The Real Kerala Story Is More Powerful

Politicians everywhere in the world believe that a certain genre of cinema helps them continue to be powerful. That is why some films like ‘The Kerala Story’ are promoted on the eve of elections while others are not, despite being cinematically superior.

Today audiences are told in rally after rally that the ruling party supports ‘The Kerala Story’ because films like this one are good for the country!

The ruling party has endorsed ‘The Kerala Story’ and praised it for ‘exposing terrorist conspiracies’, and a ‘plot to make the country hollow from within’.

This is an ancient tactic of those who dream of remaining in power forever. Even before the advent of cinema, ruling elites had used oral story sessions, theatre and visual arts to entertain as well as brainwash the people on the street. However cinema is a far more powerful tool of communication than any other.

Movies were born towards the end of the 19th Century in France, but it is Germany’s Nazi Party that used it best to propagate its political ideology to the hilt. Between 1927 and 1945 German cinema was already a mirror of the times. This is when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party came to power.

In the new order Hitler had succeeded in guiding the battered economy of a starving Germany from extreme inflation to considerable stability. Because the people were able to get a little more to eat under the Nazis, they saw Hitler as a hero.

That is why whenever there is talk of how cinema is used to help fascism become even more controlling, there is always mention of Hitler and his love for cinema.

Hitler was an ardent movie fan and many actors and filmmakers were close friends of his. The screening of films as after-dinner entertainment was routine with Hitler. Even more movie crazy was Hitler’s powerful Minister of Propaganda Dr. Josef Goebbels, who controlled the arts during the Nazi Era with an iron fist. Goebbels had watched films every day and socialised with filmmakers.

When he was impressed, Hitler would often weep during a film show. His favourite was Austrian filmmaker Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ despite the fact that the film is against fascism and totalitarian rule.

Hitler would also break down every time he saw ‘Die Nibelungen,’ a two part silent fantasy made by Lang in 1924. In 1933 Hitler had wanted Lang as head of his newly formed office of motion picture production and promised to make him the leading light of Nazi films.

Lang had disagreed with everything that Hitler stood for. He not only refused the official post offered to him by Hitler but he escaped to America far away from the Nazis. So Hitler found Leni Riefenstahl to make ‘Triumph of the Will’ in 1934.

In Riefenstahl’s documentary film Hitler is projected as a presence that is larger than life. With the help of low camera angles and magical lighting, the film maker tries to manipulate viewers into believing that Hitler is a magnificent hero who dwarfs the entire nation on the silver screen into an ant-like mass.

In a review, it is noted that while delivering long and emotionally complex speeches to the massive stadium crowd, Hitler hardly ever appears in the same shot as they do in the documentary. That is because his cyclonic rages and hurricane eyes of benevolence, lit glamorously by the director in medium shot, could be edited against any crowd or character cutaway that seemed relevant so that the track elements – the roar and applause of the crowd – could be manipulated in the editing room, says a DVD leaflet about ‘Triumph of the Will’.

Both Hitler and Riefenstahl were inspired by Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ that has a timeless message of equality and fair treatment of anyone regardless of class, rank, gender, or race. Lang’s film revolves around a fascist controlling state, in which the majority of people are oppressed by an overbearing, rich minority.

The masses are forced into hard labour and live underground beneath the city occupied by a rich minority that dwells in comfort and with little work to do except to bully the masses and frolic in their ornate garden.

The difference between ‘Metropolis’ and ‘Victory of the Will’ is that Lang believed in values of equality amongst all human beings while Riefenstahl was only helping Hitler to spread lies about his sabka saath sabka vikas sabka vishwas.

The film maker was clearly hand in glove with the fascist regime to manipulate the truth. Hitler’s message of equality was clearly a lie, just an attempt to fool the masses sitting on the political fence and to win them over to his side.

What Hitler said on screen was quite different to what he did on the ground. After all Hitler’s hatred was not limited to the Jews. He hated gipsies, communists, Slavs, Poles, the mentally handicapped and others and happily killed all those he did not approve of.

The promise of a homeland only for the Caucasian pure population of Germany was an impossible promise just to keep himself in power with the help of the mandate of people in a democracy that he had manipulated to his advantage.

Riefenstahl’s careful exploitation of the truth involved a deliberate separating of reality from fantasy, painting a false facade of a new rising German order. Riefenstahl did not care about the veracity of Hitler’s intent but went along to create a propaganda piece to convince all Germans to join the Nazi movement, using the glamour of being in such close proximity to the powers of that time and to fuel any cause of her masters that would also pay her handsomely.

Riefenstahl was alive till 2003 and after the downfall of the Nazis and at the end of World War II when she was called an accomplice in the genocide against humanity, she simply replied no, she was not. As a filmmaker all that she had done was to document the ‘truth’ of that time, said Riefenstahl in her defence.

Compare this way of film making to another film titled ‘2018: Everyone Is A Hero,’ released around the same time as ‘The Kerala Story’. In ‘2018’ no individual is larger than life. The common enemy of all citizens is a natural disaster like torrential rains and floods that are matched by a flood of compassion and human decency of citizens that come together to make life worth living.

Tears are shed in ‘2018’ for what human beings are capable of doing for each other and perhaps regret, that most do so little for fellow human beings as citizens, neighbours and even as members of the same family.

The film ‘2018’ is a grand tribute to hundreds of thousands of people who got together to do good for each other. It is an inspiring story about the strength of unity amongst mankind without finger pointing, demonising and dividing humanity into heroes and villains.

Technically too the film compares to the best cinematic experience projected on screen anywhere in the world about natural disasters. The cinematography and the editing is compact and effective and that is why perhaps ‘2018’ is doing well at the box office without needing any official endorsement from anyone except the audience.

The favourite films of the ruling party that also enjoy tax exemption include ‘The Kashmir Files’, ‘PM Narendra Modi’, ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’, ‘Uri: The Surgical Strike’ and ‘Toilet: Ek Prem Katha’. However some states like West Bengal and Tamil Nadu see ‘The Kerala Story’ as a security threat and want it banned.

Leader of Opposition in Kerala Legislative Assembly V.D. Satheesan recently said that the film ‘The Kerala Story’ should not be granted permission for screening. Kerala’s Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that the movie is deliberately made with the aim of communal polarisation and to spread hate propaganda against the state.

Celebrated actor Shabana Azmi is against the banning of ‘The Kerala Story’. In fact she is against the banning of any film. In a tweet, Azmi said that no one but the ‘Central Board of Film Certification’ has the right to decide whether or not a film should be released.

“Those who speak of banning ‘The Kerala Story’ are as wrong as those who wanted to ban Aamir Khan’s ‘Laal Singh Chaadha’. Once a film has been passed by the ‘Central Board of Film Certification’, nobody has the right to become an extra-constitutional authority,” the 72-year-old actor tweeted. Azmi was referring to the ‘Boycott Bollywood’ trend on social media ahead of the release of ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’ in 2022.

‘The Kerala Story’ was released in cinemas last Friday and was initially portrayed as ‘unearthing’ the events behind ‘approximately 32,000 women’ allegedly missing from Kerala. According to the Communist Party of India (M) and the Congress in Kerala, the film falsely claims that 32,000 women got converted and radicalised and were deployed in terror missions in India and the world. The filmmakers later changed that run away figure of 32,000 to three women.

Yes, banning books and films is uncivilised and it is undemocratic. Let as many people as possible watch ‘The Kerala Story’ instead and be witness to false claims that 32,000 women in Kerala had converted and became members of the Islamic State. The number 32,000 is a lie. It is imaginary and part of the not-so-innocent creative licence enjoyed by the film makers.

Writes Shubhra Gupta in ‘The Indian Express’ that ‘The Kerala Story’ is nothing but a poorly-made, poorly-acted rant which is not interested in interrogating the social complexities of Kerala, a state proud of its multi-religious, multi-ethnic identity. All it is intent upon is creating the most simplistic, paper-thin characters to tell us that Kerala is in danger.

In a Facebook post journalist Harish Nambiar wrote that despite his best effort, he walked out after about an hour of ‘The Kerala Story’.

‘No, it was not an act of conscientious objection. I got out because the film ‘The Kerala Story’ is replete with nonsensical portrayal throughout. It seems to have been hothoused for a deadline.

Even if you have a specific message, a degree of sophistication helps. Remember, Hitler’s most famous filmmaker Riefenstahl was compared in her capability to Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and Eisenstein.

As George Orwell said, “we always weaken what we exaggerate”. The only relief was the Kerala landscape and the Ladakh-like landscape that is used for Syria, Afghanistan and other such places. Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said that it may be your Kerala story.

‘It is not our Kerala story.’

Therefore let audiences make up their own mind whether the film is trying to create communal divisions in society through false claims, or not. Whether the aim of the film makers is to consciously create communal tensions, or not. The trailer of ‘The Kerala Story’ was already in trouble when it claimed that 32,000 girls from the state had joined Islamic terrorist groups.

What do a few filmmakers think that women are so stupid that any Tom, Dick and Harry can brainwash them? That centuries of living together can just rip apart the harmonious social and religious life of a people?

Indian audiences are clever. It is not easy to fool the audience. Everyone should watch any film they like but to believe everything shown on screen as god’s own truth, is a bit much.

Mehru Jaffer is a senior journalist and author. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.