Char Adhyay

DDR Presents Char Adhyay (1997) (A Kumar Shahani film - based on the Novella by Rabindranath Tagore) DVD Rip - 700MB - X.264 Tech Specs ~ http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/6382/4adata.png Synopsis: Ela, a beautiful spirited young man is a member of a group of armed revolutionaries during the freedom struggle. She is at once the mascot and the spirit of the movement. Within the group she meets Atin and falls in love. The unyielding nature of the movement decrees that they cannot be together. As Ela and Atin start questioning the indoctrination and the ideology of the movement, they come into conflict with the leaders of the group. The film is the story of this conflict between beuty, love and humanism and the harsh ideology and the indoctrination of the revolutionary struggle. Comments: When Tagore wrote the novella, he faced harsh criticism as he seemed to be critical of the armed struggle agaianst the British. Yet it was his humanism that prompted him to question the unflinching loyalty and the harsh discipline such struggles demand. The film, like Tagore explores the destructive potential and hypocrisy of any belief system that discourages dialogue and the human needs of its adherents. Kumar Shahani remains completely faithful to the novella, even to the extent of preserving much of the dialogue written by Tagore. Kumar Shahani is regarded as a shining light of the new film movement. He was a student of Ritwik Ghatak and is sometimes placed on par with his master. He also studied under Robert Bresson in France and Bresson's minimalistic approach found an echo in Shahani's work as well. He made very few films, but starting from his first - Maya Darpan - he was known for his experiments with the medium. This film, one of his last, is regarded as one of the most experimental films ever made in Indian Cinema. Watching the film, I was struck by the stilted dialogue - one that translates Tagores words, verbatim, but feels unnatural. It brought home the difficulty of transfeering the uplifting prose of Tagor to another medium. Yet, if Char Adhyay is to be set into film, this is the way I would imagine it. The film is replete with images and impressions, sometimes not even obvious but which stays in your subcoscious. There are almost no scenes of overt violence or eroticism and yet the film is about just these. Through nuanced picturisation and superb sense of the medium, the message is conveyed to us. The film is littered with visual metaphors. when we see Ela stranded in a boat, it is her isolation from her group. A little boy disapproval of obsessions and so many others. Kumar Shahani's mastery in using such metaphors - often reacing out to you subliminally is evident throughout the film. Superb photography by that cinematographic wizard called KK Mahajan is evident in every frame. On may a occasion the viewer is stunned by the beauty of the scene before him and the camera angles empasize what is a story of pathos. Shahani's mastery is complimented by a brilliant score by Vanraj Bhatia, that ever underrated genius. Nandini Ghoshal is outstanding as Ela, the protagonist. Others complement her, but I thought that the film treats the actors as just props. The message is more important. This is a brilliant piece of moviemaking. Definitely one for the discerning viewer. Uploader's Notes: This was a difficult rip because of the poor quality of the original video. I have tried to compensate without compromising with the superb cameramanship of KK Mahajan. The audio, which was out of sync has been corrected. Overall, I hope you will like the effort. IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1934208/ Screens ~ http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/7019/4a00001.png http://www.imagebam.com/image/300fc1152085305 http://www.imagebam.com/image/7114ee152085396 http://www.imagebam.com/image/ba6d0b152085433 http://www.imagebam.com/image/d476a6152085361

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chatavi (2011-10-03)

this quite a rare film to locate - many thanks for this upload!!! some more later perhaps incl Mani Kaul pl!!