Sensing the director’s touch, at the recently concluded Bengaluru International Film Festival.
At a film festival, the brochure is invaluable. It gives you a plot synopsis of the films being screened. It gives you a note about the filmmaker. This not only helps in deciding whether you want to give this particular film a shot, but in the case of something like The Age of Shadows, which I caught at the 9th Bengaluru International Film Festival, it provides a narrative framework that helps you hold on even as the film overwhelms you, threatens to slip away into a maze of characters and subplots. Every time the 140-minute film, directed by Kim Jee-woon and set in the late 1920s, turned too sprawling for its own good, I just had to recall what the brochure said was going on: the cat-and-mouse game that unfolds between a group of resistance fighters trying to bring in explosives from Shanghai to destroy key Japanese facilities in Seoul, and Japanese agents trying to stop them.
I cannot recommend this film enough. The plot isn’t new (replace the characters with Americans and Germans, and it’s the plot of any Hollywood-made WWII movie about a dangerous mission), but the film is a great answer to the question: Just what does the director do? Yes, we all know he is, as the cliché goes, “the captain of the ship,” but there isn’t one particularly obvious aspect of the film we can attribute to him. You look at the visuals, and you know that’s the cinematographer’s work. You see a dissolve or a cut, and you know the editor’s done that. You see an actor act, delivering lines written by the screenwriter. But what do we point to in order to say this is what the director did?
In The Age of Shadows, you could point to the opening sequence, featuring a small army in pursuit of a single man. Even if you haven’t read the plot synopsis in the brochure, even if you don’t know who’s chasing whom, who these people are and why it’s so necessary to capture this man, the stretch works beautifully. Or perhaps we should say that the stretch works even better if you know nothing and are absorbing the sequence as just pure, abstracted action. One man runs. These other men chase. He runs. They chase. And on and on it goes. On passageways. Over rooftops. The camera angles, taking in the formations of the army, are astounding – but wouldn’t this be the work of the cinematographer, the action director? Watch the rest of the film – especially a stunning, suspenseful, Hitchockian set piece on a train, lasting about 30 minutes – and you’ll know it isn’t just them, that the director’s vision has been the guiding force, the glue.
It’s like how you know that, despite the extraordinary contributions by everyone in the cast and crew, The Godfather is really Francis Ford Coppola’s film. The way scenes go on without a background score and the next scene is hinted at by sound that comes a few seconds early, the way scenes breathe between dialogues – it all points to a central vision. That’s how you know what the director has done. You can feel it.
You can feel it even in a film that doesn’t work, like Carlos del Castillo’s Colombian drama Between Sea and Land, which is about a man, Alberto, confined to bed due to a condition called distonia, which causes a gradual degradation of muscles. A key scene between Alberto’s mother and the girl who’s his childhood friend (but, in his mind, something more) is shot at night, in very little light. It’s a hugely emotional scene, but we don’t see the faces, and without facial reactions to latch on to, we are guided by the lines, the voices. One scene like this may be an accident, but two point to a deliberate pattern. When we see a second emotional scene shot the same way – this one’s between Alberto’s mother and her old friend – we sense the touch of a director.
A much better “director’s movie” I watched at the festival was Revelations (Tamil), by Vijay Jayapal. I didn’t care for the last 15 minutes, where, as if realising what the film’s name is, the story lurches from one melodramatic revelation to another. But till then, Jayapal exhibits masterful control. The story revolves around neighbours, and through his careful shaping of scenes and rationing out of information, Jayapal achieves the effect of spying on neighbours, giving us a sense of who they are and what they are up to but not really being sure of anything. You sense the director’s presence in the pace, the length for which shots are held, in the way the geography of the multi-storey house – up, down, in, out – becomes a character. With a good director, plot is almost beside the point.
An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2017 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
tonks
February 11, 2017
Great read, as always. Before I started reading this blog, I’d never thought of what the director did, while watching movies, but now I am beginning to.
distonia, which causes a gradual degradation of muscles.
It’s spelled ‘dystonia’, actually.
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Thulasidasan Jeewaratinam
February 11, 2017
Korean cinema is indeed extraordinary, Mr. Rangan, especially since 1999/2000 era. Are you familiar with the works of Bong Joon-Ho or Park Chan Wook? They’re the very definition of auteur directors.
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Anu Warrier
February 11, 2017
@tonks, the ‘i’ is probably the American spelling. 🙂
BR, that was interesting to read, thank you.
There are some directors whose movies, I would argue, are solely their vision. You know the cinematographer, the action director, everything really, is complementary to his vision of just how that scene should be set up. I’ve often found myself wondering how much of each department is the contribution of that particular person, and how much is that person’s interpretation of the director’s guidelines; or, in other words, how specific the director has been in laying down those guidelines.
With reference to a previous post: SLB’s crew is very clear that he’s extremely specific about how he wants the camera set up, the sets, the costumes, even the angles at which he shoots. So, would that be his vision carried out faithfully by his crew, or their interpretation of what he wants from them, or a mixture of both?
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Jay
February 11, 2017
What other movies did you see at the Bangalore film festival? Curious to know if your thoughts on the others you might have watched.
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Sahir.
February 11, 2017
What a fascinating writer you are, Mr Rangan. You inspire me.
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gm
February 11, 2017
Thanks Mr. Rangan. Reading your writings is like Auditing a course in a local college. No quiz, no midterm test and no finals. Just pure joy of learning to become a professional Movie Watcher. Appreciated very much.
I am reading a book called,101 Lessons I learned in Film School. Also, thanks to you, this weekend I am going to Kirik Party movie (hope, it is subtitled) at a local theater:
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vishal yogin
February 11, 2017
I remain spellbound by The Wailing 🙂
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Rohit Sathish Nair
February 11, 2017
‘Revelations’ was the first film I watched at IFFK ’16 Trivandrum (my first film festival experience). Teething issues with the pacing aside, it was a very interesting watch. As Rangan sir mentioned, some very well composed shots, which capture effectively the width and depth of the house in Kolkata. I still remember vividly, the first shot of him dusting the cobwebs in Chennai home.
PS: Sir, did you get to watch any films at Trivandrum then?
PPS: a pro tip on how to tackle festival fatigue would be really handy.
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Jyoti S Kumar
February 11, 2017
Coincidentally, the role of a director was something even I was thinking about the past few days. I was bemoaning the dearth of “good” rom-com movies these past few years, which led me to watch you’ve got mail for the fifteenth time or so. Fifteenth or hundredth, that movie has a kind of charm that will leave you with a smile even long after the movie is over. All these days I thought it was Meg Ryan’s spontaneity and amazing screen presence. But this time around I specifically started searching for the director and I realised that all the movies that I categorised as good rom com – Harry met Sally, sleepless in Seattle etc didn’t just have Meg Ryan in common, but they were all directed by the same woman – Nora Ephron. Now, this only strengthened my belief that guys just don’t get the feel that girls want from a movie. I was telling anyone and everyone who would listen to me that Twilight was a success because the first movie was directed by a woman. Even though there were many changes in the story, the director was able to translate the feel of the book even better than the author herself. And whom did they give the second movie to? Chris Weitz, the director of American Pie! Ugh! As soon as the franchise became big, they had to hand it over to a guy and that too a guy who made a name by making a teen sex comedy… So coming back to the point, given the same material, a director’s vision for the movie can make it or break it. (BR sir, I just reiterated your point with my limited knowledge of movies. Just like in you’ve got mail – you invoked Godfather, and me being a woman invoked rom-com, instead of pride and prejudice! 😀)
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rahultyagi
February 12, 2017
I know this is perhaps way off-topic, but your “careful shaping of scenes and rationing out of information” statement made me think of Asghar Farhadi, who has basically perfected this art to an astounding level. Can’t wait to see “The Salesman”!
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Altman
February 12, 2017
What exactly does a director do? Not the writer/director kind we have here, but the directors who don’t write their scripts as in Hollywood and other parts of the world. I had this hazy idea which I couldn’t express verbally until I saw Steve Jobs(2015) biopic. The brilliant lines are Aaron Sorkin’s of course.
“Steve Wozniak: What do you do? You’re not an engineer. You’re not a designer. You can’t put a hammer to nail. I built the circuit board. The graphics interface was stolen from Xerox. So how come ten times in a day I read Steve Jobs is a genius? What do you do?
Steve Jobs: Musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra.”
That’s what a director does too. He plays the orchestra.
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Garvit Sharma
February 12, 2017
Finally a mention of Korean movie in your blog.I wonder how you would have reviewed a very typical movie Korean flick like Kim Jee-Woon’s “A Bittersweet Life”. On the surface it is the marriage of SRK’s Koyla and Sunny Deol’s Jeet which is consummated by an ode to Raging Bull climax,it transcends into something more valuable and sensory than an excellent masala Indian movie.
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Amit Joki
February 12, 2017
Gm: That was an excellent read! Thanks for referring to that book in here. Any other such books you know of?
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tonks
February 12, 2017
‘Dystonia’ is the proper name of a muscle condition and so it’s spelling is standard, Anu, to the best of my knowledge, across countries and even by the Americans 🙂
I was hoping it would be corrected before publishing, but it wasn’t.
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tonks
February 12, 2017
its
*rolls eyes
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Anu Warrier
February 12, 2017
@Tonks, yes, you’re right. Even the Yanks couldn’t change it.
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gm
February 12, 2017
Amit, Making Movies by Sidney Lumet. Technically outdated but, he walks through the reader on how his mind works from the time he leaves home to go to work as a director. I wish he won an Oscar, bless his soul, RIP. The one I have not read yet, The Filmmaker’s Handbook, 2013 Edition.
Everyone should read Mr. Rangan’s Mani Ratnam book. Hope, he updates the book with latest Mr. Ratnam’s movies. Also, Would like Mr. Rangan to write a book titled ” How to Watch Movies like a Pro”
After reading both Mr. Lumet and Mr. Rangan books, watching the Lumet and Ratnam movies again, makes me little bit more smarter, and appreciative of creative work.
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Amit Joki
February 14, 2017
Gm: I have already read Making Movies, it’s a great one.
I don’t think BR will appreciate me reading his book without paying for it, for I only read it in my phone.
Thanks for the other suggestion too.
BR: Do you mind giving me your book’s electronic format? 😀 I will pay for it later when I earn and find myself in good stead 😀
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Rahul Tyagi
February 14, 2017
Amit: Do you have access to a library? If no, why not??? If yes, see if you can get the book there (or request them to get it for you in case they don’t have it). I don’t know how popular ebooks are in libraries in India, but at least here in US, you frequently also have access to ebook versions through your library.
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Amit Joki
February 15, 2017
Rahul Tyagi: That’s the key difference. You live somewhere in US, and I live in Madurai 😀
Yes, we do have a library that’s so small that its open-ended and packs tamil books of no interest and rarely do they update it with new books. Lots of people who go in there go to read the newspapers daily. That’s about it.
I have been using Project Gutenberg and bookzz.org suggested by (Sanjana or Sanchita? Thanks to the one who did)
Gm: I also already happened to have the Film Makers Handbook 2013, but it is unlike the other two books; too technical with no inherent life in the book. It’s just pieces of information and it hardly suited my taste, couldn’t sit through it at all, while I completed 101 things…and Making Movies in a sitting.
BR: Please check your mail.
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Blasta
February 15, 2017
Touche!
With a good director, plot is almost beside the point.
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Blasta
February 15, 2017
Its less about the ingredients and more about the chef
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sravishanker1401gmailcom
February 19, 2017
BR : Probably the most laconic comment on the subject comes from Al Ruddy.
Twenty years later, remembering and acknowledging everyone’s unique contributions to the obstacle ridden making of the Godfather, he ended with :
“But it was Francis’ (Coppola’s) film all the way……..frame for f…g frame”
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