The Disciple

Aditya Modak in The Disciple

A keening portrait of one man's artistic quest, Chaitanya Tamhane's The Disciple resounds with a subdued and ambivalent power. Sharad, the protagonist, is a devotee and practitioner of Indian classical music. He hones his craft and devotes his life to his musical guru, played by the noted singer Arun Dravid. Yet, though he has technical skill, Sharad fears he lacks that spark of genius that would allow him to fully inhabit and expand upon the music he loves. Improvisation, central to the performance of ragas, seems to be outside his ken. 

Sharad fears that he will become like his father, from whom he developed his love of music, whose attempt at a classical music career turned him into a bitter mediocrity. Tamhane peppers the film with flashbacks of father and son bonding over their love of music. He implies that a devotion to this musical genre is an ascetic one in which individuals not only must eschew material wealth, but also love and friendship. The world of traditional Indian music is counterpointed by the glossy excess of the pop world in the form of an America's Got Talent type show glimpsed on television sets.

Tamhane stresses Sharad's isolation visually. Shots predominately stay fixed, with little camera movement, and are held for twenty seconds or longer. The lack of movement mirrors the stasis of Sharad. Even when he is riding around Mumbai on his motorcycle listening to recordings of his idols (which we hear also, instead of the street noise), Tamhane's camera emphasizes Sharad's isolation.

Aditya Modak's deft performance underlines how Sharad's ascetic devotion has led to his isolation and emotional constipation. When his guru dies, Sharad seizes upon the moment to grab the chance for a normal life. The Disciple's final scene displays that Sharad has a newfound happiness, but that he will never escape the legacy of his past. 

Western interest in ragas seems to have peaked in 1967, so the minimal impact The Disciple has had, despite critical praise, is not a surprise. I learned to appreciate drones from the rock bands of my youth, so I lapped up both the music and the intelligent sound design of this film. Tamhane's still focus visually augments the impact of The Disciple's soundtrack. The film works as both a character study and an appreciation of a musical subculture. Currently streaming on Netflix, the film is a balm of stillness and meditative overtones in a frantic world. 

Cemetery of Splendor

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cemetery of Splendor should, over time, solidify his reputation as a modern master. Weerasethakul's style is of the slow cinema of modernists who question modernity such as Bresson, Bela Tarr, Carlos Reygadas, and Hsiao-Hsien Hou. Weerasethakul eschews camera movement. He favors takes that linger long and lovingly on its subjects. His films move away from urban Thailand into the lush countryside where nature, not man, is predominant. There, his films' subjects are often recovering from some malady, as if modern industrial life itself is the cause of what ails us.

Indeed, Cemetery of Splendor is set at a rural hospital where a group of narcoleptic soldiers slumber away despite the ministrations of the staff. They are hooked up to some new machines that are reportedly used on American soldiers in Afghanistan, but modern technology seems to be of no avail here. Seemingly unending construction is occurring near the hospital for a fiber optic cable installation. It seems intrusive. Two workers at the hospital seem to have more success with folk treatments: Itt. who has psychic powers, and Jett, an older woman with a lame leg who concocts traditional unguents. Their slight progress is halted by a visit from two young ladies who say they are the spirits of two princesses enshrined at the local temple. They report that the soldiers from the hospital will never get better because spirits from the past who died tragically and are buried underneath the hospital are preying upon the soldiers like succubae. As in the horror genre, the sins of the past are manifest in the present.

Cemetery of Splendor is suffused with tropical languor. The pacing is slow, often somnambulant. Fixed shots are held for lengthy periods of time, often to show the changing effects of natural and unnatural lighting. What drama there is is not highlighted by music or camera movement, but through dialogue, touch, and gesture. If there is a "message" in Weerasethakul's work it is that we can only find salvation by being in touch with the rhythms of nature and our fellow creatures. The climax of the film, such as it is, has Itt rubbing unguent on Jett's damaged leg, eventually pressing the healing balm into the cracks of Jett's wounds with her mouth and tongue. The dispassionate tone emphasizes that this is an act of tender mercy, a loving touch and not a bizarre sexual come on. Agape not eros. There is a transgressive tone here, much as Dave Hickey finds in Caravaggio and Mapplethorpe in his provocative The Invisible Dragon, but it is not chafing against sexual mores. rather, Weerasethakul is reacting against a modern culture that has literally lost touch. (9/16/16)

Japon

 

Carlos Reygadas' Japon, his first feature from 2002, turned out to be his first step in a long, fruitful, and unfinished cinematic journey. Themes that would reappear throughout his career are present in this film, the split between rural and cosmopolitan Mexico foremost. The film begins with a shot of a traffic jam in an urban tunnel. We follow the unnamed protagonist, first by car and then on foot, as he leaves Mexico City for the hinterlands. He hobbles along with a cane to a remote village where he is put up in a barn by an elderly widow named Ascencio. 

It is only after the first fifty minutes or so that we learn that the taciturn protagonist has journeyed this distance in order to commit suicide. The film's pace is tortoise like with many slow pans offering up visions of rural Mexico that are both beautiful and forbidding. In Reygadas' films, the urban bourgeoisie are out of touch with nature's rhythms. In Japon, the protagonist is redeemed by his sojourn, becoming more in touch with the unconscious tug of nature.

Sex and death are constant motifs here, as they are in all of Reygadas' work. Life offers sensual pleasure, but also, inevitably, mortality. A point hammered home by the film's bravura final track and pan. I find Japon's intimations of eroticism to be too literal, especially in a key dream sequence, but feel the film is a worthy and assured first feature.