ANVITAA DUTT: AN ORIGINAL VOICE FOR FEMALE FABLES

The critical success of Qala and Bulbbul attests to the writer-director’s subversive and immersive storytelling and the courageous backing of her producers

- Maithili Rao

Conventional wisdom is that filmmakers think in images, writers think in words. Imagine this. When a director thinks in images eerily poetic, and she is also a screenplay-writer/lyricist, it is a felicitous fusion. The best crucible of creativity. And when you have a producer with the courage to back this rare creativity that departs from the mainstream formula, magic happens.

The magic maker is Anvitaa Dutt, the scriptwriter, lyricist turned director, whose two films have left the audience floating on a sea of enthrallment while disturbing undertows pull you into depths of anger and despair. She is two films old - Qala preceded by Bulbbul - and they are unique, each a minor masterpiece in its own way. They are real and yet limned with fantasy that is not escapist but subversive. Subversion that is subtly hinted at and then turns brutally violent.

Dutt's films demand a chronological exploration because, in the space of two years, she shows her mastery of narrative finesse in two very different genres. Common to the latest Qala and the earlier Bulbbul is immersive storytelling through artful colour saturation to convey a host of meanings beyond words. Music and silence, apparent opposites, complement each other to add another dimension. Stunning, surreal, haunting, disturbing... one searches for adjectives to describe her films that are grounded in reality, but phantom winds fly the narrative to supernatural realms. But again, the supernatural, of chudail the demon woman, is the myth spun with delicate precision by a wronged woman. The supernatural validates an abused woman's vengeance. Bulbbul's colour saturation creates a palpable texture, rich in subtext and literary association.