by Pawel Mizgalewicz
Making art – ain’t that the perfect job? Guided by inspiration, bringing light into the world, affirming and glorifying life? Well, maybe not every day. Here comes “Theatre”, a cinema verité-styled look at the creative process, set in India’s Puducherry. And, as it usually goes, the look at how the sausage is made is not as inspiring as the effect itself. The fictional amateur group creating the play seems to be constantly annoyed by working with each other, they spew obscenities at everyone they talk to, and question what they’re doing with their life. The film presents us their (second) job as a galimatias of almost everything going a bit wrong – the product going off the path, and the human connection among the crew lost in resentment and disappointment.
Theatre is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam
“Theatre” was introduced in Rotterdam as a rare opportunity to look at the culture of Puducherry, one of the few small regions in India that used to be a French colony. The film is set in the main city of the area, Pondicherry. While the French language is now mostly only official, and the region embraces mainstream Tamil culture, the outstanding architecture makes it quite popular for artists – although mostly as a nice background, not as the subject. Kalidindi’s regret that Puducherry is never actually told about in cinema was a big reason for making “Theatre”, a piece that is very true to the place. And yet, many themes will likely ring familiar to anyone who’s worked on a theatre production in any small, underfunded, inbred circle – so, presumably, most of all theatre-making circles in the world. Not in theatre only, of course – a shared enterprise drowning in disagreement is a universal pattern that many professionals will relate to, all over the East and the West. Well, maybe except the part where the actor playing the main role has to juggle the rehearsals with taking care of his sick cow. For the main character, Das (Mani Bharathi), that’s his real job.
Kalidindi’s second feature couldn’t be further away in style from the first one – the juicy dark comedy “Kadaseela Biriyani”, which put him on the map in India in 2021. To bounce back, with “Theatre”, the director decided to create a truly spontaneous work of art, inspired wholly by the reality the crew experienced on location, humble towards the subject in a way that makes it look more like a documentary than a feature.
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His professional actors (well-versed in theatre themselves) portray amateur actors of Pondicherry’s scene. The play, from the glimpses we get, seems mostly improvised, and rather abstract in content – Das plays an Arabian king, but there is also place for some classic red-nosed clown comedy. The big part of the stage design is a lone hanging mallakhamb pole, to be used in yet-unspecified ways (Das shimmies on it an opening scene that looks like it’s out of another movie, or a dream – slow, tasteful, black-and-white, with piano music). The story of “Theatre” is mostly focused on a few days of preparations to put out the show, with the process combining some of producing, writing, directing, stage designing, rehearsing and improvising, in unstable proportions. A creative ferment is definitely felt, but so is a destructive ferment.
Movies that not only try to show you a creative group, but make you feel like you’re inside it could be called a separate subgenre of cinema. “Theatre’s” creators in Rotterdam were mentioning Jacques Rivette (the director of “Paris nous appartient”, “L’Amour fou” and “Out 1”), but this mix of form and content has been evergreen, as evidenced lately in Oscar-nominated “Sing Sing”, or by Bear-winning “Sur l’Adamant”. There are different ways to achieve this feeling, but shaky handheld cam is a popular place to start, inducing a feeling that we’re just there among the team, having a peek at how it’s really like now, as if actors were not even aware of being filmed.
Kalidindi employs several techniques that make footage seem like the camera just randomly stumbled onto the situation, and stuff “just is happening”. Cutting disjointed scenes. Injecting various frame sizes into the edit. Obscuring the sound. Starting the shot out of focus, only to finally find it, as if by happenstance, in some detail in the picture.
It’s all nervous and very energetic, and it might be hard to fully grasp the meaning of what’s happening. Part of it is the dialogue being a bit foreign to a European viewer. Likely the easiest to consume is the general stereotype of a remote rural Indian region of poverty, looking up to the Western world in a way. Pondicherry does largely meet those expectations. The main character, Das visits the town from his farm, one moment “literally shoving cowshit”, the next one posing for photos to a Western photographer – who seems to have picked Das for his exotic look, but isn’t so impressed with his level of professionalism. Some friends are excited by taking part in serious artistic projects with foreign involvement, but others make sure to keep the artist boy grounded: “white man takes your picture and you think you’re a hot shit now”.
The doubt whether the project really means something grand, or nothing much at all, seems to be an underlying constant for most characters. Are the sacrifices in professional and personal life worth all the time they take to have a shot at art? No answer is suggested, as the movie focuses purely on following the characters. At nighttime, they drink. The day after, they wonder if they said something they shouldn’t. They cannot remember well enough to be sure. Both the drinking and the rehearsal scenes are quite enjoyable to watch, due to the mentioned frenetic mockumentary energy – some slower episodes happening in between might feel a bit flat, in comparison.
The character that really stands out in the group is not really Das, or any other actor-playing-actor, but rather Bhoomi, the vicious dwarf director of the play, often referred to as “master”, tellingly. Bhoomi’s almost military approach to handling the production is quite funny, considering the scant budgets. His harsh and vulgar language might be seen as a realistic way to achieve some discipline in the group, to force all his crew and performers to align, fitting the local theme of herding cows. But the dirty words seem to spread to the other characters, who might shout back that he’s “swinging his director dick”. In a story filled with common-people characters, Bhoomi brings a whiff of a tragic genius artist, relatively to scale. He’s recognized on the town’s streets, but due to his TikTok dance videos. His angry, intense stare might be read as overwhelming passion for making his vision come true. Of course he is also not really any “hot shit”, but he’s got the drive that one probably needs to succeed as a director. He’s still an artist, and there’s no easy way to be a real artist in a non-budget world.
Free-spirited and indie to a fault, it all constantly feels bohemian. And it ends in a rhapsody – a quiet French song replacing the previous sitar sounds, with the whole team unwinding the night after the show. Suddenly, everything is calm, and you can even get a feeling of some real camaraderie and mutual support that you didn’t see so much during the production. I had to ask the director if that scene is supposed to be a hopeful message. Apparently, not really. Kalidindi has no illusion that these bonds will be long-term improved. In his words, this one nice night is mostly just that, one night. They will get back to all the resentment and disappointment – but they will also keep working together, because, well, what else can they do? It’s a small local circle, and so they are basically stuck with each other, if they are to keep doing art. It will not be perfectly enjoyable all through, but they’ll do what artist does. Perhaps the art is worth it anyway – that could be the message in “Theatre”.
