The indie angst had to come out.
Two recent indie releases that made it to India, thanks to PVR Director’s Rare – Jon Favreau’s Chef and John Carney’s Begin Again – pack in the same idea. Of asking studios and the market demands to buzz off, to create what you love.
Films about films have rarely worked and often sound like a rant against the system, and also end up annoying people in positions of power. Which is probably why both Favreau and Carney have used surrogates to make their statements about the film business.
If Chef did it through food ( Iron Man director Jon Favreau’s lovingly crafted indulgence is more food porn than film), Begin Again does it through music ( Once director John Carney loves his music and it shows – the film has a great soundtrack).
Favreau, like the Chef Carl Casper in his film (incidentally, he also plays the character) is doing what people want. “Go play your hits,” says the boss when he wants to cook up something that the critics would like. In times when people are lining up for Iron-Man and Iron-Man 2 (both of which he directed), Avengers and Iron-Man 3 (both of which he produced), it takes a lot of guts to get away from the studios to make a small film without a conventional plot.
While many critics pointed out that there is no conflict or point that the film makes, they have missed out on what Favreau is trying to say. Because the film is not about how the food tastes or looks or whether people liked it, it’s about loving the PROCESS of doing it. It is the CRAFT that Favreau wants you to see, not the dish. He wants you to see the PASSION of the Chef who may not be good at many things (like being a father or husband) but he’s great at that – being a Chef.
After having an unintended Twitter war and a subsequent nervous breakdown after not being allowed to cook what he wants (because he gets fired that evening), Casper goes back to the basics. He buys a truck and starts his own mobile sandwich station. Where he is his own boss. Chef is all about that feeling of doing what you love most. And how that heals you and fixes everything.
Begin Again too is about a journey of two frustrated artists. One, Dan (Mark Ruffalo) who started a label years ago and is getting increasingly annoyed at what music has become. Ruffalo ought to get an Oscar nomination for this part — he has lived the role. The other, Gretta (Keira Knightley) is a songwriter and musician who has been cheated on by her talented boyfriend who has sold out to market demands. She’s about to leave town when she bumps into Dan at the bar. She plays a song straight from the heart. And he knows he has to produce it. Only that his own label wants a demo.
Why spend on a demo, when you can just record the album, Dan tells Gretta. He urges her to record. They go around New York and record a whole album with very little overheads and a bunch of oddballs… The girl who has a scholarship in her music college, the guy who teaches piano to children at the church… you know the rest. They record the album on the streets, just like Chef who took to the streets to sell sandwiches.
These are films about dealing with angst by starting all over again and sticking to the basics. They are about cutting out the middle-men. About giving the bird to the system. To studios, to labels, to people who run things, to markets… to the collective system that makes most of the money while artists get nothing.
With the Internet enabling more screens at your fingertips than the ones at the malls, it’s high time art that’s intimate and personal goes directly to the viewer. Amazon, iTunes, Google and Youtube have made it possible for filmmakers and musicians to make money.
And these two indie gems have taught us that if you churn out something truly special — even if it’s a sandwich or a song recorded off the street – it’s just a matter of time before the market and the money find you. While Chef ends more optimistically, Begin Again (which releases in Chennai on August 1) is a lot more realistic… It ends with the upload, leaving the outcome entirely to us.
Are we willing to buy directly from the artist? Or do we still feel the need to make the studios rich? Who do we want to support? What is the art and change we want to see? Think about it the next time a small film releases.
