If you’re the kind who’s intrigued by cinematic subtext, how much delving into it is too much?
I was part of an online discussion, recently, about the predisposition to read too much into a movie. The verb, at first, appears a little misplaced, considering that you see a film and to read something, you’re better off nestled at the local library, amid dank shelves feathered with crumbling paper. But cinema is a new art that borrowed its critical argot from the older arts, and literature and painting lent the concept of text and subtext, which, of course, can be read. We see a painting and we say that the lambent flush on the maiden’s face, which could be the unremarkable consequence of an overhead sun, is the glow of happiness. A physical accident is imbued with psychological resonance – we become poets of pathetic fallacy. And so in the movies, in Casablanca, when Humphrey Bogart receives Ingrid Bergman’s note at the train station, telling him that she cannot be with him, the skies open up, the ink on the paper begins to run, and we say that the letter is weeping. Again, frames of film are read like pages from a book, and a mundane physical phenomenon is made magical through psychological insinuation.
So when does one end up reading too much into a film? In my opinion, never. The very act of marking a spot of text – or a frame of film – with an X and burrowing beneath with the pickaxe of an empathetic imagination is a peculiar and private occupation. Where do you stop? Fifty feet? A hundred? In all probability, you are going to keep at it till a wellspring of meaning gushes out and quenches your investigative thirst. Since this is an answer to a question that you had, and perhaps only you had, who is to say how much reading is too much reading? You read as much into a film as is needed to resolve the inconsistencies it presented to you and, if you fall in love with it, to burnish its beauty. Overestimation is the currency of the enraptured lover, who does not care that others aren’t buying his delirium. And does reading into a film have to with the filmmaker’s intents or reputation? Again, no. Because you don’t choose the scene to read; the scene chooses you. And the scene can belong to any kind of movie, even one that’s seldom regarded with critical respect – say, the great Indian melodrama.
Aalayamani (remade in Hindi as the Dilip Kumar-starring Aadmi) is one of those films whose preoccupations you can guess simply by glancing at the cast list, which is a roundup of the usual suspects who infiltrated the genre. The presence of Vijayakumari guarantees tears. An impoverished elder sister, played by Pushpalatha, turns out secretly married to a rich man’s son. The sickeningly sunny friendship, established early, between Sivaji Ganesan and SS Rajendran forecasts apocalyptic thunderclouds in the post-intermission horizon – sure enough, Saroja Devi descends into the picture like a bolt of lightning. And MR Radha, as always perched at the midpoint between comedy and villainy, labours mightily to rend these relationships, pouring malevolent mischief into the cracks in their foundations. On the surface, or at the level of text, there is little to distinguish Aalayamani from another melodramas of the era, just like the masala movies of the nineteen-eighties are often interchangeable. The sole saving grace, it would seem, is the soundtrack, highlighted by Ponnai virumbum boomiyile, where a quavering harmonica puts icy quotation marks around the protagonist’s anguish.
But let’s talk subtext now, for there’s more to old-time craftsmanship than meets the eye – even in a film whose director, K Shankar, lies largely forgotten today. Sivaji Ganesan’s mansion is the spot where my mind marked an X. Why, I wondered, was it such a menagerie? The cavernous living room is distinguished by life-sized stuffed animals, a tiger and a cheetah, around whose menace scenes are carefully composed. Sivaji Ganesan and SS Rajendran discuss the woman in their lives in front of a painting where a doe is stalked by two tigers. The heads of antlered stags are mounted on walls, and a heated conversation between SS Rajendran and Vijayakumari unfolds in front of a shelf filled with animal figurines, which cast sinister shadows on the walls. It’s too much. You want to laugh – until the revelatory scene, much later, where Sivaji Ganesan is confronted by his miruga uruvam, his inner animal. Suddenly it all makes sense. The bestial paraphernalia around him is but an external manifestation of the beast inside him. Carefully scripted foreshadowing? Or mere happenstance? The reading depends on you, dear reader.
Lights, Camera, Conversation… is a weekly dose of cud-chewing over what Satyajit Ray called Our Films Their Films. An edited version of this piece can be found here.
Copyright ©2011 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Mohan
October 28, 2011
@rangan
After seeing Sivaji Ganesan’s Thiruvizhaala-tholanju-pona-(gundu)-paappa expression, I found it mighty difficult to read the rest of the article seriously. 🙂
Reg. this matter of foreshadowing and what-not, would I be reading too much into your article if I speculated on why this essay on over-analyzing foreshadows your piece(I’m half-guessing half-hoping there will be one) on 7am arivu.
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Just Another Film Buff
October 28, 2011
It is obvious from this article that its author suffered from parental deficit during his early years.
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udhav naig
October 28, 2011
Instead of reading a film, I would say peeling a film gives a better idea.
You boil the film like a potato or an egg and peel the layers off to get to the inside. I strongly believe that even the most dumbest and the most lamest filmmaker has a reason as to why he/she is doing what he/she is doing.
I am surprised and even saddened that film critiquing hasn’t really been about critiquing the social ideas that are formed or even communicated, and it has always been about how this scene was good and that actor did well, and cinematography et al.
Not to mention, how many of our critics, barring a few like you, can speak about cinematography or scene structure coherently in Tamil Nadu is beyond me.
It is frustrating when critics write that “Vadivelu getting trapped with homosexual criminal inside the jail is hilarious.”
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Sreekrishnan
October 28, 2011
If at any point or throughout the movie – if the hows and whats explain the Why of the screenplay and you get that – the movie is considered read. If You like the Why – you like the movie, if you dont – you dont. Even when you dont like the why but the why seems acceptable interms of the Hows and what was presented, then the movie is justified.
I hope you see my point 🙂
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meera
October 28, 2011
Sometimes the analogies are obvious like the pasu thol porthiya puli analogy that is beaten to death in Tamil Cinema. And the rest are subtle, So subtle that we tend to miss it. Not every craftsman wants his subtle references to go unnoticed. Like Vetrimaran who states his claim earlier on in Aadukalam about the link between rooster fights and the actual battles we wage in real life. KB’s style involved drawing conclusions out of signs, paintings, sculptures and we are left with our own thoughts. Not many directors care to tread this path and not many in the audience have the time to delve into the inner thoughts of the film maker. But don’t you think the satisfaction in successfully deciphering the analogy is paramount but personal. And the people who have achieved this feat considered themselves at a higher scale than the rest of the audience?
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Gradwolf
October 28, 2011
Fair enough but has anyone delved into the creator’s side. Do they look back and feel some sort of satisfaction in people recognizing the foreshadowing? Or do they feel happy that they’ve given something for the audience to read into? Do they laugh when people go beyond the non-existent limit to one’s reading?
PS
Will you be at the Hindu Lit Fest any of the days?
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brangan
October 29, 2011
udhav: your current course of study is clearly helping you 🙂
Gradwolf: It would have to be a very churlish creator who “laughs” at an audience’s engagement with his work, no? The best creators, IMO, are aware that a lot of what they do springs from the unconscious and therefore are open to their works being “analysed” — whether they agree or not.
Also, most of the failures in our cinema are failures of execution. Concept-wise, a lot of directors — and you’ll be surprised at some names — are very sound. They are very good at discussing things and concepts. They don’t know how to put it on screen. But a good “reader” IMO can see the 20% of what’s on screen (the other 80% still being in the mind’s eye of the director) and try to get a discussion going.
But then, all this holds true only for those who want to look at cinema in terms other than ‘good” or “bad”, “”worth watching or not worth watching”. That is the LEAST important thing, least interesting thing about a movie. If you go into Ra.One, for instance, with the mindset “Is this going to be better than Endhiran” or “IS this going to break the boundaries of scifi” then your frame of discussion is going to be radically different than if you go in with a blank slate and let the FILM define itself for you as it plays.
I will be in conversation with Suhasini in a session today at 5:30 pm, titled “Writing In the Time of Cinema.” At the Hyatt.
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Govardhan Giridass
October 29, 2011
Yo, poya.
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vijay
October 29, 2011
BR is someone bothering you about “overanalysis”? This is like the umpteenth time I get to read something around that topic here, either in comments space or in the main piece itself. Seems like you are either in defensive mode or this thing is gnawing at you. freeya vidunga. Anybody can read anything in any movie. That’s about all there is to it. If I accuse you of overanalysis you can say I underanalyzed and leave it at that. Everything is fucking relative and subjective
If I had known before that you were meeting Suhasini I would have requested you on my behalf to reach out and slap her across the face for the atrocities she commits in the name of TV reviews, not to mention a clear conflict of interest.
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Rahul
October 30, 2011
Wonder why there are these seemingly never ending discussions about the nature of “film inspired writing” (I prefer this phrase to “criticism” or “film based writing”).Since writers themselves engage in it almost to a level that appears masochistic and exhibitionistic to me, I would think that this genre is in a state of flux, both in the minds of the writers and the audience. There is some rigorous churning going on,and though I more often than not, don’t find it interesting , a constant examination of the nature and limits should not be bad thing?
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brangan
October 30, 2011
vijay/Rahul: LOL! See, if you’re writing a column over a long period, there will inevitably be repetitions that a long-time reader will find. Chalk this down to one more, though the latter half of the piece is what made me interested in writing the article (of course, apart from trying to craft the thing in a new way).
And no, it’s not defensive at all. I guess this is just a topic that’s very close to my heart and hence the proselytizing at every given opportunity. My way of looking at it is that The Hindu readers haven’t read this kind of column, so for them it’s a first 🙂
But seriously, do suggest some topics that I can take up in future columns. Because it’s not easy thinking up topics each week that are also interesting to write about.
On an unrelated note, here’s to all the bald men out there. Unsurprisingly, I loved this comment below. “They only made a small number of perfect heads, and the rest they had to put hair on.” 🙂
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Rahul
October 30, 2011
For all the bald men out there – the more hair you lose, the more “head” you get.
BR, my “reading” of you writing a lot on this topic is that film writing to you is something deeply existential, so the question of why you are writing and what you are writing, always self consciously keeps popping up. I fully realize that this reading may convey more about you than me, but such is the nature of sub-textual analysis!
Anyway,regarding topics, here are a few that I have been thinking about-
1. How necessary/sufficient is being a writer – director for auteurship? All great auteurs seem to have a big hand in the writing department.
2. What role does a background soundtrack play in, for example, establishing the time in which the story is taking place? Hinting at other social markers like rich/poor etc.? In summary, what other roles can it play apart from accentuating and addressing the immediate emotional requirements of the scene..
3.Role of irony in cinema – To me, Drive was an intensely ironic movie.( I have yet to come to terms with it, so I haven’t commented on it much. ) What is it about irony (in literature and cinema) that affects us so deeply? Does irony hit at something very fundamental about , using a cliched term, the human condition?
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Rahul
October 30, 2011
Edit: “this reading may convey more about you than me“
Should be“more about me than you“
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Ramsu
October 30, 2011
Since you asked, how about a series on film critics themselves, and how the art of reviewing a film has evolved over the years? It was the Pauline Kael article that made me think of this. There are so many more critics out there whose body of work deserves mention, don’t you think?
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raj
October 30, 2011
Topics irukkattum. K2K enna aachu?
Looks like Besant Nagar RomCom is not viable in Tamuil cinema as much as Bandra RomCom in hindi?
Could that be a topic? Although you might have covered that before, again.
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Arun
October 30, 2011
I think a film, or any piece of art, talks to each of us in a different way so our reactions can well be different. As BR said, it’s something private. I don’t think the question of trying to justify it — and I am not saying he’s trying to do that here — acquires much urgency when we’re dealing in private circles. However, when you’re writing for public consumption, I think unusual views are bound to attract polarised comments. I will argue that there is such a thing as ‘reading too much into a movie’ when you have, from the sense of a particular reader, have dwelt too much over the subtext of or given too much credit for a movie that’s generally considered a mediocre effort. But again, I won’t complain too much if the ponderings are readable and entertaining or even enriching.
But the subtexts are what make the article fascinating and worthwhile, however. The movie by itself is a finite, completed work and it’s the possibilities or what this or that may allude to is what makes for a compelling discussion, IMO.
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brangan
October 31, 2011
Thanks for the suggestions, all.
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Gradwolf
October 31, 2011
BR, you promised your views on how much fun you had on the Saturday talk 🙂
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brangan
October 31, 2011
Gradwolf: What did you think of it? I got one half saying “oh it was such fun” and the other half saying “neenga ketta quetiion-ukkum avanga sonna answer-ukkum sambandhame ille”. I thought the session had energy, though content-wise I wasn’t too happy. BTW, did you stay for the Vikram Seth and Mukul Kesavan sessions? Both were bloody awesome.
As an aside, serious senior moment happening as I discovered that Achtung Baby turns 20 years old.
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Gradwolf
October 31, 2011
I stayed for the Mukul Kesavan, Rahul Bhattacharya and Shashi Tharoor session. It was by far the pick for me from both the days. Rahul is such a wonderful chap! It was tremendously insightful, and loved the mild digs he took on Tharoor. And the whole thing about T20 they both brought down on him! I was extremely disappointed with the crowd though. What questions man! Pathetic, it was. Some front row people were clearly there only for soundbites. And that guy rudely speaking(not asking) “YOU ARE NOT SPEAKING ABOUT SRIKANTH’S BOOK!” WTF!
Yes, I belong the latter 🙂 She went on a tangent everytime! Especially that question about the expectations of catastrophe and bombastic production values in the name of world cinema and she talks about Oscar. Idhuku Kamalaye koopturkalam! Even if he goes on a tangent there’ll be something thoughtful in it!
What did you think of the Singeetham, Mahendra session? I was pleasantly surprised by the way Singeetham articulated his views. At 80!
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Gradwolf
October 31, 2011
Couldn’t stay for the Vikram Seth session. That good eh?
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brangan
November 1, 2011
Gradwolf: I loved the Singeetham session. He joined us for lunch later and was a riot. Writing about him in the column this week.
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brangan
November 2, 2011
Talk about “reading”!
“Jurassic Park’s real theme, Briggs and Kelber-Kaye say, is women run amok. The she-dinos are reproducing without men and trying to stomp out the two-parent nuclear family (consisting here of Alan Grant, Tim, and Lex, with occasional appearances by Ellie Sattler, Grant’s partner). The critics look at Jurassic Park and see a racial theme, too. The Costa Rican dinos, they argue, represent “Third World” women. So Jurassic Park is not just about a threat to nuclear families, but to white families.”
More at this rather fun article.
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vijay
November 2, 2011
I think I had suggested something in the past for topics, cant remember what now. But as and when something pops up I usually post it here ASAP. But one thing I do remember suggesting was “movies(world cinema mostly) that you are supposed to like(or critically acclaimed) which you personally found overrated or flat out uninspiring” like say a Citizen Kane or Gone with the Wind or those usual titles that populate the top 100 lists.
Also, revisions in reviews that you have had with the passage of time. How risky it is to instantly pan a movie or deem it a masterpiece after just a single viewing and a day to write the review and make it before the deadline?
Another one(not sure this might be suitable topic for print, maybe worth a blog someday) is , have you been frustrated by the subjectivity of all this at some point? That what you do in your work may not always matter much to anybody else, except you? Especially since you made the transition from engineering into the arty world?
do you think reviewers like you should be interviewing the very same directors/actors whose films you would be reviewing shortly? How much do those personal interactions and off-the-record confessions of directors/actors tend to color your judgement of their films? If someone like say , Mysskin throws some high funda concepts during your convo with him, does that make you delve a bit more into subtexts of his film the next time around vs another director whom you havent had a chance to meet at all or who doesnt give “intellectual” vibes?
Is having an ear for good music necessary for reviewers, especially of desi films where songs and stuff are an integral part? would there be good film critics, who are tone-deaf?
why dont we take our film music criticism seriously and notch it up to another level? why is that when it comes to carnatic concert reviews the credibility(or the knowledge) of the critic matters, whereas when it comes to film music, anyone with an opinion and keyboard can write about it? All over, film reviewers also seem to pass off as film music reviewers, especially for our films, and the editors seem to be fine with it. This in spite of the fact that they evaluate just performances in carnatic music vs evaluating the compositions themselves (besides the performance) in film music. If anything, it should be more rigorous.
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