E-Paper
Sen's films say more
Mrinal Sen's autobiography has a major flaw - it fails to reveal more about himself or his creations than his films.
Always Being Born
Mrinal Sen
Stellar Publishers
2004
biography, Cinema
Pages: 328
Price: Rs 395
ISBN: 8190 2247 0 0
Hardcover
"Demonic, baroque visual theatricality, helplessly adhering to the confused theories" is how David Thompson describes Sergei Eisenstein's writings.
Thompson has the right to write his thoughts. But the world, especially those who've read Eisenstein, know it's a backlash against the Master. We can forget and , for those are not autobiographical musings of a director and attract only filmmakers, rather than general film lovers. But how can we ignore , even if it's not a typical autobiography of the Master; the sheer power of its words, the magnitude of the descriptions and the philosophy of a man who was born at least two decades ahead of his time is for all to see (read read).
Not satisfied with the Master's genius with the pen! Let us take My Last Breath. Luis Bunuel was a gift to cinema, but he had no hang-ups of being a writer. Despite his self-confessed clumsiness with words, however, My Last Breath introduces us to unknown and very often a different facet of Bunuel's character. That Obscure Object of Desire is Bunuel's masterpiece, and in more than one aspect. The world has interpreted the film in very many ways, but this is what Bunuel had to say about it: "All I can say is that the mystery remains intact right until the final explosion. In addition to the theme of the impossibility of ever truly possessing a woman's body, the film insists upon maintaining that climate of insecurity and imminent disaster -- an atmosphere we all recognise, because it is our own." Let us just keep in mind Bhuvan Shome here, for we have to return to it later.
