Pehla Adhyay

Vishnu Mathur‟s Pahala Adhyay is a riveting piece of art with an astute technical mastery enveloped in aesthetic instinct. With an Average Shot Length (ASL) of about 39.6 seconds, within 192 shots, the film tackles the fundamental element that is common to every art form - Time and Space. Based on Milechan, a short story by Ambai (Dr. C.S. Lakshmi) a well-known writer in modern Tamil literature, the film sets out to explore the isolation of the individual within the city and the uncertainty of his/her being in it. Through pure cinematic time, Pahala Adhyay depicts the isolation experienced by a student from a small town moving to a metropolis like Mumbai. The character of Ravi, portrayed by Dinesh Shakul is a student at the Mumbai University pursuing a doctorate in Social Sciences. Right from the first frame of the titles itself, we are introduced to a sound-space that alludes to the sound of Bombay - a local train passing in the distance. In the course of the film, Ravi interacts with his friends and professors, goes about a regular university life interjected by frequent visits to the library and canteen, participates in student protests, attempts to set a match for his sister and yet is unable to adapt himself to any of the roles he assumes or spaces he encounters. The film relies massively on ambient sound and as it progresses, one is introduced to a certain musicality in the film. This musicality unveils itself right from the first shot of the film where we see a tree, the movement of the leaves, the imagined sound of the wind. Similarly, the rhythm of Ravi moving through corridors and through the city, contain a certain aural pattern of the city that Vishnu Mathur explores. The idea of isolation and a sense of personal duration is quite challenging to depict in cinema as it is challenging for the spectator to interpret. Vishnu Mathur in several instances treats the frame of the camera as a painter‟s canvas, marking grid lines with Ravi‟s physical movement on camera. This exploration of the X and Y axis, makes the spectator take notice of Ravi‟s actions in the way he walks or sits but also forms a deeper connection between sound-spaces (background score) and time-spaces (imagined, visible or invisible spaces throughout the film). Ravi performs a Y axis movement and immediately in the next frame performs an X axis movement.

The only time we are treated to a fade For instance, if Ravi is to hear the sound of the train, a sound space, he directly positions the camera on the spine of Ravi, a visual space. Therefore, these spaces are connected in the mind of the spectator forming an axis of time and space through (X and Y) visual and sound. Despite this rather early marker, Vishnu Mathur in a very meticulous manner almost empties the image of all interpretative symbols. His camera (brilliantly handled by Navroze Contractor) pans only a few times in the film, every pan bears no real motivation. Furthermore, the editing of the film is so austere that there‟s almost no relief for a spectator who is accustomed to a narrative driven cinema to find visual cues or markers, except for a couple of fades, moments in which perhaps even Ravi is at ease, mentally.

The sound-space of the train with the visual-space of Ravi The camera is static at this point But instantly comes closer for the action of the greeting

For Mathur, the space exists before Ravi arrives. Deleuze once used the term "Any space whatever" with regards to Yasujiro Ozu‟s films suggesting that objects and spaces exist in a frame even after the passage of the characters out of the frame. It would be appropriate to say that Vishnu Mathur comes closest to Ozu than any other Indian film maker; by depicting spaces before the arrival of Ravi (and sometimes in complete absence of him) to displace them completely from the linearity of the film. This evokes a deep sense of alienation and is heightened by the the slowness of time in our minds while viewing the film as opposed to Ravi‟s lived time (cinematic time) in the film. A thoughtful consideration to Ravi‟s clothes in the film, which change often, also suggest no cues as to where he is located within the cinematic chronology. In this regard, one delves into metaphysics of time - the one we see and the one we don‟t see or imagine (famously used for Robert Bresson‟s films). Language is almost fractured in the film, the character of Ravi is unable to form any meaningful relationships within the campus or outside of it. Vishnu Mathur depicts this by completely eschewing any hope of an intellectual conversation, even the professor when questioned about the validity of his own statements of the role of a historian, dismisses it as „polemics‟. The camera experiences its greatest movement, with no restrictions of the view as compared to an earlier bus scene. The film concludes with one of the most memorable events in cinema. The sound-space created by the ambient sounds that we never experience through a visual space is finally reversed for the spectator when the camera moves through the city (without a reference to what vehicle it‟s in, suspected to be a bus) and the sound-space is filled by Beethoven's Sonata for violin & piano No. 5 in F major ("Spring"), Op. 24. The film, in that moment, achieves its ascent onto a plane of pure immanence. Pahala Adhyay is one of the landmark film of the Indian New Wave that poses no questions, presents no answers and focuses mainly on the feeling evoked within the protagonist. One must view Pahala Adhyay simply as "Life is".