The Kashmir Files holds no ‘grand truth’ to ‘open your third eye’. It exploits cinema’s flaws

Anurag Minus Verma in The Print



PM Narendra Modi with the crew of The Kashmir Files | Twitter
The Kashmir Files has given major FOMO to many people who believe the film contains some grand truth that they are missing out on. Many Indian audiences made a pilgrimage to the theatres to open their ‘third eye’ and witness ‘the truth’ in its pure and organic form. Passions and emotions ran high in theatres and there were many videos circulating on social media where audiences were seen delivering long speeches as the end title rolled on the screen. Cinema halls are known to give ‘audiences to the filmmaker’ but this film is unique because it gave ‘audiences to audiences’.

A few days ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, with regards to the film, that the entire ‘ecosystem’ worked to hide the truth, and that “a truth suppressed for so long is coming out.” In a Roger Ebert-ian fashion, he gave ‘two thumbs up’ to the film and recommended the film to his MPs. This is a significant recommendation from the head of the country. This creates more suspense about the ‘truth’ that this film claims to possess.

There is now a growing debate where the Right-wingers are saying that ‘propaganda’ of the Left and the liberals (whom they have nicknamed ‘Urban Naxal’) is ‘busted’ and the ‘truth’ is finally being told through cinema. On the other hand, people from opposing ideologies believe that The Kashmir Files is nothing but State-sponsored propaganda. This itself leads to the question: what is the meaning of propaganda in cinema and can we distinguish between ‘good propaganda’ and ‘bad propaganda’?

To answer this question, we need to turn to the history of cinema. 
Montage films of Soviet Cinema

The Russian Revolution of 1917 created a political environment that pushed the role of propaganda in cinema. The word ‘propaganda’ at that time didn’t have the negative connotation it has today.

In fact, propaganda was termed as an ‘essential activity’ to spread awareness among the public and ‘stimulate their revolutionary thoughts’. Many great filmmakers emerged in this era who believed in the power of propaganda and they made films that are considered some of the most important artworks in cinematic history. These were filmmakers who gave many film theories that are still taught across the best film schools in the world. Among them, the most prominent is Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein who gave ‘montage theories’ or editing techniques. Most modern editing techniques currently used in Hollywood and Bollywood owe a lot to Eisenstein and Lev Kuleshov’s theories of editing.

As such, the base of cinematic editing techniques lies in the idea of propaganda. No wonder famous French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard once remarked: “Cinema is truth 24 times a second, and every cut is a lie.” There is a medium of psychological manipulation through the use of editing that every filmmaker uses to present their ideas or ‘truth’ to the public.

Now comes the classic question of ‘good propaganda’ and ‘bad propaganda.’ How can we define ‘propaganda’ when it is inherent to cinema? Can ‘good propaganda’ be termed as the transmission of ideas that expand the mind of an individual and thus contribute to society and bad propaganda as something that restricts the thinking of an individual and converts him to a hateful person? Beth Bennett and Sean O’Rourke (2006) thus “contrast ‘good’ rhetoric, which they claim appeals to reason, with ‘bad’ propaganda, which they claim appeals to the emotions,” as noted by researcher Michael Russel in his 2009 thesis. 
Relationship between propaganda and spectators

Any success of propaganda also tells us the relationship between the propaganda-makers and the target audiences. In order for propaganda films to land successfully, a proper launching ground first needs to be created. The Kashmir Files is a classic film for its time and place — in a hyper-nationalistic era, where the Right-wing machinery is working overtime to seize the ‘means of communication’ (whether it’s news channels, social media, or Internet memes); in today’s time when there is unadulterated hate against JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) and intellectuals; in this era when bigotry is on free display even by the heads of the states. This is the perfect time for such a film to arrive — the audiences are already in a trance of misinformation and they just want to go to theatres to stamp their prejudices rather than seeking ‘truths’.

This is the reason why one sees the video of people shouting slogans in theatres and openly making hate speeches against Muslims. This is, in fact, the kind of social-political film where you’ll gain more insight about society if you move your gaze away from the white screen of the cinema hall and observe the audience.

A film professor from my alma mater Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) used to say: “The meaning of the film is already in the mind of the public and as a filmmaker, you just need to tap into that subconscious area.” This is the reason people interpret films based on their own realities and truths that they have constructed. In the case of The Kashmir files, Kashmiri Hindus are rightfully ‘relating’ to the film because this is a rare occasion when the stories of unimaginable, horrific tragedies are presented on celluloid. On the other side, some people are ‘relating’ to the film because it confirms their biases against those they hate. This is the kind of film that doesn’t ‘tell’ but rather ‘sells’ the idea of truth to you.

American writer Susan Sontag once remarked: “If cinephilia is dead, then movies are dead too… No matter how many movies, even very good ones, go on being made. If cinema can be resurrected, it will only be through the birth of a new kind of cine-love.”

The Kashmir Files also got released post-lockdown, where the intimate experience of individual watching shifted once again to collective viewing in cinema halls. Here, the cinema hall itself became a space for a national experiment, where ‘we’, the people, flocked together to experience the moving images. In the cinema hall, Kashmiri Pandits became emotional watching the film and hugged each other as an act of shared trauma, whereas many collective haters shouted angry slogans to show that, as a nation, we are together in shared anger against people who allegedly hid the truth for long.

Cinema as a truth-telling medium

This trend of bringing out the ‘truth’ of any historical event through the cinematic medium is a complicated thing to do. Cinema can only bring out one version of the truth, which itself is deeply marinated in the biases of the person telling the story or people sponsoring the film. In cinema, every frame is political by default because by choosing what’s inside the frame, you are, automatically, hiding what’s outside of it. The very frame that your camera chose tells something about the ‘gaze’ and mind of the person who conceptualised it. This is why rather than the accuracy of events presented in the film, what matters the most is how these events are presented to create a psychological effect. How does the film play with the emotion of pre-radicalised society through the usage of cinematic mediums?

There is also a difference between political cinema and politically motivated cinema. The Kashmir Files is the latter, using propaganda to shut minds off rather than stimulate any useful cinematic or social thoughts.

However, an unexpected, and probably undesired, byproduct happens to be the catharsis for Kashmiri Pandits who feel they have ‘witnessed’ their truth being told, ironically through fiction, for we, as a society, talk more about Kashmiri Pandits than talking to them or humanely understanding their plight.

Advice to cricketers: get a life

Having a pastime outside the game - say, writing a diary - can set you free from the tyranny of results and often make you a better player

Ed Smith

November 7, 2011

I'd like to tell you a story about two cricketers preparing for a new season. It's a true story, but it's also a parable about success and failure. 

The first player gives up almost everything outside cricket. There will be no distractions, he has told himself. He has decided that this will be his breakthrough season; everything else must be relegated to the status of an irrelevant distraction. Cricket is not just the main thing, it is the only thing. He becomes fitter than ever, he spends all his days in the nets and studying televised cricket matches; he even obsesses about the bowlers he will face in the first match, weeks before the game arrives. His quest is to become a machine-like player. He is so eager to learn that he soaks up every piece of advice he can find. Everyone praises his "professionalism".

The second player approaches the season in a more shambolic, human state. He moves house just before the season begins, and spends the first night in his new home without even a lightbulb to help him find his toothbrush. He breaks up with his girlfriend and finds for the first time that he is relying on the warmth of the team life, with its mischief and mickey-taking. Previously he has always been very self-contained; strangely, he is happy to find himself less so. Off the field, he is busy and engaged, having agreed to write a book. The arrival of the season - what season? - comes almost as a surprise, before he is quite in control of his life. He finds that uncertainty - am I ready or not? - energising rather than depressing. Above all, he knows that a life fully lived will make for a good book. He desperately wants to succeed, but he knows that even failure will have its uses.

The first player scores 415 first-class runs at an average of 23. The second player scores 1534 runs at 53. That doesn't prove anything, I hear you say. But what if I told you that they were the same player? It was me - first in 2000, when I dropped off the map as a promising player, then in 2003, when I scored seven hundreds in nine innings and played for England. I learnt my lesson the hard way. I had to feel alive to play cricket properly. I needed a life outside the game to play at my best. The player derives from the man; the man does not emerge from the player.

I am not the only cricketer to have had a purple patch while engaging with life beyond the boundary. Steve Waugh told me that writing a diary coincided with his best seasons. Peter Roebuck produced his best season (1702 runs with seven hundreds) in the year he wrote It Never Rains. Mark Wagh was one of only five Englishmen to score 1000 runs in the first division in 2008, while he was writing Pavilion to Crease… and Back.

And now, best of all, the Tasmania and Australia A opening batsman Ed Cowan has produced a happy ending to top the lot. He kept a diary of his 2010-11 season for Tasmania, now published as In the Firing Line. I'm not spoiling the ending (the scorecard is just a click away on ESPNcricinfo) when I let on that the last page of the book describes Tasmania winning the Shield final. Man of the Match? EJM Cowan, with 133. Both Cowan and his publishers would have settled for that narrative arc when they agreed the deal.

It's also a very good book - honest, analytical, perceptive and brave. You get to know the author and you come to like him. He is not falsely modest, but he looks for the good in others. In years to come, when he reopens his own book, he may find he was a little too generous - but that is all part of the book's warmth and spirit.

	What is it about writing a diary that helps cricketers play at their best? You might expect it to lead to over-analysis and too much self-absorption. Paradoxically, writing a diary has the opposite effect: it seems to set cricketers free. Instead of a burden, writing becomes an exorcism

He embraces the tensions that every reflective sportsman must face - between growing up and staying immature, between self-obsession and team-spiritedness, between honesty and denial, between clear-eyed analysis and the wilful illusion of mastery and control.

I couldn't resist a smile of recognition at one inconsistency. Cowan describes his admiration for Nassim Taleb's books on randomness and the power of forces outside our control. Then he goes out to bat in his lucky socks, having had a lucky haircut, eaten at his lucky Italian restaurant, drunk lucky coffee made for him by his wife (did he choose the wife on the grounds that she was lucky, one wonders!). Analytically Cowan understands randomness. In practice, he clings to superstition. Madness? Maybe. Perhaps we all need to be a little bit crazy, especially if you are an opening batsman.

What is it about writing a diary that helps cricketers play at their best? You might expect it to lead to over-analysis and too much self-absorption. Paradoxically, writing a diary has the opposite effect: it seems to set cricketers free. Instead of a burden, writing becomes an exorcism.

There is an even broader point. Every sportsman lives on the knife-edge of outcomes. He either wins or loses, on a daily basis. For the writer, it is very different. All experience, however uncomfortable, contributes to the well of his material. A writer is necessarily an alchemist, and no metal is too dull for him to turn into gold.

Here's a radical thought. Perhaps every sportsman should try to find the pastime that releases him from the tyranny of results. Writing will only work for very few. But almost every athlete, I suspect, would benefit from a complementary challenge of some kind. Michael Bevan told me that once you are a seasoned cricketer, poor form is almost never caused by technical failings. Instead, the root cause is always emotional. So you've got to sort out how you are feeling before the backswing can be corrected.

Professionalism, when it is properly understood, is having the discipline to attend to your whole personality as well as your game. They are, after all, inextricably intertwined - as Ed Cowan has shown us once again.

Former England, Kent and Middlesex batsman Ed Smith is a writer with the Times.