Kanasemba Kudureyaneri (Riding The Dreams)
Riding The Dreams (Kanasemba Kudureyaneri)
By Gautaman Bhaskaran |5 November, 2010
Dir: Girish Kasaravalli. India. 2010. 110mins
Girish Kasaravalli’s Riding the Dreams ( Kanasemba Kudureyaneri ), screened at the Mumbai Film Festival, is part of India’s reality cinema savoure d by a small, but devoted, audience. In fact, Bengaluru-based Kasaravalli’s films have never been big crowd-pullers, and this movie is not likely to be an exception.
The film is a brilliant study of how India’s poores t of the poor struggle to survive in awfully degrad ing conditions.
Already part of the festival circuit, it was shot o n the outskirts of Bijapur in the southern Indian S tate of Karnataka, and follows the life of a grave-digger, Irya (Vaija nath Biradar), and his wife,
Rudri (Umashree). Literally eking a living off the dead, Irya worships, Siddha, the messenger of death who appears in his dream every time someon e in the village dies.
Alerted about the death of the old landlord, Gowda (Akki Chennabasappa), Irya begins to prepare the gr ave, but he is perplexed when Gowda’s caretaker, Mathadayya (Sa dashiv Brahmavar), denies that his master is dead. Irya and Rudri begin to worry about the dreams going wrong, and their lives getting even more depressing. The film is a brilliant study of how India’s poores t of the poor struggle to survive in awfully degrad ing conditions, going hungry to bed night after night. Kasaravalli draws a moving comparison between Irya’s righteous principles and those of the landlord’s rich son, Shivanna (Shi varanajan), who callously leaves the father’s corps e to rot while he finishes a long business engagement. There is an un mistakable message here, of how the urge to make mo ney destroys values.
Kasaravalli, one of the pioneers of the New Indian Cinema of the 1970s, and known for works such as The Ritual ( Ghttashraddha ) and Tabara’s Story ( Tabarana Kathe ), remains undaunted in the face of big slick-looki ng productions, continuing to make movies that he stro ngly believes in. And he has a set of dedicated actors. Engagingly co nvincing, Biradar and Umashree are seen throughout the movie in tattered clothes, getting every inch into the ch aracters. Manohar’s lilting background score is per haps the only artifice here.
Production company: Basant Productions
Producers: Amrita Patil and Basant Kumar Patil
Screenplay: Girish Kasaravalli
Cinematography: H.M. Ramachandra Halkere
Editor: M. N. Swamy
Music: V. Manohar
Main cast: Vaijanath Biradar, Umashree, Sadashiv Br ahmavar, Akki Chennabasappa, Shivaranajan, Pavitra Lokesh
