The Best Feature film of 11th New York Indian Film Festival is the Bengali film Sthaniya Sangbad (Spring in the Colony), directed by Arjun Gourisaria and Moinak Biswas. This is quite interesting since the other awards went to people or endeavours which are more tested out –parallel or commercial (hoping we understand implicitly the differences between them without being too fastidious). By any parlance, most of the Bengali films harp on nostalgia as their sustaining theme ~ be it in referring the films of Ray directly or indirectly or having issues and characters that somehow, almost always look so insulated from the society at large. Sthaniya Sambaad on the contrary start with a portion of the city (Kolkata here) which perennially looks back and holds on to certain values which are post-Partition. Yet, the film doesn’t stink of nostalgic overtones but at one level submerges us in fond remembrances.
From a quantum reality perspective, the film talks of parallel mutiverses while putting the reference frame in any one of them. All these have taken us from the real to the metaphysical and the philosophical. However, most of the material aspects of existence can be measured macroscopically by the four dimensions – three of space and the one of time. By the early 20th century only physicists, namely Einstein and Minkowski, proposed the concepts of a dilating time using relativity. The concept of “now” henceforth rendered fictitious in the larger scope of nature. So time doesn’t “flow” ~ the space-time is laid out in the matrix.
The name of the film ~ both in Bengali and the English version refer space and time. It doesn’t come as a surprise later on that the four dimensions of interchangeable space-time play significant part in the film’s structure. For example, the narrative progression of temporality has been deconstructed in the film a number of times to give a sense of non-linear progression. However, if looked from a different reference frame it gets obvious that the reference frame of the characters within the film and the audience are different. The events therefore, occur at different time points ~ and as said earlier, they are not chronological in the space-time membrane: they just exist. Also, noteworthy here is the way time has been interchanged with space ~ the flight from the colony to the white town and then to the new one actually replace the pace of time within the reference frame of the film itself. The temporality gets violated naturally since there was a deliberate strategy of trying to move in different paces within the film. That is why there is a sudden jerky effect induced by an uncanny auto-rickshaw chase, the top angle suspense in the lead female character’s surreptitious fleeing from the colony to the white town or the two phony characters who are in pursuit of selling something that we never actually come to know what. In the parallel universe, if we may say so, there is a machine ~ a bull-dozer that becomes a character. In some deft images it blurs the man-machine dichotomy by bearing “human” traits ~ it almost shies away ~ we find it moving across a pond, spot it moving between two houses, suddenly round the corner and so on. In the final take when the ‘human’ is unaware, it pulls down few houses without making a noise ~ the eerie temporality embedded in the seeds of natural space.
Indian films have seen a lot of genre changes since its inception. There have been quite a few breaks in the long journey. Where does Sthaniya Sangbad stand? It’s however not very difficult to predict a “future” of such a film commercially. It didn’t get a decent screening opportunity, running for barely two weeks in Nandan. The organisations that liaise with online releases of Indian films never got interested in it. There had been occasional screenings amongst well wishers and friends. For returning money to the producer this film is probably not the best bait. However, in the milieu of films that boast of dealing with “communication” or lack of it, thereof, this film stands out for actually communicating with its intended urban audience. The different texture of it and the star-less cast is indeed refreshing. NYIFF’s award is hence encouraging ~ not because awards mean a lot or are absolute yardsticks to judge films, but more because there is hope that this film and subsequent ones which will dare to try differently get recognized in some forum and probably generate some revenue for it. An award or a film review /discussion can then actually do the duty of promoting good cinema in a culture which otherwise thrives on remaining mediocre.
From a quantum reality perspective, the film talks of parallel mutiverses while putting the reference frame in any one of them. All these have taken us from the real to the metaphysical and the philosophical. However, most of the material aspects of existence can be measured macroscopically by the four dimensions – three of space and the one of time. By the early 20th century only physicists, namely Einstein and Minkowski, proposed the concepts of a dilating time using relativity. The concept of “now” henceforth rendered fictitious in the larger scope of nature. So time doesn’t “flow” ~ the space-time is laid out in the matrix.
The name of the film ~ both in Bengali and the English version refer space and time. It doesn’t come as a surprise later on that the four dimensions of interchangeable space-time play significant part in the film’s structure. For example, the narrative progression of temporality has been deconstructed in the film a number of times to give a sense of non-linear progression. However, if looked from a different reference frame it gets obvious that the reference frame of the characters within the film and the audience are different. The events therefore, occur at different time points ~ and as said earlier, they are not chronological in the space-time membrane: they just exist. Also, noteworthy here is the way time has been interchanged with space ~ the flight from the colony to the white town and then to the new one actually replace the pace of time within the reference frame of the film itself. The temporality gets violated naturally since there was a deliberate strategy of trying to move in different paces within the film. That is why there is a sudden jerky effect induced by an uncanny auto-rickshaw chase, the top angle suspense in the lead female character’s surreptitious fleeing from the colony to the white town or the two phony characters who are in pursuit of selling something that we never actually come to know what. In the parallel universe, if we may say so, there is a machine ~ a bull-dozer that becomes a character. In some deft images it blurs the man-machine dichotomy by bearing “human” traits ~ it almost shies away ~ we find it moving across a pond, spot it moving between two houses, suddenly round the corner and so on. In the final take when the ‘human’ is unaware, it pulls down few houses without making a noise ~ the eerie temporality embedded in the seeds of natural space.
Indian films have seen a lot of genre changes since its inception. There have been quite a few breaks in the long journey. Where does Sthaniya Sangbad stand? It’s however not very difficult to predict a “future” of such a film commercially. It didn’t get a decent screening opportunity, running for barely two weeks in Nandan. The organisations that liaise with online releases of Indian films never got interested in it. There had been occasional screenings amongst well wishers and friends. For returning money to the producer this film is probably not the best bait. However, in the milieu of films that boast of dealing with “communication” or lack of it, thereof, this film stands out for actually communicating with its intended urban audience. The different texture of it and the star-less cast is indeed refreshing. NYIFF’s award is hence encouraging ~ not because awards mean a lot or are absolute yardsticks to judge films, but more because there is hope that this film and subsequent ones which will dare to try differently get recognized in some forum and probably generate some revenue for it. An award or a film review /discussion can then actually do the duty of promoting good cinema in a culture which otherwise thrives on remaining mediocre.
(Published in The Statesman on 20th May 2011 - http://www.thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=370230&catid=47)
No comments:
Post a Comment