Veena Bakshi’s film The Coffin Maker made Dalariti Nongpiur undertake a personal journey
IN THE summer of 2007, I met Nicole Anne Braganza. She introduced me to the love of my life – the Goan Sausage (no sexual innuendo intended whatsoever).
Thus began my unending, spicy affair with this delicious porky concoction. This also marked the beginning of an irreplaceable friendship between Nicole and me. A friendship based on the love for non-vegetarian food. She fed me Bombay duck pickle while I fed her tungtap (fermented fish chutney). She brought sorpotel into my life while I introduced her to tungrymbai (shit pickle she called it, but she loved it none-the-less).
So, the moment I heard the words “when death comes, give him sorpotel” (or something to that effect), I was rolling in my seat laughing. I did not attend the screening of the film at the Indian Panorama Film Festival being held in Shillong with the intention to critique it, but as I was sitting there soaking in Veena Bakshi’s Goa and Goan characters, my heart skipped a beat. Memories came rushing in – of the most vivacious Nicole, and words started queuing themselves up into sentences in my head. So here I am.
I cannot really comment on how authentic Bakshi’s characters and scenarios are with regard to the Goan culture or way of life. The only Goan I know is Nicole, but I don’t think anyone would argue with me if I say that whether or not true to form, the characters of the The Coffin Maker are lovable and very easy to relate to.
I have met a few Anton Gomeses in my life. They were not Goan and they were called something else, but you know what I mean. Bakshi’s Anton Gomes, brought to life by Naseeruddin Shah, may have been a Goan English and Konkani-speaking, feni-drinking and chess-playing coffin maker, but there is a certain universality about him. And this can be attributed to almost all the characters in the film. Be it Anton’s migraine-afflicted wife Isabella (Ratna Pathak) or his son Joseph (Anand Tiwari) or his neighbour and friend Jose or even the local drunk. Even death (brought to life by Randeep Hooda) is a charming, suit-sporting bloke.
What does this say about the film? Well only that it was a little safe in terms of storyline. Randeep Hooda kind of took me back to my first encounter with a handsome and broody version of what is otherwise represented by the scythe handy Grim Reaper or Yamraj. Sigh… Brad Pitt as Joe Black in that heart-warming romantic Hollywood film Meet Joe Black. This is not to say that The Coffin Maker is in anyway a copy or even an adaptation of the Hollywood hit. There are influences here and there like when Death fills himself up at dinner, completely bowled over by the sorpotel.
This made me think of my own love for the dish, but also of Brad Pitt’s Joe Black and his obsession with peanut butter. The film does go on quite a different tangent, but it shows glimpses of its older Hollywood counterpart. So like I said, “it is safe.” It does make up for this though with its witty dialogue and hilarious repartee. The Shatranj ke Khiladi (direct translation – players of chess) bit was a little overdone, but I can live with it.
What I loved most about The Coffin Maker, though, is the art. The sets and props just took my breath away. The Gomes household, Anton’s workshop, the chess pieces,; the little market place. There is a quaintness that created some kind of alternative reality for me – a dream I never thought I had. I mean if I ever had a home, I’d like to have the charm of the Gomes home. Not that I do not have a home now, but if I had to build one from scratch. I felt the soul of a struggling poet tugging at my not so struggling existence every time I think of Anton sitting in his workshop playing chess with none other than himself. That little bag that he takes the chessmen out of… the chess board… the slightly dusty windows in the background… the unsold coffins… What poetry. I sigh once again…
However I did have a problem with the unnecessary pauses during the length of the film. There was some technical glitch that made the subtitles disappear every now and then thus making it necessary for some manual intervention to put them back on screen. Every time that happened, it broke my concentration and made me seethe with anger a bit, but that was not really the film’s fault. It was more a slight failure on the part of the festival organisers (a small failure, but something that could have been avoided if more care had been taken).
So The Coffin Maker, whatever others might think of it, took me for a wonderful joyride. I revisited events in my life that I never really think about. I saw poetry in the inanimate sets and props, I tasted sorpotel for the first time (again), if you know what I mean and most importantly, I found one of my closest friends (Nicole) again. I wonder if she remembers the Chicken Dance.