The weather, notably rain, is not only a participant in films, influencing the course of the narrative. Many of the oldest stories feature rain and floods, as with that of Noah in the Old Testament and the birth of Lord Krishna in the Mahabharata. But it’s sometimes there only as an implication, without actually affecting the thrust of the story, say like the storm at a bleak moment in Shakespeare’s King Lear. Rain is even more useful in films as it creates effects that are strikingly sensuous, making the trope fruitful. But before moving in to Indian cinema, which is the subject of this piece, let me describe a few sequences from world cinema classics to illustrate how the rain has been effectively used.
Among the most famous is Gene Kelly in Stanley Donen’s 1952 musical Singin’ In The Rain. It is raining and Kelly (as movie star Don Lockwood) has a car waiting and an umbrella under his arm, but he chooses to send his car away, keep his umbrella folded and get soaked to the skin, celebrating the elements sensitively like a hedonist. But that happens after a tricky problem has been resolved at the studio and is a result of his momentary relief too; it is not simply a reflection of his inner state. A more profound use of rain is in the early parts of Andrei Tarkovsky’s sci-fi masterpiece Solaris (1972). Kris Kelvin, who is due to embark for a distant planet the following day, sits in the garden soaking in a shower and watching the drops patter into an empty teacup, since this is the last experience of it he will have; rain symbolises life on Earth that he is being removed from.
Rain does not only have positive connotations. Marion Crane in Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) arrives at the sinister Bates Motel in the middle of a torrential downpour, to be helped disarmingly into her room by her future killer. Kurosawa shot a stunning action sequence in the rain in Seven Samurai (1954) in which the rain falling vertically heightens the sideways movement of the samurai fighting in the mud. It also suggests the pettiness of personal strife in relation to nature’s impersonal might. While these uses of rain may be ‘metaphorical’ in the sense that rain is used to imply something else, what is nonetheless true is that rain is summoned on screen through its effect upon the senses. It is the passing sensation of falling rain in Solaris, for instance, that makes Kelvin’s last day on Earth such a melancholy affair. What is also important here is the catching of the fleeting moment, since the senses primarily register that.
When we come to popular cinema in India, what we notice is that it does not, by and large, engage the senses. The reason may not be far to seek. World cinema began as a means of documentation through the Lumière brothers. Cinema was seen as an extension of photography, and hence, a record of reality. That it was also used subsequently to promote illusion (think George Méliès) did not change this, since ‘illusion’ is only the other side of ‘reality’. It is our sense of the real as perceived through our human faculties that make us distinguish between the two and treat ‘illusion’ as what is imagined or dreamed, corresponding to inner reality.
Cinema in India had a different provenance. D.G. Phalke, when embarking upon his mythological films, insisted that cinema was manifesting what was known to be ‘real’. The word ‘real’ is perhaps misleading and ‘truth’ may be more appropriate—since the messages of the Puranas and epics were what Phalke’s mythological films were relaying. When Indian cinema moved out of the mythological mode, it still relayed truisms from tradition. Where world cinema (as record) was ideally suited to pursue mimesis, i.e.: imitate the world as perceived by the senses, Indian cinema generally upheld pre-existent ‘truths’, in effect belittling the evidence of the senses as only pertaining to the transient. It is arguably the same sense of experienced physical reality being less important than such ‘eternal truths’ that is the reason behind India’s laxity in record-keeping, something that is the bane of historical research. In popular cinema the belittling of the senses also prevails; rather than the ‘moment’ when a sensual perception is made, it is the eternal validity of the relayed truth that is cherished.
Satyajit Ray’s treatment of the monsoon in Pather Panchali (1955) and Bimal Roy’s in Do Bigha Zamin (1953) bear comparison here, since Ray was less ‘Indian’ than Bimal Roy: he followed western precepts and an aesthetic inspired by Italian neo-realism. In Pather Panchali, the monsoon sequence begins with a drop of water falling on the pate of a bald man angling for fish in a village pond. The man hastily opens his umbrella and departs for home. After this, there are shots of lotus leaves fluttering in the wind, of cattle being led home, of the overcast sky before the shower begins. The mood is pleasant and even comic, but not without a touch of foreboding. Ray is essentially preoccupied with capturing a moment in his film, but, at the same time, the moment has far-reaching consequences upon the fortunes of protagonist Harihar’s family. We associate the sensations we experience to those experienced by Apu or Durga, and it is only in this context that the sequence imprints itself upon us, enhancing our sense of anticipation and our eagerness to learn the outcome of certain events in the film.
In contrast, the monsoon sequence in Do Bigha Zamin is without sensual appeal. Bimal Roy is so distant from the moment that instead of dwelling on the physicality of the rain, he distracts us with an elaborate song and dance sequence. The purpose is to illustrate an entire condition—the plight of the farmers who must depend on the vagaries of the elements for their sustenance, the fragility of their joys and hopes. The argument being made here is not that Bimal Roy fails where Satyajit Ray succeeds, but that the two aim at contrary things. In Ray’s film, the monsoon sequence illuminates a moment when we reflect upon the individual fates that await its protagonists. Change is the essence of Pather Panchali’s discourse, while the sequence in Do Bigha Zamin reflects upon an entire condition. Roy was trying to bridge the gap between popular cinema and ‘art’ film, and used songs and dances. But one finds the same perceptions prevailing in ‘art’ films as well, i.e. cinema outside the works of Satyajit Ray. Art cinema does not deal with Puranic sentiments, but it still deals with pre-existent truths—derived from social texts. An illustration would be Marxist filmmaker Mrinal Sen’s portrayal of the working-class family during the monsoons in Calcutta ’71 (1971), rain intruding into the living quarters through the roof and a wet dog sharing the family’s gloom. Rain does not pertain to a moment here, but to a permanent condition seen as typical of the poor under capitalism. Shaji N. Karun’s celebrated film Piravi (1989) is about an old man waiting for his young son to return when the boy has been killed in police custody for political reasons. Shaji uses the rain here to set a constant mood of despondency, but that despondency pertains to the old man’s condition. His son never returns and his condition does not transform. The use of the incessant rain can also be seen here as symbolic of an entire disconsolate condition and it sets a mood commensurate with that aim.
The time-honoured use of rain in popular cinema is the lovers’ rain dance which has more cheerful connotations from those described above. It is erotic but even there, the experience of rain is not intended to immediately impact upon the audience’s senses as much as convey sringara as the mood informing the narrative. The lovers are not responding to a situation when the skies open up as much as to the intimacy growing between them. Rain, in effect, is not an external happening impinging upon the senses, but the manifestation of an essential condition typical of people in love. It would, from the evidence of such films, be difficult to imagine on-screen lovers who have experienced the rain together breaking up. This brings us to the key difference between rain as generally portrayed in world cinema and in India. Here, it would seem, rain is not an external occurrence registered by the human senses, but the external manifestation of an inner condition or mood, whether gloomy, cheerful or erotic.
(M.K. Raghavendra is a film scholar, theorist and critic. Views expressed are personal)
(This appeared in the print edition as 'Rimjhim Girey Saawan')
