Behind the seen
By Shanta Gokhale
Life in Metaphors: A Portrait of Girish Kasaravalli is a deeply enriching film. It brings us faceto-face with one of the most socially committed filmmakers of our times. He waves no flags but tells us stories that emerge from his own troubled mind as he mulls over questions that our world throws up all the time. What do the rigidities of brahminical practice do to human beings? What did the country’s independence mean besides being a nationalistic abstraction? How do people displaced by developmental projects deal with the consequent loss of self? How has globalisation affected human relationships? What place does Gandhi’s truth have in the world today?
You may enjoy the stories that Kasaravalli tells in response to these questions at surface level, thrilled to see meticulously scripted, movingly performed and sensitively shot films. Or, while being attracted by the rich surface of a Kasaravalli film, you may go beyond it to discover its metaphorical significance. He leaves it to you.
Life in Metaphors, directed by investment banker turned film-maker OP Srivastava, won last year’s Silver Lotus award for the best biographical film. Such awards are often comparative, depending largely on the quality of that particular year’s entries. But this film, beautifully shot (GS Bhaskar) and finely structured and edited (Monisha Baldawa), wins in absolute terms too. It holds the viewer by the skillful way in which it binds Kasaravalli’s own analysis of his work, well-chosen clips from his films, shots of him at work and insightful commentary from those who know and love his work, into a seamless narrative, plotted around the parallel axes of thematic content and chronology aided by logical points of transition.
Kasaravalli talks about the sources of his inspiration, beginning with the books he read as a child, the Yakshagana and Company Theatre shows that he saw and his love-fear relationship with water which abounded in his village, Tirthahalli, in the Mainad district of Karnataka. During his training as a pharmacist in Hyderabad he discovered the works of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Mani Kaul. In his culture, cinema was considered a low art. But his maternal uncle, the Magsaysay award winner KV Subbanna, declared it a great art and enrolled him in one of the first film appreciation courses at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. At FTII, which Kasaravalli declares gave him the best years of his life, he discovered the Japanese film-maker Ozu with whose compassionate worldview he found a deep affinity.
When Kasaravalli speaks, his clear, earnest eyes are not focused on the impression he is creating. They are focused on finding precise articulation for how he has used the cinematic medium to express his beliefs and concerns. For him, the most painful experience in a human being’s life is to be told, “You are unwanted; you are not one of us.” All his protagonists are victims of rejection, from Yamuna, the pregnant widow in his first feature film, Ghatashraddha, to the Gandhi look-alike in Koormavatara, abandoned by his family because he tries to pursue Gandhian ideas in real life, making himself socially unacceptable.
Kasaravalli is one of those rare artists who are entirely true to themselves at all times. He knows where he stands in the context of cinematic trends and his own creativity. From the nineties, cinema has sought to distance itself from literature; but he continues to base his films on fiction. Ananthamurthy says, of the award-winning film Ghatashraddha, based on his story, that it enriches what he has written.
Life in Metaphors makes an absorbing film because it aims unswervingly at deepening our understanding of Girish Kasaravalli’s work while giving us a sensuous feel for the natural environment from which it springs. Add to this the transparently truthful presence of Kasaravalli himself, and you have a bonus.
Life in Metaphors: A Portrait of Girish Kasaravalli is a deeply enriching film. It brings us faceto-face with one of the most socially committed filmmakers of our times. He waves no flags but tells us stories that emerge from his own troubled mind as he mulls over questions that our world throws up all the time. What do the rigidities of brahminical practice do to human beings? What did the country’s independence mean besides being a nationalistic abstraction? How do people displaced by developmental projects deal with the consequent loss of self? How has globalisation affected human relationships? What place does Gandhi’s truth have in the world today?
You may enjoy the stories that Kasaravalli tells in response to these questions at surface level, thrilled to see meticulously scripted, movingly performed and sensitively shot films. Or, while being attracted by the rich surface of a Kasaravalli film, you may go beyond it to discover its metaphorical significance. He leaves it to you.
As Jnanpith award-winner, the late U R Ananthamurthy, points out, Kasaravalli’s socio-political engagement is not ideological but philosophical. He does not look at a question through the lens of a readymade theory permitting himself to manipulate facts occasionally to fit it. Rather, he looks at facts and allows them to reveal the truth within. Kasaravalli puts it another way. Towards the end of the film he says that in science two plus two is four; but in art it isn’t enough to say four. You must also say two plus two is less than five and more than three. It is in this intriguing realm of shifting truths that Kasaravalli’s films have their being.
Life in Metaphors, directed by investment banker turned film-maker OP Srivastava, won last year’s Silver Lotus award for the best biographical film. Such awards are often comparative, depending largely on the quality of that particular year’s entries. But this film, beautifully shot (GS Bhaskar) and finely structured and edited (Monisha Baldawa), wins in absolute terms too. It holds the viewer by the skillful way in which it binds Kasaravalli’s own analysis of his work, well-chosen clips from his films, shots of him at work and insightful commentary from those who know and love his work, into a seamless narrative, plotted around the parallel axes of thematic content and chronology aided by logical points of transition.
Kasaravalli talks about the sources of his inspiration, beginning with the books he read as a child, the Yakshagana and Company Theatre shows that he saw and his love-fear relationship with water which abounded in his village, Tirthahalli, in the Mainad district of Karnataka. During his training as a pharmacist in Hyderabad he discovered the works of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Mani Kaul. In his culture, cinema was considered a low art. But his maternal uncle, the Magsaysay award winner KV Subbanna, declared it a great art and enrolled him in one of the first film appreciation courses at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. At FTII, which Kasaravalli declares gave him the best years of his life, he discovered the Japanese film-maker Ozu with whose compassionate worldview he found a deep affinity.
When Kasaravalli speaks, his clear, earnest eyes are not focused on the impression he is creating. They are focused on finding precise articulation for how he has used the cinematic medium to express his beliefs and concerns. For him, the most painful experience in a human being’s life is to be told, “You are unwanted; you are not one of us.” All his protagonists are victims of rejection, from Yamuna, the pregnant widow in his first feature film, Ghatashraddha, to the Gandhi look-alike in Koormavatara, abandoned by his family because he tries to pursue Gandhian ideas in real life, making himself socially unacceptable.
Kasaravalli is one of those rare artists who are entirely true to themselves at all times. He knows where he stands in the context of cinematic trends and his own creativity. From the nineties, cinema has sought to distance itself from literature; but he continues to base his films on fiction. Ananthamurthy says, of the award-winning film Ghatashraddha, based on his story, that it enriches what he has written.
Life in Metaphors makes an absorbing film because it aims unswervingly at deepening our understanding of Girish Kasaravalli’s work while giving us a sensuous feel for the natural environment from which it springs. Add to this the transparently truthful presence of Kasaravalli himself, and you have a bonus.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's own. The opinions and facts expressed here do not reflect the views of Mirror and Mirror does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.
