shaswataray-47371
Joined May 2020
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shaswataray-47371's rating
Nasir is bookended by images of the titular character lying down unconscious, with each of them carrying vastly different connotations. While the opening shot is accompanied by a supremely beautiful rendition of the Azaan, as the camera surreptiously zooms in at an imperceptible pace, the closing frame is an extreme long shot that basks in the stillness of the night. It is a moment when the film, so saturated with the din of everyday life until this point, must also take pause along with the viewer who's just been rendered speechless.
A spectre haunts Nasir, the spectre of religious intolerance: festering within the hearts and minds of Indian people despite their lofty personal ideals and claims of 'unity in diversity'. It takes us along the daily rhythms of a man, with glimpses of his quiet desperation to save up enough to enroll his son into a special school and find treatment for his cancer-ridden mother, despite the flurry of unavoidable expenses. The completely unassuming texture of the drama, helped along by a meticulous sonic design that renders Nasir's universe all the more tactile, reminds us that his forthcoming plight isn't some out-of-the-ordinary exceptional event: but rather, it is the daily reality of thousands and could happen to any of us anywhere.
As the film works its way towards a harrowing denouement (which can be somewhat anticipated), the way it methodically exposes the vulnerabilities of the common man-lacking both financial and political protective power-paves the way for the questions its raises. Thus when the repeating pattern of the steadfast camera and measured framing choices breaks suddenly and without warning-into a handheld frenzy of bodies and chants of "Hail Mother India!"-it catches you off-guard while you are dreaming alongside Nasir of a better future, both for him and his country.
Indeed, you are forced to ask, what kind of a mother would sacrifice her own children? Ultimately, it is the director's own words about his film that resonate the hardest: "I would love to see the day when I cannot recognise the political reality of the film. It would give me great relief for the film to become politically irrelevant someday when all this hatred was only seen and experienced as a thing of the past."
A spectre haunts Nasir, the spectre of religious intolerance: festering within the hearts and minds of Indian people despite their lofty personal ideals and claims of 'unity in diversity'. It takes us along the daily rhythms of a man, with glimpses of his quiet desperation to save up enough to enroll his son into a special school and find treatment for his cancer-ridden mother, despite the flurry of unavoidable expenses. The completely unassuming texture of the drama, helped along by a meticulous sonic design that renders Nasir's universe all the more tactile, reminds us that his forthcoming plight isn't some out-of-the-ordinary exceptional event: but rather, it is the daily reality of thousands and could happen to any of us anywhere.
As the film works its way towards a harrowing denouement (which can be somewhat anticipated), the way it methodically exposes the vulnerabilities of the common man-lacking both financial and political protective power-paves the way for the questions its raises. Thus when the repeating pattern of the steadfast camera and measured framing choices breaks suddenly and without warning-into a handheld frenzy of bodies and chants of "Hail Mother India!"-it catches you off-guard while you are dreaming alongside Nasir of a better future, both for him and his country.
Indeed, you are forced to ask, what kind of a mother would sacrifice her own children? Ultimately, it is the director's own words about his film that resonate the hardest: "I would love to see the day when I cannot recognise the political reality of the film. It would give me great relief for the film to become politically irrelevant someday when all this hatred was only seen and experienced as a thing of the past."
Sivapuranam opens with a film projector, its light steadily intensifying until it becomes blindingly bright and a cut rescues us from vision impairment. It is a significant opening shot that establishes a central recurring object and, through the shaft of projected light emanating from the aperture, mirrors a key theme permeating the rest of the film: the gaze (the 'ejaculatory force of the eye', as Bresson called it), and the way it invades shared and personal spaces by way of fulfilling repressed desires and shaping reality.
Sivapuranam is a wordless character-study that follows the subliminal trenches of one man Shiva, as he becomes fixated upon a blurry photo of a woman taken purely by chance. He gradually develops an unhealthy obsession as he tinkers around with the photo while playing and replaying other footage he has captured, the projector becoming one of the multiple unwitting enablers of his newfound vice. Shiva leads a life of solitude (we do not see any friend-figure until the very end of the film), on the periphery of which roams a number of felines and canines that he feeds every now and then. And the closest he can come to any form of physical intimacy with another being is the red ant trampling around his bare chest while he sleeps.
Karthick deftly uses repetition of framing and anachronistic editing of shots to give us Shiva's subjective experience of reality, marked by his distorted temporal sense that results from a life of monotony and isolation. This is heightened by the numerous extreme close-ups that parallel Shiva's daily act of blowing up each pixel of the woman's photograph. However, as viewers, we also enjoy the privilege of scrutinizing Shiva's actions by maintaining an objective distance, the editing careful enough to strike a balance between the two modes of vision. The constant sense of voyeuristic dread keeps on building, even though it won't come to a head until almost an hour into the film, lending every subsequent shot an added edge of unpredictability.
A lot of the ambience of Sivapuranam is owed to the various, mysteriously-sourced, harsh and discordant sounds that surround Shiva's existence. Karthick brilliantly incorporates composite frames and uses space to indicate a haunting 'presence' within Shiva's messy shack, like the one particular shot of his kitchen alongside the projected image of the woman, appearing from the adjacent room like a phantom that stalks him. And while the entire film is composed of deliberately-held camera moves and tracking shots, the pattern is also broken on two notable occasions: one being Shiva running around a forest with his camera, and the other a long take of him and an acquaintance sitting down to drink while the camera curiously (and almost uncharacteristically) whip pans between their faces.
Karthick also painstakingly establishes the material reality surrounding his protagonist, via a marked presence of heightened sounds and noises emanating from objects, animals, distant humans and natural elements. His thematic focus on the sight, direct or indirect, finds its match through a formal emphasis of using sound design as the fundamental narrative tool. Boundaries real and imagined obscure Shiva's (and our) vision and thwarts his constant impulse to 'see', while information comes pouring in via the sound track to encourage a shift in perception. In a brilliant and brief sequence, the arrival of a neighbour is recreated purely through the faint tinkling of ankle bells and shadows, the face being withheld from both protagonist and audience until much later.
The film tells of a primal desire for psychological connection, one that Shiva's lifestyle denies him and which he perversely seeks to replace, with cameras and projectors that would enable him to extend his gaze, finding only frustration for the most part.
Sivapuranam is a wordless character-study that follows the subliminal trenches of one man Shiva, as he becomes fixated upon a blurry photo of a woman taken purely by chance. He gradually develops an unhealthy obsession as he tinkers around with the photo while playing and replaying other footage he has captured, the projector becoming one of the multiple unwitting enablers of his newfound vice. Shiva leads a life of solitude (we do not see any friend-figure until the very end of the film), on the periphery of which roams a number of felines and canines that he feeds every now and then. And the closest he can come to any form of physical intimacy with another being is the red ant trampling around his bare chest while he sleeps.
Karthick deftly uses repetition of framing and anachronistic editing of shots to give us Shiva's subjective experience of reality, marked by his distorted temporal sense that results from a life of monotony and isolation. This is heightened by the numerous extreme close-ups that parallel Shiva's daily act of blowing up each pixel of the woman's photograph. However, as viewers, we also enjoy the privilege of scrutinizing Shiva's actions by maintaining an objective distance, the editing careful enough to strike a balance between the two modes of vision. The constant sense of voyeuristic dread keeps on building, even though it won't come to a head until almost an hour into the film, lending every subsequent shot an added edge of unpredictability.
A lot of the ambience of Sivapuranam is owed to the various, mysteriously-sourced, harsh and discordant sounds that surround Shiva's existence. Karthick brilliantly incorporates composite frames and uses space to indicate a haunting 'presence' within Shiva's messy shack, like the one particular shot of his kitchen alongside the projected image of the woman, appearing from the adjacent room like a phantom that stalks him. And while the entire film is composed of deliberately-held camera moves and tracking shots, the pattern is also broken on two notable occasions: one being Shiva running around a forest with his camera, and the other a long take of him and an acquaintance sitting down to drink while the camera curiously (and almost uncharacteristically) whip pans between their faces.
Karthick also painstakingly establishes the material reality surrounding his protagonist, via a marked presence of heightened sounds and noises emanating from objects, animals, distant humans and natural elements. His thematic focus on the sight, direct or indirect, finds its match through a formal emphasis of using sound design as the fundamental narrative tool. Boundaries real and imagined obscure Shiva's (and our) vision and thwarts his constant impulse to 'see', while information comes pouring in via the sound track to encourage a shift in perception. In a brilliant and brief sequence, the arrival of a neighbour is recreated purely through the faint tinkling of ankle bells and shadows, the face being withheld from both protagonist and audience until much later.
The film tells of a primal desire for psychological connection, one that Shiva's lifestyle denies him and which he perversely seeks to replace, with cameras and projectors that would enable him to extend his gaze, finding only frustration for the most part.