116 THE WEEK • JUNE 30, 2019
@LEISURE
CINEMA“EVERYONE EXPLOITS EVERYONE
else,” Marchesa Alfonsina De Luna,
the ‘Queen of Cigarettes’, as she is
known in the movie, tells her son,
defending her decision to confi ne a
group of sharecroppers to a distant
village and keep them in perennial
debt. “I exploit them, they exploit
that poor man. It is a chain reac-
tion that cannot be stopped,” she
explains her philosophy.
The son, Tancredi, points to a
young man and asks his mother if
he exploits someone else, too, and
she claims that even the poor young
man, who is ordered around by the
peasants, is part of the chain. But
he is not.
Lazzaro is
gentle, kind
and hard-
working.
Tancredi, who resents his mother and
the feudal structure she perpetuates,
strikes a friendship with Lazzaro. He
even calls him his half-brother after
Lazzaro confesses that his grand-
mother is his only kin. Lazzaro takes
the title seriously, and when Tancredi
decides to stage his own kidnapping,
he becomes a willing accomplice.
Directed by Alice Rohrwacher, the
movie, which won the award for best
screenplay at the 2018 Cannes Film
Festival, is a perfect blend of fantasy,
friendship and a social commentary
on the nature of the exploiter and the
exploited.BY JOSE K.GEORGE
Film: HAPPY AS
LAZZARO
(Italian, 2018)WORLD
CINEMA'S
FINEST
An ode to
ing outside the world of cinema is innocence
shockingly little”.
He only knew a little about the
plight of refugees before the fi lm. “In
fact, there were certain things that I
could not even understand,” he says.
“Th e makers had to explain it to me
in detail. But the message has come
out very beautifully in the fi lm.” Dha-
nush, Scott believes, got the essence
of the fi lm right as he portrayed the
character with a perfect balance of
comedy and emotion.
Scott wanted to give the story a
small emotional spin. In the book,
Aja travels to buy a bed of nails
from Ikea. But in the movie, he is
searching for his lost father. “It was
important for me to make the story
a bit more grounded than the book,”
says Scott. “Th e book was a bit more
absurd. Th at kind of absurdity does
not translate as well on screen. We
kept the comedy, but grounded the
story a bit.” Scott started his career
as a comedian and believes that
comedy remains his fi rst language
of communication. “It is a great way
to talk about serious things,” he says.
“Today, the plight of immigrants is
a very important theme across the
world. But I did not want it to be-
come preachy or political. [I would]
rather keep it simple yet important.”
One of the best things about col-
laborating with the author, Puertolas,
while scripting the fi lm, Scott says,
was his openness to making chang-
es. “Th e book is a book. Let’s makea good movie now,” Puertolas had
told him. Re-imagining the story and
shooting the fi lm then became a lot
more convenient. In the book, Aja
lives in a Rajasthani village. So, the
fi rst thing that Scott did after coming
to India was scout for locations in
Rajasthan. But logistically, Mumbai
worked better, so his hero is from
Mumbai.
Another important aspect was
to represent the immigrants from
diff erent parts of the world in the
right manner. “And that would have
happened with the writing, obvi-
ously, but the casting was also very
important,” says Scott. It required
working with casting directors in
diff erent countries very closely,
which was challenging but reward-
ing. He refers to the scene of a camp
in Libya. “In reality, it was shot in
Belgium, and real immigrants act in
that scene,” he says. “It was touching
because this was their fi rst job since
they got to Belgium. We were very
close to reality.”
Th e fi lm, after doing the festival
circuit, released in Spain and France
last year and has been praised for its
empathetic yet comic elements. It
releases in other parts of the world
like India, the UK, and the US on
June 21. Dhanush only hopes that
it is liked in the new territories, too.
“Box-offi ce numbers are as impor-
tant as the process of fi lmmaking,”
he says, “and I hope people like the
fi lm.”LONE WOLF
A still from the fi lm