Manto

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.

My Rating : 8/10

'Manto' as a film transports you to a different world completely. It gives you a sense of the zeitgest of a 1940's recently-partitioned India and Pakistan and the strong religious sentiments of the people at the time. Saadat Hasan Manto was a Pakistani writer, playwright and author and someone who through his writings wanted to give a different perspective.

Nandita Das' direction reminds me of the likes of Guru Dutt and Satyajit Ray. 'Manto' is exquisite, poetic and an intimate character study.

Upar di gur gur di annexe di bedhiyana di moong di daal of di Pakistan and Hindustan of di...Manto.

Brilliant.

If you are one of those people who hate English subtitles in a Hindi movie, my sincere suggestion to you is to check before-hand if the subtitles are shown in the show you are going to watch.

I watched this movie, at INOX Bhubaneswar. God knows, who is the culprit behind this idiocy.

Apart from that, the movie is good, atleast from what I was able to make of it, despite the difficulty and frustration in understanding the dialogues, because of the subtitles. The acting of Nawaz is terrific. The insertion of his short-stories, into the film, is also well-done and blends near perfectly.

One thing, which I didn't like and was clearly avoidable, was the fact that the movie is not completely sincere, honest and accurate in it's depiction of Manto's life. For example, Manto started facing court trials in India only, and it did not start in Pakistan. He faced fine in only one of the total of six trials he faced. I am not fully aware of the financial hardships faced by him, but the effect and impact of the fine or the court decision, certainly seemed a bit exaggerated.

I love period films for the way it transports one to a different time, a different world altogether. This movie takes it one step further. It transports you into Manto's stories, as if you are a spectator living inside his short stories. I found the story-telling to be extremely effective. Manto's stories are highlighted really well in this movie. The parallel story-telling of his own life story and his work was a very innovative way of putting forward a biographical tale of a writer.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui, as usual, is fantastic in his role. The supporting cast, led by Rasika Duggal are also great in their respective roles. The friendship between Manto and Shyam (Tahir Raj Bhasin) was very convincing. The stories revolving around the Partition of India, and how it affected so many people at the time was absolutely heart-wrenching. The way this story was told was both educational and incredible. A great film.

Struggle for the freedom of expression during the turbulent times of partition!! The sliver of those times well presented with some fantastic and powerful story telling from the bold and repulsive pen of Munto!!

*Not* for entertainment seekers. It's for those who can sink inside the every character's mind and try to explore the circumstantial sense of every scene.

Nandita Das has written and directed this by literally living in those characters and times.

I am afraid that the time pass movie goers may complain of boredom and classify this movie a documentary. Nevertheless they may still look at others watching the movie to check if they are alone thinking that they way.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui is promisingly the best actor ...sorry the writer. I had to change from actor to a writer because I am still not able to get the Munto out of him.

Art work and sound recording is brilliant!! For some reason I felt the cigarette lighting with a match stick sounded so perfect I felt that it's been some decades since I heard that sound. Same with the sound of the type writer and the ruffle of the paper.

If you are movie lover who loves to analyse every scene go to the movie. If you land up into this movie because other movies are sold out, you won't be sold on entertainment!! Jingoistic expectations will be laid to rest right from scene 1.

I can rate this movie because it will berate someone who will call Priceless!!