Phantom India

Okay, I've watched Louis Malle's 1969 documentary, PHANTOM INDIA. I've also downloaded a handful of stills from the dvd to show a few random images. So now what?

I'm tempted to write off-the-cuff impressions of the 7 episodes, but to be honest it would take a lot of words and time. It runs over 6 hours in length, and was edited by Louis Malle and Suzanne Baron for French television. Each segment running 51 minutes and including dozens of sequences on seemingly random occurrences and interviews as he and his 2 man crew rambled around India in the Spring and Summer of 1968. The cinematographer on this project was Etienne Becker, and the sound was captured by Jean-Claude Laureaux.

One of the refreshing things about Malle's treatment is its willy nilly approach to subject matter. We don't see a refined and delineated script which he follows, but rather snatches of life in a myriad of colorful places with imagery that the camera loves.

I'm not personally familiar with India. I've never traveled there for spiritual awakening, nor cheap drugs, nor trekking the Himalayas, not even on photo safari. I've always envied people who have gone to India, largely because it seems so exotic and difficult. Those who have gone to India usually bring home tales of horrific poverty, unbreathable heat, pariahs living on the streets, children in rags begging adamantly, Sadus walking the country by-ways near naked and covered in ashes and Hindu regalia. They marvel at the world-famous tourist attractions: Ajanta caves, the Sun temple of Konark, Ellora cave temples, the Red Fort in Delhi, Taj Mahal, ashrams of the holy, national parks, beaches of Goa. Everyone knows that it has profoundly changed them, but no one can express exactly how or in what manner. Well, that's what this movie is like. One critic on a blog I read compared the movie to a wealthy person's vacation movies. She has a valid point.

At the beginning of episode one, Louis Malle is filming two women digging weeds for fodder in an open field. They're obviously uncomfortable at the intrusion of these Westerners and their camera, even to the point of pulling shawls over their heads to hide, yet continuing to chop at the weeds. Malle reflects that he won't continue this mode of filming throughout the rest of his documentary, he won't be the ugly European, instead he'll let the camera dictate what to shoot. Huh? After this caveat in respect to the Indian people, we watch over 6 hours of the ugly Westerner sticking his camera in the faces of anyone visually interesting: a guide, a dancing student, a politician, indigenous natives of the Orissa hill country, fishermen arguing on a beach, people bathing, gauntlets of beggars outside temples, even devout Hindus praying and meditating in singular privacy. It's as if he can't help himself, which is understandable. He's a documentary film maker, that's what he does. What's interesting is that he doesn't seem to see the hypocrisy he's perpetrating, even though he understands it logically.

Louis Malle's first-person voice-over is intelligent as it inquires into leftist, communist or Marxist ideology. Which reminds us that 40 years have passed not just in India, but in the world. Many of the reform theories of political thought from 1968 have undergone large transformations. It is a different world, it is a different India. But as much as Louis Malle inserts opinions against Western thought interfering with the Indian day-to-day existence, his opinions are covered in just those same blandishments of arrogant attitude that he warns against. Though perhaps I'm being too harsh. His documentary is vast, disjointed, confusing, colorful, exhilarating, perplexing, and at times graciously slow. I'm reminded of Walt Whitman's line, "Do I contradict myself, very well, I contradict myself." Both Whitman and Malle understand that their subjects demand no less. I admire Louis Malle's experiment to shoot and edit in a style which recreates a rhythm of rural Indian life (in 1968, 80% of India's population lived in 500,000 villages). It's an ambitious technical attempt that imparts to the viewer some element of relaxed time which most films rarely accomplish. No that's not right, it's not that most films rarely accomplish this rhythm, most never even think to try. There are film directors from Iran and Africa who capture similar arcs of timing, almost akin to human breathing. THE SEALED SOIL by Marva Nabili being one example; I'll also include Idrissa Ouedraogo's films from Burkina Faso, and perhaps even Béla Tarr's film WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES.


PHANTOM OF INDIA is large but not unwieldy. It certainly embodies an outsider's view of things we're not able to understand: culture, religions, art, dance, myth, devotion, caste systems, death, population control, politics, industry, exploitation, health, diet, ambitions, beliefs, gender identities, economic limitations and possibilities. The menu is huge, far too large for even a long, long documentary. However this film's an amazing document of huge ambition.

The other day a friend informed me that only 15% of Americans own passports and of that number there are many who don't use the one they have. We in this country can use films like PHANTOM INDIA. Our ignorance of other people and other cultures colors all of our beliefs. Mostly it has a way of cheapening the lives of people we don't understand. Louis Malle, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Michael Winterbottom, Michael Apted, Agnes Varda, Jean-Luc Godard, Krysztof Kieslowski, Nagisa Oshima, Chris Marker, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Hirokazu Koreeda, Spike Lee and many others are directors known for informing their narrative films with lessons learned while making documentaries. Hey, got over 6 hours to kill and a comfortable couch? I recommend it.