The Maya of Bunnu K. Endo’ (The Maya of Bunnu K.Endo)
Most of the grand inquiries into Cinema pertaining to the nature of the depiction of the action, time and space vis-à-vis ‘reality’ that has a direct bearing on one’s Cinematic practices; and the films identified to back such inquiries had already transpired without my knowledge and prior to my existence, as I started working on my graduation film in 1990 at the Film and TV Institute of India (FTII) at Pune. All that was left was for me to do was an interpretation of these already interpreted inquiries, as I am doing now – for I am not sure if I had systematically engaged with them, then. Not that I claim to be fully doing so now, but nevertheless it is an understanding of things that is distinctly mine.
For example I am not fully comfortable into indulging with the likes of Ferdinand de Saussure and the world of language, signs and meanings into my filmmaking practice, so I won’t bring in much of it here, in this piece. Almost as an anti-thesis, Godfrey Reggio the maker of the film ‘Koyaanisqatsi’(1982) had once famously declared, ‘The meaning of Koyaanisqatsi is whatever you wish to make of it. This is its power’. While there is no one stopping a viewer from fixing a particular meaning or multiple of them to any sign, it would be limiting for a filmmaker to assign in its making any fixed meaning or interpretation through any signs that her films could carry. One of the historical functions that theorization of Cinema has indulged itself in, is to give this art-medium a sense of serious legitimacy by associating it with other well established ways of artistic expressions – like literature, theater, painting etc…, which is probably what the application of ‘semiotics‘ to films does. It is also absurd that people should academically bring in Isaac Newton’s law of attraction and the formula therein, within the ambit of Academic Film Studies while inquiring about Tom Gunning’s ‘Cinema of Attraction’ and find such ‘scientific’ differentiation ‘fruitful’.
‘Gotala’ (Imbroglio), the 30 min odd graduation film shot in B&W at FTII, was about a group of organized fundamentalists – religious and cultural – seeking deliverance from the divine Lord Krishna who is more interested in descending down from the cosmos to befriend an earthly married woman and return back with her. Getting into its materiality, by and large, the film was set on a street of an unnamed city in India – a street that led itself into a two dimensional painted backdrop in which it vanished far away into a point into the horizon. On one end of the well etched two footpaths that the street had was a cigarette shop that had a wooden bench attached to it sitting on which was the Bakthi (devotion) poet Saint Tukaram, also waiting for the lord. Opposite this set up was a house that sure had a door but no walls wherein lived a vulnerable young couple done in by architectural transparency. By the house were two large hoardings that held posters of mythological films – one of them named ‘Shree Krishna Leela’ (The Maya of Lord Krishna) – through which the divine Lord Krishna himself would eventually descend down to Earth. Right in front of these posters was a traffic signal from which protruded a freshly painted zebra crossing that made its way to the opposite footpath. This part of the footpath held a few large steps that led to nowhere. Whiling their time away squatting on these steps was that group of organized fundamentalists practicing their ‘Bakthism’ as they wait for that elusive strategic divine deliverance upon the arrival of Lord Krishna. Besides these steps was an enclosed telephone booth, just in case any important messages needed to be delivered from the Cosmos.
‘Gotala’ (1990)
This surreal set was constructed inside a studio at FTII where once the historical Prabath Studios ruled the roost. The initial decision to work within the campus using the available studio resources was mainly due to the fact that I was broke enough not to be shooting on a real location. Limitation can often be turned around such that it becomes your strength – this was one of the first of the theories that I had by default picked up at Pune, it holds good to this date. It was decided that we rigidly limit ourselves to this surreal set around which the film’s ‘mise en scène’ (things happening in front of and with the camera) would revolve. It is now tempting to retrospectively use the term ‘dispositif’ to describe this decision that might look creatively limiting. The word could mean different things depending on the used context. It also reflects a predetermined ‘fixed and systematic set-up or arrangement of elements’, as Film Critic Adrian Martin (1959) defines it as. He also elucidates it as “In aesthetic terms … it refers to the rules or strategies by which a film (or any audiovisual work) can be generated: a game-like approach that often involves the canny invention and imposition of constraints.’
Among other things this decision to confine oneself in the way mentioned above opened up for the film a lot of fun and play. A bike riding messenger arrives near the steps that leads to the nowhere to announce arrival of Lord Krishna and speeds away, disappearing so to say – through the Cinematic technique of stop motion – into the painted backdrop upon which the street vanishes away into the silence of the horizon. The figure of Lord Krishna advertised in the film poster cracks breaking down from the hoarding to fall flat onto the ground and lo, through a quick Cinematic dissolve it make way to the real Lord Krishna – live in flesh and blood, in jazzy royal costumes with all its glory.
As the leader of the fundamentalist group has a cosmic telephonic conversation in the telephone booth, the camera follows the telephone cable that leaves the booth and goes up to the film poster where we see Lord Krishna’s elder brother Lord Balarama speak on the other end and warn about his brother’s actual intentions. In the end Lord Krishna and his lover merge back into the two-dimension of the film poster. Amidst howling winds the poster itself then raises high above the sky, into the space bypassing a two-dimensional moon cutout and overtaking a perplexed astronaut ‘driving’ his two-dimensional toy rocket, as it goes far away into the horizon of the galaxy.
As hinted earlier in Part 01 of this article, there was no attempt to capture and create ‘reality’ in Georges Méliès’ film ‘A Trip to the Moon’ (1902), the way Lumière Bothers did in their initial forays into filmmaking. In fact there was no attempt whatsoever to hide the fact that what is being shown is an artifice. ‘Gotala’ uses the Indian mythological genre with similar intent; the cinematic techniques used too are similar to the ones used in the genre – stop blocks, dissolves, superimposition, half dissolves, use of black screen, painted backdrop, cutouts etc.. The crucial difference is the fact that the Indian mythological genre is a celebration of the power of the Later Vedic period gods, mainly Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. ‘Gotala’ does the exact opposite – through black humor, parody and absurdity; and Brechtian alienation. ‘Cinema of Attractions’ if you wish. It is acknowledged that it is a film that is being watched through the means of minimalist overtly artificial half finished sets and the usage of the mythological tropes thrust into a contemporary plot that deals with the rising fundamentalism of its times that ultimately and dangerously culminated in 1992 in the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, leading to the turbulent times that the country is still going through presently. ‘Reality’, thus reflected.
What I had not heard of in 1990 during the making of ‘Gotala’ was the ‘Dogma Manifesto’. In 1995 two Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier (1956) and Thomas Viternberg (1969) came up with a set of ten rules or dogmas that they thought were necessary to create a new cinema during their time, breaking away from the past. Some of the self imposed rules included that the action happen in the present – here and now, no use of artificial lights or special effects, usage of only diegetic sounds without taking recourse to music, shooting to be done in location with available properties and settings, camera movement should be handheld, the non use of any genre, preference has to be given to performance of the actors and the director should not being credited in the film. Certificates of Dogma were given to directors who followed these ‘Vows of Chastity’, as they were called. Lars von Trier’s ‘Breaking the Waves’ (1996) was the first influential film for this movement.
The Dogma movement officially was declared dead in 2005, the year my first feature film ‘Suddha’ (The Cleansing Rites) hit the screen, its production by and large inspired by the spirit of the Dogma brethren – in its embracing of the digital video and use of available resources – actors, properties, lights etc. But unlike the hardcore Dogma films, the découpage used here was invisible. And although the classical three act structure and the dramatic narrative format was not used in the film, within scenes there was the undetectable logistics of ‘analytical decoupage’ at work – its services used for the purpose of a diegesis or a plot. Not surprisingly, the film was well received as that was precisely the role of cinema in popular imagination. Similar was the case with my ‘Putaani Party’ (The Kid Gang) 2009. The ‘decoupage‘ and the ‘mise en scène’ was entirely subservient to the unfolding story-play, almost hidden and invisible.
But in ‘Haal E Kangaal’ (The Bankrupts) (2015), there was ‘dispositif’ at work again – looking at it reflectively. The film was shot within confines of a one bed room flat with only two actors; correlating and juxtaposing this with the fact that the two characters virtually lived within their own rigid mental spaces. The camera that did not venture even beyond the main door of the house, captured these two characters – failed filmmakers – boxed within the frame of the walls, windows, arches etc.. – till in the end we realize that they are boxed within their own stories that they themselves are narrating.
‘Haal E Kangaal’ (The Bankrupts (2005)
Back in 2003 Lars von Trier had made ‘Dogville’ which was quite an antithesis of what the Dogma movement was, but I bring its reference here because of this very precise reason. Unlike any Dogma work and quite opposite to it, this film was shot entirely in a studio floor with minimal setting that represented a remote village. Here, like in ‘Gotala’, houses have neither walls nor doors. People used miming techniques to get into or out of them. The village – often seen from the top – is just a large architectural floor plan that is drawn on the ground of the studio floor. The village itself has one huge street on both sides of which are the transparent houses. Inside these houses are the odd real tables, chairs or cupboards – depending on which houses they are in – around which people go about their lives acting as if everything existed. Such was the ‘dispositif’ of Lars von Trier for ‘Dogvilli’. In fact it can be argued that the ‘Dogma Manifesto’ itself can be seen through the lens of the ‘dispositif’ conversation of the Adrian kind.
‘Dogvilli’ is about the levels of acceptance that the insider has of the outsider who is the ‘other’, of the levels of tolerance of the outsider ‘other’ has on the treatment meted out to her because of the otherness; and the innate self preservation that provokes violence and dehumanizes everyone alike. Dogvilli is the name of the extremely remote village situated in the United States of America nestled by the rocky hills, apple orchards and a defunct mine, none of which we ‘really’ see in the film. Everyone in the film, including the protagonists are disrobed by brutal hypocrisy; reflected very well in the ‘découpage’ and the ‘mise en scène’ of the film. Timothy Barnard explains the relationship between them as follows – “‘Découpage’ is the formal treatment – the camera treatment – of the ‘mise en scène’ (Action and related things that happen in front of the camera), sequenced”.
The stylized minimal settings, the unreal lighting, the sound effects that accompany the mime actions, the dark colours, the deep contrast, the theatrical style of acting, the absence or the presence of things and of people, the handheld camera with its movements, the character movements, the jump cuts and the resultant frequent long and short ellipses of time – in short the entire treatment of the ‘mise en scène’ of the film seen in its sequential entirety, the process of which is called the ‘découpage’, reflects or compliments the thematic premise of ‘Dogvilli’ – which could possibly be – when pushed hard enough the beast in you would lay bare its fangs.
‘Dogville’ (2003)
I had engaged myself with ‘Dogvilli’ only around 2018 during the scripting stage of my film ‘Bunnu K. Endo Maye’ (The Maya of Bunnu K. Endo) (2020). The movie is about the all round control that large multinational companies have on our individual lives – affecting our liberty, freedom and very existence. A ‘Company’ is a faceless depersonalized entity; we can only see the people who run it or represent it. These people themselves are not the ‘Company’; neither are the shareholders who are the owners of this intangible being called the ‘Company’. How do you deal with this entity in real life whose existence cannot be seen tangibly but whose omnipresence is effecting our very being? And how do you show such a phenomenon in a film? We found a way out when we for various production reasons restricted ourselves by imposing onto ourselves a few conditions that would eventually open up things for the film. Not that one was consciously working towards the theory of it, but was it the Adrian definition of ‘dispositif’ working here again?
To reflect the unseen over-invasive ‘multinational company’, it was decided in the preproduction stage of ‘Bunnu K. Endo Maye’ itself that the representative of the multinational company will never be seen in the film, but will only be heard or his presence felt only by seeing the implications of the actions that he has or could have taken. There would again be only two characters in the film, the extra marital love engulfed victims who are entrapped and lured into an empty flat with a promise of an elusive better life. Once they are in, they can’t go out; the different spaces within the flat too are selectively available to them – as is food and water which appear inside the flat, out of nowhere, at random times and all of a sudden. The unfurnished flat would lend itself to a lot of negative space in the camera frame due to its empty walls. By and large the frame would be empty – physically or otherwise – as there would be very few ‘real’ properties that will be seen. Most others will be suggested through the use of miming, along with appropriate sound effects that would suggest their usage.
So in the film we have the characters mime the action of the spreading of the imaginary butter holding an imaginary butter spreader on an actual bread slice; tea is made by lighting an imaginary gas stove with the help of an imaginary gas lighter and drunk poured into an imaginary cup from an imaginary tea pot; prayer is done to an imaginary idol with an imaginary prayer bell and aarthi – all with appropriate sounds thrown in at appropriate places. The rustle of a sari is sharply audible when a character mimes the action of wearing a sari. The flat is locked from outside, but without any logic things pop up and disappear in the house as if, on their own. The driver of the car who leads the couple inside the flat in the beginning of the film is only represented by his hands and voice. Through his conversations we infer that there is a couple sitting at the back seat of his car. Otherwise the couple’s presence in the car is only suggested with the lady’s handbag seen on the back seat and made obvious with the moment of the dupatta kept on her handbag as it slides away out of frame accompanying to the bangle sounds as if somebody is taking it away from its position.
‘Bunnu K. Endo Maye (The Maya of Bunnu K. Endo) (2020)
It is only when they enter the house that the couple is revealed to the audience. Once inside, they are guided by a few messages that arrive inside the house in an unexplained way, through pen drives in which the representative of the ‘Company’ makes them play-act their past. As they do so within the confines of the four walls of the flat itself that they are struck in, the sound design changes to that of a different location – the mechanical factory sounds of the present gives way to the soothing birds that could have existed in the past. What we are seeing is two people in a flat, but what is being played out is in the location of a previous time that throws some light into the material conditions as to why the couple is here in the present. The play-enactment brings about a change in the sound scape – the empty flat becomes a village house having a dining room, a prayer room, a bedroom and a kitchen. It also becomes an echo generating college badminton court, a college hostel, a park etc… One location is being seen, but the suggestion is of another. Which is the ‘real’ one?
The characters are playing their parts in the past, but the past is happening in the present. Which one is the ‘real’ time that is unfolding before the camera? So much so that in the end – goaded by the ‘Company’ – the man rapes the woman and in reciprocation the woman kills the man, in the present. But these acts are also of their past. Is it the past that we are seeing or the present? Are the woman raped and the man killed in the empty flat? Or are they raped and killed in the past location? If they are killed in the past, why are they in the present? And if they are killed in the present, why does the driver start the process all over again in the end of the film by driving the gullible couple who are yet again invisible and their presence only inferred by the driver’s voice and the handbag of the woman? What is with the power of this all powerful invisible entity that has set some conditions and restrictions on the couple luring them into this house – whose time and space it controls – with a promise of better days? What is it about this omnipresent nonliving being that has brought the couple to such a state?
All these questions and the resultant homonymous (ambiguous) interpretations are possible in “Bunnu K. Endo Maye’ despite the ‘Analytical Découpage’ mode of filming of the action-reaction kind that some of its scenes had, despite the fact that a mode of filming that Bazin calls as the ‘Sequence-Shots’ was also incorporated into some of its scenes or despite the fact that the good old Russian mode of film representation of the ‘Montage’ kind was also present in some other scenes. The guess is that these possibilities of multiple interpretations show up possibly due to the fact that there was the Adrianian definition of aesthetic ‘dispositif’ involved in the making of ‘Bunnu K. Endo Maye’, albeit done unconsciously or for production reasons. The limitation set for the film as reflected in its ‘mise en scène’ (the formal pattern of the film and not just meant ‘what goes into the scene’) works out well within the ambit of the premise of the film or is in compliment with its intent.
‘Bunnu K. Endo Maye’ (The Maya of Bunnu K. Endo) (2020)
As the reader might have noticed the subject specific terminologies used here might mean a bit different each time they are used. I would assume that is how it is in arts and cinema – half the time is expended in defining the meaning of the words that are used as signs to explain the concepts; and there could be multiple meaning for some of these words depending on who is defining them. The word ‘mise en scène’ too has multiple connotations to it, apart from its literal meaning to ‘put in place’. If in theater it could mean the arrangement of things and people on stage, in cinema it could mean the arrangement of things and people for the camera. It could also mean the expressive act of such an arrangement in theater or in films. It could take a larger connotation if it also means the arrangement of sounds, colours, text, rhythms, the juxtapositions, words and every other material element that goes into the making of the shot, the scene and the film; and their sequencing pattern – ie… everything we do and is implied in the process of ‘Découpage’. (Neol Burch: the handling of material reality, and our awareness of this handling). The last mentioned definition of ‘mise en scène’ brings us to the realm of ‘dispositif’, because in the sequencing of these elements there is a certain choice that is involved. A choice would also mean the existence of conditions that would have its own set of rules.
Making a case for the usage of the concept that the word ‘dispositif’ signifies, without undermining the various concepts existing of the phrase ‘mise en scène’, Adrian Martin in his write up ‘Turn the Page: From Mise en scène to Dispositif’ poses this thoughtful question, ‘does the notion of the dispositif name or point to something that is and has always been inherent in ‘mise en scène’—maybe even larger or greater than it, as an overall formal category?’ He argues for a ‘general rethinking and expansion of mise en scène’. If one is not restricting the interpretation of ‘mise en scène’ to just the staging of the actors and things for the camera, but also including it to mean the underlining game plan – formal or otherwise – through which a film can be created, then Adrian Martin’s case for turning the page from ‘mise en scène’ to ‘dispositif’ in film praxis makes perfect sense.
Thus, the limitation set for ‘Bunnu K. Endo’ or for that matter for ‘Gotala’ or for any other film is itself its ‘mise en scène’ or its expanded version – its aesthetic ‘dispositif’.
The End
Click HERE to read Part 01 of the article ‘Towards Defining a Cinematic Practice… Part 01’
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