The rain falls in Montevideo. I sleep in my new bedroom for the first time. The house has come close to flooding twice of late, and as the lightning flashes I can’t help worrying that if I were to sleep it will do so again, this time in earnest. The house is full of strange noises. Hungover, I try to adjust to the novelty but it isn’t easy.
These kind of domestic details spring to mind because Ray’s film is so absorbed in similar details, transforming the mundane to something magnificent. The sequence where Apu and his bride, Aparna, learn to live with each other, is a celebration of the domestic; the simple joys which Apu learns to love, and then laments when they are cruelly curtailed.
Having been fortunate enough to have seen films by Ray, Kurosawa, Bergman and Bertolluci on the big screen in recent months, what these filmmakers have in common is the ability to turn the screen into a world, one which transcends genre, or even classification. Humanism may be a common thread., but above all, the filmmakers seem to be embarking on a desperate quest to leave behind the traces of the worlds they have known or imagined.
In which sense the great art of cinema is not so far removed from the great art of cave painting. These are the things I have seen. Marvel at them.
No comments:
Post a Comment