Anirban Dutta’s ‘Anubhuti’, which had its world premiere at Rotterdam, is a sensuous series of tableaux based on Krishna, Radha, and Meera
- Trinity Auditorium
- Feb 5, 2024
- 1 min read
The film is free of dialogue, and Meera Bai’s famous bhajan-s take their place. Through these songs, Meera projects herself into the Krishna-Radha universe in Vrindavan.
In his second feature, Anirban Dutta gets credited for – among many other aspects – the story, screenplay and direction. But unlike other films, these individual components of cinematic storytelling cannot be separated in Anubhuti, which is a dialogue-free amalgamation of verse and music, dance and emotion. Every element exists in such a fused state that perhaps the most ideal credit would be that for mise-en-scène. Let’s say you walked in around the 50th minute. You will not see the faces of the actors playing Krishna, Meera and Radha: Aritraa Sengupta, Shamila Bhattacharya, Rittick Bhattacharya. Instead, you’d find their feet in a single sensual frame. One pair of feet is blue; the other two belong to Meera and Radha. Coloured powder is (slowly) being applied by these feet, smeared on these feet – it’s shringar ras as we have never seen on screen. Toy pigeons and peacock feathers complete the visual composition. As in every other frame in this unusual movie, cinematographer Soham Dey is in no hurry to move away. The long-felt emotion is expressed in a long take.
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