“This is what I’m meant to do,” Pacino says of acting. “With this, everything suddenly coheres, and I understand myself.”Credit Photograph by Dan Winters
Nearly fifty years ago, when Al Pacino was at the start of his career,
Marlon Brando gave him two pieces of advice: don’t go to court and
don’t move to Los Angeles. At seventy-four, Pacino has managed to avoid
the courts but not Beverly Hills, where he has taken up reluctant
residence, for more
than a decade, in order to share custody of his now thirteen-year-old
twins, Anton and Olivia, with their mother, the actress Beverly
D’Angelo. (Pacino, who has never married, also has a
twenty-four-year-old daughter, Julie Marie, an aspiring writer and
filmmaker.) Every half hour or so, an open-topped tour bus crawls its
way along the wide, manicured boulevard where Pacino holes up for most
of the year, with a cargo of rubbernecking out-of-towners, cameras at
the ready. Inevitably, they stop in front of his rented house, which,
like the actor, is elegantly dishevelled. Green canvas has been woven
through the bars of the long iron fence to hide the place from street
level; low-hanging Indian laurel trees seal off any visible signs of
life from above. Nonetheless, the buses stop, the guides burble, and the
tourists crane for a sign of the actor or his children. On my second
day with Pacino, I happened to be parked in front of his house as a tour
bus rolled up. The guide leaned down. “You were here yesterday,” he
said. “You know Al?” I nodded. Above me, camera shutters clattered.
At that moment, Pacino was reclining in a deck chair at the far end of a wide lawn behind the house, doing business on a cell phone.
Beyond him was a fenced-off swimming pool, and beyond that was what he
calls “the bunker” (as in “I hunker in the bunker”), a drab beige
outbuilding, where he sometimes goes to incubate his roles. Pacino was
dressed for the bright day in his usual sombre getup: black jacket,
shirt, slacks, and shoes, with a long gray cravat loosely knotted at the
chest. He keeps a well-pressed assortment of these dark camouflage
outfits on a wardrobe rack in the alcove off his living room, alongside
his infrequently used barbells and a folded-up running machine. His
comfortable house, with its absence of texture, is remarkable for its
indifference to externals: no paintings, no designer furniture or
fripperies. Pacino’s focus, the house makes clear, is resolutely inward.
As
an actor, Pacino has always been unafraid to do what he needs to in
order to be in the moment; he trusts his instincts and explodes with
whatever feelings come up. Performing, for him, is not so much a
profession as a destiny. “This is what I’m meant to do,” he told me.
“It’s the cog in my life. With this, everything suddenly coheres. And I
understand myself in that way.” Pacino has given complex shape to some
of his era’s most memorable creations: Michael Corleone, the college boy
turned Mafioso, in “The Godfather” trilogy (1972-90); Frank Serpico,
the police whistle-blower, in “Serpico” (1973); Tony Montana, the Cuban
drug lord, in “Scarface” (1983); the hapless thief Teach, in “American
Buffalo” (1983); Sonny Wortzik, the would-be bank robber, in “Dog Day
Afternoon” (1975); the gangster Big Boy Caprice, in “Dick Tracy” (1990);
Ricky Roma, the smooth-talking salesman, in “Glengarry Glen Ross”
(1992); and Roy Cohn, the closeted lawyer, in the HBO version of Tony
Kushner’s “Angels in America” (2003)—to name just a few of the more than
a hundred roles he has taken onscreen and onstage. In recent years, he
has painted brilliant, eerie film portraits of such obsessives as the
euthanasia activist Jack Kevorkian, in Barry Levinson’s HBO movie “You
Don’t Know Jack,” and the eponymous swami of rock and roll, in David
Mamet’s HBO film “Phil Spector.” Pacino regrets that many of his
Hollywood movies of the past decade (“Righteous Kill,” “The Son of No
One,” “88 Minutes,” “Jack and Jill”) have been business chores, taken on
for primarily financial reasons. “If you don’t have that alacrity of
spirit, then you have to check yourself—because where’s the pony in all
this horseshit?” he said. “I worked for United Parcels once, and I don’t
want to have that feeling with my own craft—that it’s just a job.”
Because
of the protean nature of his attack, Pacino has often been compared to
Brando, another truth-seeking force of nature. When Pacino was thirteen
and performing in a school play, an adaptation of “Home
Sweet Homicide,” he already identified so strongly with his role that
when his character was supposed to get sick onstage he became nauseated.
(“Somebody came up and said to my mother, ‘Here’s the next Brando.’ I
said, ‘Who’s Brando?’ ” Pacino recalled.) But between Brando and Pacino
there is this crucial difference: Brando, who, over time, became
reclusive and indifferent to acting, disappeared into his gift; Pacino
has survived his—and is still working to refine it. “I believe I have
not reached my stride, which is why I persist,” he told me in an e-mail.
“The day I turn to you and say, ‘John, what I just did in this role was
a real winner,’ I hope you’ll have the courage and decency to throw a
wreath around my head, and then so very quietly and compassionately
shoot me.”
Pacino has three films
awaiting release in the next year: Barry Levinson’s “The Humbling,” in
which he plays an aging actor who has lost his magic; David Gordon
Green’s “Manglehorn,” a film about an eccentric small-town locksmith; and Dan Fogelman’s “Danny Collins,” an amiable redemptive fable about a slick pop star who wants to turn his art
and his lush life around. At seventy-four, Pacino sometimes asks
himself, “When am I just gonna sit back and smell the golf balls?” But,
with two new movies waiting in the wings (Martin Scorsese’s “The
Irishman,” about the man who supposedly killed Jimmy Hoffa, and a Brian
De Palma bio-pic about Joe Paterno), and a David Mamet play, “China
Doll,” in the works for Broadway in 2015, the answer is not soon.
Most
of Pacino’s house has been ceded to his kids. The den is a sort of Camp
Pacino, overflowing with toys: a pinball machine, a drum kit, electric
guitars, dolls, a mound of games, balls, rackets, and swimming gear
crammed into baskets against the back wall. A low table holds a
sprawling Lego construction in progress. Outside, a punching bag hangs
incongruously beside the patio barbecue. (It’s there for Pacino’s son;
when I asked Pacino if he used it, he said, “Like Oscar Wilde, whenever I
get the urge to exercise I lie down until it passes.”) Pacino usually
spends weekends with the twins, because “their mother knows I’m a
slacker at the homework.”
At one point, Olivia came in to ask a favor:
“It’s the Singularity—the machines are taking over!”Buy or license » Olivia: Daddy, I really want to see the boy next door. He usually comes over by the weekend.
Pacino: Does he really? But I don’t even know what his name is. What’s his name?
Olivia: I forgot. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him.
Pacino: Do you want to go over and say— What do you want me to do? Me? I’m the— What am I, the go-between?
Olivia: No. Just see if Jared [Pacino’s weekend assistant] can call.
Pacino:
But Jared’s not here. He could do it tomorrow, when he comes in. Do you
want Mike [Pacino’s regular assistant] to do it now? Mike will do it.
Olivia: I don’t think Mike knows anybody there.
Pacino: Jared knows someone there? Ask Mike if he could just find out.
Pacino’s
father left him and his mother when he was two, and he carries the
shadow of that abandonment with him. “It’s the missing link, so to
speak,” he said. “Having children has helped a lot. I consciously knew
that I didn’t want to be like my dad. I wanted to be there. I have three
children. I’m responsible to them. I’m a part of their life. When I’m
not, it’s upsetting to me and to them. So that’s part of the gestalt.
And I get a lot from it. It takes you out of yourself. When I do a
movie, and I come back, I’m stunned for the first twenty minutes. These
people are asking me to do things for them? Huh? I’m not being waited on? Wait a minute. Uh-oh, it’s about them! That action satisfies. I like it.”
He
pointed out a watercolor beside the fireplace. “My son painted this
when he was four. ‘New York in the Fall,’ ” he said, then steered me
back into the living room and deposited me on a sofa to watch “Wilde
Salomé,” a docudrama he directed, starred in, and largely bankrolled,
which premières this month. The film represents Pacino’s eight-year
attempt to “inhale” Oscar Wilde by chronicling the mounting of a 2006
Los Angeles production of Wilde’s 1891 tragedy, in which he was Herod to
Jessica Chastain’s Salomé. (“Wilde Salomé” will be released in tandem
with a film of the play itself.) Pacino first encountered “Salomé” in
London in 1989, without realizing that it was written by Wilde. “Who
wrote this? I’d like to know this person,” he recalled thinking. “I just
felt a connection. A kindred spirit. I think it was a mischievousness, a
subversiveness.” Pacino relates to Wilde as an outsider. “I feel like
an outsider who got on the inside, so I’m inside out, if you know what I
mean. Or outside in,” he said.
Like “Looking for Richard,”
Pacino’s 1996 movie about Shakespeare’s “Richard III,” “Wilde Salomé” is
a dramatic mosaic that jumps from historical facts to performance to
interview to enactment. Pacino is the director yelling at the crew to
hurry up; he’s the lubricious Herod eying his gorgeous daughter; he’s
the interviewer prodding Tom Stoppard, Tony Kushner, Gore Vidal, and
Bono to talk about Wilde; he’s the professor offering tidbits of
Wildeana; and he’s the anthropologist trudging through the desert with
kaffiyeh and camel. At one point, Pacino, with a carnation and a floppy
handkerchief in his jacket pocket, even pops up as Wilde himself.
Part
of Pacino’s fervor for Wilde comes from a desire to claim the writer’s
intelligence and eloquence. “I’m quite timid when it comes to
challenging the status quo,” he said. “Oscar had the brains to back it
up.” Pacino, whose formal education ended in tenth grade, grappled for
years with a sense of intellectual inadequacy. Early in his career,
after a breakthrough performance in Israel Horovitz’s 1968 play “The
Indian Wants the Bronx,” Pacino appeared on “The Merv Griffin Show,”
and, in front of a television audience of millions, he froze. “He just
couldn’t do it,” Horovitz recalled. “He felt he had nothing to say. He
was humiliated by his own presence. He wasn’t the character he was
playing—he was Al.” Pacino’s devotion to acting is, in a way, a defense
against that self-doubt. Having a script to work from gives him, he
said, a kind of license. “I can talk, I can speak, I have something to say,”
he explained. “You don’t need a college education. All the things that
you were inhibited to talk about and understand—they can come out in the
play. The language of great writing frees you of yourself.” Most
actors of Pacino’s stature—Brando, Jack Lemmon, Dustin Hoffman, Robert
De Niro—began in theatre and rarely returned. Pacino, however, craves
the derring-do of working in front of a live audience, an activity he
compares to tightrope walking. Stage acting, he likes to say, quoting
the aerialist Karl Wallenda, is life “on the wire—the rest is just
waiting.” Onstage, in the zone, he told me, “you’re up in the sky with
the theatre gods—love it, love it, love it.” As a list of some of
Pacino’s more esoteric stage work demonstrates—Eugene O’Neill’s
“Hughie,” Bertolt Brecht’s “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,”
Shakespeare’s “Richard III” and “The Merchant of Venice”—the theatre is
where he goes to challenge himself and to think. “There are more demands
put on you when it is on the stage,” he said.
To Pacino, there
is no such thing as a fourth wall. “The audience is another character in
the play,” he said. “They become part of the event. If they sneeze or
talk back to the stage, you make it part of what you’re doing.” Once,
when he was performing “The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel,” the first
play in David Rabe’s Vietnam trilogy, in Boston, in 1972, Pacino made a
strong connection with a pair of penetrating eyes in the audience. “I
remember feeling a focus I never experienced before—intense, so riveting
that I directed my performance to that space,” he said. “I found at
curtain call for the first time that I needed to find out who belonged
to those eyes. So, as we were bowing, I looked over to the space where I
believed the look was coming from and there it was, two seeing-eye dogs
still looking at me. They must have found the curtain call as engaging
as the performance.”
Acting, according to Pacino, is about
“getting into a state that brings about freedom and expression and the
unconscious.” Mamet compares Pacino’s excavations of his characters to
the way Louis Armstrong played jazz: “He’s incapable of doing it the
same way twice.” While Pacino was shooting his last scene for the movie
“Devil’s Advocate” (1997), in which he played Satan, for instance, he
suddenly broke off from the script to launch into a rendition of “It
Happened in Monterey.” “It’s just absolutely out there, surreal and
brilliant,” the actress Helen Mirren, whose husband, Taylor Hackford,
directed the film, said. In the final movie, Pacino lip-synchs to Frank
Sinatra’s version of the song; according to Mirren, the studio had to
pay “a huge sum for the rights, but it was worth it.” “It’s from the We Experience Parenthood More Fully Than You collection.”Buy or license » Pacino
sometimes develops his characters by observing others. When he was
working on his performance in “The Indian Wants the Bronx,” he would
walk for hours with Horovitz. “What he was doing was finding a character
in life,” Horovitz told me. “He’d spot a guy on the street and go,
‘Wait, wait, wait!’ We’d follow the person for hours, just to observe
the walk, the posture. And the costume was important, too. He had to
find the costume, rehearse in the costume, live in the costume.”
“Some actors play characters. Al Pacino becomes them,”
Lee Strasberg, the longtime director of the Actors Studio, said. “He
assumes their identity so completely that he continues to live a role
long after a play or movie is over.” Once, when Pacino was playing
Richard III in Boston, Jacqueline Kennedy came backstage to greet him.
“I didn’t even get up,” he said. “I was so into it that night that I
continued to be the King. I can almost not forgive myself for that.”
When
preparing for a role, Pacino has a tendency to circle the airport
before arriving at his destination. “I’m a slow learner,” he said. “I
don’t believe in memorizing lines. That’s not how I come upon a role. My
thing is eventually coming to the words, making the words part of you,
so that they’re an extension of your emotional state.” Pacino’s
“nibbling away at a character,” according to Barry Levinson, is a subtle
process. After the first few readings of the script for “You Don’t Know
Jack,” Levinson recalls wondering “when Kevorkian will show up.” “I
remember we were in wardrobe. Al had his hair done, and his suit. We
were talking and, all of a sudden, I could sense that Kevorkian was
coming alive,” he said, adding, “Once he latches on, then he’s off to
the races.” At the finale of “You Don’t Know Jack,” after Kevorkian has
unsuccessfully defended himself in court, the judge looks at him and
asks if he wants to take the stand. Pacino doesn’t answer at first. “It
takes literally a minute,” Levinson said. “He’s trying to decide if the
defense rests. It’s a brilliant moment. No words—it’s a look, a glance,
small things that really inform the character.”
Over the years,
there have been rumblings about Pacino’s overacting. He can certainly
roar; he can pound the furniture; he can go big with the facial
expressions; he has made some dud movies. But the drama, for Pacino, is
almost always inherent in the character he’s hoping to convey. His
portrayal of the blind Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in “Scent of a
Woman” (1992), for instance, was considered hammy by some, but, in
Pacino’s thinking, the character was a lunatic—a suicidal, narcissistic
man who drew attention to himself through his affectation of swagger—and
he played him that way. “I paint the way I see it, and some of the
colors are a little broader and a little bolder than others,” he said,
adding, “Sometimes you take it to the limit, sometimes you may go a
little overboard, but that’s all part of a vision. I say, go with the
glow. If an effort is being made to produce something that has appetite
and passion and isn’t done just to get the golden cup, it isn’t a
fucking waste. Yes, there are flaws, but in them are things you’ll
remember.”
Pacino protects his talent by leaving it alone, which accounts for his vaunted moodiness. “There
are various superstitions connected with reaching his center, and he
doesn’t want to discuss them ever,” Mike Nichols, who directed Pacino in
“Angels in America,” said. “He’s consulting somewhere else. And the
somewhere else does not have to do with words.” Pacino almost never
talks shop. When he was at the Actors Studio, in the late sixties,
whenever Strasberg gave him notes, he said, “I would actually count
numbers in my head not to hear what he was saying. I didn’t want to
know. I thought it would fuck up what I was doing, where I was going
with my own ideas.”
Even Pacino’s speech patterns, which forge a
kind of evasive switchback trail up a mountain of thought, serve as a
defense against too much parsing of his interior. “Al is dedicated,
passionately, to inarticulateness,” Nichols said, pointing out that in
conversation Pacino has no “chitchat.” Playing dead in social situations
is his instinctive strategy. “He was so sensitive that he was
insensitive to his surroundings,” Diane Keaton, with whom Pacino had an
on-again-off-again relationship in the seventies and eighties, wrote in
her memoir “Then Again.” “Sometimes I swear Al must have been raised by
wolves. There were normal things he had no acquaintance with, like the
whole idea of enjoying a meal in the company of others. He was more at
home eating alone standing up. He did not relate to tables or the
conversations people had at them.”
Pacino refers to acting as
“close to magic.” To invoke that spell, he observes many rituals, which
sometimes include shaking hands with everyone on a film set before
shooting a scene, and heading off for a walk before going onstage. “The
calm before the storm—only sometimes the calm becomes the storm,” he
explained. In 2012, when he was appearing in Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen
Ross” on Broadway, Pacino was skulking around midtown in a hooded coat
when a parking attendant accosted him. “ ‘You! Get out! What are you
doing here?’ ” Pacino recalled him shouting. He added, “Oh, it felt so
good.”
While working on his first production of “Richard III,” in
1973, at the Church of the Covenant, in Boston, Pacino and his
assistant developed a pre-show routine for launching him into the role
of the anarchic, manipulative “lump of foul deformity” who would be
king. Pacino’s dressing room was the church rectory. “She’d peek through
the door and say, ‘Half hour,’ then, ‘Fifteen minutes.’ She’d come back
again and say, ‘Five minutes.’ I would say, ‘Fuck off,’ each time,”
Pacino told me. “She’d say, ‘The audience is out there waiting for you.’
And I’d say, ‘Fuck off!’ She’d say, ‘I’m coming to get you.’ She’d grab
at me, and she’d throw me out of the dressing room. I guess it was the
right spirit, because it worked. They called me out six times after I
bowed.” After the show, he added, “I would bawl my eyes out. I roused so
many things in myself.”
Pacino’s allegiance to
the stage, his compulsion to connect with a live audience, is due,
perhaps, to a need to re-create his relationship with the person he
calls his first and “indeed my best audience,” his mother, Rose. To be
seen and to be accepted was the promise behind his early performances.
The theatrical interaction gives him, he said, “a sense of being at
home, together again.”
Pacino’s father, Salvatore, was eighteen
when Alfredo was born, in East Harlem, in 1940, and twenty when he left.
He paid a few memorable visits, twice going to see his son perform in
high-school plays, but Pacino saw very little of him, even after he had
become a star. By then, Salvatore, who married five times and for
decades worked as an insurance salesman for Metropolitan Life, owned
Pacino’s Lounge, a restaurant and bar in Covina, California, where he
frequently joined the band to sing, play the maracas, and shake his
booty. “When a friend met my dad, he looked at him and said, ‘There it
is with you, Al. I see it. The survivor,’ ” Pacino said. “I got that
from my dad.” “Hey, you forgot the GoPro.”Buy or license » Rose,
according to Pacino, was a reader who had “a sensitivity and a
connection to the theatre.” She took Pacino to see Tennessee Williams’s
“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” on Broadway. She was playful, with a good sense
of humor, but also volatile and reclusive. She often refused to leave
her room when company came over. “She reminded me of a Tennessee
Williams character. She would have been a really good Laura, also a good
Amanda. She had both,” Pacino said, referring to Williams’s play “The
Glass Menagerie.” In other words, she was a troubled, fragile,
controlling, somewhat hysterical soul, who fought a losing battle
against her own desperation. Despite the family’s meagre income, Rose
scraped together enough to pay for visits to a psychiatrist. To treat
her chronic depression, she resorted to electric-shock therapy.
Eventually, she became addicted to barbiturates, which may have been the
cause of her death, at forty-three, in 1962. The stain of her possible
suicide hangs over Pacino’s memory of Rose. “Poverty took her down,” he
said. Not long before she died, Pacino recalls rushing to a casting
session for Elia Kazan’s “America America.” “I had one of the few
fantasies I’ve ever had in my life,” he said. “I would do well, my
mother would be O.K. with it all, and I could say, ‘Mom, we got it.
We’re gonna make some money. It’s gonna be O.K.’ ” As it happened,
Pacino arrived late and missed the audition. After
Salvatore left, Rose and Sonny (as Pacino was known throughout his
childhood) moved in with her parents, James Gerardi, a plasterer who was
an illegal immigrant from Corleone, Sicily, and his wife, Kate. In
their cramped three-room apartment in the South Bronx, which sometimes
housed as many as seven people, Pacino never had a space of his own. (“I
remember years of sleeping between my grandmother and grandfather,” he
said.) At the same time, he was an only child, often left to his own
devices. “I was always sort of building stories, creating stories,” he
said. “It was a way of filling up the loneliness.”
Storytelling
ran in the family. In warm weather, Pacino’s grandfather, with whom
Pacino had what he calls “one of the great relationships of my life,”
would sit with him on the tar roof of their tenement and spin tales
about his rough Dickensian youth in turn-of-the-century New York. “He
got the shit kicked out of him by cops with helmets and big clubs—‘You
little wop! Get over here, you stinking Guinea!’ ” Pacino said. “He’d
talk about running away from home, living off the farms, how he would
steal milk. He just loved talking to me, like we were on some little
rowboat.” The roof, Pacino added, “was our terrace. There was this
cacophony of sound—the Poles, the Jews, the Irish, the German, the
Spanish. This definitive melting pot is what I came from. In some Eugene
O’Neill plays, you hear the same thing.”
Among many odd jobs,
Rose worked as a cinema usherette, and when Pacino was three or four she
began to take him to the movies. “The next day, I would act out all the
parts,” he said. “I think that’s how it started.” Pacino was often
coaxed into performing scenes for his extended family, which included a
deaf aunt. His party piece was an imitation of Ray Milland in “The Lost
Weekend,” playing an alcoholic writer desperate for a drink. Pacino
would open cupboards and doors, pretending to search for a hidden stash
of booze. “I never understood why they were laughing, because I didn’t
think it was funny,” he said. “But I knew it produced laughs.”
On
Bryant Avenue in the forties and fifties, people escaped their small,
hot apartments to sit on stoops or hang out under street lamps to roll
dice or play poker. To disarm bullies and find friends, Pacino used the
same strategy on the street that he’d used at home: he performed and
enlisted others to perform with him, earning the nickname “the Actor.”
“We’d act out parts from joke books and comic books,” he told me. “Kids
make videos today, but it was kind of an unusual thing then to get
street urchins to join you in acting out comics. Of course, it never got
off the ground; there’s a comedy in there somewhere.” “He was always
full of drama,” said his neighbor Ken Lipper, who would later become the
deputy mayor of New York and a producer and screenwriter of “City Hall”
(1996), in which Pacino starred. “He loved to take on different
personae. He used to go to 174th Street and pretend he was a blind
child.” Pacino’s bravado and good looks got him noticed. “The girls in
the neighborhood would say, ‘Sonny Pacino, the lover bambino.’ The boys
would say, ‘Sonny Pacino, the bastard bambino,’ ” Pacino told me. “It
started early.”
Pacino was smoking at nine, chewing tobacco at
ten, and drinking hard liquor at thirteen. He walked the edges of
rooftops and jumped between tenement buildings. His favorite place was
“the Dutchies,” a swampy labyrinth on the Bronx River, where truant kids
hid in high marsh grasses. Pacino played third base for the Police
Athletic League team, the Red Wings, which became a “quasi street gang,”
with Al as its de-facto leader. In black wool jackets with a red stripe
down the sleeve, the Red Wings patrolled their turf and protected it
from roaming invaders, like the Young Sinners and the Fordham Baldies.
Once, when they were twelve and sitting on the steps of a tenement after
finishing a game of stickball, Lipper said, “some guy came over who was
thirtyish and started menacing us. Al got up and whacked him with the
stick.” Pacino’s wild crew, “tough kids with high I.Q.s and tragic
endings,” became a template on which he modelled many of his memorable
characters. “These people were a springboard for my profession,” he
said. “They were part of what I consider the best time in my life.”
Pacino
was less popular with the authority figures around him. “I wasn’t out
of control, but I was close,” he said. “My mother had to come to school
to talk to the teachers. Their conclusion? That I needed a dad.” When
Pacino’s junior-high-school drama teacher, Blanche Rothstein, climbed
the five flights of stairs to talk to his grandmother about his acting
skills, it was, he said, “the first time I ever had encouragement.” He
went on, “The world we came from, the encouragement just wasn’t there.
We weren’t seen. Or we weren’t regarded. Do you think ever, once in my
life, my mother or any adult ever said, ‘How was school today?’ Never!
It was unheard of.” Nonetheless, Ms. Rothstein spotted a spark when
Pacino read Bible passages in school assembly—“I didn’t know what I was
talking about, but I felt it,” he said—and she cast him in school plays.
Thanks to his talent, at the end of junior high Pacino was voted “most
likely to succeed.” Pacino
was accepted into Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts, which
meant that his South Bronx street life was more or less a thing of the
past. “All that remained was acting,” he said. His stay at the school,
however, was a short one. “You gotta be kidding,” he told his Spanish
teacher, when he discovered that the class was conducted entirely in
Spanish. And he found the Stanislavsky method boring. “What does a kid
who was thirteen, fourteen know about Stanislavsky?” he said. “All I
knew was you sing, you dance, you have fun, you imitate. Now I was
looking at my navel twenty-four-seven. It took me I don’t know how many
years to get over that.” By his own admission, Pacino was a “dunderhead”
at academic work, and by the time he dropped out of school, at sixteen,
to support his mother, he was ready to go. Rose, who had at first
approved of his ambition, now saw it as foolhardy. “Acting isn’t for our
kind of people,” she told him. “Poor people don’t go into this.” Pacino
said, “I didn’t know what she was talking about. On an unconscious
level I did, but it didn’t mean anything to me. I’m a survivor.
Survivors only hear what they want to hear.”
Between odd jobs,
Pacino attended auditions, where he soon learned that, as an
Italian-American of a certain class and demeanor, he didn’t “look right”
for most parts. His instinct was to bide his time. “I knew, when the
opportunity came, all I’d have to do is be there,” he said. But his
mother’s death, when he was twenty-one, sent him into a tailspin. Within
a year, his grandfather, too, was dead. Pacino had buried the two
people to whom he was closest. “And I had no father,” he said. “I think
that was my darkest period. I felt lost.” “Don’t—they’ll just spend it on drugs.”Buy or license »
On
Pacino’s living-room mantelpiece is a small moody photograph of him in
profile in his early twenties, in an Off-Off Broadway production of
August Strindberg’s play “Creditors.” The image marks the seminal
moment, he said, “when I knew that nothing mattered except that I became
at one with the play.” “Creditors,” a tragicomedy about a credulous
young artist whose mind is poisoned against his wife by her bilious
ex-husband, was directed by Charlie Laughton, an actor turned acting
teacher at the Herbert Berghof Studio, whom Pacino first met in a
Village bar when he was seventeen. Laughton, who’d also had a
hardscrabble early life, recognized both Pacino’s talent and his
difficult circumstances. Over time, he became Pacino’s mentor, his
sidekick, his drinking buddy, his dramaturge, and, ultimately, his
business partner. Laughton also introduced the teen-age Pacino to the
works of Joyce and Rimbaud. “He would read them, and then I would read
them myself,” Pacino told me. In those knockabout years, he added, “I
dealt with whatever was bothering me through reading. You could not find
me without a book.”
Still, in the early days of rehearsing
“Creditors” Pacino, surrounded by classically trained actors, panicked
and wanted to quit the show. Laughton sat him down and went through the
script with him until he fully understood what was going on. Pacino had
been spooked in that way before, in his Off-Off Broadway début, in a
production of William Saroyan’s “Hello Out There,” which grew out of
Laughton’s classes. Pacino’s first line got a laugh, but he didn’t
understand the joke. In the alley, during intermission, he burst into
tears and didn’t want to continue. Laughton talked him through it. “It
was a very important moment for me,” Pacino recalled. “I went back in
there and finished the run.”
Laughton, who was for years
wheelchair-bound with multiple sclerosis and who died in 2013, at the
age of eighty-four, remained an emotional bulwark for Pacino until the
end. Pacino visited him in his last days, at a hospital in Santa Monica,
and they got to talking about the time that Pacino was taking
Laughton’s class at the Berghof Studio and performed a scene from
Reginald Rose’s “Crime in the Streets” in front of Berghof and the rest
of the school. After he finished, he said, “Berghof got up there and
started to put me down. He started screaming at me, ‘How dare you!’ He
was absolutely flipping out.” Pacino asked Laughton, “What was going
on?” “A new era,” Laughton said. “He saw a new era.”
On
January 17, 1967, for his first scene at the Actors Studio, Pacino
presented a monologue from Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh,” which
morphed into a soliloquy from “Hamlet.” It was risky, but, as Pacino
said, “It’s a risk not to take risks.” Breaking a long-standing
Studio tradition, the audience of actors applauded his performance. Lee
Strasberg then asked Pacino to play O’Neill’s character, Hickey, as
Hamlet, and Hamlet as Hickey. Afterward, he addressed Pacino. “The
courage you have shown today is rarer than talent,” he said. Pacino had
broken through. “I was now an actor,” he said. “I had an identity.”
He
spent much of the next year in Boston doing plays (Clifford Odets’s
“Awake and Sing!,” Jean-Claude van Itallie’s “America, Hurrah”), in
which, he said, “I played notes that fell flat and I didn’t connect.”
But when Israel Horovitz delivered his one-act “The Indian Wants the
Bronx” to Pacino, in a messy basement room in a building on West
Sixty-eighth Street, where he was earning fourteen dollars a week as a
superintendent, Pacino found the perfect vehicle—a script about two
taunting teen-age louts in the Bronx who take out their frustrations on
an Indian man at a bus stop.
Over
the next months, Pacino and Horovitz performed the play in and out of
town to raise interest in a production. But when a producer was
eventually found she had her own ideas about casting. “On audition day,
she brought in the actor she wanted: blond, blue-eyed, tall,
untalented,” Horovitz wrote in a memoir. “I said no, absolutely no. She
said, fine, O.K., she wouldn’t produce the play. I said, ‘Let both
actors audition.’ ” Pacino was furious with Horovitz for putting him in
this position; since he didn’t belong to Actors’ Equity, he was forced
to attend an open call. “It seemed like every young, non-union actor in
New York City showed up that day,” Horovitz recalled. When it was
Pacino’s turn, he came out singing, then crossed to downstage center and
looked directly at the producer:
Hey, Pussyface, can you hear us?
Can you hear your babies singin’ to ya?
“Startled and terrified,” according to Horovitz, she agreed to cast Pacino.
“The
Indian Wants the Bronx” opened at the Astor Place Theatre, on January
17, 1968. Of all the débuts I attended in more than fifty years as a
theatre critic, Pacino’s was the most sensational: immediate, arresting,
and inexplicable. “I saw an actor up there with a shaking jaw, who was
on the verge of tears,” Horovitz recalled. “The circumstance of the play
was bringing him to a deep place of pain. And the audience connected to
this terrible sense of humiliation, of unworthiness.” Pacino won an
Obie for Best Actor, and a Tony the following year, for his performance
in Don Petersen’s “Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?”
“All
I could see was Al Pacino’s face in that camera. I couldn’t get him out
of my head,” said Francis Ford Coppola, who nearly got fired from “The
Godfather” (1972) for insisting that Pacino play Michael Corleone, the
educated youngest son of Don Corleone, the Mafia kingpin. The studio
lobbied for such bright box-office names as Robert Redford, Warren
Beatty, Jack Nicholson, and Ryan O’Neal. But Mario Puzo, who wrote “The
Godfather” and adapted it for the screen, came to Coppola’s defense and
gave him a letter to be used at his discretion. “Above all, Pacino had
to be in the film,” he said.
On the day of his first screen test,
however, Pacino was hung over: he didn’t know his lines, and he
ad-libbed the scene. Puzo felt that Pacino “was terrible. Jimmy Caan had
done it ten times better.” Puzo went over to Coppola. “Give me my
letter back,” he said. “Wait a while,” Coppola said. Pacino tested three
times for the role. The back-and-forth agitated him to such a degree
that he finally refused to take Coppola’s calls and made the actress
Jill Clayburgh, his girlfriend at the time, speak for him. “ ‘Francis,
you’re making him crazy. He doesn’t want to be where he’s not wanted,’ ”
Pacino recalls her saying.
When Pacino was finally offered the
part, he almost couldn’t take it. A few months earlier, he’d signed on
for an adaptation of the Jimmy Breslin book “The Gang That Couldn’t
Shoot Straight,” and M-G-M and the producer, Irwin Winkler, refused to
release him. Winkler and Horovitz were sharing a house on Fire Island,
and Pacino begged the playwright to intercede on his behalf. “This was
the door opening, and they wouldn’t let him out of his contract,”
Horovitz recalled. “I went crazy with Irwin, and he said, ‘You find me a
young Italian actor that’s as good as Pacino, and I’ll let him out.’ ”
Horovitz took Winkler to see a performance by a young unknown named
Robert De Niro. “He took De Niro, and he got two options on Pacino and
two on De Niro,” Horovitz said.
After Pacino got the “Godfather”
role (for which he was paid a flat fee of thirty-five thousand dollars),
he walked from his apartment, on Ninetieth Street and Broadway, to the
Village and back, thinking about how he’d play it. “I didn’t see Michael
as a gangster,” he said. “I saw his struggle as something that was
connected to his intelligence, that innate sense of what’s around and
being able to adjust to things.” He added, “The power of the character
was in his enigmatic quality. And I thought, Well, how do you get to
that? I think you wear it inside yourself, and you find a way to avoid,
as much as you can, the obvious.” However, after his first week of
avoiding the obvious, according to Pacino, “they wanted me fired—they
didn’t see what I was doing. Luckily for me, the Sollozzo scene”—in
which Michael earns his Mafia spurs by executing two men in a Bronx
restaurant—“was the next day. When they saw that scene, they kept me.” Buy or license » Pacino’s
performance in “The Godfather” put him at the center of one of the
great cinematic sagas of the century and on a first-name basis with the
world. He was showered with accolades and offers. (Coppola asked him to
star in “Apocalypse Now,” but he declined. “You know, sometimes you look
into the abyss?” Pacino said. “I’m, like, this is the abyss. I’m not
gonna go there.” He also turned down “Star Wars,” “Die Hard,” and
“Pretty Woman.”) But perhaps the most satisfying response came from
Puzo, who wrote, “It was, in my eyes, a perfect performance, a work of
art. I was so happy . . . I ate crow like it was my favorite Chinese
food.”
Pacino’s other great early successes—“Serpico,” “The
Godfather, Part II,” and “Dog Day Afternoon”—only added to his momentum.
But, of all his performances in those years, the sleeper was his
embodiment of the garish, vulgar, sensationally violent Tony Montana, an
impoverished Cuban refugee who becomes the most powerful drug
trafficker in Miami, in “Scarface.” The role was dismissed as “macho
primitivism” at the time, but, over the years, it has emerged as a
challenger to Michael Corleone as Pacino’s most popular creation. The
director, Brian De Palma, designed “Scarface” as a kind of hyperbolic
pageant. “The picture had a fire to it,” Pacino said, in “Al Pacino: In
Conversation with Lawrence Grobel.” “The violence blown up, the language
blown up. The spirit of it was Brechtian, operatic.” To play Montana,
Pacino drew inspiration from the swagger of the Panamanian boxer Roberto
Duran and from Meryl Streep’s committed rendering of the traumatized
Polish immigrant Sophie, in “Sophie’s Choice.” As an actor, Pacino said,
“you’re always looking for that thing that’s going on besides the
words.” In “Scarface,” he connected with Montana’s raging ambition and
the rebelliousness in his epigrammatic lines: “All I have in the world
is my balls and my word, and I don’t break them for no one”; “You know
what capitalism is? Getting fucked!”; “You wanna play rough? O.K. Say
hello to my little friend!”
In
the twenty years following the release of “The Godfather,” Pacino made
seventeen films and was nominated for an Academy Award six times. (He
finally received one, in 1993, for his performance in “Scent of a
Woman.”) But he was discombobulated by the distractions of his success.
“I felt like the fighter that was in Round 8, exhausted in the corner,
they’re pouring water over my head and rubbing Vaseline on my face, then
ding went the bell, and I was back out there in another film,”
he recalled. “It was a whirlwind.” Pacino disappeared into work, and,
after hours, into a bottle. “I don’t remember much of the seventies,” he
said. “All that stuff—the explosiveness of my life change. It would be
almost fair to say I wasn’t really there. It was too much for anyone to
handle.” Eventually, Laughton called Pacino on his alcohol abuse, which
had been a constant since he was a teen-ager. He stopped drinking in
1977.
During his first year of sobriety, a time of great stress,
Pacino made “Bobby Deerfield,” a plodding Sydney Pollack melodrama, in
which he played a celebrity race-car driver, who hides his vulnerability
behind sunglasses and a carapace of toughness. His next movie,
“Cruising” (1980), William Friedkin’s thriller about a serial killer who
targets gay men—which sparked protests in the gay community—was “a
terrible experience” for Pacino as well as for the critics. “Author!
Author!” (1982), which was written by Horovitz, was also a bust.
“Scarface” came out to mixed reviews, and was followed by “Revolution”
(1985), in which Pacino played a Scottish fur trapper with a Bronx
accent, who gets embroiled in the Revolutionary War. “Revolution” was
proof, if more was needed, that on the Hollywood merry-go-round Pacino
had lost track of who he was. The movie cost twenty-eight million
dollars to make and grossed less than $360,000. It was one disaster too
many.
In a radical move, at the height of his celebrity, Pacino
called a halt to movie-making and moved to Snedens Landing, in
Palisades, New York, with Diane Keaton. There he settled, he said, “into
something that was wonderful with Diane and my life. I didn’t feel
rushed or that I had to put out. I felt relatively content.” The
stoppage was a crucial emotional recalibration. “It is the very nature
of fame that the light is on you a lot,” he said. “I sort of wanted to
turn the light out of my face, so I could see.”
Pacino’s return
to New York was also a return to theatre. He appeared in Dennis
McIntyre’s “National Anthem” at the Long Wharf Theatre, in New Haven. He
played Mark Antony, in a disastrous “Julius Caesar” at the Public, a
role he could never find his way into. But his main creative focus was
on “The Local Stigmatic,” a little-known 1969 one-act by Heathcote
Williams, about two British ne’er-do-wells who grievously harm a famous
actor whose success enrages them. Pacino produced and starred in a
fascinating film version of the play. “I took almost a year to edit this
fifty-two-minute play,” he said. “I had no one wanting it to work or
not work. It was under my control. I was free.” (The film was never
released theatrically but was included in the DVD boxed set “Pacino: An
Actor’s Vision.”)
Although Pacino remembers this time as
“probably the best period” of his adult life—“It was as close to egoless
as I’ve ever been”—four years into his self-imposed exile from
Hollywood he was running out of money and Keaton was running out of
patience. One day, according to Pacino, she read him the riot act. “What
do you think you’re doing?” he remembers her saying. “Do you think
you’re gonna go back and live in a rooming house again? You’ve been rich
too long, buddy. You can’t go back. You think you’re on the A-list, but
you’re not. You’re out because you put yourself out. You’ve got to go
back to work.” Keaton added, “This script. This is your thing. This is
what you’ve got to do.” She handed him Richard Price’s screenplay for
“Sea of Love.” “It was so sweet of her,” Pacino said. “It was so giving,
so caring. I have to say, she was right.”
“Sea of Love” (1989),
the story of a cop in a midlife crisis who falls for a woman who may be
the killer he’s pursuing, made a star of Ellen Barkin and restored
Pacino’s box-office clout. In the next five years, he made “Dick Tracy,”
“The Godfather, Part III,” “Frankie and Johnny,” “Glengarry Glen Ross,”
“Scent of a Woman,” “Carlito’s Way,” and “Heat.”
As
Pacino paced his living room, a tall, striking woman with long auburn
hair swept in, draped an arm over his shoulders, and pulled him to her,
like a swan taking a cygnet under its wing. Lucila Sola, a
thirty-five-year-old Argentinean actress, spoke in Latin-inflected
English. “I am his longest relationship—seven years,” she said, by way
of introduction. Sola, who studied law and sociology before switching to
acting, is the latest in a long line of strong, smart actresses with
whom Pacino has been involved—Tuesday Weld, Kathleen Quinlan, and Marthe
Keller, among them. The two met at a dinner party in 2005, when his
twins were four and her daughter, Camila, was seven. They were both
dating other people, but their kids got along and they found themselves
going to movies together, swimming in Pacino’s pool, taking trips to San
Diego, the beach. “We were friends. For two years—two years—nothing,”
Sola said. “When people ask, ‘How long have you been together?,’ I say,
‘Forty-nine years.’ A year with Al is like a dog year because it’s so
intense.” She explained, “He’s a medium. He’s channelling something.
When he’s doing a part, it’s hard to be around him because he’s very
different. Al has left the building.”
June 9, 2003“Sorry, sir—we seem to have lost five million dollars in the fog of accounting.”Buy or license » The
conversation turned to Diane Keaton’s bittersweet second memoir, “Let’s
Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty,” which had been published the week before
and in which she discussed “the lure of Al.” “His face, his nose, and
what about those eyes?” Keaton wrote. “I kept trying to figure out what I
could do to make them mine. They never were. . . . For the next twenty
years I kept losing a man I never had.” Sola expounded on the astuteness
of Keaton’s observation. “Al has this ephemeral, childlike quality
about him,” she told me. “His friend Charlie used to say he’s like
smoke. He’s there, but he’s not there. That’s maybe what drove the women
crazy. You want to catch him, but you can’t because Al is—”
“Leave John alone,” Pacino cut in, bringing the conversation effectively to an end.
Sola
had persuaded Pacino to accompany her to a friend’s birthday bowling
party the next day. That evening, complaining about the “fucking bowling
shoes”—“I can’t stand putting on my shoes every day. Imagine putting on
bowling shoes,” he said—Pacino got behind the wheel of his white Range
Rover and headed for Lucky Strike, in Hollywood, which turned out to be
more of a bowling den than an alley.
A bookshelf extended from
the entrance into the large underlit space; jokey signage—a poster
advertising “10 Rules for Sleeping Around”—hung from the walls; from a
distance, beyond the bar, came the echo of ricocheting pins. The
birthday girl, Kam, in blue satin shorts and a diamanté tiara, waved
Pacino and Sola over to the leather banquette where her posse of svelte
girlfriends and their men were huddled. While Sola plunged into the
crowd of chatty celebrants, Pacino took a barstool at a table behind
them and ordered a plate of barbecued chicken. As he ate, the standup
comedian Billy Bellamy, who is credited with coining the phrase “booty
call,” appeared. “We’re blessed, man,” Bellamy said. “I’m blessed. You
killed in that Liberace shit, man.”
“That was Michael Douglas,” Pacino said, wiping barbecue sauce off his fingers.
As
Pacino was putting on his bowling shoes, a Lucky Strike staffer
approached. “Sorry to disturb you,” he said, holding up his cell phone
to indicate a promotional photo op. “But would you mind?”
“I don’t do that,” Pacino said.
Sola pulled him away toward the party. “Once that starts, it’s over,” she said.
Pacino
guttered his first ball. His second swerved left and picked off five
pins. By the next frame, his score was fifteen. He sat down on the sofa.
“I
usually get myself into a Zen place and am just very quiet,” he told me
later. “People give you room when you get real quiet with your
disposition.” At the bowling party, however, the tactic wasn’t working.
The phones came out, and Pacino was swarmed with requests for selfies.
Having done his duty, he slumped back down on the couch. From his body
language, Sola could tell that the night was over. Thirty minutes after
they arrived, she was leading Pacino toward the exit.
In the
garage, he fumbled for his parking ticket and couldn’t find it. “You
know me, I’m in pictures,” he said to the attendant. At the exit, he
struggled again, this time to fit his new ticket correctly into the
machine. The barricade finally lifted. “I’m a natural, baby,” he said,
as he accelerated into the balmy night. “I just pick things up.”
In
mid-2010, Pacino learned that his business manager, Kenneth I. Starr,
had been arrested for embezzling his clients’ money in a Ponzi scheme.
(Starr is currently serving seven and a half years in prison.) There had
been warnings. Early on, Mike Nichols, who had taken his money out of
Starr’s company, had raised suspicions. “I’ll get to it,” Pacino told
Nichols. “Then I never got to it,” he said. “Millions of dollars were
gone,” Sola said. “Gone.”
Pacino took the loss in stride. “I
thought, Hey, this is the world. It’s real,” he said. “Not one day I saw
him down or depressed,” Sola said. “He was, like, ‘O.K., now what do we
do? Roll up our sleeves and go to work.’ ”
Pacino’s agent, John
Burnham, told me, “In his halcyon days he made around fourteen million a
picture, but the industry’s changed. Nowadays, he gets five million.
With a gun—seven million.” It has taken Pacino four years to work
himself back to a position where, he says, “compared to a normal person,
I have a significant amount.” He sold a Snedens Landing property, did
commercials, took out a loan, and signed on for Adam Sandler’s dismal
but profitable “Jack and Jill” (2011)—a “kids’ movie,” according to
Pacino, in which he sent up both his legend and his financial
predicament. In the film’s best moment, a hip-hop ad for Dunkin’ Donuts,
Pacino can be seen dancing and pitching the “Dunkaccino”: “You want
creamy goodness / I’m your friend / Say hello to my chocolate blend.” “I’ve
recently come to terms with the fact that I can only do something I am
creatively connected to,” Pacino told me. “The Humbling,” based on the
2009 Philip Roth novel, which Pacino optioned, is part of that mission.
The novel tells the story of a depressed, aging actor whose talent is
slipping away and who tries to rejuvenate himself through an affair with
a younger woman (who in the movie is played by Greta Gerwig). “I liked
the idea that an actor is losing it and wants to revive not so much his
career as his life, and finds that there’s no life there,” Pacino said.
“He’s trying to be a real person, and discovering that he doesn’t have
the appropriate tools to do this. I felt that these things were sad and
almost farcical.”
Barry Levinson, the director, who enlisted Buck
Henry to write the screenplay, was also taken with the novel. “It was a
great character study,” he said. “We wanted to flesh that out a little
bit more, to apply some of the things that Al’s gone through in his
life, and, hopefully, not in a super-serious fashion. There’s a dark
comedic trail to the piece.” The film was undertaken with a freewheeling
spirit. “We did a lot of improvisation,” Levinson said. “ ‘The
Humbling’ is about as homemade a movie as you can make. We made it for
two million dollars in twenty days. We shot part of it in my house,
because we didn’t have enough money to go somewhere else.”
Pacino’s
legend is based on the films of his youth, for which he drew on his
anger, his sexuality, his energy. The films he’s interested in now tend
to dwell, like “The Humbling,” “Manglehorn,” and “Danny Collins,” on old
age and the issues of decline. They are of a different amperage and a
different spiritual mind-set. They are not, so to speak, the
rock-’em-sock-’em Pacino of old but a new Pacino: a man who is
consolidating his family, regretting some of his life choices, and
living under the strictures of his fame.
In
late June, I met up with Pacino in Boston, one of the twenty-three
cities in which he would be performing “Pacino: One Night Only,” a
business junket disguised as a lap of honor. The promoters referred to
this form of entertainment as “talk theatre.” In essence, Pacino was
taking himself on the road. He had flown in late the previous night from
Ottawa, where he’d sold out a twenty-six-hundred-seat theatre at the
National Arts Centre. In Boston, he was at the Wang Theatre, a fun
palace built to hold thirty-seven hundred customers, who were shelling
out up to a hundred and seventy-nine dollars a seat—plus an extra three
hundred if they wanted to attend a meet-and-greet after the show.
June 14, 2010Buy or license » A
slick eight-minute montage of clips from Pacino’s movies opened the
evening. He told Sonny Corleone, “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s
strictly business”; he shouted, “Attica! Attica!”; he jumped Ellen
Barkin’s bones. When Tony Montana drunkenly turned on the scowling
patrons of a swank restaurant (“Say good night to the bad guy!”), the
audience roared. The lights came up, and Pacino entered to a standing
ovation. He let the volley of sound wrap around him, then, with his
hands clasped together in front of him, he bowed low.
After a few reverent questions from Ty Burr, the Boston Globe’s
film critic, who was his interlocutor for the evening, Pacino picked up
his legend and ran with it: performing as a kid for the deaf aunt
(“started my overacting, I guess”); the high-school teacher who called
him a prodigy (“How do you spell that?”); when he knew he had “it” as an
actor (“I hope I never do”). Pacino played off the hoots of
approval—“riding the bull,” he calls it—taking the audience into his
confidence, and, when he went off course, letting it guide him back to
his story. “Where was I? Oh, yeah—I was a superintendent. . . . I put an
eight-by-ten picture of me on the door—kind of looking handsome.
Underneath, I wrote ‘Super.’ And there wasn’t a girl that went into that
apartment that I didn’t go after!”
Afterward, at the
meet-and-greet, Pacino sat on a stool in front of a camera for
forty-five minutes while premium ticket holders lined up for a
photograph. The night before, he had obliged a blind woman who handed
off her cane and asked him to dance. Tonight, the fans approached him
solemnly, like communicants, uncertain how to arrange themselves beside
their icon. Some leaned in, some stood apart, some asked if it was O.K.
to put an arm around his shoulder. (It was.) One woman planted a kiss on
Pacino’s cheek, then placed a lily and a rose in his lap. Another
woman, in formal evening gloves and a gray dress, who positioned herself
in front of Pacino to speak to him, told me later that she had devoted
her life to theatre after seeing Pacino act in “The Resistible Rise of
Arturo Ui,” on her twenty-first birthday, thirty-nine years before. “He
gave me a passion for the theatre,” she said. “It was a great gift.”
At
Logan International, a private jet was waiting to take Pacino and his
crew to New York. “There’ll be a crowd at the airport,” Pacino warned
me, as the bags were loaded into his two-car convoy. As predicted, a
group of autograph hunters were waiting like spectres outside the
reception area. “It’s their job,” Pacino said. “At first, I didn’t know.
I just thought they were strange people who kind of looked alike, but
they do it for a living.” As he got out of the car, the scrum of about
twenty pushed forward. “Al! Al! Over here, Al!” they called, flourishing
photographs and memorabilia. Head down, Pacino walked straight through
the glass doors and into the bright silence of the lounge.
At
takeoff and landing, Pacino crossed himself and kissed his fingers.
During the flight, he talked about another kind of blessing he’d felt
that day. In the late afternoon, with his bodyguard a hundred feet away,
Pacino had spent an hour on Boston Common, sitting unnoticed on a bench
and watching the passers-by. “It felt like I was back on the block,
back home,” he said. “I felt lonely, but I always feel that way. I could
feel connected to myself, just like when I sat there fifty years ago. I
started there, in that park and that town. I didn’t feel I had changed.
I was still me. The park was still the park. I’ll remember that
moment.” The temporary anonymity had brought “a kind of peace,” which,
he said, “is pretty much a luxury.” Later, he told me, “I haven’t been
in a grocery store or ridden the subway in fifty years. My kids have a
difficult time going out with me publicly. We have yet to go on a
camping trip. But one day I want to rent a small house on a lake. It’s
my dream—I don’t know how to get to it yet, but I’ll give it another
year.” Still, he said, “I’m fine not having anonymity. I’ve learned how
to live with the other thing, and the sort of enjoyment that comes with
that. It ain’t bad.” He added, “Not that I recommend it, but, like they
say, you should try it sometime.” ♦ Watch John Lahr’s commentary on films from Al Pacino’s career.
In his first interview with a magazine for five years, MS Dhoni sat down with www.alloutcricket.com to discuss life, bikes, love, combat and cricket.
You would be forgiven for thinking that winning the World Cup was MS
Dhoni’s finest moment. After all, that wonderfully free hit over mid-on
for six – a stroke of majesty and triumph to close the deal – lifted a
heavy burden from the shoulders of all India. The young were sick of
hearing about the old, hearing tales of Kapil Dev’s famous band who had
won the World Cup in England in 1983. India’s youth finally had its
moment and, best of all, had it at home, in the city of Gavaskar and
Tendulkar, and from the hand of a captain whose swashbuckling style had
made him as much a darling in the grand homes of Kolkata as in the
fishing villages of Kerala.
MS and me are off for dinner. He is wearing trainers, jeans sawn off
at the knee, a T-shirt and a camouflage jacket. We turn left out of the
team hotel and left again down an alleyway that leads us immediately
into the central square of another provincial English town. After a
third left and a stroll past Nando’s – he wants a break, he says – we
enter another chicken-type diner that he says is pretty good. During
this short walk, the Indian captain is asked to pose for 25 photographs.
To the first family of five he says no, but adds that he will be back a
little later and will happily answer their call then. Fifty metres
later he relents. Of course, five means 25. “Rahul [Dravid] taught me
how to say no politely,” he says, “but in the end, when it is only a few
people, why not.”
In the diner, the manager’s face lights up. Dhoni hands him a signed
Indian shirt. Waiters gather to look. The place is near empty. We sit at
a small table and drink orange juice. He is an unbelievably
good-looking man. A woman comes over with her daughter. She shoves her
forward and Dhoni gives a nice smile for the ‘snap’. The woman cannot
contain herself and, puce with embarrassment, asks if she can do the
same. “No problem,” he says. The husband comes over too. You’ve probably
got the picture by now. The chicken arrives.
“Winning the World Cup was very special because it meant so much to
so many. One thing about our country that is constant is cricket. The
smile it brought to people’s faces was the thing I shall always
remember. It reminded me, reminded all of us, of our importance to the
lives of the Indian people less lucky than we are.
“But personally, no. The proudest moment of my own life was the day I
accepted my ranks at the Pipping Ceremony.” Your ranks? Pray explain.
“From when I was a young boy, I read books on weapons and tanks and
combat. I was so interested in the army. Then later, my profile as an
Indian cricketer allowed me access to the real thing so I spent time
with soldiers, learning “Cricket is not everything, not by any means,
but it is a large part of who I am.about their lives and sacrifices. I
had friends in the Special Forces and heard their stories of missions,
the risks they take, the commitment they must have to succeed. I met the
chief of the Army Staff and told him about my lifelong fascination with
the military. I asked if it was possible to become involved myself.
Incredible as it may seem, he took a recommendation through various
channels that finished up with the president of the country. The result
of all this is that I became an honorary lieutenant colonel in the
Parachute Regiment.” The things we don’t know!
More of the army in a minute. “I love my country,” he says. “I tell
my wife she is only the third most important thing after my country and
my parents, in that order. The point is that while I am an Indian
cricketer I will devote myself to that cause. Cricket is not everything,
not by any means, but it is a large part of who I am. Therefore I want
to play in all formats of the game and to play as much as possible
because before long it will be over. Then I’ll focus more on the Army!”
Does his leadership have any ideological ambition, I wonder? “I
believe in the process more than the result. If you are properly
prepared, physically and mentally, committed to the task and fully
engaged in the moment, then I have no problem with the outcome. It is
not about 95 per cent at this level and with this much exposure, it is
about 100 per cent. A dropped catch is fine if you were focused and in
the moment. It becomes a problem to me if you are not. I live for the
moment, not the past, not the future. People ask about my remaining
ambitions. They are simple. I want to keep playing well and to win. I
want the Indian people to be proud of us.”
As Dhoni talks, many aspects of his character which are otherwise
well concealed begin to emerge. He is a thoughtful and intelligent
person. He is driven by a deep morality. He is honest, he is loyal. And
he does not suffer fools. Perhaps above all, he is utterly
single-minded.
“My wife wants me to eat fish, she says it is delicious. But I don’t
like fish, so that is that. I find liquor has a bitter taste, so I don’t
drink alcohol but understand that other people enjoy it. I care most
about how people live their lives, what choices they make and how they
get the best from themselves. This is why people such as Amitabh
Bachchan [Indian actor], Sachin and Rahul are heroes of mine. And I love
young talent, Ajinkya Rahane for instance, and urge him to be himself,
to trust his talent and allow it to work for him within the parameters
of his capabilities. He did that at Lord’s and the hundred he made was
among the best I have seen by any Indian batsman.”
Given Dravid is working for television on the series, I seek him out.
“I cannot speak highly enough of MS. He has a unique ability to ignore
consequences and soak up pressure. This makes it easier for everyone
else. When he took over the captaincy it was immediately obvious that he
held the seniors in great respect but was not overawed by them. He is
calm and measured. Win, lose, he can walk away. I don’t know many, if
any, who can retain their perspective like he can.”
Dhoni’s father was strict, which taught him respect – “and
punctuality” – above all else. “When I was young I was closer to my
mother but while I was in Class 12 (18 years old) the reason for my
father’s reference to discipline became clear to me. Exams were due and I
needed to study but the last day of preparation coincided with a big
cricket match. I asked him what I should do. In turn, he asked if I was
ready for the exam, which I felt I was. ‘With only 24 hours to go you
will either be ready or you will not. Go and play,’ he said, ‘and have
some fun for there is nothing more you can do in your studying.’ In
other words, you now have your priorities in order.”
Dhoni and his beautiful wife, Sakshi Singh, live with his parents in
Ranchi. True. The man listed on the Forbes 100 list as the 22nd richest
sportsperson in the world lives with Mum and Dad. How cool is that.
Twelve years ago he was working for the railways as a ticket collector.
Now he could buy a jet plane. “There is some myth to the railway story.
We are a middle-class family and my luck to have some talent as a
sportsman meant I qualified for a Sports Quota (like a government
scholarship). This gave me a proper job, for life had I wanted it, and
it allowed me to earn some money, gain some life experience but also to
focus on cricket. I thought I was reasonably good but didn’t think I
would get this far. Every morning for four years, eight months a year,
we practised at 6.30am – always with two new balls and very
competitively. We were taught to bat for 20 minutes without getting out
and then to challenge ourselves with game situations to which we had to
adapt.
“When we were kids, our sport was dependent on weather. When the sun
shone it was cricket. If not we played football. I was a goalkeeper but
always played knockabout matches up front because I wanted to run
around. When it rained we played table tennis and badminton. I just
loved to compete. If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t play! Studies were important
but sport was a passion.”
Back to the World Cup then and the innings that won it, the best
one-day innings I have seen. Was it a massive gamble to promote himself
above Yuvraj Singh, especially as he had relatively little batting
during the tournament? “Something in me said I should go. I was changing
into my batting shoes when Gary [Kirsten] came in and gave me a look.
‘Should I go?’ ‘Yes, I think you should go, man,’ he said. I had played a
lot with Murali for Chennai in the IPL and felt I could read him. If I
got it right, I felt I would calm the others down. You ask if it was a
gamble. I believe that it is not about a right or wrong decision but
about an honest and well thought through reason. I knew in my heart it
was justified and felt that the team trusted me.”
He much enjoyed working with Gary Kirsten, who gave them all
confidence. Their trust was implicit, as it is with Duncan Fletcher. “We
are as one, it has to be that way. Gary had a fantastic skill to work
with a player on a weakness without the player knowing it is a weakness.
Indian people run on emotion and both he and Duncan have learnt to
respond to that in their own way. Duncan is a little more old-fashioned
than Gary and gets frustrated by things he sees as unprofessional but he
is a very good man and there is more to him than meets the eye – humour
for a start.”
We turn to life away from the game. He listens to Hindi music – “70’s
and 80’s stuff mainly, it had more meaning to it then, the songs were
deeper and more patriotic. I like reggae too, the beat works for me.”
That passion for sport is matched by another: a devotion to his
collection of 35 motorbikes.
“I love them all, expensive, cheap, old and new,” he says. A Harley?
“Yes, a Harley Fat Boy. A Ducati Pantah, a Hellcat – one of the
confederate motorcycles from the US, some ancient two-strokes, Triumphs,
even an old BSA.” Does he ride them hard? “Not really. Well sometimes,
but actually, I like to polish them. I’ll tell you a story. When I was a
boy, one of our senior players used to position his beautiful bike
behind me and then hit balls at me to catch. If I missed one and it hit
the bike, I had to fix up the mark. Therefore I learned not to miss
many. I’ve either been polishing bikes or trying to cling on to catches
pretty much ever since!”
If you stop to think a while about the 33-year-old Mahendra Singh
Dhoni, you can only marvel. This man leads the Indian cricket team under
the greatest burden of expectation. He keeps wicket and bats in a key
middle-order position in all three formats of the game. He has led India
to all three ICC trophies and is a serial winner of the IPL with the
Chennai Super Kings. He endorses 21 wide-ranging, high-profile products
that include Pepsi, Reebok, Brylcreem, TVS Motors and Reliance. They say
he is worth US$51 million. He has been awarded the fourth highest
civilian honour in India, the Padma Shri, has been the ICC World
Cricketer of the Year and is co-owner of the Mahi Racing team. All this,
and, best of all, he likes to stay home and walk the dogs.
Conversation with Dhoni is stimulating. Unlike so many sportsmen, he
avoids clichés. Better still, he engages. His interest is more in the
person than the performance and his hope is to be remembered as a human
being every bit as much as a cricketer.
The clarity of his perspective tells us much about the über-cool
figure who finishes matches to such effect. “The problem for the
finisher is that, too often, there is not much else to come. The big
shot is not necessarily the best or smartest shot. What matters is
staying in. I am never in a hurry. My aim is to leave it till the bowler
and me are on level ground, i.e. to the point at which he is under as
much pressure as me. Then we see who can handle it. And most crucially,
to stay humble. Assume nothing. Each day is different. I always tell the
team that today somebody will be a hero. You have the chance, go and
take it.”
Perhaps there is a little military discipline in these performances. Perhaps the Army has rubbed off .
“Yes, maybe. I have made a real study of manoeuvres, of geography and
physics, and of mental application to various challenges. I had the
choice of four regiments but chose a fifth, the Parachutes, because it
is a hundred per cent volunteer regiment. They are derived from the
British SAS – an incredible unit, you know – and I felt I would be able
to contribute more with them later in life. I believe I know enough to
justify the honour and was worthy of it. One day I will train with them
and I will jump with them too because I am keen to truly earn my wings.”
We move back to cricket and particularly to the nuances of the
five-day game. He admits India were sub-standard in England three years
ago but says that injuries to important players and a feel that the
guard was changing contributed to that. “You cannot hide in Test
cricket, England were too good for us. The challenge of Test cricket is
unmatched by anything else in my experience. I love the planning and the
strategy, the requirements of patience and consistency and the chance
of recovery. But I get bored playing on a dead pitch. Trent Bridge was
one of those, to play and to watch. Pitches should have their indigenous
qualities exaggerated. Spin in India, pace and bounce in Australia,
seam and swing in England. To survive in the modern era, the game needs
results, not draws.” He is a fan of the 50- over game – “because it
bridges the gap. Test cricket and T20 are too far apart; 50 overs is an
important format”.
I ask if he has days, weeks, seasons even, when he is over it; if
there are periods when he would rather be a million miles away. Surely
the urge for escape must overtake his enthusiasm for game and country.
“Not really. I don’t think about it much. Only injury brings on that
sort of doubt or emotion. Otherwise, I live for the moment. I’m with you
here and that’s good. And tomorrow will be good. Essentially I’m very
content and happy with my life.
“Sakshi provides the spark I might sometimes need. Jokes aside, she
is the person to whom I have reference. She is both loving and
inspirational. Sometimes she travels with me but cricket is easier
without having to ensure her safe passage. One day, we will see the
sights together and she says that then, can she please move to number
two on the list of my priorities! But for the moment I am here to play
cricket. I have been given this honour to play for my country so I want
see it through.”
The food is finished. Word has spread and fans are gathering at the
diner’s door. We switch to short, sharp questions and equally short
responses.
Will you grow your hair long again? “No.”
Why did you shave it off after the World Cup final? “It had been a
stressful few months, I admit. Many people were demanding that we won
the World Cup at home. The bare head was the final goodbye to the
pressure we had been under. It was like we could start afresh.”
If you could have one player from any other team, who would it be?
“Any pacy, seam-bowling allrounder. You can build a team around one of
those. And no, I’m not naming names!”
How long will you play for? “My job is to get the team right and then
move away. I couldn’t stand down after the tour here three years ago. I
don’t believe in deserting when the chips are down. And speed, I’ll
know it is time to finish when I am no longer one of the fastest movers
in the team. At that point I will surely know age is winning.”
Other than involvement with the military, what will happen when you
retire? “I would like to build some academies, to provide facilities and
opportunities for the young.”
Is it ever lonely on the road? “My door is always open, unless Sakshi
is in town and then it shuts occasionally. Seriously, I always leave
the door to my room open and there is a constant flow and buzz. No, I am
never lonely.”
Does anything keep you awake at night? “No, I sleep well.” Oh come on
MS, there must something, some anxiety? “Well, maybe if I am going
shooting the next day, to the pistol range say, then the excitement has
me tossing and turning a bit.” Ye gods.
Will you have children? “I hope so! We are practising!!” And what
will you expect of them? “A sense of fun, some discipline, to treat
others as they would treat themselves.” Sport? “If they would like. They
will be raised with an outdoor life, running free and happy I hope.”
Is he planning to stay at home with Mr and Mrs D? “Why not? Our culture
is different to yours. It is more European. We look after our parents
when they get old as they looked after us when we were young.”
He gets up from the table to pay the bill. The waiters line up for
selfies. Outside, the night is closing in but still people want their
piece of history with the most marketable, perhaps most remarkable,
cricketer on the planet. As we walk, I ask if he thinks captaincy is a
calling. “Well, I remember playing in a senior district match, long
before I ever captained a team. I was bowling and one of the team
dropped a catch and then, with a couple of others, laughed about it like
they couldn’t care less. Between overs I told them to stand together,
well out of the way, and laugh all they like. I said the rest of us will
get on with taking the wickets.
“I suppose that suggests I wanted to be the leader. Time allows you
to learn to read the game and then you work out the direction you think a
team should take. After that, you decide on the process and if you get
the job, you put it in place. So we are back with the process, where we
began two hours ago.”
Before we say goodnight, he leaves me with a simple final thought. “A
perfect smile is too often missing from the faces of the world. If
cricket can provide more smiles, it is doing its job.” He said we should
meet again and that he would tell me more about his friends in the
special forces. I can’t wait.
आउटलुक के अप्रेल अंक में मेहदी हसन पर मेरा लेख फोटो सेक्शन में है, जो कि संपादित है , उसे मूल रूप में यहां पढें-
29 March 2010 at 20:07
आवाजों को सरहदों के पार जाने से रोका नहीं जा सकता। शायद इसीलिए
राजस्थान के लूणा गांव की आवाज रेत के धोरों में बहती हुई पाकिस्तान में
मेहदी हसन तक पहुंच जाती है और वे यहां आने के लिए छटपटाने लगते हैं।
पाकिस्तान से खबर है कि अस्वस्थ होने के बावजूद वे एक बार फिर अपनी जन्म
भूमि पर आना चाहते हैं।
राजस्थान के शेखावाटी अंचल में झुंझुनूं जिले के लूणा गांव की हवा
में आज भी मेहदी हसन की खुशबू तैरती है। देश विभाजन के बाद लगभग 20 वर्ष की
उम्र में वे लूणा गांव से उखड़ कर पाकिस्तान चले गए थे, लेकिन इस गांव की
यादें आज तक उनका पीछा करती हैं। वक्त के साथ उनके ज्यादातर संगी-साथी भी
अब इस दुनिया को छोड़कर जा चुके हैं, लेकिन गांव के दरख्तों, कुओं की
मुंडेरों और खेतों में उनकी महक आज भी महसूस की जा सकती है।
छूटी हुई जन्म स्थली की मिट्टी से किसी इंसान को कितना प्यार हो सकता
है इसे 1977 के उन दिनों में झांक कर देखा जा सकता है जब मेहदी हसन
पाकिस्तान जाने के बाद पहली बार लूणा आए और यहां की मिट्टी में लोट-पोट हो
कर रोने लगे। उस समय जयपुर में गजलों के एक कार्यक्रम के लिए वे सरकारी
मेहमान बन कर जयपुर आए थे और उनकी इच्छा पर उन्हें लूणा गांव ले जाया गया
था। कारों का काफिला जब गांव की ओर बढ़ रहा था तो रास्ते में उन्होंने अपनी
गाड़ी रूकवा दी। काफिला थम गया। सड़क किनारे एक टीले पर छोटा-सा मंदिर था,
जहां रेत में लोटपोट हो कर वे पलटियां खाने लगे और रोना शुरू कर दिया। कोई
सोच नहीं सकता था कि धरती माता से ऐसे मिला जा सकता है। ऐसा लग रहा था
जैसे वे मां की गोद में लिपटकर रो रहे हों।
इस दृश्य के गवाह रहे कवि कृष्ण कल्पित बताते हैं-' वह भावुक कर देने
वाला अद्भूत दृश्य था। मेहदी हसन का बेटा भी उस समय उनके साथ था। वह घबरा
गया कि वालिद साहब को यह क्या हो गया? हमने उनसे कहा कि धैर्य रखें, कुछ
नहीं होगा। धीरे-धीरे वह शांत हो गए। बाद में उन्होंने बताया कि यहां बैठ
कर वे भजन गया करते थे।' मेहदी हसन ने तब यह भी बताया था कि पाकिस्तान में
अब भी उनके परिवार में सब लोग शेखावाटी में बोलते हैं। शेखावाटी की धरती
उन्हें अपनी ओर खींचती है।
मेहदी हसन के साथ इस यात्रा में आए उनके बेटे आसिफ मेहदी भी अब
पाकिस्तान में गजल गाते हैं और बाप-बेटे का एक साझा अलबम भी है-''दिल जो
रोता है' ।
मेहदी हसन जब पहली बार लूणा आए तो पूरे गांव में हल्ला मच गया था-'
मेंहद्यो आयो है, मेंहद्यो आयो है। ' मेहदी हसन जहां जाते, लोग उनका
छाछ-राबड़ी और दूध-दही से स्वागत करते। इस यात्रा में झुंझुनूं में जिला
कलेक्टर ने उनके सम्मान में रात्रि भोज दिया था, लेकिन मेहदी हसन बिना बताए
झुंझुनूं की एक बस्ती में अपने रिश्ते की एक बहन के घर पहुंच गए और वहां
मांग कर लहसन की चटनी के साथ बाजरे की रोटी खाई। प्रशासनिक अधिकारी उन्हें
ढूंढते रहे।
इस बार जब मेहदी हसन अपने गांव आएंगे तो शायद यह कहने वाला कोई नहीं
मिलेगा कि 'मेंहद्यो आयो है।' गांव में अब एक नई पीढ़ी जन्म ले चुकी है,
लेकिन वह इतना जरूर जानती है कि इस गांव का मेहदी हसन गजल सम्राट है। जिन
लोगों ने मेहदी हसन को नहीं देखा, वे भी उन्हें प्यार और सम्मान करते है।
शायद ऐसे ही वक्त के लिए मेंहदी हसन ने यह गजल गाई है-''मौहब्बत करने वाले
कम न होंगे, तेरी महफिल में लेकिन हम न होंगे।' लगभग 250 घरों के लूणा गांव
में आज भी कोई कार जैसी चीज चली जाए तो लोगों को यह समझते देर नहीं लगती
कि मसला मेहदी हसन के साथ जुड़ा है। मेहदी हसन की वजह से ही लूणा को एक
सड़क उपहार में मिल गई है जो गांव तक जाती है। हमारी गाड़ी जैसे ही गांव
में पहुंचती है तो एक ग्रामीण सांवरा छूटते ही बताता है कि मेहदी हसन के
बारे में जानना है तो नारायण सिंह के पास चले जाओ। वही सब कुछ बता सकता है।
दरअसल, लूणा में मेहदी हसन का अब एक ही साथी बचा है- नारायण सिंह।
मेहदी हसन के एक दोस्त और हैं- अर्जुन सिंह, लेकिन वे विक्षिप्त हो चुके
हैं और उन्हें कोई सुधबुध नहीं है। गांव का एक रिटायर्ड फौजी रामेश्वर लाल
बताता है- ''मेहदी हसन मेरे पिताजी (मालाराम) के अच्छे दोस्त थे। उनके साथ
गांव में कबड्डी खेलते थे, अखाड़े में कुश्ती करते थे। मेरे पिताजी के साथ
उनकी फोटो भी थी, लेकिन अब वह भी नहीं रहे।' गांव में लोगों से बातचीत में
ही यह पता चलता है कि अपने सुरों से दुनिया में राज करने वाले मेहदी हसन
पहलवानी भी करते थे।
शाम के झुरमुट में हम गांव की गलियों से गुजरते हैं। गांव के
छान-छप्परों से धुआं उठ रहा था। लगा हवा में लहराते दरख्त मेहदी हसन की गजल
गुनगुना उठे हों- ''ये धुआं सा कहां से उठता है, देख तो दिल कि जां से
उठता हैं ' कुओं पर बीते वक्त की वास्तु के पनघट बने हैं। इन पर चकली की
जगह लकड़ी के बड़े चक्के लगे हैं जिन पर कभी चरस से पानी खींचा जाता होगा।
एक सरकारी स्कूल के परिसर में ही पिछवाड़े एक मजार है। यह मेहदी हसन के
दादा इमाम खां की मजार है, जो शास्त्रीय संगीत के अच्छे ज्ञाता माने जाते
थे। उन्हीं से मेहदी हसन ने गायन सीखा। मजार पर पहले कुछ नहीं था। एक
ग्रामीण युवक मुकुट सिंह ने बताया कि कोई एक दशक पहले मेहदी हसन निजी
यात्रा पर इस मजार को ठीक कराने के लिए ही आए थे। तब वे झुंझुनूं से अपने
साथ दो कारीगर लेकर आए थे, जिनसे मजार पर कुछ निर्माण कराया। मेहदी हसन की
इस यात्रा के पीछे छिपे उनके दर्द को महसूस किया जा सकता है। अपनी जमीन से
उखड़ जाने पर पीछे छूटी यादें किसी यातना से कम नहीं होती। मजार की बदहाली
देखकर रोना आता है। मजार अब भी उतनी ही वीरान और सन्नाटे से भरी है, जितना
उसके पास खड़ा एक सूखा दरख्त। यह मजार ही जैसे मेहदी हसन को लूणा बुलाती
रहती है। मानो रेत के धोरों में हवा गुनगुनाने लगती है- '' भूली बिसरी चंद
उम्मीदें, चंद फसाने याद आए, तुम याद आए और तुम्हारे साथ जमाने याद आए।''
नारायण सिंह कभी-कभी जुम्मे पर इस मजार पर हो आते हैं।
नारायण सिंह अपने बेटों-पोतों के साथ ही कई घरों के बीच बनी एक कोठरी
में रहते हैं, लेकिन भगवा वस्त्रों में। दस साल पहले अपनी पत्नी के निधन
के बाद उन्होंने संन्यास ले लिया। कोठरी में एक तानपुरा भी रखा है।
उन्होंने बताया कि मेहदी हसन के दादा इमाम खां से उन्होंने भी संगीत की
तालीम पाई। आध्यात्मिक संगीत में उनकी रूचि है, लेकिन गजलें उन्हें नहीं
आती। मेहदी हसन की भी कोई गजल उनको याद नहीं। वे कहते हैं- ''मेहदी हसन ने
शास्त्रीय रागों से गजल को जोड़ा, इसलिए वे प्रसिद्ध हुए।'' नारायण सिंह
दिनभर अपनी पुरानी किताबों की जिल्द बनाकर सिलाई करते रहते हैं। वे कहते
हैं कि उन्हें कुरान भी आती है। उन्होंने रामचरित मानस के उर्दू अनुवाद की
एक दुर्लभ पुस्तक भी दिखाई।
लूणा गांव में लगभग 8 वर्ष की उम्र में ही मेहदी हसन ने ठुमरी, खयाल
और दादरा में गायकी सीख ली थी। अपने पिता उस्ताद अजीम खां से भी उन्होंने
शास्त्रीय गायन की तालीम ली। रेत के धोरों में संगीत की स्वर लहरियां जैसे
आज भी मेहदी हसन को सुनाई देती हैं और वे इस धरती पर खिंच कर चले आते हैं।
गांव में किसी से भी पूछो कि मेहदी हसन के पुराने घर कहां हैं, तो
लोग सकुचाने लगते हैं। ज्यादातर लोग जुबान सिल लेते हैं। लगता है जैसे कोई
गलत बात पूछ ली हो। एक ग्रामीण रामेश्वर दबे स्वरों में बताता है-'' जहां
मेहदी हसन के कच्चे घर थे, वहां अब भागीरथ मीणा की पक्की कोठी है। ऐसी कोठी
पूरे गांव में नहीं है। मीणा एक सरकारी अधिकारी हैं जो बाहर रहते हैं।''
पूरे गांव में बहती फिजां में मेहदी हसन की मौजूदगी का अहसास लगातार
बना रहता है, लेकिन उनकी पुरानी यादों के ज्यादा पन्ने अब खुल कर सामने
नहीं आते। उनके साथी नारायण सिंह के जेहन में भी बचपन की ज्यादा यादें बची
नहीं हैं। वे अपनी उम्र 90 वर्ष बताते हैं, हालांकि इतनी उम्र के लगते नहीं
हैं। कहते हैं- ''मेहदी हसन के पिता अजीम खां मंडावा के ठाकुर के यहां
दरबारी गायक थे जिन्हें गाने के बदले ठाकुर साहब से जमीन भी मिलती थी। चाचा
इस्माइल खां पहलवान थे, जिनके अखाड़े में मेहदी हसन और उनके बड़े भाई
गुलाम कादिर के साथ मैं भी जाता था। मेहदी हसन की दो बहनें थीं- रहमी और
भूरी।''
मेहदी हसन जब भी लूणा गांव आते हैं, वे नारायण सिंह से जरूर मिलते
हैं। वे दो बार सरकारी मेहमान बन कर भी आ चुके हैं। लूणा इस बार फिर उनके
आने की प्रतीक्षा कर रहा है। हैरत की बात यह है कि लूणा को लेकर मेहदी हसन
के दिल में आज भी जुनून कम नहीं हुआ है। समय की परतें भी इसे दबा नहीं पाई
हैं। तानसेन के बारे कहा जाता है कि लोग उनकी मजार पर जाते हैं तो कान के
पीछे हाथ लगाकर सुनने की कोशिश करते हैं- क्या पता कब उनके सुर फूट पड़े।
लूणा गांव भी उनके आने की आहटों को कुछ इसी तरह सुनता रहता है। इस बार जब
वे लूणा गांव आकर वापस लौटेंगे तो कौन जाने उनके मन में अपनी ही गजल के ये
स्वर गूंज रहे होंगे-'' अब के हम बिछुड़े तो शायद ख्वाबों में मिलें, जैसे
सूखे हुए फूल किताबों में मिलें।''
As we see yet another film (Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania) that
explicitly acknowledges its influence, it is time to ask what is it
about Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge that makes it so powerfully resonant
with so many people over such a long time? It is a perplexing question,
for the film was made in 1995, in the early days of economic
liberalisation and so much has changed since. Just to refresh our
memories, 1995 was the year in which Enron was scrapped, Amitabh
Bachchan Corporation was formed and Madhu Sapre and Milind Soman had
shared a python between them. Shah Rukh Khan’s other films for the year
included timeless classics such as Zamaana Deewana, Guddu and Ram Jaane.
It was a different time for India, and even more so for Hindi cinema.
Cinematically, DDLJ broke some new ground- but the durability of its
appeal can hardly be located there. It touched a deeper chord by
articulating a societal fault line in a way that was both precise and
real. Another film, Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, too has had a great impact
since its release in 1994 but today it is seems to be a dated product of
its times.
It was easy to understand what made the film work then. It
brilliantly articulated an anxiety that existed about all the changes
being unleashed on India. It depicted the battle between the past and
the present, and between collective custom and individual desire, in the
form of a love story between two endearing characters. It served up a
cinematic version of tradition and mellowed out modernity till one could
barely tell the difference between the two. It offered a comforting
resolution to a complex question and quietened the misgivings that had
risen about social change.
Unlike most Hindi films, where the pleasure lies in the telling of
the tale rather than its resolution, for that is almost always a return
to the familiar, in DDLJ, it was the resolution that was new. The
star-crossed lovers did not fight the world nor did they succumb to
bullets/stabs in slow motion, but submitted to the authority of the
older generation after making a strong moral case. The reconciliation
went beyond the surface- the past and the present agreed to fuse
together, the cultural continuity that was forged seemed deep and real.
The power of DDLJ becomes clearer when we examine the latest tribute
that has been offered to it in the form of Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania.
Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhaniya, it must be said is a pleasant film, but it
is unlikely to become a classic partly because it does not take itself
too seriously. It is in its lack of pretension that the film becomes
significant, for in the world that it depicts tentativeness abounds.
Compromised tradition meets ritualised modernity, and instead of a grand
reconciliation we have a workable negotiation. The forces of the past
lack the moral certitude of an Amrish Puri in DDLJ and the customary
rituals of the wedding too lack any real self-belief. What remains of
tradition is the memory of authority, rooted in patriarchal habit. But
modernity too is its mirror, for it seems adrift in the fragmented
rituals that come detached from any larger meaning. The heroine
outdrinks the hero, she covets a designer wedding dress and he a car,
and the two sleep together even though she is engaged to someone else.
It is striking that even the act of sleeping together is handled
matter-of-factly. Many reviews have read this as a sign of the growing
maturity of cinema- another reading is that even this action, unusual in
the Indian social context, is divested of any radical meaning. It is
merely a ritual of the times, like the tequila shot.
The romance is bedecked with question marks, and even the answers are
not assertions but hopeful hypotheses. This is a world where parents
posture, and imperfect young people huddle together with hope rather
than conviction. Things change, in that certitudes crumble bit by bit,
and opposites do not abrade each other quite as much. The genius of DDLJ
was that it made the present rescue the past, giving strength to the
former by granting honourable legitimacy to the latter. Good tradition
morphed into respectful modernity-Shah Rukh Khan earned the baton from
Amrish Puri. Modernity submitted to the test of tradition and came
through. In Humpty Sharma, both sides are imagined to be imperfect, and
the resolution happens when the quest for perfection is abandoned. The
past makes a conditional settlement with the present on a case-by-case
basis. What continues is that authority continues to be vested in
masculine power; the conversation is still between men.
Today, the idea that the old and new will get neatly resolved is
nothing but a fantasy. The years that have passed since DDLJ have told
us that the past is in no hurry to retire and the present lacks the
idealism and confidence to assert itself. The best case scenario today
seems to be to make conditional peace with the past. We crave for the
illusion that DDLJ provides precisely because it gave us an answer that
seemed to be so final, besides it had Shah Rukh Khan who had just learnt
how to fling out his arms and smile at the world. Raj is the hero India
needs for he has all the answers but Humpty Sharma is the one we will
have to make do with. The quest for grand and absolute solutions may
need to give way to those that offer more modest and context-sensitive
answers. Imperfectness may not be such a bad thing, for then we need
each other to cobble together some form of completeness.
When I am not making movies – which is
thankfully rarely – my favourite pastime is to get fundamentally quoted
without the context. Blame the lack of space in newspapers today with
all those advertisements accounting for most of it. It helps to keep our
conversation going, you see. And it has happened again. My whole
conversation has been reduced to one line that’s being knocked around,
“rape is a bad accident says anurag kashyap”
Fun though it is, I think it’s time I speak for myself and not let
some out-of-context quote in a paper, or an edited version of a
half-an-hour conversation do the talking.
Sitting here in Karlovy Vary I have been inundated with texts and
mails about an interview of mine, that has of course, as always, been
completely misread. It does not help that a long conversation has
been reduced to a paragraph, but credit to the writer that he does
mention that the now-controversial paragraph is the point of view of a
woman and not my own.
The reactions on various social platforms do prove that in anger the
opinionists also turn blind, and they actually read what they want to,
so that they can rage over it, rather than seeing it and arguing
healthily over it.
I don’t mean to spoil the rage party, but let me try to bring some context here.
Recently, I was in conversation with a woman, who quoted an old
article she had read in The Times of India oped page, years ago.
That article profiled a courageous rape survivor, a European woman
living in India, who after being gang raped, actually fought for a fair
trial for her rapists and a lighter sentence. She strongly protested
any baying for blood or vengeful mindset. She was in fact ridiculed and
vilified for standing up for justice for her own rapists. When asked why
she did it – she said that she would treat the trauma of her rape the
same way she would treat the trauma of being in a terrible car crash.
She would try to heal from it, she would want the irresponsible
perpetrators punished, but she would not allow the crime to gain greater
significance than she felt it was due. Any greater assignment of
meaning to her own rape would be to give in to a male view of the female
gender. She also believed that her identity and her dignity did not
reside between her legs, but between her ears.
The woman friend of mine who told me about this case, also mentioned
that this article made her rethink the concepts of honour, izzat,
dignity and personal identity, for years to come.
What was read as my comment or statement in the HINDU were actually
“questions” raised by the survivor, which were then subsequently
narrated to me by another woman and by me to Sudhish Kamat who writes it
like it is but not all of it, which by now is attributed to me as my
quote. Those questions stayed with me and bothered me, and made me
question things, because I felt that there was a certain truth to them.
I am not so good at articulation without my camera, but let me try
and elucidate the point my female friend was making: No woman invites
rape, rape is never ever the woman’s fault, and no woman would chose it –
if the choice was a viable one. But in a situation where the choice is
between life and rape, a woman might just choose the latter. If her
choice is ‘life’, why is that very life taken away from her, once she is
raped? Why is she called stuff like ‘zindaa laash’ and why does the
entire focus shift to ‘honour’ rather than to ‘healing’? To ‘punishment’
rather than to ‘rehabilitation’? When does the male gaze take over,
such that even the extent of the victim’s physical and mental bruising
is decided for her by others?
Why is she never granted the quiet she so sorely needs? She is
frequently dragged out by the social worker to narrate her story again
and again, she relives the trauma again and again, she is used to make a
point. should that not be a choice. the choice of the survivor.
The woman who told me this story also said that she often puts a very
difficult binary choice to her female friends: Such as: burnt alive, or
rape? Dismembered, or rape? Acid attack, or rape? Horrible though it
sounds, when given a choice like this, many women went quiet. The horror
of rape, when pitted against other ghastly horrors, acquired a
perspective. Not that of being ‘fine’ or ‘acceptable’ but often, of the
lesser evil – if other brutalities or violence was not involved.
Does this mean any of us is trivializing rape here? Far from it. It
is a violent, traumatic, battering, violating experience. All I want to
say is that let us not add male notions of honour and purity to it. That
is like adding insult to the injury.
The point is about not having a choice. When one is raped, there
often is no choice. When one has the option of fight or flight one uses
it but often neither option is available. It is the same in a bad
accident. You do not have a choice but you go through the brutality .
However, what happens afterward is telling. When in a bad accident,
the victim goes to the doctor or a hospital, tries to recuperate, allows
oneself to heal, the victim is rehabilitated or allowed to
rehabilitate.
And the one who causes the accident is punished.
My distress with our social network-ists is that they assume they
understand rape simply because they are women. Rape is not that easily
understood and it is not a gender’s prerogative to do so.
In this world men are raped too and more so in our society, in this
part of the world. I am also a victim of rape and I have healed a lot
more than most because the world was not fussing over me.
Suddenly there is a new term being thrown
around, VAW (violence against women) well, coming to VAW, VAW is not
the same as rape, VAW includes rape but rape has a much broader bracket
that includes the other gender too and also the one we most
often don’t consider a gender, the transgenders, who are
the biggest victims of the said crime..How I look at Violence? You can’t
wish it away, laws will not and can’t control it, it has existed since
the mankind has existed, violence against animals, violence against
humanity, all kinds of violence exists and will continue to as long as
people are not equal. as long as two people will have different
strengths and ability, there will always be a power struggle and there
will be violence. The weak will always be violated by the strong and it
is not gender specific. You can police it. regulate it .. there is
violence in sport but is regulated. the perpetrator is always shown a
yellow card, then a red card and then is barred from the field and if
he/she continues, is banned from the game for life. Only physical
assault does not constitute violence, emotional blackmail is also
violence, mind games are also violations, misusing nirbhaya
laws is also violence and rise in that VIOLENCE AGAINST MEN since those
laws have been constituted, was even commented on by the Supreme court
just last week. Every solution will create a new problem. anyway i am
digressing here..its a never-ending discourse.
If I had to discuss or argue about rape, I would much rather do so with the victims and survivors than with a feminist.Why?
Because I get a strong feeling that the Indian feminist is very hard to
talk to, because he/she doesn’t listen. He/She has a fully formed
opinion etched in stone and will give no space to accommodate any other
point of view.
Indian feminists start with
the agenda already defined, and hence there is no room for any other
opinion or position. Feminists are always eager to adopt any woman with a
strong voice as their own. We saw our film “Queen” being immediately
adopted by them as a feminist film. Let me say here that neither is
Vikas Bahl a feminist, nor am I, and we both love and respect women as
we do men: as people, as human beings. Isn’t that the way it should be?
Queen
was not intended to be a feminist film, it was the love and respect for
this human being and her story that came through, the film was not pro
woman or anti men. It was a story of a girl finding her own self and how
she does it on her terms.
I
know a lot of women who the feminists project as their own and these
women hate it, they hate it because they don’t see themselves that way
but don’t say it out loud because they are mortally afraid of offending
the feminists. The fear that the feminists inculcate even in women is
especially peculiar.
Next. coming to my short film – well everything we do is not always a statement. The purpose of the film was not to offer a solution but to tell a story.I
made a deal where I was obligated to do a short film for the platform
it provided to five other young filmmakers around me who I think deserve
more and so that they can showcase what they are capable of. They
made their shorts and the time came to do mine, we were running out of
time, I was already late by a month. We were to do a short film and I
had two days and the script was chosen from a bunch of scripts and
purpose of the film was not to offer a solution. Purpose of the film was
to tell a story, and this was the best of the lot, it had its issues
but we did not have time to iron out the issues and in that story we
tried to shoot it in a way , that one feels the harassment. The
ending was meant to be light hearted. We had no idea that it would go
viral and that’s our shortcoming probably, we had no idea that it will
be taken as my opinion and even after it was, it helped to bring forth
so many points of view – and that wouldn’t have happened if that short
did not exist.
I
responded to and engaged with some sensible points but the angry, short
sighted judgemental ones that came from twitter anger we chose to
ignore. I refuse to take the responsibility of making a statement on
behalf of a half baked -ism of this country through my work. I am not
your voice so please stop expecting me to be, I am on my own journey and
constructive points of views help me grow and understand things more, I
have been taught not to be afraid to sound like an authority before I
speak, I have been taught to speak freely because until and unless you
don’t do that, there will not be debates and discussion and arguments.
I
am my own voice and I speak for myself, and my life is an ongoing
process, I have not come to any conclusions about anything in life,
about you or me or cinema or rape or women or anything. I react, I
think, I over react, I think too much and I think aloud. I am what I do
and not what I am expected to do.
I
don’t think I am that important in any scheme of things and I write
this letter for the sake of the few people I actually care about, who
are distressed, and who urge me to have my say.
- Anurag Kashyap
(ps – To avoid further misunderstanding,
let us clarify that he didn’t send us that profile pic of his to go with
this post, we just googled and put one. Because just text looks bit
drab)
भारतीय सिनेमा के विकास में बंगालीभाषी और मराठीभाषी समाज का विशिष्ट
योगदान रहा है। सिनेमा का जन्म सन 1896 में माना जाता है। बंगाल के हीरा
लाल सेन सन 1902 से
ही फिल्मों के प्रति आकर्षित हो गए थे। उन्होंने कई फिल्मों का आयात किया
और इस नए आविष्कार को वे राजा-महाराजाओं के दरबार तक ले गए और वहाँ इन
फिल्मों का
प्रक्षेपण-प्रदर्शन किया।
सन 1913 में दादा साहब फाल्के ने भारतीय सिनेमा को जमीन प्रदान की और
भारतीय सिनेमा के मूक युग का आरंभ हुआ। इस युग के अनेक व्यवसाई फिल्मकारों
के साथ-साथ जिन
समर्थ फिल्मकारों का नाम लिया जाता है उनमें दो नाम प्रमुख हैं - बाबूराव
पेंटर और धीरेंद्रनाथ गांगुली। दोनों ने यथार्थपरक और सार्थक फिल्में
बनाईं।
सिनेमा में ध्वनि के आगमन की आहट सुनाई देने से पूर्व ही कलकत्ता का न्यू
थिएटर्स आकार ले चुका था और फिल्म उद्योग को नया रंग देने की तैयारी शुरू
हो चुकी थी।
न्यू थिएटर्स के दो आरंभिक बड़े निर्देशक थे, देवकी बोस और नितिन बोस।
सन 1935 में पच्चीस-छब्बीस वर्ष की आयु में बिमल राय ने न्यू थिएटर्स में
नौकरी की शुरुआत की। आरंभ में वे नितिन बोस के सहायक कैमरामैन रहे लेकिन
जल्दी ही
उन्हें स्वतंत्र कार्यभार सँभालने का अवसर मिल गया। स्वतंत्र छायाकार के
तौर पर बिमल राय की पहली फिल्म प्रमथेश नाथ बरुआ द्वारा निर्देशित 'मुक्ति'
थी।
सन 1939 में द्वितीय महायुद्ध आरंभ हो गया और कलकत्ता युद्ध की जद में आ
गया। सन 1940 से 1945 के बीच के समय में कलकत्ता शहर के नागरिकों ने
सिनेमाघरों को अपना
आश्रय स्थल बनाया। जहाँ तक फिल्म संबंधी जानकारी का प्रश्न है 'किस्मत'
नामक फिल्म (अब कोलकाता) कलकत्ता के सिनेमाघर में तीन वर्ष तक हाउसफुल रही।
यही नहीं 1941-42 में आईं 'कंगन', 'बंधन' और 'झूला' फिल्में भी सुपरहिट
रहीं। ऐसा लगता है कि 1940-46 के बीच के समय में भीड़ सिनेमाघरों पर टूट
रही थी। उस समय
के समाचार पत्रों तथा अन्य उपलब्ध सामग्री के आधार पर उस समय की मानसिकता
पर शोध कार्य होना चाहिए। एक ओर भारत का स्वतंत्रता संग्राम अपने अंतिम चरण
में था,
दूसरी ओर आजाद हिंद फौज के स्वागत की तैयारी थी और तीसरी ओर फिल्मों के
प्रति बढ़ता आकर्षण था।
ऐसे समय में सन 1944 में बिमल राय द्वारा निर्देशित प्रथम फिल्म 'उदेर
पाथे' प्रदर्शित हुई। कहा जाता है कि इस फिल्म को देखने के लिए अपार जन
समूह की उत्सुकता
अभूतपूर्व थी। एक वर्ष बाद इसका हिंदी संस्करण 'हमराही' संपूर्ण भारत में
प्रदर्शित हुआ।
सुप्रसिद्ध फिल्म समीक्षक इकबाल मसूद ने लिखा है, 'मद्रास के स्टार थिएटर
में मैंने बिमल राय की 'हमराही' फिल्म देखी। मद्रास में यही एक सिनेमाघर
था, जहाँ हिंदी
फिल्में दिखाई जाती थी। मैं एक सामान्य व्यावसायिक फिल्म देखने गया था।
मैं फिल्म के निर्देशक या फिल्म के बारे में कुछ भी नहीं जानता था।
'लेकिन फिल्म ने मुझ पर गहरा असर छोड़ा। शायद यह एक समाजवादी फिल्म थी। उन
दिनों इंग्लैंड में समाजवाद आ चुका था लेकिन भारत के वामपंथी युवक खुद को
अकेला पा रहे
थे। सांस्कृतिक स्तर पर सब कहीं घटिया लोकप्रिय कला का बोलबाला था। मुझे
आज भी स्मरण है कि'हमराही' ने मुझमें उत्साह का संचार कर दिया था।'
आज के समीक्षक 'हमराही' को रोमांटिक यथार्थवादी फिल्म कहते हैं। उस समय इस
प्रकार के शब्दों का प्रयोग आरंभ नहीं हुआ था। आज की शब्दावली में कहूँ तो
'हमराही'
मुझे 'अपने समय से आगे की' या 'भविष्य की फिल्म' लगी थी। दूसरे शब्दों में
कहूँ तो, 'जिस प्रकार के समाज में हम जी रहे थे और जिस भविष्य की हम
कल्पना करते थे।
उसके अनुरूप यह फिल्म थी। हम जवान थे और अच्छा लगता था कि फिल्म में एक
लखपति की बेटी एक वामपंथी युवक से प्यार करती है।''
यह लंबा उद्धरण यह भी बताता है कि हमारे यहाँ अच्छी फिल्म समीक्षाओं का
हमेशा अकाल रहा है। खोजने पर भी चौथे, पाँचवें या छठे दशक की फिल्मों पर
प्रबुद्ध दर्शकों
की तात्कालिक या समकालीन टिप्पणियाँ हमें नहीं मिल पातीं। अपनी प्रथम
फिल्म से ही बिमल राय समर्थ निर्देशक के रूप में स्थापित हो गए थे।
'हमराही' मूलतः एक शोषक राजेंद्रनाथ तथा एक शोषित अनूप की कथा है। यह पहली
हिंदी फिल्म थी, जिसमें शोषक तथा शोषित का द्वंद्व साफ होकर उभरा था। अनूप
एक शिक्षित
बेरोजगार युवक है और अपनी माँ तथा बहन के साथ रहता है। अनूप की बहन
सुमित्रा एक दिन अपनी सहेली गोपा के घर एक खुशी के अवसर पर जाती है। इस
पार्टी में धनाढ्य
वर्ग के लोग एकत्रित हैं। सुमित्रा पर चोरी करने का आरोप लगा दिया जाता है
और वह अपमानित होकर घर लौट आती है।
इधर बेरोजगार अनूप को काम मिल जाता है। उसी का एक लेखक मित्र जो एक
पत्रिका का संपादक भी है, अनूप को बताता है कि राजेंद्रनाथ नाम के करोड़पति
को एक प्रचार
अधिकारी चाहिए। इस प्रचार अधिकारी का काम है, करोड़पति के लिए भाषण तैयार
करना। अनूप यह काम स्वीकार कर लेता है। राजेंद्रनाथ को भी अनूप का काम पसंद
आता है।
अनूप द्वारा लिखे गए भाषणों को सभाओं में सुनाकर राजेंद्रनाथ बहुत
लोकप्रिय हो जाता है। एक दिन जब अनूप इस मिल मालिक की लाइब्रेरी में बैठकर
अपना काम कर रहा है,
उसकी भेंट गोपा से होती है। गोपा, राजेंद्रनाथ की बहन है और सुमित्रा की
वही सहेली है जिसने उसे अपने घर पार्टी पर बुलाया था। यह पता लगते ही कि
इसी घर में उसकी
बहन का अपमान हुआ था, अनूप तुरंत नौकरी छोड देता है।
राजेंद्रनाथ का काम अनूप के बिना चल नहीं पाता। अनूप ने एक उपन्यास भी
लिखा है, जिसे वह छपवाना चाहता है। राजेंद्रनाथ अनूप के घर आता है और उससे
मित्रता करके
उसे अपने साथ ले जाता है। साथ ही वह अनूप द्वारा लिखे गए उपन्यास की
पांडुलिपि भी इस आश्वासन के साथ ले जाता है कि शीघ्र ही अनूप के उपन्यास को
प्रकाशित करवा
देगा। राजेंद्रनाथ की बहन गोपा पांडुलिपि देख लेती है, उसे यूँ ही उलटती
पलटती है तथा अनिच्छुक पाठक की तरह पढ़ने लगती है। ज्यों-ज्यों वह उपन्यास
को आगे पढ़ती
जाती है उपन्यास उसे अपनी लपेट में ले लेता है और वह पूरा उपन्यास पढ़
डालती है। अनूप द्वारा लिखे उपन्यास को पढ़कर गोपा का परिचय जीवन के उस
पक्ष से होता है जो
अब तक उसके लिए नितांत अपरिचित रहा है। यह उपन्यास मजदूरों की रोजमर्रा
जिंदगी तथा पूंजीपतियों द्वारा उनके शोषण के बारे में है। उपन्यास पढ़ लेने
के बाद गोपा,
गुप्त रूप से मजदूरों की सभाओं में भी जाने लगती है।
इस बीच राजेंद्रनाथ, अनूप का उपन्यास अपने नाम से छपवा लेता है, और उसकी
ख्याति एक पूंजीपति तथा एक विचारक लेखक के रूप में फैल जाती है। गोपा अपने
भाई के इस
कुकृत्य को जान लेने के बाद उससे घृणा करने लगती है। एक दिन जब गोपा घर पर
है तब वह राजेंद्रनाथ को टेलीफोन पर बातें करते सुनती है। राजेंद्रनाथ
मजदूरों की एक
सभा को भंग करने के आदेश दे रहा है। भले ही हिंसा का सहारा क्यों न लेना
पड़े। इस सभा में अनूप भाषण दे रहा है। गोपा को सभास्थल पर पहुँचने में
थोड़ी देर हो
जाती है। राजेंद्रनाथ अपना काम करवा चुका है। सभा बिखर चुकी है। अनूप घायल
होकर अचेतावस्था में लहूलुहान पड़ा है।
गोपा के पीछे-पीछे ही राजेंद्रनाथ भी पहुँच जाता है और अपनी बहन को घसीटकर
घर ले आता है। गोपा का मजदूरों के प्रति प्रेम तथा अनूप से लगाव जगजाहिर
हो जाता है।
अगले दिन अखबारों में पूंजीपति की बहन तथा बेटी की मजदूरों से सहानुभूति
के समाचार के लंबे विवरण छपते हैं। गोपा का भाई और पिता उसके समझाने का
प्रयत्न करते
हैं। गोपा के न मानने पर वे उसे एक कमरे में बंद कर देते हैं। इन सब
घटनाओं से गोपा का अनूप के साथ रहने का निश्चय दृढ़ होता जाता है। अगले दिन
जब अनूप इस शहर
को छोड़कर दूसरी जगह जा रहा है तब गोपा भी उसी के साथ चल रही है।
बलराज साहनी ने अपनी फिल्मी आत्मकथा में लिखा है, 'उस जमाने में बंगाल में
बिमल राय 'हमराही' बना रहे थे, जिसमें पूंजीवादी व्यवस्था के प्रति
व्यंग्य कूट-कूट कर
भरा हुआ था। पर बिमल राय अंत तक यथार्थवाद को निभा पाने में सफल नहीं हो
पाए थे। 'हमराही' के हीरो हीरोइन भी, जैसा कि न्यू थिएटर्स की फिल्मों में
प्रायः हुआ
करता था, अंतिम दृश्य में दूर क्षितिज की ओर जाते हुए दिखाई देते हैं,
मानो संसार की समस्याओं का हल किस्मत पर छोड़ दिया गया हो।'
बिमल राय द्वारा निर्देशित अगली फिल्म 'परिणीता' थी। शरतचंद्र चटर्जी के
उपन्यास पर आधारित इस फिल्म में अशोक कुमार तथा मीना कुमारी ने अभिनय किया
था। इस फिल्म
के संवाद नबेंदू घोष ने लिखे थे। एक बैंक क्लर्क गुरूचरण अपने कई बच्चों
के साथ रहता है। उसके ही बच्चों के साथ उसकी भांजी ललिता भी पल रही है।
ललिता एक होशियार
और सुघड़ लड़की है लेकिन गुरूचरण उसका विवाह करने की चिंता में डूबा रहता
है, क्योंकि गुरूचरण का पुश्तैनी मकान उसके पड़ोसी नवीनचंद्र के पास गिरवी
पड़ा है।
नवीनचंद्र तथा गुरूचरण के परिवार आपस में स्नेह तथा सौहार्द्र के साथ
अच्छे पड़ोसियों की तरह रहते हैं। ललिता भी नवीनचंद्र की पत्नी के पास बनी
रहती है और घर के
काम-काज में भी हाथ बँटा देती है। ललिता का एक काम नवीनचंद्र के पुत्र
शेखर के कमरे को ठीक-ठाक रखना भी है। शेखर को वह अपना दोस्त मानती है और
वक्त जरूरत उसके
बटुए से पैसे भी निकाल लेती है। ललिता का एक अन्य परिवार में यानी मनोरमा
के घर भी आना-जाना है। मनोरमा के घर वह खाली समय में ताश खेलने जाती है।
मनोरमा का एक
भाई है गिरिन। एक दिन मनोरमा का परिवार पिकनिक पर जाने तथा दिन भर घर से
बाहर घूमने की योजना बनाता है। जब यह समाचार शेखर को मिलता है तब वह
उद्वेलित हो उठता
है। शेखर की परेशानी के कारण का पता चलते ही ललिता मनोरमा के परिवार के
साथ बाहर जाने से इनकार कर देती है। इन्हीं क्षणों में शेखर यह महसूस कर
पाता है कि ललिता
की निकटता अब प्यार में बदल चुकी है।
नवीनचंद्र अपने देनदार गुरूचरण से कर्ज की रकम जल्दी चुका देने का आग्रह
करता है। गुरूचरण के घर गिरिन अब ज्यादा आने-जाने लगा है। गुरूचरण एक दिन
नवीनचंद्र का
ऋण चुकाकर मकान छुड़ा लेता है। गुरूचरण के घर में विवाह का आयोजन हो रहा
है। विवाह की तैयारियाँ देखकर शेखर समझता है कि गिरिन का विवाह ललिता से हो
गया है।
वास्तव में गिरिन ने गुरूचरण की एक अन्य बेटी से विवाह किया है। ललिता
स्वयं को शेखर की वाग्दत्ता मानती है। जैसे ही शेखर पर यह भेद खुलता है वह
तुरंत ललिता को
अपनी माँ के पास ले जाता है ताकि वह अपनी भावी पुत्रवधू को आशीर्वाद दे
सके।
अपनी अगली फिल्म 'दो बीघा जमीन' में बिमल राय ने सामाजिक विषमता को
दर्शाने वाला कथ्य चुना था। यही एकमात्र फिल्म है जो 'हमराही'की परंपरा में
आती है। 'दो बीघा
जमीन' में हम शरतचंद्र के औपन्यासिक पात्रों की मध्यवर्गीय दुनिया से
निकलकर एक किसान की समस्याओं को देखने समझने का अवसर पाते हैं। 'दो बीघा
जमीन' को देखकर एक
अमेरिकी आलोचक ने कहा था कि भारत किसी अन्य प्रकार से न सही लेकिन
राजनीतिक दृष्टि से एक नव स्वतंत्र देश है। इस राष्ट्र का एक फिल्मकार अपने
देश के आर्थिक
विकास को इस क्रूर निराश दृष्टि से देखता है, यह बड़ी अजीब बात है।
'दो बीघा जमीन' की कहानी सलिल चौधरी, पटकथा ऋषिकेश मुखर्जी और गीत
शैलेंद्र ने लिखे थे। शायद यह क्रूर सी दिखने वाली फिल्म बिमल राय ही बना
सकते थे जिन्होंने
1941-42 में 'हमराही पर काम किया था इसी कारण बीते दस वर्षों में भारत ने
विकास की जो दिशा ग्रहण की थी, उसकी विवेचना कर पाने में समर्थ थे।
'दो बीघा जमीन' एक ऐसे किसान की कहानी है जो गाँव का सबसे सुखी किसान है,
क्योंकि वह खुदकाश्त है। किसी की जमीन पर मजदूरी नहीं करता लेकिन जमींदार
गाँव की सारी
जमीन एक उद्योगपति को बेच देना चाहता है। इसमें शंभू की 'दो बीघा जमीन'
बाधा बनती है। जमींदार शंभू को बुलाकर बताता है कि उस पर दो सौ पैंतीस
रुपये का कर्ज है
जो उसे कल तक चुका देना चाहिए। लेकिन शंभू को अदालत से तीन माह का समय मिल
जाता है।
शंभू अपने बेटे कन्हैया को साथ लेकर और अपनी पत्नी पार्वती को गाँव में ही
छोड़कर पैसे कमाने के लिए, कलकत्ता चला आता है। पित्रा पुत्र दोनों कड़ी
मेहनत करते
हैं, चोरी करने या न करने के अंतर्द्वंद्व के शिकार होते हैं, अस्वस्थ
होते हैं, लेकिन अपने काम में जुटे रहते हैं। इन प्रसंगों में बिमल राय ने
कलकत्ता शहर के
चरित्र को उजागर किया है। सन 1956 में जब वेनिस फिल्म समारोह में यह फिल्म
दिखाई गई तो पश्चिमी दर्शक कलकत्ता शहर को देखकर चकित हो गए। एक अमेरिकी
आलोचक ने अपने
लेख में भारत की इस खूबी का वर्णन किया है कि जहाँ शहर की सड़कों पर,आ जा
रही कारों के बीच, गाएँ और भैसें भी आती-जाती रहती हैं।
दरअसल 'दो बीघा जमीन' में पहली बार एक शहर, कथा को आगे बढ़ाने का बहाना भर
बनकर नहीं, बल्कि अपनी अस्मिता के साथ सिनेमा के पर्दे पर उपस्थित हुआ था।
इस परिवर्तन
को भी कई लोगों ने महसूस किया। सुप्रसिद्ध फिल्म समीक्षक इकबाल मसूद ने
अपने लेख, 'द फिफ्टीज, द सिटी : पैराडाइज एंड इनफर्नों' में लिखा था, 'बिमल
राय की 'दो
बीघा जमीन' का कलकत्ता हिंदी के लोकप्रिय सिनेमा में दिखाई दिया पहला
उल्लेखनीय शहर भी है। यह उजड़े हुए गैर-बंगाली किसान की आँखों से देखा गया
कलकत्ता है, जो
इस शहर में पैसे कमाने तथा पूंजीपति जमींदार से अपनी जमीन छुड़वाने आया
है। यह फुटपाथों और काम के बोझ से थक गए रिक्शा वालों का कलकत्ता है। बिमल
राय की यह
फिल्म शहर को अस्थायी मजदूर तथा सर्वहारा के दृष्टिकोण से देखने का प्रयास
करती है। ऐसी कोशिशें सिनेमा में बहुत कम हुई हैं।'
शरतचंद्र के उपन्यास 'बिराज-बहू' पर आधारित फिल्म में बिमल राय ने नायिका
के व्यक्तित्व को उभारने का सफल प्रयत्न किया। बिराज एक गरीब परिवार की बहू
है। वह
मिट्टी के खिलौने बनाकर परिवार की आय में अपनी ओर से भी योगदान देती है।
बिराज न केवल सर्वगुण संपन्न है बल्कि वह बहुत सुंदर भी है। इसी सुंदरता पर
गाँव का
जमींदार रीझ जाता है और उसका अपहरण कर लेता है। इस विषय को कई फिल्मकारों
ने अपनी तरह से छुआ है। इन कथाओं में स्त्री निरपराध होते हुए भी दोषी मानी
जाती है और
इस की सजा उसे अपने प्राण देकर ही चुकानी पड़ती है।
'बिराज बहू' में नीलांबर और पीतांबर की पत्नियों के सौहार्द्र को बिमल राय
ने लगन से फिल्माया है। भले ही दोनों स्त्रियाँ शरीर से घर को बाँटने वाली
दीवार को
पार नहीं कर सकतीं। उनका स्नेह इस दीवार के अस्तित्व को मिटा देता है।
फिल्मांकन में उनका आपसी स्नेह सशक्त होकर उभरता है।
'बिराज बहू' फिल्म बीसवीं शताब्दी के आरंभिक वर्षों के ग्रामीण जीवन,
संयुक्त परिवार और पति-पत्नी संबंधों का प्रमाणिक चित्र प्रस्तुत करती है।
उस समाज में यह
संभव था कि कोई स्त्री एक बुरे पुरुष को डाँट सकती थी और वह पुरुष
प्रत्युत्तर न देकर चुप रहता था। बिराज बहू ने जिस बात पर जमींदार को
डाँटा, जब बिराज बहू का
पति यह कहता है कि वह जमींदार से यह शिकायत करेगा कि वह दिन भर वहाँ क्यों
खड़ा रहता है जहाँ से गाँव की स्त्रियाँ पानी लाती है। तब वह उसे बरज देती
है क्योंकि
वह जानती है कि यहाँ पुरुषों का अहंकार आड़े आ जाएगा। कुतर्क से बचने के
लिए यहाँ यह स्पष्ट करना उचित होगा कि कोई भी समीक्षक यह नहीं कह रहा कि
'बिराज बहू' का
गाँव आदर्श गाँव है या उस जीवन और समाज में अनेक बुराइयाँ नहीं थीं।
यह सही है कि आज हम उस जीवन पद्धति से बहुत आगे निकल आए हैं। 'बिराज बहू'
में राम-सीता के मिथक द्वारा कथा कही गई है। उपन्यासकार शरतचंद्र की सोच इस
फिल्म को
शक्ति भी प्रदान करती है और कमजोर भी बनाती है। यही क्या कम है कि यह
फिल्म देखकर 'पाथेर-पांचाली' का स्मरण हो आता है। यह भी सच है कि बिमल राय
उस स्तर तक कहीं
पहुँच पाते।
सन 1955 में बनी बिमल राय की 'देवदास' सन 1935 में बनी प्रमथेश चंद्र
बरुआ, सहगल और जमना की 'देवदास' की तुलना में वाकई बेहतर और चुस्त फिल्म
थी। इस फिल्म से
जुड़े सभी लोगों ने इसे एक चुनौती के रूप में स्वीकार किया था। इस फिल्म
से हिंदी सिनेमा की उस समय की बहुत-सी दिग्गज प्रतिभाएँ जुड़ी थीं। दिलीप
कुमार देवदास
बने थे, पार्वती की भूमिका सुचित्रा सेन ने की थी, वेश्या चँद्रमुखी के
पात्र को वैजयंतीमाला ने और देवदास के कलकत्ता के मित्र चुन्नीलाल की
भूमिका को मोतीलाल
ने जीवंत कर दिया था। गीत साहिर लुधियानवी ने लिखे थे, संगीत सचिन देव
बर्मन का था। पटकथा तथा संवाद नबेंदू घोष और राजेंद्र सिंह बेदी के थे।
'देवदास' की अपार सफलता के कारणों से बिमल राय भली भाँति परिचित थे। वे
जानते थे कि फिल्म की तुलना फिल्म से ही की जाती है। शरतचंद्र के उपन्यास
'देवदास' को
पढ़ने के बाद फिल्म देखने वाले लोग इक्का दुक्का ही होंगे। बिमल राय ने
कहा था, 'शरतचंद्र' के उपन्यासों पर फिल्म बनाना मेरे लिए सर्वाधिक
आनंददायी कर्म है।
हालाँकि किसी भी साहित्यिक उपन्यास पर फिल्म बनाना तनी हुई रस्सी पर चलने
के समान है। जब भी फिल्म का किसी उपन्यास में फिल्मांकन की जरूरतों के
अनुसार बहुत छोटी
सी छूट भी लेता है तो साहित्य प्रेमी कराह उठते हैं। मुझे शरतचंद्र के
उपन्यासों पर तीन फिल्में 'बिराज बहू', 'परिणीता' और 'देवदास' बनाने का
अवसर मिला है।
'शरतचंद्र के उपन्यासों के प्रत्येक पात्र के अनेक पाठ संभव हैं। पात्र को
पाठक अपने नजरिए से व्याख्यायित करता है। इसलिए यह अस्वाभाविक नहीं है कि
पाठक,
फिल्मकार की व्याख्या से सहमत न हो लेकिन फिल्मकार को उसकी अपनी व्याख्या
के लिए दोषी ठहराना क्या उचित होगा?
'दूसरी ओर एक बुरी परिपाटी यह भी है कि शरतचंद्र के उपन्यासों पर बनी
फिल्मों को तुलना उससे पूर्व बनी फिल्मों ही के साथ की जाती है। फिल्म
पत्रकारों और फिल्म
समीक्षकों की टिप्पणियाँ इसी प्रकार की होती हैं। बहुत ही कम प्रबुद्ध
दर्शक ऐसे होंगे जो शरतचंद्र का उपन्यास पढ़कर, उस पर मनन करने के बाद, उस
उपन्यास पर
आधारित फिल्म देखें और सीधे उपन्यास के साथ फिल्म को जोड़ें। तमाम
कठिनाइयों के बाद भी यदि मुझे शरतचंद्र की एक और उपन्यास पर फिल्म बनाने का
अवसर मिलेगा तो यह
मेरा सौभाग्य होगा।'
यह बात सही है कि 'बिराज बहू' के पति के पात्र को कई कोणों से देखा जा
सकता है वह अपनी पत्नी से बेहद प्यार करने वाला उसका अत्यंत आदर करने वाला
पति है लेकिन
व्यावहारिक जीवन में असफल और (यदि आधुनिक दृष्टि से परखा जाए तो) एक
निकम्मा पुरुष है आदि-आदि। यही अनेकों कोण संवेदनशील समीक्षक या पाठक के
समक्ष व्याख्या की
चुनौतियाँ प्रस्तुत करते हैं। सबसे आसान काम है कि 'बिराज बहू' को दांपत्य
जीवन की सीधी-सरल-अनउलझी कथा कहकर खारिज कर दिया जाए।
'यहूदी' फिल्म की पटकथा नबेंदू घोष की थी और संवाद वजाहत मिर्जा के। आगा
हश्र कश्मीरी की कहानी के अनुसार मोजेस ने क्रोधित होकर यहूदियों को
अविश्वास का श्राप
दिया था, उसी दिन से यहूदी सारी मानवजाति की घृणा और उपेक्षा के पात्र
हैं। शापित यहूदी जगह-जगह भटक रहे हैं। वे किसी भी देश के नागरिक नहीं हैं।
एजरा एक यहूदी व्यापारी है। रोम में वह प्रतिष्ठित है लेकिन एक दिन जब रोम
का राजा ब्रूटस रास्ते से जा रहा है तभी एजरा के पुत्र द्वारा अनजाने में
एक ईंट गिर
जाती है। ब्रूटस आदेश देता है कि यह हमला किसने किया फलतः एजरा के बेटे को
पकड़ लिया जाता है और मौत के घाट उतार दिया जाता है। इधर एजरा का नौकर
इलियास (तिवारी)
रात के अंधेरे में ब्रूटस (नासिर हुसैन) की बेटी को उठा लाता है। एजरा को
इस बालिका में अपने पुत्र की प्रतिछाया दिख पड़ती है। पंद्रह वर्ष गुजर
जाते हैं। इस
बीच रोमन सैनिक यहूदियों पर अत्याचार करते रहे हैं। अब हान्ना (मीना
कुमारी) बीस वर्ष की है। एक दिन रोम का राजकुमार घर लौट रहा है उसका रथ उलट
जाता है और वह
लुढ़कता हुआ नीचे गिर पड़ता है। होश में आने पर वह हान्ना को देखता है।
शहजादा मारकस - 'कहाँ हूँ मैं - जमीन पर या जन्नत में (रोमन राजकुमार)
हान्ना - मुँह बंद रखिए आगे ही कीचड़ लगा रखा है उस पर....'
(यहूदन)
अब मारकस यहूदी का वेश धरकर हान्ना के घर पहुँच जाता है। एजरा उसे अपने शिष्य की भाँति अपना लेता है। यहाँ मारकस का नाम मंशिया है।
यहाँ यह महत्वपूर्ण है कि मारकस मंशिया होना चाहता है या मारकस ही रहना
चाहता है। मारकस के बदले हुए व्यवहार से उसकी मंगेतर ऑक्टेविया भी चिंतित
है। एक दिन
ऑक्टेविया यहूदी व्यापारी एजरा के घर हीरे खरीदने आती है उस समय मारकस
वहाँ मंशिया के रूप में उपस्थित है। एजरा इन शाही मेहमानों को हीरे-जवाहरात
दिखाने का आदेश
देकर चला जाता है।
मारकस अपना चेहरा छुपा रहा है। यह एक छोटा सा हास्य दृश्य तो है ही, इसमें
त्रासदी भी है। मारकस अपनी मंगेतर से आँखें चुरा रहा है। यानी वह अपना
सुरक्षित महल
छोड़कर इस असुरक्षित घर को अपना ठिकाना बनाना चाह रहा है। अपनी पहचान
संदिग्ध बना रहा है। क्योंकि इस घर में यदि वह 'पहचान' लिया गया तो अजनबी
हो जाएगा। दूसरी
ओर आक्टेविया के सम्मुख बेजान हीरे बिखरे पड़े हैं लेकिन वह अपनी तेज नजर
और सहज मेधा से जान लेती है कि असली हीरा उसके हाथ से छूटकर हान्ना की झोली
में जा गिरा
है।
सन 1959 में उन्होंने 'सुजाता' का निर्माण और निर्देशन किया। उपेंद्रनाथ
चौधरी और उनकी पत्नी चारु, एक अछूत लड़की सुजाता को गोद ले लेते हैं।
सुजाता के माता
पिता एक महामारी के शिकार हो चुके हैं। 'सुजाता' इसी परिवार में पलती और
बड़ी होती है लेकिन उसके अछूत होने की पहचान इस परिवार को बेचैन बनाए रखती
है। चारु और
उपेंद्रनाथ की एक अपनी बेटी रमा भी है। रमा और सुजाता दोनों ही केवल बहनों
की तरह ही नहीं बल्कि दो बहुत अच्छे मित्रों की तरह रहती हैं। सुजाता का
मधुर व्यवहार
ही उसे इस घर में टिकाए रखता है, वरना चौधरी परिवार तो कई बार यह प्रयत्न
कर चुका है कि सुजाता को किसी भी तरह इस घर से निकाल दिया जाए।
चारु की एक सहेली गिरिबाला भी, चारु को यह चेतावनी दे चुकी है कि घर में
एक अछूत को घर के एक सदस्य की तरह ही रखने के गंभीर परिणाम हो सकते हैं।
गिरिबाला और
चौधरी परिवार दोनों ही इस बात पर एकमत हैं कि रमा का विवाह गिरिबाला के
पोते अधीर से हो जाए लेकिन अधीर स्वयं सुजाता को पसंद करता है। समस्या विकट
होती जाती है।
दोनों परिवारों के सदस्यों में सुजाता के प्रति कड़ुवाहट बढ़ती जाती है।
इधर अधीर और सुजाता एक दूसरे के साथ जीने और मरने का निश्चय कर लेते हैं।
एक दिन चारु
सीढ़ियों से फिसलकर गिर जाती है और बुरी तरह घायल हो जाती है। केवल सुजाता
का खून ही उसे बचा सकता है और सुजाता अपना रक्त देती है। चारु और सुजाता के
रक्त वर्ग
की समानता ही चारु में यह चेतना जगाती है कि छूत-अछूत की समस्या को मानव
ने अपने क्षुद्र स्वार्थो की पूर्ति हेतु निर्मित किया है। मानवीय अस्तित्व
इस प्रकार के
भेद स्वीकार नहीं करता।
सन 1960 में निर्देशित 'परख' में बिमल राय एक अछूता विषय उठाते हैं। 'परख'
स्वतंत्र भारत के तीसरे आम चुनाव से पहले प्रदर्शित हुई थी। यह फिल्म भारत
की चुनावी
राजनीति पर तीखा व्यंग्य करती है। राधानगर नाम के छोटे से गाँव के
पोस्टमास्टर को पाँच लाख रुपये का चेक मिलता है। चैक पर जे.सी. राय के
हस्ताक्षर हैं और यह
निर्देश संलग्न है कि इस धनराशि को गाँव के सब से अच्छे आदमी को दे दिया
जाए। पोस्टमास्टर की पूरी रात बेचैनी में कटती है। सुबह वह गाँव के पाँच
ऐसे लोगों को
बुलाता है, जो गाँव के प्रभावशाली व्यक्ति माने जाते हैं। जमींदार तांडव
तरफदार, महापंडित तर्क अलंकार, गाँव के मजदूरों के नेता हरिहर कुंज, गाँव
के स्कूल का
मास्टर रजत और गाँव के डॉक्टर हरी-इन्हीं पांचों में से सर्वोत्तम का
चुनाव किया जाना है।
तुरंत चुनावी राजनीति और सरगर्मियाँ शुरू हो जाती हैं। शांत गाँव तरह-तरह
के शोर शराबे में डूब जाता है। जमींदार ढोल ताशे बजाकर यह घोषणा करवा देता
है कि उसने
सब कर्जे माफ कर दिए हैं। साहूकार एक कुशल इंजीनियर को बुलवाता है तथा
तुरंत गाँव में नलकूपों की खुदाई का काम शुरू करवा देता है। मास्टर रजत
पूर्ववत गाँव की
सेवा में लगा रहता है और गाँव वालों के छोटे-मोटे काम करता रहता है।
डॉक्टर यह घोषणा करता है कि उस के दवाखाने पर दवा निःशुल्क मिलेगी और
पंडितजी भविष्यवाणी
करते हैं कि इस गाँव पर लक्ष्मी की अपार कृपा होने वाली है।
पूरे गाँव के लोग इन खानदानी शोषकों के अचानक दयावान हो जाने पर चकित हो
उठते हैं। इन खजानों के खुल जाने पर भी मास्टर रजत ही अपनी निस्वार्थ सेवा
के कारण गाँव
का लोकप्रिय व्यक्ति बना रहता है। पंडित तथा साहूकार मिलकर मास्टर रजत को
बदनाम करने का कुचक्र रचते हैं और अगली रात को कुछ लोग युवक रजत तथा
पोस्टमास्टर की
लड़की सीमा को साथ-साथ देखते हैं। गाँव का पोस्टमैन हरधन इन सब घटनाओं पर
निगरानी रखता है। अंततः यह फैसला हो जाता है कि गाँव का श्रेष्ठ व्यक्ति
कौन है। हरधन
अपनी वास्तविक पहचान बताता है और पता चलता है कि वही जे.सी. राय है। पाँच
लाख रुपये रजत और सीमा को दे दिए जाते हैं।
सन 1963 में बिमल राय ने एक अत्यंत उत्तम कृति 'बंदिनी' का निर्माण एवं
निर्देशन किया। 'बंदिनी' इस से पूर्व बिमल राय द्वारा निर्देशित'परिणीता'
का ही तार्किक
विस्तार है। यहीं यह भी दिखाई देता है कि 'परिणीता' से 'बंदिनी' तक
पहुँचने में बिमल राय की सिनेमाई भाषा पर पकड़ कितनी मजबूत हुई है।
'बंदिनी' एक असाधारण फिल्म
है। 'बंदिनी' की कहानी तो बहाना भर है। यह फिल्म सिनेमा की भाषा में रची
गई एक सुंदर कविता है। कल्याणी नाम की युवती अपने गाँव में कैद हो कर आए एक
क्रांतिकारी
स्वतंत्रता सेनानी विकास घोष से प्यार करने लगती है। विकास घोष और कल्याणी
का प्यार बढ़ता है और जब विकास घोष को दूसरी जेल में ले जाया जाता है तो
जाने से पहले
विकास घोष, कल्याणी को अपनी पत्नी मानकर स्वीकार करता है।
पूरा गाँव जानता है कि कल्याणी अब विकास घोष की पत्नी है। लेकिन वर्षों
गुजर जाते हैं और विकास घोष की कोई खबर ही नहीं आती। एक दिन यह खबर मिलती
है कि स्वतंत्र
होने के बाद विकास घोष ने विवाह कर लिया है और दूसरे शहर में रहने लगा है।
गाँव वाले कल्याणी तथा उस के पिता का मजाक उड़ाने लगते हैं। परेशान होकर
कल्याणी अपना
गाँव और घर छोड़ देती है। अपने ही विचारों में कैद, अपनी ही दुविधा में
उलझी कल्याणी शहर पहुँचकर एक दुर्घटना में फँस जाती है और कैदी बन जेल
पहुँच जाती है। सभी
इस सीधी सरल लड़की को देखकर चकित होते हैं। जेल का डॉक्टर देवेंद्र तो
कल्याणी से प्यार करने लगता है लेकिन कल्याणी सिर्फ एक सवाल के घेरे में
कैद है, क्या अब
भी वह विकास की पत्नी है या नहीं यदि विकास ने अपना वचन तोड़ दिया है तो
क्या वह भी इस बंधन से मुक्त हो गई है कैद से तो वह अपने अच्छे व्यवहार के
कारण छूट जाती
है लेकिन इस सवाल की बंदिनी बनी रहती है। बिमल राय अपनी इस फिल्म में
संकेतों द्वारा गहनतम मनोभावनाओं को अभिव्यक्ति देने में सफल हो सके हैं
'बंदिनी' बिमल राय
की सर्वोत्कृष्ट कृति है।
बिमल राय की फिल्मों पर उसी स्तर का या बेहतर समीक्षाकर्म संभव है जैसा कि
शेखर एक जीवनी और कामायनी पर हुआ है। हिंदी की तथा विश्व की क्लासिक
फिल्मों के
अध्ययन-अध्यापन से नई रचनात्मकता का विकास संभव है। आज साधनों का अभाव
नहीं है लेकिन कहीं इच्छा शक्ति की कमी है। नई विधा पर अध्ययन आरंभ करने
में अध्यापकीय
संकोच भी एक बाधा है। आशा है इन बाधाओं से पार पाया जा सकेगा।
मणि कौल की अधिकतर फिल्में हिंदी की साहित्यिक कृतियों पर ही
केंद्रित/आधारित हैं। 'सतह से उठता आदमी' (मुक्तिबोध) 'उसकी रोटी' (मोहन
राकेश) और 'नौकर की कमीज'
(विनोद कुमार शुक्ल) का ध्यान इस सिलसिले में सहज ही हो आता है। फिर
'दुविधा' (विजयदान देथा) भी है - राजस्थानी/हिंदी में। इस तथ्य के स्मरण के
साथ यह बात भी
सहज ही ध्यान में आती है कि वह भाषा से संबंधित या उसको सोचता हुआ सिनेमा
भर नहीं है - वह भाषा को सोचता हुआ सिनेमा भी है। इस नाते मणि कौल का
सिनेमा हिंदी में
बनी हुई फिल्मों से बहुत अलग हैः फिर वे चाहे बॉलीबुड की फिल्में हो या
समांतर सिनेमा की फिल्में।
यह तो सर्वज्ञात है कि कोई भी भाषा किसी अन्य माध्यम/विधा में व्यवहृत
होते ही, एक अलग प्रकार की भूमिका में उतर जाती है, फिर वह चाहे
कविता-कहानी-नाटक-उपन्यास-निबंध में बरती जा रही हो, या रंगमंच, सिनेमा और
संगीत में। पर, यह भी होता ही है कि उसकी यह भूमिका कभी-कभी इतनी सघन,
तीव्र, गहरी,
एकाग्र और मौलिक हो सकती है कि उस पर अलग से सोचने की जरूरत महसूस होती
है। मणि कौल की फिल्मों में हिंदी की भूमिका पर, भाषा की भूमिका पर, अलग से
सोचने और
चर्चा करने की ऐसी ही जरूरत सचमुच महसूस होती है, क्योंकि वह सिने भाषा
में, सिने माध्यम में, भाषा का व्यवहार कुछ ऐसा सोचने और खोजने के लिए किया
जा रहा है जो
किसी मानवीय अर्थ और बोध को छवियों के साथ मिलकर बहुत गहरा कर रहा हो।
जब उसकी 'रोटी' फिल्म रिलीज हुई थी तो उसे यह कहकर बहुतों के द्वारा कोसा
गया था कि वह अत्यंत शिथिल और उबाऊ है, कि उसके'विलंबित लय' वाले संवाद
अत्यंत असहज
लगते हैं। तब इस बात को भुला दिया गया था कि संवादों की इस प्रकार की
अदायगी का अपना अर्थ और मर्म है। दुभार्ग्यवश मणि कौल के सिनेमा को लेकर यह
बात इतनी बार
दुहराई गई कि आम दर्शक का ध्यान तो उसकी ओर से कटता ही गया, जिन्हें हम
प्रबुद्ध दर्शक कहेंगे वे भी उनके सिनेमा को लेकर उस तरह उत्साहित नहीं
हुए, जिस तरह कि
होना चाहिए। उदयन वाजपेयी की एक पुस्तक 'अनेक आकाश' जरूर एक अपवाद की तरह
सामने आई, और कुछ कवियों-लेखकों सिने-प्रेमियों की वे टिप्पणियाँ भी जो मणि
कौल के
सिनेमा को 'खारिज' करने की जगह उसकी खोज-परक यात्रा को समझने का यत्न करती
हुई मालूम पड़ीं।
यह भी कम दुर्भाग्य की बात नहीं थी कि मणि कौल के सिनेमा को लेकर यह धारणा
भी बनी, बनाई गई - और प्रचारित भी हुई - कि उनका सिनेमा पश्चिम के
फिल्मकारों से
प्रेरित सिनेमा है। जबकि स्थिति यह है कि वह फेलिनी, इंगमार बर्गमैन,
फ्रांसुआ त्रुफो, गोदार आदि-आदि के सिनेमा से कहीं रोल नहीं खाता। हाँ,
उसमें ऋत्विक घटक के
सिनेमा की 'प्रतिध्वनियाँ' अवश्य हैं, जो मणि कौल के 'गुरू' और पथ
प्रदर्शक थे। अच्छी बात यह भी है कि मणि 'प्रतिध्वनियों' पर ही नहीं रुके,
अपनी तरह की
सिने-भाषा की खोज में लगे रहे। प्रसंगवश, यहाँ यह भी याद करने की जरूरत है
कि मणि कौल का संगीत से गहरा संबंध था और उन्होंने स्वयं ध्रुपद सीखा, और
अंनतर कुछ
देशी-विदेशी शिष्यों को सिखाया भी। यह स्वाभाविक ही था कि सिनेमा में भी
वह शब्द-भाषा को सांगीतिक रचना का-सा आधार देकर, भाषा-मर्म की कई तहों को
टटोलते-खँगालते। 'सिद्धेश्वरी देवी' जैसी वृत्तात्मक फिल्म में मणि कौल ने
बनारस के घाटों, गंगा, और इमारतों के भीतर-बाहर के दृश्यों को जिस तरह
फिल्माया है, और
शब्दों की बारी आने पर, इन सबके बीच उन्हें तैयारा-गुंजाया है, उसका मर्म
फिल्म देखते हुए ही समझा जा सकता है - उसे लिखकर बताना बहुत मुश्किल ही है।
सो, वह यत्न
में नहीं करूँगा। अपने को एक बार यह-याद जरूर दिलाऊँगा कि अगली बार जब भी
'सिद्धेश्वरी' को देखने का अवसर आए तो उसमें शब्द-व्यवहार को लेकर अपनाए गए
दृष्टिकोण
को लेकर और सजग रहूँ। स्मृति के आधार पर - फिल्म की स्मृति के आधार पर -
अभी तो एक चीज का ध्यान और गहरा रहा है कि मणि ने अपनी फिल्मों में शब्द को
'प्रहरों' के
आधार पर जिस तरह बरता है, उस पर भी ध्यान जाना ही चाहिए। कोई पहर रात का
है, दिन दुपहर-शाम का है, और वह क्या करूँ ... क्या करूँ ... कह' रहा है और
शब्द-माध्यम
से (छवियों के बीच) उस पर और क्या कसर या 'कहलवाया' जा सकता है, इस पर
उनकी पकड़ अचूक रहती है।
यह भी गौर करने वाली बात है कि मणि कौल की जिन फिल्मों में, शब्द-व्यवहार
गौण है - जैसे कि 'माटी मानस' में, वहाँ भी छवियों को फिल्मकार के द्वारा
भाषा में ही
सोचा जा रहा है - 'माटी मानस', दृश्यों का, माटी निर्मित चीजों का,
फिल्मांकन मात्र नहीं है, पर दृश्य कुछ कह रहा है, और उस दृश्य के पीछे से
भाषा मानों बिन
बोले भी, बोल रही है, हमें गहरे में स्पर्श भी कर रही है। यह एक 'जादू'
है, जिसे मणि ने लाघव के साथ साधा है। अगर ऐसा न होता, हर दृश्य एक 'क्या'
भी न करूँ रहा
होता, तो 'माटी मानस' जैसा लंबा वृत्त-चित्र, एक फीचर फिल्म का-सा आनंद
हमें न दे पाता। 'सतह से उठता आदमी' ही भाषा के 'अचूक' और नितांत नए तेवरों
के कारण
अपूर्व है ही।
मणि की अपनी भाषा तो कश्मीरी थी, पर, जब हिंदी को उन्होंने बरता तो उसमें
इतना गहरे पैठकर बरता, कि उस पर तो कोई अलग से भी'अध्ययन' कर सकता है। मैं
यह टिप्पणी,
अपनी बेटी वर्षिता के यहाँ, त्रांदाइम (नार्वे) में बैठकर लिख रहा हूँ,
जहाँ फिलहाल इस बात का अवकाश नहीं है कि मैं मणि कौल की कुछ फिल्मों को
पुनः देखता, और
कुछ अधिक संदर्भ-सामग्री जुटाता। मणि पर लिखे गए लेखों और टिप्पणियों की
प्रतिलिपियाँ भी नहीं हैं, जो भारत में घर पर हैं। पूरी टिप्पणी स्मृति के
आधार पर लिखी
है, और उन चीजों के आधार पर, जो मन में बसी हुई हैं - मणि के सिनेमा को
लेकर।
और कह सकता हूँ कि 'स्मृतियाँ' कई हैं - सिद्धेश्वरी देवी के फिल्मांकन के
बीच मीता वशिष्ठ का स्वर जिस तरह तरंगित होकर एक-एक शब्द को ध्वनित करता
है, और स्वयं
अभिनेत्री की देह जिस तरह जल की सतह के भीतर-ऊपर तरंगित होकर देह-भाषा से
भी बहुत कुछ कहती है - और देह - भाषा और शब्द भाषा, अपनी अपनी तरंगों में
अलग होते हुए,
कहीं मिल भी जाते हैं, वह अपूर्व है। शब्द भाषा से कब, कैसा, और कितना,
काम लेना है,इस पर मणि का सोच निश्चय ही एक अलग प्रभाव डालता है। छवियों के
सिलसिले में
'दुविधा' का 'गुड़ प्रसंग' ने भी मुझे बहुत आकर्षित किया था।
मणि के साथ अपनी मुलाकातों की भी कई स्मृतियाँ हैं। एक बार मणि, मैं,
चित्रकार मनजीत बाबा, और दो-एक अन्य मित्र कार से चंडीगढ़ और फिर वहाँ से
जालंधर गए थे, और
साथ ही दिल्ली लौटे थे। मणि की दृष्टि बेधक थी। वे बातें करते थे। मुखर
थे। जालंधर के रास्ते में जब हम कहीं कुछ खाने-पीने के लिए किसी ढाबे पर
रुकते थे, तो
किसी दृश्य, वस्तु, व्यक्ति, प्रसंग, पर उनकी टिप्पणी देखने-सुनने वाली
होती थी। कुछ स्मृतियाँ किसी चित्र-प्रदर्शनी को साथ-साथ देखने की भी हैं।
हम 'स्मृतियों'
के विवरणों को कुछ भूल भी जाते हैं। और बातचीत भी हूबहू कहाँ याद रहती है।
पर, स्मृति में किसी से मिलने-बातियाने' का और उस 'सुख' का एक बोध बना
रहता है। वही
बोध मणि से 'मिलने' का मन में बना हुआ है।
क्या मणि अपने सिनेमा में भी स्मृति (यों) के 'बोध' की बात ही नहीं करते,
ओर नैरेटिव के बोझ को उतारकर फेंक नहीं देते। और जब शब्द-भाषा के माध्यम से
किसी संवाद
या उच्चारण को रखते हैं तो बस स्मृति के, उसके मर्म को गहरा करने के लिए
ही रखते हैं - शब्दों का कोई अपव्यय किए बिना!
