MATTER

OF
CRAFT
•

PARMA CHATTERJEE 31

hese days when we discuss an art form,, we tend

T to forget for some inexplicable reason the very

components that make it what it is. The craft that
enables an artist to express him/herself through a
medium seems to be regarded as a necessary evil
rather than an absolute precc,ndition. It is a malaise
that has overtaken the Arts particularly the cinema.
We have now, for our ben it, the so-called cineastes
who discuss what the giea Kenji Mizoguchi called
'the Flickers' from every c.inceivable viewpoint, be it
sociological, historical, ps)chological, philosophical
or even psychiatric; every Oing, that is, except the
cinematic! Given this strangt situation directors like
Mani Kaul suffer, despite their continuous mastery of
film language and signal coarribution to it, because
critics are Hind to their essemial cinematic qualities
and stick all sorts of labels including that of being
metaphysical onto the outward layers of their work

C/NEMAYA 31 I 19.9t
 because of their narrative methods that only appear
to he, but certainly are not. mystifying.
Kaui's !::..
ability to translate with fidelity the vision seen in the
mind's eye into a vivid cinematic image. His bril-
liance in this area first became apparent in a student
film Shraddha, the name of the wife in the work made
at the Film- Institute of India thirty years ago. In this Rakesh's story he was 26. The Film Finance Corpora- I
short, simple tale of a middle-class young man
Murad Ali
in The Cloud
Door (1994)
32
-_ making up with his wife-after quarrelling with her ___Kalidasi's beloved iri the perit.d piece•-beil -on
over his refusal to drink a glass of milk, the boy
- _
director handled volumes and cinematic space with-
the blackboard in school. He regarded this phenom..
enon as normal till he was caught out by his father I
on a f,rnily excursion and treated. When he saw thf. q
.1
world with his first pair of glasses it was magical and 1
for a long time he would get up at the crack of dawn irl
to see the city of Udaipur come alive before his eyes. 1
When he made A Day's Bread in 1970 on Mohan $
don, now the National Film Development Corpora-
tion, gave him just enough money to
stay alive - Rs. 250,000 or just over US$
25,00) at the time. With an Anillex
camera and six lights he made a visual
tour de force that also made the reputa-
tion of his colleague, the cinematogra-
pher K K Mahajan.
Using the tonal range of the black and
white emulsion with distinction. he
brought into play the 32mm lens'
distinctive qualities in portraiture. He
photographed his lead actress, and paid
tribute to her in close-up with this
problematic wide-angle lens that could
distort the human face at a close range.
The lonely housewife, standing under-
neath a tree on the highway with a tiffin
carrier for her truck-driver husband has
become a memory-image in lodian and
indeed world cinema. He had, by his
own admission, photographed this
silent, gentle beautiful woman with a
32mm from slightly below eye-level
with the camera tilting ever so slightly
up. This shawl-draped beauty with sad *
eyes, whose lot is to wait for her not I
always reliable man, is the first of Kaul's
suffering heroines. The others are-
Mallika, the grea: Sanskrit poet
Mohan Rakesh's A Monsoon Day and the-silenfbilde in
In Two Minds-. _

great-assurance and originality. This is all the_rnore Kaul's feeling for the human face is only _ matthed
astonishing as at that time-at_the. Film.Institufe very _by_his love for landscape, albci_t_animared by the
—
little practical training in cinematography was . human presence. Take, for instance, the shot of the
imparted to students of the direction course. This train drawn by a steam engine chugging across a
ability to 'see' and 'transform' has, perhaps, its serene, almost dormant nature in A Day's Bread. It has
origins in his childhood. all the grave beauty of a sustained note - in a vocal
As a litre boy growing up in Udaipur in Rajasthan alnap (introduction) in Dhrupad singing. Kau!, much
he suffered from acute myopia and was unable to see later. went to the veena maestro Zia Mohiuddin Dagar,

C6161.1AYA 31 / 1996
 scion of the illustrious Dagar family, one of the he was literally without any resources. Arrr 2cl with a
• reading exponents of Dhrupad, the most ancient form 16mm Bolex reflex camera with a constant speed
F
of Hindustani classical music. The cinematic image of motor, a 16-86mm Switar Zoom lens, a tripod and
1/ t he train almost presagcs a deeply embedded yearning four sun guns, two of which failed in the fluctuating
:.-ri7hin the director. voltage conditions that mark rural electricity supply
A • usi cal • image but different in content and in India, Kaul ventured forth into the deserts of
s pirit is that of a horse seen from a high-angle, open Rajasthan to shoot his unusual love story derived
.t.rindow, disappearing down a wooded path subtly from a folk tale of a wife impregnated by a ghost
graded in greys in A Monsoon Day. It has within it while her trader husband is away. -Making a virtue of
--connadictory resonances: of pulsating-life and of necessity he used the Kodalcchrome1WversaLemtil-
loss, thus being celebratory and elegiac arthe one and sion rated at 25 ASA.clay-tight and 40 -ASA tungsten
t he same time. with telling effect to make a haunting film.- _
- _
There areother instances from the same film that He used the limitations of his audio-visual re-
king as limp to one's throat. Take: foi- instance, sources to find a new narrative mode-aliclexamine_=-:
Mallika in mid-shot feeding her pet deer: a-functional the silent cinema technic* of telling the story -
•act in a mirac:.! i lighting and composition is through pictures. He employed a cl:,t-rged folk ballad
suddenly changed into an intensely poetic one. as a leitmotif to punctuate the narration that used the
Another example is the final meeting of the poet spoken word sparingly. With practically no lights to
Kalidasa with Mallika in middle-age in the key shot of work with, he even managed a few elegant night
the film as the camera tilts up towards a sky full of sequences. But the most memorable image was a
shredded clouds after Kalidasa has told his beloved zoom out from a tree with almost translucent healthy
about the vastness of life and by implication their green leaves photographed in the evening cross-light
own place in its expanse. The viewer is suddenly as the silent bride goes away in a bullock cart
overcome with powerful emotion thus giving the lie towards a desert expanse.
to the charge made by many critics that Mani Kaul's He was to turn, with a typical mixture of cussed-
work lacks emotion. ness and ability, the zoom lens into a potent weapon 33
In the very same film he also used cross-fades of expression later when he went on to make Dhrupod
within the same sequence, sometimes within the on the Dagar Bani or Dagar School of Dhrupad
same scene, to handle both time arid mood in a singing and veena playing. He again made the simplest
unique way. Here time, seemingly suspended for the and most effective shot in the film: an austere zoom
waiting Mallika, is surreptitiously marking and out of a lad practising singing in a corridor tells us
transforming her as it is the surrounding countryside. more about the subject than the bravura sequence in
This is the second remarkable example oFthe use of the end that leaves the viewer in awe because of the
opticals in postwar cinema, the other being in Alain sheer expertise of camera movement and the ma-
Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour, where the painful nipulation of space, hence perspective.
memories of the French heroine's past overlap with He has with good reason become a cult figure
the present thus subtly altering, influencing her because of his phenomenal grasp of craft. He can
relationship with her Japanese lover, both of whom work with a novice cameraman and make him
have come through the Second World War with perform like a champion. When In Two Minds was
scarred psyches. made on a schoolboy's pocket money he personally
Kaul's career has been dogged till recently by the photographed the 16mm reversal original on 35mm
lack of proper funding and he has invariably fallen Eastman negative frame by frame over a period of
back on Government funding that has been far from fifteen days on the Oxberrystand set up for him
generous. He has as a result developed great resource- especially at Prasad Laboratories, Madras, 23 years
fulness and can give more value for money than any ago. This was in the pre-liquid gate days and
other director in the business. The only other person blowing up footage from 16mm to 35mm was a very
who could perhaps match him in this regard was the risky business. Those who have seen the film will
late G Aravindan always remember its images. It is indeed a great pity
By the time In Two Minds, his third film, was made that only soldiers get decotated for gallantry in

CINIMAYA 31 1996
 action beyond the call of duty. Had there been such a
provision for artists then Kaul would have been
amongst the first to be so honoured.
He has always heavily influenced the look of every
film of his and has conclusively proved that he, and
nor the cameraman, is responsible for the visual style
that has come to dominate his work - especially after
his first two films. This is all the more interesting
because he has never ever transgressed upon the
rights of the operating cameraman. When circum-
Zia Mohiuddin
Dagar in Dhrupad
(1982)
34
stances pushed him against the wall he
unhesitatingly chose the extraordinary still photogra-
pher Navroz Contractor to photograph In Two Minds.
Similarly when he did documentaries for the
stultifying (government) Films Division of India, he
worked with journeymen cameramen whom he
inspired to perform way beyond their customary
proficiency. Nomad Puppeteers of Rajasthan and Arrival
prove the point.
In recent years he has helped cinematographer
Piyush Shah find himself. He told him in his typical,
casual manner that the most expressive range on the
ZOOM lens is b- etween- 28 and 40mm - _that is where a
film gets made! He dlso informe-d the focus-puller
Rafe MiThammad,-about how to pull focus in an
expressive, but unobtrusive-way so that the viewer
feels the impact of the_exer.cise Without ever nO-ticing
- -
the means-employed to achieve it. ft took twelve
takes to get the necessary shot but at the end of it
there was great satisfaction for both the teacher and
the pupil.
If all this reads like a eulogy then it is only
partially true. He has had problems with scripts and
CIVFM:WA 31 /1996
tended to disregard the written text, being the first
'non-literary director ill Indian films. In the early
days of his grand forays into black and white, he
eschewed dramatic dialogue delivery in favour of a
slow, deliberate style u I rn inade into d butt of jokes.
But he somehow transcended this by using his flair
for incidental sounds and music. His feaure films
followed a style that was diametrically opposite to
the prevalent dramatic one favoured by large
audiences. The tempo too was slow though never
without interest.
The biggest hurdle that he La i to
overcome like every genuine 1 mmaker
was the use of colour. He was a.: pains to
learn to use it organically, elo jaently and
not symbolically or decorativeiv. He did
not always succeed as his love for
primary colours was very strong. How-
ever, he often managed to turn a weak-
ness into a virtue and without notice
could produce an image that gripped the
imagination - for example the shot of the
dark, almost subterranean glove on the
beach av. akitst a olowitw backv,round of
pearly pink. taken early in the morning in
Idiot. It may interest readers to know that
this film was shot entirely with a 28mm lens; Kaul
uses the distorting characteristics of this wide-angle
lens to mirror the distortions in the lives of his
characters. Incidentally Idiot also makes virtuoso use
of the crab dolly in interiors. His ways of seeing will
certainly be enhanced as he works with European
labs. Rank, London processed his latest featurette Thz
Cloud Door and shall presumably process the next one
Danish Girls Show Everything. He is, finally in his early
fifties, finding backing in Europe that will enable
him to -.York comfortably after years of struggle.
His vision of the world changed after his last three
films. He-seemed at that point ready 05 become a
woman's director like Kenji Mizoguchi7Max-0- phuls
and- George Cukor, all masters temperamentally
dissimilar to him and to each other but unitc.d in _
_their love for
_ women. Kaul plOceeded in the direc-
don of inforrnation &tiering, towards a highly .
personal, poetic notion of the documentary form.
With Idiot he has come back to fiction films and shall,
it is hoped, stay there a long time finding new
avenues of exploration with his hard won mastery of
film craft.
 CINE MAYA 71 i
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41.

•
 located. The main character, But that does not come out in your film,
• Myshkin, is very much Russian in unless one follows it very thoroughly or
the b(iok hat you do not know :!oF.ely. He is atually the wisest of them
where he is from. all.

QLESTIONENG In the blm you don't know how he is

finked e, idi the people in Bombay - you
There's a slight problem, which I
wanted to avoid. He could easily

don't understand whose son he is, how he

FIXED knows the servant in the other family. It's

very confusing.
But tha: part is not confusing for
long. 'foil see, the whole problem

NOTIONS today a:. I see it, and what affects

me very deeply, is the conflict of
identity. In fact, it's such a
superficial conflict of identity
• based on religious and cultural
issues. Communities are preju-
diced against each other all over
Soon after a the world, not just in India. For
me, it is very important to find
screening of Idiot somebody we don't know
anything about. In fact, when for
Mani Kaul answered the first time he hears about the
marriage - where he gets an have been made into d religious
questions on his kind epileptic fit - the excitement for figure - a moral and religious
him is great.... It's the anonymity figure. I didn't want that at all.
of cinema to
36 I like but the word anonymous is
16-year-old not a very happy word because How would it be moral?
today it has various connotations Because he becomes a character
Inca Yamini Roy - associated with consumerism. who is so very sacrificing and
Like in today's world the human suffers a lot. Therefore, he is
being too is like an object in the more intelligent. He is not
market. The culture with which* intelligent simply because he
we are associated is also being knows nore or he can atiswer
destroyed so we are also becom- questions. When he talks, you
How different is your film, Idiot, frail
ing the anonymous man in a realise he knows more about life
the book? How different is the story? And
consumerist world. itself. There is a problem, you
when yo;t heaan to make the film did yau
know - he ^,iitht come across as a
intend iv:- illm to fall into the same
So how's this connected with the film? pathetic figure.
pattern as the book or did you see it
I alp talking in two ways - when • _
differently? _ - _ -
use the word anonymiius, I -do _ - - But yin don't have to involve teligion if
I tried to be as close to the book
not mean-this kind of anonymity. you want to make a person intelligent. If
as possible. But I was not - inter-
I mean, he is still ftesh and pure - doesn't come through religion.
ested in creating an interpretation
where the mind is still alive to _- What does it come through? I
of it_ The_ book has_ a very definite ,
traditions. _-mean, I also believe that it does_
view and ! was not interested in
not come throzigh religion.
that kind of interpretation
Yes, he is the most innocent in the world.
because I had a view. I can tell
That's what makes him an idiot. Intelligence from my point of view ...
you about what I feel.... i am very
comes from -
interested in charicters that are
But he is not an idiot From?
not confined geographically. or
No, he is not innocent in the face
are cultwally very specifically
of struggle - don't know because I haven't read the

•, :iYA 31 / 1996
 oo k - . I don't know how he got to be more You're going to mcke hir., behave like a incorporated in the form, but that Stills from Idiot
,
I

roiligent than the rest of them. You can corrupt character, So, you make him hold a is the second question. Anyway, I
<fe
from the way he talks, from some of the glass in a particular way and say a bad was talking of the question of
,Inas he says that he is a thinker. He is man holds a glass like that: a good man behaviour. When you have very
cr-tqe involved in his own world and he's an will pick up his glass gently, a bad man stereotypical characters in the
rver. He thinks about everything he will handle it roughly. films it is actually based on the
obstrres- You have an order in mind the reduction of a certain kind of
wen, when I said that there's a moment you start to interview; behaviour - meaning if I want the
danger of turning-him into a everything that doesn't pertain to character of corrupt person what
, refigious figuruethat.l meant was _the intery_iew_ i_s_ unnecessary. _ _ should-I look for in the person?—.7
- that. you may haye-a pfciblein of -Which brings me to the secon4-__
intelligence. You tend to create an question:- how that which_ is. An absolutely corrupt person can be an
image of intelligence in-which _. unrelated is unnecessary so the _. absolutely smooth talker. Yob can have a
case the person develops certain unfolding of the plot. very kind, normal.person who's not the
sigto and v7ays- Of liehaViour, - _ - _ slightest bit spicfous.-...jdoi't know how
talking,. sometimes manipulating like the Ole of the sister - you-don't to explain this.
languages, which makes him actually come to know that she's married What you are-trying to say is that
sound intelligent. But being the idea of corrup-
intelligent is a very difficult tion may not
t hing. What you are talking of is vividly show on a
a certain behaviour. That's an person ... how does
image of intelligence. To be one convey that in
honest is something else. It's not a film? If you're
behaving intelligently. I may not not showing it
behave intelligently but I am - physically then
what is its exist-
But when I talk to you I can make out ence in the film?
you're very intelligent. 37
You see, its not that when we That's it -
associate a certain kind of Forget abounny
behaviour with being innocent or film. I am raising
gullible that We shift the whole an issue: that when
issue to a moral gromd. For ex- you're showing an
ample, this is an intilligent man: intelligent man and
see how he talks, how he sits. you do not wish to
show it physically
No, an intelligent man can sit any way he how do you convey
his qualities - of
Then you're saying he looks how much he
dumb. He need i•ot look intelli- knows, what are
gent. his capacities to
grasp and to learn,
You have to have so i. thing that can show his capacity to
his intelligence! innovate, capacity
But now that's (Hbatable. The to the man. Like the roles you talked of, to make new links. These are all
idea of behaviour is at the root of that do not have any particular sequences his qualities and if it does not
the concept of characterisation. in the story. I couldn't understand at least. have to show on his face or his
That you make a character and say But you said it helps to orchestrate the body or the way he sits, then how
that this charactes is going to be sequence. do you show it?
good, then you associate one kind But there's something in it that
of behaviour with him. See, if I connects with an outside world; By the way he talks to somebody, in a
-a t . this clialatu.i is gull% u bc ;;.is,OiliCts,ai.Zs 7

corrupt - valid. Something that needs to be If you take a person in real life

CINF MAYA 31 J1996

 who's like Myshkin. a thinker, an
observer who does not express
• hoc ?nd
very intelligent, then at some
point people should realise lie is
intelligent.
See, I have personally done
away with the idea of
characterisation, because I feel
that characterisation does not
belong to cinema. It belongs
either to a certain kind of theatre
Lore my Eyes or to a certain kind of literature,
(1988) and I think even literature has
. '-••!`
•••-,
38
given it up. It is just not the
essential issue anymore, at least
with me. The conflict - all the
drama as far as I am concerned -
comes not only through the
people I am using, it comes
through the image that I am
using, the sound I am using, the
editing that I am doing. My
editing, my camera positions, my
sound. music, are not meant only
to enhance the performance of
:he actors. I believe. that if you're__ image you won't look at the _
given lily film, and if you areltot___ -hands imme_dia_tely; you look ac
looking at the-people, but the
whole image7-yquill get involved
and _absorbed in the idea as the
film unfolds. What I am trying to
say is it is not just the person, but - the 'ce—rtaiiit-y. gf the universe,
the whole imagE that is impor-
tant. My film Before My Eyes, shot in about it. Similarly, the face is the
Kashmir, which is 23 minutes
long. has got nothing except
inountains, forests, rocks, trees.
It's not meant co create specific
CINEMAYA 31 / 1996
thoughts as one does in a feature
film in which one has to deal
channelise thoughts.
Yes, but in cinema you're used to
everything being laid out for you, the story,
the structure, everything has a speofic
form - the way people behave - you know
that this person is a fool, that this person
is good. But with you, you have a different
point of view, you don't want to do ii in
that particular way.
That is the first assumption. The
second is whether that
person or group of
people will relate to the
entire image. The
4 painter Cezanne used to
r'
`;r•-
•;, a. take very little time to
• -- -• _ paint eyes which is the
-
r? -4. - most important feature
,
of the face and he used
• to take two to three
months painting the
sea, because he said
that "there's no corner
of a painting." For him
the entire image was important.
Now, for example, if you work
with an actor often the actor only
wants to show only his or her
face, so I tell them no, I am going
to show only your hands, and just
like your face this is 'your' hand,
how can you say that your face is
more precious than your hand?
How can you feel that way? I
have paid attention to these.
details. If you stand in front of an
-the face because somehow you
- believe in a centre to tEe uni--
verse. Philosophers have for the
last thousands of years .believed in
that there is nothing uncertain
centre of Cie body. Now I b:alieve
that this is actually uncertain, and
that there is no centre, either of
the universe or of the body.
Your films are among the very few that
play on sound and have no specific story.
abi,trart eid if you
want the audience to foliow your Jiaioque
too closely but concentrate on the sound aryl
the image, then I think it is too long.
The basic problem arises in not
being able to relate to a work
which does not have, first, a
centre and, then, a structure. A
structure enables you to relate to
the whole meaning. If I make
something in clay, I take some
wire and create a rough structure
of the figure and then I start
putfing some clay around those
pliable wires and this structure is
not just holding the clay or
giving it form but also guiding it.
It also makes you relate to the
whole immediately: you have an
idea of what the posture is like, it
gives you a contact with the
whole. Now, in any architecture,
the idea of the structure is to
provide a contact with whole of
the building. Neemrana, where I
shot my film The (loud Door, is a
fort which I am told wok some
400-500 years to make. Nobody
had an idea, when the fort began,
of what it would look like. They
began with terraces, certain kinds
of doors, certain windows, with
voids but with no idea of a
whole; so there is this material
but no structure. But now you
. can look at that fort again and
again everyday because what is
happening is that everyday it gets
a new alignment: a dome gets
.aligned to a windoWhi a_certain
Way, and because of a cifange in a -
certain posiTion and because of no
overriding structure that was
present before the window_came __
exis-teirce,---y-o-u- Suddenly -
discover a completely shifted or _
changed alignment. Or you find a
wall aligned with the hill in a
certain way, and the light
changes as evening falls and it
is a different alignment in a
 different way.
The idea of perspective arose
from the idea of conveigence and
e idea of structure arose from
dlat of perspective. Imagine what
kind of films I make - when I
. d3n't have a centre, or a structure
of which I am-not certain. What I
want to relate to is the idea of
—uncertainty '--cructal for me is-the
uncertain..-There is a possibility
that the audience will not
-unTerstand, but the more
unfortunate thing is that there is
not even a -curiosity to understand
- which is a tragedy.
I understand very well your point of view
and how you -
Sorry for interrupting you; won't
you grant me this much that a
film like that for the first time
will cause a very seVere sense of
something new, a different angle.
It's not a question of seeing
something new, but because of
the film, something arises in your
head because of what you see.
What?
A new thought - that is the
purpose of my film. If the film is
Ro shOw-you soniething that.is-
alr-eady known, not-only by-the
filmmaker but also by the
audience, whtre will it lead us?
At any. given_stage-_of time for all
that we know; therels-always
something that is unknown.
There has been no time in the
history of the world when
everything has been known and
there shall be no time when
everything will be known. It's an
al
film like that, but it ended
because physically I can't make a
film of more than two hours I
mean, that the film can end only
physically.
But if you make a film that pcople do not
understand -
That's a possibility - that they -
would-not understand. But the _
more unfortunate thing is that
- there's not even a curiosity to
understand which is a tragedy. - -Stills from
What I am trying-to say is..that -the Idiot

disorientation - I mean, you can't you know yourself as part of a

blame me, you know! galaxy, as part of a universe -
No, I'm not blaming you. I suppose each where does it end? If it doesn't
time one looks at your films one sees end then we're living in a very,
very uncertain
- world. If world we are exposed to on
we're doing television is killing the capacity of
that, then wanting to understand. It feeds
where is the you like you're a sick, old person
question of at home and it feeds you as if you
certainly have no capacity for chewing. I
ending a film, am using the word chewing
or of certainly because the mind is like the
making a stomach. What food is to stom-
character, or ach, thought is to the mind. If!
of making a were to give you only pre-
structure? digested material where the mind
That's what does not have to exercise itself
we look for you would sooner or later lose
when we go the capacity of making your own
to a film. You kind of links, of utilising your
don't watit to mental muscles.
look at an
uncertain
universe
which won't
end - or end
only on
account of
dine. I made a

CINEMAYA 31 1 1996
 Right: Light
Apparel
(1995)
Extreme
right:
Before my
Eyes (1988)
40
ften, while looking at Mani
Kaul's work, I have been
moved to thinkif the-re is _ cinema
life-for cinema beyond theimag-g;= ties; ecalogues -who opened
if, indeed, a _cizerna_of'being'
against that of the 'subject', is
truly. possible; also, if it is
possible -to devise a new ecologi-
cal sign that would follow the
trail of cinema beyond the
movement and time of its image
to unexpected openings, to the
site of another, altogether new,
image. [low else does ont talk
about the ecclogues of cinema who,
eiNEMAYA 31/ 1996
unlike its auteurs, chose to speak if in some way Mani Kaul's work f;
from the fragile margins of did riot reopen the prob!ematic
to intuit its new possihili--- ontology of cinema to unhingeits
-anehor in the image of 'home'.
question of being' _in turning -_ Mani Kaul's work has never
quietly away from the highways failed to raise some of the most r
of narrative .where the sublect _ unusual and, to my mind,
never failed to achieve-a certain extremely_important. questions
Jisposition in r_hetoric;.ecologues about cinema....
who created space through - There is ark inherent difficulty
oneiric resonance of partial to bind Mani's work within a
memories and cast irords and context even though one could
things in a durative stillness mention a few invocations here:
against the violence of causality his teacher and guru, Ritwik
in hiszory! ; Lave often wondered Ghatak; the classical Indian texts

on aesthetics - Dhvanyalok (The
Luminous Sound), the 9th
century treatise on literature, and
Sangeet Samay Saar, the 13th century
treatise on music; dhrupad, the
earliest form of Indian classical
music; Matisse and Bresson. More
definitively, however, one could
begin by creating a new binary
where one pitches a sensuous
ethic of separation against the
formal idea of unity. The idea of
enity cast the image within a
mimetic mode of continuity and
ia lance. It was only in conjunc
-
OPAL SINGH
11111•1111111111111111.1111111111111111111111
tt tomqvith an ,ather (image), in
c;reati.ig a symbolic exchange
t:.hroqgh this conjunction, that the
inrotr. evistence. The
actoil its o‘‘...,.production
riemained unr..,21 except in
re167e::- • •'• •!,,mitunt
(marritive) that it helped bring
albout in the fist place. The image
hiadleen, as ifdestinially,
ex htm 1.•r• • conventions of
subjectivity. bf itself, it could
appo.ar ther,x—t, as only a
forna• reference, a
••4 from a:11,J
narrative driv.es or cultural cross-
currents - but never as a 'clearing'
or something leading to a
'clearing'.
Mani Kaul's work is impelled
by an ethic of separation. His
impatience with a particular
narrative disposition or even with
the narrative form itself could
possibly be linked to this ethic.
His persistent refusal to cast his
work within the conventions of
subjectivity makes it not a little
difficult to write about his work
within a dominant mode of
CINLLIATA 31 1996
 thinking which pitches its entire
argument around modern/
posttnodern cultural practices. It
WOUjdNt.TILI OS II (jucsil0IIS
regarding the narrative choices
thrown up by the archetypal and
historical subject have been
resolutely put under erasure. It is
almost impossible to critique his
work within the known allegories
of nationality. He rigorously
pushes the image into a pre-
narrative space) It is perhaps here
that the problematic concerning
the ontology of the cinematic
image is reopened. We reach this
space to find that the narrative
has been played out already,
brought to an end, much like the
ontology which appears only after
the philosophy has ended in a
way in which we speak of the end
of philosophy: not as death but as
a condensation and a possible
reorganisation. And, even though
one may feel slightly more
comfortable, in speaking about his
aesthetic choices,' such enumera-
tions may often turn to be not a
little misleading in their witting/
unwitting anxiety to exhume
spectres of formalism. It is
obvious that Mani Kaul is not a
formalist. The sites where 'the
question of being' resonates here
function like blindspots: fluid and
contradictory. The sites of
subjectivity, however, function as
perhaps the only formal sites of
Mind of Clay (1 985)
construction.
The-First Films - _
In his first two films, A Day's-Bread —
and A Monsoon Day, Mani_Kaul put
the schema of unity into an
irreversible paradox. Within an
apparently continuous mode- of
representation, he developed time
as an integral of the feminine
imaginary - a time without home
or even a reference within the
symbolic order of exchange.
Surrounded by a symbolic
CINEMAYA 31/ 19%
cosmology, the incessantly
waiting women go through the.
&native stillness of being -
fragile at first Out gainiiig
fortitude as they gradually asstinif
an existence uncomfortably
contiguous but ironically inde-
pendent of the exchange (home
and outside; love and trauma) to
which they had seemed to have
been almost fatalistically bound.
The stillness of look and body,
invoking the paintings of Amrita
Shergill and the frescoes from the
Ajanta caves, grows with reti-
cence into an ecological sign - a
non-transgressive mode of
duration. A gesture deepens in
space, a sense of time surfaces on
the periphery. For a while space
and time become indistinct
within an unusual pacing of the
posture. This rhythm of the
imaginary, which cannot be
explained away as a question of
stylisation alone, brings the unity
of the narrative drive to eventu-
ally dissolve without disintegrat-
ing. (This to my mind, is the
crucial difference between him
and the other 'stylist' of the 70s,
Kumar Shahani, who pushes the
gesture, through a rhythm of the
symbolic, back into the narrative
drive.) The continuous mode of
space, the suffused elemental
signs, the saturated 'look' all
contribute to his initial ,ncplora-
don of the imaginary in his
eali; work. Time beg!.1-.. to
appear as the barely perceptible
threshold of being:
The classical- Sanskrit poet,
Kalidasa, who remains a major
presences, if not exactly-an
influence, _fur both Mani Kaul and
his teacher Ritwik- Ghatak, -
developed a tertiary schema to
create the imaginary of both
space (a limen between heaven
and earth) and time (a limen
between remembrance and
 pugetfulness) in his celebrated Ghatak envisions woman as a
pia-y Abhigyan Shakuntalam (Remem- possibility to open the enclosure
txring Shakuntala). He rejected a of the symbolic, although she
ple inscription/dissolution of herself does not enter the domain
111 imaginary within the
7, of the symbolic. She is not a
sembolic order constituted almost subject of history for she is
entirely as a referential range. The always already larger than
woman is forgotten because she subjectivity. Ghatak's is the
fails to-produce the reference cinema of melodic excess where,
"
'too, space and time
appear to become -
indistinct within the.
feminine conscience.
It is as if the entire
cosmos appears as a
mirror to this
feminine imaginary.
The wedge between
the two, the turmoil
of the lived, is
sutured by a real too
vast to remember. It
is through her that
the sites of faded
memory begin to
resonate. The
which would function as a unflinching affirmation of hope
condensation of narrative and of in his work is actually the coming
power. The woman has forgotten together of these resonant sites -
the 'name of the father' much not as references but as memories
earlier. The woman bears the that are cleft and without articula-
weight/wait of the child in her tion. His is the cinema of grand
womb (a limen between the poetic conscience. His other disciple,
imaginary and the symbolic): The Kumar Shahani, tries, on the
woman retreats to an as yet other hand, to stage woman
unformed cosmology, a third between subjectivity and para-
space. which could be recovered subjectivity (cf. Tarang/Wages and
only after the symbolic forma- Profits, 1984). The sites of
tions - the heaven and earth, i.e., memory are, here, transformed
- have receded and the woman into points of reference in order
has become an ecological that the vitality of the new
Possibilty. The woman gives birth epistemes of history could be
to the child and is ever rally both interpreted and built upon
rece!ved at the threshol3 but only. in its complexity. In this sense,
Ir., be included within the Kumar is closer to the modern epic
symbolic order. form. Mani Kaul, whom Ghatak
In different ways, both Mani had once descibed as someone
Kau] and Ritwik Ghatak eissolve who had a tilt in his brain and
the. binary schema with which who was almost boyishly in love
narrative subjectivity is 1130St with words,' has repeatedly posed
often constituted. In different 'the question of being' within
ways, both invent their imaginary the imaginary of feminine desire
zo excavate the ecological sign. in A Days Bread, A Monsoon De.y and,
more recently, in Siddhrbwari.
Memory, here, is neither the cleft
site of melodic excess nor a fixed
point of reference; it functions,
instead, as an oneiric reticence
simultaneously closed and open
like the luminous poetic word....
Both Ghltak and Mani belong to
an in-cligenous oral tradition.
Whekati orality hi Ghatak _
- Left: Arising
reappears in the form of insomnia
from the
and melodic-excess, in Mani Kaul,
Surface
until very recently (ThF Gaze), it IT (1980)
. e.en_to be-closer toleep and
silence. the 'tit in-hibrain', is
like a transgression of the self.
Unlike Ghatak who lived the life
of a nomad, Mani Kaul could be
described, with some reticence,
as a monad. They both live the
metaphor of 'homelessness' and
in living it become enormously
different from each other.
I have often wondered if the
idea of 'a vital tradition demand-
ing sharp differences and violent
breaks'6 aptly describes the
continuity between Ritwik 43
Ghatak, Mani Kaul and Kumar
Shahani. What brings Ritwik
Ghatak and his students together
appears to me to be more of a
filial bond. Mani's relationship,
however, escapes this simple,
though higkly productive,
narcissism. To extend a Hegelian
phrase, though not without some
degree of trepidation, his is a
relation of 'homage and pa -1-
cide'.7
For Ghatak, the real is his
effective field; for Kumar, t is
quite specifically the symbo;ic; for
Mani, however, it has beer be
imaginary, always.
The Second Phase
In the second phase of his ....ork,
Mani Kaul moved away frou the
paradox of unity and entere -:. the
far more fluid domain of disners-
als. The first indication .of this.
shift had become visible in In Two
CINEMAYA 31/ 1996
 A Day's Bread
(1970)

44
Minds itself where a clear disjunc- however, appeared as an absence imaginary, thus, becomes a
tion had appeared within the - as the edge of music, the human functional principle of thought
'classical' unity of time and space. voice outside the narrative, that and moves freely through the
The folktale regarding the two cut through the stillness of this interstices of a number of short
claimants of the bride - the real space. stories and poems by the Marxist
man (a trader who is also a The domain of dispersals is Hindi poet, Muktibodh.
husband) and the virtual man (a itself divided into phases. The The dispersal constituted as
lover who has been a ghost for a first one constitutes thought as an both intertextual and intratextual
long long time) - not only act of decentring and ends with movement in Arising from the Surface
brought into play the ideological Arising from the Surface. The shift, as hinted at the possibility of an
category of 'alienation' as an became visible. in In Two Minds, is acentred cinema. It had, pin-naps,
extension of his earlier explora-_ - even more• clearly from -'the something_to do with his explora-
tion of-the-imaginary but it also -7 question -inflbeini to thinking tion of the musical formswhere
strongly hinted at the_possibility_ about 'the question of being'. the musical note becomes
Of a virtual universe of both Though the ideological categories perpetually homeless withinihe -
narrative and cinema. In a radical such-as 'alienation' and !_objectifi- given musical structure. It had
_ _ departure from the. , catiOn -are_more concretely in - also something to do with the
films, In Two Minds was cait in a evidence here,- these are also, in a idea of range as proposed by
world bereft of time, a world way, subCterted by a surreal, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
constituted almost exclusively by almost phantasmic: presence in Mille Plateau where the over-
space. Evacuated of time, the which is felt rather than seen. flowing grass emerge as the
space became flat and hauntingly This is also the site where one moral lesson. The idea of depth
pplemicised the objectification of could locate the creative anxiety and centre inheren- in the image
the being and the image. Time, of the author in the film. The of 'root' was definitively cast

CINEMAYA 31 11996
, away.
.Siddheshwari. based on the life of
the legendary exponent of the
se mi-classical musical form,
3kutrui, was his first film essay in
ASzhich the idea of limen or the
twely perceived threshold - 'the
question of being' as an acentring
- was fully stretched. The 'name
of the father', as in Kalidasa, is
forgotten. Both space and time
3 ppear as an unfolding range like
the city-of Benaras which, in its
pre-narrativity conceals shadows
of narratives almost impossible to
remember. Such a cinema is
unthinkable without a degree of
blindness which comes with the
dissolution of thv. gaze.
i recollect a s. i‘2ening of Mani
Kaul's The Gaze (an adaptation of
Dostoevsky's The Meek One, where
a fellow filmmaker, with charac-
tefistic self-assurance, had raised
objections to Mani Kaul's rather
'determined obfuscation of
sound. He had a genuine problem
in granting sound an existence
beyond the double edge of
information and ambient sensu-
ousness and seemed politely
amused at The Gaze's unhelpful
soundt-ack. In effect, it meant
that cinema had little chance of
surviving beyond the monologic
. of open enclosure into which one's voice can
interiority and dialogic exchange.
The question, as it had ap-
peared to me, then, was whether
sound, beyond a certain feel of
oridity could, here and there,
appear, like silence, as the 'open
si,,ce of voice' .° Like the sound
ti at returns to you When you first
Teak on landing at any pre-
p tirative space! A space that has
lain unnoticed and fallow - on tile
ee'ye of a faded memory! Sound,
he -e, would be recovered not
flit ely as an echo but as a
clearing, as something returned
in an open enclosure. Even as
turned the argument in my mind
I began to gradually feel that the
traces of-new cinematic enuncia- rt-turn tohis original 'home' - nature suflust-d .
as an elemental sign - after having been
tion could possibly be found on
anointed by the court and married off to the
the hidden footways of the princess. The beloved back horn': receives news
sound-image.... of his success as a writer and courtier but also
Mani's is a cinema about of his marriage. The symbolic bond of love a :Id
creative compassion that bound her to the poet
possibilities. Casting ahnost the becomes an imaginary of remembrance and
entire film in a maze of virtual forgetfulness much as it did in Abhigyao
reality; casting it in the mirror, as Shakantolum,
Ritwik Ghatak's Kornai Candor (1961) is
it were, giving the 'cut' (or is it similarly woven around-the theme of
the_Inne)_ an autonomy_ from a . remembrance and forgetfulness and, in lam
'lif before' an into a 'life aftet , builds a lotOf t he narraiivelciion a rc7und an
--actual dramatisation ofKalict'asa's play. - -
spreading the imaginary almost
4. "An Interview with-RitwikGhatar, by Ravi
infinitely across the domain of Ojha and ludhajit Sarkar in Film Miscellany,
the-lived, with The Gaze and Idiot, Pune, 1976.
:S. Has perhaps the only-Indian filmmaker to ,
-he- rhO_V-es MI° anzarea
- of - do so. Others like Aeloor (3opalakrishnan and
excessivity as immediate and - - the late G Aravincian have addressed themselves
Jrgent as the sense of overhang- to notions ofinteriority rather than the
ing breath that one experiences in question of being.
6. Arun Khopkar, ibid. p. 188.
Dostoevsky's endless monologues 7.1n her translator's preface to Of
that seem to exorcise the phan- Granimaio/ogy, Gayatri Chak r.borty Spiro k
toms of the symbolic. points out how in explaining the preface's
relationship to the text, Hegel had coin -A tins
paradoxical image.
Notes
8. John Sallis: "Echoes- Philosophy and Non-
I. With self-assured irony, Satyajit Ray declares
Mani Kaul's cinema to have 'wilfully adopted a
Philosophy After Heidegger" in Hugh)
Silverman ed. Philosophy and Non-Philosophy Since
very special and very private mode of
Merleau -Peaty, New York, 1988.
expression.' In a statement that reads like
&tills begins his essay with a description of
inverted ridicule, he calls him a phenomenon
him wandering alone in the Alps under a clear
in the hatory of Indian cinema for having 'not
only done away with most of the cliches of
sky where the transparent intensity of sunlight
is cooled by the mask of fresh mountain air:
45
narrative cinema, but with most °fits axioms
"... climbing over a ridge and then down into a
too.' What surprises him, however, is that
high valley. Boulders are strewn here and
Mani too 'has not discarded narrative itself '
there, reminders ofdeafening avalanches: but
Extending the range of his ridicule, he likens
now only the occasional tinkle of a cowbell is
his image to that of the 'chic in modern
to be heard. Nothing else ... listening proves
advertising photography'. See Satyajit Ray's
so exceptional here because there is almost
"Four and a Quarter" in hisOar Films Their
Films, Calcutta, 1976.
nothing to hear; but also because the valley,
encircled by snow-covered peaks forms a kind
This response is almost symptomatic of the
objections that were raised against Mani Kaul's
expand and resound. Here monologue and
work initially. It was severely panned for
interiority are unthinkable. Instead, the voice
obvious radical deviation from a known
is drawn out into a space which, rather than
narrative behaviour and even more for its not
being simply filled by the sound of the voice,
so obvious though equally radical spat io-
claims it and in a sense takes possession of it....
temporal aspiration. In likening Mani's image
Hearing the echo, one then experiences
to that of advertisement photography, what
silence, not as the mere opposite of speech but
Ray shockingly overlooks is its spatici-temporal
as the open space of the voice."
demeanour. The advertisement image is
valorised only in its dismemberment. Mani's
image. on the other hand, puts it through a
pre-narrative space (and time) to recover its
body within the site of ontology.
2. Arun Khopkar adduces the 'gestures and
postures from the paintings of Amrita Shergill,
the sidelong glances andtribbhanga postUres
from the frescoes of Ajanta and Levi-St rauss's
structural analysis of myths' antongst the major
influences in Main Kaul's early cinema.
See Arun Khopkat -Works of Mani Kaul and
Kumar Shahani" in TM Ramachandran edited
Stills from: The Cloud Door, idiot,
Before M.) Eyes, Mind of Clay
70 Years of Indian Cinema, Bombay, 1985, p I 8°
3 Mani's A Monsoon Day depicts Kalidasa's and Main Kaul by Lalitha Krishna
CINEMAYA 31 11996
 The Servant's Shirt defies a reduction
of its fictional material to a
synopsis or a syn;:pt_
The text may be termed 'non-
narrative': it does not plot a
structured development of events.
Rather than moving to converge,
the narrative takes events to
elaborate upon them. There is a
significant (and historical)
difference between the two
approaches. The former finds its
origins in the discovery of at the ver .. end. Fight against
'perspective' during the European perspectil e has inspired many a

APPVACH Renaissance, whereas the latter modern p .inter, writer, musician

has been deeply explored in India and filmn,..ker from the turn of
and made the basis of transmis- the 20th rentury. The effort in
sion of musical and philosophical cinema has been naturally limited

To knowledge. since the birth of the pinhole

Convergence (or 'climax' in the camera came about through
conventional narrative) is very
much the fruit of a movement
that runs from a foreground to a
NATIKAR middle 0,rolm(I t,
casting a -toriLoi.
lines are 'seen' to converge. After
a series of minor convergences
KI KAMEEZ the major climatic convergence
winds up the argument of the
narrative discourse. Prior to the
• appearance of perspective, the
epics and later the chronicles
spread themselves in the manner
MANI KAUL of poetic elAborarion, expansive
description, often not reaching
the climax in time when viewed
against rhythms prevailing today.
The proposed film The termination of the event
which, these days, would be built. extent. I believe the moment the
is based on
developing into a climax, did in the
Naukar ki Kameez traditional _texts suddenly appear :appropriates' the spac it is
(The Servant's Sh_li70,
a novel in Hindi by
Vinod Kvinar Shukla.
•;.NEt.1AYA 31 1996
perspective itself. Perspective also
provides an illusion of being or
movhg in a three-dimensional
upto notions of
.
narrative, which control the
contemporary idiom in the
cinematograph and generate
certain powerful cliches, includ-
ing those that animate hyper-
realist conventions.
One of the three experiments I
desire to attempt with this project
is to not let the cameraman Ion:,
through the camera while a shot
is being taken. Doubtless, I have
already tried this experiment in
my earlier films but to a limited
eye looks through the camera it
filming by_ a diehotonious
organisation that splits the
experience" of that space into a
fork: of being sacred and/or of
being pyofane._ Obviously it saves
what it knows as sic-red from an
exposure to what it thinks is
profane. in preparing a shot it
includes c:rtain features of the
space being ;:overed and excludes
all the rest that threvea the order
of what has been included. What
 has been excluded from the
composition happensstrain just
outside the fringes of the rectan-
t*plar format (of whatever aspect
. Jatio). To my mind, when that
whatever-by-chance does get
:ncluded, more often than not, it
is not an unfortunate accident - it-
is, on the contrary, coincidental
to the intuitive strain of-making-
the very film. The random --
happening, an inch outside the
four lines of-the forrna-r, when
--_thought of_-as equally significant
- to an elaboration (we couldn't
call thai -3 construction) makes the
dichotom) between the sacred
and the profane irrelevant. The
secret no longer lies in the
manner a space is covered but in
the act of covering it. The eye
while looking through the camera
immediately transposes its spatial
material to a vertical/horizontal/
diagonal vertex and doing that it
walls up the filmed space into
significant closure. And therein ties
the familiar meaning contained in
the 'old' composition. Should the
procedure become more open-
ended as suggested by us here..
are there possibilities of the
whole experience turning
chaotic?
camera frees the camera from a
slavish synchronicity with the
placements and movements of
objects and figures in space. With
a flexible difference between the
operation of camera- and its
material, a basis for an open
relationship between the two is
unlocked. Major factors that shape
images such as the lens or the
Position and the range on the
zoom lens, the direction of light,
the angle pointing towards the
action, the distances that result in
orchestration of volumes, the
hP•1...en
the lit up areas, the arrangement
of colours et cetera, do not
require a looking through the responds to space and movement
camera. And how by not looking with certain rhythms that are
through may we invent the much linked to specific feelings, the
desired approximation to the feeling director may oversee the entire
in question is something that will shooting on a video monitor
become clearer as we proceed. hooked to an output from the
in a closed relation between the camera. Instead of composing by
camera and its material, the visual control and execution, the
camera, absorbed by the narra- director would enfploy a more
tfve, is absent-and SO is-the sound, intrinsic artistic gift of selection:
again for reasons of realism, recognise-the living moment —
made .to duplicate the visual when it takes place. What needs
stresses upon the screen. In an to be determined by The director
encounter with an original Van -_ and-the cameraman i the act-of
Gogh, for example-, the colour - making the shot: attention being
white presents itself as water in a that aspect of time that deeply
light that may belong to a colours the emergent feeling in a
particular hour and carry a feeling shot. The technical arrangement
particular to what the artist may would enable him to abort
have been seized with in that
moment of imagination - but it is
only a certain distance from the
painting that enables us to sustain
this vision. For if we approach
the painting and in proximity
examine its surface, we find the
water to be mere paint ana a
paint that was perhaps directly 47
applied from a tube. The paint as
thing has been maintained as a
thing the artist worked with and
yet it opens a new space in being extreme mistakes that may take
water. Here the paint, the way of place if the cameraman is not
its application and the effect seem looking through the camera.
. r• looking
tion in regard to the feeling at through the camera naturally
that moment. In order that the presumes that there will be no
discipline of the cinematograph retakes as understood in the
may reach such strength in conventions till date. A retake
expression it is imperative that normally involves a desire to see
the shot function both as a thing the planned take perfected to a
of celluloid and. a vision tharthe considered notion of how it must
thing is able to cisclose. I believe finally appear. The retakes
every filmmaker is deeply aware repeatedly strive to essay the
of this universal . equation and projected sacred space and any
winch i. why , • o. iiimmak- eruptt.;11 cm the unpaued (and
ing make the mcst stimulating therefore profane space) disrupts
films. They cont?in both the the very meaning of the enter-
matter and the f-rm. It should be prise. When one hears the famous
possible to ester. 3 that quality to exclamation 'cut it' to stop a take
other kinds of films. in the middle of its filming, most
In practical terms it is proposed likely some random elements are
that while the cameraman at work.
CINEMAYA 31 i 1 C3t;
 Developments such as these are
thought of as errors. However, in
what we are proposing, the
appearance of the random is
crucial to certain configurations
one may be aspiring to. Of the
old order, the great master Robert
Bresson is the lone example of a
filmmaker who totally accepts the
technique of retake. He is known
to retake until the actor and the
crew 'give up' - by a paradox the
retake in his case reaches a point
of no control, of what others have
48 described as the descent of grace
upon his shots. For good reason
the master never uses the word
'grace' in his writings or inter-
views: what cannot be controlled
cannot be described. His retakes
are not five or ten but forty and
fifty. The exhaustion of the
actors' will and that of the crew
lead to notion; of predetermina-
tion which suit Bresson's own
spiritual convictions. With him
the moment of realisation is a
'privileged moment', whereas for
-
us--niovement is hoped to te
— — realised between two -moments -
whenever, whatever! And
- —therefore, error, with itS-, is very
mach an aspe-ct of our art. The
new is significant as it becomes.
Not the eternal. The reason to
retake in our c:ase would be to
elaborate and not to repeat, to
create figures. new figures upon a
moment and not to perfect a
r• C., to change angles,
CIWINAYA 31 13915
change movements, change
lighting in ways that are subtle,
even minimal, to make a new
becoming in/of space and not to
freeze an eternal recurrence..
The 'cut' as a joint is our third
step. What has been of impor-
tance in splicing two shots is the
particular fashion in which the
preceding shot terminates and
meets the succeeding one at its
very beginning. Whatever be the
coloration of the joint, the cut is
either made to hide or show itself
in the service of the narrative. For
us the joint, like not looking
through the camera, must
resonate with coincidental
happenings. If the entire signifi-
cance is saturated in that one
instant, i.e., in the last and the
first frames of the two shots, the
more important wholes (dura-
tions) which make up the shots
are ios‘ :6 an o:-)11 :en. What
meaning, of open meaning, is
first the duration and second its
position. In that order. The "her
way round, when position is
given the first place, the editor
can only make an assembly on
account of certain preconceptions
(of the narrative) and fit in the
required 'o.k.' lengths to make
the continuity of the illusion
more real. This kind of position-
ing kills the free, the unexpected
and the unpremeditated juxtapo-
sition that may arise between the
collision of two wholes. Doubt-
less. the principle of 'duration'
- ni intb an -
which turns---a-- frigme
overtone of the whole, into a
living movement within the
filmed material-has VI be-sacri-
ficed.- — - =-
Once you are open to multiple
possibilities through elaborations
made during the shooting you
may carve out multiple durations
th:t have multiple ways of
coming together. Duration is a
continuous and unbreakable
stretch which enables a section to
function as a part and a whole at
the same time. These sections
need to be rewgnised in the
'rushes' without necessarily
locating or fixing their positions
in different sequences. The joint
or the cut thus becomes an
indescribable moment and not
merely a transit post between
spaces. The joint/cut thus
disables convergence and instead
makes the cinematograph an art
of divergence.
The method of 'taking' (shoot-
ing) and 'cutting' (editing)
offered here as a radical alterna-
tive to established conventions
may lead us to discredit the use of
script, of scripting. It is only
partly true. The script, thought
out and written in whatever
detail, is only a series of noLitions
for my kind of work. But a
loes cenetv
to the film a matter and even a
body which is useful for the kind
of experiments that I feel confi-
dent of carrying out. A
groundedness should only
enhance the nature and quality of
the experiments; formal engage-
ments that saw the air with
techniques face the danger of
falling irk:, empty gestures. The
novel and the script of The Servant's
Shirt pursue the enigma of a clerk
named Santa to a self-mocking
spiritual depth but -.t the same
time spread the narration on a
material width that sweeps across
-the -struggles of a lower niiddle
class life. To us, the author Vinod
Kumar Stitikla, through his
writing, gifts to Santu and to the
lorveriniddle class in India 2
poetics of resilience that he
would have in the first place
discovered amongst the people ke
abstracted his novel from. And
that is what is precisely hoped for
the film and is indeed an impor-
tant objective we have in mind.
 ithin the Europ-ean tradition, I am espe-
% cially fond of Dostoewsky, Matisse, Bresson
and, barring his last two films, Tarkovsky.
Despite being very different from one another all
ti.,ur are important for me. Once a student told
Yoe that all four had come together in The Gaze;
i.key had become suddenly piesent. Obviously,
iheir pregence in my work is an internal pres-
ence. I think a lot about what it is which could be
- common to all four. I . feel all of thern_we-i-e
wor_king against the idea of perspective and conver-
gence. This was, perhaps, the method of their
work. In Dostoevsky, especially, the manner of
his writing.is such that nowhere do you feel that •
the world is-moving towirds rconvergence. It is:
as if numerous worlds are opening up.:..
Bresson's schocl, like Cezanne's, is
constructivist. Cezanne works upon a painting by
UNDWIDED
building one stroke upon another, inducing thus
a feeling of light so extraordinary that when he
stands next to a hill he can sec blue light. By
construction I mean building one thing on top of
SPACE
another and so on. Roughly this is also the
definition of structure where one thing is placed
•
on top of another such that if you take away one
tlement it will disrupt the whole (although
defining a structure entirely like this will not be MANI KAUL
appropriate). 49
isresson's work is a typical example of con-
struction. It is also closely linked to his philoso- SPEAKS TO
phy. You would have noticed in his films that a
door opens, a .person comes out, enters one door,
emerges from another, goes down from a third,
OMAN VAJPEYI
and then goes out of the room, goes out of the
house from a fourth, comes back again, opens a
door, enters, opens a chest, takes out something
from the chest, puts it on the table - in other
words, a person within the labyrinth of the
world, in which everyone is caught. Someone - it
could be anyone - breaks loose, like this girl in A
Gentle Creature. Breaking loose here means death.
Dying is essential, though not in all his films.
Nonetheless, like the ass in Balthazar and the girt
in A Gentle Creature, they achieve 'grace'.
Bresson has spoken about filmmaking in his
Notes on Cinematography.... He speaks about juxtapo-
sition. Suppose you are not able to find the space
for a shot. That is, there is a shot that is not able
to express itself. You change its place - take away
from where it is placed and put it three shots
away and it will suddenly become eloquent.... A
shot is born out of closeness to another. There is
a thought to this juxtaposition to which Bresson

CINEMAYA 31 / 199E;
 The Gaze FILMOGRAPHY
(1990),
with 1965
Sharnhhavi Shradd
d ud
(app:o q.
Shekhar
Kapur 1966
Yatrik (The Traveller, 20 mit.$)

1970
Uski Roti (A Day's Bread, 110 mins)

1971
Ashad ka Ek Din
(A Monsoon Day, 143 mins..

1973
Duvidha (In Two Minds, 82 Is LIS)

1974
The Nomad Puppeteers (18 mins)

has given great importance. His method of filming is 1977

thus a constructivist method. He uses non-actors Chitrakathi (I 8mi ns)
whom he does not let act. For him acting in cinema
1980
is as absurd as a living horse on stage. •
Satah se Uthata Aadmi (Arising from the
The kind of affinity he has with Cezanne, I think I
Surface, 114 mins)
have the same sort of affinity with Matisse. Matisse
had a great regard for Cezanne ... although it is Arrival (20 mins)

difficult to establish auy relationship, barring very 952

few canvases, between the two.... Matisse drew Dhrupad (72 mins)
50 figures; he did not construct. This is what had
1985
impressed him in the Chinese painting. A figure is
Mati Mantis
born out of a single stroke. There was no need to
(Mind of Clay, 92 mins)
•stand here and construct.... He has himself "Written
that he had become so anarchic that in the end he 1986
even forgot to apply colour. He could not understand The Desert of a Thousond Liars
how to apply colour to painting. In a way, he was 1988
saved by an inner relationship with Cezanne. Befwe My Eyes (23 mins)
I feel that I have one relation with Bresson,
another with Ritwik Ghatak. But there is a wide 1989
difference between the two. It is strange that I have a Siddheshwati (90 mins)
relation with two persons so contrary in disposition. 1990
I am often trying to figure out how one could fuse Nazar (The Gaze, 124 mins)
the two into some sort of harmony. I have absorbed
1 992
bitilh
- — of .them. _They are both-there inside Me. Only-
• Idiot—(18-4 ruins)
_now, in Idiot-, lath begin-fling to feel tat the two
have gradually come through-a door that has beerr _ 1994
shut for years. To bring restiaint and sensuousness The Cloud Door (26 mins) in ths_ series Erotic
together is an extremely difficult task. — Talcs_

199 5
Extract from Abhed Akash (Undivided Space) - a long
Light--Apparel
- (4 mins 30 secs)
conversation with Mani Kaul. Madhya Pradesh Film Develop-
ment Corporation, Bhopal, 1994. in the series Danish Girls Show E,erything

Translated from the original Hindi by Madan Gopal Singh Pre-production

Naukor ki Kameez
(The Servant's Shirt)

CINEMAYA 51 11996