Magical force of simplicity

The Blackboard reflects the vision of a young filmmaker blessed with the ability to pierce into the heart of harsh geopolitical realities, says Saibal Chatterjee

Narrative simplicity and economy of means do not come easy to a filmmaker. So when a director does manage to get even remotely close to the vicinity of direct, uncluttered cinematic expression, the effort can yield a work of rare worth, a creation shorn of artifice despite all the conscious choices that an artist or storyteller must necessarily make when he chooses to focus on a visual, emphasise an idea or simply highlight a striking human situation.

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As it so amply does in Samira Makhmalbaf's second film as a director, Takhte Siah (Blackboard), which she completed at the tender age of 21. The film, made in the year 2000, reflects the vision of a young, immaculate filmmaker blessed with the ability to pierce into the heart of harsh geopolitical realities to come up with startling insights into the human condition in a war-ravaged country. The unrelenting starkness of the setting, captured through images of uncommon beauty, reflects the intractability of the grave problems that beset the people who live there.

Screened on the fourth day of the ongoing Asian's Cinefan - 6th Festival of Asian Cinema to a packed auditorium, Blackboard took many filmgoers weaned on the spectacle of Hollywood blockbusters and the soulless thrills of Bollywood potboilers by utter surprise. Its story is located on the Iran-Iraq border, but such is the power and universality of the tale that its resonance could be valid anywhere in the world where mankind is struggling to surmount the daunting obstacles of war, exploitation and hunger.

The Blackboard

Blackboard focuses on a group of uprooted Kurdish teachers who are compelled to trek across the border, blackboards strapped to their backs, when their habitat is bombed with chemicals. They look for young people who might be in need of education: all they find are hapless human beings too caught up in the bitter struggle of daily existence to turn their minds to the need to acquire education. A humanist spirit that gives the powerful visuals a context and logic lifts a simple enough storyline way above the mundane.

This is cinema at its simplest. It is also cinema at its most powerful. Samira Makhmalbaf draws her strength from the combination of cinematic virtuosity and technical finesse on the one hand and a deep understanding of a culture-specific yet universal idiom that can communicate with viewers around the globe.

Much the same is achieved in Khyentse Norbu's Bhutanese film, Travellers and Magicians. Norbu is a 42-year-old lama recognized as the incarnation of a great Buddhist saint of 19th century Tibet. He employs cinema much in the manner of a painter wielding his brush or a writer his pen - to express his personal views on man and the world he lives in. He eschews pontification and adopts a direct approach that fits in nicely with the simple yet magical quality of his narration.

Travellersand Magicians is about Dhondup, a handsome young government servant stationed in a remote Bhutanese outpost. Even as he discharges his official duties, he spends all his waking hours dreaming of flying away to the US. But his journey assumes a completely unexpected shape as he, while on the road to get to Thimphu, meets a monk, an apple-seller, a papermaker and his pretty daughter, Sonam, whose presence gives Dhondup reason to rethink his plans.

The wise monk, as they wait to hitch a ride to town, spars with Dhondup good-naturedly, poking fun at his obsession with the US. He then tells the young man the mythical story of Tashi, a village boy who learns the art of magic and is unable to bear the thought of being confined to his pastoral existence all his life. During his peregrinations, Tashi is lost in a forest, where he falls in love with an old man's beautiful wife.

The film alternates between a real journey and vividly depicted dreamscape, the two running parallel to each other. For Dhondup, the US is a land of dreams but the story of Tashi, despite its reverie-like quality, impacts his mind. Or is it the beautiful Sonam who deflects him off his chosen path?

Travellers and Magicians is a bewitching, humorous and utterly human film that captures the beauty of Bhutan's landscape with loving detail. Using amateur actors, Khyentse Norbu achieves the kind of spontaneity that no big-budget commercial can ever hope to attain. This indeed is magic that can travel to any corner of the globe without losing its way.