Mani Kaul – Idiot AKA Ahmaq (Feature Film Version) (1991)

adminApril 19, 2021

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Feature film version of Mani Kaul’s film on Dostoevski’s masterpiece that was shown at NYFF.

Synopsis:
Mani Kaul’s adaptation of Dostoevski’s Idiot is his most profoundly affecting film and a “tour de force” (Rajadhyaksha) that co-ordinates actors, settings and situations to a multiplicity. It his most realized attempt at making formalist film by moving the camera,without looking through the viewfinder to make Gilles Deleuze’s reading of cinema as an any-instant-whatever or equidistant instant to an any-space-whatever or any equispatial instant. This equispatial instant is created by destroying the dialectic between required and not-required, sacral and profane. Mani Kaul, analyzing his own films would state that, whereas his earlier works engaged a rarefaction of information, Idiot was the first to encounter a saturation of events.

The film has important actors in the lead role. Theatre director Ayub Khan-Din plays Prince Myshkin, Mita Vashisth plays Nastasya Mukhopadhyay (Nastasya Fillipova in the original), and Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan shows of his trademark acting style in this early role as Pawan Raghujan (Rozoghin).