The Image Deluge

 

Deccani Souls (2012) / Kaz Rahman

The first ten minutes of Kaz Rahman's 2012 film, Deccani Souls, have a distinct feeling of impending disintegration that pervades through them - it is as if the image is constantly coming apart at its seams, a faucet about to burst because of the contents that occupy it. As a result, Rahman must act as the editor-gatekeeper, allowing at a maximum only two or perhaps three disjointed images into the frame, but not more. Finally, as all of them jostle for space with each other, they seem to arrive at a reasonable reconciliation, an uncomfortable compromise: the superimposition. The superimposition is a often enough a cutesy pictorial tool - wu-xia epics would use it to establish looming presences and to indicate the oncoming of a major event - Rahman's film tells us that the superimposition is also the tool to depict a midwinter fever-dream or memories - because as memories go, when they rain, it's a downpour.