The Cloud door features pictorial beauty , slow-building sensuality and surprising humour that combine to rich effect. A king overhears a parrot telling erotic stories to his daughter , and is angered. He desires to kill the parrot but the princess intervenes and saves the parrot's life. The parrot escapes and is trapped far from the palace. One day when it's new owner is sleeping, the bird convinces a young man to open the cage door. In return, it shows the young man a secret way to get into the palace.
One of the inspirations for the story for the movie is based on the work
of noted Sanskrit scholar Bhasa and his six-act play 'Avimaraka' . The Cloud Door is a technically sound product . Too many people are busy on making several interpretations about this film but it's a refreshing mystical little tale with stunning visuals, beautiful locales and great music.
The film tells the story of a woman prisoner serving life imprisonment for murder, Kalyani ,the all suffering, selfless, sacrificing, and strong yet weak Indian woman. The film's protagonist Kalyani had the courage to not only make choices in her life but choices which at times might appear to be even wrong ones as she gives up everything for love. Her past is told in flashback. During the British Raj, Kalyani (Nutan) falls in love with freedom fighter Bikash. (Ashok Kumar) . He later leaves her in the village promising to come back but never does. The society treats Kalyani harshly. She leaves the village and moves to the city. Interestingly when Bikash tells Kalyani his story , Bimal Roy uses the flashbacks within flashback device in the film, surely one of the earliest use of such a technique in Indian Cinema. While the events of the story are highly melodramatic , Bimalda takes great care to handle them with sensitivity, simplicity and subtlety. Bandini is brilliantly photographed by Kamal Bose with its rich tonal quality and evocative framing. The film also sees the debut of Gulzar as a lyricist with Mora Gora Ang Laile , one of the most romantic songs in Indian Cinema as it expresses the heroine's first flush of love. Dharmendra is okish while Ashok Kumar is impressive as Bikash but Bandini clearly belongs to Nutan. She portrays her characters inner conflict and complex emotions with almost near perfections.
Mani kaul was one of the directors who took a different path than other directors of Indian Parallel cinema. He tried to change the language of Indian cinema. He was greatly influenced by Robert Bresson. He started with the image and made his way into the text.
Satah Se Uthata Aadmi was regarded by many Indian film scholars as Kaul's best work. Kaul's film was based on the literature of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh , a left-leaning Hindi author who was one of the main representatives of the Nai Kavita movement in Hindi. The film merged episodes from Muktibodh's writings with material from other sources. In the film, we noticed a world where the revolution had finished, idealism had diminished in the name of practicality. This was the time when the role of intellectuals and artists had been questioned.
Kaul here started his association with the documentary-fiction genre. The sutradhar (narrator) of this film was also the main protagonist Muktibodh (played by Gopi). This film also raised the question of theory versus practice. This film portrayed broken, post-socialist state of society. Kaul was a big fan of Indian Classical music. He studied Dhrupad and used it's leading vocalist Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar to deliver Bilaskhani Todi. This was the most complicated work of Kaul but it would create a big impact on viewer's mind.
Mani Kaul was one of the few film-makers whose work was very different than the other directors of Indian parallel cinema. Mani Kaul was understandably the one who attempted to modernize the language of Indian cinema. Robert Bresson influenced him greatly. Kaul started with the image and made his way into the text. Kaul said that " And I know that when the shot finds its place, it has a quality of holding you. The position is its meaning". The slow narrative provided him to hold part of the story untold, making audiences linger on the images.
Uski Roti was Mani Kaul's first feature film. This was a poetic film about waiting. The plot was very simple. A woman took food out to the road for her driver husband. The husband didn't care about her. He only stopped his bus there when he had a passenger to pick up. He had a mistress in other town.
We noticed Bresson's influence in many aspects of film-making here : the delayed editing of shots, the priority on objects rather than concepts, the several shots of hands and faces that have a beauty of their own etc. Camera strongly captured the texture of the village and its natives. The most striking thing about Uski Roti was the way Kaul fully discarded the conventions of narrative cinema by dispensing with the plot. This was one of the great works of Indian art cinema.
Kumar Shahani is an Indian filmmaker who created a new cinematic language that is very much his own. His Tarang is very different from the intense stylization and abstraction of his previous work Maya Darpan . It took him 12 years to make his 2nd film Tarang. The film is an intricately plotted melodrama realising his view of epic cinema.
Rahul ( Amol Palekar) , the son-in-law and heir of an old industrialist ( Shreeram Lagoo) , couches his personal ambition under a disguise of liberalism. He develops an affair with a wife ( Smita Patil) of a dead worker.
Shahani explores the class struggle on multiple fronts. It explores themes of conflict and betrayal when different worlds conflict as a result of industrialization. Amol Palekar was convincing as an insecure but ambitious man. Smita Patil played her part well and displayed impressive ranges. Though the work is commendable but still it lacks in some parts. The ending was far from satisfactory and it fails to deliver a punch.
