Satah Se Uthata Aadmi

Satah Se Uthata Aadmi is candidate alongside such other works as Chattrabhang and Maya Mrigaya as being one of the most obscure Indian films particularly in the contemporary DVD era. The film on the literature of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, a left-leaning Hindi author from India's turbulent '60s and '70s, recreates Muktibodh's literary settings quite effectively. However the concerns in both the form and content of the film, including lines from Muktibodh's iconic poem Andhere Mein are adapted by the director to create a work very much in line with his previous masterworks Uski Roti(1969) and Duvidha (1973). In fact the work can be studied as a combination of the two distinct approaches, that of the pure object in Uski Roti and its sensorial effect on a constantly changing society in Duvidha. Kaul starts by appropriating the events according to the text but gradually reduces the narrative signifiers until in the gorgeous factory sequences the spectator is confronted with the written text itself. Kaul had begun his studies in the austere form of Indian music, Dhrupad and used its leading vocalist Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar to render (Raga) Bilaskhani Todi. Kaul transforms this form of music into a cinematic idiom where the form emerges first through exacting (calculating) and then by approximations (improvising) A remarkable film by Mani Kaul.