An open letter to Ingmar Bergman

Dear Mr. Bergman, I take this opportunity to write an open letter to you. The chance to share my comments on an article you wrote induced a peculiar feeling in me—comments from an Indian film buff 49 years later! My initiation to world cinema was through your films some fifteen years ago, and to date you have remained the one film-maker who has had the most profound influence on my cinematic aesthetic sense. So it is quite an honour for me to critique an article by you: “Film has nothing to do with Literature”* Who gave the article this title? You or your editors or your translators? I think it’s a misnomer since the article basically deals with the creative process that one undergoes when one plans a film, right from the spark of an idea to the script to its final execution. The debate that you raise does not take up even half the article! I fully understand your view when you say that the first lightning of an idea is “a mental state, not an actual story”. It’s a level of abstraction which you’re hinting at, which you interpret further to make a story (the winding up of the thread as you mention), then a script and finally the blueprint for shooting. I think literature can also act as this precursor. India is a country where for centuries literature was read out loud along the banks of holy rivers and in the courts of kings. Literature here is hence perceived as a story-telling medium. The history of Swedish literature in the first half of the 19th century is probably not that enriched, and the youth of the ’40s and ’50s were rather more focused on things other than literature, their generic and marked lineage to the Nazi state always quite apparent. Evidently, literature was not as influential in your cinema as it was in Indian cinema. But take it from me, Mr. Bergman, it’s just another level of logical abstraction when you get to read a literary piece, an idea strikes you and you sit down to write your script. No idea, in the purest form of the word, is entirely original, and I feel we shouldn’t hanker over the conceit that someone else’s literature is originally yours. In the end, every inspiration is derived from life—that is what counts. I cannot resist the temptation to quote here the eminent film scholar and dramatist Bela Balazs: “Nearly every artistically serious and intelligent adaptation is a re-interpretation of that material”. And we have umpteen examples in our favour! But I definitely agree: trying to make a blind copy of the literature in a different medium in an attempt to remain ‘faithful’ is in most cases doomed to be a failure. Apart from the relationship of literature to film as the latter’s idea generator, there is another aspect with which I disagree with you. You have written: “When we experience a film, we consciously prime for illusion.” From my point of view, in very few cases does film creates an illusion in the same way literature does. There is not much a viewer can do; you are right in saying that “the sequence of pictures plays directly on our feelings”. The viewer is forced to see what is being shown in most cases; his mind is too preoccupied to be prepared for illusion. There is probably only a single Pather Panchali by Satyajit Ray, but there are hundreds and thousands of Apus in Bibhutibhushan’s masterpiece (on which Ray based his classic with his own interpretations). Every reader has his own cast, his own costume, his own setting, playing and fast-forwarding again and again in his own head. I will end this letter by touching upon an interesting aspect which I felt did come up in your essay: the technical differences between film and literature, and why to you, it’s virtually impossible to translate literature into films. Here I quote Sergei Eisenstein (from his book Film Form): “I consider that besides mastering the elements of filmic diction, the technique of the frame, and the story of montage, we have another credit to the list—the value of profound ties with the traditions and methodology of literature.” The ‘methodology’ is a very significant term here since this is where the two media come into conflict. Accepting fully the differences between the two or, as I mentioned earlier, that making a film from literature is essentially a re-interpretation of the latter in terms of the language and grammar of film, it’s interesting how ‘literary’ your films of the 1950’s were. The confessions of the Knight in the church which was almost a soliloquy in The Seventh Seal, or the narrative logic to describe Professor Borg’s constant swing between reality and his dreams, are the by-product of purely literary techniques. In many of your films of the 1950’s (before you wrote this article)—viz. The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Smiles of a Summer night, The Magician, The Virgin Spring—all have extensive dialogues or background narration to depict a mood or to outline a character or to indicate an emotional turbulence. For example, in Wild Strawberries, in one of the dream sequences (looking into a microscope to see his own eye in horror), Professor Borg’s alienation is what we were ‘told’ via narration, the sequence has no visual impact on us as the audience. And in most of the films of this era, we find barren landscapes with mystical light as a ray of hope or dark clouds to depict terror, man-made or otherwise, where your characters are always trying to bridge the ‘gaps’. The reference to the supernatural and the spiritual can at best be termed ‘Gothic’. And as a foil to this style you used narration, the verbalization of your thoughts and ideas. The 1960’s saw a change in your style; you came closer to your characters and focused on the face as you once said later on: “For me, the human face is the most important subject of cinema”. This relationship with your characters made us feel your association with them more directly, and to me your style , from then onwards, was more cinematic. Also, from your published screenplays we can see how each differs from its cinema version. For you the process of interpreting the written word for film probably started then. Hence, this article is historically the link between your old style and the new form. I doubt if you really believed that “Film has nothing to do with literature”. Your own work reveals that even to disown literature you have to internalize its style and then adapt it for your filmic needs. Till then, we can hate but probably cannot ignore the influence of literature on film. Cheers! Amitava Nag

A response to Bergman & the Open Letter by Amitava Nag

by Gaston Roberge

(Before reading Amitava Nag's letter) I am in deep communion with Bergman's essay. And I’m happy to have been given the opportunity to read it. Whether you think in terms of images, of music, of a scene, your film must be triggered by an aesthetic impulse. An example comes to mind: Eisenstein conceived Ivan the Terrible when he imagined a scene, the mood, the vibration of which determined the entire film, but that particular scene, although it was filmed for an eventual part III of Ivan the Terrible, was not retained in the finished film. Personally, although I don't consider myself a filmmaker, I once had an exciting experience: I happened to visit a classroom of first graders (in Los Angeles, when I was a student at UCLA). For some reason the quality of the light in the classroom moved me so deeply that I decided on the spot that I'd make a film on that particular classroom. And I did it. Whether it was a good film or not is not the point here. A third example is that of Manikda (Satyajit Ray). It is known that when he wrote his screenplays, bits of music came to his mind and he would write them in staff notation in the margin of his text. Further, I argued that his Ganashatru was music, in the sense that it had a musical form, not a dramatic form as purists claimed it should have had since it was based on a play. (After reading Amitava’s letter) Paraphrasing Bergman, in this case (Ganashatru), I would say film has nothing to do with drama. But then, that would be an exaggeration. And I think Amitava is right in feeling that the title of Bergman’s article may be a misnomer. Film as such has to do with all the arts; a particular film may have to do more with some arts and less with others. But in as much as film is an art form, it cannot be dissociated from the other forms. ________________________________ * From “Four Screenplays” by Ingmar Bergman, Simon and Schuster, 1960. (Translated by Lars Malmstrom and David Kushner). New Quest had invited comment on this short article by Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007), which could not be reprinted for the benefit of NQ’s readers as permission was not secured from the original publisher. It was reprinted in “Subject and Structure” (An Anthology for Writers), John M. Wasson, ed., Little, Brown and Company, 1972.

The cinema of Bergman and Antonioni

“I do it for an ideal spectator who is this very director. I could never do something against my tastes to meet the public”—this is what he said when asked who he made his films for. In 1995 he was handed a lifetime achievement Academy Award presented to him by Jack Nicholson who commented, “In the empty, silent spaces of the world, he has found metaphors that illuminate the silent places of our hearts, and found in them, too, a strange and terrible beauty: austere, elegant, enigmatic, haunting”. In the true meaning of these terms, his cinema had slow pace, sparse dialogues and a pronounced lack of structured narrative.

On the other side lies this other director who toyed with the issues of mortality, death and the existential being in almost all his major films. Reflecting on his cinema Jean-Luc Godard once commented, ‘Nothing can be more classically romantic’.

Meet Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman: the two master filmmakers who along with few others ensured that cinema is essentially an art form on par with classic disciplines like painting and music. On July 30, 2007 as both of them passed away in the span of a few hours (Antonioni at 94 and Bergman at 89), the entire film community was shocked by this coincidence. This piece is just a small tribute to these geniuses—not a journalistic obituary; rather, a sublime retrospect.

 “All my opinions on the subject are in my films”
—Michelangelo Antonioni

Though Antonioni was never keen to appease the mainstream audiences, his 1966 film “Blow-Up” (set against the backdrop of ‘swinging 60’s’ London, starring Vanessa Redgrave and David Hemmings) was probably his most commercially successful venture. It was able to capture the mood of London amidst the bubbling fashion scene. The use of photography – both still and motion, remains, to date, inspirational to budding photographers the world over. However, “L’Avventura” (1960) remains for me his finest work along with the inimitable colour masterpiece: “The Red Desert” (1964). Whereas the latter dealt with industrial pollution and environmental illness, the former was essentially a human saga of alienation, loneliness and the utter despair of non-communication. Here, the director placed his central character in dusty, barren landscapes that symbolized his own emotional void. There is an awkward sensation all along, a mystery which the viewers would love to keep unresolved—but sail along with the central character’s quest for the meaning of life. In “L’Avventura”, as Anna’s best friend wore Anna’s clothes and dressed like her after Anna mysteriously disappeared (and also became the new woman for Anna’s lover), we hear the melancholy tune of an uncertain relationship, resulting in insecure identities—of love and self. This feeling of insecurity flows in as the theme philosophy of most of Antonioni’s cinema.

It is important to note that Antonioni was preceded by the great Italian neo-realist film movement. However, Antonioni, barring his initial few films, never seemed to be influenced by it as he always emphasized the effects rather than the causes of social and political change: “I think filmmakers should always try to reflect the times in which they live; not so much to express and interpret events in their most direct and tragic form, but rather to capture their effect upon us.” This is probably the reason why his cinema is largely devoid of any tension arising from the conflict between Catholicism and Marxism that marks some of the most political cinema of the neo-realist era in Roberto Rossellini’s “Rome, Open City” (1945) or Vittorio De Sica’s “The Bicycle Thief” (1948).

By shunning the path of conventional narrative, the audience is stripped of the security of viewing a realistic illusion—a plot to relate to easily rather than a juxtaposition of emotions which at worst can be eerily un-adventured. Antonioni’s world is unstable, the characters don’t seem to act; they, like us (the audience), merely observe the vagaries of life as it unfolds before them; the camera follows their gaze instead of focusing on them as the objects. The dissolution of one scene and the beginning of another opens up newer possibilities like the fading away of one love relation into another. This philosophical standpoint dwells very aptly on the structure of cinema as an art form and remains essentially unique to Antonioni, becoming his signature. And in putting up these multifarious, multiple possibilities, Antonioni used actual and metaphorical deserts as his constant image, cinema after cinema. As opposed to the pessimist embodiment of his human characters, he introduced melancholy landscapes as an aesthetic counter-balance to his dispirited human characters. Having an architect’s eye for detail, Antonioni used planes, angles and heights to an extent perhaps no other film-maker in the history of cinema ever dared to do. He used these inanimate concrete objects to reflect certain moods: the rude, arrogant buildings of “Zabriskie Point” (1968) or the hapless, solemn, ‘grey’ industries with their ‘angry’ chimneys in “The Red Desert”.

For Antonioni, the protagonist driving his film’s point-of-view was frequently a woman. In “L’Avventura” the camera followed Claudia (along with the audience) to observe as an outsider and remain emotionally distant from the love affairs of her friends. In “L’Eclisse” Vittoria entered the stock exchange and through her gaze (identified with the camera) we observe the rowdy stock traders. In “La Notte” (1961) the camera picked up Lidia from the crowd on the sidewalk. In a series of shots we understand Lidia as someone searching for any acquaintance, a kind human contact—a recurrent Antonioni theme: a loner’s existence in a cruel world of trolleys, scooters and cars which strangle his/her survival.

Another interesting aspect of Antonioni’s oeuvre is his provocative, seductive use of time duration by playing on the persistent vision of the audience. He once admitted, ‘I need to follow my characters beyond the moments conventionally considered important, to show them even when everything appears to have been said’. This restlessness can be observed in the shots of people walking aimlessly, unable to find themselves or others, not sure of their preferred destinations, if any. This lasting impression of aesthetic estrangement is achieved in several ways: in the taut tension of playful coyness between Monica Vitti and Marcello Mastroianni in “La Notte”, the mosaics of colour, shape, patterns and forms of emotions in “The Red Desert”, the lyrical mysticism associated with the island and the characters in “L’Avventura”.

 “For me, the human face is the most important subject of cinema”
—Ingmar Bergman

Being the son of a clergyman, Ingmar Bergman was both fascinated and terrorized by religion. Almost throughout, he had a quest: making sense of the unknown, and having faith or the lack of it. This quest drove the director to break away from the darkness and angst usually associated with his cinema to an undercurrent of profound humanism, love for mankind and a joyous celebration of innocence. Bergman’s forte was the performances he coaxed from his actors. Throughout his life Bergman was actively involved in theatre and the influence flowed onto the screen, in setting up scenes and also in his reference to theatre, or rather, ‘performance’ in his cinema.

Unfortunately, Bergman is considered by many as only gloomy and dull—extreme close-ups, static tableaus, monochromatic contrasts and the bitter, numb ruthlessness of his Nordic home. But, at the core of it are the pensive expressions of man’s place within God’s arrangement; that’s why he raised questions about mortality, faith, the after-life and the tussle between living and dying. An existentialist to the hilt, Bergman used symbols and apparently non sequitur imagery to make his points. For example, in “The Seventh Seal” (1957), Death was presented as an interesting proposition; of metaphysical allegory as well as a signifier of mass holocaust and the extinction of human civilization in the post-World War II Nuclear age (He once commented: “In the Middle Ages man was terrorized by the plague. Today he lives in fear of the atomic bomb”. It’s the ‘Middle Ages’ which Bergman resorted to in many of his films as a medium to portray the opposite of our modern world). His confusion came out through the Knight’s confession: “Why must God hide behind vague promises and invisible miracles? …What will become of us who want to believe but cannot?” In one of the greatest moments of world cinema, in “The Seventh Seal”, the Knight plays chess with Death. Before that, Bergman’s existential linkage is exposed through the brutally simple yet utterly dark conversation between the Knight and Death:

Knight: Who are you?
Death: I am Death.
Knight: Have you come for me?
Death: I have been walking by your side for a long time.
Knight: That I know.
Death: Are you prepared?
Knight: My body is frightened, but I am not.
Death: Well, there is no shame in that.

The encounter with one’s own mortality was repeated again in the first dream sequence of Isak in “Wild Strawberries” (1957). Here again, Bergman puts individuals outside of themselves in an honest interrogation of their own life and deeds.

One of the strongest philosophical positions that Bergman took is in the form of a ‘mirror’—the gap between the face and the mask. In “Persona” (1966), Elisabet broke down on stage in her performance as she was caught in a state between herself and someone else. Time and again, Bergman placed his characters in front of the ‘mirror’ to examine themselves or to confront another’s gaze (Karin and Anna in front of the actual mirror in “Cries and Whispers” (1973). The search for identity (which is also established in Bergman’s portrayal of encounters with Death as mentioned above) was depicted on screen by extreme close-ups of one or two individuals. As in the quote at the head of this section, the human face was, for Bergman, the canvas which reflects all the human drama in its stark naked presentation.

The image of a rootless, sequestered individual in Bergman’s cinema was depicted by and large in black-and-white cinematography. The individuals were also set on barren islands or landscapes: the island surrounded by the sea in “Through a Glass Darkly” (1961), the snow forming a white void in otherwise dull surroundings in “Winter Light” (1963), an island setting in “Persona”, “Shame” (1968), and “Hour of the Wolf” (1968). And confined in this way, man travelled to communicate, to bridge gaps: travelling across a plague-devastated land in “The Seventh Seal”, travelling in a car in “Wild Strawberries”, the train compartment in “The Silence” (1963), the boat in “Shame”, the movement within several chambers and rooms of a single house in “Cries and Whispers”, the silhouettes of a caravan in “Naked Night” (1953), and the four buildings in “Fanny and Alexander” (1982).

 
The Indian context

Just as the two differed in their philosophy, so did they in style. While Bergman followed the more classical path of established cinema techniques, Antonioni experimented with very long takes and florid tracking shots, thereby landscaping his frames—articulating each detail with great care and using cinema to tell us what keeps people apart and isolated. Apart from this superficial difference, both wanted, in essence, to extract meaning from life in today’s chaotic world.

Working for over four decades, both of them had been influential, becoming – icons to latter day film-makers. Woody Allen, for example, has remained forever indebted to Bergman—in a number of films we find motifs and philosophical viewpoints of and references to Bergman and his cinema (as Allen’s character comments in “Manhattan”: “Bergman’s the only genius in cinema today”). Antonioni on the other hand, has influenced the new generation of Chinese film-makers to a great extent. However, the deep personal style of these two geniuses ensured that their techniques stem from the general mood of their cinema, which is an especially philosophical journey.

In the Indian context, it is difficult to figure out the direct influences of Bergman and Antonioni. Many Indian film-makers have been respectful towards both of them, but it is hard to find references to the influence of these two film-makers in their own work. However, there are resemblances which we could say are probable inspirations. In Kundan Shah’s satirical “Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro” (1983), for example, a murder was accidentally photographed and later revealed in the darkroom, as in “Blow-Up”.

Buddhadeb Dasgupta for one has used space and landscape to great effect in Indian cinema in “Charachar” (1993), “Bagh Bahadur” (1989) and “Uttara” (2000) where, like Antonioni, he showed how space can communicate with humans in a time when inter-personal communication is on the verge of breaking down. In Dasgupta’s “Lal Darja” (1997), the mechanization of today’s world makes the protagonist feel as if he would turn into a robot—his anxious, disturbed existence is reminiscent of the female protagonist in “The Red Desert”. Rituporno Ghosh’s “Unishe April” (1994) and Khalid Mohamed’s Hindi film “Tehzeeb” (2003)—which is officially dedicated to Ingmar Berman—both deal with the relationship between a celebrity mother and her neglected daughter; a story similar to Bergman’s “Autumn Sonata” (1978).

Satyajit Ray’s conceptualization of disjunctive montage in “Nayak” (1966), where an actor unwinds during a long journey, has a close correspondence with Bergman’s “Wild Strawberries”, where a doctor unravels his heart in similar ways—both are at the height of their personal achievements and rewards. Looking back at the evolution of ‘art’ cinema in the Indian context, one cannot overlook the fact that Bergman and Antonioni’s films were first seen in large numbers in India only since the mid-60s. Ray’s “Calcutta Trilogy” and Mrinal Sen’s “Bhuvan Shome” (1969) all dealt with a new form of isolation that didn’t depict the ‘grand narrative’ (as in Ray’s “Apu Trilogy” where we get to see a complete ‘story’).In doing so, both directors moved away from their earlier trend and made cinema of and about the individual placed within the contemporary world—aesthetically, an influence they may have derived from their western counterparts, who had already shifted to cinema about the common ‘individual’.

Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s early work, “Kodiyettam” (1977) chronicled the life of a nobody (this common ‘individual’) who drifted aimlessly, much like Aldo in Antonioni’s “Il Grido” (1957), who abandoned his past and embarked on an aimless quest. The other great Malayali director, G. Aravindan was probably influenced less, in spite of his marked concern for the linear narrative and the extensive use of poetry and long takes. For Aparna Sen, Bergman had been an interesting influence: “Bergman did influence my thinking. Bergman's influence doesn't show in my films, but a little bit of it comes through in Yugant. It is there for instance in the innocence of the fisher folk and the character played by Anjan Dutt”. In her first feature, “36 Chowringhee Lane” (1981) the black-and-white dream sequence of Violet (she saw her house, pushed open the door to a graveyard next to an ocean where a strange ritual was being performed) seems to be influenced by a number of Bergman’s dream sequences.

To sum up, Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni had inspired generations of film-makers, scholars and viewers worldwide, though to pinpoint their signature in any other director’s work is a difficult task. Fortunately, that doesn’t take anything away from being enriched by the entire gamut of their creations.

Animation in Hollywood

1. In self-defense
"What then, is time? If no one asks of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not" —St. Augustine
Time "can reduce [us] to hopeless confusion" — Bertrand Russel
Human beings have been so far confused about the notion of time. From the linear 'arrow of time' of Newtonian Physics to the 'space-time' duality of Einstein or the validity of the Chaos theory, we have shifted paradigms without fully understanding it. In this essay, I am in no way trying to define, dictate or direct readers about the 'notion of time'. Linearity is an artificial way of viewing this world. Uncertainty Principle and the Post-Modern culture study taught us to think differently. Here, I will try to trace a history of animated films in Hollywood from its inception. This history is by no means complete or comprehensive. However, here I will try to put forward several events to trace the history, but not always, as a series of interconnected events occurring one after another like beads strung on a necklace.
2. Before the Beginning
Time immemorial, human beings have tried to capture a sense of motion in their art. From the drawings of animals with multiple legs in the Altamira caves in Spain to the sequential paintings or sculpting in Sumerian, Egyptian, Chinese and Greek cultures or the performance of shadow puppets in the Indian epics 'Ramayan' and 'Mahabharat' the eternal quest for capturing motion has been a persistent and intrinsic human desire. In 1645 Athanasius Kircher, a Jesuit priest published his book "The Great Art of Light and Shadow" where he describes the construction of a new invention — the magic lantern. In 1736, Pieter van Musschenbroek, using Kircher's techniques projected images in sequence using multiple projectors that became popular in Europe. However the most famous magic lantern show had been Fantasmagorie in 1794 by Etienne Robert in Paris. Flip Books (which first started in the 16th Century) and other optical toys also became popular in the 19th Century.
True animation cannot be achieved without understanding a basic principle of the human eye—the 'persistence of vision'. This was first demonstrated in 1826 by William Paris who invented Thaumatrope which having one image on each side of a disc, when spun very fast combine into a single image. Two other inventions that help to further the cause of animation are-

• Phenakistiscope invented by Joseph Plateau and Simon Ritter von Stampfer in 1832-33. The device consisted of 2 discs mounted parallel on a single axle. In the disc closer to viewers' eyes slits were cut out for them to look through. On the second disc opposite each slit were a limited number of sequential drawings. When the discs were rotated the slits acted as shutter and the viewers saw a progression of image resulting in a moving object.

• Zootrope invented by William Homer in 1834 that became popular only in the 1860's. The device was a drum with sequential drawings on its inside. When the drum spun there was an illusion of movement.

Variants of all these techniques were used throughout the later part of the nineteenth century. In 1853, Franz von Uchatius customized the Phenakistiscope by painting pictures on glass instead of paper and projecting them through lens. This was perhaps the first attempt to project animated image by projecting light. Twenty-two years later, Emil Reynaud invented the Praxinoscope — a theatrical Zootrope with mirrors, which became increasingly popular. By 1892 he could project 10 to 15 minute 'films' but the invention of films two years later drove him out of business. Subsequent 4-5 years saw the invention of Kinetoscope by Thomas Edison, the Cinematograph by Louis Lumiere and the 'birth of film'.
3. The Early Years
The earliest pioneers in film animation were perhaps Emile Cohl, a Frenchman who produced several vignettes and J Stuart Blackton, an American who is credited with the first animated cartoon in 1906 entitled "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces" which uses chalkboard sketches and cutouts. However, the first celebrated animator remain Winsor McCay, an American best known for his works Little Nemo and Gertie, the Dinosaur. McCay made between 4,000 and 10,000 separate line drawings for each of his three one-reel films released between 1911 and 1914. McCay was also the first to experiment with colour in animation. The notion of an onscreen live dinosaur in 1914 was astonishing and had a galvanizing effect on the audience. Even before McCay had shown the world the true potential of the animated cartoon in Gertie, the first animation studios were around. In 1913 Raoul Barre' opened the first animation house which produced some short satires of contemporary life based on Tom Power's newspaper comics notable among which are "The Phable of a Busted Romance" and "The Phable of the Phat Woman". By the 1920s birth of a new industry started to shape with the popping up of new studios in and around the New York metropolis. Winsor McCay who animated his films almost single-handedly (apart from his final films "Gertie on Tour" and "The Centaurs", both in 1921 where his son and John Fitzsimmons assisted him) from inception to execution, could never accept the studio-system for animation films and the grossly overdone commercial nature of it —
"Animation should be an art….what you fellows have done with it is making it into a trade….not an art, but a trade…bad luck".
Arguably the most successful and influential of these early studios was the John Bray studio starting in the 1910s.Out of Bray's studio came the likes of Max Fleischer (Betty Boop), Paul Terry (Terrytoons) and Walter Lantz (Woody Woodpecker). But the studio's most important contribution to the history of animation has been the introduction of translucent cels. This idea of inking the animator's drawings onto the cels and then photographing them in succession on a background (on long sheets of paper so that panning could be performed easily) was invented by Bray employee Earl Hurd in late 1914. The credit was swallowed by Hurd's more illustrious boss John Bray who patented this and charged royalties from other studios.
One of the first animated characters with an identifiable persona after Gertie was none other than Felix, the Cat by Otto Messmer that appeared in the early 1920s in Pat Sullivan productions. Like Hurd, Messmer also was deprived of the credits and this time again his boss Pat Sullivan earned millions of dollars in royalties over the years. Animation historian John Canemaker tracked down this genius in 1976 and only then the rest of the world came to know of Felix's legitimate father. Otto Messmer, with his brilliant work, established that true art is possible from the studios also thereby negating McCay's prophecy. But stories of Hurd and Messmers point to the rather ironic last part of McCay's quote—'bad luck'. So far, it seems, his saying holds true more for the studio artists rather than the art.
However till the 1920s the general trend of animation was based on primitive gags and violence as Dick Huemer pointed out— "Plots? We never bothered with plots. They were just a series of gags strung together." One character would beat another mercilessly only to leave his victim recover and return the favour much like the popular World Wide Wrestling television series.
From the mid 1920s the animation industry first felt the effects of a sea-change –
commercialization started seeping in the system as big studios started eating up smaller ones and animation standards were been set. Animators were given quotas on the number of drawings they had to produce a day. Cartoons had to be produced in bulk and that too, cheaply. This was evident since the production of general Hollywood feature films (non-animated) started from the 'Continuity System' thriving on standardization and the minute division of labour. Independent production started its backtrack apart from some notable exceptions in the United Artists in 1919 formed by such stalwarts as D. W. Griffiths, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charles Chaplin. Added to the external pressure, the animation studios of the 1920s felt a mounting internal one — audience started to become apathetic due to excessive rework of the same gags. The animation business started a nosedive and so were the studios. Came the late 1920s, they had to reckon with new forces: Sound and a man from Kansas City named Walter Elias Disney.
4. Birth of an era — Walt Disney, Warner Bros. and MGM
On November 18,1928 audiences in the Colony Theatre in New York experienced an achievement worth their lifetime — Mickey Mouse in "Streamboat Willie" and the Walt Disney studio became the most influential studio in the history of animation, a position it undisputedly held till its founder's death in 1966. However "Streamboat Willie" was not his first cartoon. While in Kansas City, Disney started producing short animated films in his Laugh-O-Grams Film Studio for local businesses notable being "The Alice Comedies" which was not complete as Disney went bankrupt. Undeterred by the failure, Disney headed towards Hollywood in 1923. By then, Los Angeles already became the centre of live-action filmmaking but the animation industry remained rooted in New York and few in the Mid-West. Along with Disney, two others also moved from Kansas City — men who would shape the future of animation. Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising were, like Disney, men with little success but as was proved, they had a destiny lying ahead — they eventually founded the Warner Bros. and MGM animation houses.
Coming back to the Walt Disney Studio, it must be admitted that like Otto Messmer and Hurd, a number of Disney animators like Vladimir Tytla and Freddie Moore remained overshadowed by the omnipresence of Walt Disney. However, unlike most studio heads, Disney was a cinematic visionary who introduced latest innovations in sound and colour (although not the first to use colour). Audience for the first time experienced animated cartoons moving in real way rather than in the 'rubber hose' style of the silent era (disregarding anatomy as if all limbs were rubber hoses). Disney's innovations included use of a storyboard to review the story, use of pencil sketches to review motion and multi-plane camera stand that allows parallax effect creating illusion of depth and zooming. In 1932 Walt Disney won the first of his studios Academy Awards for the film "Flowers and Trees". And in 1937 the first full-length animation musical "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" created history proving a worldwide market for animation. During the next 5 years, the Walt Disney Studio completed the animation classics such as "Pinocchio", "Fantasia", "Dumbo" and "Bambi".
Meanwhile in 1930, Warner Bros. Cartoons was born. "Looney Tunes" began the same year by Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising (both Walt Disney veterans) followed by "Merrie Melodies" the next year. Three years later in 1933, Harman and Ising left Warner Bros. to form the MGM Cartoon Studio. The real importance of the Warner Bros. animators like Fred "Tex" Avery and Bob Clampett is that they broke from the Disney tradition (which other studios imitated) and imbibed their films with highly exaggerated slapstick comedy. 1937 saw Daffy Duck in "Porky's Duck Hunt" (Looney Tunes) and it was first time that characters were distorted beyond physical perceptions for comic effects. And in 1940 the Warner Bros. gifted us the memorable, suave and wily comic hero Bugs Bunny in "A Wild Hare" and this started the supremacy in humour of Warner Bros. only to be matched by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera at the MGM whose classical Tom and Jerry remains an all time hit. However one interesting aspects remains the reflection of contemporary society in animation films. The two devastating world wars had enormous effect on live -action films resulting in the birth of a 'war-genre'. However the link between these 'social' films with the general animation film (which puts the basic objective of animation films as sole entertainment into scrutiny) is an interesting as well as an intriguing area which is beyond the scope of this essay.
The 1950s saw the increasing popularity of television with the animation industry coming more and more in TV commercials. Soon animation was a hit and in 1956, in a bid to introduce Warner Bros. cartoons to new generation Americans, the company sells all pre-1948 colour cartoons to AAP for TV syndication. Four years later, "The Bugs Bunny Show" debuts on ABC in prime time and from 1962 it got its Saturday morning slot where it created history by becoming the longest-running children's shows in television history. One year later Ivan Sutherland's doctoral dissertation at MIT on Computer Animation opened up new possibilities that eventually governed the direction of the animation industry. In the two decades starting with 1960 animation finally leaped to television. Quality was soon on the decline trying to meet the increasing pressure of the 'prime time slots'. TV animation house moguls began to care more for the market rather than the quality and McCay's prophecy finally seems to be correct. Bulk production in a desperate attempt to conquer as much air-time as possible (that too in a quick time) forced the animators into imitating previous successes thereby stunting creativity. By and large, production of animation films was decreasing, as the animation houses couldn't cope with the pressures of television. However traditional animation and the first traces of computer animation started in a big way in live-action films — the increase in popularity of Sci-Fi films were based on different 'special-effects' animation techniques. The first major use of motion control animation was in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) and the first computer animation was used in the film "The Andromeda Strain" (1971). Two years back, in UCLA a silent revolution started — the Internet was born. This along with the digital revolution ushered the 'Information Age'. This transition from the 'Industrial Age' (whose effect was evident in the Assembly Line Production of the early animation films) to the 'Information Age' had enormous impact on this industry, but more so later.
Coming back to the decline in quality of animation films due to television, this time again like in the mid-1920s, smaller studios were swallowed by larger ones. However the situation improved when the two giants — Disney and Warner Bros. entered the market. The introduction of the Cable TV in 1982, the Disney Channel one year later and the Cartoon Network in 1992 were the artifacts of this change. Disney's "Duck tales" (1986) and Warner Bros.' "Tiny Toon Adventures" (1989) were far better than their competitors and were soon popular. However they were no match for their predecessors whose creative persona imbibed life to so many legendary characters. Back on television, new zeal came with the Warner Bros. production "Batman: The Animated Series" in 1992 for deep characterizations and strong stories. Parallely on the big screen with the advent television, production of animation 'shorties' were stopped completely by 1980s though the trend started in the late1950s. From the late 1980s a new generation Disney artists breathed life back into animation with films like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", "The Little Mermaid", "Aladdin" and "The Lion King".
The glorious history of animated films had been made memorable by numerous genius, both heard and unheard, whose relentless work ensured that business logistics don't overwhelm the potential of the medium and the result attained will be the best of both worlds: a trade and an art.
5. In Lieu of a Conclusion: Computer Animation and a Digital Future
As already mentioned, computer animation gained prominence in the so-called 'Sci-Fi' films starting with Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey". The extensive usage of computer effects was first seen in George Lucas' "Start Wars" (1977) and also in Start Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" (1982) by Nicholas Meyer. And one of the most popular till date remains Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" (1982). The first 3D digital character was introduced in "Young Sherlock Holmes"(1985) and three years later, in Ron Howard's "Willow", morphing was used for the first time to transform one form into another. But the landmark in most elaborate usage of computer graphics and effects remains Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park"(1993) and "The Lost World" (1997). In between Paul Anderson's "Mortal Kombat" was the first film to incorporate the latest computer games and John Lasseter's "Toy Story" was the first feature film wholly generated using computer animation. All these films have successfully carried out the simulation of digital actors consisting of a series of special effects — morphing into different shapes, exploding into particles and so on.
This brings us to a crossroad. In one place, we have a glorious history of 'live-action' feature films that can be broadly classified as 'lens-based' recordings of reality. On the other we can, given the time and money, simulate almost everything in a computer of which filming physical reality is just one option. And that too generating photo realistic scenes without actually filming them! This also blurs the distinction between special effects and editing as everything is controlled by the computer 'mantra' — 'cut and paste'. William J Mitchell reminds of the inherent mutability of a digital image that erases the distinction between a photograph and a painting — "The essential characteristic of digital information is that it can be manipulated easily and very rapidly by computer. It is simply a matter of substituting new digits for old…..Computational tools for transforming, combining, alerting and analyzing images are as essential to the digital artist as brushes and pigments to a painter". Film being a series of photographs in sequence, we can apply Mitchell's logic to digital films as well. (A point to note here is that this was not the first attempt to link cinema with painting since as early as 1935, Len Lye, a pioneer of abstract animation painted directly on film in an attempt to turn his films into abstract paintings.) And here, cinema returns to its 19th Century origins — the handcrafted images of magic lantern slides, the Phenakistiscope and the Zootrope mentioned earlier. Two important events worth mentioning here are —

• Music Videos (which mostly have non-linear narratives), and
• CD ROM games which incorporate actual movie-like scenes with live actors, realistic sets, complex camera angles, dissolves and other codes of traditional film making.

And the way by which the computer screen consciously emulates the cinema screen and with the development of commercial multimedia, we can safely comment that cinema has been reinvented on a computer screen after 100 years of its birth.
However, the entire nature of the relationship between the animated image and its real-world spectator is being renegotiated and redefined by technology and the Internet plays an important role here. The web blurs the distinction between the private and the public in a manner incomprehensible by our physical senses. One example of this loss of identification or rather, the identity sharing between the spectator and the hyper-real world created by the web is the case of BOTS or intelligent agents which are autonomous, human-like computer programs that can help in a variety of tasks including chatting with real person in a live Chat Room. These virtual creations, designed to pass as human beings are extremely sophisticated and people have been observed to develop emotional relationships with these BOTS, unaware of their virtual existence.
Ninety years ago, Winsor McCay had the freedom of drawing thousands of lines for his own creation. Now the corporate and commercial imagination is shaping our vision of reality. With pre-assembled, standardized editing and animation packages, full-length animation is again turning its wheel to a potentially individual's art with the distinction, that with the click of a mouse button, your world is being created. This complete cycle from an individual's art to one produced with collective effort and again to the possibilities of becoming an individual's art (though time and money remain, as often, the most critical and discerning question.) puts McCay's prophecy in question. Whether animation will be an art in future or will it be guided by only commercial interests or like Disney, Warner Bros. or MGM, whether it will balance both remains to be seen. The changing scenario in culture studies along with the new found cyborg consciousness and the change of animation position in respect to the meaning of representation forces us to take new stance.
We are in a confused milieu.
References:
1. Film Art: An Introduction (Fourth ed.) by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
2. A rather incomplete but still fascinating history of Animation by Dan McLaughlin http://animation.filmtv.ucla.edu/program/anihist.html
3. Chronology of Animation by Richard Llewellyn. http://www.public.iastate.edu/~rllew/chronst.html
4. Chronology of Animation before film by Dan McLaughlin http://animation.filmtv.ucla.edu/program/before.html
5. Chronology of Hollywood Cinema of Cyberspace & Digital Effects by Steve Napleton http://freespace.virgin.net/s.napleton/Research/chronology.html
6. Warner Bros. Animation Art: The Characters, the Creators, the Limited Editions by Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald, Hugh Lauter Levin Associates; (November 1997)
7. Chronology of the Walt Disney Company by Ken Polsson http://www.heise.de/tp/english/special/film/6110/2.html
8. Hanna-Barbera Cartoons by Michael Mallory, Beaux Arts Editions; (October 1998)
9. What's an agent anyway? A sociological case study by L. N. Foner, May, 1993, Agents Group, MIT Media Laboratory.
10. What is Digital Cinema? by Lev Manovich. http://www.heise.de/tp/english/special/film/6110/2.html

“Illusion” is what remains ?

Theatre, Circus and Magic were the three things to which Gautam Ghosh got attracted to, since his childhood days. Specially the latter two for their mesmeric power—their ability to create ‘illusion’. This hypnosis led him to still photography and later to the moving images—the celluloid. Twenty one years after his first feature film Ma Bhumi (in Telegu), it’s perhaps with ‘Dekha’, his latest film, Gautam pays a self tribute as he returns to his childhood love—illusion. Also interesting is that, a diehard Communist, all his earlier films like ‘Hungry Autumn’, ‘Ma Bhumi’, ‘Dakhal’, ‘Paar’ are made from his Marxist lineage. ‘Dekha’ in that sense, is a self analysis also, where he criticises and questions the relevance of Communism in India through his hero. In that way, ‘Dekha’ becomes a new opening for Gautam, and he comes out to a new bend (much like his hero) in his filmy career. The film has blind Shashi Bhusan, aged around sixty, as the fulcrum of action. He gave shelter to his teacher’s daughter Sarama and her son after she made a move of her husbands’. The film is basically the life and thoughts of Shashi with other characters adding in to make him a clearer person to us. A poet, Shashi, was a Communist who sees life according to him (he picks it from King Lear). The film starts with a long camera shot on the verandah and it takes us to Shashi. Shashi is shown in a ‘frame within frame’ as he stands puffing on a cigarette. Sarama enters from the outer frame to the frame of Shashi (the frame within) which expands to set the track for us—Sarama in a yellow sari (symbolising optimism) comes as a ray of hope to free Shashi from his mental entrapment. In a later shot, Shashi asks Sarama whether she is wearing a yellow sari and gets disturbed by the physical touch of Sarama’s hands. In the soundtrack, we can hear a speeding train which symbolises the first knowledge that we gather about Shashi. The train sound is used many times in the film to mark changes in Shashi and Gagan (a born-blind man who comes in the second part of the film). In the end for both Shashi and Gagan, the train sound becomes very loud which has culminated from the earlier small changes in them, as opposed to the aeroplane sound which marks a sort of stalemate situation for a promoter who is eyeing for Shashi’s house as well as for Nikhil (Sarama’s husband) who wants to reunite with her for his own personal benefits. The usage of colour is quite poignant in the film as it is used to mark the changing moods of individuals or as they reflect to Shashi. Shashi’s wife Reba wears a red sari in happier times (symbolising intense emotion of love and passion) in his abrupt plunge into nostalgia. She wears a purple night dress when she comes out as a sophisticated but jealous person lighting a cigarette, as well as sensing security and comfort as she has decided to take up a job and leave Shashi. She leaves Shashi the next day in a light blue sari which is just opposite of the reddish tinge—calm and composed, oblivious of the previous night’s passion and excitement. Shashi’s first hallucination of Reba was that of a woman as a source of inspiration. The reminiscence of her, later, was the actual character, not the emotion and feeling that gets intermixed in Shashi’s idea of ‘Reba’. This difference between the reality and the ‘observed’ reality leads to ‘illusion’. Shashi had illusions about Reba which he gets over and develops one for Sarama later when we can find Shashi submerged in the delusion of a dancing Sarama. Sarama now takes over from Reba in the recluse of Shashi’s internal sensitivities. This conflict between the two realities adds new dimensions to life in the speeding waters or in the long wide bends of the river—motifs that come a number of times in the film. In one of those flashbacks, Reba asks Shashi to see her and not the sky through her lenses. In this regard Reba and Sarama have a commonality. Reba to Shashi and Sarama to Nikhil—both want to see the world through their husband’s eyes—worlds that they themselves can’t see. Yet, they want Shashi or Nikhil to look only at them—a vicious circle which leads to narcissism since both Reba and Sarama, in rotation, want to see themselves through other’s eyes. This nature lures them to exploit and get exploited. Apart from them there is Garima/Rima who runs a little magazine. She comes as a motif here. She in the end comes in a yellow sari. Here there is again a ‘frame within frame’ like the very first shot, but now, the inner frame is bigger (symbolising the mental change that had gone within Shashi). She gives him a break and Shashi returns to poetry. Garima first comes to Shashi as a continuation of his emotional attachment with his mother. In a way, both of them have similar functionalities with Shashi. It’s after Garima comes, Shashi gets a new turn in his life after a long time. In one shot, Garima comes to Shashi while Sarama stays back implying that Sarama can’t help Shashi out, since both of them are in the same mental rung. In another shot we find Shashi trying to help Sarama financially and wants to stand by her. The frame leaves both of them and zooms only on Sarama indicating the helplessness in their relation— a blatant truth that they can’t help each other. Blind Gagan lives in Duars in North Bengal with Shashi’s teacher (Sarama’s father). He symbolises the child of nature, completely naive and ignorant. And he is so distant from us, the urban sophistication, that it seems he can understand the sounds of birds which he told them he can’t. In fact Gagan is never shown as a person who is handicapped (mentally)—his speed and his actions are all normal and he is quite agile as opposed to Shashi. His thoughts and his world are simple, devoid of any complications, in black and white, though he is a little confused like the trickling water drops on a glass pane. In that fateful night in a bungalow in Duars, the electric atmosphere where the mating elephants symbolise the intense passions of life, Shashi wants to get intimate with Sarama. Sarama doesn’t respond to him and she goes to Gagan. Gagan loses his innocence and becomes ‘blind’ for the first time. Sarama depraves Gagan of his innocence, draws him in the ‘Danger Zone’ (marked by a banner in a tree) and then leaves him—we find Gagan groping in rain for Sarama. Gagan, beguiled by the passion of Sarama, comes to Calcutta and stays with Sarama and Shashi, learns to sing Rabindra Sangeet. The film flows from Sashi’s world to Sarama’s, from one emotion to the other, and in the end the film shows Shashi returning to his poems. Sarama and Gagan have their own but different realisations but all three now stand near the bend of a river where the water gushes fast—unobtrusively. The film is an out and out thinking movie and it veers round Shashi, who is a byproduct of the Communist consciousness in Bengal after 1950s. This film and the character Shashi can be perceived only if you place yourself in the right track, else, the whole exercise seems pointless with Shashi emerging as a mindless pervert who wants to touch girls(much younger than him) out of sexual instinct or finding solace in a prostitute. The character is multi dimensional. He has social and ecological awareness (he wants to preserve the trees for birds and his pond for slum dwellers who bathe there) but also feels that in Duars, the bringing down of forest for growing tea gardens was just since people got jobs in the tea gardens—a person full of contradictions, and in the end, because of these contradictions, emerging as a very natural and vibrant individual. The disturbance in Shashi for the present Indian society comes most glaringly in Duars where he realised the anarchic condition of India which is nothing but a ‘market’, as well as with his discussions with friend Ashesh. With Ashesh, Shashi passively resorts to self analysis and at last, self defence. They discuss failure of Communism in India over a mug of beer in the luxurious bungalow in Raichak. Vilayat Khan’s lyrical notes fill the air. Classical music or rather all art’s isolated existence in the wake of social reformation is evident. Dichotomy is omnipresent here and it is a pervasive truth. Shashi realises, “None can do it” regarding Communism, and for him, love for country and for women (including mother) was nothing but an illusion—a mirage. Garima’s frivolous behaviour helps Shashi to change internally. In a sudden flow of emotional montage he moves from Sarama to Reba and back to his mother. His return to his mother, her songs, and her existence symbolised his first change. In his fit of hallucination, this reverse journey imbibes a flow and a speed in his mental discourse. There are lots of motifs, symbols being used like the sudden indisposition of Shashi a couple of times hearing reports from newspaper that disturb our inner credentials as a human being, as well as the Bison’s picture portraying Shashi’s instinct and sexuality. In the end after Shashi undergoes a mental change and transcends the physical barriers, the chair in front of the picture remains vacant for the first time. There is another flashback scene with the prostitute which is blurred. At that time, ‘tunnel vision’ has crippled Shashi, and it shows his degradation—his mental ‘vision’ also gets narrowed down, a powerful image. Another motif and a series of frames .which become important are when Reba leaves Shashi. Reba walks out and the frame cuts to the exterior view of Shashi’s house which suddenly looks very shaggy as if with the departure of Reba, the condition of the house deteriorates and Shashi becomes blind. Blindness of Shashi gets a new dimension in this regard. Shashi’s vision, both physical and mental gets blocked after that, he gets confined to nostalgic ruminations and he admits, he has nothing more to see. The sound usage is thoughtful. The sound tracks of speeding trains, aeroplanes or crickets in Duars are all very significant. There are nostalgic renditions of Rabindra Sangeet though Swagatalakshmi is very loud and unimaginative. The photography in Duars is marvellous—from the long top shot of Shashi and his teacher to the night in the bungalow—its overflowing with sensuousness. In general, the camera work is innovative with very fast pans on Shashi, and also in several other frames including the dancing Sarama and Reba. Soumitra Chatterjee plays Shashi from within and it stands out as one of the finest perfomances of the legendary thespian. Since Shashi was blind after a certain age, Soumitra’s characterization is devoid of the general mannerisms associated with a blind person. There are a number of close-ups where the subtle changes in his face reflect the inner confusions and dilemma. Soumitra Chatterjee with ‘Dekha’ established that he is unarguably the most versatile and powerful cinema actors of Post-Independent India. Other actors are natural except Debashree Ray in the passionate lovemaking scenes where she looked stiff. But the film is crippled by some redundancies and inconsistencies. Nikhil is an alter ego of Shashi in more that one respect. The character is blown out of proportions (with a very funny portrayal of Anjan Dutta) and is a wastage, he doesn’t stand alone on his own. He doesn’t help much in defining Sarama’s character either. If the character would have been confined just to Sarama’s minimal flashbacks (not that elaborate party scene), it would have been relevant. The motif used when Sarama’s life was initially full of motion like the random moving colours in a palette against the death of their relation when the motion got into a confused static state and culminates into a red wound in Sarama’s life, becomes unnecessary in this regard. The lovemaking scenes of Sarama and Gagan looked contrived and out of place—not a natural continuation of events. Those scenes were thrust upon the film and they definitely raise questions about the director’s integrity and lead us to believe that he has a target audience in mind for such mindless shots. In the final analysis, ‘Dekha’ remains an experimental film—an experiment with reality. It fails to transcend to the heights of Gautam’s earlier ‘Paar’ or ‘Dakhal’ since the director himself was a bit confused about its fate. The director’s obsession for ‘illusion’ was apparent and this is what remains till the end but it’s a question whether it leaves any everlasting impact or not.

The Japanese Wife

Minimalist art has always looked at life pretty simply. It s the urge to reflect life devoid of the creator s own personal, social or demographic influence is what has made this form of art so appealing. Without going into the debate of bridging Modern with the Post-modern it is probably safe to assume, doing more with less is difficult to produce and even more difficult to apprehend. Watercolour for example is a minimalist medium with respect to the transparency water brings into the medium dark shades placed on the canvas as pigments from the tube, adding water dilutes it. So to say, watercolour leaves spaces instead of painting that space opaque. Calligraphy is one of the popular exponents of the power of the medium minimal, simple and poignant. In literature, haiku closely matches minimalism in content where simplicity in itself is ultimately sophisticated. Thus it s extremely relevant that in a film where Japan comes as an important reference, minimalism will play the keynote in its definition of art. Unfortunately, in Indian psyche minimalism in art is a borrowed concept and seldom internalized. It comes as a surprise hence, that Aparna Sen s latest film The Japanese wife is such a glowing exception.
Notwithstanding the basic premise where a couple lives an unusual conjugate life for 17 years without physically meeting each other, the film treads on the long-tested path of love and sorrow. If the central theme s practicality is questioned (it can well be), then this film can t be seen in the light of its own. There are few love stories in the world which are uncommon and yet they belong to the peripheries of this earthly world. If we can accept this rationale of the film then we can be ready for some of the hidden treasures it offers.
As mentioned, minimalist painting is something which has its own place, its own set of parameters to judge with. To transcend that for cinema is difficult and probably unfair as well. From culture studies perspective, placement of cinema in the trope of common art theories will more often than not, lead to a failure. However, conceptually there are identities which we can now deliberate further.
Life flows on as a river. There are tides and ebbs. Through the crests and troughs generations proceed from one life to the next. In the film, the river Matla plays a vital role. It is the lifeline of Snehamoy, the protagonist. One one hand it acts as a bridge between isolated individual and the society. We can see shots of boats carrying people across the river. The river further acts as a vehicle of emotions for the battered soul Snehamoy just floats on it in his boat whenever he is lonely, whenever he wants to be intimate with his wife physically and also emotionally. On the other, the river acts as an opaque stroke of non-communication when the torrential rain stops the normal ferrying of boats across it. In some masterly camerawork we see the calm river, the turbulent one and the ferocious other. It depicts the inner self. Since everything is looked upon from a Nature point-of-view, here is a law beyond our comprehension which puts things back to normalcy and life flows. This global intelligence of nature is what makes man helpless in front of nature, this why a human creator should refrain from being a prophet he/she can at-most depict life in its fragments, to philosophize or to order is beyond the scope. In line with this we find there are 3 deaths in the film Miyagi s (the Japanese wife) dog (whose name is Haiku!), her mother and Snehamoy, and all three so sublimely unemotional. The camera is an observer and narrator of a slice of life in a part of the world. It seldom pries the other half which is hidden from the audience the Japanese wife s presence is henceforth like Japanese watercolor calligraphy minimal yet natural.
River is also the mother. The life of Snehamoy is influenced by three women his aunt, a young widow, and his Japanese wife. He plays the role of a son to his aunt, the role of a dutiful husband when he visits every possible doctor available for his wife s treatment and that of a responsible father to the son of the widow. Placement of river as the mother archetype is poignant in the scenes where Snehamoy experiences the river internally. He feels the lapping of the river as if his mother caresses him and he returns to his boat, his private abode on the river to masturbate a strong oedipal reference of human beings with Mother Nature. Drawing reference from Tantrik philosophy, we can think of the inverted triangle here representing the feminine Shakti energy. The horizontal line represents stability (the aunt) and the two diagonal lines represent movement (the wife and the widow). And at the centre is the bindu the symbol of Purusha (Snehamoy). Snehamoy here represents Shiva who leads a life of celibacy in the form of Tapasya . Tapa as opposed to Rasa is the internal awakening, the inner uplift and passive gaze whereas the river represents Rasa . The red will of the wife which she sent to Snehamoy acts as the symbol of union the union of the Purusha with the Prakriti (merging of White- representing male reproductive fluid with Red representing female reproductive fluid). So after the disaster and destruction the Prakriti is green, maternal. In denouncing the Vedic path and embracing the Tantrik stance, the director moves closer to nature colourful, tyrannical and without prejudice. The kite-flying scenario is also important here the Purusha way of coluring the Prakriti , the strings of the kites like lines of colour distinctly unique and collectively radiant. In one of the last scenes (after Snehamoy s death) there is a black-white shot of Snehamoy gliding in his boat there is absolute serenity and calmness, the journey from the worldly world to the other world the resurrection from death with the help of Tapa .
The intermingling of the existential world with the cosmic taking a minimalist stance is what makes this cinematic experience so memorable. As pointed out earlier, logical consistencies are to be overlooked because life is not always logical. Moreover, the simplistic rendition in a minimalist genre strips off the sophistication of putting forth a complex urban rationale. By self-reflexivity then, any critique of the film including this one should be simple, straightforward and minimal. That I have delved deep into mythology and the other genres is in sheer admiration of this work of art nice, taut and sublime.
Rest is the viewer s Ananda , her love and her dream.