I joined the Film Institute of India way back in 1968 and graduated with a Diploma in Film Direction three years later. I can now recollect that when I joined the Film School, I had not even the faintest idea of what I was about to discover. It was the Institute that shaped and molded my thoughts, removed my mental blocks and opened up new horizons.
A year later, I went back to my alma mater as a teacher and spent two highly rewarding years there. It was the most fruitful period of my life, a wonderful experience of learning, interacting with the students and striving to achieve a certain degree of conceptual clarity. It was in those days that I discovered the Grand Master of transcendental cinema, the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, who has left a lasting influence on my mind. Till then, I was a great admirer of the French Master, Robert Bresson. But I must admit that the cultural barrier remained nevertheless standing between us like thick mist in a winter morning.
I have always admired film-makers who have achieved simplicity in narration and austerity in form and above all a certain meditative, contemplative stance devoid of sensuousness. Cinema being too concrete a medium, it is the easiest thing to breed sensuousness in profusion and pull the audience by its nose. I have never felt close to film-makers who use large doses of sensuousness for one reason or the other. The question, to my mind is an ethical one – to excite the senses to the point of disturbing their rational thinking is a certain sign of disrespect to the audience. To look at it from the point of aesthetics, the distance one has to maintain is an aesthetic distance, a respectable distance, leaving the audience a margin to move closer to the work and have a more active participation, a greater sense of involvement in the process. I believe, freedom is alienated in the state of passion. One should not therefore seek to overwhelm the audience.
In this context, I am reminded of what the great patriarch of Cinema, Eisenstein wrote about ‘entertainment’. “Discussions on ‘amusement’ vs ‘entertainment’ irritate me. Having spent no small number of man-hour in the matter of ‘enthusiasm’ and ‘involvement’ of the audience in a united and general impulse of absorption, the word ‘amusement’ sounds alien and inimical to me. Whenever it is said that a film must ‘entertain’, I hear a voice: “Help yourself”.
‘Maya Miriga’ (The Mirage), is my debut film after twelve long years of graduation from the Film Institute. The idea too had stayed with me through those long years of hibernation. I had conceived the idea in one of my intense moments of loneliness and deep depression and it had undergone several changes in various phases. But I somehow, never wanted to write out a detailed script. I always felt that it is a continuous process of growth till the camera finally freezes it. I am fond of quoting something that the celebrated French film-maker Renoir had said in relation to Hollywood style of film-making. He said something like – ‘they check and recheck the budget which is very good, they check and recheck the schedule which is also good, but they tend to check and recheck the inspiration of the film- maker which is not so good’.
One, of course, can not wait for the inspiration while making the film, but a good enough margins should be provided for the last minute changes. As a style of working, improvisation on location may not be a good system or for that matter, arguably no system at all. It has certainly given me anxious moments and an ulcer too. But given a consistency and clarity of thought, it can work out very well. Somehow, there is more excitement and greater satisfaction in working that way than having an ossified shooting script in one’s hand.
So, that is how it all began – no written script in hand, a set of amateur artistes and an abandoned house at our disposal. We pitched our tents and spent months on location to dress it up and give it a lived-in ambience. It may sound old hat to say that Cinema is an extension of photography and therefore puts men and milieu at par with each other because then both are reduced to images – concrete, life-like images reflecting and reinforcing each other. I had put a lot of faith in the physiognomy of the artistes rather than their histrionic talent. Fresh faces have a great charm in cinema, if not great presence and in any case, my kind of film did not demand histrionics but believability. The amount of energy and effort we spent to dress up the location was guided by the same principle. It is important that it carries conviction, creates a realistic base and provides the audience a mental peg to hang the experience on. That is why this concern for details, both cultural and social. But realism is not an end in itself, only a base to create an interest and hold their attention, so that one can proceed further and go a little beyond.
One of the things that bother me is this question of ,individuation’. Normally, one perceives the character in its psychological dimensions and that is one way of dealing with it. But there is an inherent danger in it that the audience may get too involved with the characters and refuse to see beyond them. It can pose a problem when the film has to move beyond and transcend the characters. The psychological approach to character building may work better in the dramatic- narrative style of film-making. One of the reasons why I have not used any close-up in my film is of course to maintain an aesthetic distance but it is also to avoid overemphasis through psychological cutting. Use of ‘non-events’ and a style of ‘non-dramatic’ acting was obviously designed to make an understatement. The logic of structural design, the logic of form is thereby superimposed on the story and not the other way round.
To my mind, the concept of rhythm is a very significant one in all the temporal media. Cinema, after all, is a spatio-temporal medium and demands a certain sense of design-making. In the ultimate analysis, it is all geared towards creating movement and rhythm. One can achieve stylization either through spatial elements, the plastics of cinema or through the temporal element or both. ‘Maya Miriga’ seems to have a realistic pace but an effort was made to elongate time. The balance that I ultimately wanted to achieve was between realism and simplicity on the one hand and my preoccupation with a certain cinematic form on the other. It is like building several layers, one over the other. Not every one is likely to perceive all the layers but even then it should work. And my satisfaction is that it seems to have worked.
