"Shahani’s other allegiance [in addition to Ritwik Ghatak] is to Bresson with whom he had worked on a film. The legacy of that lesson is to be seen in the girl in the centre of Mayadarpan [sic]. She, too, like Mouchette, suffers inwardly and wordlessly. No quarrel with that. But we are concerned with what happens outwardly. And here, I am afraid, Bresson evaporates. Does Shahani seriously believe that the major outward manifestation of such suffering is a slow, rigid ambulation up and down verandas repeated every five minutes or so throughout the film? Film language would be threatened with extinction if this were really so. To me Maya Darpan seems a combination of poor psychology and poorer stylization. Even the sophisticated response to colour goes for nothing in a film that is so gauche in its handling of the human element. Even more than [Mani] Kaul, Shahani seems to forget that when one imposes a rigid style on the actor without a thorough working out of its expressive possibilities, it becomes indistinguishable from bad acting. The method becomes, extremely risky in a story with an urban background, where the nature of life and work severely limits the expressive gestures. The only possible approach here is the psychological one, for which Shahani seems to have no use."
Satayajit Ray on Kumar Shahani’s Maya Darpan from his collected essays in Our Films, Their Films1 note
Monday 13th February at 7:31pm
Tagged with: wow hARSH ok so like maya darpan wasn't perfect but ugh idt this is a fair assessment either like it unfortunately goes back to those pigheaded debates on bresson vs dreyer stfu but interesting nonethless Satyajit Ray kumar shahani maya darpan film criticism indian cinema
"No agony, no agony, no agony. If God is everywhere, why is there agony?"
