All language subtitles for Phantom India - 01

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PHANTOM INDIA
Reflections on a Journey

Only 2% of Indians speak English,
the official language after colonization.

This 2% talks a lot,
in the name of all the rest.

Politicians, businessmen,
intellectuals, bureaucrats -

all explained
their ideas to me at length,

and I immediately sensed that the real
questions weren't being addressed.

In learning English,

they also learned to think
as our civilization does.

Their words about their country were
ordered by Western symbols and logic.

I'd heard them all before.
I recognized them as my own.

Tattered ideas, worn-out phrases,

like Nietzsche's birds,
so exhausted from flying

that one can catch them
in one's hand.

Thursday, January 18.
Delhi, the first day of shooting.

We leave the city.

Behind a small factory in the suburbs,
a barren vacant lot,

scattered clumps of grass,
crouching women.

On our arrival, one of the women
curses us and flees.

Her curses are translated. :
She doesn't want to be filmed.

It's evil,
a spell we cast upon her.

Being filmed will steal
from her everything she is.

The camera's fundamental brazenness
is something I've constantly experienced,

even in Paris, even with actors,
even on film sets.

Here it's worse.
These women have absolutely nothing.

They spend the morning on their knees
to glean a handful of fodder,

and I steal a bit more from them.

To them, we're Martians.

We enter their universe
without permission.

Our camera is a weapon,
and they're afraid of us.

Thursday, January 25.
Shepherds on the road to Halvar at night.

Camera in hand,
we emerge from the shadows

like bandits.

The shepherds watch us filming them,
half worried, half mocking.

Our loot. : A few images,
a few words, some laughter.

We know nothing about them.
They know nothing about us.

That's what this film will be. :

images gathered without a script
or preconceived concept,

a film of our chance encounters.

Like these stonecutters
on the outskirts of a village.

They seem from another age,

pyramid builders,
slaves from vanished civilizations.

I feel like I'm dreaming
with my eyes open,

but for them, it's terribly real.

They earn half a rupee per stone
and haul eight stones a day.

Tuesday, April 9.
Mysore, 2.:00 p.m.

The man's face
is blackened with smoke.

A skeleton is painted
on the child's bare skin.

These are Muslims
celebrating Muhurram.

This traditional dance is called
the Tiger Dance.

It's also a job. The man and child
earn their living dancing.

Words are useless between us.
The image is our only connection.

They dance and I film them.
That's all.

Everywhere we go, the first thing
I see are their eyes, their stares.

In a moment
we're surrounded by Indians.

We came to see them,
but they're the ones looking at us.

So we preferred to film them that way,

their sea of enormous eyes
turned on us,

on the camera's single eye.

We decided to film all these looks,

to make them
the leitmotiv of our journey.

Monday, February 19.

A group gathers around
an orchestra and dancers at a wedding.

At our approach, everything stops.

The participants stop
what they're doing to look at us.

The roles are reversed. :

We've become the show,
and they're the audience.

The young groom,
his face covered with yellow powder,

wearing a flowered hat,
waits for something to happen,

for us to do something.

Bit by bit,
they seem to forget about us.

The ceremony continues

with its precise ritual,
unchanged for centuries.

This eternity erases us,
like an unimportant spot in the crowd.

The husband goes from door to door.
He's given rice and offerings.

For 150 bricks,
these men earn one rupee,

equivalent to 64 centimes,

but equivalents are meaningless here
where everything is different.

We film them as they are, the hypnotic
repetition of their movements.

There's some sort of truth to be found
there at least.

To tell how they work
10-1 2 hours a day,

live in huts,
come from neighboring villages,

have no land-

would all that add anything
to what the images already reveal?

Saturday, March 2.

The proletarianized peasants
call these "the backward classes, "

an expression used to designate
those without caste, the Untouchables.

They are exploited,
their lives stolen.

In this scene,
rich ground for political analysis,

I notice the camera's
chosen only one aspect.

It keeps returning
to this young woman,

because we're drawn to her beauty,
her graceful modesty, her laugh.

Because she dazzles us. Because
that's what it was like that morning.

Gradually we discovered
the simple joy of not planning ahead,

of deciding neither what to shoot
nor its meaning.

We follow the camera.
It guides us.

We're not filming to defend an idea,
or demonstrate one.

For three months
we followed the trees.

The roads are terrible,
but the trees are magnificent.

They've been revered for centuries,
with altars devoted to them,

with a statue of Ganesh,
son of Shiva,

elephant-headed god
of prosperity.

I made this journey
for personal reasons.

It was an escape,
a break, a sudden detour,

but the escape quickly
became a quest,

a need to discover, or rediscover.

Each step we take is part of the film.

Westerners with a camera -
Westerners twice over.

Sunday, February 18.

We saw the flags
and heard the music,

but when we got there,
the festival was over.

We saw priests
giving food to beggars.

Or at least
that's what we thought we saw.

But these aren't beggars, but Brahman
peasants come from local villages

for a ceremony honoring Shiva
that will last several days.

As Brahmans they belong
to the highest level of the caste system.

This doesn't make them the richest,
but the most respected.

Other peasants keep
a respectful distance.

They'd never dare share
the Brahmans'meal.

Knowing someone's a Brahman isn't
enough to place them in Indian society.

There are more than 1,800 subdivisions
within the Brahman caste.

The groups cannot intermarry,
nor even share a meal.

Western logic fails here.

It takes an intuitive understanding.

We'd have to experience it
from the inside, be a part of it.

These are Catholic Indians, traveling
performers putting on their show.

A circling rider who never dismounts,
a transvestite in too much makeup,

music that isn't Indian at all,

an image of Jesus on the altar
among Hindu gods -

it's like something
out of a Fellini film,

ambiguous, indecent,
completely unexpected in India,

which continually startles us
with its Puritanism.

I'm taken by the sudden feeling
of being home again,

finding Europe
on the shores of Kerala.

Friday, April 5.

A Communist demonstration.

I'm told they're postal workers
protesting a postage increase.

It seems odd, but at the same time,
quite nice of them.

They keep chanting the same slogans.

We keep hearing a word
that means "Long live..."

Long live the Communist party,
the postal union, the Vietcong.

I don't believe the story
about the postage increase.

I can see they don't trust us.

We've often been taken
for US spies, CIA informants.

Indeed, I often feel like a cop,

as if my film were surveillance,

an investigation
whose purpose still escapes me.

Friday, March 18.

In the south, not far from a village,

we come across
a large group of vultures.

The corpse at the side of the road
is a buffalo, mostly intact.

We've seen this often.

In many parts of India,
for religious reasons,

it's forbidden to slay cattle.

They still die-of old age,
sickness, cold, hunger,

what we call "natural causes. "

A dog helps itself to the corpse,

while vultures wait.
They're in no hurry.

When I see this scene again today,

I realize we reacted
in terms of our culture.

Around us, the landscape
reminded us of Greece,

bathed in some austere grandeur

that lent an air
of mysterious sacrifice.

To us it was a tragedy,
a drama in several acts.

For our Indian companion,
it was an everyday scene. :

a glimpse of life and death
and their calm alternation.

It was nothing worth filming,
nothing extraordinary.

As we headed further south,

we frequently found statues
at the entrance to villages. :

gigantic animals, especially horses.

These are the villages' divine protectors,
their personal gods.

In the south, religion is everywhere
a part of daily life.

Here, a jeweler throws a party
for his friends and family.

Folklore, as seen in the West,

is the continuation or rediscovery
of ancient traditions.

Folklore needs tourists to exist,
and in India, tourists are scarce.

The gestures, the attitudes,
the ceremony,

everything happens
in the present tense,

in the indicative mode, in reality.

Once the film has been finished,
edited and projected,

it can be seen as folklore,

but it's you and I
who make it so.

Drawings with ritual meanings
can be found everywhere in India. :

on entrances to houses, on walls,
in the streets, in homes.

The women who create them
allow only tiny variations

on specific symbolic themes.

Where we take aesthetic pleasure

in the abstract floral drawings,

these women experience
and recapture a link with the divine.

They draw to bring
their god to them.

Indian women are very beautiful,
especially in the southern villages.

These women belong
to a group with tribal origins

that merged with the caste system.

They wear brightly colored clothing,

predominantly red
and inlaid with tiny mirrors,

like fabrics from Gujarat.

Their noses, ears, necks,
wrists and ankles

are all covered
with solid silver jewelry.

They wear their fortune on them.

Alongside the dirty, crumpled rupees
passed from hand to hand,

there's this wealth
worn by all the women,

incomprehensible
in such a poor country.

There is much dancing in India,

yet it's very rare to see
a dance including both sexes.

Maybe this is a mystery of a country
which remains essentially rural,

where an unchangeable system reigns.

Each person knows what to expect
of his life from childhood.

Everything is laid out in advance,
even marriages,

governed by the exacting boundaries
of castes, subcastes and families.

A lengthy protocol,

a rather dreary party
despite the expense,

and above all,
the bride's solemn expression.

There was something poignant
about all these marriages,

but maybe that's just
one more Western conception.

We spent five months in India
without ever seeing love.

We never saw a man
turn to watch a woman,

never saw a woman whistled at, nor
a single provocative or tender gesture,

as if there were only one sex.

Once, however,
during our last days in Bombay,

we came upon
this boy and girl flirting.

We filmed these two lovers
with rapt attention.

It's our most precious footage,
absolutely unique.

In India we always saw
the women on one side of the street,

the men on the other.

What also surprised me
was the lack in Indian newspapers

of reports of sexual offenses,

sadistic acts, rape, exhibitionism, etc.

Each Sunday, Indian newspapers
devote pages to marriage offers.

These aren't lonely-hearts ads.

They state their terms.

I'll read an example. :
"Seeking accomplished young woman,

light-skinned, non-kusika,

for single man,
masanad prakaranam,

34 years old, government employee.

Send horoscope. "

Marriage isn't a personal matter here.

First and foremost
it's about caste,

because the young woman
must not be kusika

in order to marry the young man of
the subcaste masanad prakaranam.

As for the horoscope,
requested without fail,

it crushes any chance
of love at first sight.

"Light-skinned"is a frequent demand,
but completely relative, of course,

in a land where everyone is
more or less copper-skinned,

but it's assigned great importance,
especially in the higher castes.

In Northern India especially,

a dark-skinned child's birth
into a high-ranking family

is seen as a catastrophe.

Saturday, February 1 7.

Konarak.
A gigantic chariot of the sun,

with 1 2 stone wheels,
each 10 feet high.

Begun in the 13th century,
it was never completely finished.

This temple is famous
for its countless bas-reliefs of all sizes

illustrating the Kama Sutra,

the Indian encyclopedia
of erotic techniques.

Indian tourists listen calmly to the guide.
Apparently, they aren't shocked.

Is it just a pose?

Victorian England
brought its Puritanism here

and left a profound mark on India.

In Indian films, couples never kiss.
It's forbidden by the censors.

In the crowd of Indians,
we meet two young Frenchmen.

They belong to the international
brotherhood of penniless travelers

that journalists call
"beatniks" or "hippies. "

Lots of Europeans who come here

are touched by grace.

After only two weeks in India,
they claim they're Buddhist

or Hindu.

Some just make the trip on a lark
and smoke hashish all day.

That's all they do-smoke and sit around.
They don't go anywhere.

All they're interested in here
is being able to smoke freely.

That's all they care about.

For a lot of people,

drugs are an end in themselves

instead of a means.

Hashish can be a way
of opening yourself more fully

to music or poetry or love.

It can be a means
of accessing those things,

but for a lot of people
it's an end in itself.

They say, "We can smoke hashish.
We're free and happy."

India is too beautiful,
too full of things.

It makes you want to stay.

We thought we'd stay three months,
but now we don't want to leave.

We've gotten used
to the Indian rhythm of life

and have adopted it.

When we left France we still had...

the defects of Western society.

We were basically
selfish individualists.

Here you realize
that money doesn't matter.

The Americans send
their Peace Corps here

to teach the people to fish intensively.

The people aren't interested.

They have enough to live on
and don't need more.

They don't feel the need for more.

That's an Indian character trait.

They won't work more
than they need to.

The poorest man with a rickshaw -

ask him to take you somewhere,
and he'll say no if he doesn't want to,

even if you give him money.

He earns his three rupees daily
and that's enough. He doesn't need four.

The fisherman fishes until he catches
his two pounds each day.

He's not interested
in catching more.

Why? To have more money?
He's not interested.

- You're not interested in money?
- Absolutely not.

Unfortunately, in the society we live in,
we need money.

When you live in modern society,
you need money to live.

You can't live without money.

You'd like to get rid of it?

At our level, yes.

We live in a parallel society,
completely different from modern society.

Capitalism and all that.

If we have enough to live on,
that's enough.

We don't want
to produce things to export.

We produce what we need
for ourselves.

We don't need the extra money.

By farming the land,
making our own tables and furniture,

binding our own books.

Knowledge won't be limited
to a bunch of dusty intellectuals.

The days of books
and grandiose thought are over.

We have to know
how to farm the land.

The only religion will be
that of love and friendship

and life.

If it works, maybe someone will say,
"Hey, that's a good idea.

I'll do the same thing here."
And another will say the same.

Maybe a lot of people.

In Madras, three weeks later,
we ran into Bernard and Didier again.

They'd changed a lot.

As we went further south,
the climate got rough.

I got sick as soon as I got here.

Ever since I got to Madras,
I haven't been able to eat.

I throw up. My head hurts.

You've decided to go home?

Yes, I wrote to my parents.

They're sending money
and a plane ticket.

Didier has made up his mind
to go home.

He doesn't want
to try Indian doctors or medicine.

To go back suddenly like this,

straight from Madras to Paris,
is going to be really strange.

I'm going to Goa.

- By yourself?
- All by myself, like a big boy.

To Goa, then back to Delhi?

Then Pakistan.

Young people from Sweden,
Germany, England, Australia -

all the industrialized nations -

have come here, like me,
to find something else.

But none of us
can escape our civilization.

I'm afraid they're dreaming India,
like I am.

In Goa, on one of the immense beaches
inhabited by hippies,

an Italian nudist
spoke of his disillusionment.

What were you looking for?

A new way of living.

To learn to live a certain way.

I wanted spirituality in my life
that was missing in Italy.

I felt something was missing,
that there were other things to do.

That's what I came to find,
but I didn't find it.

Maybe what I was looking for
was just an idea I had.

An idea of my own.

Just an idea in my own head
from reading books.

For example, I was really interested
in the life of Gandhi.

It really intrigued me.

But the idea Gandhi represented
can't be found here anymore.

Yes, India isn't easy for foreigners.

It started with the American rental car,

an exception in India,
where late-model imported cars are rare.

The tires were completely bald.

The manager of the rental agency
offers to change them,

but there's one problem. :

There are no tires this size in India.
They're not produced here.

But they'll find some
approximately the same size.

That "approximately" will mean a dozen
flat tires over the next two months,

the same scene
repeated over and over.

Ten mechanics take the tires off,
remount them and take them off again,

trying to solve the impossible problem
of the curve of the rim.

They possess infinite patience.
Time doesn't seem to exist.

It can take an entire afternoon.

Once or twice,
due to our poor Western upbringing,

we threw an angry fit,

an ugly-and quite useless-reflex.

Tuesday, February 27.

I awoke very early.

The light is still undecided,
very soft and sad,

as it often is in the tropics.

I'm suddenly projected
15 years into the past,

to early mornings in the Seychelles,

on beaches like this.

I was 20, shooting my first film.

The tropics enchanted me, the entire
world one big promise of happiness.

Suddenly, the fishermen in front of me
are replaced by others.

Once again
memory fills the foreground.

Once again, I'm incapable
of living in the present,

of feeling it, of touching it.

Even in the Seychelles,
reality escaped me,

that elusive harmony
between men, light and landscape.

I had to reinvent it, modify it,

project onto it
my dreams and memories.

I had to destroy it.

Westerner, filmmaker,

time's tamer, time's slave.

The sun is now high in the sky.

The catch is poor, as it often is
on the Madras coast.

We film the faces,
the order and beauty of things.

Suddenly, the scene changes.

A stranger joins the fisherman.

He stands out in his city clothes.

He's come to buy their fish,

to take it on his bicycle
to sell in the neighboring city.

He's not a big buyer,

but for these fishermen, as in the rest
of the world, he's the enemy,

a middleman
who won't pay full price.

So begins an argument over pennies.

It's the same story over and over,
the old story of exploitation.

These fishermen
are in a caste of their own,

or more precisely, a non-caste -
unclean, untouchable.

They live on the bare sand, sleeping in
huts made of leaves or under the stars.

Sometimes they move further down
this stretch of beach.

Then they return.

They aren't sailors.
They can only fish from the shore.

That's how they've always done it.

Another argument breaks out.
Once again it's about money.

The woman is the partner and ally
of the fishmonger on the bicycle.

This is my film.

On one hand, an entirely subjective
reflection on my interior world,

but on the other,
just the opposite. :

the economic realities
that won't let me escape into dreams.

An incessant back-and-forth
between myself and the things before me.

Almost always,
reality gains the upper hand.

Due to the state
of the original material,

certain defects could not be removed
in the restoration of this film.

Translation by LYNN MASSEY
for SUBTEXT SUBTITLING

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