Sant Tukaram (1936)
Director: V. Damle, S. Fattelal; Writer: Shivram Vashikar; Cinematographer: V. Avadhoot; Editor: A.R. Sheikh; Cast: Vishnupant Pagnis, Gauri, B. Nandrekar, Shankar Kulkarni, Kusum Bhagwat, Shanta Majumdar, Master Chhotu, Pandit Damle, Sri Bhagwat
Duration: 02:10:58; Aspect Ratio: 1.286:1; Hue: 162.712; Saturation: 0.006; Lightness: 0.498; Volume: 0.233; Cuts per Minute: 15.437
Summary: This classic film chronicles the life of Tukaram (17th C.), one of Maharashtra's most popular saint poets, activating the 20th-C. resonances of his turning away from courtly Sanskrit towards vernacular rhythms of religious poetry which constituted the first major emancipatory movement against brahminical caste domination. The episodic plot pits Tukaram (Pagnis) against the Brahmin Salomalo (Bhagwat), who pretends to be the true author of Tukaram's songs while calling for his ostracisation. In showing Tukaram's growing popularity and his willing acceptance of the suffering heaped on him and his family by his oppressors, the movie binds song, gesture, rhythm and camera together with character and crowd behavious denoting the spiritual connection between the poet and the people while separating off the members of the brahminical caste. One of the studio's cheaper productions, it adheres to most of the conventions of the genre, including numerous 'miracle' scenes in which the poet's god intervenes to demonstrate the truth of Tukaram's teachings. However, it endows these conventions with an unusual degree of conviction, as in the song
Adhi beej ekale, written for the scene in which Tukaram celebrates the fertility of nature and composed in the poet's own ovi form of 3-1/2 beats, paralleling the work rhythm of women churning a grindstone. Scholars mistook it for an original, hitherto unknown Tukaram composition. The film breaks new ground with Gauri's earthly portrayal of Tukaram's wife, Jijai, who energetically squeezes cow-dung cakes for fuel and refuses to ascend to heaven, preferring to stay on earth and look after the children. Other innovations include the extraordinary tracking shot introducing Rameshwar Shastri to the town, showing the people working to the cadence of a song, Gauri, a familiar figure in Prabhat films mainly in walk-on roles, had her first major break in the film and went on to several fine performances in e.g.
Manoos/Admi (1939) and
Sant Sakhu (1941). Kumar Shahani (1981) pointed to erotic elements in the devotional fervour e.g. in the scenes of the prostitute who is converted by the saint and in Pagnis's own performance. Art historian Geeta Kapur wrote (1987): [It] belongs [to] a sub-genre of special significance. The saints' lives are, as legends, quasi-biographical material [e]xpressly adaptable to historical ends' in the light of their manifest commitment to spiritual equality and their validation of demotic speech patterns.
The finale AUD Class
GC: Iconic image 1
After the titles, the first image of the film is that of an idol of Vitthala, also called Panduranga, and his wife Rakhumai—a mutation of Rukmini.
This is interesting. The deity wears earrings shaped like a makar (a sea mammal, probably the white shark); so he is Vishnu. But the consort’s name. This .suggests he is Rukmini-husband, Krishna. This further means the deity is both a god and one of his avatars.
So Tukaram is established as a varkari and a Vaishnav.
[For more about this god and this religion of syncretism in Maharashtra, please see: 'The Cult of Vitthala,' a translation by Ann Feldhaus of ' Vitthala ek Mahasamanvya' by R. C. Dhere]
The idols are positioned fully facing the camera—or/and the audience gaze. They are seen knee above, in a tight mid-shot.
One could imagine the idols are situated in a temple; but that is not made clear.
This is an iconic image—without any specificity of time and space.
But then there are several difference between the iconic nature of a painting or a photograph and that of the cinematic image.
One is the latter’s temporal aspect. A film image is a shot that runs over time or has a temporal duration. This image containing the gods runs for seventeen seconds.
Nothing changes for a while (after all these are stone idols). A slight camera movement heralds the shot transition. There is an image change, using the fan wipe.
Frontality
Iconic image
Idols and iconicity
Rakhumai
Vitthala
Episode 1
triangle
Iconic image 1
Iconicity
Shot duration
Triangularity
The next shot is of Tukaram sitting and singing. The same song continues---he is singing the song.
There are several objects in the frame: some farming equipment (he could be in his house), an architectural feature resembling the base of a temple pillar (he could be in a temple).
We don't know where he is. We could assume he is sitting facing the gods he worships. But that has not been made clear.
This indeterminacy makes this an iconic image, too. We realize this is Tukaram from the iconography: the song--a famous abhang attributed to Tukaram; the musical instruments; the sandalwood paste markings on his face and so on.
There is the image of the god; there is the image of the devotee; but the images are not yet connected in space and time.
This juxtaposition of the two shots is not creating any story at this point in the film.
Importantly, the shot is of very long duration---one hundred and ten seconds (almost two minutes).
Nothing moves in this shot—neither the camera nor the actor. He sways and sings but does not walk and change his position vise a vise the camera). So there is no change in the mise en scene. There is no editing within shot,
We could say this is a meditative camera looking on at the sant meditating upon his god.
Yet again this image is not a fully frontal. The sitting image of Tukaram makes an angle with the camera. This angular placement together with the previous frontal image creates a triangularity and opens up a third position---to be occupied by the audience.
What this creates is a triangular relationship between the god, the devotee and the audience (looking on at the two).
[For additional understanding to this traditional relationship, one could go to Norman Cutler’s book on Tamil Bhakti poetry: 'Songs of Experience: The Poetics of Tamil Devotion' (Chicago University Press, 1979) and 'Icons and Events: Reinventing Visual Construction in Cinema in India' by Gayatri Chatterjee in 'Bollyworld: Popular Indian Cinema through a Trans-national lens' edited by Raminder Kaur and Ajay Sinha, Sage publication].
Indian filmmakers have used this triangularity (between two characters and the audience) to depict lovers. This creates some very interesting mise en scene quite unique to Indian cinema: the lack of cutting between two lovers, showing them looking out making angles but never exchaning looks through shot/counter-shot, (this has been discussed in the annotations for Devdas and Jogan).
mental image
With another wipe, we come to the next shot of the film--which is not a single iconic shot but a sequence with Salomalo.
And as soon as he is introduced, the camera begins to move. The cinematic process is fully installed with the process of editing, the use of dialogues, the introduction of other characters, and the establishment of a geographical space—where the event is taking place.
Salomalo sings the same song, but in a different tune.
The music director Keshav-rao Bhole writes he composed ‘this song’ for Salomalo in the rag Behag and in the style of the Marathi Natya-sangeet—with little tankari, thumka etc (Majhe Sangeet, K V Bhole, 1964).
If Tukaram’s singing mode is simple, this is ornamental, if the former has interiority and calm, this is show-offish and dramatic.
Bhagawat playing Salomalo was a theater actor and consummate singer.
Salomalo tries to 'steal' Tukaram's poetic creation in order to become popular and popularly venerated by the villagers.
Traditional texts, for example Bahina-bai's poems, enjoin that Mumba-ji and not Salomalo the Brahmin constantly opposed Tukaram. However, the filmmakers chose to have the latter as the 'enemy of the hero,' someone who is supposed to provide obstacles in the path of the Bhakta (devotee).’
In all religious stories about faith, there must be someone to test the faithful devotee on the grounds of faith and god-love. Salomalo is that figure.
However clearly, the people are not easily fooled. But then they are also ready to accept and test out this Brahman and his claims.
The characterization of Salomalo is quite complete in this episode: he is a false Bhakta or devotee. He would lie, pretend, steal and go to any length in order to gain what he wants.
At the end of the Salomalo sequence, once again the early Tukaram image is brought back with another wipe.
This needs some attention.
The film begins with a full immersion in the devotional mode; but that mood is interrupted by the false devotee Salomalo. There is then a
rasa-bhanga—a break to the quiet and meditative shanta rasa produced by Tukaram’s singing.
So the former rasa is reinstated, as if it were—an amazing understanding of aesthetics from the directors of this film.
This also raises a question. Usually, a drama, an assemblage of all various rasas, ends with the
shanta rasa—the resolution and closure must reinstate calmness and stability, with the heart-n-mind finding balance. So how come the narrative here begins with calmness; or more precisely, even before the narrative begins there is calm and equanimity? The drama is meant to begin and disturb it all. We will need to remember this question as the film nears its end.
Bahinabai traces the bhakti (vaishnavite) tradition to Naat. (Adinath ie Shiva)
Tukaram had 6 children and 2 wives. But in this film he has one daughter and one son and one wife.
Kumar Shahani's famous essay on Sant Tukaram:
The Salomalo sequence is followed by a sequence with Tukaram's wife Jijai and daughter Kashi. This is an episodic film and we realize we must note carefully the progression of the sequences.
The daughter of a moneylender from Pune, Tukaram's second wife Jijai is shown as outspoken and independent in spirit but also childlike and lovable.
This extraordinary representation of a wife begins with Jijai engaged not in some household chore but in something that gives her pleasure. She washes her pet she-buffalo, while singing an ovi, songs women in Maharashtra sing while conducting their everyday chores. The tune of this particular ovi is like a lullaby; and she ends it by gently humming.
Her daughter Kashi comes in to fill a large earthen basin with water. Remarkably, she too then sits down to do something she enjoys---namely, making a human figure with mud and dung. Kashi half complains and half teases her mother for taking care of a she-buffalo that has stopped producing milk. It is so because the animal had come with the latter as part of her dowry.
Jijai defends her love for the she-buffalo in strong terms. Also, she worships Manglai, the goddess worshiped by her natal family. Till the end of the film, Jijai will remain steadfast in her own belief system and not be proselytized by her husband.
Possibly, the name of the buffalo is Manglai, too. Jijai sings another ovi about 'Manglai of my mother's home...a woman of many attributes.' She adds that the buffalo gives much milk. Clearly the song was composed once when the animal was producing milk.
Tukaram was a farmer by caste. but he had a grocery shop, so he could have also been a Vani. The afghan (?) rulers of the time created a position of money lender, so the family also became a sahukar. (money lender).
Jijai is played by a studio hand, and someone of lower caste who worked in Prabhat studio. Her name is therefore given only as Gauri, without a surname.
Gayatri Chatterjee: Heroine can criticise the hero.
A blasphemous act in our times - to take a leather shoe into the temple and lambast the deity! (this film could not be made in todays time, it may get censored!)
More who teaches philosophy in PU. (descendant of Tukarams family) says that its the More family temple, not public one as portrayed in the film.
special effects
interesting aspect of the bhakti tradition in maharashtra is the the diety is called the mother. he says mother 3 times. (redo transcript)
Scene 2 (buffalo, sick child, temple blasphemy, miraculous cure, punishment)
Scene 3
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