IndiaStar Review of Books *film review*
In a defining moment in Tony Gatlif's new film Gadjo Dilo, Izidor, the old Gypsy, drunk and beatific, tells a group of villagers in a small Carpathian village tavern in Romania about the Gypsies in France. "In France," he says, "there are Gypsy [Roma] doctors, engineers, advocates, they live in big houses, drive big cars, they speak Romani, hell, everyone speaks Romani. In France they love the Gypsies." A fat, beefy, red-eyed non-Gypsy European villager then asks Izidor, "If they love you so much in France, why don't you and your people leave our country"? Twentieth century has left several communities longing for their real and imaginary homelands. Gadjo Dilo is the final film in Gatlif's Gypsy trilogy and shows the writer-director successfully experimenting with the narrative style. (Of the first two, Latcho Drom and Mundo, Latcho Drom won the best documentary in Cannes in 1994) Gatlif's people--the Gypsies--nomads, the outcastes of Europe, at this point merely search for a place where they can live the so-called normal lives--get a job, get a house, live in a community where you are loved and accepted. Like Izidor's version of France. But Gatlif's film does not dwell on such melancholy fantasies. Instead he brings Stephane, on foot it seems, from Paris, in search of the Gypsy musician, Nora Luca, who sang the song closest to his father's heart. This theme combines in equal measure the traditional bildungsroman, the apprenticeship (as in Crossroads or even the Karate Kid), the travelogue, and is a romance. The apprentice here is Stephane played admirably by Romain Duris and the master is Izidor. Izidor Serban plays the old man Izidor with incredible variety--one minute he is drunk and hyperventilating, the next minute he is persuasive and manipulative, then again he is heartbroken and wailing. He is fundamentally loud, but he is loud like the exasperated mother who has too much to do, too many children to watch, too many worries to brush aside. It is a memorable performance. Stephane's love interest is played by Rona Hartner--a beautiful woman, aggressive, foul-mouthed, yet a willing companion to Stephane in his search for the music and the musicians. She is manager, performer, translator. But more on her character later. To a great extent, Gatlif is careful not to idealize the Gypsy community. The music, for instance. Even though the plot is about Stephane's search for a musician, Gadjo Dilo is a lot less "about" Gypsy music than, say, Latcho Drom was. There is less of music in it. It is almost like doing a chore that Isidor takes his violin down and starts playing it for Stephane the first time. And that too, only after the old man realizes that Stephane will leave if he does not assist him in finding Nora Luca. He makes the promise of music to hold Stephane back. Then we hear the Gypsies performing at a wedding. Then again a couple of recordings that Stephane makes with his improvised equipments. This economy of music is in marked contrast to the expansive concerts that we get in Latcho Drom. With holding back thus on the music--a wise decision since he already exhausted the genre in Latcho Drom--Gatlif attempts to tell us something more about the Gypsy culture than their music in Gadjo Dilo. This of course requires us to rethink why we want to see a movie about the Gypsy people. If it is not about their music--the only thing that they are known for, their only contribution to the world--then why should we care? Gatlif keeps our interest in Gypsy music--for we are, after all, like Stephane, after their music--deferred to a later time. We keep thinking that soon we will cut to a scene where the nomads sit around a fire and everyone, man, woman and child will sing. But that does not happen. Instead, Stephane (and we) are plummeted right into the middle of their daily lives (the promise of music is the force of gravity here ) and we get to see how much they desire this contact with the outside world that Stephane represents. The old man clings to Stephane, as if Stephane was his son taken away at the beginning of the movie by the police. As a free-agent, as a "guest," Stephane is free to roam with whomever he choses, free to enter any room he choses. So the kids teach him the bad words in Romani, just like kids do everywhere else in the world. So he runs into the shed where Sabina and her friend, naked, are taking a shower. So he tries to clean up Izidor's room. But there he transgresses his freedom as a guest. You behave like a woman, cleaning my room, Izidor yells at him. This initiative by Stephane is what Gatlif wants us focus on. An act whereby Stephane commits to do something with the Gypsy people and for the Gypsy people. Cleaning the room and again stopping Izidor from harrassing Sabina for a quick sexual encounter. We might call it clash of cultures, but Gatlif uses these narrative turns to step up the pace in Stephane's transformation from a guest, a consumer of Gypsy culture to one who genuinely participates in it, even though he has got it all wrong and is doing it all backwards. This turn culminates in Stephane's decision to bury his recordings of the music he made. Not a consumer, not a crazy foreigner, but one who has perhaps recognized some Gypsy subjectivity within himself. The oppression that the Roms experience in Romania can be a potential minefield that can devastate the delicate narrative balance and character illumination that Gatlif builds on so well in Gadjo Dilo. But, somehow, the political commentary in Gadjo Dilo is subtle. One of the most poignant moments in the film happens at the tavern in Bucharest where amidst general drinking and dancing suddenly the voice of Nora Luca breaks out over the creaky stereo system and Sabina starts to sing with her. We see Stephane physically drawn into and inside of Sabina, as if the song, like a cynosure, has brought them to the place where they both desired to go. Such subtle treatment of pain and longing and exile have strong effects. Gatlif almost plays a trick on us at these moments. He plays the emotional key but he plays it against the grain of expectations. Stephane has heard Nora Luca a hundred times presumably, but with Sabina singing alongside the record, Stephane is as transformed by Nora Luca (and Sabina) as his father was by Nora Luca. The music is tranformed by the listener just as the listener is transformed by the music. This is then the best way to make a film about Gypsy music or romance. To show its transforming power. And it is this experience that forever separates Stephane from the villagers who set fire to the Gypsy camps. The same people who require of them nothing more than performance at weddings and bars. Gadjo Dilo for the most part is a tightly edited film with few lags. That said, I did feel that the whole running-naked-through-the-forest scene with Stephane and Sabina was relatively gratuitous. Sabina's earthiness includes a total lack of inhibition and we sense this virtue in her early on in the movie. So the lewd remarks, the sex-talk etc are rather unnecessary. One of the more lyrical moments of the film, however, is the scene where she bathes with the blue flowers steaming in the water. We are called to be silent, just witness, and not say anything. |