The Science of Sleep

The Science of Sleep (2006), Directed by Michel Gondry.

Either you get into a film since the first shot, or you slowly slip into the lives of the characters as it progresses, or sometimes no matter how hard you try the film completely eludes you. The science of cinema is much like the science of sleep. Not surprisingly people have such divergent experiences even when they have watched the same story unfold on the big screen. Though what is surprising is how everyone is such an involved and passionate critic when it comes to films but has so little to say about the events in ‘real’ life. However, I digress.

It is not yet time for bed. Tom Waits playing in the background sings,

When I'm lyin' in my bed at night
I don't wanna grow up
Nothin' ever seems to turn out right
I don't wanna grow up

And then after a few more songs he starts to say,

but you're innocent when you dream
when you dream
you're innocent when you dream

But again I digress.

As adolescents we’d stay up well through the night because life was short and sleeping was a waste of time. But then we also believed that we could grow up to become almost anyone we wanted. And the story of our adulthood would be dominated by only one character – the almighty me.

However, now as thirty somethings there is nothing we look forward to more than sleep time. In fact, we are often reluctant to wake up to face another day in the life. For in dreams lies our real world.

At last coming to the film in question – what is there not to love about this whimsical (you say, write genius) film about Stéphane meeting Stephanie and (we all) meeting his world of dreams? As the boundary between dreams and reality blurs, how does one distinguish between the two? They say in our dreams the ‘impossible becomes possible’. But who is to say what is impossible to begin with?

People may either dream about a plane not taking off or of a dead relative gifting them a ruby ring. Similarly there are many ways of ‘seeing’ this film. Best to let our imagination and creativity make sense of our dreams and reality.

I'm exhausted, I'm gonna wake up now.

(On cinema part 3)

Rashomon

Rashomon (1950) Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Then came Rashomon. And it was not a moment too soon. We were in our mid twenties crawling towards the thirties- the age of cynicism. We had crossed the moment when reality and truth are enthusiastically, even euphorically embraced. Right or as we were soon to discover what we perceived to be right and good were passionately defended. And life was simply a struggle between the good and the evil with naturally the good always emerging victorious. We were suspended in that nebulous region somewhere between passionate adherence to our sense of right and the soon to engulf us unfathomable skepticism.

At that moment Rashomon happened. The rain falls incessantly and the three men take refuge under a gate and soon the monk and the woodcutter are narrating to the commoner a most incredible tale. A woman is raped and subsequently her husband is murdered. At the enquiry the woman, the accused bandit, the ghost of the dead husband and the woodcutter who chances upon the lifeless body in the forest narrate four versions of the story. Each version totally different from the other and yet each describing the same truth while dragging us through a labyrinth of trees and human deception with the dappled light hiding much more than it reveals. The sun peers through the dense foliage, the leaves rustle, the shade flickers, the shadows stretch across the faces and the rain refuses to relent. Even the elements conspire to obscure that, which should be self-evident. The camera seems to run to capture the truth that shifts shapes with every passing moment to elude it.

So, a simple story gets transformed into a philosophical treatise on the relativism of truth and the subjectivity of our perceptions. It becomes a film about, as Kurosawa writes, “…such human beings–the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are…this sinful need for flattering falsehood going beyond the grave...Egoism is a sin the human being carries with him from birth; it is the most difficult to redeem.”

Rashomon showed us who ultimately wins when reality and the ego clash. Therein lies the truth. And we think we became better humans, if only in our perception, just by becoming aware of that.

Another thing, Rashomon went on to win the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival and the American Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Kurosawa writes, “ Japanese critics insisted that these two prizes were simply reflections of Westerners’ curiosity and taste for Oriental exoticism, which struck me then, and now, as terrible. Why is it that Japanese people have no confidence in the worth of Japan? Why do they elevate everything foreign and denigrate everything Japanese? Even the woodblock prints of Utamoro, Hokusai and Sharaku were not appreciated by Japanese until they were first discovered by the West. I don’t know how to explain this lack of discernment. I can only despair of the character of my own people.” (Something Like an Autobiography)

If we replace the word Japanese/Japan with Indian/India the above thought would still hold true.

(On cinema part 2)

Andrei Rublev

Andrei Rublev (1966) Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.

It has to have a beginning. In our case it was Andrei Rublev. There were before that stray snatches, a scene, a visual recollected from the late night show on Doordarshan long before there were 357 channels and nothing on. Later we’d wonder where does one go to watch these films. For we were too preoccupied with the obvious to realize that in far off reaches of India, in small towns of Kerela there exist Andrei Tarkovsky appreciation societies and such like. Till an honorable member of one such introduced us to Andrei Rublev.

The moment the rope is cut and the man shouts, “I’m flying, I’m flying” gliding over the beautiful Russian landscape with the horses running wild till the inevitable thud and the horse rolling in the grass rising to trot off and reveal the broken man and his tattered balloon something in our lives changed. We were drawn into the world of Andrei Rublev with his vow of silence, painter of breathtaking icons in an era devoid of spirituality. The jester dances banging his drum, pagans carry torches in the mist, the birch trees in the forest crawl with life and the river yields a decomposed swan, the cavalry marches through the snow, the snow falls through the roof of the ransacked church, the mad woman chooses to go with the Tartars, and finally in an inspired moment overcoming the fear of death and lack of knowledge the young man casts the perfect bell and as the bell tolls Andrei Rublev regains his passion. While we watched the horses standing in the rain at the end unnoticed by us something inside us too got reborn.

Andrei Rublev became the moment when we began to ‘see’. We developed a cinematic conscience just like a child records what would go onto become her first childhood memory. And life has become so much more enriching ever since.


(On cinema part 1)