Filed under: Film Musings | Tags: 7th IDSFFK, Anupama Sreenivasan, “The Invisible wars”, Bina Paul Venugopal, Cannes film festival, Coast of Death, Director Bina, film education, Film Festival, Gitanjali rao, Grandmother, IAWRT, IAWRT Asian Women's Film Festival, IDF, IDSFFK, Indian Documentary Foundation, Indian Film festivals, International Documentary, International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala, International Indian festivals, Jaaved Jaaferi, Mamaiji, mumbai, oorvazi irani, Paul Venugopal, Rajiv Mehrotra, Saba Dewan, Shashwanti Talukdar, short films, Sophy VSivaraman, Sundance Film Festival, The International Association of Women in Radio and Television, The Last Adieu, True Love Story, Wall Stories
It is always a joy to be traveling with your film and I feel that a work of art is always in the making, it is never really complete, you discover it a new way through the eyes of the audience each time and your work takes a rebirth.
Recently I was invited with my short film “Mamaiji”(Grandmother) to the 7th IDSFFK International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala. I received a personal email from the Artistic Director Bina Paul Venugopal , who is the heart and soul of the festival(and has sadly retired from the festival this year) and I quote This year along with IAWRT we are programming a section of Short Fiction Films by Women and would very much like to screen Grandmother in this Special Focus which was to be curated by Anupama Sreenivasan, Festival Director IAWRT (The International Association of Women in Radio and Television) Asian Women’s Film Festival. I am also very grateful along with Bina to Anupama for taking interest in my little film and giving it a beautiful platform starting with the IAWRT festival itself held earlier in June 2014. So it seemed Kerala was calling and I packed my bags to visit the beautiful land.
Once I reached Kerala I was in the care of Bandhu Prasad who was in charge of the Festival Filmmakers’ Liason & Artists’ Facilitation Desk who made all the necessary arrangements for us to feel at home and enjoy the festival. As I drove from the airport to the hotel I cannot forget the first impression of leaping white waves dancing to their bliss of existence, so complete so powerful a vision that stayed with me and one of the regrets of this visit was that I did not find the company in others or myself to come back to the seashore but my wish was fulfilled in a cinematic experience latter in the festival itself so that was some consolation. I quickly proceeded to my hotel and reaching on July 18th was in time for the Opening Ceremony of the festival which had an inspiring speech by Rajiv Mehrotra, Managing Trustee PSBT(Public Service Broadcasting Trust), who I made a mental note of to meet in the near future. He was not quiet the person I had in mind who would head a government organization like PSBT as he passionately advocates the cause of the independent documentary in India.
I met a few friends, one of who was on the Jury ( no, I would not be breaking any rules if I met him as my film was not in competition and was part of a Special Focus section) but he was kept so busy by the Festival authorities during the festival that I could not spend any time with him on the remaining days which was disappointing but was compensated by other activities and films and there was always something exciting to do. The two opening films “La Estancia” and “Nelson Mandela, The Myth and Me” both were a good beginning to exploring new perspectives. There was dinner thereafter and a good night’s rest followed.
19th July and I open my hotel door to be greeted with headlines from the festival. It felt like company to be welcomed by the newspaper of the state mentioning your film. That was the day my film was to be screened. It was an almost packed house for the Special Focus session. There was a special Q and A arranged with the filmmakers but what was a slight damper was that each film did not get its focus in the Q&A as it was after all the 4 films screened and some of the audiences started walking out of the auditorium after the screenings. But that is always the case and why do I complain, there are so many films to catch in a festival like this.
Standing for the Q&A with Anupama and the other young woman filmmakers Anoodha Kunnath, Arya Rothe in the special focus ‘Films by Women’ an interesting question arose about the perspective of women filmmakers, the question put to Anoodha who had directed her short film ‘My Grandfather’s Yakshi’ was that why did she not use a young girl as the protagonist and instead a boy as the film was born out of her own personal life and something her grandfather use to tell her. What was more interesting is when the topic came to the discussion what really consisted in the film which was unique as a woman director’s perspective and I in turn asked the audience what they felt in her film was not a woman’s perspective. We were told that the cameraman must have been a male gender as the way he captured the female ‘Yakshi’ was sensual and more like a man.
This opened a very interesting question to explore in all our films. What is it that a woman filmmaker can do or say in a film, is she just more sensitive and can we really find a particular vocabulary in women filmmakers’ in modern times and is there a need. Of course there was Laura Mulvey and a lot of independent women filmmakers before and after her who fought the traditional grammar of filmmaking to represent the woman as object and made radical shifts but are there nuances that are subtle yet obvious in a woman filmmaker. In fact its always sensitive men filmmakers like Satyajit Ray that we talk about in relation to powerful women sensitive films and many commercial women film directors today don’t like being slotted as a woman filmmaker. Can you really tell the difference is something that I have not yet found a definite answer for and am still searching as an audience and artist. It’s interesting that my film never set out to be about a woman but yes the feminine gender does hold an important place in my identity and search as an artist which subconsciously surfaces itself in my work. The film for me was about making the ‘ordinary’, ‘extraordinary’ which is all around us and in its simple existence is so beautiful and rich. There were some questions about my film which I was most happy to discuss and the film had a fan (who had most of the questions to ask) in one charming young lady who was a young filmmaker herself, Vaishnavi and was participating with her film “Doll” dealing with the metamorphosis of a relationship between a young girl and a barber, there was a passion and excitement that I saw in her eyes and I am sure she will go places, we connected and remain so.
I did shortlist quite a few films but just managed to see the following which I was richer by the experience and touched me in more ways than one.
I would like to make a special mention of the documentary “The Invisible wars”. I was choked by the Investigate Documentary directed by Kirby Dick dealing with the epidemic of rape within the US military and its cover up. Here are these strong women who are broken from within and their lives are not the same. Sitting at a comfortable distance from the trauma I could not even begin to understand their pain and justice was in the waiting. I felt I needed to follow the story in real life and hoped justice would be delivered soon, here is one film which goes into the real world and can make a difference. The documentary premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, where it received the U.S. Documentary Audience Award and was also nominated for the academy awards.
Trailer “The Invisible wars”
My desire for the sea was soon fulfilled and I experienced cinematic pleasure for 81 min seeing the “Coast of Death” – a poetic ode to the Galician coast in northwestern Spain in which a fly on the wall camera observes the magical land of ‘meigas’(witches) where fog and drizzle prevail. The filmmaker says We adopt a slow and poetic view, letting time going by within the image´s frame, this allows us to observe landscape´s movements. To convey the idea of dialogue and relationship between landscape and people we use wide shots where the human figure is seen distant but his voice is heard close. The story suggests the experience of Finisterre´s landscape. A journey that will go away from reality to a dreamy look immersed in the mythical representation of the Coast of Death. This experimental feature was judged the best New Director at the Locarno Film festival 2013.
Trailer “Coast of Death”
I was introduced to the personal and professional world of Sukhdev by his daughter Shabnam Sukhdev who takes us on a personal journey coming to terms with her famous father after his death, trying to find the man and father she never understood all her childhood and a coming of age film. It was a beautiful discovery titled “The Last Adieu” .
Trailer “The Last Adieu”
I took this opportunity not to miss seeing the animation film “True Love Story”(18 min) by Gitanjali Rao sensitively and creatively capturing a Bollywood style love story as a theme which was part of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival 10 selected short films at the Critics Week. I would like to quote below from an interview done by Animationexpress.com
What inspired to make ‘True Love Story’?
I had been toying with the idea of first love for a while. And being a Bombayite I spent a lot of time in traffic jams watching at life unfolding on the street sides. I began to get interested in the lives of street boys who work hard selling flowers and books at traffic signals but are looking for love by impressing girls all the time. I loved observing the small flirtations that happen between these flower sellers. I wished to tell the story of these young boys and girls who have complicated migration stories yet their spirit survives in the chaos of the big city, and then, emerged a first love story between two people living on the streets of Bombay.
Another charming world opened up with the documentary “Songs of the Blue Hills” by Utpal Borpujari. It is a feature length documentary, the first ever film (mentioned by the filmmakers) to present a wide range of Naga music and musicians to take the viewer on a journey through contemporary forms of Naga folk music.
During the course of the festival I happened to enter a screening of a film in progress by a young filmmaker Tanushree Das. I was impressed by its contemplative style and self-reflection which used image, sound and the medium of sms text messages, “For You and Me” is a film of yearning and the struggle to sustain relationships in a society steeped in both physical as well as technological distance. Since I reached almost at the end and missed it I made it a point to communicate with the director at the festival and managed to make contact and now await to see the film which she has so kindly personally shared with me.
Bina Paul Venugopal introducing the Impact Campaign Workshop conducted by IDF
One of the other highlights of the festival were the workshops and one of them attracted me was titled ‘Impact Campaign Workshop’ Conducted by the IDF Indian Documentary Foundation which is a Not-for-profit organization co-founded by Jaaved Jaaferi and Sophy VSivaraman for the Promotion, Development and Funding of Documentaries in India and about India. I felt the workshop was targeted for young filmmakers and some experienced filmmakers felt out of place during some of the activities but however it was nice to be introduced to this platform which is very encouraging for the medium of documentary and non-commercial film. So I might catch up with Sophy and the gang in the near future and see if worlds meet and if it interests you do have a look at their website and work.
Sophy VSivaravan Co Founder of IDF
Javed Jaaferi talks about IDF
The festival for me was coming to an end and it was not possible to attend everything and one of the many things I missed were the films and talk by Saba Dewan, who was the Filmmaker in Focus at the festival, and will explore her work shortly. She says Paradoxically, more creative documentaries are made in the of darkest times and during the most oppressive regimes… Funding and distribution of documentaries are important, but if the film has nothing new or creative to convey, it will all be useless.
I did not go to the sea but I managed to pick up some traditional mundus for my dad from a Kerala emporium from the main market close by and ended my day with beautiful company with two spirited lovely lady filmmakers – Shashwanti Talukdar and Kavita who were put up in the same hotel as myself and were attending the festival with their film “Wall Stories”.
I was leaving the next day and they had just arrived, we shared a meal and we parted, I came to Mumbai and they continued to savour the pleasure of being in the company of cinema.
Filed under: Film Musings | Tags: acting, acting analysis, film education, film review, film workshop, Lootera, Lootera film review, oorvazi irani, Ranveer Singh, Sonakshi Sinha, Vikramaditya Motwane
It is through the close-up that we “discover the soul of things.” – Béla Balázs, film theorist
Introduction
A film comes to life with actors, it is the actors who make you cry and laugh. And all the efforts of all the artists and technicians including the director is consummated in the act of acting, that is the final medium through which the film gets transmitted from the creators to the audience.
According to the “Natyashashtra” the ancient Indian text on art and aesthetics, there are four kinds of abhinayas(means of communication for an actor) postulated by Bharat Muni. They are categorized as angika, pertaining to the movement of head, torso and limbs;vacika, consisting of speech; sattvika, expressive of deep emotions indicated by subtle facial changes, and aharya, related to the use of costume. And further the “Natyashastra” states that mastering the sattvika is a true indication of a great artist and to be strived for.
The human face has 43 muscles and various combinations can create more than 10,000 expressions and the face, is the greatest tool for an actor in cinema to make the audience deeply identify with the world they inhabit and make them experience a new reality.
Béla Balázs, an international film theorist argues that it is through the stylistic technique of the close-up that we are able to reveal human subjectivity in film. Close-ups reveal the most hidden areas of our life and allow us as viewers to notice those minute details that we typically overlook. Balázs asserts that it is through the technique of the close-up that we “discover the soul of things.”
It is this very close-up that struck me about Vikramaditya’s film “Lootera” and I will attempt to analyze the film in relation to acting with this powerful tool of cinema, which I feel is often overlooked by some amateur filmmakers or is not acknowledged by a sensitive audience. However I will also address in the process the other means of filmmaking that aid an actor in his art and craft of acting.
We live life through moments and similarly when we experience a film we feel and identify with the acting beats and moments of the character and if strung together could be conceived as an ‘Actor’s Script’ and a character arc emerges, which I will attempt to unveil for the two main lead protagonists in this article – Pakhi Roy Chaudhary and Varun Shrivastav.
The first half of the film, till the intermission strongly belongs to the character of Pakhi and thus I begin with her character arc for the first half of the film.
“Lootera” Part One
A) Pakhi Roy Chaudhary – performed by Sonakshi Sinha
Pakhi is introduced as a character suffering from Asthma and her close bond with her zamindar father is established, located in the picturesque town of Manikpur (West Bengal) in the era of the 1950’s.
The character of Pakhi is brought to life with the soundtrack as much as the visuals right from the beginning of the film. Besides the Bengali character that the music establishes it is the heavy breathing and choking on the soundtrack of an asthma attack that gets linked to the identity of Pakhi and with that a pain and struggle to survive that comes into play which overshadows her character, it’s very different from introducing a character with giggles for instance.
Pakhi’s character as scripted and her bond with her father comes to life with the small nuances of facial expressions that the actor shares onscreen with the audience. It is her charm and warmth that is visible in her eyes that makes us want to enter this world that has been scripted by the filmmaker and we thus journey with her into this parallel reality.
Pakhi falling in love with Varun, who comes to her village posing as an archaeologist
As an audience we experience Pakhi falling in love with Varun and how is that done? Ofcourse it’s in the script and the art direction and cinematography and the soundtrack that make the scene possible but it is only because of the actor Sonakshi that you really want to believe that it’s true. Every glance, every gesture brings to life the beauty of the scene right from Sonakshi biting her lip mischievously while playfully switching the lights on and off, admiring herself in the mirror or simply looking at Varun with so much spoken through her eyes – naughtiness, joy, yearning,warmth, contentment all enclosed in the emotion of love and romance. And I feel Sonakshi here fulfills this need of a period film very aptly by being expressive with her eyes and takes us in to the old world charm aided by the costume, jewellery and art direction.
I would also like to make a special mention here of two integral scenes of the love story
The two lovers are framed in a beautiful setting of nature by the pond, just having finished a painting session. A beautiful moment captured which we realize latter as an audience is an integral plot point to the film where Varun reveals to Pakhi his desire to paint a masterpiece before he dies. Close ups of the two actors are of course integral to the scene but a highlight of the scene is the use of whispers in the dialogue after a critical point in the scene. Sonakshi as an actor executes her acting abilities this time consisting of speech with beautiful precision and brings to life a special touch of tenderness that makes the scene rise above the mundane. Of course the director(along with other creative artists who might be responsible for this) too need to be given due credit for this choice and in cinema an actor’s final performance is never complete without the choices of the director, as cinema is a director’s medium.
Another powerful scene in the film is when Sonakshi is able to express the yearning and pain for Varun after their small separation that he inflicted on her. Through her eyes the dialogues get a resonance of truth that touches a chord in you. This is when she visits Varun at the archeology site and asks him when he would return for his painting session. She urges him, will you come tomorrow, day after, the day after that, and the words ring true with emotion…and each line is full of expectation and yearning. And the scene ends fittingly with Pakhi emotionally charged and vulnerable, asking an innocent, yet bold question “Aap mujhse pyaaar karte ho …Varunbabu”. And like in every scene the actions and words and how they are delivered continued to paint the character of Pakhi besides expressing emotions.
A missed opportunity as an actor to explore the ‘expressive object’
However one tiny scene caught my attention but for the missed opportunity it portrayed. There is a point where Pakhi puts on Varun’s coat, wears his hat and holds a cigarette in her hand but as an actor Sonakshi did not make the props potent ‘expressive objects’ which could take the scene to another level and could be a memorable moment in the film. Of course this was not a scene set out in the film and maybe if it was given more screen time it could be worked on by all concerned. But it’s significant how an actor can infuse life into inanimate objects and how that object can become an extension or means of revealing feelings and character and this remains one of the areas I feel the film did not explore to a great extent. Successful popular instances are – the use of the kane by Charlie Chapman or Marlon Brandon’s use of a glove and other objects in the film “On the Waterfront”.
Pakhi heartbroken and devastated when Varun’s true identity of being a ‘Lootera’ (conman) is been revealed when he abandons their marriage and robs the valuable ancestral idol from the village, and runs away.
Among the few scenes in the film, I found this scene when Pakhi is told by her father about Varun’s betrayal as lacking in the scripting and execution and rather than an integral scene it seemed to be treated as a transition scene with less attention to detail and depth. The scene was essentially limited to two or three shots and the close up of the father and daughter being essential to the impact of the betrayal. However Sonakshi was limited in her impact and seemed to be given little space or directions to execute these shots to satisfaction. One close-up was sufficient with no dialogue but the emotion was not conveyed.
B) Varun Shrivastav – performed by Ranveer Singh
Varun’s introduction when Pakhi throws him off the road in a minor car incident
The first half of the film does not do justice to Varun or rather Varun does not do justice to the role in the first half. This is a shot that introduces the audience to his character and the beginning of his love story and meeting with Pakhi but the look on Ranveer’s face when the camera is capturing his character on screen is not effective to want you to identify with him, you rather feel there is no inner life happening when the camera is on him. Having said that making a film is a daunting task and achieving perfection in every scene is sometimes not a liberty for an actor or director who has deadlines and budget constraints and just has to move on.
Varun’s responding to Pakhi’s flirtations and losing a grip over his own feelings and falling in love
It seemed like the script did not develop the nuances for the character of Varun or is it that the actor Ranveer could not build a unique character strong enough to hold his ground against Sonakshi. Had the actor transformed into another character or was he playing a restricted part of himself. Ranveer in his interviews does share with us his director’s advice about not moving his hands too much as he normally does. Yes that did help make a shift to the role required but could something more in-depth be done as an artist to actually bring to life another human being. Ranveer does say that he was influenced by Sonakshi in being more spontaneous as an acting style rather than his more studied research based method to acting but a preparation that equips you for spontaneity according to me is the ideal way to proceed and spontaneity alone cannot equip an actor without a thorough grounding.
It seemed right for the camera to have Sonakshi in the frame for a close-up at significant moments because her face was more expressive and she seemed more effortless in her responses.
Can lighting help an actor and director convey dimensions of character? Pakhi comes to Varun’s room late at night to express her feelings for him. As Varun opens the door we see a deliberate shadow on his eyes keeping us in the dark about his emotions and intentions for a brief few moments. The scene does progress to show his eyes briefly which I felt broke the spell for the scene. However it’s mostly Pakhi who we see and rightly so, as if we ask the question from the point of view of the script – whose scene is it? it would be Pakhi who we identify with and she is the character moving the action forward in the scene. This similar lighting of deep shadow and concealing the eyes is played with in the scene when Varun is pressurized by his chacha to give up his love and return to work the next day. The similar lighting setup adds an interesting connect to the two scenes and could be thematically explored. If the whispers in the soundtrack in the earlier scene convey tenderness to the lovestory then the lighting in the scenes with shadow and specially concealing Varun’s eyes help bring out the dilemma that he faces in this love story
Varun’s dilemma as a conman and his profession which prevent him to have a relationship and a normal life and he finally chooses his duty over love
The director Vikramaditya seen behind the scenes in ‘the making of Lootera’ with Ranveer Singh
here is a close-upjust before we see Varun leave the haveli, which could go past almost unnoticed where for a very brief moment we see Varun looking at the mirror with a tear rolling down his eye. Maybe its intentional to keep the mystery going for the second half of the film. But as a performance it remains a potent close-up not fully exploited by the director and actor and maybe here the editor plays an important role in choosing to shape the impact of the performance of the actor in that particular instance as very powerful performances are made and broken due to the impact of a few frames being present or absent. But in the service of the final impact of the film the shot being brief is a significant choice.
The film after the intermission does bring a greater focus to Varun as a character but does not leave Pakhi far behind and the second half belongs to both these characters and how they resolve their love story. The film now shifts from Manikpur to Dalhousie in the atmosphere of a cold winter.
“Lootera” Part Two
Pakhi Roy Chaudhary – performed by Sonakshi Sinha &Varun Shrivastav – performed by Ranveer Singh
Pakhi betrayed in love, traumatized by her father’s death and coping with her deteriorating asthma condition is trying to find solace in writing a book about her life experience and seems to be struggling to succeed.
Pakhi is introduced here with a bland look and ailing face which gives the illusion of no makeup but many a times there is more makeup required to give the ‘no makeup’ look convincingly on film and it is the makeup as a tool that plays a big role in aiding the actor here to make the audience believe that she is sick and has lost the vitality of life.
The scene finds Sonakshi in a typical situation like a writer’s block and innumerable scenes in films where a character tries to write but keeps scratching out the text and tears the paper and throws it on the floor. Here again the pen in the hands of Sonakshi could be used as an ‘expressive object’ in an interesting manner but it did not go beyond the mundane.
However the beauty of the scene emerges with a violent cut into a sensitive flashback in close-up that follows where we see Pakhi effortlessly writing and interrupted by her lover and with the flashback the scene is complete and gets a unique dimension.
Behind the scenes ‘the making of Lootera’ Vikramaditya with Sonakshi and Ranveer
Here Sonakshi and Ranveer share one of their best chemistry in the film and feel really in love which seemed lacking in some parts of the film. The cinematography with the mosquito net that works as a veil over Sonakshi’s face creates a mesmerizing frame with beauty and softness and whispers on the soundtrack take over to elevate a simple trivial exchange to a romantic tenderness. But one point strikes me here is that maybe nuances of Pakhi’s literary world could be shared with the audience to shape a more realistic and complete persona which would help us identify with her intellectual space and thoughts.
Varun is hunted by the police and it is under these circumstances that he meets Pakhi again and takes refuge in her house in Dalhousie.
Ranveer returns into Pakhi’s life, this time not clean shaven and this reflects his slight shift in persona which aids him as an actor, seemingly now more macho and in control and the plot takes him to Paki’s doorstep, where he takes refuge in her home. Pakhi on seeing Varun is angry and sad as she feels he is responsible for her father’s death and exploited her and wants to hand him over to the police.
The scene in the film when Pakhi and Varun are confronted by each other seems to be treated with a commercial audience in mind rather than the artistic demands of the film. The scene starts with heavy asthmatic breathing and I felt if the soundtrack could have remained with that alone it could be very effective to create tension in a sensitive audience but the use of loud music in this scene submerges the soundtrack of breathing and the pain that it is so symbol of. The treatment of the scene is treated and acted both melodramatically which slightly robs it of its depth and realism.
However the second half of the scene is more sensitive and has an interesting Blocking of the actor Sonakshi which exploits her acting abilities and effectiveness of the character placement in the scene which is symbolic of the feelings towards each other at the same time gives the audience a pivotal point to observe the drama.
There is a beautiful use of the principle of ‘contrast’ put into play here where after the turbulence you now have calm which again gives way to turbulence but having a slightly differing quality to it. Pakhi faces her back to Varun and sits on a chair which faces the camera and the blocking is very symbolic yet cinematically exploited to get a brilliant view of Sonakshi slowly breaking into tears after Varun has exited the room and closed the door in the background. Its again the close up that allows this emotional moment to unfold so truthfully.
Varun then convinces Pakhi of his innocence and explains that he is a victim of circumstances and should not be held responsible for her father’s death. Varun and Pakhi’s love for each other is rekindled and Paki now wants to protect Varun from the Police.
In one of the acting highlights of Ranveer’s performance in this film is this scene where love is rekindled, where the emotional truth and effectiveness stand out. Also what makes the scene more challenging and thus memorable is the absence of dialogue and it is only through his moist eyes that the scene is conveyed. Ranveer mentions in his interviews that he attended acting workshops and for him the film was very challenging, one of the reasons being he had never as a character had to dig so deep into his emotions. The scene is poignant as its just after this scene that the plot reaches closer to its climax and we have the Police Inspector visit Pakhi and she now protects him from the Police rather than handing him over.
Varun confesses he loves Pakhi and Pakhi in turn is convinced of Varun’s love for her
Another beautiful scene in the film follows between both the actors is where they meet for the last time before their eminent separation. The scene starts with an interesting touch of humour to an otherwise painful experience, which is used by great directors like Satyajit Ray and others who have observed life and know its workings. Varun asks Pakhi “ You know what my real name is – AtmaramTripathy”. And this brings a precious smile to Pakhi’s face.
Another minute detail which is captured in a mid-shot is the body language of the two actors. They are both seated together on the sofa and they both look like mirror images, I don’t know if it was intentional or by default but like it is said that couples resemble each other with their body language after many years their love seemed to fuse them together or rather put them into perfect sync with one another.
And the whispers return and in close-up Pakhi says “Did you ever love me” and Varun says “Everybody used me, but only you loved me”.
Varun discovers Pakhi’s ailing condition and death wish through her writings and this time sacrifices his freedom and life for the sake of his beloved and does a final act of love which gives a new life to Pakhi. Varun knowing fully well that he has lost his chance to escape and walks to surrender to the police, but threatened by his actions he is shot to death.
Pakhi at the window silently expressing her desire to die with the falling of the last leaf
Varun who ensures that the last leaf will never fall
Even though scenes are not shot in continuation in a film it seems like after the scene of the rekindling of love Ranveer as an actor is gaining his ground and brings his role to a good finish.It’s in the final moments of the film where Varun literally walks into the arms of death with pause and care that makes you look forward to the next film of this actor who in his dying achieves a glimpse of truth through the camera close-up enough to remain alive in our memory.
Pakhi’s life of suffering and hopelessness is transformed with the power of love into a desire to live. This is proof of Varun’s deep love for Pakhi.
The film concludes with a close-up of Pakhi where she discovers the masterpiece on the tree and with quick cuts into a flashback prior to that reminds us of the innocent romantic moments that make the film come a full circle round. The intercutting of the leaf on the tree and Sonakshi’s face is what fills the frame and underlying it all is the emotions that the actor portrays through her face which through the medium of the closeup we get so close to her. Her tears of joy and hope, love and pain, the choreography of the action – a glance and then a pause, a gentle look downwards and then again she faces the tree and in those small gestures, those choices, those unspoken words, in her eyes is enveloped the magic and experience of cinema. No novel can describe, no theatre can reveal the intimate brilliance of the actor’s depth than the humble close-up in cinema. And all that the filmmaker wants to say and wants you to feel is culminated in this last close up.
Conclusion
And now let me leave you with some food for thought. Who is an actor. What is acting. The basic challenge for an actor is to emote truthfully and transform into different characters. Therefore what is the process of an actor.Is using your personal memories the only devise an actor can and should use to create emotions. How many times is an actor truly successful in going beyond his own personality and bringing a character to life.The actor being ‘the instrument and the player’ of his art from is he therefore vulnerable as an artist as the tools of his art are inevitably linked to his emotions and his very own identity. Acting as an art form can either drive you crazy or it can lead you to the path of self-discovery and help you evolve as a human being.
Oorvazi Irani is an acting coach for professionals and amateurs and has introduced the Michael Chekhov Acting technique to India with her dvd of same http://www.oorvazichekhovindia.com
This Article is First Published on the website madaboutmoviez.com
http://www.madaboutmoviez.com/2013/07/lootera-indepth-acting-analysis-review-film/
Filed under: Film Musings | Tags: Anand Gandhi, film blog, film education, film musing, film review, film workshop, film workshop mumbai, filmmaking, oorvazi film education, oorvazi irani, Ship of Theseus, Ship of Theseus review
Being a film educationalist I am not comfortable making a claim that this film is path breaking as its not new cinematically and so much exciting has been happening ever since the birth of cinema internationally and in India that these are not significant claims any longer but what is important for me is that its special. Its special for me personally as I am encouraged as an artist, as a filmmaker one more time, if a film is made and seen not for entertainment and passive viewing but for something deeper, meaningful and more engaging. It inspires the artist in me to believe in the medium of cinema as the art form of the future.
Here is an artist who is sensitive to the world and himself and has something to say, rather something to ask and his films are like a quest of that truth in which he involves the audience. I believe true art is about an exploration and is anchored in the real world. Are the questions new, or rather can they be new and can they go beyond self and existence if that is what we as humans are enveloped in. So its not about how radically new the questions are but how effectively they are posed and bought back to the forefront and what is the unique personal touch and experience of an artist that absorbs us in his work.
An important appeal of the film for me was the reality that it touched at many moments and the eye for detail right from the acting beats to the real life conversations to the symbolic little actions in the plot to the excellent sound design to the powerful poetic visuals that helped you enter into this parallel reality of the filmmaker’s world where as an audience we become one with his quest for identity and life itself. The reality like in great masters including Satyajit Ray is not just about reality as it sounds and looks but about how real it feels and therefore about the ‘truth’ in every moment. And this film tried to venture there, if it succeeded or not is up to each individual to decide and I or no one else is supposed to pass a judgment on that , is what I feel.
The audience is always free to make their own interpretations and experience the film the way they like but its also insightful to try and understand the world and concerns of the filmmaker and that is best known through his body of work. Even though this is Anand Gandhi’s debut feature his older short film and featurette hold some interesting similarities, concerns and style which put together tell a story, help you to understand “The Ship of Theseus” more deeply. After seeing those films this seems like a beautiful evolution, as an artist, and I felt like I was traveling with a friend and each film took me one step ahead and I am eager to continue this journey where the worlds of the real merge and blur with the reel and a third reality is born.
I will leave you to comprehend for yourself the larger picture that these links of his earlier films tell you about him as an ‘auteur’ in theme and style and hopefully help you understand “Ship of Theseus” in a broader context of the artist and his art and gain a deeper understanding of his quest and make you engage in his art which is trying to reflect on our reality, is located in our world that we live in as human beings.
Let us not see a film to pass judgment but to experience another world, a reality that tries to bring us closer to our own world, our own reality.
“Right Here Right Now” 2003
30 Minutes ( uploaded in two parts) written and directed by Anand Gandhi.
“Continuum” 2006
40 minutes (uploaded in 5 parts)
(a featurette written and directed by Khushboo Ranka & Anand Gandhi)
Part One (Hunger)
http://youtu.be/tYfZWPEmu6o
Part Two (Trade and Love)
http://youtu.be/O5niloPdmRA
Part Three (Death)
http://youtu.be/E_7yqdSl0nY
Part Four (Enlightenment)
http://youtu.be/Rqt5LbU2658
Part Five (Continuum)
http://youtu.be/u7GAdzz9U_I
“Ship Of Theseus” (2012) written and directed by Anand Gandhi
catch this film in theatres in Mumbai till 25th July 2013 (Thursday)
Filed under: Film Musings | Tags: Ashvin Kumar, documentary, film blog, film education, film review, independent filmmaker, Inshallah Kashmir, oorvazi irani, review
Review of “Inshallah Kashmir: Living in Terror” a documentary by Ashvin Kumar
By Oorvazi Irani
When I think about Kashmir I cannot but help think of this imagery of a child who is being pulled in all directions wanting to be claimed after a bitter divorce, and my heart goes out to this child which is Kashmir and ‘living in terror’. What does this child want is not an easy answer and Ashvin Kumar has tried to delve into the heart of Kashmir to explore this question.
“On 21st August 2011 the Indian state made a historic announcement. The State Human Rights Commission admitted to 2156 unidentified bodies from 38 unmarked graves in Kashmir” this statement made in the beginning of the film by Ashvin Kumar who has written, directed and edited the film is one of the key concerns that the film revolves around, which questions the two decades of Militancy, living terror, and the irony of living in terror under the watch of a secular, democratic republic, India. An integral part of the film is about the atrocities of the law enforcers on the common man and the probe into the militant identity.
The film leads us into its narrative and the land of Kashmir with a point of view shot from the edge of a boat in the Dal lake along with the soundtrack of the Director and how he discovered this film. The shot is powerful and poetic and symbolizes the troubled waters of this beautiful land that we are about to enter. The film is largely interview based and it is the human stories that take the narrative forward including Ex Militants, a Kashmiri Pandit and the other voices of the common man in Kashmir, interspersed with views and comments by Omar Abdullah and government of India officials and experts. “Inshallah Kashmir” is culled from three hundred hours of rare footage shot in the conflict-zone of Kashmir while shooting “Inshallah, football”. This film reveals the scars of two decades of conflict through testimonies of over forty people whose families have been devastated by the conflict. In order to avoid censorship after his earlier films were banned/restrained from circulation Ashvin decided to bypass the Indian censor board and release “Inshallah Kashmir” online and free-of-charge on 26th of January 2012, India’s Republic Day.
The film as a whole develops a dialogue between the visual and the sound and the drama of real life is combined with poetic moments of pause and reflection. One such instance is the beginning of the chapter of ‘The Kashmiri Militant’. The meeting ground for the director’s first interview with a militant is a poetic imagery of dried burning leaves being swept in a football field in a village in Kashmir and the soundtrack draws us into the reflections of the director as he speaks on the militant identity “..the Kashmiri militant is not part of a single homogenized group. Differing motivations and ideologies are at play, at times working against each other…”
The film does try and make a sincere attempt at presenting a picture with varied shades and voices and has distinct chapters like ‘The Kashmiri Militant’ ‘The Kashmiri Pandit, the Hindus of Kashmir’, ‘Missing or Disappeared’, , Kids in Conflict’ etc. Is the film the whole truth? But can one film ever attempt to be? I feel its value lies in the pertinent questions that it raises; it asks you to probe and involves you in the midst of the human turmoil that Kashmir is suffering.
An independent voice not controlled by the establishment is extremely precious and the least we can do as an audience is engage ourselves meaningfully in its narrative and begin our search for truth.
For those who are yet to watch the film and for those who would like to revisit the same here’s the complete film for you all-
My Review first Published on the website http://www.madaboutmoviez.com
Filed under: Film Musings | Tags: Argo, Farrukh Dhondy, film appreciation, film education, film review, film workshop, Lincoln, oorvazi, oorvazi irani, Oscar, oscar film review, Oscar nominee, Zero Dark Thirty
Entertainment Vs Truth
A musing by Oorvazi Irani
The recent Oscar nominees and winner have got me thinking again. Do films reflect reality or a perception of reality, or is reality and the truth anywhere in the picture. A film always has an agenda and belongs to someone. So when we view a film we need to think deeper than the plot and be aware of an undercurrent ideology that the film promotes. Sometimes intentional, sometimes in the name of formula and entertainment truth is put for sale.
I would like to quote Farrukh Dhondy(from his column Cabbages and Kings that appeared in Asian Age on March 2nd 2013) in regards the film “Lincoln” and the interesting views he puts forth
“Slavery in America was not abolished by Lincoln and his civil war but by the need of the nascent capitalist industries in the North for free labour from the South.
…….The question is, quite simply, “Did Abraham Lincoln intentionally and heroically liberate the slaves?”
A child’s first view of history is mythological. Figures loom largest. Noah saved all living creatures from the flood; William conquered Britain; Ashoka united India; Aurangzeb stubbornly brought about the downfall of the Mughal empire; Lincoln freed the slaves… People dominate. They are the movers, the shakers of the earth and it makes sense.
Then comes adolescence and the awareness that history is not the story of kings but the story of the people. One embraces that doctrine with all the enthusiasm of the new republican and then follows the theory… ” ( here is the link to the full article http://www.asianage.com/columnists/revisiting-history-834)
The film “Argo” at the surface does not seem a Hollywood formula film and is based on true facts but why does the film have a climax that seems just too filmy to digest, a car chasing a plane and the heroes get away safe and sound. What is the level of creative liberties in relation to depicting facts that do not dilute the heart of the matter is an interesting exploration. As facts were omitted , different circumstances created for a more entertaining film but as a certain critic rightly questions is that really necessary to create drama, a good storyteller could extract the drama out of real life but I say would that sell is the big question, but why not, do we want it to sell and to whom. When presenting a historical fact seeing it from the American viewpoint only could be dangerously pushing Iranian stereotypes and highlighting an event itself projects the makers in a certain light. Its not about how good or bad the Iranians are but whats most important is about how great the Americans are.
“Argo” the Oscar winning film this year again highlights a supposed success story of America and the whole world starts talking about it. The film is cinematically quite good like all the films mentioned above and has a style of realism in its cinematic appeal (most of the time) but yet again the main focus of the film remains projecting the American CIA agent as the star. A popular film needs a active single strong protagonist and this character dynamics is never lost in the tale of all our Oscar films mentioned above. It just happens to be that two of those protagonists are CIA agents, isn’t it.
Reality is all perception and truth is but relative, in that web I search for my vision of discovery.
Filed under: Film Musings | Tags: death of a shadow, film education, film review, film workshop, hrithik roshan, oorvazi irani, Oscar, Oscar short film, Oscar short film nomination, short film, Tom Van Avermaet
“DEATH OF A SHADOW” A Film by Tom Van Avermaet
Oscar Nominated Short Film – 2013
A Review by Oorvazi Irani
Soldier Nathan died during World War I. A strange collector imprisoned his shadow and gave him a new chance: a second life against 10,000 captured shadows…
How is this for a beginning to a story idea. Not real but fascinating. And that’s the power of a good story, you believe in it not because of it being realistic but because of its hidden truth, power and beauty. The director Tom Van Avermaet is influenced by ‘surrealists’ of the American cinema (Darren Aronofsky, Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton, Stanley Kubrick…) and inspired by the mythology and mystery of fantasy tales and comic books. This is very apparent in his style and choice of subject but what is interesting is that he does not deal with the film poetically or mysteriously as a treatment but makes this magic realism rooted in the apparent world of realism. Many critics have dubbed his film as steam-punk which the director defends “Steam-punk is like a general term for science fiction in the Victorian Age, with machines” but says his work is not centered around that but does use certain elements from that genre.
Coming back to the story why does Nathan want to go back to the world of the living, why does he want a second chance? Here kicks in the director as auteur again “there are elements I come back to, like the element of someone looking for an unreachable love. Both shorts have those elements.” (“Dreamtime” 2006 was his first short film and the current film was under production for 5 years now). So at a simple level the film is a love story where our hero wants to come back to life or rather buys his way to a second chance to live to meet a woman he fell in love with just before dying. But of course there is a twist in this love story, after he buys his second life he is faced with the harsh reality that she does not love him but someone else. The film now gaining dramatic momentum leads Nathan to take revenge and destroy his object of jealousy, however ultimately ending in a self realization and a sacrifice for love.
The love story is not new but what makes the mark is that the film is in a new wrapping with surrealistic layers and this added with Matthias Schoenaerts (“Rust and Bone”) intense performance as Nathan Rijckx, the eye for detail with great production value and visual beauty along with a effective soundtrack, help take the film beyond a simple love story to the realm of a pondering on life and existence itself.
An imagery that lingers on is the gallery collection of the ‘shadows of death’. But for my liking I did expect more of the poetry of the mysterious world of shadows, but that’s another story and maybe another film.
“Death of Shadow” was Screened exclusively in Mumbai by the Shamiana Short Film Club on 24th February 2013 with a message from the film-maker.
You can watch Oscar Nominated Short Films here http://theoscarshorts.shorts.tv/thefilms.php
This Film Review First Published on the website Mad About Moviez http://www.madaboutmoviez.com
Filed under: Film Musings | Tags: acting, acting technique, acting technique in india, acting workshop, auteur, film, film acting, film auteur, film workshop, Michael Chekhov, Michael Chekhov Acting Technique, michael chekhov acting technique in india, oorvazi irani
AUTEUR & ACTING
The Michael Chekhov Acting Technique
Presented by Oorvazi Irani
If cinema is the director’s medium
And the director is an artist, an Auteur
An Auteur director works in collaboration with the writer which is the first stage of creation
But collaboration with an actor with an acting technique can lead to an exciting final stage of creation waiting to be explored
The question I propose to ask today is – Can an auteur director involve with the actor with the technique of acting itself. Rather than orienting himself to the actor’s style of acting can he introduce and work with the actor together as a collaborative teamwork. Can they both work in a new collaboration where the character comes to life and is truly born from the marriage of the writer , auteur director and actor.
The next question will be how does the auteur director go about this process.
The first step would be for the auteur director to understand the challenges of the actor as an artist and put himself through the process. Not to become an actor but to experience firsthand the possibilities.
Also what this does for the auteur director is that it helps him to live the part of the character and become one with his creation, he might not be the most skilled individual to bring the character to life but he can share the joy of creation with the actor and discover his characters from a deeper source adding nuances that have escaped the writer. Ofcourse the writer could also be included in the process, as acting is the final phase of the written script and it actualizes the potential of the story and screenplay.
The challenges an actor faces are the demands to transform himself into other characters and to bring them to life by emoting truthfully. Every actor has his own way of responding to these demands which he either evolves with experience or by following a particular acting technique.
The most popular means used to act is – to use one’s personal memories and personality to act. As an artist I find that limiting the ‘art of acting’. I believe any form of art should put the individual in a position to evolve and not regress and high points in artistic creation are experienced by the artist and audience when the artist has transcended the ego.
The Michael Chekhov acting technique unlike some other acting techniques is not regressive but fun and creative and any individual who wants to creatively ‘play’ can start the exploration. Michael Chekhov himself was a great actor, director born in Russia in 1891. He devoted his whole life to developing and perfecting a revolutionary acting technique that does not use personal memories and one’s limited personality to act but at the core of the technique is the use of the actor’s ‘Imagination’ and the actor’s ‘Body’ . The actor is treated as a creative artist and the possibilities of creation are infinite with specific tools like the ‘Imaginary Body’ – ‘Imaginary Centre’ – ‘Psychological Gesture’ – ‘Sensations’ with which the whole world opens up to the actor and the world inside him strives to reach out surrendering to the joy of creation.
An Auteur can rediscover himself and his film in artistic collaboration with the actor – are there any takers in India for this exciting journey to join the list of internationally respected actors and directors who are inspired by and follow the acting technique like Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Hopkins, Johnny Depp, Marilyn Monroe, Joanna Merlin, Anthony Quinn, and many more.
For more information on the technique do visit my website, link below
Article first published on the movie website http://www.madaboutmoviez.com
Filed under: Film Musings | Tags: film education, film workshop, Ingmar Bergman, oorvazi irani, Persona, scene analysis, world cinema
Scene Choreography
PERSONA (1966)- A film by Ingmar Bergman
Action:
The scene begins with a closeup of hands concealing something from the audience by Elisabet Vogler played by Liv Ullman (one of the key protagonists in the film who was an actress and has been silent for three months after a particular performance, who is now being looked after by Nurse Alma at a holiday home by the sea) and Nurse Alma played by Bibi Anderson reveals the young boy’s photograph that was being concealed after which follows a long dialogue which in fact is like a monologue by Nurse Alma to Elisabet her patient(as Elizabeth does not speak) about the story behind the photograph. We have the scene repeated twice with the same dialogue. Only in one version we see Elizabeth for almost the full duration and in the other version we see Alma for almost the entire duration.
Analysis:
“The idea for Persona, ..came from a picture. One day I suddenly saw in front of me two women sitting next to each other and comparing hands with one another. I thought to myself that one of them is mute and the other one speaks. This little thought returned time and again and I wondered: why did it return, why did it repeat itself? It was as if it returned so that I would start to work on it.” – Ingmar Bergman
I instinctively selected this scene as being representative of the film and then on further research realized that even the hands with which the scene begins are so powerful and infact a major source for the inspiration for the film itself. Ofcourse every scene in this film is representative of the film like every drop of the ocean has the essence of the ocean in itself but I found a special choreography to this scene and felt like sharing it or rather highlighting it with a detail shot breakdown of the scene(including dialogues).
This is a significant scene and at one level can be representative of the theme of the film itself. The Patient and Nurse relationship is not a simple one. At one level they are two very real different individuals in dramatic conflict and at another level they are two faces of the same person and expose the different masks we wear.
I would like to draw your attention to every acting beat in the scene which is highlighted by a gesture, movement by the actress and seems like a dance of emotions. The first version of the scene has us experience the scene seeing the face of Elisabet Vogler, the patient who is mute and is being spoken about by Nurse Alma. The scene starts with a closeup of hands, to then include a beautiful closeup of two faces followed by the separation of one face from the frame leaving a single face that continues the journey forward for the viewer. Nurse Alma speaks about Elizabeth and accuses her of being cold and indifferent and Elizabeth has no dialogues for defense or expressiveness (which for many actors is like a crutch, you take away dialogues and they are lost) but simple movements of the head – right, left, down and straight, towards the camera combined with the depth of truth in the facial expressions that make the scene poetic. The next version of the same scene is played out keeping Elizabeth in profile and we see Nurse Alma’s face speaking the dialogues. As in the earlier version the camera slightly magnifies the closeup of the character but this is the dramatic point of this version where it ends at a jumbo closeup of Alma but then transforms into not one but two personas – one side of the face is Alma and the other side of the face is Elisabet. At this point a relatively real story enters into another realm of exploration.
The opening value of the scene is revealing something that is concealed (a young boy’s photograph followed by the story) –
The scene emotionally peaks with Nurse Alma accusing Elizabeth of being indifferent to her loving child who she hates and then the scene climaxes with a glimpse of the two faces/identities merging and returns to a closeup of Alma with a cry of help and I quote
No I am not like you. I don’t feel like you. I’m sister Alma, I am just here to help you. I am not Elisabet Vogler, you are Elizabeth Vogler. I would like to have… I love..
And the closing value or the scene ends with a final merger and superimposition of both the faces/identities with the words ‘I haven’t …’ which indicates a merger of these two identities. Or makes us question that is this a real story are these two separate individuals or is this an internal drama of the mind and soul.
So the film starts with these two very different individuals and ends with a complete merger/fusion of the two. It begins at the plane of reality and ends with being in a suspended plane of existence between the real and unreal.
“Persona” is the Latin name for facemasks worn by actors in antiquity. Its an amusing title, good name, an apt name. The film will be about people’s masks and attitudes.” – Ingmar Bergman
Bergman in this film like all films exposes bare the turmoil of the human mind and soul. He does not accept love, god as normal individuals would but looks at the darker side of human nature where he explores themes of hypocrisy – and revealing the muck inside the formality of relationships and normal existence. Like a stone thrown into the water and its serene pretentious stillness and purity is opened to the mud and muck hidden at its core which show up and break the serenity at its surface.
The scene is structured in close-ups and the ‘face’ plays a very powerful role in the scene like many other films of Bergman. To quote Bergman himself “What the eyes can yield is for me the essential of all filmed art”. So with the landscape of the face, dramatic one key lighting on the canvas of black and white this master artist sets into motion an explosion of emotions on the screen, gripping you tight, not letting you escape the ugly revelations of a tormented human mind and soul.
Conclusion
I want to end this analysis by leading you into the next scene which after a few shots takes the film at certain points to pure abstraction like a true artist – two faces in a white void whispering to each other and that scene ends with Elisabet drawing blood from Nurse Alma to which Alma violently protests. There is a repulsiveness that emerges slowly but overshadowed by the beauty of cinematic treatment and depth. There are many more beautiful cinematic moments in the film including ofcourse the haunting mirror/ dream image of the two women in close contact and ofcourse the soundtrack helps to make you experience the internal and external atmosphere more truthfully.
First published on the website http://www.madaboutmoviez.com
Filed under: Film Musings | Tags: Abhay Deol, Anurag Kashyap, auteur, Auteur Theory, Bicycle Thieves, Black Friday, Black Friday – The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts, Cahiers du Cinema, cinema, Dev D, film education, film workshop, Francoise Truffaut, Gangs of Wasseypur, Gulaal, indian cinema, Indian Ocean Song, indie films, Kalki Koechlin, Kay Kay Menon, last train to Mahakali, midday multimedia, No Smoking, oorvazi irani, Piyush Mishra, Raj Singh Chaudhury, Ram Gopal verma, S. Hussain Zaidi, Sahir Ludhanvi, Satya, satyajit ray, Sneha Khanwalkar, sriram raghavan, Taxi Driver, That girl in yellow boots, Viacom 18 motion pictures, Vikramaditya Motwane, Vishal Bharadwaj, Zeishan Quadri
“Anurag Kashyap: An Auteur Demystified” An Indepth Essay By Oorvazi Irani
Introduction
‘Auteur‘is a French word which translated in English means ‘author’, the creator of the work. Having said that, cinema unlike the other arts like poetry, painting etc. is a collective art and includes contributions from other artists to make it a completed film and is not the work of a sole artist. However, the ‘Auteur Theory’ suggests that there is one prime force that leads to the creation of the film and that individual guides all the processes of filmmaking. It is the vision and worldview of this individual who makes the film special and thus a work of art. The ‘Auteur Theory’ was born out of the French New Wave movement in cinema pioneered by the critic and filmmaker Francoise Truffaut ( he wrote an important article ‘ a certain tendency in French Cinema’ for the Cahiers du Cinema magazine in 1954)which was a protest to liberate the medium of cinema from its old conventions, asking for freedom for the director to express himself beyond the reliance on literature and demanded respect for the director who is to be treated as an independent artist in the medium of cinema enabling him to create a body of work, like any other artist, dwelling on themes and developing his distinctive style.
Why do I regard Anurag Kashyap as an auteur and chose to analyze his body of work because I feel there is a struggle – there is a creative voice that wants to rebel and a heart full of feelings. His films contain a personal vision and a distinctive style which as an artist interests me to observe and examine.
What is the place, in the history of cinema, of this young filmmaker? He is not revolutionary but belongs to the rebels, he is not radical but belongs to the non formula, he is not the first artist but belongs to the world of artists, and he is not extraordinary but does not belong to the ordinary either.
In India after 1950 there was a parallel cinema movement which was literally created as a force opposed to the popular mainstream film industry with higher ideals and broke the conventional rules set out by popular cinema like happy endings, songs etc. Anurag Kashyap belongs to that alternate cinema movement in India today. It has evolved to not necessarily being opposed to mainstream cinema but seems to be seeking if it can maintain its soul and yet remain mainstream. It’s interesting to note that Anurag started his film career with his feature film Black 
Friday(2007) financed by Midday Multimedia (with a mere budget of Rs 4.5 Crores)who were new to filmmaking and with his latest film Gangs of Wasseypur(2012) has the support and backing of a major Corporate – Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, produced by Sunil Bohra (with an app budget of Rs 9.20 Crores for GOW Part One and a collection of Rs. 10 Crores in the opening weekend). History and common sense both suggest ‘Less money is more freedom’ for an independent filmmaker or a director in a studio system (rather corporate setup in today’s terms), so what interestingly remains to be seen is will all the bigger budget trappings compromise the ‘spirit’ of films in the near future for an auteur like Anurag.
For an Auteur to enter the system and yet retain his personal freedom and smuggle the ‘soul’ into it (as Martin Scorsese puts it) is an interesting challenge. Also till now he has largely been opposed to the star system and has not 
used big stars even for his recent film Gangs of Wasseypur – will he venture, in the near future making bigger budget films and using stars, if he does what will be the price he pays is the big question. Best summed up in Anurag’s own words on the release of his first film Black Friday(2007).
“Every rebel becomes a conformist..my real insecurity begins now” ( Feb 13th 2007 http://anuragkashyap.tumbhi.com/uncategorized/black-friday-introspecting-156 )
The Auteur and his influence of his own life
Every Auteur consciously or otherwise is exploring certain pet themes and thus his body of work reflects his thought process and insights on the subject. The personal life of an auteur cannot be divorced from his films. This interplay is different every time, sometimes more subtle, sometimes more overbearing, which can include premise, locations, character or any or everything. If the filmmaker does not involve himself its the work of a craftsman and not an artist.
I feel the starting point for a true artist is that he/she is sensitive to life unfolding and also aware of their inner self. There is a constant process of questioning and probing for the truth.
Anurag was a sensitive child – as a young boy in school he wrote a poetry on suicide but it was not seen as an expression of pain by a sensitive 
artist but rather misunderstood and perceived wrongly as a state of depression and was recommended treatment. His keen sense of observation, his originality and creativeness in his schoolwork were never understood or encouraged in his childhood instead his voice was drowned in the routine and security of a conformist existence. He felt like an outcast in a prestigious school where he did not know English and was teased by others. He always had a voice but nobody heard him. This continued even with his films as one film after another was banned (starting with Paanch, Black Friday,Gulaal) but, as he himself says, that was a very important part of his life, those failures really shaped him and in fact interestingly entered and become part of his artistic world of exploration.
“No Smoking mirrors my struggle in the industry. That’s why it’s most dear to me and it’ll always remain so, more than Dev. D and more than Black Friday.” (Interview with Bikas Mishra – Dear Cinema Feb 8th 2009).
An important layer of the film is Kafka’s Trial and this takes us back to an early influence on Anurag in his initial struggling days in Mumbai. He had written a play and showed it to Govind Nihalani, who appreciated the work and asked him to read Isben and gave him Kafka’s Trial to read and adapt to film. At that point in time all this confounded Anurag’s confusion as he was going through a tough time in his life and as a result Anurag stopped taking Govind’s calls and meeting him. But its interesting to note how this finds itself later in a film that he makes.
And Anurag says about the film at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi 
“The first book that I read in English was Kafka’s Trial (Anurag could not read English till the age of 17 years) I never could understand it but it never left me. If you work in any system its very Kafkaesque, you don’t know what is going on, you cannot figure it out. And you don’t know what is wrong with you. I could not understand why Black Friday was banned. I could not understand if a book could exist why the film could not come out. I could not understand why Paanch was banned. I could not understand why I could not make Gulaal….what is wrong with speaking up.”
“Just smoking becoming a metaphor it became a very personal movie. And the end portion where the things are not explained is also because I never could understand what was going on with my life so I felt let the audience also feel the same thing.”
The motif of smoking however as a metaphor for freedom is introduced in his first short film Last Train to Mahakali (1999) which the filmmaker later takes on to make it a major aspect in his film No Smoking(2007).
However the film No Smoking was marketed by an item number by Bipasa Basu, where I feel the target market seemed to be all wrong. An audience who would be lured to a theatre with an item number is not the deserving viewer for a film like No Smoking.
Another very personal film is That Girl in Yellow Boots(2010). Anurag seems to be confronting his painful past of sexual child abuse which he experienced for 11 years. “ I came to Mumbai brimming with angst, bitterness and a sense of violation and isolation. Thanks to the love of my life, Kalki Koechlin, I am completely cured of my acrimony.”(TOI Subhash K Jha, Nov 11, 2009, 10.51 am IST) These words of Anurag are revealing that as a young man when he came to Mumbai to make films he had a lot of pain inside him and a voice that wanted to be heard. The film has as its theme child abuse and incest, which we realize only at the end of the film when the protagonist is confronted with a bitter truth that the father she was so desperately searching for was a pervert, a child abuser and had sexually violated her sister and caused her death. The film leaves the character and the audience in a state of shock and deep pain which are not expressed with tears, not taken to the level of sentimentality but to a much deeper level.
The film is not limited to the pain of a personal experience; it reveals the underbelly of society and provides a glimpse of the darker side of life at close quarters. Above all the film is interested in the journey of the inner self and reflects on how so many of us are living a delusion. The film prompts us to see the need to confront reality and find our true selves.
The film uses as the title track a doha by Kabir which speaks about this search for oneself.
Hear me, says Kabir, seek and you shall find
Hear me, says Kabir, seek and you shall find
In this world tangled in delusion,
The self cannot be seen.
In this world tangled in delusion,
The self cannot be seen.
The self cannot be seen.
The self cannot be seen.
In fact the metaphor of the ‘mirror’ and the character looking at herself/himself in Last Train to Mahakali, That Girl in Yellow Boots, and Gangs of Wasseypur, and in a lot of his films seem to hint at the director’s examination of self delusion by the characters, a sort self examination, a self exploration, a contemplative introspection.
The Auteur and his themes
One way of looking at an auteur is that at a certain level ‘he is making the same movie again and again with slight modifications’. He has pet themes that he is exploring. If we look at Anurag’s body of work we find that this is probably true. Anurag goes from the micro to the macro, from the self to the nation and back again. And at a deeper level from the outside world into the inside world.
Revenge seems to be an important part of the dramatic hook of many of his films including Black Friday, Gulaal and his recent Gangs of Wasseypur. Revenge is a crucial element of popular genre storytelling and in fact was one of the main themes for the ‘western’ genre in Hollywood. So many Hindi formula films are based on revenge. But ‘revenge’ here may also be looked at with more depth besides being a popular formula to tell a story. Not to make a simplistic reading of personal life and its relationship to his films but Anurag has been the underdog and a lot of his films have the spirit of revolt as a rebel an involute revenge may be of sort. However, his films are not a glorification of revenge but mostly rise above to question its very existence.
The filmmaker is not self indulgent but concerned, raise pertinent questions about the world around him and as a true artist should, is searching for the truth. His first feature film Black Friday made in 2004 but released in 2007 three years later due to censorship trouble is a film based on Mumbai’s Black Friday – The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts, based on a book by S. Hussain Zaidi about the 1993 Bombay bombings.
Realism and social, political concerns take centre stage in this film and begins the career of this filmmaker but the concerns and issues raised in this film never really seems to leave him but only get reinvented on his journey.
The film begins and ends with a quote by Mahatma Gandhi “ An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”.
The film ends with the bomb blast recreation and then text title cards.
The Bombay Blasts became India’s largest criminal case
The designated court took 13 years to deliver justice
100 out of the final 122 found guilty
29 still absconding including Tiger Menon
And Bombay is now called Mumbai.
Anurag wanted to make an honest film and raise questions about the state of politics and the legal system and our society at large.
An important scene dealing with revenge, seems to be critical, in regards to what the filmmaker wants to convey to the audience as a message or an insight on same. The scene is – where we see the jail cell through a red filter and one of the bombers, Badshah who is now captured and is being interrogated by the cop. Badshah Khan very proudly takes credit for the bombings and says Muslims have taken the revenge for the atrocities done to their Muslim brothers. That’s when Kay Kay Menon who plays the cop says and speaks in the voice of the director “ …Allah was not on your side, on your side was Tiger Menon . He saw your rage and manipulated you. He was gone before the first bomb was even planted. ..he fucked you over. you know why ? Because you were begging for it. All in the name of religion. You are a fucking idiot. You are an idiot and so is every Hindu, who murders one of you. Everyone who has nothing better to do…but to fight in the name of religion is a fucking idiot.”
The end credits appear with the Indian Ocean Song ‘Bandeh’ which ends the film on a poetic note of lament but never pessimistic rather urging the audience to wake up. It’s a film where there is anger and he wants the audience to acknowledge that justice is not done and wants the audience to question the state of justice in our country.
With his film Gulaal (2009) where the canvas is now the state of Rajasthan he continues his lament of the nation and urges us ‘to save India’ and at a larger level to save this world. Production on Gulaal began in 2001, when Anurag Kashyap was listening to songs from Pyaasa and his film Paanch was struggling with the censors. The film is inspired (and gives credit to) by the song ‘Yeh Mahlon, YehTakhton, Ye Tajon ki Duniya’ By Sahir Ludhanvi from the film Pyaasa
The film is set in present day Rajasthan, a state in western India. The plot is provided by student politics of the university and a fictitious secessionist movement consisting of former Rajput leaders who have become the present day 
elite.
Also revisiting the title card at the beginning of the film sums up the intent and tone of the film which I would like to reproduce here below:
The first text card:
The film is a work of fiction, dedicated to all
Those poets of per-independent India
Who wrote songs of freedom and had a vision of
Free India, which we could not put together.
If Black Friday was more of an angry voice which was symbolized by Anurag then Gulaal is now more grief and lament which seems stronger, 
but there is still the use of the strong red color which is symbolic of power and danger. Also the characters of Prithvi Bana and Ardhanareshwar take the film to mythical realms.
Returning to the Theme of Revenge with the film Gangs of Wasseypur (Part 1), the film speaks about revenge at various levels and in its very existence laments the current state of our country and contemporary society. What now hits you hard with this film is that ‘revenge’ a primordial emotion is so strongly still prevalent in our society today and the film seems to be questioning our evolution as a species. The filmmaker like in his earlier films here more than ever is drawing on newsreel and documentary footage and attempting to weave the story of India’s independence with the story of this personal epic saga spanning generations which succeed in revealing, the fact that free India is not really free even today and shows us that prevalent level of lawlessness and bloodshed is so paradoxical in an apparently democratic India. ‘Might is Right’ which is something of the cave man era is still so prevalent in
our 21st century, Kashyap does not spare the viewer from confronting this brutal truth nor does he dilute harsh reality with candy floss.
Violence and revenge are intertwined and thus become a very important part of his cinematic vocabulary, violence being mostly external and visceral but also speaks about internal violence specially in one of his more personal films That Girl in Yellow Boots and No Smoking. Dev D also at one level is about revenge where Devdas is on a mission of self destruction.
The Auteur and Realism as a treatment
Anurag says that he makes films about things as he sees it. In fact the appeal of a lot of Anurag’s films are his realism which seems raw to a lot of viewers. Here raw for me refers to the unadulterated truth and not a work that does not treat the raw reality. As art and an artist does not present to you life as experienced in real life as raw and personal but by the process of his art and craft he makes your experience richer, makes you reflect and offers you a space to experience the apparently raw reality which he has treated with the processes of filmmaking. Also an interesting observation of a lot of viewers after seeing a Kashyap film is that they could not emotionally identify with the characters and that I would say is revealing as it seems that the film
maker does not passively want you to get sucked into the emotional life of the story but remain detached enough to be an active viewer and participate in its unfolding. Also what makes Anurag’s films special is the Realism in them. But what I mean by realism is like what you would feel in a film by Satyajit Ray who has observed life and character’s closely and brings them alive in each scene nuances, uniqueness and an authentic truth which connects with the viewer (however I am not suggesting here that the experience of an Anurag film is close to the experience of a Ray film, far from that).
The Auteur and the writer
A very important aspect of an Auteur would be a director who is part of the conception and script of the film and in this regard Anurag is very closely involved in the creation of his work. In fact he started his career as a writer writing scripts in Mumbai (he wrote the script of Auto Shankar overnight which was loved by Sriram Raghavan and Shivam Nair) and got famous and recognized with his script Satya which he wrote for Ram Gopal Verma. Black Friday, his first feature film, was based on a book but the screenplay was by none other than Anurag. Now another dynamic sets into play, Anurag as an Auteur is not (or is not supposed)to be the sole originator of his work, it has in fact always been a practice that auteur directors including Truffaut have associated with other writers for the script and screenplay, sometimes to keep away from personal indulgence and many times because the idea or story is initiated or bought to the director by someone else who then with that merit being the best person who knows the world of the story should be present to be a partner in scripting the project. The film Gulaal has Raj Singh 
Chaudhury as a co scriptwriter. It was Raj Singh Chaudhury who bought the story to Anurag based on his experiences of college ‘ragging’ and its consequences. Raj says the story idea was his ( and he also suggested the film be set in Rajasthan) but the script and screenplay was by Anurag. No doubt Anurag connected with the story as he recalls in an interview to Tehelka in 2005 ” Scindia (school in Gwalior) was hell for me. The sexual abuse continued there for years. I hated myself. I couldn’t understand why it was happening to me. I was often picked out, beaten, then taken to the toilets. To save myself from the beatings, I’d give in to the abuse,” . Another fascinating aspect of Anurag’s script collaborators is that all of them are actors. Raj Chaudhury was also an actor and had in fact written the story keeping himself in mind. Anurag felt he would fit the character perfectly and in spite of other popular actors keen to play the role he cast Raj as one of the lead actors, Raj says he also helped in the scripting of No Smoking.
Dev. D is a collaborative effort too. The film was developed from a concept that Abhay Deol( who plays Dev, the main protagonist in the film) narrated to Anurag. “Core idea came from Abay, Abhay told me this idea of a boy lost in a strip bar in LA and this triggered off a lot of ideas I had in mind and showed the possibility of adapting Devdas.” “ …. The idea was to try and explore that adjective(Devdas) that it has become and through which I wanted to talk about the youth , I wanted to talk about how they look at love, life, relationships, in today’s day and age, the age of fast cars, fast cash, fast food, instant gratification. Does it really happen that people are longing for one woman for the rest of their lives because I don’t see that happening today. It has changed . So it was trying to explore all that by using Devdas as a medium.” Vikramaditya Motwane(assistant director of Sanjay Leela Bhansali and latter Anurag produced and co-wrote his debut film Udaan) was asked to write the first draft of the script and Anurag said he would take his draft and add his bits to it (From Eros extra features). Also what would be an important touch to the film would be that Anurag understands very well and has experienced being depressed and lost lik
e the character Dev, of course for other reasons, a young boy who enters science and takes up zoology at the University of Delhi, dissatisfied with his choice, confused and depressed he takes to drugs and alcohol.
How do you measure popular mainstream cinema – its by the stereotypes and clichés that it adopts in its telling.
Dev D is backed by a major corporate house, who is encouraging alternate cinema catering mainly to the multiplex audience but not limited to them. Dev D is a modern reinterpretation to the classic Devdas (which has 12 film versions made of the Bengali novel written by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay). So the first rule that Anurag breaks from the popular cinema standard is ‘romanticizing’ the hero Devdas and he makes him into a very real practical contemporary youth of today. He also breaks the backbone of the character who epitomizes self pity to giving up drinking, discovering that love is not romantic ideas and does not die for Paro but chooses Chandramukhi instead and starts a new life. This is in fact one of Anurag’s rare films which has a positive, if we can call it, a happy ending, but never the less, seems real and not romanticized.
The sexual frankness given to the characters including the female characters is unlike popular formula films and the women are strong and determined not passive and docile. And the self-sacrificing Chandramukhi (played by Kalki Koechlin) that became the epitome of the character mold of the prostitute with a golden heart in Hindi cinema over the years was also broken, in fact her past life is also contemporary in its origin and is taken from a real incident and inspired from newspaper headlines.
Another important collaborator with Anurag has been Kalki Koechlin, she had been invited by Anurag to co-write the script of That Girl In Yellow Boots primarily because he knew that she would be able to give insights about the world that the film portrayed and also she is the key protagonist of the film. Where like other instances we have the actor-scriptwriter collaboration merging into itself.
Also this being a sensitive subject and theme close to Anurag’s heart and Kalki being his life partner who he credits to have rid him of his past pain adds another dimension to the film itself.
His recent film Gangs of Wasseypur (Part One) seems to have a long list of writers Zeishan Quadri, Akhilesh, SachinLadia, AnuragKashyap. But it was Quadri who bought the story to Anurag. Quadri’s deal was simple. He’ll write the script and play the character Definite, a key character in the second part of the two-part film.
“Though I was born in small town in northern India, I migrated to the city to make films, the city got to me and I went deeper in exploring it’s effect on me through my films until I met Zeishan. Zeishan was from Wasseypur and a few things that he told me about this place dragged me back to my roots, my backyard, my growing up and my tryst with Bollywood and the politics of my region.The few anecdotes that Zeishan shared with me of this place then went on to be retelling and an analysis of the history of the place explaining it’s evolution as a burning inferno and it’s fight for coal to the way battles were fought. From digging coal to killing someone over an innocuous brawl to vengeance being inherited. Part One of the film gets to the roots of the people and explains why they are the way they are.”(Anurag’s own words – GOW official website)
The Auteur and his style (visual)
Style or treatment of the film by a director is not necessarily consistent or easy to catch but some directors do have a distinctive style that can be recognized as a signature style of the artist in his body of work. Anurag Kashyap according to me has a characteristic way of using colour in his films and that becomes an integral part of his signature style which began from his first short film and continues till this day. In his visual palette we see the use of the three primary colours Red, Green, Blue and their combinations at various points. Besides being three primary colours we have the added dimension of the colours mostly appearing either desaturated or as part of the noir vocabulary of neon lights reminding us of the underbelly of society that we are exposed to in the films.
Below is a brief observation and analysis of Anurag’s colour palette in his films.
Anurag’s first short film Last Train to Mahakali (1999) ( a short film 45 minutes made for the television series ‘Star Best Sellers’) starts the film 
with a green desaturated tint while we are introduced to the main protagonist of the film a prisoner who is on death row. His present world in the prison seems to represent this colour. In fact green is repeated in No Smoking(2007) – In the film an important set or world of existence is the rehabiliatiton centre and the world of Baba Bengali who runs the rehabilitation centre (which is symbolic of the establishment) is presented in a desaturated green tint.
The film The Last Train to Mahakali does fleetingly play with blue and red but it is the end of the film which is red mixing with yellow, like a kind of an orange (which in fact is the common space occupied by the journalist and the prisoner) there seems to be a surreal (artificial) sunshine that fills the room on the chilling note that the film leaves you with.
In the film Black Friday (2004)the colour red seems to dominate which symbolizes anger to me besides the bloodshed and pain that it contains within itself as a colour not to forget the element of danger that the colour stands for and that at one level 
the filmmaker is alerting us about. Red is an important part of its title and credits and a red filter is used in significant scenes of the jail torture which enclose an important message of the film by the director. Anurag is said to have referred to those scenes saying that he wanted a green filter but since that was not available he went for the red filter instead. The filter was to reduce the realistic goriness of the scene but I feel it does more than that and fortunately since the green filter was not possible the red palette by default comes into play.The film has a special use of blue, rather in its de-saturated form, for the flashback 
sections specially where Dawood is shown and also to portray the treatment of the recreation of the pain and loss of the actual bomb blast which ends the film.
So if Black Friday begins with red and is about protest then so is the case with Gulaal(2009) where the chief color seems to be red. This film primarily uses red as an integral colour in the film right from the gulaal which is red in colour to certain sections of the inner haveli which are bathed in red light or a filter where there is a clash between characters who revolt. In this film red is also part of the costume palette which infact is part of many of his films but here they become symbolic, Prithvi Bana played by Piyush Mishra is dressed in red and his mythic Ardhanareshwar who follows him around 
is in blue (his body is painted in blue). The film has scenes where green and blue light are visible but red stands out as a primary symbolic colour of this film.
The film That Girl In Yellow Boots has yellow as one significant colour in its colour palette which is related to the boots which the protagonist wears on this journey in the film (it also appears in the title and credits titles). Yellow could represent hope for a brighter future, a joy the protagonist is searching for. But the film also has blue which is the other important colour and the note on which the film ends . To quickly glance though the world of the film – the massage parlour is predominantly green, Ruth the protagonist of the film has an apron which is green in colour. The last scene the client who we realize is her father has a blue towel ( however the towel is always blue for all clients)also we saw earlier the room 
where she discovered her father’s pictures (when she visited his home) also predominantly had blue walls. The film reaches its climax when Ruth confronts her client who she discovers is her father and his reaction to her truth shatters her into a state of shock and grief. It’s the end of the film which this sequence leads to which has an important use of the colour blue as symbolic yet part of the realistic 
setting of the film. After the confrontation with her father she walks into the corridor with a green light, then enters the streets which are yellow and when she sits in the taxi, her face is bathed with blue light (which is the light in the taxi as planned I assume) and the world outside which she leaves behind has a 
tinge of yellow and green. The last scene is the taxi ride, a minute long in duration where the camera remains with Ruth as a mid shot followed by a kind of jump cut mid close, and the audience remains focused on Ruth’s face bathed in blue light, she then shuts her eyes and the film fades to black.
The film Dev D is sprinkled with many colours starting primarily with green and yellow and then moving on to red, blue and most importantly pink that enters into this film with the character of Chandramukhi played by Kalki( Red + Green = Pink). 
Pink represents a very feminine colour at the same time is very punk . The film travels into the drug world of clubs and underbelly of Delhi and gives the makers to exploit the neon filled streets and existence of the colour that seems real, at times gaudy but symbolic. The concluding scenes have Dev and Chandramukhi bathed in a tint of a combination of red and yellow with a hint of pink( being the colour of the bathtub in which Dev is seated and the loffah with which Chandramukhi is gently scrubbing 
him). But the last scene however is natural colours with the sun shining through on the couple riding a bike.
This film The Gangs of Wasseypur – Part One (2012) is subtle in its colour palette and merges with the real world but on keen observation it is prevalent. He chooses a palette for its production design to be predominantly green and blue. With a brief small scene in red and continuing the desaturated blue at many points. But at the end of the film which is the death of Sultan brilliantly played by Manoj Bajpai is the use of the colour yellow or rather the yellow of the sun going into white which with the death of the protagonist is symbolic of the fiery 
revenge which finally turns to nothingness. White is the combination of the three primary colours (Red +Blue +Green = White) and thus in his colour palette he is now critically poised already combined and merged all his colours. I do not suggest that this is necessarily consciously done but for me it plays out brilliantly. What next …
The Auteur and his collaborators
Since Anurag’s films have a distinct colour palette and the visual impact of the film being strong requires a special mention of Wasiq Khan as a Production Designer(responsible for the visual look of the film) and his two key cinematographers till date being Natrajan Subramanium (Last Train to Mahakali – Paanch – Black Friday)and Rajeev Ravi (No Smoking – Gulaal – Dev D – That Girl in Yellow Boots- Gangs of Wasseypur) who have contributed significantly to bring his vision to life.
‘Song and dance’ form a very integral grammar of popular Indian cinema and starting with Dev D Kashyap with the music director Amit Trivedi has reinvented the music soundtrack specially with the song ‘Emotional Atyachar’ (one of the important sources of reference for the song was Om Dar Ba Dar – an avant garde Indian film in the year 1988). Over the years a very distinct quality of an Anurag Kashyap film is his soundtrack that he has developed and this film is an important juncture for it to take off which reaches a new high in his latest film Gangs of Wasseypur(Part One) with the title track ‘kehke Longa’ and ‘Womaniya’ besides others . In this film Sneha Khanwalkar who has designed the 
music and song for the film ( besides the background score which is by G V Prakash Kumar) has added a special touch by including folk singers and tunes mixed with modern sophistication to give a vibrant dose of chatpatta music that brings alive the landscape of the story and characters. Song and dance is a powerful tool to enhance the emotional experience of the viewer which has its roots in ancient Indian arts and aesthetics and most of Indian popular cinema uses this to transform the viewer into a realm which is not imitating reality but experiencing emotional truth( what an item number does , can be another essay in itself ). However most of the songs in Anurag’s films are not limited to the emotional realm of realism but many times the songs are a commentary on the film’s theme, its plot, or its characters. The songs are rooted in 
Indian culture but yet are funky and reinterpreted in a postmodern vein. In this regard Piyush Mishra is also an important close collaborator in his films who wrote the lyrics for Black Friday and Gulaal, also being the music director for Gulaal. He also wrote some lyrics for Gangs of Wasseypur along with Varun Grover. (Piyush has also acted in many of Anurag’s films besides being a reputed actor himself, he played some memorable characters like Prithvi Bana in Gulaal and an important character role in GOW Part One). Each film having a unique identity and original soundtrack Black Friday had the special quality of the music of band Indian Ocean and with the film No Smoking Vishal Bharadwaj interpreted the surreal world on the soundtrack as an artist.
Another important collaborator is the editor -editor Aarti Bajaj edited many of Kashyap’s films including Last Train to Mahakali ,Paanch (unreleased), Black Friday, Dev D, Gulaal, No Smoking and shaped the films to a powerful experience. But from the film That Girl in Yellow Boots and his recent film Gangs of Wasseypur, Anurag has worked with Shweta Venkat Matthew (as I assume his personal life came in the way of the professional world and this collaboration broke up). Each of the two editors try to keep up with Anurag’s pace and rhythm for his films and the result is a highly charged film.
But I would say that like a true auteur he maintained his style in all departments of filmmaking irrespective of changes that took place and found the right individuals to fit his vision. Also at any given time there are many young aspiring filmmakers in his office wanting to learn and be part of the exciting world of filmmaking that Anurag represents to the Indian youth.
The Auteur and his influences from cinema
What has been the influences on Anuarg as an auteur besides his personal experiences, and here cinema itself plays a very important role. In his recent film Gangs of Wasseypur he mentions the influence of Tamil cinema, infact dedicates the film to ‘the 3 musketeers Ameer, Bala and Sasikumar, the sons of Madurai’ as he calls them. He says “I realized that these filmmakers are making their films in a milieu that’s so much familiar to them. This made me feel that even I have lots of stories to tell which belong to the place I belong to.” (Interview by Sethumadhavan.N featuring on the website www.madaboutmoviez.com).
But it was in 1993 in a film festival (which he was urged to attend by his friends) when he witnessed ‘A Retrospect of Vitterio De Sica Films’ (Bicycle Thieves is the film that influences him the most among the 55 films of De Sica), it was “an epiphany” he says which changed his life and he runs away from home with Rs 5,000 in his pocket and decides he wants to make films. The Screening of the film Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese (on a tv screen in the office of Shivam Nair, Shriram Raghavan during his struggling years in Mumbai) was the beginning of another interesting phase. Pic Posters of Bicycle Thieves and Taxi Driver
Seeing films like Fun ,De Sica’s Films, Taxi Driver he says gave him confidence to make cinema as his voice was similar and other hindi films he saw he could not relate to, they were films not about him but some other people. Also 
the attraction to noir is that its about him too. Anurag says “Noir might mean different things to different people, but for me its an environment and a story of the underdog. We don’t pay attention to the people on the streets and just pass them by.” He thought cinema could be about that too. “I wanted to tell those kind of stories and these films gave me confidence.”
However Anurag ‘s work includes the influence of Bollywood, and in a post modern sense. Gulaal has for its inspiration a song from the Hindi classic film Pyaasa but the film builds on the original and adds a new dimension to it. In Gangs of Wasseypur Bollywood referencing is integral to its plot and characters – the film explores this revenge saga through the socio-political dynamic in erstwhile Bihar (North India), in the coal and scrap trade mafia of Wasseypur, through the imprudence of a place obsessed with mainstream ‘Bollywood’ cinema. This has a direct link to his childhood, when as a young boy in UP he was attracted to Hindi cinema from a very young age and repeatedly saw films (often visited the open air theatre or the Government theatre next to his house)like Kora Kagaazand Aandh iand latter Do Badaan in his college days.
The Auteur and acting
Another influence as a director is that Kashyap was an actor before being a director and a distinct quality of his film is strong and powerful performances which bring the film to life and seem real and truthful. Acting was something that he did while he was struggling to find his voice, he joins a theatre group Jana Natya Manch and performs street plays. This also helped him to meet people and its not therefore a coincidence that a lot of his collaborators specially his scriptwriters are actors who are attracted to work with him. He says “Instead of the actor performing for the camera, I let the camera capture the people….” A little known fact is that Manoj Bajpai was responsible for suggesting Anurag’s name to Ram Gopal Verma as a young scriptwriter for the film Satya (which got him a lot of fame) and Anurag does not forget to return the favour by casting Manoj in his recent big budget film Gangs of Wasseypur (which has helped Manoj bring back his acting career to the top after a low phase). Anurag like the rest of his team has been quite loyal to many of his characters like Kay KayMenon and Kalki but without compromising the film at any cost.
Conclusion
Where does Anurag Kashyap go from here – the real world and the world of cinema meet in his films, will one dominate the other – and how – 
and to what effect ? What form will his colour palette take on now, are the three primary colours going to be repetitive and boring or are they going to help telling a story and increasing its complexity of visual vocabulary ? Will the distinctive style of the songs in his films take on newer dimensions and reinvent themselves or will its novelty die out? Will the plot of revenge be a continuing fascination and lead to deeper insights ? Will the commentary of Indian politics and society be allowed to freely express itself, will it continue to cause a stir in the conscience of the youth ? What will Anurag Kashyap discover about himself and the world around him is what we the audience will have to wait and watch to see!
Anurag’s films are like a silent scream – real yet not raw, disturbing yet not deafening, shocking yet not depressing, violent yet not ugly, a hope hidden in a lamenting.
© Copyright Oorvazi Irani
First published on madaboutmoviez.com
Filed under: Film Musings | Tags: auteur, film education, film workshop, Govind Nihalani, Mamaiji, oorvazi irani, short film, sorab irani, The K File, The K File movie
The message was sent to my dad, Sorab Irani who is the Producer of the films.
“Your daughter(Oorvazi Irani) is a very neat storyteller and her film(“The K File”) has a surprising sting in its
Film Education 