Bereaved Fathers
So, here is the couple of film-clips I was struggling with. The first is from Satyajit Ray’s classic Pather Panchali (1955), the scene after Durga dies. Just watch Subrata Mitra’s gentle camera turning almost divinely indifferent to catastrophe at the beginning. The way it describes the storm-ravaged house in unperturbed langour, the way the camera stands still after Harihar (Kanu Bandyopadhyay), back home after months and ignorant of his daughter’s untimely death, arrives at the vicinity of the house and exists the frame. No cuts follow. The camera just watches the cow in the midground until Harihar enters the background after many seconds. It is only the profilmic space rumbling with poignancy for minutes until the news breaks through the mother’s breaking down. The scene is famous for the sudden muting of the voices and the wail of the tar-shehnai which is muted again to release Harihar’s shriek in its utter starkness.
Follows the climactic scene of Francis Ford Coppolla’s Godfather III (1990). The Coppollas and the Scorseses are known to be Ray afficiandoes. I think the scene is a sort of tribute to the above scene. Watch for the similar muting of the voice and overlay of music and Al Pacino’s heartrending cry shredding the soundtrack. Well, when daddies are deprived of their daughters in these ways they are rendered motherless.
Sorry, for that jab at pains, usual of me…
21/07/08 12:12 am
Trying to answer Anamitra’s query below. He said that inspite the similarities he is not supporting me “as the consequences of these two sequences and the sequences in whole are totally different”.
But sometimes, in some films, something peculiar happens Anamitra. This is what the idiosyncratic world of French Nouvelle Vague taught us. It is like this: they saw cinema as an archive of ‘written memories’., to put it bluntly. Recall the scene in 400 Blows where Antoine Doinel is reprimanded because he lifts an Balzac piece in a classroom exercise? He is immediately labeled a plagiarist. 400 Blows is a film on language – writing, reading, teaching language feature many scenes in the film if you can recall – it is about the language as imposed by the masters and language as it is creatively twisted by the renegade students, in a way which will never be allowed by the authorities (not surprisingly, the French has the strictest language academy existing).
Why language? Because it is the Cahiers du Cinema critics who turned into New Wave filmmakers who maintained that cinema is a sort of ecriture, a sort of writing. So whenever language appear in the film, try to think about it in terms of ‘film-language’. Thus what is the Balzac sequence putting forward?
According to me, this: Doinel is claiming that he has not ‘cheated’. He has quoted. He says that when someone is writing in any particular subject (can’t recall what it was in the film) why should someone be ‘original’ if it is already well-expressed by someone else in the language? One recalls, one quotes, one pays tribute, thus on the moment of quoting one creates his own legacy. Not ironically, nouvelle vague filmmakers, especially Godard will be continuously alleged of lifting and plagiarism by critics who never exactly understood.
I am not actually talking about intertextuality. I am talking about cinema as memories of a language. Cinema is a peculiar language. It is not like – Bengali is a language of communication and certain fellas use it to write poetry. Film-language lacks the functionality of spoken language, you don’t find a grammar-book nor a dictionary. Instead you have ‘filmic-utterances’ piled up in history. Godard used to quote a close-up, a tracking shot. Tarantino does it almost in every frame. Its about connecting things.
So you have a situation: a father suddenly encounters daughter’s untimely death. You recall another instance in the memory of the medium. You recall the power of it, you recall the impact. You quote. Cinema is writing. You recall how it was ‘wrote’. Overlay the voice with music, turn the scream visual, as Joanna describes below – as if the voice is choked, as if it is a gasp for air and life – then suddenly release the sound in it’s crescendo. You recall not what was written, but ‘how’ it was written. The language, the style, the rhetoric. Yes, the situations are different: a poor brahmin and a rich mafia-lord are not similar persons too. But at that moment they are similar fathers, bereaved. You connect a couple of fathers in history of cinema. It is like asking a pissed-off young man in a novel what’s aching him and he answers: “to be or not to be…that’s aching me”; he sums it up by quoting. He is not Hamlet, it is only the moment which matters and the act of reading it. The act of ‘reading’ is important, because only then is the quotation recognised.
No point ringing up Copolla to substantiate the quotation. Because when we see films we connect again. It is not only the artist’s private pleasure; it is also the viewer’s method of ‘perpendicularly integrating’ (that’s clumsy, sorry!) cinematic memories.
thank you for the clips! was wanting to see it from the moment u discussed about it in class. and i cudnt agree more with you when u say: when daddies are deprived of their daughters in these ways they are rendered motherless.
purely heart wrenching
P.S. cannot wait for the next post
Anindya Sengupta: Heart wrenching. Yes, Preeti, even I was also touched when I watched the clips for the umpteenth time probably. Now this is my latest inference: cinema is an archive of emotions.
Preeti
July 20, 2008 at 1:56 pm
also, the fallen tree and how it could have stayed on, standing for just a bit longer, without having come to its end. and the tree, i noticed, didnt look old, didnt look weak, looked like it had been been ‘untimely’ felled.
very apt, very understated metaphor, but I wonder if Harihar’s mouthing those lines, “ar kota din opekkha korte..” was absolutely necessary…even without him SAYING that, just a second or two spent staring at it with an expression of questioning would have done…or is it too far-fetched? dunno…
Anindya Sengupta: Not far-fetched, neither wrong. Since film is so musical, elements – if already introduced – need to reappear at certain rhythms. Harihar’s voice is already introduced when he was calling Apu. Therefore, it could resurface again like a chord in an intricate passage. Probably they go through permutations and combination during editing. Designing the musicality of the soundtrack…its pretty tough, because you are left with many options all of which seem right.
Joanna
July 20, 2008 at 2:18 pm
hmm, ur right, especially when right and wrong in art is hopelessly tangled together…
when the father opens his mouth and nothing is heard, deafening silence…i actually felt like i was choking for want of air, like i’d open my mouth like that to gulp air, to breathe.
who says these are shadows?…
Joanna
July 20, 2008 at 2:48 pm
hmmm…i agree. i mean i literally felt as though i had gone deaf for a moment there as though someone is crying and wailing right in front of me and i cannot hear him, builds up the tension and takes it to a whole new level altogether!
so subtle the ways of cinema can be to play and meddle with human emotions the way they do!
Preeti
July 20, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Is there any article by anyone on this comparison, Anindya da?
I am standing by your opinion as the repercussion on the two fathers and the representation, use of the audio tracks; are almost the same.
But I am not supporting you as the consequences of these two sequences and the sequences in whole are totally different.
Errrrrr…I am confused!
Anindya Sengupta: no articles available Anamitra. Yes, I will elucidate more tonight. Watch out this space.
Anamitra
July 20, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Bereaved Fathers…….
It is fiction which treads on a safe path so as to avoid incredibility, truth has no such compulsion; it can afford to be incredible (Tagore,Chaturanga). These are the moments when cinema attains eternal truth…tears asunder all its boundaries of representation and actualization…and refuses to be a conformist and a mere attester . The screen doesn’t claim absoluteness in portraying the void and grief of the bereaved fathers, for it is technology that can claim absoluteness, humanity cannot. At times, to be helpless is to be humane….here the screen is rendered helpless, and hence soulful…
Kusum has her soul, Sashi, Kusum has her soul…
Dhriti
July 21, 2008 at 9:20 am
oh…no remarks….plzzz Anindya da….let me know wat u think…
Anindya Sengupta: Remarks in the evening! I am getting late!
Dhriti
July 21, 2008 at 10:03 am
but u owe us a remark…….!!!
Anindya Sengupta: Dhriti, should I remark on every remark made by you people?
Of course, we might start thinking (as long this initiative sustains our enthusiasm), but me passing acknowledging words might render me as a gatekeeper of thoughts! That won’t be very pleasant to me. Further, sometimes I cannot comment so quickly. I need to think a lot. And I want you people to discuss. That’s the idea; I might initiate certain things and you might carry on. Treat this like a platform.
I only can say that your distinction between the ’screen’ and the ‘technology’ has kept me thinking. I am trying to gather my ideas. Thanks! Yours is a truly passionate involvement.
Dhriti
July 21, 2008 at 10:17 pm
actually i was apprehensive of my own observation…(technology that can claim absoluteness, humanity cannot.) How can technology claim absoluteness when it is constantly oriented by ideological interventions…technology is no autonomous entity…so that contradicts my whole observation…any such binary certainly cannot be substantiated…phew!
Anindya Sengupta: Hold on. You might be right. I think you were right.
Dhriti
July 21, 2008 at 11:09 pm
there are binaries everywhere i think, whether we see them or not. but every angle of thought deserves an autonomous understanding, so one’s never completely wrong, or right.
substantiate noye naiba kora gelo.
Joanna
July 22, 2008 at 12:28 am
Great to see such a wonderful blog on cinema!!…some of them who belongs to film fraternity writes about ‘quitting cigratte’ and re-starting it again, then end up writing apologetic blog…but unfortunately nothing on cinema, and some even try more futile attempt. I really wish this continues forever. Thanks Anindya da. This will help in understanding cinema rather i should say in understanding the film language. Especially for people like me who are not part of any film institution. It would be really appreciating if u write something on Ghatak as well if put up ur views on “memories of under development”. I’ve heard u on it little bit, and would love to hear more from u.
Anindya Sengupta: Welcome Tushar! Ghatak is definitely on the cards! And you reminded me of Memories… Thanks! I might turn out doing a detailed analysis of it! I would definitely love to do it. Thanks again, please do visit. Plans are to post twice a week at least.
Tushar
July 22, 2008 at 12:56 am
I think you can post the last scene of Apur Sansar…the scene which reminds me of Ulysses of Tennyson
“Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.”
I have alwys felt that Apu is a traveller…he have been traveller everywhere everytime…his journey is the key theme of the film…he is in quest of knowledge…of experience…through out the trilogy he travells from a village to a town to a city and probably at the end of this film he is taking the route of “untravelled world”…He is “Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will” and again he is there “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”.
Prajjal
July 29, 2008 at 8:47 am