DARSHAN AUR PRATIGYA – III: KAHANI AUR KIRDAR

Taking the discussion further, Mani Kaul was a filmmaker who tried to oppose each and every structure of filmmaking through his unique methodology. Even the structures which are extremely basic to the filmmaking process were brusquely shattered by him. From the best to the worst of filmmakers of world, everybody consider script to be the backbone of a film. And every effort is made to follow the script in detail. Recently, Indian filmmakers have also started giving too much importance to the script which is something new to Indian cinema. Masters like Raj Kumar Hirani, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Amir Khan, Vishal Bhardwaj, Anurag Kashyap, and Dibaker Banerjee spend majority of time in writing the script as opposed to the actual filmmaking process. Undoubtedly, this has changed the way our films look nowadays than they used to ten years ago. This has also contributed to the improved standing of Indian cinema internationally as well as in film festivals. Even the film schools in our country have started giving a lot of stress on teaching script writing to the students in their courses. The amount of justice done to the script while making a film actually decides the quality of final product. When Mani Kaul had planned his first full length feature film ‘Uski Roti’ based on Mohan Rakesh’s short story, he wrote a twenty five page draft of the script along with the author. Mohan Rakesh wrote the dialogues mainly, besides working on rest of the script and Kaul had explained what and how the things were to be done. But when Kaul used to reach the location, he always worked according to his own way. The way Rakesh had planned the script used to change completely on the set. Finally when the film was done, there was very little from the script which actually became a part of the creation. According to Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr who works with DNA, Mani Kaul did not mean to convey the intent and tone of Mohan Rakesh's story, which was more about the emptiness of rural life. He admitted that earlier he used to believe whatever is there in the script must be incorporated in film also. But in later years his perception and method altered completely. This lead to difficulty in finding sponsors for the films. No sponsor was ready to invest in a film without a script. He always believed in innovating rather following the order of script religiously. Kaul considered it a method of bringing polychromatism (anekta) in a creative product. Recently, Ranbir Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra starrer ‘Barfi’ became an instant worldwide success. The maker of the movie, Anurag Basu explained in an interview that original script of movie was written in about ten pages. Rest of the movie was made through innovation on location. The actors used to arrive on the sets completely oblivious of the scene they were going to shoot and the director used to come and innovate the entire scene along with them. This is how the film finally evolved from a rough draft to a masterpiece. 

Kaul made a virtually plot-less cinema during his career. There was a very little almost non-existent story in his movies. On asking how his technique was different from other filmmakers, Kaul expressed that during the process of editing, his shot used to be very mobile throughout the film. Since there was no big story inside the shot, no concrete context and no special place where the shot must be placed, it could be easily taken anywhere. Due to the inherent mobility and impartiality, one shot could be easily placed in three four different places. Since there was no strict serial number of the scenes as is usually the case in most of the movies, the same shot could be taken to scene no 3 and scene no 9 at the same time. He was accustomed in taking the shot in such a way that rather than being special it could be mobile and at the same time it was not very regular also. The shot taken in some context could be used in some other context while editing. For him shot was primary and the context (sandarbh) was secondary. This juxtaposition of shot with the context is a chance factor or sanyog according to Kaul. This was possible because he worked in a manner which could allow randomness to enter the structure without much hassle. He was a one filmmaker who not only understood Mahabharata but also tried to interpret it through action. His cinema demonstrated the magic and exceptionality of Mahabharata which is not only an epic but also a way of living in itself. The mobile shot in his cinema could be interpreted to be a representation of Krishna who appears in the epic at different times, completely dispossessed from the bondage of time and space. Similarly this time-space concept has been violated many a times in Mahabharata. Sanjay, an advisor and charioteer to Dhritarashtra, blessed with gift of seeing events at a distance granted by sage Vyasa, narrates to Dhritarashtra the action in the climactic battle of Kurukshetra, which includes Bhagavad Gita also.  He is actually violating the concept of time and space here. Mahabharata illustrates that consciousness can be present at more than one place at the same time. Mani Kaul was fortunate to comprehend this reality very early in his life so he made it a part of his creative and personal journey also. 

The second structure which is considered very significant to a film is the character (kirdar). Those actors are usually chosen who can play that particular character and even if they can’t, good actors prepare themselves to suit the role. Some lose their weight, some gain extra, some undergo rigorous training sessions, some go for speech therapies and some even opt for method acting. The aim is to fit into the sleeves of character. Meryl Streep, a renowned American actress is well known for her ability to imitate and master foreign and domestic accents. In The Iron Lady, she reproduced the vocal style of Margaret Thatcher, from the time before she became Britain's Prime Minister, and after she had taken elocution lessons to change her pitch, pronunciation and delivery. Streep believes in the dictum, ‘How could I play that part and talk like me?’ Christian Bale starved himself for over four months and lost almost 60 pounds to play the role of a man suffering from chronic insomnia in a psychological thriller ‘The Machinist’. According to Kaul there is a context (sandarbh) to everything. Whatever we do and whatever we are, is in relation to some context. Otherwise there is no meaning to it. When an actor says, “come here”, then is it the character who is saying this or is it the actor himself? A character is simply a context, nothing more and an actor is just representing that context. He cannot become the character. Secondly while shooting, if the actor is simply portraying the character, then the shot would have greater mobility. But if it’s otherwise, then the scene would have a definite position while editing and couldn’t be placed anywhere else because the scene assumes a different form when the character is strictly enacted. Kaul says that when an actor is performing, he is expressing his nature (swabhav). And it would be great if he stays close to his real nature. Most of the times, an actor struggles to become the character by parting away from his real self. An actor playing the same character at different times if liberated from the actor-character bondage would be able to express it more easily. This would end the concept of typed casting also. He further elucidates that Peter Brooks, an English theatre and film director, while making the stage adaptation of Mahabharata did cast those actors who had no resemblance to the physical personality of characters. He selected a very thin lean man in the role of ‘Bheema’ who actually was very tall and muscular. Kaul says that Bheema is a nature which can be there in anybody. One need not be physically huge to play Bheema. Therefore Kaul always refuted the concept of character because it negates the possibility of polychromatism (anekta). 

Mani Kaul believed that cinema is not a hundred page script, nor it is a medium to say stories or a stage for performing actors. Cinema according to Kaul is a unique interplay of image and sound which actually should create a magic. Cinema is a beautiful canvass on which we try to paint the reality of life. But most of the times, it has been browbeaten as a medium to bear the burden of fiction. More than ninety percent of cinema till date has been fiction and nothing more. Only a small fraction of it has managed to be something beyond. Cinema of Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Godard, Luis Buñuel, Robert Bresson, Tarkovsky, Kieslowski, Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, Béla Tarr was a colossal departure from the fictional enslavement which majority of cinema is subjected to. Their aim was to narrate the story through images and sound. These nonconformist filmmakers endeavored to create a multi-layered, multi-dimensional, polychromatic visual impression, which at times even trespass the confines of time and space. Kaul used human face as a landscape and music as a vehicle to transport the emotions of character. Fiction as my brother, Prof Sunil comments is the worst addiction. Fiction after a certain point of time is a dead weight which most of us carry throughout our lives. It is a ‘mayajal’, which doesn’t liberate us from the illusion of body and mind. Once caught, we are carried deeper and deeper without even realizing the futility of whole trap. The worthlessness of this obsession would be realized only in a moment of darshan. But since the fixation with order and morality is so strong, we are not able to appreciate this truth. We are always stuck up in our individual fights. Similarly, a modern man is always trying to represent somebody else. He is always performing the role of some other person (kirdar). The futility of context is never ever realized. In this process he forgets his real self. He keeps on moving away from himself until a point is reached where his true self gets completely eradicated. The real self gets substituted by some fake mysterious identity. The grooming and conditioning of the society facilitate to reinforce this identity even more. Gradually an ego is created which disguises itself as our true self. In Michael Winterbottom’s latest work ‘Trishna’, the protagonist of the movie Jay (a wealthy young businessman) asks Trishna (a waitress and mistress to Jay), that in Kamasutra sex is permitted with only three women – a single woman, maid and prostitute, then who real Trishna is out of these three. Torn by the question and inability to identify her true self, she brutally murders the man. A woman though plays different roles in her daily life, needs to apprehend that she is a pure, unscathed and all pervasive reality, a conscious being first, then anybody’s wife or mistress. Tattered inside the jungle of spurious egos and identities, a modern woman needs to find herself. An ego is nothing but a veil which masks the true self with glitter and glamor. True self is hidden somewhere beneath the pile of these fake egos and identities. It would be identified only if we try and move a bit from our positions. We need to realize how much damage has been inflicted upon us in this pointless war. The real self is still lying intact in this chaos. We just need to liberate it from ‘kirdar’.

CAMERA BUFF

'Cinema is the supreme art' - Lenin

What exactly fascinates a filmmaker? What exactly goes in his mind while deciding a frame? Or how exactly does a cinematic medium work? And what makes cinema so popular? Is cinema an Absolute art? Is it possible to portray the reality in a real way through cinema? I always looked for answers to these questions because my relationship with cinema has been extremely special and personal one. Special because even after pursuing cinema seriously for so many years it still hasn’t stopped fascinating me. And personal because it has helped me rediscover and reinvent myself spiritually as well as intellectually throughout my quest as a human being all through these years. But finally Kieslowski has helped me respond to all such queries with a fresh perspective towards this unique art form. 

Whatever we see around us is what can be simplistically termed as a ‘Reality’. And whatever is the reality we perceive it with our naked eyes. We do perceive it through other means also as we hear it, smell it, touch it, taste it and permeate it in our systems through our consciousness. But largely visual medium is what helps us the most in choosing what to believe or what not to believe. Moreover visual sensation masks other sensations also making itself the most dependable one. Camera can be called one of the greatest inventions of modern times. But when we use camera as a tool to capture the reality, things undergo a radical transformation. Our eyes and other senses actually help us to perceive the reality ‘as it is’. So when we introduce some other medium to perceive the same reality the vision starts distorting. Camera as a visual medium alters the way reality looks like, feels like or sounds like. It creates a sort of distortion or alteration in the way we perceive the world around us. And it does this the very second it enters our visual field. This distortion is something which creates a sort of magic. It not only offers a different field of vision but it also offers endless possibilities the way things can happen apart from what and how they really are. We can only imagine how even the simplest of realities can actually shape when filmed through this medium. A simple frame of a man walking with his dog on a road or a woman holding her child in the lap can look extremely different when viewed through a camera. And this is what actually fascinates a filmmaker who makes use of this medium to not only portray the real world but also mould it in a manner he feels like. 

A camera gives enormous power to the person handling it. He not only becomes able to capture the vastness of everything around himself in a completely novel manner but he also starts viewing everything around critically with a third eye. But this power is both constructive and destructive as well. It is constructive in a sense that it helps the filmmaker to organize the images and shape it in a form of perspective. But destructive because a filmmaker has to die several times at both personal and social levels simultaneously before lending a final image to the audience. And this power does come with a great liability too. Because a cameraman/filmmaker is not only responsible for the things he captures but is responsible for the vision he lends to that image too. When I talk about responsibility associated with this medium I am not really referring in terms of social/societal perspective but surely the personal choices the artist has made in order to organize that perspective. A novice actually goes crazy when he holds camera for the first time in his life and consequently realizes the immense potential of this medium. And by the time he comes to terms with his enthusiasm and passion he finds himself drifted miles and miles away from where he actually started. This is what happens to Filip Mosz, the protagonist of Kieslowski’s extremely important film ‘Camera Buff’. Filip, an average middle class man living a decent standard of life with his wife in a small apartment of Poland, goes berserk when he buys a moving camera to shoot his new born baby. When his boss appoints him the responsibility of filming the jubilee celebrations of their firm, he realizes how the reality moves and behaves through a camera. But gradually his camera craze and this altered vision carry him far away from his own reality. He switches over from shooting the home videos to socially relevant documentaries. And when he tries to lend his own perspective to the recordings he finds himself in a hitch. But by the time he actually realizes, the damage becomes irreversible. To put it together, the camera not only views the world from a different eye but it also creates a new world around itself. It’s almost equivalent to the presence of another being around us. So it’s not simply a filmmaker holding the camera and shooting what he feels like, it’s actually an entire world created by the camera around itself for which he is responsible and answerable too. 

Till now it is clear that a camera generates possibilities, distorts the actual picture and creates a world of its own. When we say that it creates a world of its own, it creates a world where people look different, sound different, behave different and feel different even though they are real people playing real life inspired characters. They may be a result of complete fiction but even that fictionalized makeover incorporates enmeshed, inseparable deep rooted facets of reality. But the fact is that reality is not often a mono-dimensional and monochromatic entity. It is a multi-dimensional and polychromatic framework where everybody and everything, howsoever significant or inconsequential they may be, have a locus of their own. Basically a reality is further made up of numerous small and big realities. And furthermore, there are various point of views associated with that reality. Since there are various viewpoints to it, there are always different versions existing at the same point of time in a society. All this makes it a very very complex arrangement. So when we try to image this complex arrangement with a camera, things start simplifying instinctively. And howsoever we may try to be pristine and meticulous in our approach, we would often end up missing out on some or the other detail. In other words, a filmmaker may endeavour to give a real perspective to a reality or he may try to present different perspectives to the same real thing but in the end there would always be an angle which would remain hidden from the viewer and howsoever he may try to be apathetic or unbiased to the issue it would always be the perspective of the filmmaker in the end. But on the other hand, it would also not be wrong to say that cinema is the only vehicle which can carry so many perspectives at the same given time. It does miss out on some or the other but it’s also true that it is the only existing art form which can justify so many dimensions at one time. In fact, Cinema is the only medium which can give a multidimensional view of the same event. Visual medium does simplify many of the things most of the times but ultimately onus lies on the filmmaker as a craftsman for being true to the art. He may forgo his social responsibilities but he should never disregard his larger responsibility towards his own craft. 

Further simplifying, when I talk about a multidimensional and polychromatic view, I am basically closing on thought, action and the combination of both. A painting justifies thought more than action. A dance justifies action more than thought. Music is pure thought. Poetry and prose may talk about and inspire action but mainly they are thought driven. Theatre combines both meticulously in almost equal proportions but it lacks universal and popular appeal. So cinema is the only art form which combines thought and action uniformly while simultaneously having a universal appeal as well. Universal because it involves the audience through many different forms of action although there is a deep rooted thought driving those actions. According to me action is something which involves a person initially and immediately and then the thought takes over. And cinema is such art which does this exactly the way described. Moreover it has the power to reinvent itself at various levels of thought and action every time. Furthermore, cinema doesn’t devalue any other art form; rather it highlights the effect and power of other creative mediums. Thereby it would be very just in concluding that cinema if not an absolute but it’s almost an absolute art. 

At last I feel that I have found answers for my extreme fascination with cinematic medium. Cinema for me is a source of endless possibilities. Cinema for me is an ever inspiring hope which would continue to enlighten me in difficult times of my life. Cinema for me is definitely the supreme art.