Santosh

 

Writer/director Sandhya Suri

Director with lead cast at Cannes

SANTOSH                 B                                                                                                               India  Germany  France  Great Britain  (120 mi)  2024  ‘Scope  d: Sandhya Suri

There are two types of untouchables in this country.  Those that no one wants to touch.  And those who no one is allowed to touch.                                                                                           —Geeta Sharma (Sunita Rajwar)

More than 1000 Indian movies are filmed every year, most of which are never seen outside the borders.  In artistic terms, India had its great moment with the world renowned Satyajit Ray in the 1950’s, (Satyajit Ray: 5 essential films), maker of the Apu Trilogy (1955 – 1959), but since Ray’s death in 1992, Indian cinema has never shined again with that same artistic fervor, mostly churning out Bollywood musical comedies to great commercial success, though directors such as Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta, and Asif Kapadia have made films set in India but with North American and/or European producers.  Only recently has there been signs of something changing, with a rise of female directors offering their own unique insight, like Leena Yadav’s PARCHED (2015), Rohena Gera’s SIR (2018), or more recently Payal Kapadia’s 2024 Top Ten List #3 All We Imagine as Light (Prabhayay Ninachathellam).  Ten years in the making, Suri’s film started out as a documentary before transitioning to her feature debut, following in those same footsteps, adding a different perspective than what we’re used to seeing.  The death of a murdered teenage Dalit girl after a heinously brutal rape in rural Northern India bears some similarity to the 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder, where a young woman was viciously beaten and gang raped by several men on a bus, which brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets in protest, demanding quicker trials and harsher punishments, but the violence has continued unabated.  Sandhya Suri is a British-Indian writer/director based in London, studying documentary film at The National Film and Television School, where her earlier films were documentaries, so this is her first feature, a searing social critique arising out of the Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Lab, premiering at Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2024, allegedly inspired by this real-life 2012 incident, stemming from her outrage at what happened, bringing to light uncomfortable issues of police brutality, caste discrimination, misogyny, Islamophobia, and rampant government corruption, where pervasive violence against women is not just seen in an Indian context, but becomes a universal theme that is just hard to turn away from.  In India, around 85 to 90 rapes are reported every day, or putting it bluntly, One woman reports a rape every 15 minutes in India, but keep in mind that these are just the reported cases, as India is a country where it is estimated that 99% of crimes remain unreported, largely due to fear, stigma, and a general lack of trust in the police.  The right wing Bharatiya Janata Party’s Censor Board, largely supported by the upper castes, objected to the movie’s unfiltered depiction of lawlessness, corruption, and racial abuse in India, particularly in the Hindi heartlands, believing it does not reflect well on their voter base, so the film has been banned from screening in India, including digital platforms.  There are very few forensic labs in India, which remains a country run by men, as most of the judges are men, with only a 22% success rate in rape convictions, according to the annual report of the Ministry of Home Affairs, statistics that do not take into account rapes ending in murder and attempted rape, which are counted separately, which means the justice system fails to secure a conviction at trial for roughly 4 out of every 5 victims, so crimes against women are taken less seriously, where the police investigations lack professionalism and sensitivity.   

While that is the backdrop of the film, the story is told in a social realist style starring Santosh Saini (Shahana Goswami) as a newly widowed woman whose police officer husband was killed during a riot when a rock struck his head.  Facing the scorn and financial ruin of her family and bitter in-laws, as she married for love against their will, quickly removing her from an apartment that was provided by the state due to her husband’s police work, yet it’s clear neither family wants to take on the burden of a near-thirty-year old widow, with her mother-in-law actually blaming her for her son’s death, berating her, “You are used dishes.  Who wants you back?”  She attempts to obtain her husband’s meager pension, only having been with the force for two years, instead discovering that she inherits her husband's police position out of financial necessity under an archaic "compassionate appointment" scheme, where she is trained to take his place in an overwhelmingly male police station in rural Northern India, quickly growing used to how normalized it is to accept bribes, while derogatory remarks towards women and indiscreet insults are also part of everyday life, with the police uniform becoming an unlikely tool for liberation and emancipation.  When a low-caste 15-year old girl is found raped, murdered, and dumped in a well, part of India’s “untouchable” community, Santosh grows frustrated at how no one takes the crime seriously, completely ignoring her existence, as her cruelly dismissive superior refuses to allow her to assist the illiterate father’s attempt to file a complaint after his initial missing person’s report was completely ignored, yet the discovery of the body days later ignites protests in her community, so in response to the negative publicity, the charismatic and extremely pragmatic female inspector Sharma (Sunita Rajwar) is chosen to lead the criminal investigation, with Santosh assigned to work under her.  She is immediately fascinated by Sharma’s ability to ingratiate herself into the masculine culture of the station while seemingly remaining a fierce advocate against gendered violence in public.  Sharma, meanwhile, spots Santosh’s keen intelligence and ambition and offers to mentor her, with the filmmaker blending a journalistic attention to procedural detail, slowly and expertly building tension as evidence and characters are revealed in a world of uncertainty, with an empathetic rendering of Santosh’s internal conflicts, as she seeks professional advancement and respect from her peers while clinging to moral ethics in a system that prioritizes suspect confessions and convictions by any means.  This disquieting film exposes an alarming number of femicides, becoming an indictment of all the scars and wounds of society, where innocence is destroyed by widespread violence and corruption.  While the focus is on the intense observation of Santosh, who is something of a blank slate, a sponge absorbing everything that she sees, a reflection of her own idealistic hopes and values contrasted against the much older Sharma, a seasoned veteran who has already had to navigate her way through the male patriarchy, yet it is through those more experienced eyes, conveyed in the smallest inflections, that viewers are able to understand the depth and scope of the compromised system both women struggle against.

What distinguishes this film is the ruminative way that it is filmed, an under-the-surface, psychological study of the world that presents itself to Santosh, a compelling neo-noir morality tale that holds itself up as a mirror to contemporary India, yet what’s immediately recognizable is the ostracization of the underclass, where the economically disadvantaged are always blamed for everything, where the system of justice doesn’t really work for them, while those in the higher caste are untouchable, as police refuse to charge them and hold them accountable, so their crimes go unpunished.  It mirrors the Jeffrey Epstein case in America, a convicted sex trafficker of underage girls who was enabled by rich and powerful figures who have never been charged, or even questioned, about their roles in a sordidly vile operation which couldn’t have happened without their assistance.  As of this date, the other hidden perpetrators also remain untouchable, so this is not unique to India.  Following an alleged Muslim suspect who befriended the girl and comes from the same lower caste, this plays out like a tense whodunit, with authorities moving in to make an arrest, but rather than transfer him to a police station, he is moved to an abandoned house where he is questioned under relentless torture, which includes extensive beatings and waterboarding.  Under pressure, Santosh is handed a paddle and beats him as well, but suffers a panic attack afterwards, plagued by guilt at the thought that he might be innocent.  Acting on her suspicions, she checks his smartphone which reveals he was in another city at the time of the girl’s death, exonerating him from the crime, but authorities report he hung himself during the night, serving as a scapegoat instead of the real murderer.  One of the most chilling scenes is when Santosh interviews the upper class men who casually dismiss any involvement, yet the incident happened on their grounds, in their well, while dead domesticated animals are routinely dumped into the wells of nearby lower-caste villagers to contaminate their water supply and assert caste superiority.  The girl may have just wanted fresh water, paying for it with her life.  Their smugness is despicable, blaming her femininity for even questioning them, suggesting men know better, with one of them even asking what she would do if he were guilty, literally taunting her powerlessness.  This horrid behavior is unforgettable, revealing the true nature of just what kind of men they really are, capable of crossing any line and getting away with it.  Released at the same time as Konstantin Bojanov’s THE SHAMELESS (2024), a Swiss-Bulgarian production that studies two women in the Indian caste prostitution system, with both films having a similar premise, that the true untouchables are the powerful, while it also recalls Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River (2017), which exposes the violent crimes against Native American women in America.  Sharma has her own outlook, believing the publicity this case generated would make anyone think twice about committing this kind of offense again, even if their suspect was innocent.  While that may seem like a sensible go-along and get-along approach, it’s also morally reprehensible, with Santosh literally distancing herself from this fiasco.  Ambiguous to the core, never explaining anything or providing easy answers, allowing viewers to make their own judgments as it’s happening, the film provides an unflinching look at how vulnerable marginalized communities are continually dehumanized by those in power.

Kerouac's Road: The Beat of a Nation

Kerouac and Neal Cassady

Kerouac with Joyce Johnson in the background

Joyce Johnson

W. Kamau Bell

Josh Brolin

Natalie Merchant

Matt Dillon

Kim Jones

Jean-Christophe Cloutier

Diana Langley

Faustino and Tenaj Melendreras

Amir Staten

Diana Langley and dog

Director Ebs Burnough

Kerouac at typewriter

KEROUAC’S ROAD: THE BEAT OF A NATION                        C                                             USA  Great Britain  (91 mi)  2025  d: Ebs Burnough

My heart resides in a typewriter, and I don’t have a heart unless there’s a typewriter somewhere nearby, with a chair in front of it and some blank sheets of paper.                                         ―Jack Kerouac, Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings, 1999, a compilation of more than sixty previously unpublished works

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.                                                                                                                                       —Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957

Apparently shown on American Airline flights, this is not your typical look at Jack Kerouac, author of the youth culture novel On the Road, published in 1957, though it was written in 1951, revised several times, recalling his reckless adventures of the postwar late 40’s, literally waiting years to get published, so by the time the book became a best seller, and the author instantly famous at the age of thirty-five, he was no longer that youthful adolescent figure he once was, making fame extremely awkward for him, as he simply could not see himself as an ambassador for youth, which may have contributed to his notorious drinking problem, dying at an early age of 47.  While Kerouac is the focal point, a countercultural hero who worshipped the American Dream, appealing to those longing for freedom and adventure, yet viewed more than half a century later, his influence is more recognized today, something he would probably never have believed, as it crosses through many cultural boundaries that didn’t even exist back then.  Directed by a gay black man who previously made THE CAPOTE TAPES (2019), which also dealt with another famous white male writer, the openly gay Truman Capote, with a variety of comments offered here from different perspectives, it’s not really the book that people are mentioning, or the personal influence from having read it, as it’s more about how youth culture has really been defined by the book, creatively rebellious and artistic, breaking free from conventional norms, leaving the nest of your parent’s house, where there’s a certain freedom in exploring what’s out there.  There’s a bit of a disconnect in the way traveling on the road in live-in camper vans is just not the same as hitchhiking on the open road, a liberty not available to most, as it would be much harder and more dangerous for gays, women, and blacks, so for the director the open question was how to broaden the road for all the people who couldn’t do it in 1957 and make it more inclusive.  The book seemed to be an organic, undiluted product of America, yet part of a life cycle, viewed as a way to reach a particular destination to somewhere else, where the author starts out so young and hopeful, where it’s a bit like a caterpillar morphing into a butterfly, as there’s a transcendent process taking place, with adolescence followed by the new experiences of young adulthood and being on your own for the first time, which is not always positive.  While there are recurring figures that include actors Josh Brolin and Matt Dillon, the always insightful musician Natalie Merchant, who sang “Hey Jack Kerouac” 10000 Maniacs - Hey Jack Kerouac YouTube (4:10), yet was inspired to write a new song for the film, “In the Land,” which plays over the end credits, and former friend and composer David Amram, Kerouac scholar Ann Charters, Québécois scholar Jean-Christophe Cloutier, editor of the original French writings of Jack Kerouac, novelist Jay McInerney, East Bay culture commentator and political provocateur W. Kamau Bell, host of United Shades of America, British fashion designer Kim Jones, who has a complete collection of his works, Kerouac’s former girlfriend and author Joyce Johnson, yet also just ordinary folks in contemporary verité storylines like Amir Staten, a young black student graduating from his private school in Philly to begin his journey attending Morehouse College in Atlanta, bi-racial and politically opposite empty-nester couple and frequent road travelers Faustino and Tenaj Melendreras, and queer 68-year old Diana Langley making a road trip to visit her estranged 91-year old father who all but ignored her after causing a lifetime of trauma.    

Hoping to introduce new audiences to the book, the real stand-outs are Natalie Merchant, who views Kerouac through a misogynistic lens, Joyce Johnson’s vivid personal reflections, with some excellent family background information provided by Ann Charters, so viewing this from a woman’s point of view is radically different, yet feels essential, while the black or queer road traveler’s take from the comfort of their cars is a distracting detour that just doesn’t work, as they have literally nothing to do with Jack Kerouac.  If that’s not bad enough, there is an offscreen voice rendition by Michael Imperioli of The Sopranos fame, a supposed Kerouac devotee reading various passages of the author’s writings, but they are not easily delineated from the voices of the rest of the film, instead getting jumbled into the mix, and really carried very little emotional weight.  Had they been highlighted differently, Kerouac’s words onscreen might have had more meaning, as there’s an unusual tenderness and compassion in how he viewed the rest of humanity.  He explored gender, sexuality, and queerness openly in his work during a time when it was rare to do so, and he wrote with deep empathy about marginalized people.  A prodigious reader and writer, who always thought of himself as being in the tradition of great writers who came before him, with each novel fitting into a different segment of his life, always centered around the idea of being a writer, the documentary includes vintage footage of Kerouac and his Beat Generation friends, like Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, with some of the women acknowledging that they were an exclusive boy’s club, as women were typically excluded and not well-developed in Kerouac’s books, seen only in a subordinate role to the men’s nonstop adventures, and while representative of the times in which they lived, his writings are literally saturated with what many believe are demeaning sexist and misogynistic views.  Despite this, flawed as he may be, the myth and romanticism associated with Kerouac has affected each new generation, acting as a rite of passage for restless souls, instilling them with a driving force for freedom in an unflinching search for the meaning found in the chasm between idealism and reality, encouraging them to get outside their comfort zone in pursuit of new experiences, to engage in the world around them, whether it be life on the road, reading, poetry, or music, especially the liberating riffs of jazz, as we are all on individual journeys, yet at the same time desperate to be part of a community.  Heavily inspired by the work of James Joyce, particularly his autobiographical, stream-of-consciousness writing technique, one stark image that stood out was Kerouac’s own handwritten notes on Joyce’s seminal work, Ulysses, describing it as the greatest book ever written, as it elevates art to previously unforeseen heights, having a major impact on the Beats, a literary subculture movement who were always searching for a spiritual quest for greater meaning.  While barely mentioned when he was alive, it’s also made clear that Kerouac was bisexual, where homoerotic longing is a thread that streams through the work of the Beats, rejecting materialism in all its forms, and conventionality, casually experimenting with drugs and sex, while always celebrating spontaneous creative energy, with Kerouac idolizing and channeling his manic friend Neal Cassady in a spontaneous stream-of-conscious flurry in On the Road, with Cassady later appearing in half a dozen other works written by Kerouac.   

This is not really what anyone would expect, and there’s only a few sequences that actually stand out, as otherwise this is extremely dry, formulaic, and conventional, something Kerouac himself would probably have loathed.  The big surprise is that this is not so much about Kerouac, per se, but more about what the writer signifies in contemporary America, as the book started out with only an underground following, but interest has grown through the decades, where it’s now part of the mainstream, yet the film appears to be a skin-deep portrayal of Kerouac, where you have to sift through all the extraneous material to find pertinent information that actually matters.  A symbol of freedom, misogyny, white male privilege, and even the American interstate highway system that brought us all closer together in the 50’s, you have to wait about a half hour before you learn anything important about Kerouac’s life, mostly told in a brash manner by Ann Charters, who knew him personally and wrote his biography, revealing the loneliness behind his rebellious image while also detailing his creative process, often drawing connections between his life and his writing, specifically mentioning the outsider status of his conservative French-Canadian upbringing, the closeness to his mother, as he was clearly a mama’s boy, growing up in a working class environment, actually attending college on a football scholarship, so he was an athlete as well.  A book that inspired musicians Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Van Morrison, Jerry Garcia, and so many others, driven by a desire for 100% personal honesty, offering a model on how to live openly and freely, it’s curious that the extensive body of work beyond On the Road goes unmentioned.  And while this is not an idealized look at Jack Kerouac, as his life is often complicated and contradictory, he inspires each new generation to live in the moment, which is always a challenge, especially with all the distractions that exist today and the obsession with phones, but the words that he wrote still resonate and are reflected in modern culture.  One of the fundamental texts for discovering America, while at the same time discovering yourself, it’s an intensely realized experience that still exists on some level, as there’s always something bigger than ourselves.  When you return to the text, you encounter not just the book but also yourself, and who you were when you first read it, and all the iterations of your life that have followed, providing a changing perspective as one ages.  The director’s background is also significant, a theater major at Northwestern, an actor coming from the theatrical world of Broadway, and a political operative, as he’s the former White House Deputy Social Secretary under President Barack Obama and Senior Advisor to First Lady Michelle Obama in brand strategy and strategic communications, updating the Beat movement through a modern lens, moving from race and class to queerness and counterculture, the film explores how one book still challenges what it means to be free in America.  It may be a different country now, stuck in dangerous times as opposed to the postwar optimism of the 50’s, but the road map is the same, using a composite of novels, poetry, music, and drama, even the recollecting of dreams to evaluate that inner spirit that drives and moves people, that reflects the essence of our being as we make the choices of living our lives.