Two days, two films Part 1

I nearly didn’t go for the fist one. I really wanted to see it of course, but I really wanted to see it on the big screen, the way films are supposed to be seen. ‘Gopi gawaiyaa, Bagha bajaiyaa’ is a CFSI produced animation film based on the short story ‘Gopi gyne, Bagha byne’ by Upendra Kishore Roy Chowdhury. One look at the trailer will give you a sense of the canvas of the film- it has been designed to be a film for the theatre, not the small screen of television. Much work would have gone in the sound as well, and I was really not looking forward to seeing it at Vikalp @ Prithvi, at Prithvi House- those are hardly ideal conditions for film viewing.

But then I wasn’t sure when the next opportunity to see the film would present itself, and so I went...

Even though I must state at the very outset that there is little that I know about animation, so I can’t talk knowledgably about it, it was the animation that struck a chord. It’s a beautifully detailed film- exquisite, like some of our folk forms. The first thing, and the last, and throughout in between, that hits you is the colour and the detail. While things have been kept simple, a lot seems to have gone into designing it in a way that maximum possible communication is made possible by efficient production. A rich multicoloured palate is used throughout- every frame is a feast (some have too much going on- there were places I thought the background plates were almost distracting). And the textures, oh my! Things come alive because of her use of textures…

She seemed to have been inspired by shadow puppetry- especially in how she conceived the ghost, and the way facial features moved within the face of the evil Senapati, with overall movement, in a rocking motion almost- I had thought while seeing the film. In the interaction afterwards she mentioned that this was indeed true, and had informed everything from the animation, especially the movements, to how the various characters shaped up. While on the subject of characters- I was most fascinated by the noses! She said the film had about 80 characters- so many varieties of noses! And I was fascinated by the stitches everywhere on the faces and bodies, like they were cloth dolls stitched into shape.

The other thing noteworthy about the film is another subject I know little about- the music. It’s a musical, so from the first scene to the last, there is such-lovely-music.

Somewhere in the middle of the film however, a note of disapproval crept into my mind- when the boys started fighting over the girl. It was disservice enough to women to not have a single noteworthy female character in a film directed by a woman, though in a story that perhaps didn’t allow for it, it can, I suppose, be overlooked. But what explanation do we have for perpetuating the idea of boys fighting over a girl they haven’t even seen, forget interacted with. It made me shake my head, and want to shake a finger at Soumitra for having written it that way, and for Shilpa for having directed it…

Otherwise, it was mostly a lovely experience. See the trailer and judge for yourself.