The Cinematheque

“Filled with soaring musical passages, the movie is finally a meditative, unsparing if compassionate exploration of the ineffable chasm between inspiration and industry, between greatness and the desire to be great.”

Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

The pressure of the guru-disciple dynamic in the making of classical Indian music provides the tightly regulated focus of Chaitanya Tamhane’s richly detailed and surprising second feature. Sharad Nerulkar (Aditya Modak) isn’t a star in the waning scene. He exists at one remove from a little-known legend: the ascetic Maai, who shunned public performances and whose lecture tapes are the only true influence in Sharad’s life, over family and any personality of his own. The status of this milieu was already on the precipice when Satyajit Ray used it as a symbol for a dying world in The Music Room, but Tamhane pitches this as only a dramatic set-up. Whether boldly crossing time or maintaining, during each of the many musical performances, a steady gaze of intricate, geometric compositions, Tamhane keeps our evaluations of Sharad’s choices in careful suspension up until the film’s stunning final act.

In Marathi, Hindi, English, and Bengali with English subtitles

Best Screenplay
Venice Film Festival 2020

“Extraordinary … I’ve long believed that music is the closest art to cinema, and that the filming of musical performance is a uniquely severe touchstone of directorial artistry. Tamhane’s approach to the subject is passionately, probingly creative.”

Richard Brody, The New Yorker