By John Esther
Thanks to a lifetime of hardship resulting in hopelessness and a controversial government program, thousands of Indian farmers continue to commit suicide. The number of farmers who have committed suicide in India between 1997 and 2007 now stands at 182,936. That is about one suicide for every 31 minutes. Since the farmers cannot pay off their land and the government provides aid to the families of indebted Indian farmers who have committed suicide, why not?
A fictional account of the capitalist crisis met with government response, writer-director Anusha Rizvi's Peepli Live tells the tale of two brothers, Natha (Omkar Das Manikpuri) and Budhia (Raghubir Yadav), who are about to lose their plot of rural land and want to take advantage of the government program. The question is: who is going to hang himself for the greater good?
After the brothers decide which one will die, the story breaks out with the media, government, politicains and entrepenuers descending on the small rural village to see if a suicide will take place. Sadly humorous, everybody has an agenda. Votes, ratings and money are at stake and nobody cares if a nobody sends back the gift of life. Will he do it?
A better writer than director, the strength of Rizvi's Peepli Live is the film's unsentimental portrayal of the poor. Far more Émile Zola and Shohei Imamura than John Steinbeck and Michael Moore, the films depicts India's lowest cast as ignorant and brutish, with adults and children prone to yelling, violence, excessive inebriation and self preservation at any cost. This honesty prevents sympathy for the self/society-doomed protagonist, which translates into a more complex look at the issues at hand. If a man and those around him are miserable, malicious loudmouths, is his suicide less tragic? If so, then within the context of the film it qualifies attitudes toward suicide, suicide for money, how bad is India's banking system, mainstream media, does a society get the government it deserves, etc.
The film's depiction of the poor is not to suggest it is a Wall Street editorial where the poor are a necessary good(s). The upper and middle class castes are hardly noble, either. They move in ways to preserve their self interests. The community is an afterthought. The government would rather pay for a suicide than use those same resources to prevent one. Even if an individual in Peepli Live does speak out against the plight of his countrymen and countrywomen, there is nothing to be done when the nation's policies are motivated and based on response rather than prevention. The plight of the farmers is just another incident of a global economy based on conflict.
Complex in the context, Peepli Live is about despair and doom. And while that may sound like a depressing time at the movies, consider that with a 104-minute running time, over three Indian farmers will have, on average, committed suicide during that time.
