The Eloquence of Silence: Analysing the
Verbal Void in Pushpaka Vimana
-
Gem Cherian
“The
reason one writes isn’t the fact he wants to say something, he writes because
he has something to say.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
A silent black comedy released in
1987, Pushpaka Vimana was directed by
Singeetham Srinivasa Rao based on his own script. The film centres on a poor
and unemployed youth, played by Kamal haasan, who enjoys a good life by
stealing the identity of a rich, middle-aged drunkard. Pushpak is the name of
the apartment-hotel where the rich man resides in. In the Ramayana, the Pushpak is the aerial chariot of Ravan which goes
everywhere at will. As an imposter, Kamal experiences a life normally not
granted to men of his kind, meets a beautiful girl and falls in love with her.
Sadly, this brief journey into the paradise ends as per the poetic justice.
In the speech he made in Bristol, the Nobel
laureate British playwright Harold Pinter remarks: “I think we communicate only
too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a
continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves.” The lack of
speech is a form of speech itself. The role that the silence plays as a verbal
void is important as it gives one a moment to fill the blank suspicion he has,
regarding a dubious occurrence that may have happened much coincidentally.
Pinter acknowledges of not one, but two types of silences in the Bristol speech: “There
are two silences. One when no word is spoken. The other when perhaps a torrent
of language locked beneath it.” (26)
The web
resource Wikipedia calls the ‘language’ of Pushpaka
Vimana as ‘silent film’. It is a silent movie in the obvious sense that it
lacks any audible dialogue. Pushpaka Vimana
can be placed under the genres of the silent film (in form), slapstick
comedy and social satire. Being a commercial hit, it got a warm reception from
viewers and critics as well. It was also appreciated by the Cannes jury of 1988. The film bagged the National
Film Award (Golden Lotus Award) for the Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome
Entertainment in 1988. It is interesting to note that among the films spanning
from 1975 to date, this is the only film that grabbed this award under the
label- “language: silent”.
Silence itself is a remarkable form
of response and not a neutral stance. The importance of silence is
underlined by the title of J. R. Hollis’ book on Pinter, which is subtitled as The Poetics of Silence. “The effect of
language, then, is to note that the most important things are not being said.”
(Hollis 13) Singeetham Srinivasa Rao’s characters inhibit a separate linguistic
universe. In the film, he makes us recognise that language is neither a simple
tool, nor a neutral instrument but that it has to be re-forged, invested and
infused with meanings in order to achieve its end. He drives his characters,
hollows out their language and subverts all meaning.
This paper
attempts to re-enter the verbal void of the script of Pushpaka Vimana. The avoidance of oral communication is the
innovative step taken by the auteur. The scriptwriter has not avoided dialogues
for the sake of avoiding them. Instead, the visual frame or the situation of
his script does not need verbal communication. Yet, incidental noises are a
part and parcel of the frames. That is, apart from dialogues, everything is
heard! John Russell Brown comments:
For
an actor, the speech is a huge opportunity for expressing a change of subject, the generality and then direct
address, the uncertainty indicated in the
stage-direction, his physical posture, broken rhythm, manner of moving off-stage. (226)
The merit
of the script lies in the skilful insertion of scenes that do not demand any
plausible dialogue other than gestures and lip movements. This is achieved
through the excellent craftsmanship of screenplay that guides the camera
placement. The conflict between haves and have-nots, the concept of ‘carpe
diem’ (seize the day), the juxtaposition of realism and fantasy (magic and
logic), the plight of the subaltern (marginalized) - all these motifs are
unveiled through ‘unsaid dialogues’.
The exposition scene gives the
viewers a picture of the crude shack (one room in a three storied lodge) where
Kamal haasan stays. Humour of the film starts right from the beginning when the
sweeper cleans the rooms and verandahs in accordance with the rhythm of a dance
class, the music being played in the background.
Umpteen metaphors have been employed
by the scriptwriter to convey the stark practicality of day to day life. As an
unemployed youth, the hero cannot spare his hard-earned money for a cup of
coffee. The clever man, however, does not want to lose the game. By employing
the fable of the crow, he succeeds in his intention. The scene that shows the victorious
grin of the brainy champion is aptly backgrounded by pictures of musclemen.
The Pushpak itself serves to be the
most important metaphor in the film. It is a tool in the hands of the
scriptwriter whenever he wants to convey the world in the rose-stained glasses.
It is the token to luxury. It is through the Pushpak that the hero enters the
world of the ‘haves’. The discarded ice-cream from the rich man falls exactly
on the shadow of the Pushpak, emphasizing the heights of luxury that a
‘have-not’ cannot dream of reaching. Yet, as an admiring outsider, he does not
really ‘see’ the years and years of perspiration before the establishment of
the five-star hotel Pushpak. This dramatic irony also reaches the viewers
devoid of words.
The scene where the sweeper places
the hero’s slippers above the photo of his convocation silently symbolises the
meagre significance that the society puts on one’s academic qualification. The
spirited job hunt and the dispiriting reception from employers that youngsters
of all times have had to face are cleverly captured when the label in front of
an office is unveiled as the camera moves from “VACANCY” to “NO VACANCY”. The
long queue in front of the several offices, where the hero tries to get a job,
reminds us of the multitudes of qualified hands and the minimal opportunities.
The visual frame of this curse of unemployment needs no words or dialogues to
communicate itself to the viewers.
A silent conquest of the ‘have’ by
the ‘have not’ is interestingly caught on the screen by the script. This is one
of the most humorous scenes in the film. The protagonist literally victimizes
the rich man in order to carry out his motive of becoming rich. It is not a
brutal victimization because he feeds the man, manages to make provisions for
his daily chores, and even turns the fan on for him. The protagonist only wants
to make sure that the man does not barge into his plans. The protagonist’s
attempt to use all the assets of the rich man for himself lays bare the motif
of ‘carpe diem’ (seize the day). Yet the mirror acts as a constant, silent
reminder of who he really is.
The scene that introduces the
heroine is significant. He is spellbound when he sees her father, a
professional magician, tricking his wife and even the shop owner by simple
magic. However, the real catastrophe begins when he feels the inner urge to
know magic in order to skip difficulties. This catastrophe is silently conveyed
to us through the toppling of dress materials, and later when he breaks a
walking stick by imitating the magician. The romance between the hero and the
heroine is conveyed only through lip movements, gestures and coincidental
actions.
Another appealing thing about the
film is the beggar scene. This is the frame whereby the scriptwriter strongly
points to the identity crisis of subalterns in the society. The protagonist
himself is a subaltern, but his indifference and general attitude is that he is
not one. This is why he pays no attention to a casual fight in the slum where
he stays. The same silent reason could be attributed for his being dressed up
as well as carrying himself as a gentleman. Of the three beggar scenes, the
initial one sketches the hero trying to underrate the beggar by showing a coin.
Psychologically, the protagonist wants to sense a feeling of confidence or
victory by rendering the beggar a subaltern twice. Ironically, when the beggar
confronts him with his treasury of currency notes, the protagonist himself
feels a subaltern twice and gets embarrassed.
In the second beggar scene, when the
protagonist disguises as the rich man, the same subalternisation repeats, but
the roles reverse this time and he wins! It is pathetic to see such an act from
a qualified young man, but this could be what the scriptwriter wants to satirize
silently. The third beggar scene shows the death of the beggar and a crowd
hungry for the currency notes he had collected all through his life. It is this
incident that leads the protagonist to the realization that what he has been
doing turned out to be meaningless. From this point, he tries to correct
himself.
The slow progression into self-realization
is shown step by step. He sheds the attire of the ‘have’, becomes the ‘have
not’ that he was before, and fetches his old things from the hotel to leave. It
is only now as he leaves the Pushpak that he gets to understand the strenuous
journey its owner had taken from a small coffee shop to the five-star hotel.
Probably this underlines his newly found inspiration to achieve success the
hard way.
His departure from a phantasmagoric
world is marked by his goodbye to the heroine who is performing with her father
for the magic show. His transformation from a trickster into an honest man is
evident through his letter of confession to the lover. Again when the camera moves
from the Pushpak out to the street, we see the protagonist leave the
hypothetical world of luxury and fantasy only to re-enter his old world of
reality. As the film ends, we see the protagonist waiting patiently in the
queue without resorting to any tricks. All these frames lack dialogue. Yet, the
verbal void that the scriptwriter has created fits well into the celluloid
space and explains everything so deftly.
Being aware of the director’s
preoccupation with silence as well as his take on what defines it reveals the otherwise
unclear layers of meaning and irony in the film. The use of these bursts of the
“no words” form of silence is a powerful tool which leads to many difference
effects. Srinivasa Rao seems to have adopted this technique for his theatre
considerably well.
The
script uses silence for the emotional effect of gravity also. The most obvious
example of this is the silence at the end of the movie- a silence not of sound
but of action, of any information at all. The auteur denies us the satisfaction
of seeing or hearing what happens to the romance or the onward life of the
hero, leaving us instead with only the curtain. Though the lack of information
is not disturbing, in a way it gives us a shock of recognition. In our real
lives, we don’t know everything; we go throughout life without having all of
the information we could use to help us on our way.
Pushpaka Vimana is
distinguished from other films by its sense of mystification, suspense and
ambiguity. This springs from the gap between the text and the sub-text (the
surface action and the underlying meaning), built-up illusions and hidden
reality, and a multiplicity of meanings and significances. All of this tends to
present the picture of an enigmatic universe juxtaposed with the real world. Singeetham
Srinivasa Rao is a filmmaker who has been watching, portraying and
tape-recording the society as a prophet. He has stimulated in critics and
theatre goers alike, a major reassessment of the relationship between the
auteur, the film and the audience.
Works Cited:
Brown,
John Russell. “Dialogue in Pinter and Others.” The Critical Quarterly
VII.3 (1965).
Hollis,
J. R. Harold Pinter: The Poetics of
Silence. Illinois: Southern
Illinois
UP, 1970.
Pinter,
Harold. “Between the Lines.” Sunday Times
London 4
Mar 1962: 25-26.
Web Resources:
Janz,
James R. “Toward a Definition of Pinteresque: Playing Games with
Dramatic Irony.” Diss. Simon
Fraser University,
1986. Web. 03 Jan.
“Pushpaka Vimana.” Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia.
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 22 July 2004.
Web. 10 Jan 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushpak/>
.
