Manto, examined only in juxtaposition

Writer-director Nandita Das is quite brave to attempt a movie on the subcontinent’s favourite writer. Any moves on Saadat Hasan Manto, then, will be held to intense scrutiny and very high standards because all those who have read Manto carry a piece of him within — heart-wrenching instances of human feral behaviour, glimpses of the death of humanity, a bloody slice of the tragedy of a nation, people split.

I first watched Das’ Manto in May, at the Cannes Film Festival that hosted the film’s world premiere. I was moved by the depressing contrast and similarities between Manto’s India then and now. I admired many things in it — the resonance Manto’s life and the issues he struggled with have today, as well as Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Rasika Dugal’s excellent performance — but I didn’t feel the love I wanted to.

It took me a second viewing to put my finger on why Das’

Manto worked for me only in parts. Though Nandita Das’

Manto is visually, cinematically flat, with the camera remaining a calm observer, never a player, her screenplay is almost scholarly.

While this works to some extent when she presents Manto’s stories because we are so familiar with them, this narrative style snuffs out the significance of what he said when she wrenches it out of context and uses them as quotes to breathe life into her character, Manto.

The other, bigger problems are that Das’ screenplay frames Manto and his work only within disapproval of colleagues or the state’s hostile opposition to it, and worse, she concocts dialogue, details to explain some of his inexplicable choices, like his decision to move to Pakistan. Das’ Manto opens just before Independence, treating us to his story Ten Rupees en route to Bombay Talkies and then Filmistan to collect his script-writing fee.

There are some brief, sweet personal moments when Manto is with his wife Safia (Rasika Dugal) and his bestie Shyam Chadda (Tahir Bhasin), but there’s also the Progressive Writers’ Association’s disapproval of his bleak stories that we get a glimpse of. All too soon, however, there’s Partition, threatening letters to Filmistan for employing too many Muslims, a growing fear psychosis within Manto that wrenches from him his belief in the city he loved, and soon he is off to Lahore, to live in Laxmi Mansion.

It still baffles many, and me, why Manto moved to Pakistan in the first place, and why he didn’t move back to India when so many others — Sahir Ludhianvi, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Begum Para, Qurratulain Hyder — did. But then, that unanswered question is, perhaps, the only fitting epilogue for a man who had a visceral aversion to judgement, sentiment, and preferred to leave even his most dramatic stories open-ended.

Thanks to Das’ script, and her repeated attempts to close chapters, the singletone, melancholic characterisation of Manto abides. Yet, Nawazuddin Siddiqui is able to add to his Manto many shades of a man of many extremes. Through his walk and stare, Siddiqui conveys the confusion of a man unable to live with his own choices. Rasika Dugal, who plays his suffering wife Safia, invests her character and the film with touching tenderness that, at times, shines a warm glow on Manto the friend, the writer, the family man. And at times it shows a life that’s fading.

Watch it.