India's 'Monsoon' makes a mark at Toronto Film Festival

Sturla Gunnarsson, the Iceland-born, Canada-based filmmaker was in Mumbai several years ago filming 'Such A Long Journey', when he experienced the Indian monsoon for the first time. It touched off a long-running romance with the phenomenon, leading to Monsoon, the expansive, visually stunning feature-length documentary that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last week. "It was a way into understanding India for me, why am I always smiling in this country that drives me crazy?" explained Gunnarsson in an interview at his downtown Toronto home.

Monsoon traces the path of its namesake season across several regions of India, touching down in Kerala, Maharashtra, Goa, Assam and Meghalaya. As Gunnarsson notes in his voice-over, India's monsoon ties together the incredible diversity of its places and people, all of them feeling the touch of the same clouds and partaking of their life-giving rain.

The film covers several aspects of the monsoon - the anticipation, prayers, preparation, euphoria when it finally arrives, and in some cases, the destruction in its wake. Gunnarsson also visits meteorological offices in various cities, to illustrate the monsoon's importance to India's economy. In Kerala, officials debate and await orders from New Delhi on when to declare the official onset of the monsoon, aware that a single word out of place could roil the stock markets.

Still, the force of nature proves supremely indifferent to official statements, which was Gunnarsson's greatest challenge while drawing up a schedule for filming. And sometimes, experience and folk wisdom prove superior to official forecasts. A bookie in Kolkata offers odds against a forecast of thunderstorms, confidently declaring, "these are dummy clouds", and is proven right.

The bookie is among a varied cast of characters, who radiate a simple dignity and warmth as they go about their lives in this documentary. We meet Akhila, a charming schoolgirl in Kerala, whose manner goes from vivacious to grave as her family's home floods in the course of the film; a Marathi journalist who chokes up as he wishes for "at least a few drops" of rain to fall in Maharashtra's droughtridden region; a Mumbai dabbawalla who hopes his sons will one day work in offices so that they can also get their lunches delivered; a wildlife official in Assam's Kaziranga National Park who frets about his wards, especially the endangered rhinos he touchingly describes as "innocent animals"; a cheerful officer in Cherrapunji's Met office, once described by the British as a "suicide posting"; and a brief appearance by the film actress Moushmi Chatterjee.

The film mostly manages to avoid stereotypes, but a gruesome sequence of a goat sacrifice ritual that seems to have nothing to do with the monsoon, makes the cut.

The documentary is shot in ultra high-definition 4K format, which provides for sweeping panoramas and stunning closeups. The background music, composed by Andrew T MacKay of the Bombay Dub Orchestra, complements and enhances the visuals. "One of the key things was to base it around the malhaar, the monsoon raag. And there's one scene in the drought, as the sun is just setting, and that raag is only played at 5.30 in the evening," said MacKay, referring to the level of detail that went into his compositions.

For Gunnarsson, a self-confessed nonbeliever, Monsoon turned out to be more than just a film about rain; it became a process of spiritual transition as he followed his subjects' reverence for this gift from nature. "The journey for me was trying to come to an understanding of why I find their faith so moving, for me it was a journey from atheism to agnosticism," he said.