The Jewel of Cinema
Some images wander eternally as symbols of the
invisible. Some scenes are not merely visual—they transform into rhythmic
poetry.
The camera has only one eye. The gift of two human eyes lies in seeing the same scene from two simultaneous, divergent perspectives. But the camera’s single eye sees from only one end, one angle, at one time. And within that single frame, it must convey multidimensional feeling. In this sense, the one-eyed camera is a limitation. Yet it is also the staircase to transcendence.
I am reminded of Picasso’s cubism. An artist’s space is bound within the vessel of time, place, and object—what in the language of art we call dimension. Length, breadth, height, and time: four dimensions of reality. And yet artists have always invoked another—a fifth dimension, entirely imagined. A dimension that Einstein too uncovered, altering the very definition of creation in the twentieth century.
E = mc²: Einstein’s new foundation for human history. Energy, mass, and the velocity of light. In a weightless universe, the first four dimensions collapsed, giving way to the ultimate determinant of materialism—the fifth dimension.
Earlier there was a dual world. Picture a sphere: light falls on one half. Two men sit on opposite sides. One sees only darkness, the other only light. Two realities of the same object at the same instant. In art this awakened the dialectic of good and evil, sin and virtue. Art moved from one-dimensional practice to dual dimensions.
In the twentieth century, Einstein carried this duality into multiplicity. Inspired, Picasso painted faces with nose in front, ear above the eye, the back drawn into the front. Critics at first were baffled. A story is told: one evening, Picasso was dining with friends when a critic asked him—
“Your portraits—with nose, mouth, eye, ear all scrambled on the same face—I cannot understand them. Is there no reality in your paintings?”
Picasso laughed. “On the contrary, I worry about reality too much. Not only reality, but the reality behind reality—that is what concerns me. Call it surreal, or super-real if you like.”
The critic persisted: “Explain, what do you really mean?”
Picasso replied: “Well, look at this table. It has four legs. Sitting on it, you cannot see them. If I draw it from above, the legs won’t appear. But does that mean the legs do not exist? To preserve your ‘realism’ you will omit them. I will paint them too, however awkward the picture looks. Because what exists, or what exists beneath existence—truth deeper than truth itself—that is what I paint. I do not draw only what I see, but also what I know.”
Cinema is like a one-stringed ektara. A single note, yet capable of summoning myriad harmonies. Its one-eyed motion, its two-dimensional screen, appear as limitation. But if the artist possesses inner vision, he transcends the instrument, just as Picasso transcended the flat canvas.
This revelation came to me watching Dhrupad, Mani Kaul’s 1982 documentary. I watched it not once, not twice, but eleven times, spellbound. And I can now say with conviction—among all Indian documentaries made by Indians, this is the greatest.
Remember Ravi Shankar and Satyajit Ray in Jalsaghar—that astonishing harmony of music and image? The sitar’s sharp murmur matched with chandeliers and wall-portraits, as the camera glided among them. Two opposing emotions arose at once: the visuals pulled the heart backward into the past, while the music drenched the mind in the disillusion of the present. Out of this tension emerged vast melancholy.
The mathematical ecstasy of Kaul’s Dhrupad mirrors that scene’s grandeur. Never before in Indian cinema had such things occurred. The camera darts through palace gates, layer upon layer falling away like onion skins. Behind it plays music stretched across time’s measure. Melody becomes eternity: night ending, dawn arriving. The illusion of worldly rise and fall dissolves into the timeless cadence of raga. The images strike deep.
Immanuel Kant once wrote: Aesthetic experience is the harmony between free imagination and true understanding. Every artwork is a meticulous account of this aesthetic experience.
So too is Dhrupad. The rise and fall of a raga embodies emotional burden, hesitant meanings, dual resonances—and the very structure of Kaul’s film stands upon this foundation. In the stage of an ancient fort, a troupe of singers pours out distilled essence of music until the first light of dawn. At sunrise the film ends.
The audience comes to realize: beauty, perhaps, is the blessed goal of existence. In Kaul’s Dhrupad, it is also the final refuge of art. A seamless stream of soma—not only coursing through individual life but flowing through the whole of existence, eternally. This stream of divine light and joy finds outward expression in the film, through the camera’s flight across thresholds and the music’s unending murmur.
If ever a thousand-page book were written on the role of music in Indian cinema, at least fifty pages must be devoted to the story of Dhrupad.
Ritwik Ghatak’s dearest disciple, pioneer of postmodern Indian cinema, father of India’s New Wave—Mani Kaul, in Dhrupad, unveiled an aesthetic horizon of vast, many-sided possibilities. Whether the future of cinema will follow this direction—this burden rests upon the generations to come.
The camera has only one eye. The gift of two human eyes lies in seeing the same scene from two simultaneous, divergent perspectives. But the camera’s single eye sees from only one end, one angle, at one time. And within that single frame, it must convey multidimensional feeling. In this sense, the one-eyed camera is a limitation. Yet it is also the staircase to transcendence.
I am reminded of Picasso’s cubism. An artist’s space is bound within the vessel of time, place, and object—what in the language of art we call dimension. Length, breadth, height, and time: four dimensions of reality. And yet artists have always invoked another—a fifth dimension, entirely imagined. A dimension that Einstein too uncovered, altering the very definition of creation in the twentieth century.
E = mc²: Einstein’s new foundation for human history. Energy, mass, and the velocity of light. In a weightless universe, the first four dimensions collapsed, giving way to the ultimate determinant of materialism—the fifth dimension.
Earlier there was a dual world. Picture a sphere: light falls on one half. Two men sit on opposite sides. One sees only darkness, the other only light. Two realities of the same object at the same instant. In art this awakened the dialectic of good and evil, sin and virtue. Art moved from one-dimensional practice to dual dimensions.
In the twentieth century, Einstein carried this duality into multiplicity. Inspired, Picasso painted faces with nose in front, ear above the eye, the back drawn into the front. Critics at first were baffled. A story is told: one evening, Picasso was dining with friends when a critic asked him—
“Your portraits—with nose, mouth, eye, ear all scrambled on the same face—I cannot understand them. Is there no reality in your paintings?”
Picasso laughed. “On the contrary, I worry about reality too much. Not only reality, but the reality behind reality—that is what concerns me. Call it surreal, or super-real if you like.”
The critic persisted: “Explain, what do you really mean?”
Picasso replied: “Well, look at this table. It has four legs. Sitting on it, you cannot see them. If I draw it from above, the legs won’t appear. But does that mean the legs do not exist? To preserve your ‘realism’ you will omit them. I will paint them too, however awkward the picture looks. Because what exists, or what exists beneath existence—truth deeper than truth itself—that is what I paint. I do not draw only what I see, but also what I know.”
Cinema is like a one-stringed ektara. A single note, yet capable of summoning myriad harmonies. Its one-eyed motion, its two-dimensional screen, appear as limitation. But if the artist possesses inner vision, he transcends the instrument, just as Picasso transcended the flat canvas.
This revelation came to me watching Dhrupad, Mani Kaul’s 1982 documentary. I watched it not once, not twice, but eleven times, spellbound. And I can now say with conviction—among all Indian documentaries made by Indians, this is the greatest.
Remember Ravi Shankar and Satyajit Ray in Jalsaghar—that astonishing harmony of music and image? The sitar’s sharp murmur matched with chandeliers and wall-portraits, as the camera glided among them. Two opposing emotions arose at once: the visuals pulled the heart backward into the past, while the music drenched the mind in the disillusion of the present. Out of this tension emerged vast melancholy.
The mathematical ecstasy of Kaul’s Dhrupad mirrors that scene’s grandeur. Never before in Indian cinema had such things occurred. The camera darts through palace gates, layer upon layer falling away like onion skins. Behind it plays music stretched across time’s measure. Melody becomes eternity: night ending, dawn arriving. The illusion of worldly rise and fall dissolves into the timeless cadence of raga. The images strike deep.
Immanuel Kant once wrote: Aesthetic experience is the harmony between free imagination and true understanding. Every artwork is a meticulous account of this aesthetic experience.
So too is Dhrupad. The rise and fall of a raga embodies emotional burden, hesitant meanings, dual resonances—and the very structure of Kaul’s film stands upon this foundation. In the stage of an ancient fort, a troupe of singers pours out distilled essence of music until the first light of dawn. At sunrise the film ends.
The audience comes to realize: beauty, perhaps, is the blessed goal of existence. In Kaul’s Dhrupad, it is also the final refuge of art. A seamless stream of soma—not only coursing through individual life but flowing through the whole of existence, eternally. This stream of divine light and joy finds outward expression in the film, through the camera’s flight across thresholds and the music’s unending murmur.
If ever a thousand-page book were written on the role of music in Indian cinema, at least fifty pages must be devoted to the story of Dhrupad.
Ritwik Ghatak’s dearest disciple, pioneer of postmodern Indian cinema, father of India’s New Wave—Mani Kaul, in Dhrupad, unveiled an aesthetic horizon of vast, many-sided possibilities. Whether the future of cinema will follow this direction—this burden rests upon the generations to come.
Comments
Post a Comment