Rolling stone_Daddy’s girl

How do you solve a problem like Maria?

How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?

How do you find a word that means Maria?

A flibbertijibbet! A will-o’-the wisp!

                                                                               -The Sound of Music

 Well, yes! How do you solve a problem like Maria Faye Dunaway? How do you reconcile with the fact that she remains elusive, in a mental countdown of the acting legends, even when you are overwhelmed by her talent? Is it because, she may not seem to possess a ‘body of work’? But that’s not kosher, you know yourself very well. After all, she has more than one performance (and I am no thinking about The Netwok; it has an Oscar) to her credit, which makes you spellbound with the knowledge that madness is a country, just around the corner.

It is Faye, and Faye alone, who can make you want to put a step forward despite knowing that what shall ensue can only be mad, bad, and dangerous to know. And not only when you have just started, but also when you have been on the Mean Streets for quite some time. Again and again. If that is not greatness, then what is?

Bob Dylan’s trailblazing Like a Rolling Stone, 1965 asked How does it feel/To be on your own/With no direction home/Like a complete unknown/Like a rolling stone? The answer came two years later in the shape of one Bonnie Parker in Bonnie and Clyde, 1967. Faye Dunaway, not only blazed as the lawbreaker on the run; she created a mercurial chemistry with the magnetic but continent Clyde Barrow played by Warren Beatty – a liaison kindled by the fire of non consummation that makes an offer you can’t refuse.

Dunaway made you realize that a stone while it is rolling can only fall down, but during that free fall, it is unstoppable! Amorality, violence without a cause, complete disregard for society and its norms – Bonnie and Clyde were epitomes of everything that is a threat to life. Yet, Faye makes it bonnie while it lasts, almost to the very end and you have to stop yourself from marveling at their swinging out of control act.

Edna St Vincent Mallay wrote about a candle burning at both ends, and not going to last the night. But ah my friends/ and oh my foes/ it gives a lovely light. Bonnie Parker was such a character-a will-o’-the wisp! After you shake yourself away from the lure, if you want you can shake your head in exasperation and say, it’s Chinatown! But, you know, it won’t change a thing, it never has, and never will.

And nothing changed in Chinatown, 1974. Except the fact, that Faye could fall back on a decade long experience, and give the slowly getting mentally unhinged process a precision that is as visceral as a knife wound, and as fatal as a gun shot at point blank.

Evelyn Cross Mulwray, in Chinatown has a secret. She is at once the daughter of Noah Cross, the father figure to a community, and also the mother of his child. Faye Dunaway fights till the last moment to not to give in, to remain sane. But some fights are won, only because they are lost, and you have to let the blood drip drop by drop, and are not permitted to wince till the last.

And because one does not cry out, one has the appeal of an exotic. Silence is charming, most of the times, because it is covering something sinister. Even, if we sense it, we are conditioned to applaud, or even get enticed by what we feel is strength of character. We get turned on by an aberration and also relieved that somebody apart from us has also erred – it makes us human.

Dunaway’s portrayal of Evelyn is a wrist-slitter, a noted film writer describes her as a ‘broken orange doll’ and nothing could be more apt. It is acts like these that make one wonder, why did she have to do a cameo in Dunstan Checks In?

Perhaps, the answer is in the same lines of Dylan with which I opened Dunaway’s case. Art is To be on your own/With no direction home/Like a complete unknown/Like a rolling stone, and an artist can never know when the crest shall break, or form. All one can do is wait for the wave.

Faye Dunaway has not given up romancing life. Meanwhile, if you ever wonder how Chinatown may look like without her – then watch Navtej Singh’s extremely competent and adroitly Indianized Manorama Six Feet Under, 2007.

Hamlet, without the Prince of Denmark, may not be a bad idea, if it is written by somebody with the caliber of William Shakespeare. In this riveting drama, Navtej Singh, proves that he does not have to be Roman Polanski to pull it off. Of course, the movie does not have the Faye Dunaway character.

After all,

                                            Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?