Some Ramblings - Siva

 

Deep focus was such a big problem back then, particularly in the indoor setting. When two objects were in the frame, one deep and one near, the film lighting "rules" mandated that the objects closer to the frame received all the focus and attention, and consequently, more lighting, than the images in the background. This wasn't much a problem when the primary action happened in front and the background/backdrop was just scenery, used to fill the frame. But when there indeed was a requirement when the background needed as much attention as the foreground, film makers found no answer. All that changed when a young filmmaker and his cinematographer questioned the status quo and practically invented a new way of lighting, for scenes that required the audience to focus as much, if not more, on the periphery of the frame as much as near distant ones. That's what it took - questioning. And cinema was never the same again. "Citizen Kane" ushered in a new age of telling stories through inventive use of the technical elements involved in film production, light, in this situation. As against the conventional wisdom that story is always the key and narrating is all there is to it for a movie, it took a boy wonder to alter the perspective of the audience by reshaping their imaginations, playing around with pieces that weren't all to important for the process of story-telling.

Horror movies always played with light and shadow. For ominous foreboding of something evil that was about to happen, select a wider frame, light the foreground as bright as possible, leave the background a bit darker, have the character move into the towards the frame as slowly as possible. This is not story, this is not story telling, this is all technique. The mind rapidly rearranges the pieces in the mind and automatically expects a jump-scare moment at any time. And to ratchet up the tension even more, leave the background score alone and play it to absolute silence, to leave the emotions heightened and nerves frayed. And then a little movie called "The Blair Witch Project" broke these commandments with glee, selecting close frames, keeping the lighting as shallow as possible, and chucking the background score for good. And how it scared the hell out of its audience is by shifting the focus to a first person's perspective, in that, the action is always through the eyes of the member in the frame, the audience only sees what the character sees. No ghosts, no jump-scares, but the constant fear of the unknown by the darting of the (camera) eyes, generated all the horror, as those filmmakers realized that horror is always in the anticipation. Again, questioning.

"Siva" wasn't really about the story or the story telling, it was all about how the narration unfolded on the screen with how RGV thought about a presentation that hitherto never existed in the telugu film idiom. The camera moved with a purpose, the frame was lit with an intention, even the sound, however brief and intermittent, exploded like the action, and puppeteering these three elements to purposefully manipulate the minds of the audience into feeling a strong emotion that otherwise would have felt flat, had the camera been a wider even by a bit, had the lighting been shallow or the sound had the same old "dishoom dishoom" effects. This is what is truly called a director's vision. "Siva"'s reaches its crescendo not in the now oft-quoted cycle chain scene, but where Naresh get ambushed and beaten hollow and blue. Again, the scene is a ballet in control, minimalism and explosion. When the goon slowly comes from behind Naresh, in first person's perspective, shown only with the shaking handheld camera, and the sound effect of a hockey bat hits Naresh's head from behind, a sharp cut moves the perspective to third person observing Naresh falling like a heavy sack, clutching his head in agony and whimpering in serious pain. It is this sound of Naresh's halted and sharp yelps of pain that truly shoots the emotion of the scene through the stratosphere. Had it been relpaced with the typical background score, or the usual foley effects of bat hitting, head cracking, body slumping, the effect would not had been anywhere close to what it is now. And every element here is a director curating what he wanted in the scene and choreographing just how it should be. And each shot holds for only so long, Naresh clutching his head and face with both his hands, letting out long grunts of pain stopping only to catch some breath and again continuing with the moaning. This scene is an exercise in mastery and manipulation, forcing the audience to feel exactly how the director intended - shock, fear and finally horror, when he is dragged to the nearby rock, his head, caught by his hair, raised by the goon and slammed...no, only suggested as slammed, as the shot smash cuts to the next scene, with a horrifying sound effect of the cracking of the head bleeding into the bursting open of the hospital door by a shocked Siva. And this is a true cherry, not a single of drop of blood shown anywhere, in this arguably most violent scene in telugu filmdom.

"Siva" is more the director's sensibility more than his vision. The sensibility doesn't not allow Asha to be overly dramatic when she says she could only be safe with Siva in the restaurant scene, the sensibility shines through when the politician Machiraju resorts to cold logic when Bhavani threatens him with dire consequences, the sensibility bleeds through in the walk and talk of practically every character in the movie. Sensibility is an expression of the choice, how he would like to see a particular scene unfolding, how he would like to scene lighted, how much he would like his characters to not cross a certain decibel level, even in the most charged up situations. Ironically, even a veteran artist like Nirmalamma, whose instincts would had been entirely rewired for delivering expressions only melodramatically due to her length of her career, appears entirely realistic in her outburst. Sensibility... Sensibility... Sensibility. Direction is not emotional choreography, direction is not story movement, direction is not performance calibration.... direction starts with a sensibility, and the two questions that constantly question the sensibility are "how" and "how much" (elaa, entha).

Pushing every technical element in the process of film making into spaces that it has never ventured before (S. Gopal Reddy's lighthing had never been this way before, and it has never been the same since), RGV's smoke and mirrors act of "Siva" was as phenomenal, as path-breaking and as instrumental for the reimagination of the director's toolkit in Indian cinema, as "Citizen Kane" was for Hollywood.