It is sometimes averred that children are influenced to avenge the frustrations and failures suffered by their parents. This influence is subtle and unintended, but effective nonetheless. My father, for instance, wanted to become a writer. However, he had to support a wife and a growing family and, so, he went to work in the Defense Industry and, indeed, remained in that employment until his mid-fifties. Then, he revived his interests in creative writing, submitted a few stories for publication, but didn't succeed in that endeavor. As if in recompense for my father's thwarted efforts to become a professional writer, I have spent my life writing, thousands of pages by this time, and millions of words. Because of my father's inability to get his writing published, I haven't really tried to offer my work to the general public -- I just assume that I will never succeed in this endeavor. Nonetheless, in some obscure way, I feel like I am redressing a wrong suffered by my father. A similar dynamic is on view in Chaitanya Tamhane's The Disciple, an austere masterpiece hidden in the darker recesses of Netflix. In The Disciple, a man spends half his life pursing the ignis fatuus of success in the performance of Indian (Hindustani) classical music. In this pursuit, the man, Shared Narulkar, aims to succeed where his father failed and, indeed, blighted his own life and that of his family with his obsession. A conventional film, either made in Holly- or Bollywood, would show us the hero making good where his father failed. The Disciple is more disheartening -- instead of achieving success, Narulkar simply replicates his father's failure in his own life. His striving, it seems, is for naught. The dynamic of fathers and sons is particularly pointed in the insular world of Indian classical music because the art is taught by discipleship -- aspirants to performance of this kind of music study with masters or gurus to whom they are indentured in all respects. The disciple, for instance, is required to massage his master's legs and back -- we see Narulkar lovingly performing this service in the film. But, not all father's are worthy of respect, and the film poses the question of whether Narulkar's guru (the young man calls him Guruji, apparently an honorific) is actually concerned about his pupil's well-being and success in his vocation or is merely exploiting him.
The Disciple begins with a long shot of an Indian classical music ensemble performing. A man in his late middle age is singing while younger people seated at this side play the tabla drums, a harmonium, and create droning tones on large instruments that look like emaciated, out-size string basses. The ensemble is performing to a crowd of about 40 people seated uncomfortably on metal folding chairs in what looks like an assembly room at provincial high school. Fans are running overhead and the room seems hot. The camera slowly dollies toward the ensemble focusing not on Guruji who is singing, but on Shared who is seated at his side playing one of the big stringed instruments and gazing with undisguised love at his Master. The film is constructed with classic symmetry -- the first hour is set in 2006 when Shared is 24; the second half of the film takes place 14 years later with Shared approaching forty. There is a short coda to the film showing Shared married with a little girl -- he now seems to be about 45. In the first hour, Shared performs with Guruji and is shown practicing with the Master. He enters a competition and we expect that he will win a prize -- but, in fact, he doesn't even finish among the top three contestants. The film is punctuated with sequences shot in dreamy slow-motion in which Shared drives his motorcycle through the deserted and grim-looking streets of Mumbai, listening on earbuds to a lecture delivered years earlier by a renowned female singer named Maai. Maai was a purist and never authorized any recordings of her performance -- because no recordings exist, there is nothing to criticize and the community specializing in North Indian Alawar music reveres her like the Hindu goddess of music, Shawasthi. Maai's words are mystical: she says that even "ten-thousand lifetimes would be insufficient to learn how to successfully perform Raag as the musical form is called. (I think this is the Indian word for what we call Ragas in the West.) The performer of this music sings for her Guru and God. All performances necessarily fall short of perfection and, therefore, fail -- "but one must learn to fail with sincerity." The performer who seeks to do justice to his or her art must expect to tread "a path of hunger and loneliness." Ironically, Maai's lecture was delivered to music enthusiasts in Belgium; she was so austere in perfecting her art that she never even allowed herself to be photographed. Shared works transferring hundreds of hours of classical Raag on reel to reel tape to CDs. With a friend, he sells these CDs at classical music festivals. He and his partner are such purists that they are not willing to listen to the concerts where they sell merch -- shows that have catchy titles like Diwali Dawn. "It would make your ears bleed" to hear this denatured Raag music, Shared's friend says. The first hour of the film is interspersed with flashbacks that show Shared with his father -- we see the older man practicing this music with his son keeping him indoors when other children play outside. Later, Shared travels halfway across Indian to a concert performed at dawn on a glorious-looking mountain plateau -- apparently, Raag's are composed for various parts of the day and, with his father, he is seeing a master perform a "morning Raag". (The little boy has memorized the Raag forms that associated with the various times of the day.) Shared lives with his aunt who gently suggests that he should consider getting a real job. Guruji's health is declining -- we see him with a doctor; Shared, of course, is expected to pay for the old man's medications and treatment. The old man performs at a house party in a wealthy man's music room saying that he doesn't understand the introduction made by the hostess with respect to his performance -- "I understood only a little of the English," he says, adding with false modesty, "I will try to give a decent performance of a few songs." Shared's sex life consists of masturbating to computer porn. There is a remarkable transition: we see the beautiful outdoor stage where Shared with his father hear the morning concert, the high ranges of the Himalaya resplendent in the distance. But, then, the film cuts to Shared vomiting. He has stage-fright. At a concert, he performs in tribute to his guru and people politely applaud his efforts.
The film's second hour begins 14 years later. (None of this signaled in any way -- we have to figure out the time-line from the dialogue; indeed, the film is so austere in its technique that it doesn't put the flashbacks in any sort of pictorial quotation marks although, nonetheless, we pretty quickly understand that certain sequences are set in the past.) Shared is at photo-shoot to promote himself for performances at festivals. He has an agent who is pretty skeptical about his career. In this part of the film, Shared is harassed by his mother (whom we never see -- he talks to her by phone) to marry and have children. His mother doesn't want him to "waste his life like his father." Guruji, who seemed on his last legs fourteen years earlier, is still alive, complaining of unremitting pain and still being supported, at least in part, by Shared, who continues to buy his medicine and massage his legs. Shared is now employed as a music teacher and has become the guru to about 14 students. When one of them asks his master's permission to perform with a classical-pop fusion band, Shared is cruelly dismissive -- the boy can perform in that manner if he likes but he will be expelled from the class. In modern India this doesn't go over very well. The boy's mother stalks off, muttering that she will report Shared to the school principal. Shared observes a girl singer navigating auditions for a show like American Idol -- the young woman ultimately becomes famous, performing Raag to pop-rock accompaniment complete with stage-fog and slinky half-naked dancers. Guruji tries to perform at a house-party in the wealthy man's music room, but is too sick to complete the show. After the concert, Shared and a friend meet a fat critic who is famous for having disrespected the Mumbai classical music community. The critic is scathing and there may be an element of North-South Indian bias implicit in the discussion -- the critic seems to come from the North where this form of music was perfected and dislikes the performance style in the South, Mumbai where the film is mostly set. The critic says that Maai was a pious fraud -- she was a racist who denounced the Muslim influence on her music as "poisoning it" and spitefully ruined her own daughter's career. Despite her mystical declarations, she was a wicked woman. When the critic insults Guruji, Shared throws a glass of beer at him. In what seems to be a dream, Shared hears Maai saying that "technique can be taught but not the truth." And "the truth is sometimes ugly." Shared performs for Guruji who tells him that he has not succeeded and doubts whether he even understands the music. Later, Shared donates the tapes on which Maai is speaking to a library -- but the librarians have almost no interest in the donation and don't know anything about the once-famous singer. Guruji seems to die while complaining about the fact that his patrons scarcely pay him anything -- he gets some "dry snacks" and taxi-fare. (Just when we think Guruji is dead, he revives -- he's one of those noxious old people who lives on indefinitely as a burden to all around him.) At a concert, Shared becomes disgusted with his performance and storms off-stage. There's a short epilogue, as it were, in which Shared is now married and has a child. He's marketing his recordings of vintage Raag on a USB thumb-drive -- 300 performances per drive. In the last scene, Shared sits on a train. A young man comes onto the train and sings, accompanying himself with a stringed instrument . Like the rest of the travelers, Shared seems embarrassed by the street musician and gazes stonily off into the distance.
The film is exquisitely filmed in very long sequence shots. Each scene consists of only one or, perhaps, two shots. For instance, when Shared takes his guru to the doctor, there is a shot of long duration showing the old man, almost like a cadaver, on an examination table. A second shot shows the guru and his disciple conferring with the doctor at his desk. More than half the movie consists of concert or performance scenes, usually shot with very slow imperceptible dollying motions in or out of the shot. The scenes with the motorcycle moving along the midnight streets of Mumbai are visually striking. Some of the sequence shots are deliberately inexpressive -- for instance, in the scene where Shared walks off-stage in despair, the concert is filmed from a long shot and we can't see the expression on the hero's face nor can we gauge how the audience is reacting to his performance (we see them from the back). The only close-ups in the movie appear in scenes taken off TV shows. The masturbation shots show the hero pleasuring himself in front of a screen on which no images appear -- we hear a woman moaning but can't see her. (The director seems to not want to provide us with any prurient imagery). In its ascetic style the film resembles movies by Pedro Costas or Straub and Huillet's The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach with its long performance sequences. Some of the long takes involving performances also seem to channel Tsai Ming Liang and his movies like Goodbye Dragon Inn. I can't judge the quality of the music in the film, but, it is riveting to see these performances. (The music is something like Jazz in which the performer improvises using microtones and complex rhythms, apparently constructing the work from variations around a single note. The form is very exacting and failure is apparently expected.) Looming in the background is Satjayit Ray''s The Music Room, a film about a old Indian aristocrat who impoverishes himself by putting on lavish performances of Indian classical music in a specially designed chamber in his house. (Ravi Shankar devised the score for that film.) As The Disciple proceeds, we see that the audiences become smaller and smaller. In the last concert scene, when Shared storms off-stage, the show takes place in what looks like a middle school cafeteria -- there are many empty seats in the audience. The film raises more questions than it answers. There are various musical communities that are so elitist and purist that they end up withering away -- no one can pass the litmus test for purity: I think a similar film could be made about the ever-shrinking number of devotees to art-song and Lieder or the closed world of Delta Blues purists. There is much about this film that is mysterious, but I think the picture is very, very good.
(On the evidence of The Disciple, Chaitanya Tamhane may well become one of the world's great directors. His first feature, Court, earned high praise. The Disciple, the director's second film, was shot by the Polish cameraman, Michel Sobocinski and was produced by the great Mexican film maker Alfonso Cuaron. Netflix has been criticized for, essentially, dropping the film without any advance publicity. However, The Disciple won a number of awards at film festivals and, so, there are plenty of reviews that will direct to you to the film.)
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