Years of adherence to stringent rules leave a performer at odds with modern society in this melancholy film from Chaitanya Tamhane, India’s first Venice competitor for two decades
Chaitanya Tamhane’s The Disciple comes boldly billed as the first Indian film to play in Venice competition since Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding won the Golden Lion in 2001, just before the Twin Towers fell. That’s a long time for a nation’s film-makers to sit on the sidelines, left out in the cold – assuming they ever saw it that way. Possibly they did not. The Disciple, for one, is about the virtues and pitfalls of steering one’s own course. Its hero is embarked on a long, lonely quest. The bright lights and red carpets hold little attraction for him.
You don’t have to be familiar with the intricacies of Hindustani
music to appreciate Tamhane’s heartfelt, melancholy drama although I’d hazard a guess that it helps. That’s because its protagonist, Sharad Nerulkar (Aditya Modak), is steeped in its traditions, living and breathing its phrasing, picking his way through an apprenticeship that’s been known to last a lifetime. He longs to prove himself as an Indian classical vocalist but can’t meet the bills or pay the rent. His mother despairs of him ever settling down with a wife. “I do nothing but practise,” he laments.