Ram et Jam

By John Rekatssip

My first sighting of director Gerome D’Arbre is on the set of his latest Bollywood-inspired French film, Ram et Jam, which is currently being filmed in East London. D’Arbre is running, with eyes wide and arms gesticulating wildly. He is enacting, for the benefit of the cast and crew, the melodramatic movements he requires from his two lead actors for the next shot. Close scrutiny reveals the tiniest glimmer of a smile that affects each corner of his mouth. Much as he tries to suppress it, it’s clear – he loves his job!

The other thing that is clear is the major influence of Bollywood, including on D’Arbre himself, who is now sitting before me, his mouth stained an alarming shade of red from the incessant chewing of paan (betel nuts). He describes the Bollywood film, which he first saw as a child, and which continues to impact him, Paagal Aisa Kaisa Insaan (The Crazyness of Being Human; 1947) as a beautifully crafted, highly symbolic and dreamlike epic.

“It’s a masterclass in filmmaking – really! A film that exhausts all of the emotions” he says thoughtfully, chewing paan. “I have seen it fifty times, maybe more and, yes, it makes me cry…”

So what does he consider to be the main differences between Hollywood and Bollywood? “Hollywood is obsessed with making stories credible” he says. “Anything where all the loose ends are not tied up is considered an insult to the audience’s intelligence. In sci-fi movies, for example, we all know aliens do not exist, so why bother to unnecessarily justify their existence? Just start the film with aliens existing and get on with telling the story!”

He also believes that the documentary/cinema verité style of the French New Wave and what has followed since leaves people cold. “The films of Truffaut, Jean-Luc Goddard etc. are shit as are British films. No one wants to see these white-trash people self-destructing all over the screen. Are we going to help such people after watching these films? No! So then it becomes a little sadistic for me…”

“Thankfully,” and he sighs visibly at this point “in Bollywood, no emphasis is placed on the credibility of the story. Instead, it is embellished with great looking sets, actors, actresses etc. In fact, I believe that the more unclear the story, the greater the interest of the audience. With a linear story, people have an easy time of guessing the ending. However, when they have to work really hard to understand what is going on, then they stay transfixed until ‘the end’.”
He says that in Bollywood, “they work hard to take the film as far away from reality as possible” so the audience feels a genuine sense of escapism. “I have never seen a Bollywood film where they have an actual Indian street – it is all constructed. Even the beggars are beautiful.”

JR: So how have these factors influenced your work?
GD’A: Well, these things have been playing in my head for many years and slowly I have been trying to work out my own filmmaking vocabulary. I have borrowed heavily from Bollywood’s desire to turn its back on reality. However, this is always going to be difficult, because the moment I take the lens cap off, I am slapped in the face by the cold, stinking fish of reality. For my diploma film, Woh Ajeeb Neel Kamal (That Strange Blue Lotus, 1987) I couldn’t afford to construct sets in order to shoot indoors. So, of my £5,000 budget, I spent £4085 on covering the entire location in black cloth. The remaining amount was spent on making the film, which is a meditation on the frailty and beauty juxtaposed with the pain and sacrifice of life as a male temple-prostitute. The film was depicted using the metaphor of the rare blue lotus, which in the end is destroyed by a passing elephant. I spent six months researching this film in the beautiful Indian village of Palaamkhet - although I stayed in a hotel in the nearest large town, about 180 kilometres away.

JR: So what is your latest film about?
GD’A: It is nonsense to ask a filmmaker what his film is about! If I wanted to express myself through words, then I would become a writer or a poet. Instead, everyone needs to watch and then attribute his/her own meaning to the film. As each person does this, the film grows, refracts & reincarnates into a million different ‘unrealities’. Ultimately, the film develops its own ‘world consciousness’ and comes alive. If this ‘world consciousness’ is on the whole negative, than the film has the potential to become an evil monster. However, I am trying to harness this power to unite the whole world in peace, so the central theme of my film is love.

JR: So it’s a love story?
GD’A: Yes, firstly it’s a Faust story where a man from the West, called Jam, sells his soul and it gradually becomes a Romeo & Juliet/Cinderella story as he is rescued, by a man from the East, Ram. They are both transformed by the redemptive power of love.

JR: So are you exploring homosexual themes here?
GD’A: No, that is an extremely narrow definition of my vision. This is much bigger. Love stories are not just about uniting one man and one woman. Love is also the bridge between all humankind. This film has massive scope, taking in the concept of the whole of the East and West. My character, Ram, is symbolic of the whole of the East. I have taken him from a story called “The Ramayan” which you may have heard of. Jam on the other hand symbolises, in a very filmic and stylised way, every person in the West. Quite literally, most of us see jam every day, even if it is only at breakfast! So anyway, the film follows a non-linear storyline based on three common Bollywood sequences. The most important of these is the “Wet Sari Sequence”. Obviously, I couldn’t have Ram dancing around in a wet sari, so I have had to change his costume to something more suitable – a sarong-type garment.

JR: Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?
GD’A: I would seriously love to make propaganda movies, in North Korea perhaps…

Ram et Jam will be released in Summer 2006.