Provisory translation from an review in shomingeki No. 18, November 2006


Attention: This text will be published in a new reedited and corrected version in the book FIVE INDIAN DIRECTORS by Pradip Biswas and Rüdiger Tomczak

Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, a film by Aparna Sen, India: 2002

“Maybe all men got one big soul where everybody´s part of it.
All faces of the same man one big self.” (Monologue from the film The Thin Red Line by Terrence Malick, USA: 1998)

for Lyne Beaudry



There are films on which I could write like on travels, encounters or own experiences despite the fact that I deal with a cinematic tale which takes us temporarily away into an invented identity.
After seeing such a film several time we will follow a trace and it takes some time until we can express some comprehensive, universal thoughts and feelings about such a film.

The film opens with a collage of news excerpts and different over voices. It deals with a number of terroristic massacres motivated politically or religious. This may be point to the time where the film was made (before and after September, 11, 2001).
Than a little red and white bus appears and a voice tells about two strangers, meeting at a bus travel.
But there is also a third opening of the film (before the film begins to tell its story). Meenakshi, a young orthodox Hindu woman from the south is prepared by her mother for a long trip. Her hair is done by the mother and a lot of rituals are made for the daughter. The daughter let it happen but she is sometimes bothered by the verbal didactic kind of her mother. Meenakshi is going to travel back to her husband in Calcutta with her nearly one year old son.

A bus terminal where a lot of strangers are waiting for a travel: among others a woman with her adolescent handicapped son, an elderly man with his wife and his sister or two Sikhs. The travellers are like the spectators who are waiting together in front of an entrance of a film theatre. If this accidental group of people become fiction, for building up a story, some certain narrative constructions have to be invented. Meenakshis father is the forest care taker of this region. Raja, a liberal open minded muslim and a wild life photographer (who owes Meenakshis father the permission to photograph in this region) is asked by Meenakshis parents to help the young woman who is travelling with a baby and a lot of luggage.
Finally the bus and the film begin to move at the same time. While the titles appear we see the Bus driving on narrow dizziness evoking roads through a green mountain landscape, I feel reminded in the wonderful Road Movie Arigato-san (Mr. Thank you, Japan: 1936) by Hiroshi Shimizu.

The persons are now stuck together into a narrow place and from situations and often funny moments the film begins to enfold itself. The film constructs out of these different people who are separated through language, age, gender and religion a mosaic of a human life. Aparna Sen has given these people special characteristics which are soon occupying our visual memory. Like in the films by Ford, Ozu or Renoir these different ages of a human life will be involved in a strange dialogue.

The bus is crowded by people like this 30 minute long bus scene is packed with visual and narrative ideas which give the film an enormous depth. We learn something about the multi-cultural facets of the sub continent India but as well about the spiritual sub continent cinema.
In the necessary reorganisation of time ( several hours bus travel must be compressed into to 40 minutes film time) Aparna Sen brings together seemingly different visions of cinema. When the interior scenes in the bus appear in real time where every cut means a glance, they are interrupted by total shots of the driving bus. This total shots can mean short but also longer pieces of passing time. That has to do on one hand with “the overcoming of time through space” (Francois Truffaut on Hitchcocks The Birds) but as well with some train sequences in Ozus films where the montage appears transparent as an obvious method to organize an artificial time. The montage in Mr. and Mrs. Iyer is at the same time poetic and analytical. I don't believe there is a real contradiction between a cinema of identification and one of reflection. Mr. and Mrs. Iyer shows me that these seemingly different attitudes about film making can exist side by side. (1)

Aparna Sen seems to move freely in a spiritual landscape which seems to me created by more than 100 years history of cinema. And how she brings together the past of narrative cinema with its present, she created also unique connections between the different (life -) times of her characters. These leads to moments which I would like to call pure poetic cinematic moments. There are among others two examples which seem to be plain at the first sight but which are for me reason enough to love this film.
In one scene Meenakshi is in trouble with her crying child. She turns her head behind her, looking for Raja who is placed some rows behind. Directly behind her seat is a young couple (can be identified obviously as Hindus because of the woman´s Bindi). This couple is flirting and. We see Meenakshi how she looks at them ( who behave themselves opposite to her quite freely) for a few seconds. For me, this glance has the subtle idea of longing and envy of a woman who was to early bound in marriage and motherhood. This glance of just some seconds is intense and unforgettable and gives already an idea what a single glance of Konkona Sen Sharma can evoke. She seems to look at another possibility of her life, that she hasn't lived.
The other moment is more complex and a wonderful example how Aparna Sen creates connections between different life times. The old muslim is grumbling to his wife about the noisy young people. “Let them, it is their time for fun”, she answeres. Another time he complains about the “shameless” kind the girls are dressed. Some moments later, the girl Kushboo takes her guitar and sings a song which begins with “Don't say a word.” The old man has become tired, his face has a dreamy, absent-minded expression. Just a moment ago he has talked with his wife how they first met many years ago. When his wife is argueing with him because he always takes in and out his dentures, he answers half sleeping and enchanted by the girls song more singing than talking: “Don't say a word.” The present youth of the singing girl and his own youth in the past come together in a magical kind. The girl and the old man have each for themselves found a place for their dreams.

What Mr. and Mrs. Iyer for example has in common with Ozus last masterpiece Samma no aji (An Autumn afternoon, 1962) is a complexity we don't recognize at the first sight. Once I tried to track patterns in Ozus film in listing all the rooms and places in the film. In Aparna Sens film I could make a sketch how the persons are placed in the bus. Each of the characters has a kind of pendants which can be a mirror, a personification of another possible reality or another life time like Raja and the indian jew Cohen, Meenakshi with a young and old hindu woman or Kushboo and the old muslim. Like in Ozus film, past and present are connected in these images. (2)

Suddenly the bus has to take with its mostly sleeping passengers another road, because the main road is closed. But even the other road is soon blocked by parking trucks and buses. It is twilight, the passengers walk around and ask the driver. The old muslim celebrates his evening prayer, his face toward the sinking sun.
A sikh mentions an assassin on a train motivated by religious fanatics which caused some hundred death victims.
Finally Meenakshi and Raja are awakening. (for practical reasons they sit now in the same row.)She smiles when she finds her hand on his one. The last sun rays are reflected in their faces. And this light on the faces of Konkona Sen Sharma and Rahul Bose is beautiful like an escaping nice dream. Suddenly there is noise, excited men are running around with cudgels in their hand through a river landscape. A police jeep appears and an officer pronounces the curfew. He won't take responsibility for people who are staying outside the buses in the darkness of the night. The religious motivated riots could be found before in small traces in the newspapers the passengers have read during the bus travel. This small traces are now an obvious danger. The people are in the middle of a region of a riot between muslims and hindus.
The community was during the travel not only a “little India” how Aparna Sen once said like the community in Shimizus Arigato-san was a cross over of people suffering under the japanese economical crisis in the Thirties. The buses in both films have also an affinity to cinema. They drive through fragments of the world visible in the windows like looking at the limited cadrage of a screen. The bus as a cinema like place in Mr. and Mrs. iyer was despite all cultural and religious differences a relative peaceful and civilized place. But now the community is split. Hindus and Sikhs blaming muslims and even Meenakshi is irritated when she learns that Raja is a muslim. Only Raja, Cohen and the teenagers are reserved with resentments and pre justice. Now all have to spend the night together in the bus. It is dark, the windows are black and the space became very narrow. The symbols of civilisation are out of function. The cars and buses can't continue and all portable phones don't work any more and this little India, exemplary for the sub continents civilisation seems to be separated into tribe rivalities.

Fanatic Hindus enter the bus, obviously on the search for muslims and there is no doubt in their intention. Some men have to drop their pants to proof their religion. Surprisingly especially Cohen the jew informs them about the old muslim couple. They are deported out of the bus, first with patience, later with violence. The old couple is at first unsuspecting which contrasts to the obvious intention of the fanatics. The scene is depressing even though the violence takes place outside of the frame.
Depressing silence.
Only Kushboo stands up, begs the men for letting the old people in the bus. They beat her in the face and make her silent. When Raja stands up in indignation, Meenakshi gives him in a quick reaction the baby. There is a very moving moment with Rahul Bose which goes far beyond the context of this scene. There is an expression on his face which gives an idea like an understanding of his own powerlessness. He, whose profession is to record moments and images is condemned to be unable to act. The only thing he can do is to take the crying baby in his arms for calm it down. Meenakshi pretends, Raja is her husband which saves him from the sure death. The film is now opening a new element in its story. The characters Raja and Meenakshi do now the same what the actors Konkona Sen Sharma and Rahul Bose do; they play fictive persons.

When Cohen is asked why he had informed the old couple he answers weeping: ”They would have killed me. I am Jewish. I don't have a foreskin.” He, who belongs to an even smaller minority acted out of fear to death and acted against his vision of the world. Many other passengers in the bus could have reacted like him.

Identifications like in a dream

I am the old muslim who is deported with his wife out of the bus, who is band with her banned from the community and who is killed with his wife in a hidden place.
I am the indian jew Cohen, who gives away the old couple to the Hindu fanatics out of fear he himself could be a victim. He is also banned from the community.
I am also Meenakshi who was married too young for guaranteeing the continuation of her orthodox family and whose dreams are betrayed.
I am also Raja, the photographer, who seems to be open minded but who is unable to name his feelings, his fears and his wishes. He is married with his camera and several natural parks in India where he collects images.
Maybe I am also Santanam, the Baby, who is neither blind for the beauty nor for the ugly sides of the world.
The child who doesn't know pre justice, who accepts people for their own sake as long they are friendly.
All this souls have spoken to me like in a dream, I always have when I see this film.
This film is heaven and hell at the same time.
All these persons are sometimes alone:
when they dream,
when they love,
when they fear,
when they die.

The dawn of the next day. While we hear a song which bases on a suffi poem from the 11th. Century, we see Cohen walking lonely through the landscape. He leaves this film likely sad as Jean Renoir did as Octave in his film La Regle du Jeu (Rules of The Game, France, 1939). This shot gives him a certain kind of dignity. We know that he himself could have been the victim. Cohen is the third tragic character in this film. This film might here point as well to the history of its making, where in India at times Hindu fundamentalists who often used Nazi- paroles were participating in the government.
Raja leaves the bus too. He, who wasn't unable to act records traces of the terrible night of murdering: the dentures of the old muslim beside the broken box and the broken glasses. Beside these crystallized traces of the tragedy Raja photographs situations of people who can't continue their travel and who are doing every day actions. Raja is like a spectator. The only thing he can do, is observating and recording. That reminds in the heavy bearable passivity of the spectator in a cinema.

The whole long night.
The sound of the water says,
what I am thinking.
(Gochiku, japanese Haiku-poet)

While the curfew is still on a police officer brings Raja, Meenakshi and the child to a deserted forest house. This is again an isolated place. And this strange place which seems to be in another time and space in the middle of the riots (which concern the whole region) Only an old care taker lives there, a man who lives in his memories of times when his late wife was still on his side. The film brings the world like it is and how we can dream it together. Out of this tension this film will take its power from now on. Raja and Meenakshi (who are considered by all as a couple) are not only strangers but they are also separated by religion and language. The English in that they are talking to each other is the compromise. But though there is a strange intensity between them like it can happen when people with or without their will make a travel together or are stuck together for a certain time.
Independent of it, almost free of gravity above the plot or what we call a story - there are always moments which resemble the poetry of a haiku. Once we see Meenakshi with the baby in her arms. She is anxious and scared to spend the night with a strange muslim in this house. In the depth of the image we see a labour elephant passing by. Santanam, the child recognizes it puts his fingers in the direction of the animal and his voice is excited in joy. Meenakshi doesn't even realises this moment. The child attracts our attention to a complete other detail in the image. We can realise the world like Raja, Meenakshi or the stressed police officer. But we can realize it as well like the child who sees something beautiful and which is fun for him.

There is an argument between Meenakshi and Raja and later the reconciliation. .As varied the confusion of different languages and accents are, the feelings and tensions between Meenakshi and Raja are mostly told in images. Raja, the discrete photographer takes images of situations, persons and things which touch him like for example when he takes pictures of Meenakshi and her child. The wonderful light of cinematographer Gautam Ghose visualize an idea of an emotion in his face. Rahul Bose (3) reminds me in the young Henry Fonda in some films by John Ford, an acting type who is moving exactly because of their discreet kind. And Konkona Sen Sharmas Meenakshi is one of the most moving female characters I saw in a film for a long time. She was praised for her unique ability to adapt in a short time different accents in an almost playful kind like for example the american-english accent in Shonali Boses AMU. But here the magic of her interpretation can be find especially in her mimic and sometimes there is only one glance of a view seconds from her that gives her character in an almost uncanny kind a soul.

Again in the city close to them where people can buy some necessity before as long the curfew is interrupted for a few hours. Meenakshi and Raja are sitting in a tea shop. The young girls they know from the bus are joining them. They are curious to learn the “love story” of this couple. Meenakshi and Raja are telling the (fictive) story of her first encounter. Raja emphasizes more and more a detailed story of “honeymoon” in a temple in Kerala. Despite we know (like Meenakshi and Raja) that this tale is pure fiction, it will nevertheless evoke emotions and longings and here is a moment in the film I would choose if I had to describe this film in one scene. Raja is telling about never really experienced full moon nights in Kerala. “We didn't need oil lamps, did we, Meenakshi?” says he and looks at Meenakshi. She is totally absent-minded, like in a day dream. You must have seen her face and her glance back to Raja to understand that I stopped breathing. This silence of Konkona Sen Sharma belongs to one of the most beautiful moments of the film. What is cinema? Aparna Sens film answers this question in a few seconds with one single glance of Konkona Sen Sharma.

A sharp cut which let us awake. The police officer brings them back to the forest house. The road is blocked by fanatics and they have to take another way. They pass a village which is burnt down. Before we see the village, we see the terror reflected in the persons faces. This time a village is destroyed by muslim fanatics. A totally traumatized child, cries and it seems to be the only sign of life in this village. We recognize the child, a girl which is a reconstruction from some news excerpts in the beginning of the film.
Back in the forest house, Raja tries to write down the experiences of the last days. We hear Meenakshi singing an beautiful lullaby for her child. later after the child has fallen into sleep, both are talking on the veranda. It is getting dark and the world has turned again in this kind of twilight light. Raja and Meenakshi become closer. Despite the reality there remains something like a vision of love. Through Rajas camera lens they observe the animals in the forest. The kind how Raja lets Meenakshi look through his camera has a unique tenderness. Suddenly and for the last time another invasion of terror breaks into the quietness. A group of fanatics chase one man in the forest. Meenakshi and Raja lock themselves in the house and watch this drama through the tele objective of Rajas camera how the chased man will be killed. We don't see the murder but the reaction in the faces of Raja and Meenakshi. Meenakshi gets a heavy shock. He helps her, lays her softly on the bed, covers her with a blanket and sits down in front of the bed.
She wakes up in the night calling her husbands name. It will remain her secret if she means the real name of her husband or the fictive name of Raja.

Then, they are driving in a truck of a military convoy (the police officer organized this ride for them) on the way to the railway station where they will finish their long interrupted travel to Calcutta.
They enter a shabby railway compartment. The dark colour of Meenakshis sari is in strange harmony with Rajas clothes. He is asked by her about places he has travelled to, want to participate in a life which she was never allowed to live. And with oppressed curiosity she asks him if he travelled alone to that or if he will travel alone to the next place. For one moment they are becoming close, almost physically, touching and almost kiss each other until they are disturbed by a passenger who walks through the narrow gangway. (5) Again a sharp cut which jumps over the last hours of this night. Meenakshi plays with her child. He has just waked up and smiles. She drinks from the water bottle in the kind of orthodox Hindus (who never touch the bottle with her lips and let the water drop into their mouths). He smiles again and when she asked why he smiles he turns his head shyly to the window. When the train has a longer stop, Raja leaves the train for buying coffee. Irrational but nevertheless moving is Meenakshis almost whispered sentence to her baby:” He has left us and is gone, Baby.” Raja returns, put the coffee cups on a little table, takes Santanam silent in his arms and sits down. In a strange physical confidence she leans her head on his shoulder. And then again a cut - this time the most heartbreaking of the whole film. The train arrives Calcutta central station. Meenakshis husband is waiting for them. Meenakshis husband thanks Raja who is introduced by her as a muslim. Raja says goodbye in a very laconic way, while Manni, Meenakshis husband is phoning his father. Both part from each other. Suddenly Raja stops takes the film out of his camera and returns to Meenakshi. “For you”, he says and gives her (who saved his life twice) the undeveloped film.
That is the only gift he can make to her.
Then he says: “Goodbye Meenakshi”, emphasising the pronunciation of the double e. She almost with tears in her eyes says: “Goodbye, Mr. Iyer”. Without turning back his eyes Raja goes towards a group of men who are expecting him. Then once again Meenakshis face who looks at him while he parts. The frame is freezing. While the credits run we see once again fragments of the moment when Raja took pictures of Meenakshi and her child. This moving images turn always into a freezing one. The images become more and more blurred.
Now there is nothing we can recognize any more.
How Raja moves toward the people who are waiting for him and whom we can't recognize in the blurred background he seems to walk from one reality into another one. I am the one who parts and the one who stays back at the same time.
And I feel like Raja or Meenakshi who probably don't know how and whom they should tell about their encounter their voyage or about all the things they had experienced together.

When I saw this film the first time I didn't liked it at all. After some time when I have seen this film about 18 times it seems to me as one of the most beautiful gifts which was given to me from the more than 100 years old history of cinema by Aparna Sen, a gift which touches so much which is previous to me in and outside of cinema.
And this gift called Mr. and Mrs. Iyer has become part of my love for cinema.


Rüdiger Tomczak

Remarks.
1) I am not a friend of a theory of cinema unless it deals with concrete films (like Bazin did). And according to Gilles Deleuze I am fond of the idea that a film maker is beside being a poet is as well a thinker. Generally and according to Ozus sentence:"There is no grammar of the film because any film establishes its own," I believe that every film has beside its narrative or poetic intention always an own theory of course manifested in its images and sounds.

2) I used quite a lot of famous film titles in comparison with Aparna Sens film. There is no intention to track influences which I can´t proof at all. beside the individual achievments in the history of cinema without no masterpiece would exist, I am also interested in this enormous capacity of philosophical, poetic, narrative ideas etc. which is collected in this long history of cinema. Beside these special achievments of the "auteurs du cinema", I see film history aa well as a gigantic landscape created in different countries, in different cultural contexts but as well by individuals.

3) In an older version of the german version was a little chapter about Konkona Sen Sharma. I cut it off to save the balance between two really wonderful actors Bose and Sen Sharma. There was for example a comparison between Sen Sharma and the legendary chinese actress Ruan Ling yu (1910-1936). All this thoughts would have exceed the subject and it is really another idea to compare her three significant roles in Aparna Sens 15 Park Avenue, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer or Shonali Boses Amu.

4)The second part of this essay is more descriptive than the first one. Totally ignoring spoilers (one of the stupid fashionable words ), this a try to transform what I have seen and how I have felt it. It can happen that my english translation gives often a very small idea of it.

5) There was an interesting interview with Aparna Sen (the exact source escaped me) where she talked about the androgyne aspect in her film (or in her films) Even if the androgyne aspect is not only a domain for female film makers, I see in Mr. and Mrs. Iyer an extremely fine balance between female and male aspects. Like in Renoirs The River (where you can find Renoir in the girl who fell for the crippled soldier, for the old widow, his half indian daughter or even the restless soldier himself), in most of Ozus films and in the vietnamese masterpiece Thuong nho dong que (Nostalgia for the country side) by Dang Nhat Minh. The other thing is the fact that the film shows almost all ages you can imagine and probably according to Prousts "beings of time" we can see this film really in different times of our consiciousness. How Meenakshi looks at Raja or we at both of them or how the child looks at them creates a quite varied net of exchanged glances. Beside our probably erotic view at Bose or Sen Sharma there will be always the equal strong view of the child Santanam, a point of view to the world which is still free of all the heaviness of several thousands years cultural history between men and women.

6) After seeing this film about three or four times and before I really could apreciate the film as a whole masterpiece, my access was the wonderful and really Ozu-like interaction between the girl Kushboo and the old muslim through that song which was really my entrance to the depth of this film. What was at my first look at this film quite irritating, the dialectic between identification and strong reflecive moments, I understand now as the key to the poetc of the film. It can be also called the contradiction in cinema between being waked up and dreaming, to let us fall into a cinematic tale and to accept that it is a cinematic tale. It is remarkable that some negative reviews on Mr. and Mrs. Iyer were often focusing rather on the surface of the main plot than underneath.

These remarks don´t appear in the german version