deal in common with the style of North-Indian singing popularised by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (like Waris Shah, a native of Punjab and a Sufi), although the amount of ornamentation never reaches the extravagance of a full-blown qawwali performance.

The film has its flaws, of course; for starters, I could've done with at least one less gimmicky use of dream sequence. Also, I'm not sure whether to consider the decision to make both lead female characters literate to be a laudable bit of revisionism or a laughable anachronism. But none of the characters is depicted as being irredeemably evil or irritatingly beatific, and the conclusion is satisfying without being the least saccharine. Those two factors alone put it head-and-shoulders above the typical feature from the sub-continent.

And for those of you who approach your art from a more intellectual standpoint, there's plenty of food for thought in a picture produced in India with mostly Sikh actors about a Sufi poet. The part of Waris Shah, in fact, is played by Gurdas Maan--the most successful contemporary popular singer in Punjabi, who has recently added Sikh devotional music to his repertoire of traditional folksongs and slick bhangra numbers. Plus there's a historical preface which isn't afraid to blow the lid off Aurangzeb's reprehensible hatred of song and dance--something history buffs will tell you not enough films have the stones to do.

Comments

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

There's an obligatory big giddy female dance number among the eight chief songs listed on the disc

You say that like it's a bad thing!

Anyhoo, thanks for the rec, I'm adding it to my Netflix queue.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Nah, it's actually quite a nice little number, and works well enough where it's shoehorned in. But don't take my word--watch it yourself. (The title means "Kites" and the lyrics compare the two female singers to kites gamboling in the sky, their fates at the mercy of life's breezes.)