August 12, 2007
'The Blue Umbrella'
- A Lyrical Tale of Hankering and Pain By Subhash K. Jha
Film: "The Blue Umbrella"; Cast:
Pankaj Kapur, Shreya Sharma;
Director: Vishal Bharadwaj; Ratings: ***
There's a quaint wintry feeling to Vishal Bharadwaj's new film that
comes not from knowing-it-all about filmmaking (and god knows, after
"Maqbool" and "Omkara", he is qualified enough to strut around as a
know-all) but from entering the dark tunnel of non-knowing, to
explore an uncharted territory and emerge into a light that's
illuminating and un-experienced.
This is the spirit in which Bharadwaj in his new film enters the
world of the child Biniya, played by Shreya Sharma who is as
brilliant as Shweta Prasad was in his other film about the
unpredictable fantasy world of the young in "Makdee". "The Blue
Umbrella" is about the world of the young but not a film about
children at all.
What is "The Blue Umbrella" about - a fragile fable, a deep
exploration of the relationship between fantasy and childhood or a
treatise on the bonding sometimes bordering on interchangeable
between the very young and the very old?
"Blue Umbrella" is all of that, plus a lot more.
The film's delicately perched theme and baby-soft mood, largely
brought on by the mellow and cold textures of Dalhousie's hilly
climate, are bolstered by some genuinely lucid, near-lyrical
photography by Sachin Kumar Krishnan.
To see the little girl romping in the rain-soaked valleys with her
newly acquired blue umbrella is a sight reminiscent of images out of
Vittorio de Sica or Satyajit Ray's early works.
The director isn't blown away by the visual and lyrical powers
bequeathed to him by a team and theme that create a dreamscape out
of the muted mellow resources of Ruskin Bond's novella.
Through sharply drawn vignettes and a razor-acute humour, Bharadwaj
builds up a gradual momentum in the narration as the umbrella
becomes a stalking point between little Biniya and the village crank
Nandkishore Khatri (Pankaj Kapur) who covets the girl's umbrella and
finally disgraces himself by stealing it.
The frail and tender film's finest moments come towards the end when
the old man is ridiculed and ostracised by the village for his
ostensibly petty theft.
Pankaj brings a magnificent yet mirthful eloquence to his crabby
greedy old man's role. It's hard to imagine "The Blue Umbrella"
working without his presence. The actor vanishes into the
umbrella-thief's role with the stealth of a well-oiled thief
stealing into a room filled with priceless treasures.
And what a booty Pankaj and Bharadwaj emerge with! Don't let the
intimate smallness of the presentation lull you into believing this
to be minor film.
"The Blue Umbrella" talks of layers upon layer of existential
dilemma. It goes into areas of human foibles where the camera
generally has no access. We see the old man's startling solitude in
the snow-capped landscape with the fearful clarity of life looking
at death.
The film's most treasured sequence is the one where the little girl
returns to Khatri's deserted tea stall - humours him by buying stuff
and then quietly leaves the tell tale umbrella on his counter.
Here, more than anywhere else in the richly tapestried story of
hankering and pain, the umbrella, blue or otherwise, emerges as a
metaphor for dreams... pursued, found and fugitive.
There's an enigmatic silence enveloping the heart of this peculiar
tale, a silence that's as hard to pierce, as it is to define.
But the tone of timelessness is heard all through. You can't miss
being under this "Umbrella" without missing out on a vital point on
the raison d'etre of cinema.
This film had to be made because the story of the old man, the
little girl and the umbrella that bonds them waited to be told by a
raconteur who could capture the wispy mood of the plot without
losing the gossamer threads that bind human emotions to a much
larger truth than visible to the camera's eye.
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