Aamir..

A response to, "Why Aamir left me disturbed" by Saisuresh Sivaswamy at http://saisureshsivaswamy.rediffblogs.com/

It is a good insightful thought provoking analysis of the film. After watching Aamir, i kept on ruminating over the film. Like you, I kept on trying to think what disturbed me about the film. As much I agree with you that it is the silence of the Muslim community at large which disturbs the viewer, I feel that by taking such a view we are indeed operating within a stereotype, not one instated by the film, but one with which we come to watch the film. If we read the silence as one that is only indicative of the approval or connivance, such an interpretation bereft the film of its nuanced representation of the Muslim community, and their complex relationship not just with the self appointed leaders preaching them jihad, but with the Indian nation state at large. In fact I feel that the director credibly goes on to debunk this simplistic popular stereotyping of the Muslim community where they are either the extremists or the supporters of those who are.

As the cat and mouse game begins with the protagonist Aamir finding himself within a vortex of head spinning baffling events, significantly we have innumerable shots of people merely looking at the protagonist. These people are the ordinary nameless religion-less inhabitants of the city of Bombay who merely keep looking as Aamir runs after the taxi with his luggage or helplessly sits on the footpath. The director clearly establishes for us that these people are ‘looking’ and not ‘watching’ by inter-cutting these shots with those who are actually ‘watching’ him - the men who work for the guy who has kidnapped Aamir’s family. For instance, as Aamir is sitting on the footpath the people on the motorcycle watch him and come back and give him the phone. And at this instance, the people on the road are yet again looking. This crucial distinction between ‘looking’ and ‘watching’ is repeatedly highlighted by the director, and informs the sub-text and the meta-text of the film. The sub-text is constitutive of the arbitrary people looking at Aamir and what largely characterizes their looking is apathy, an indifference, a mere curiosity, something to pleasantly distract them, and entertain them as they are carrying on with their daily drudge. This indifference can be read as that symptomatic of the fast paced city of Bombay, or as a humanist critique of the people at large who are so caught up in merely surviving, or going about their life that they are largely apathetic to a man who is so visibly in some grave problem. The meta-text of the film is constitutive of the self appointed leaders of jihad, and their men who are demanding from Aamir a participation in their so called jihad.

And as the film shift from the roads of Bombay to Dongri, and the ‘people’ are replaced by more specifically a Muslim neighborhood, we see the sub-text becoming more complex. The film resolutely and commendably refuses to frame us in reading every Muslim looking at Aamir as a stereotypical white filigreed cap wearing silent accomplice in this jihad. While the film definitely gives a sense of many watching Aamir and having the prefect knowledge of what is happening, the film also forces us to keep in mind the earlier shots of the indifferent onlookers by maintaining a stylistic continuity of these shots. These abrupt, at times angular, medium close up shots of arbitrary Muslim men and women looking at Aamir intercut with shots of Aamir or the leader is very much in continuity with the earlier shots of people looking at Aamir, either on the airport or as he is chasing the taxi. Thus, consequentially it presents a representation of the Muslim community where they have a complicated relationship to the whole idea of jihad, and by corollary to India. For me, this is where the film scores. It leaves me with a sense that while many Muslims do support jihad and are ‘watching’ him as accomplices, presumably for the reasons given by their leader, there are many who are mere onlookers who are just ‘looking.’ I agree that there is an absence of other voices, and all we hear is the clichéd reasoning of the leader in support of jihad. But I think the film forcefully makes the point that as much it is the reality that so many support jihad, it is also as much a reality that so many within the Muslim community are indifferent to it. Like many others, living in the abject conditions of poverty, the continuous suspicion of being ‘terrorists,’ their concern is just to survive, to make their ends meet. Their silence is thus also indicative of the classical attitude that politics or religion is the luxury of the affluent. Thus the film leaves us with the sense that while there are many educated upper middle class men like Aamir who do not support the jihad, there are also many who want nothing to do with jihad. And I think this is what makes the film so powerful that it stays away from the clichés and stereotypes. I think as much I would like to hear more voices in support or against jihad from within the Muslim community, I find it commendable that the film also gives us the sad, but stark reality – one that of silence which is as much symptomatic of the complicity as of indifference, an urge of the common Muslim to stay away from it all just like that of the other ordinary people we encounter earlier in the film.