Qaushiq Mukherjee’s latest film Garbage , now streaming on Netflix, sets the stage with words that capture the screen. “Class and gender war is at its peak,” it says. “The battleground is mostly the Vagina”. As is typical of a film directed by Mukherjee, aka Q, the provocation is not only clear but also unsubtle. The film also dubs illiberal right-wing men, its misogynists-in-residence, as the chief reason behind the escalation. Garbage is only the latest, though perhaps the most inflaming, among a new crop of visual journeys that project conservative men as the bad guys, while purporting to sing paeans to feminism and liberal thought. Not too long ago, the Radhika Apte-starrer Ghoul (also on Netflix) followed a similar trajectory. Lost in their rhetoric and a strangely rigid liberalism, both Ghoul and Garbage suffer from the same lack of nuance that they accuse the other side of.
Set in Goa, Garbage brings together the lives of Phanishwar (Tanmay Dhanania), an ailing taxi driver who shadows as an online troll for a predictably fascist agenda, and Rami (Trimala Adhikari), a 20-something student trying to escape the fallout from a sexual rendezvous made public. The movie opens with the cabbie receiving the woman at the airport. Both look tired and tense from the outset. Phanishwar is shown as a staunch follower of a laughably anodyne religious guru, perpetually obsessed over the idea of women’s sexuality, and keeps in his house a mysterious, mute woman as a chained pet.
It is easy to see where Q — the maker of the comedy
Garbage does have its moments, especially in its darkly satirical take on fanaticism and trolls. In one scene, Phanishwar types hate comments from his social media account during a painfully audible session of bowel movements. Some of Q’s trademark exaggerations even work, as when Rami, during a particularly exotic encounter, realises what it means to be in a position — literally — of power in bed. But that is as far as the vision goes. Elsewhere it tragically limits itself to the kind of partisan commentary and metaphorical conceit that both sides accuse each other of.
The allegations of abuse levelled against #MeToo champion Asia Argento, for instance, bring to mind the old adage that “there are two sides to a coin”.
In Garbage , Q confers on Phanishwar the humanity of a fatal disease (cancer) just as Col Dacunha is allowed a vulnerability — a fear, both of the enemy and the consequences of his actions. In both Garbage and Ghoul , liberals are shown exhibiting the very same rigid tendencies that they are supposedly meant to rise above. So while both films shock on multiple counts, one can’t help but feel that they would have succeeded in conveying something more profound had they only looked inward.
Manik Sharma writes on arts and culture