Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of Idiot

Timestamp:

Jun 28, 2012, 5:24:03 PM (12 years ago)

Author:

Trupti

Comment:

--

Idiot

@@ +1 @@
+'''Idiot'''
+
+
+1991 180’ col Hindi
+d Mani Kaul pc Doordarshan st Fyodor
+Dostoevsky’s novel sc Anup Singh
+dial Hemendra Bhatia, Rajeev Kumar c Piyush
+Shah m D. Wood, Vikram Joglekar
+lp Ayub Khan Din, Shah Rukh Khan, Mita
+Vasisth, Navjot Hansra, Vasudeo Bhatt, Deepak
+Mahan, Babulal Bora, Meenakshi Goswami, Zul
+Velani, Amritlal Thulal
+
+
+With this tour de force of control over a
+bewilderingly complex narrative and a massive
+cast of characters (more than 50 key roles)
+constantly shifting about in both geographic
+and cinematic spaces, Mani Kaul continues
+exploring Dostoevsky’s fiction (cf. Nazar,
+1989), faithfully following the novel’s original
+plot transposed into a scathing depiction of a
+feudal elite, largely bypassed by history,
+located in Bombay and Goa. The story begins
+with the return of Myshkin (Ayub Khan),
+having spent many years in London
+undergoing treatment for epilepsy. He
+encounters the beautiful Nastasia (Vasisth), a
+femme fatale pursued by the rich Pawan
+Raghujan (Shah Rukh Khan) and the ambitious
+Ganesh (Mahan). The wealthy milieu seems to
+live in a vacuum, alongside a formerly
+productive generation, such as the
+businessman Mehta (Velani) and his proud
+daughter Amba (Hansra) or the retired,
+drunken colonel (Bora) who is accompanied
+by characters like Killer and the cynical and
+suicidal Shapit (Thulal) on the beaches of Goa.
+At Nastasia’s party both Ganesh and Myshkin
+propose to her, but she leaves with Raghujan
+who throws a bundle of banknotes at her
+which she proceeds to burn. After the central
+sequence in Goa, the colonel leaves home and
+dies, and Myshkin becomes engaged to Amba.
+However, he suffers an epileptic fit and the
+next day Nastasia breaks the engagement,
+claiming Myshkin for herself. Just before their
+wedding she again runs away to Raghujan who
+eventually kills her, after which he spends the
+night with Myshkin awaiting the police. In the
+end Myshkin is revealed to have gone mad.
+Kaul coolly orchestrates with great virtuosity
+the continuously mobile, elusive points of
+‘stress’ (in Kaul’s phrase) as they shift from
+geographic location to cinematic space and
+back again, from the editing and gestural
+rhythms to the discontinuous soundtrack,
+achieving a multi-layered cinematic texture that
+at times threatens to stretch beyond the
+boundaries of the frame. The innovative
+approach to plot and narration keeps the film
+on a precarious edge between formal control
+and random collisions of speech and identity.
+Much of the film’s successful use of characters
+as ‘independent vertices’ (as the director
+describes them) follows the extraordinary
+performance of British Asian actor Ayub Khan
+who uses his difficulties with Hindi to
+considerable advantage as the nervous and
+culturally dislocated epileptic. The director
+commented: ‘Whereas for years I dwealt on
+rarefied wholes where the line of the narrative
+often vanished into thin air, with Idiot I have
+plunged into an extreme saturation of events.
+[P]ersonally, I find myself on the brink,
+exposed to a series of possible disintegrations.
+Ideas, then, cancel each other out and the form
+germinates. Content belongs to the future, and
+that’s how it creeps into the present’. The film
+was made as a four part TV series running 223’
+and edited down to feature length.
+
+[[Film]]