15th Annual NEW YORK INDIAN FILM FESTIVAL May 4 - 9, 2015
REVIEWS
examiner.com Director Mahadevan, composer Subramaniam at NYIFF 'Gour Hari Dastaan' screening
May 11, 2015
Following a New York Indian Film Festival screening Friday night at
Village East Cinemas, Gour Hari Dastaan—The Freedom File director Ananth Narayan Mahadevan discussed his film,
described as “a heart-wrenching black comedy” biopic and about
a veteran freedom fighter of the Indian independence movement
who fights on patiently but steadfastly against the Indian
bureaucracy for his deserved recognition.
He first thanked the audience.
“It makes a great difference to a filmmaker
for a film like this, to have such a great audience,” he said.
The award-winning screenwriter, actor, and director of Hindi
and Marathi films and TV serials noted how Gour Hari
Dastaan depicts the dichotomy of idealism and cynicism
via two complementary characters, the freedom fighter Gaur
Hari Dastaan (superbly played by veteran actor Vinay Pathak)
and an investigative journalist who takes up his cause (Ranvir
Shorey).
Then Mahadevan cited first-time screenwriter C P Surendran,
a well-known and respected journalist, novelist, columnist and
poet. Since the core of the film is the “symbiotic”
relationship between the fighter and the journalist, Mahadevan
said he didn’t want a traditional screenwriter for a film that
so centrally explores the role of journalism in modern Indian
culture.
Mahadevan’s impetus for tackling the true story of the
freedom fighter Gaur Hari Das was an actual newspaper
story—visible on screen at the end of the film, along with
current black-and-white footage of the real Das himself—about
Das’s 32-year effort to gain a coveted Freedom Fighter
certificate necessary to authenticate his existence and enable
him to receive benefits.
“No one believed in this man. They all thought he was a
fraud,” said Mahadevan. “It wasn’t so much about the freedom
struggle, but a man being denied the truth of a past that he
lived--and the fear of that being wiped out of his life. How
frightening is that?”
Mahadevan mentioned the ironies in Das’s fight for his
identity—which in Gour Hari Dastaan, even his own son
questions.
“He didn’t need the certificate or the money,” Mahadevan
said. “The tragedy and triumph is that at the end of the day,
is it a piece of paper or the truth of your identity?”
He further noted that in India today, over six decades
after the end of almost two centuries of British rule, “the
country does not recognize the value of freedom that was hard
fought and came at a price that was bloody. A generation has
not been exposed to the truth of how their houses came to be
built—and the roof over their heads.”
Indeed, as Dastaan observes toward the end of the film,
some things were better under the Brits, including whiskey and
knowledge of “who the enemy was.”
Also at the screening was “the man behind the wonderful
background score,” said Mahadevan, who then introduced Indian
classical violin/composer Dr. L. Subramaniam, along with “that
wonderful voice,” Subramaniam’s wife and star
Bollywood playback singer Kavita Krishnamurti, who sings
in the score. Subramania’s daughter Bindu, also a singer on
the Gour Hari Dastaan soundtrack, and his song Ambi,
also a violin virtuoso who worked on the score, were also in
attendance.
Later that evening Dr. Subramaniam spoke of the score,
particularly in the context of Mahatma Gandhi, whose
leadership of the Indian independence movement was continually
invoked in the film.
“We used two songs that were both favorites of Mahatma
Gandhi,” said Subramaniam. Both, “Raghupati Raghava” and
“Vaishnava Janato,” are sung by Krishnamurti.
“Bindu sings the English song ‘Right Now’ heard in a bar,
and we include ‘Babul Mora Naihar Chhooto Jaye,’ a song
popularized by [legendary classical vocalist] Pandit Bhimsen
Joshi and sung by Kavita. It’s one of his greatest songs—and
it also suits the character, since Pandit was an elderly
singer, and the film’s main character had crossed 80 [years
old].”
The song is also a famous lament about being exiled by the
British rulers from the writer’s beloved home town.
Subrmaniam, who has previously scored such films as Mississippi Masala and Salaam Bombay, said that
in scoring the film, he wanted to convey the personality of
the person who fought for freedom with Gandhi in the era so
specific to the film.
“I used Indian tonalities with western strings and
orchestrations, so there’s a global sound reflecting both the
British bureaucracy and Indian bureaucracy,” Subramaniam
continued, noting that he went through Gour Hari Dastaan a number of times and sat down with Mahadevan to learn where
he wanted music.
“I wanted to bring in Dastaan’s subtle character—since he
believes in truth and fighting for truth--and that of his wife
[played by Konkona Sen Sharma, a top actress in India’s
non-mainstream Bollywood “parallel cinema”], who’s sympathetic
to her husband but realizes that he may never win his battle.”