It hurts, because it is only the second film I was lucky to see from Rima Das. I remember my enthusiasm when I saw 6 years ago her Bulbul can sing when I was sure to have seen one of the finest works among the younger Indian filmmaker. Until now, I could not get my hands on her other films. They were either geo-locked by Amazon or Netflix and DVD-releases in India are already wiped out anyway. I have not even seen the first Village Rockstars-film. But I have to be happy with everything made by Rima Das which comes into my reach. Despite my high expectation, her most recent film Village Rockstars 2 needed less than a minute to win me over and I almost felt that I continued being in her wonderful cinematic world exactly where I left it 6 years ago. It is like one sees many films at the same time. There are elements of ethnographic documentary, wonderful storytelling, a certain playfulness like we know from one of the unsung great masters of Japanese cinema Hiroshi Shimizu (with whom she has in common the somnambulistic ability to work with the freshness and spontaneity of young actors) or the deep love for anything which is alive like in the films by Jean Renoir or Terrence Malick. Dhunu, a half orphaned teenage girl, is the daughter of a country woman. She dreams of becoming a guitar player and practices always when she is not in school or participating in the hard work in the fields. There is no doubt, the life of the villagers relies mostly on very hard physical work. There is always the threat of a flood which can destroy a whole harvest. At the first glance one can percept the incredible landscape as paradisiac but at a second sight one sees the cracks in it. This mode of life of this rural community based on old traditions is endangered. Beside struggling often with natural disasters, a ruthless broker tries to buy cheap land from the farmers for his investments. Without land a farmer is homeless and finally detached from the community. The life in this village is punctuated by hard work and the hope for a good harvest but also by the different seasons and different festivals and rituals. There are a lot of scenes where the people are singing and dancing. And as much as Rima Das avoids a superficial idyl, between the hardships and whenever the old and young people maltreated by her hard work in the fields can get a glimpse of joy, the film celebrates it in wonderful moments. Very few hints to the modern Indian consumer society are visible, a three-wheeled truck, but as well from time to time a power shovel, a destroyer of landscapes, a destroyer of fields. A fancy Motorcycle appears as a false promise of prosperity. Those who accept a deal with this broker will pay a hard price.
There is no movie theatre in this village, but Rima Das often offers images of this landscape, turns them into incredible beautiful cinematic moments that one has to take more than once a very deep breath. Dhunu once watches the mighty heaven, her facial expression between a dreamy look and defiance against the life she is expecting here. More than once we see her contemplating the landscape around her at dawns or sunsets like she watches a film on a mighty but undefined screen. These are the moments where her dreams have a place. To see her in this mesmerizing landscape, her bones still stiff from the hard work in the fields, there is nothing I can do than sitting in my privileged seat and staring at the big screen of the cinema with tears in my eyes. There is on one side this visual beauty and on the other side these moments are the only place where Dhunus dreams and longings have a place.That is as heartbreaking as it is full of cinematic glory.
Rima Das is not only familiar with the place she comes from. She seems as well totally in tune with her unorthodox kind of producing and creating her independent visual poems. Beside these great moments, one can find as well beauty in very small moments: Dhunu and her friend, a confidential talk of two adolescent girls. The tenderness between her and her mother and sometimes even the tenderness in petting a young goat. But there as well tragic twists and the village will be affected by a huge natural disaster. There is a time for working, a time for fun, a time for dreaming but also a time for mourning. The faces of the protagonists are unforgettable, the face of the mother, who aged much too fast, the conflicting feelings reflected in the face of the young protagonist – these moments are as impressing as the beauty of the natural environment. A whole world seems here condensed to 108 film minutes. Not that I want to give the ending away, but Village Rockstars 2 is again a demonstration of the art of the transition from the last image to the darkness of the ending credits in the dark cinema hall. It is not a film you watch and than you go and act as nothing has happened. Village Rockstars 2 is one of these cinematic journeys - an experience which stays with me a long time.
Rüdiger Tomczak
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