Manto

A film based on the celebrated writer Saadat Hasan Manto is as riveting and overwhelmingly haunting as his work. Like Manto's stories, this film never fails to give goosebumps. Blending seamlessly between the depiction of some of Manto's stories like Ten Rupees, Khol Do, Thanda Gosht and Toba Tek Singh and his life, the film adds extreme depth and an insight to Manto's thinking. Set in the pre-partition era, that is, mid 1940s and 1950s Manto transports you to that era, the life in Mumbai(then Bombay), and Lahore, Bombay film sets and coffee shops, rickety magazine offices, courts, gardens, hooded convertibles and tongas in the sepia coloured tones. The film also grasps the intellectual conversations between Manto and Ismat Chughtai (Rajshri Deshpande) well. Nawazuddin Siddiqui has embodied the character of Manto. With that I mean, he IS Manto in the film. He is backed by an equally talented cast, with his wife Safiya(Rasika Dugal), who portrays a controlled and strong demeanour, his dear friend and actor Shyam(Tahir Bhasin), and a host of talented actors in special appearances. Divided like the fonts used in the film, Siddiqui brings out the inner divide, conflict, the hidden rage, the disgust, the hurt, the inner turmoil, the helplessness and fear, the urge to write the truth along with managing his household, the continuous court appearances to perfection. The hurt and regret speaks volumes with his incessant cigarette puffs and chugging of alcohol. With memorable dialogues and truthful portrayal of the characters, this is one of the films which will talked about for years. Worth watching a 100 times. The only fault? - The film got over too soon.

Manto, the film (2018) - reflections When I was about eight, we lived in a by-lane of an erstwhile fisher's colony, Machua Toli, of Patna. My parents had to move away from the joint family we lived in there. Irreconcilable differences, you'd say in today's parlance. There were tears, seethed in anger, streaming in vulnerability that parted an address of intimacy into torn realities. That was my first sense of partition. I missed my playmates, two sons of a rickshaw puller and a housemaid, and the courtyard in that otherwise dark home where I rode my tricycle and intimidate my aunts of riding over. In our new, rented home, we lived with the strangers, with a veranda and a toilet shared with the other tenants. Soon, I learnt to play in a no man's land next to our rooms, all alone, and made up three imaginary playmates, Rakhi, Sukhi and Bhutkarua. I am amused to realise that after about five decades, I still remember those names exactly. Maybe, because they gave me company for three years, during the noons after my morning school when my mother would be tired and asleep, during the evenings my father would be working late and I would wait for him after finishing my homework. Those were my first fictional characters, protagonists or hero's friends in many roleplays I told myself, modelled after the kids I had to leave behind in that by-lane of Muchua Toli. Manto lived a partition as well, much real, bloody and unnecessary than mine. He was as helpless as I was. He realised that the people closest to him were drifting away just because he belonged to the 'other people'. The eyes of Nawaz, playing the role, reflected my torment, looking at Bombay for one last time and then, at the ship signalling to set sail for Lahore. Fortunate would be the literary readers that Manto was not eight at that time. Doomed was he that he was not eight while crossing the line. He was destined to carry the cross that forever split his being into two nations and uncountable characters wedded to his fiction. He was a rebel, or so it would seem. His nightmares, tears behind the door of a prison, anxious observation of a spider climbing up the rods and failing, then trying again, and dropping down were only for Safia to see. Safia, his friend and wife, the mortar that kept him together, was always with Manto through those human moments. She loved the animal Manto for whom the civil norms of the timid never made sense. She cared for the messiah whose only religion was truth. She knew how Manto went in and out of his stories, aimless, easy but always honest. Nandita has captured these transitions the way Manto would have felt himself. Rasika as Safia breaks down on two occasions, gets angry on one but never ceases to love, and live, Sa'saab. Flashes of potent geniuses pass before you during the 112 minutes of the film, Paresh Rawal, Javed Akhtar, Rishi Kapoor, Divya Dutta, Vinod Nagpal... they pass like the stations that Manto might have crossed during his train rides between Lahore, Amritsar and Mumbai. That was before he got scared, before he ran away, before he felt as vulnerable as the millions who ran and were not blessed to live and bleed their shame and fear on blank pages. Manto joined the exodus for his own sake, for the sake of his family that he adored. He couldn't afford to stay put. Robbed of the land where his parents and the firstborn were buried, Manto could never forgive the senile political class and a bankrupt, rushed imperial power. The people he saw vanquished, and killed, and raped, and sold around, pleaded with him to write about them. He obliged them, much as his sober psyche could take. Manto's potent words and characters ate up Nandita, Nawaz and a host of brilliant technical experts (sound, cinematography and art direction, three cheers!). The film couldn't rise over the writer. The past of Lahore of 1948 is such high definition, that sitting in the chilled auditorium (eighteen people watched the second show, I counted) in Bangalore of 2018, I could smile, laugh and be angry with Manto. Such is the permanence of Manto's works that the artistes making the cinema disappeared into an ephemeral mist. It didn't matter that the celluloid version could become a reality after six anxious years of wait and passionate hard work. His signature shone. From right to left, alive in the audacity of a pencil that preserved the Sheaffers and Parkers he never needed to use, in the letters that could make pearls feel humble, it read 'Saadat Hasan Manto'. Insaniyat zindabad. Afsana nigari zindabad.

Class movie which would take us to the pre and post Independence Day's of India. Well scripted and directed by Nandita man and as usual Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Manto stole the show. Other stars done justice to their respective roles especially Rasika as Safia (Manto's Wife). And the last scene of Toba Tek Singh was touching. The movies revolves around Manto's life at pre independence India at bombay and post independence Pakistan at Lahore. And at Lahore his artistic choices and words were challenged by censors and he had to face court and system ruling the state. We could clearly see a liberal writer fighting for his rights and also his life transformation from Bombay to Lahore.

After reading Thanda Gohsht I was mesmerised by the literary style and excellence of Sadat Hasan Manto. This movie has been a good portrayal of Manto's life. Manto was a literary genius who transformed literature forever. Impressed by movie and obviously flawless acting of Nawaz. They could have made it a little more better (but there's always room for improvement and critics will always find something to blame). But overall it was a great journey watching this movie and experiencing a view in Manto's life and his thinking(although it feels like grotesque and abominable). Do watch it.

The movie is so string tied with beautiful acting of all the actors, that you tend to ask for another showtime. I wished the movie didn't end on 112 minutes, but effortless. What a direction and screenplay, mind-boggling experience, like said by the director in her interviews, I brought some Mantoniyat with me.