Two films by the same director are rarely so different from each other Decline (2006), a free-flowing tale that celebrates storytelling and vivid imagination, and Dear Jassi! (2023), an unflinching tale of doomed love. Tarsem Singh Dhandwar, the Jalandhar-born and globe-trotting director of both films, however, insists that the only difference between them is that one is a fairy tale and the other is not. Speaking from Montreal, he says: “Decline It is visual and imaginary. Dear Jassi! It is visual but not imaginary.”
Both these films, made at a gap of 17 years, are in the news simultaneously. DeclineThe film, self-produced by Tarsem, is set to premiere at the 77th Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland on August 8, after which it will stream on Mubi from September 27. Dear Jassi!The film, which won the Platform Prize at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, is now looking to be screened in theatres in India. The film is produced by T-Series Films and Wakao Films.
A scene from ‘The Fall’.
Tarsem, 63, has made numerous commercials and a few music videos since the early 1990s, besides directing six narrative feature films. Thesaurus (2000), a sci-fi psychological thriller starring Jennifer Lopez. Dear Jassi!The film, which is short but heartbreaking, is about an Indo-Canadian girl who was murdered in Punjab in the year 2000 for falling in love with a poor, uneducated autorickshaw driver.
“The story came first,” said the filmmaker, who works between Canada, the US and the UK. “Before I started shooting, I decided on the style. I only shot what was necessary. I told the writer [Amit Rai] He wrote the script exactly the way I wanted it.”
true Crime
Dear Jassi!This, he suggests, is a version of real life Romeo and JulietMade in the neo-realist style of the 1950s, the film influenced Satyajit Ray. “It’s a small, personal film,” says Tarsem. “I didn’t want to show violence. The writer wondered if it would have any impact. I said it would because you would imagine your worst nightmare.”
‘Dear Jassi’ is about the caste-based murder of Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu in Punjab in the year 2000.
The film begins with a Sufi musician (Kanwar Grewal) who begins and ends the Punjabi film with a song and a narration referring to the tragic story. The singer was filmed in a single take of 18 minutes. The horrific incident happened 24 years ago. “It was a subject I knew would never be tackled in our lifetime,” says Tarsem. “I told my brother we could make a film on it now or two decades later.” He chose the latter option.
made by tarsem Decline and other movies (Immortal, 2011 – based on Greek mythology – and mirror Mirror, 2012, interpretation of snow Whiteof them) before turning to Dear Jassi!His first film shot in India. “I thought of it as a script written by Haneke and directed by an Iranian – Shirin Neshat, even Farhadi,” Tarsem says. They could divorce and make it “the end of the universe,” he says. Haneke could take the end of the universe and do the opposite, he says. “That’s how I set Dear Jassi,,
The film’s strength comes from its distinct approach to the disturbing material. The two leads are played by Pavia Sidhu, a Canadian bhangra group dancer studying law at UCLA, and debutant Yugam Sood, handpicked from a rural kabaddi ground. The film has no background score or close-ups.
Yugam Sood and Pavia Sidhu in a scene from ‘Dear Jassi’.
The story began with a phone call the girl’s mother made to the kidnappers. (She told them they could do whatever they wanted with her daughter.) Tarsem says: “In what universe is it possible to believe that a conversation like that happened? I reverse-engineered the rest of the film from that.”
nothing out of the average
Declinewhich was filmed in more than 20 countries, is a project that Tarsem loves dearly. It’s understandable. “I call it my baby. All my money is gone. But I would do it again in two seconds if I had to,” he says. “Someone thinks it’s the worst movie in the world. Some think it’s the best thing since sliced bread. When people say com c, com ka“It’s terrifying,” he says, but he also says he didn’t expect this. Decline There is so much polarization.
The story focuses on an eight-year-old Romanian immigrant girl who picks oranges in 1920s Los Angeles. She is hospitalized with a broken arm. A silent-era Hollywood stuntman, who is lying in bed in the same hospital after falling from a bridge, tells her the story of five heroes who seek revenge for the injustice done to them by an evil governor. The story, told by an adult contemplating suicide, is interpreted through the lens of the untainted imagination of an innocent and optimistic child, creating a riot of colors and exciting adventures.
Lee Pace and Catinca Untaru in ‘The Fall.’
There’s no one like Lady Gaga
Tarsem, whose work on REM’s ‘Losing My Religion’ won a Grammy, doesn’t consider himself a great music video director. “I don’t write treatments. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Give me a song and if it fits, I’ll put an emotional feel into it. Sometimes, a song comes along and I know what to do with it and I do it,” he says, admitting that his music video for Lady Gaga’s ‘911’ was “a weird one.”
Lady Gaga in her music video ‘911’.
“She got in touch during COVID-19. I like Sergei Parajanov very much. I showed her a still from a film by the Armenian director [The Colour of Pomegranates, 1969]She said she knew the image and didn’t need to look at anything else,” he recalls. “There’s no one like Lady Gaga.”
Tarsem’s next film could be another leap – like a Hindi action film. “The best part about it is that Dear Jassi!He said, “The experience of shooting in India was great. I would love to go back. Give me the right project, the right story.”
The writer is a New Delhi-based film critic.
