Sathyajith Ray - The Master Craftsman

A famous quote by the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurazoa goes like this.‘‘

If you have a chance to born as man in the world, do you don’t know about
Sathyajith Ray?...more better than this you say that you don’t know about SUN
and MOON

."

A perfect simile which doesn't need much explainations. As far as Sathyajith Ray is concerned; cinema was not an accidental thing happened in his life; rather it was a fulfillment of his ambitions.

A brief biography (Ref: Seton, Marie. Portrait of a director: Satyajit Ray)

Being an excellent graphic artist trained at Rabindranath Tagore's university Shantiniketan, as well as a good writer, ray already possessed the qualities to be a film maker ,but still the important thing is that his passion towards cinema.At his younger days, just like every young college boy, he also had some personal interests one among them being the love for western and classical music and the other one was watching films. Watching more films made him to think about the technicians rather than the actors,. Thus directors like John Ford, Ernst Lubitsch, Frank Capra etc..became his favorite film makers. After graduation, when he joined Shanthinikethan to study art, The training obtained from Shanthinikethan should have influenced him to build up his filmmaking style later. Also he had read lot of books on cinema at University library. Raymond Spotiswoode's “Grammar of the Film” was one of the most significant one. But still, there was no thought in his mind to become a film maker. Everything happened gradually; he started writing articles on cinema in magazines and also started writing screenplays of his own. In 1947, Ray co-founded Calcutta's first film society along with his friends. Battleship Potemkin was the first film they screened. But the turning point came in 1950 when he traveled to London .Out of the 6 months he spend there ,he watched almost 100 films .Vittorio Dessicca’s “Bicycle Thieves” was one among them . This film changed his perspectives towards filmmaking a lot. The neo-realist style of the film had influenced him in a great extend.

From a Commercial Artist to a Filmmaker

Ray’s first work was Pather Panchali released in 1955. On those days, the Indian film industry was at its childhood stage and traditional movies were like photo dramas. Most of the films were shot just like they picturised a drama with a movie camera. Ray brought a revolution by his neo realistic movie in the contemporary cinema, with brilliantly crafting each frames of his maiden movie venture. He used amateur artists to portray his characters. Moreover he almost shot the film outdoor which was alien to traditional films. A specialty of Ray was that he was flexible to be inspired from contemporary filmmakers and adapt new techniques from them. The Apu trilogy series was rich in its craft, complete utilization of visual elements .He didn’t use even unwanted lightning pattern in any of these movies. I think the 'frame-within-frame' technique (using windows,doors,or cabin windows) was favouite to ray as all teh movies in the Apu series possess many such frames .We should remember, there were not much editing transition styles available for him on those days to use; still he utilized ‘dissolve’ and ‘fade-in’ techniques very effectively. It is Ray who introduced the stylish way of film making (I can’t find anyone before him).

Certain scenes which seemed attractive to me in ‘Pather Panchali’ are:

1. In the opening scene, Durga picking up kittens from their container, shot as if the camera is inside the container. (This technique is still used widely, but remember this is 1955).

2. The stylish introduction of little Apu .

3. Discovery of train by Durga and Apu . ( This one is the most famous scene )

4. The rain scene.

Ray’s filmmaking style reveales that cinema is art of visuals and a director can pass whatever message he needs to tell spectators, a story, an incident, a biography, anything but he should depend on visuals to achieve this purpose. Even though Ray was mostly exposed to foreign/Hollywood movies while he was in a stage of learning , his own films dealt with the typical Indian culture and he portrayed stories of middle class and low class.

Some critics claim that after splitting with his camera man “Subrata Mitra” the quality of cinematography got lowered in his movies , but I believe it might be the because of the different working styles of the cinematographers . 1968 movie “Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne” was not like Ray’s usual genres. It is coming under the genre adventure/fantacy and camera work was not bad. In 1977 movie the historical drama “Sathranj ke Khiladi” ,the cinematography seems excellent . The conversation scene, between Weston and Outram , has a flavor of hollywood movies, in its angles, placing of props ,and the rhythm. However last films Ganashathru and Agantuk were not that much impressive in visuals, may be because of the peculiarity of their theme.

Some of Ray’s famous compositions /scenes from his very first film have been taken by many filmmakers later. This includes the train scene in Pather Panchali. Another example, the 1995 film , “My family” by Gregory Nava, copied the ending scene from ray’s ‘Apur Sansar’. Ray films are study materials in most of the film schools around the world. In 1992 he became the second Indian to be honored by Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science for Lifetime Achievement.

The journey through a fairy tale : El Laberinto del fauno, (Pan's Labyrinth ) ,SPANISH

The Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro’s Blade 2 which I had watched earlier was just another vampire action  movie, the sequel of Blade: narrated in a usual way . So I didn’t have much expectations when I got a DVD of his Spanish movie “EL Laberinto del fauno” aka “ Pan’s Labyrinth”.

But I was wrong. This Oscar winning movie was not at all comparable to his hollywood ventures in quality .
It may be the first time that the major technical awards like cinematography and art direction goes to a foreign language film.

Children are fond of fairy tales and some of them, sometimes, will be too much obsessed with such things and it’s not uncommon. In this movie, Guillermo Del Toro narrates how a little girl survives her disturbing surroundings with her self created imaginary world. But the movie is not a children’s’ film. The lead role in the movie is “Ofelia" a 12 yrs old girl, enacted by Spanish actress Ivana Baquero .

By and large,I would say, the movie has two separate viewing dimensions. A spectator can choose his own. Anyways the director uses the viewpoint of the leading protagonist ,”Ofelia” usually at a first time watch, we will also be in the same dimension and as a result , we will also be immersed with the fantasy world along with Ofelia. We can watch the movie as a third person, then it would be easy to make out the reality. Guellirmo del Toro's treatment in this film is like "magical realism" similar to Francis Copola's "Aocalypse Now" , Adoor's 'Anantharam' etc..

The opening scene of the movie itself is brilliant. When title begins, we can hear a lady humming a lullaby, along with that we can also hear heavy breathing of a girl, then the first visual comes. Camera slowly pan to left of the frame and shows a close head shot of a little girl ,lying, and her nose is bleeding . Then camera zoom into her eyes (just like rewinding the shot as we can see the bleeding from her nose is disappearing ),and suddenly the scene dissolves into a wide shot of a ruined city along with that a narration starts in voice over,: “A long time ago, in the underground realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a Princess who dreamed of the human world. She dreamed of blue skies, soft breeze, and sunshine. One day, eluding her keepers, the Princess escaped. Once outside, the brightness blinded her and erased every trace of the past from her memory. She forgot who she was and where she came from. Her body suffered cold, sickness, and pain. Eventually, she died. However, her father, the King, always knew that the Princess' soul would return, perhaps in another body, in another place, at another time. “ Along with the narration, the visuals shown vaguely …before completing these lines of narration, again a fast cut to next shot ;2-3 vehicles traveling through woods and then cut to interior, of one of the vehicle, extreme close shot of a hand pointing to the lines in a page of a story book, and it is the same girl we saw at the opening scene. Obviously the lines she is reading is the narration we have been hearing, about the princess. So now that we got that the ongoing scenes are flashback and possibly by the little girl and we can assume the story will be coming back to the point where we started, as we are still unaware of what happened to the little girl.

Now we can see, she is not alone in the cab, she is with her mother who is pregnant and sick, and her mother affectionately scolds her for always being immersed in fairy tales books. So it is revealed here that Ofelia is a bookworm girl and it is her nature that always too much into such kind of stories and stuffs. Another incident happens at this moment. The cab is stopped somewhere between the woods as Ofelia’s mother suddenly feels uncomfortable and tends to vomit. Ofelia also gets outside of the cab and walks around there, she suddenly watch an idol like sculpture there and she finds a big ,cricket like insect with a pair of wings coming outside of that sculpture ,when she put a separated part back to it. As per her knowledge from the story books, it may be a fairy . She asks to the insect “are you a fairy “ ?

When they start the journey again, we can see the insect also following the cabs. But the scene cut there itself. Later they reach the destination, to the mill of Ofelia’s step father, a fascist army captain, who is a sadist and cruel man, captain Vidal . There, Ofelia finds a similar insect again. ,following the insect she reaches a nearby Labyrinth (a maze with complicated passage ways built with rock ) . From this point onwards, Ofelia’s disturbed mind could have started working in unusaual way. She began to believe that it is a fairy . She even asks to it “have you followed me “? In fact, the insect could have reached along with the vehicle, or it might be a different one as we already saw that the place is surrounded by dark woods and such insects may be common there. The new surroundings were unbearable to little Ofelia and her only relief was her story books. The backdrop of the story is set, in the Northern Spain, while the civilian war is going on, in 1944, a group of rebels are carrying on a guerilla war against the fascist troop. The movie deals with this story also in which the lead character is Mercedes, the captain's maid , but really the sister of Pedro, leader of the guerilla troop. Director carefully handled this such as Ofelia’s fantasy story never mixed with the real story. At that night, Ofelia meets the insect again, this time her mind is completely set up to believe that the insect is a real fairy which she is reading in stories. She takes her story book and shows the insect, a picture of a fairy (a tiny human like structure with a pair of wings) and says, the fairy looks like this. . Suddenly, Ofelia sees that the insect itself reforms into the exact shape of fairy which is in her book. From here onwards, Ofelia’s subconscious mind completely takes over her conscious mind and begins to create a complete magical world where she would be the princess. The director narrates the parallel story along with Ofelia’s fantasy world brilliantly .Some points which we may feel complicated , while connecting these stories , should be resolved by the spectator himself. For eg:, Ofelia gets some stuffs, a book , a piece of chalk , a key, a mandrake root, from the fantasy world, given by a faun ,all stuffs are real, which she might posses already or she gets from somewhere else .

I can’t go forward with rest of the incidents as it will be too long, and every scene, there is some thing to analyze or narrate. Still there are some scenes which are extreme violent or graphically vulgar.

The scene which portrays the sadism of Captain Vidal first time,

1. He beat young man to death and also shoot his father suspecting that they are rebels.

2.The scene in which he stitches his wound on his cheek after getting stabbed by Mercedes.

3.The last scene in which he is shot by Pedro, the bullets penetrates his face, just below his right eye, and the eye ball of his right eye going upwards ,before he fell down and dies.

4.I didn’t like the scene in which, Ofelia gets the key from the giant toad as it seemed most vulgar scene.

The director gives us only a single scene in which we can distinguish between Ofelia’s fantasies with real world. The climax scene, she is speaking with Pan, and Vidal who was chasing her, comes to the scene to find that she is speaking alone. This scene ,director has presented with the viewpoint of Vidal or a third person, only to help the spectator to make out the reality .Here the movie comes back to the original sequence after flash back.

The movie got 3 Oscars, for Cinematography, make-Up, and art direction. But I wonder then why it lost the award for Editing? Editing of the movie done by Bernat Vilaplana is outstanding. There are so many scenes which are remarkable with excellent editing, most of them, we can not even recognize the cutting point. Eg:, the scene ,in which Captain Vidal preparing for his shaving in front of a mirror. Also another scene ,the army men going to woods with their horses and the camera panning to right then ,without any distraction, next frame smoothly comes which shows Ofelia , walking around woods ,in a different but similar location. Aboslutely brilliant editing.

No words to say about cinematography , it speaks for itself and justifies its reward. Especially the lightning given was outstanding. Most of the frames had to be shown in dark atmosphere , where light should come from any single source .Also there were almost no scenes in which camera is still, the picture was shot just like the camera follows the characters ,so frames always seem dynamic . Guillermo Navarro is the cinematographer.

Apart from Ofelia and captain Vidal, Mercedes is a strong character and the performance by the actress Maribel Verdú is mind blowing. Script is so amazing that each and every characters are narrated well. Captain Vidal's mannerisms are brilliantly portrayed. The writer portrays him as sadistic and crule as well as brilliant and disciplined. He always carry a watch in order to keep himself punctual. His character itself is introduced with a close up shot of this watch in his hand . Even though it is not mentioned , the reason for Ofelia’s hallucinations may be because her subconscious mind automatically finds a way to release the pressure inside her creating a fantasy world she always dreaming of and put herself into it ,or it may be a state of schizophrenia.

The music composed by Javier Navarrete is touching. In the last scene ,we will make out that the lulaby heard at the beginning of the movie is sung by Mercides.

Overall an amazing movie experience. visit http://www.panslabyrinth.com/.

My rating for this movie is 8.5/10

Remembering a classic -"THAZHVARAM"

Today, watched the 90's classic malayalam movie "Thazhavaram-The valley" once again, in a TV channel,after a long period. But this time ,thought of writing something here about the movie . This movie, I would say, one of the best movie by Bharathan,. I know that there is no point in describing the story of the movie and tell you repeatedly that the movie is excellent ,because its already known to all . So I will point out some of the good features of the movie which I was attracted to ."Thazhavaram" is a masterpiece in all aspects. It is a well crafted movie and the making style of the movie is western classical type . By genre, it’s a thriller , in my opinion. Bhartahan was keen to make this movie, grammatically perfect as well as thematically strong. The theme of the movie is not so unusual, ...a man who reaches an isolated valley in search of his old pal, the murderer of his wife , so as to have his vengeance. What makes it different is the treatment .

Technical
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First thing that can be noticed is the technical quality of the movie. First of all Venu has done an excellent cinematographic work. Next one is, director, Bharathan, has composed each frames very carefully. I haven't watched much more movies, in which a director keeps the grammatical aspects of moviemaking so brilliantly. The film consists of so many beautiful wide-shots, which nowadays can never be seen in any reginal movies, but is an essential part of a visually stunning movie. Another brilliant composition ,in which director used "Golden Mean" which is a dynamic balancing technique , usually got to see in western movies..(the scene in which the character "Balan" played by Mohan lal walks through the valley ,just after passing a hanging brdge,and some cattles crosses him. ;two by third of the frame occupied by the sky and rest by the surface,and the character moving from left towards right of the frame...) This technique is very rarely used in our films. Almost all of the frames are geometrically perfect. Visual elments are well composed in the frames to achieve good depth to the scenes which makes them visually brilliant. Sound recording was also remarkable. One of the best feature of the movie is that the background music coming only in required situations.

Performance

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There are not much protagonists coming to main plot, the main characters are played by, Mohan lal, Sumalatha,Sankaradi and Salim Gouse, all of them has done their job well...The performance of Saleem Gouse is especially remarkable. And of course, Mohan lal is brilliant in his lead role.(A scene in which he is listening to Sankaradi explaining the fake story told by the anti-hero ,he is responding to the narration of Sankaradi and at the same time he is shocked hearing the story.His expression at that moment is simply amazing)

Screenplay
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Script by M.T Vasudevan Nair is outstanding . There are no signs of any particular time period in the script.That makes the movie a unique one ,. No matter after how many years since it's release ,you are watching this movie, you will feel the same freshness. But credit goes to the director who was able to screen a beautiful script without losing its soul, in a well disciplined manner, avoiding disturbing action scenes and gimmicks which could have been added easily in this kind of themes. Usually flashbacks in a movie would become little bit irritating and may affect the flow of the central theme.But in this movie, Bhartahan shows flashbacks in certain intervals and complete it at a point and move forard with the current theme from that point , which is a classic style of storytelling, so that the audience will be immersed in the central theme, without breaking the flow, cinematically speaking,creates a suspension of disbelief.

Definitely,Thazhavaram is a movie which deserves a place in your personal movie collections.

Overall I'd give 9/10 for the movie.