Seven Minutes to Ecstacy

In the whole of seven minutes, there are a few seconds of human speech.Rest is all about sights and sounds of Nature.Almost like a whodunit that boringly lulls you into an unsuspecting daydream only to be awakened by the shrill cries of a murder is this debut speciale!That maybe, the construct of a linear, simple thriller.Cut to the laziness swirling around of yet, another hot day, in a rural setting of Bengal, the water insects carousing playfully and unseen over still waters and as Time seems to have stopped, the young

Apu

looks up casually only to be innocently excited by the prospect of dark clouds and to shiver wet in the pouring rain.

Durga

, the sister can dance for longer.She is elder and stronger, his silent sibling envy, perhaps!The wicked camera eye naughtily does not miss to eavesdrop on the rotund, middle aged priest as he opens his umbrella when a rain drop on his bald head rudely shakes him up from his afternoon doze. The camera pans

Sarbojya

, the mother,as she tucks away a fallen coconut careful not to be seen.As the smiles of the audience are about to be heard as laughs, descend the rains like a much-awaited crescendo as a cathartic climax.The background track captures the movement, transition and speed: from a pregnant silence to the rhythmic patter on to the eerie whoosh of leaves and branches.The sharp and slanting sheet-like raindrops consumes the entire environs.Together,the cuts and edits morph into the architecture of a visual montage of black and white, light and shadows,love and anxiety, delight,humour encapsulated in the common routine of humanity:a pure expression of the beautiful.

 

Was it romanticising poverty or an “epiphany of wonder?”.

Satyajit Ray,the perfectionist, famously was never happy with the music of his early movies.Ravi Shanker and his kind were virtuosos, he had averred who seldom could adapt to the quick, short compositions reflecting the many and variable moods of the story and its crisp narration.Ray went on to make his own music.Subroto Mitra who caught on camera the seductive freshness of silent waters, heavy dark clouds,the muddy tracks and puddled pathways brought alive Bansi Chitragupt’s realistic stage-sets was a beginner and a Ray regular subsequently.He too had to make way for the master to do his own thing.These artistes were maestros of their craft but not good enough for this very special polymath called Ray.Never one to be easily satisfied,he believed the creator’s vision was unique and private which could only be translated adequately by that person alone.Easier said…
When asked about his boundless and enviable creativity and questioned about his craft,skill and talents, he had said, it was all there in Bibhuti Babu’s stories.He had only tried to present them with all fidelity as he could not have bettered the writer.This too, was also the paradoxical mix of humility and arrogance.

Watch this for new angles of amazement and to discover where after all is the Director?