Her Venetian Name in Deserted Calcutta (1976) Poster

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"India Song"
Velrias23 April 2017
"India Song"

Duras, here, is speaking an experimental, visionary new cinematic language & grammar; an avant-garde synergy between image and sound, trying to create distant images into memories.

The scenes do indeed feel like a far off, distant memory, of joy, romance, and melancholy.

Incredible.

It feels like a dreamscape, with the images portrayed; rich in nature.

Duras creates a extraordinary, ethereal, complex connection, similar to India Song; the images, the emotion, the environment, the narration...all come together to create a unique concoction; a vortex of musical sounds and imagery.

It's almost like a silent film reversed; revolutionary. Duras has seemingly freed herself from material characters, and instead uses voices for her expression,in seductive tones.

It feels metaphysical; existential, with regards to the India Song repetition.

The images hold a scarred past: a broken mirror; a music piece heard in the distance; empty spaces; torn walls; a singer from Savannakhet.

Haunting speeches, juxtaposed with a slow-moving background..

Listening to India Song, with a man saying how he loved because of India Song, while gliding through a dark building, with a lone light, really is a marvelous, stupendous, alluring prodigious experience.

Once again, the characters are mysterious, and the form in which they are presented, makes them all the more fascinating.

The screams, and cries, over the sounds, are truly haunting.

Sun-beamed, sun-glazed rooms...

The shouting, and painful screaming, into the ballroom song; transcending..

Duras was much ahead of her time when she created this, and I do say that she this is still ahead of it's time even now, and may be for a long time; if always.

In some moments, it really feels as if you've entered a dream.
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10/10
An eternal chef-d'oeuvre
hervieu-philippe27 January 2003
A deeply sensitive introspection around the themes of presence and absence, memories, life, love, death and permanence. Not a movie to see, but sensations to live. Something about what can't be said or show. If you don't like it, your are only half living. If you like it, you are already half dead. A unique magical object. Sad and beautiful. Pure poetry.
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