A Film Review
friendz..this is my review abt a flim which Prianka and I went to see........the next day i wrote this following mail.........
I went to see a movie (natak ta dekha holo na) yesterday. A Bengali movie “Baythikromi”-The exception directed by Ahsok Vishwanathan. As all of you (except Priyanka) are aware of my love for analyzing any form of performing art, here is another attempt to do the same. Yes I do believe that if the analysis was documented after a stone (with Rhea or Samiranda) or a drink with (Sayantan or Wendy) or a mere discussion with Sreemoyee (in her perpetually blown state) it would have been a more insightful and illustrious one. But since no one was available so it was me, the film and poetry of thoughts.
Since the time Priyanka (she went with me to the movie, my colleague from Mafoi) dropped me at Park Circus yesterday night after the movie a series of thoughts have been bothering me and the epicenter of them has been the question “WHO DECIDES REASON?” I believe I talked about the concepts of “theater of absurd “to everyone reading the mail. The film was nothing but a reeled version of the same concept.
Absurd means “out of harmony with reason or propriety, unreasonable, illogical” .As Martin Esslin once said “…the theater of absurd tends towards a radical devaluation of language, towards a poetry that is to emerge from the concrete and objectified images of the stage itself. The element of language still plays an important part in this conception but what happens on stage transcends and often contradicts the words spoken by the characters….” Translated in my words this would mean to understand the apparent disconnect between the inner world of the characters and their external world(expressed through dialogues) we need to focus beyond the mere dialogues delivered and the flow of happenings and reach the thought level of the director at his moment of creation . To understand an absurd cinema your wavelength must match with that of the creator at his moment of creation (which essentially is past tense). Don’t worry it happens everyday when we connect to some creation or the other. The first time we understood Newton’s first law we had the connected with Newton at his moment of creation, “the inception of mechanics”.
What is absurd? Something to which we cannot connect at the moment. But if we connect with the same thought say 2 hrs latter, then what is absurd now will no longer continue to be so after 2 hrs. As the rock band Oasis said “its probably all in the mind”. In times of Emperor Akbar human race could not think about mobile communication devises, it was in the realm of absurdity then. But for all of us reading and writing this mail mobile communication is a part of our everyday reality. It’s hard to imagine a life without it. Akbar’s absurdity is our reality today. Absurd form of art is the same it is irritating and boring piece of creation till the point you connect to it. All forms of absurd creation are “genuine works of creative imagination” which transcend the author’s original intentions and present itself as far richer, more complex and open to a multitude of additional interpretations. One such interpretations is about to follow and yes I am aware that any endeavor to arrive at a certain interpretation would be an act of foolishness on my part. My interpretations today may not be matching with my interpretations of the same movie tomorrow. This is true in many occasions but especially so in the realm of absurdity. Because once interpreted today the absurdness of the concept is lost, so when you try to connect tomorrow by rules of absurdity the interpretation must be different as I would be connecting to something which was absurd till that moment and not something that I have already connected to and has moved from my zone of absurdity to reality.
{Baythikromi is a boy meets girl, falls in love and decides to marry. boy comes and stays with the girl’s family. The girl’s family consists of her mother and her married sister. The sister had a miscarriage and since then is not in a very so called normal state of mind. She once had a loving husband who has married again and fantasizes her sister’s husband to be her own. In moments of weakness the sister and the boy makes love and the girl catches them red handed. Since then all of them have been living in the world of alternative reality.)
To me the film is about difficulty of communication between human beings in a world in which everything is uncertain and the borderline between dream and waking is ever shifting. The self absorption of all the characters and their inability to come out of the periphery of their own existence and say a proper “HELLO” to others around them is the basic theme of the film. The film lacks both characters and plot in conventional sense because it tackles its subject matter at a level where neither characters nor plots exist. That explains the irritating disconnect in the sequential flow from one scene to another. At times one notices the apparent irrational movements on the actors part(e.g. they suddenly start dancing with a tea cup in hand, the boy and girl starts kissing even when everybody is present in the dinning table and in the next scene they are standing at two ends of the table. These are essentially moments when the movie goes beyond the mere actions of characters and concentrates more on the “icchay korchey ” part of the characters. It’s like the happiness of being able to connect to someone creates a ripple of joy for the moment and is projected in the form of dance mudras. Then when reality strikes everything is back to normal i.e. the communication is disrupted and everyone returns to his or he’s own shell of self absorption.
The absurd movies are not events with a definite beginning or a definite end but type of situations that will forever repeat themselves. The false notion of communication that we live with is depicted in scenes like the couple coming out of restaurant and find a magician exhibiting his skill in front of an audience. Then with time when the characters move out of the false notion the magician appears again this time alone still exhibiting his skills but to himself. The communication is with the within. Through out the film there are paintings of self absorption.
In the first half of the film though the actors were not being able to connect but they were happy with the false notion that they are being able to connect. But as the film progresses towards the end and the actors realizes the truth that they have never been able to connect, they are tormented. In their own torment state they become even more self absorbed and in the end accept the reality. Once they accepted the reality all they concentrated in doing was to connect to themselves depicted in the last scene when all of them are dancing to the flow of music. “Baythikromi” is a work of art about the expression of an incommunicable reality that Ashok VIshwanathan tries to communicate .That is the film’s paradox and its reality.
The most striking dialogue in the film is by an insignificant character who says “some people who don’t know anything about madness or are not mad themselves are breaking their head to cure madness”. It reminds me of Paulo Coelho’s “Veronica decides to die”. The denial of the existence of alternative reality by a greater population of “sensible” people and their futile attempts to cure the same. The film ends with the actors introducing to the doctor the alternative world of human reality. It’s a world where all the peoples are powerful enough to choose their own reality, in which they are happy depicted by singing and dancing to the universal flow of music. The film still continues to haunt me even at this hour with the question “WHO DECIDES REASON?”
I throw the forum open for more light ……………
Regards
Raj
I went to see a movie (natak ta dekha holo na) yesterday. A Bengali movie “Baythikromi”-The exception directed by Ahsok Vishwanathan. As all of you (except Priyanka) are aware of my love for analyzing any form of performing art, here is another attempt to do the same. Yes I do believe that if the analysis was documented after a stone (with Rhea or Samiranda) or a drink with (Sayantan or Wendy) or a mere discussion with Sreemoyee (in her perpetually blown state) it would have been a more insightful and illustrious one. But since no one was available so it was me, the film and poetry of thoughts.
Since the time Priyanka (she went with me to the movie, my colleague from Mafoi) dropped me at Park Circus yesterday night after the movie a series of thoughts have been bothering me and the epicenter of them has been the question “WHO DECIDES REASON?” I believe I talked about the concepts of “theater of absurd “to everyone reading the mail. The film was nothing but a reeled version of the same concept.
Absurd means “out of harmony with reason or propriety, unreasonable, illogical” .As Martin Esslin once said “…the theater of absurd tends towards a radical devaluation of language, towards a poetry that is to emerge from the concrete and objectified images of the stage itself. The element of language still plays an important part in this conception but what happens on stage transcends and often contradicts the words spoken by the characters….” Translated in my words this would mean to understand the apparent disconnect between the inner world of the characters and their external world(expressed through dialogues) we need to focus beyond the mere dialogues delivered and the flow of happenings and reach the thought level of the director at his moment of creation . To understand an absurd cinema your wavelength must match with that of the creator at his moment of creation (which essentially is past tense). Don’t worry it happens everyday when we connect to some creation or the other. The first time we understood Newton’s first law we had the connected with Newton at his moment of creation, “the inception of mechanics”.
What is absurd? Something to which we cannot connect at the moment. But if we connect with the same thought say 2 hrs latter, then what is absurd now will no longer continue to be so after 2 hrs. As the rock band Oasis said “its probably all in the mind”. In times of Emperor Akbar human race could not think about mobile communication devises, it was in the realm of absurdity then. But for all of us reading and writing this mail mobile communication is a part of our everyday reality. It’s hard to imagine a life without it. Akbar’s absurdity is our reality today. Absurd form of art is the same it is irritating and boring piece of creation till the point you connect to it. All forms of absurd creation are “genuine works of creative imagination” which transcend the author’s original intentions and present itself as far richer, more complex and open to a multitude of additional interpretations. One such interpretations is about to follow and yes I am aware that any endeavor to arrive at a certain interpretation would be an act of foolishness on my part. My interpretations today may not be matching with my interpretations of the same movie tomorrow. This is true in many occasions but especially so in the realm of absurdity. Because once interpreted today the absurdness of the concept is lost, so when you try to connect tomorrow by rules of absurdity the interpretation must be different as I would be connecting to something which was absurd till that moment and not something that I have already connected to and has moved from my zone of absurdity to reality.
{Baythikromi is a boy meets girl, falls in love and decides to marry. boy comes and stays with the girl’s family. The girl’s family consists of her mother and her married sister. The sister had a miscarriage and since then is not in a very so called normal state of mind. She once had a loving husband who has married again and fantasizes her sister’s husband to be her own. In moments of weakness the sister and the boy makes love and the girl catches them red handed. Since then all of them have been living in the world of alternative reality.)
To me the film is about difficulty of communication between human beings in a world in which everything is uncertain and the borderline between dream and waking is ever shifting. The self absorption of all the characters and their inability to come out of the periphery of their own existence and say a proper “HELLO” to others around them is the basic theme of the film. The film lacks both characters and plot in conventional sense because it tackles its subject matter at a level where neither characters nor plots exist. That explains the irritating disconnect in the sequential flow from one scene to another. At times one notices the apparent irrational movements on the actors part(e.g. they suddenly start dancing with a tea cup in hand, the boy and girl starts kissing even when everybody is present in the dinning table and in the next scene they are standing at two ends of the table. These are essentially moments when the movie goes beyond the mere actions of characters and concentrates more on the “icchay korchey ” part of the characters. It’s like the happiness of being able to connect to someone creates a ripple of joy for the moment and is projected in the form of dance mudras. Then when reality strikes everything is back to normal i.e. the communication is disrupted and everyone returns to his or he’s own shell of self absorption.
The absurd movies are not events with a definite beginning or a definite end but type of situations that will forever repeat themselves. The false notion of communication that we live with is depicted in scenes like the couple coming out of restaurant and find a magician exhibiting his skill in front of an audience. Then with time when the characters move out of the false notion the magician appears again this time alone still exhibiting his skills but to himself. The communication is with the within. Through out the film there are paintings of self absorption.
In the first half of the film though the actors were not being able to connect but they were happy with the false notion that they are being able to connect. But as the film progresses towards the end and the actors realizes the truth that they have never been able to connect, they are tormented. In their own torment state they become even more self absorbed and in the end accept the reality. Once they accepted the reality all they concentrated in doing was to connect to themselves depicted in the last scene when all of them are dancing to the flow of music. “Baythikromi” is a work of art about the expression of an incommunicable reality that Ashok VIshwanathan tries to communicate .That is the film’s paradox and its reality.
The most striking dialogue in the film is by an insignificant character who says “some people who don’t know anything about madness or are not mad themselves are breaking their head to cure madness”. It reminds me of Paulo Coelho’s “Veronica decides to die”. The denial of the existence of alternative reality by a greater population of “sensible” people and their futile attempts to cure the same. The film ends with the actors introducing to the doctor the alternative world of human reality. It’s a world where all the peoples are powerful enough to choose their own reality, in which they are happy depicted by singing and dancing to the universal flow of music. The film still continues to haunt me even at this hour with the question “WHO DECIDES REASON?”
I throw the forum open for more light ……………
Regards
Raj
posted by friendz at 13:38
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