Mani Kaul: Beyond the surface

Long before Cannes became the stomping ground of red carpet gowns, Mani Kaul had quietly made a mark. Even if his cinema was abstruse. He, in fact, seemed to revel in that. I admit that there have been moments during his films when I had wanted for something to shake, but he could not care less about audience expectations. He would freeze the frame on a chimney and, being ‘aficionados’ who had just been rendered ‘Breathless’ by Godard, one had to give due respect to our own avant garde, so one stared wide-eyed hoping not to miss a thing in a blink and were rewarded with smoke rising finally.

It was like a landscape painting in 3-D. Much of Kaul’s scenes seemed like still images. He was not a story teller, though his two wonderful works remain classical music biographies – Dhrupad and Siddheshwari. When you ventured into a Kaul film, you were supposed to know about the subject and then approach his cinema. It took me a while to understand quite a bit, except as brilliant visuals.

It was different with Uski Roti, a simple story about a woman who carries food for her truck driver husband to stop on the road and collect it. There was the sub-plot of a mistress and her own sister and even the idea of waiting on a road. But I recall a “proud heathen” friend once saying, “Woh roti kitni deir tak pakk rahi thi?” (How long does the roti take to cook?)

Indeed, the wait on the road was nothing as compared to the wait to get there. It was process. Had he been a mainstream director, it might be said that he was tantalising. In his case, he just wanted to see each frame as a vignette. For those of us who like interpreting, it could be fun, although occasionally tiresome.

I have read a few tributes and he is referred to as the “god” of cinema. This was the problem. Put a person on a pedestal or in a shrine and make offerings, but how many of these new wave filmmakers followed their god? I guess he had to die on 'ashaadh ka ek din' (a rainy day and the title of one of his films) so that people got their convenient headlines and quotes about cinema verite.

His guru was Ritwick Ghatak. Now, I found Ghatak accessible. Kaul not so much. Watching a Kaul film was like visiting a modern art museum, even if he spoke about real things. This was realistic cinema that was abstract.

His greatest contribution, besides the films on music, was the use of literature. He did that quite extensively and in Satah Se Uthta Aadmi (Arising From The Surface) he used the Hindi writer Muktibodh’s work. At a time when we are discussing issues of people’s involvement in the democratic process, some of the scenes are subtly political. The following extract has potently captured quite a bit of it – panning the panorama and then using the person, the transposition of a fight with the manner in which the observer just walks round as though circling a pyre or making mental notes without getting involved. Questioning the idealist - what have you done? The fog in the distance then completely takes over.

It is all about fogginess – of people, of ideas, of how we see and then watch the disappearance. Fade out…

Murder, she said

She is distasteful. She is dramatic. She comes on strong. Then why do people expect Lady Gaga to play Little Bo Beep?



In a performance in Manchester she recreated murder with scenes of her being eaten by a psychotic killer, fake blood on her body. It just so happened that there was a shooting spree in Cumbria hours before the show.

There are questions being asked. Most people are shocked. Shocked about what? This was part of the Monster Ball tour. Get it? The name conveys something. So, why was one mommy so agitated when she took her 14-year-old for the show? She said, “I was absolutely sickened at what I saw. We know Lady Gaga is not exactly mainstream performance for all the family but she really crossed the line this time.”

If they were worried about the 12 people who were shot dead or the three prostitutes a few days earlier in Bradford, then they might have chosen their entertainment more carefully. Were they not riveted by the news in the tabloids or on television channels? How does that imbue them with a sense of superiority? Lady G had planned this performance. They say she could have toned down the act? How would that have helped? It would have only drawn attention to what had happened and then there would be accusations that she was using the tragedy. Besides, if it is understood that she is not mainstream, then why apply those standards for her?

Here are a few comments that I completely disagree with:

"We're always saying, people who are icons to young people need to be aware of their behavior and they need to think about how their behavior influences young people.”

It is the job of the parents to ensure that young people are not besotted by glamorous images. These same young people read about stars and socialites in skimpy clothes getting drunk at parties and even stripping. Only because they have not paid for the show, does the responsibility factor decrease?

"Would she have sold less tickets without that scene in her show?”

Did she advertise that scene? If she did, then why were all these people there with their impressionable children?

“Murder is disturbing image to impose on young people. When young stars mention they've got a collection of knives and enjoy flicking their knives they're endorsing it. They're not thinking about what they're portraying to their fans. It's all for shock value.”

It is indeed shock value and they may be endorsing it. But there is a gun culture that exists. There are murders. There is incest. There are cases of monster dads and moms who have sex with their eight-year-old kids. They are not watching these shows. Often news stories and most certainly documentaries recreate such scenes. Do parents have problems with that?

Art, music, cinema and literature portray social evils or use them as metaphor. What if these people had decided to stay at home and watch one of those horror movies?

Mars and Venus – ecstasy or Ecstasy?

If you did not look at the fruit, you would think it was all about love. Now David Bellingham, a programme director at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, says the fruit was overlooked and so was the subversive message in Botticelli’s painting:

“This fruit is being offered to the viewer, so it is meant to be significant. Botticelli does use plants symbolically. Datura is known in America as poor man’s acid, and the symptoms of it seem to be there in the male figure. It makes you feel disinhibited and hot, so it makes you want to take your clothes off. It also makes you swoon.”

Is there another way of reading it? Mars is lost but Venus is in her senses and fully clothed. Why would the man decide to get high and feel uninhibited if there is nothing to gain? If it is for him to be put into a stupor, then again Venus gets nothing out of it.

Take one operative phrase – removal of clothes. This is also a giving up of a part of oneself, baring oneself to the other. Exposure is not without its fallout.

The National Gallery description of the painting notes: “The scene is of an adulterous liaison, as Venus was the wife of Vulcan, the God of Fire, but it contains a moral message: the conquering and civilizing power of love.”

Is this also a message of guilt? Is the seduction incomplete? Did Venus seduce him or did they get intimate and this painting is the post-coital depiction, where she is sitting dressed up and unsure?

Though many paintings do show her in splendid naked glory - was she high on drugs then? Was it loneliness and not love that drove her to it?

Can Mars pretend that he was under the influence and therefore he is unclothed? If the fruit is capable of making people go mad, then the madness could be a metaphor for losing one’s senses as sublimation.

The fruit is being offered to the viewer. Is it to tempt us? Is the precursor none other than the Garden of Eden?

The idea of drawing the viewer in is also part of the voyeuristic exercise where art itself needs an audience; the painting has other characters in the sublime love story. The satyr’s apparent insignificance – or invisibility – conveys a delightful tension that exists in relationships, among artists and interpreters as well as the person and the Self.

Of course, we can settle for a most pragmatic analysis and imagine that this was supposed to be an aphrodisiac that ended up working as a sedative. I believe it happens.