Nocturnal India
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Nocturnal India |
| Original title | Nocturne India |
| Country of production | France |
| original language |
English Portuguese French |
| Publishing year | 1989 |
| length | 109 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Alain Corneau |
| script | Alain Corneau Louis Gardel |
| production | Maurice Bernart |
| music | Franz Schubert |
| camera | Yves Angelo |
| cut | Thierry Derocles |
| occupation | |
| |
Nocturnal India is a French literary film adaptation by Alain Corneau from 1989. It is based on the novel Indian Night Play by Antonio Tabucchi .
action
The French, with Portuguese roots, Rossignol came to India from France. The historian is looking for his friend Xavier Janata Pinto, who disappeared in India a year ago. He begins his search in Bombay's red light district. In the run-down Hotel Khajurao he meets with the prostitute Vimla Sar, who lived with Xavier for a while. He had come to Bombay from Goa . After a good time together, he became very angry and angry. He wrote a lot, but burned everything. Some letters had come from the Theosophical Society in Madras , to which he always answered. When he got sick, he went to the hospital in Bombay and she hadn't heard from him. Rossignol goes to King Edwards Hospital, where the doctor gives him no hope of finding Xavier's name in the thousands of medical records. Nor does he remember any such patient. Rossignol accompanies him on his rounds.
Rossignol spends the next night at the luxury hotel Taj Mahal , where he begins a long letter that he tears up. He takes a trip to Elephanta Island , where he visits the three-headed Shiva , the sight of whom touches him deeply. He then travels to Madras by train. On the trip he met a man from Israel who called himself Peter Schlemihl . Rossignol knows Adelbert von Chamisso's book and knows that the name cannot be real. The traveler thinks that Schlemihl has lost his shadow, but will find it again in the end. He travels to Madras to see the statue of the dancing Nataraja . It was once on the table of a concentration camp doctor who used it for medical experiments. The desire to see the statue on site has dominated him for 44 years.
Rossignol visits the Theosophical Society, where he talks to a professor about Xavier. The letters he wrote are confidential, but the professor reads one to him. In it, Xavier writes that he became a bird that sings at night. The letter is from September last year and was written in Calangute , Goa. In a restaurant, Rossignol later heard on the news that a former German doctor in Madras was killed by a Nataraja statue. He wants to get in touch with Peter Schlemihl, but changes his mind.
He travels to Goa by bus. During a long stay, he met a family whose daughter is blind and mentally disabled, but is considered an arhat and is revered as a fortune teller at festivals. He lets her predict his fate, but she cannot sense his own identity and soul in him. He was "someone else". Rossignol is irritated. In Goa, Rossignol briefly visits the episcopate because he wanted to investigate Xavier there. Now he says goodbye immediately and goes to Calangute. He swims in the sea and gets to know a schoolgirl who gives him the tip to look for his friend in the Hotel Mandovi. At the same time, she points out that Xavier may not want to be found if he has not asked to look for him. While pondering on the beach at night, Rossignol realizes that Xavier must have named himself "Nightingale" after the bird of the night, so the name Xaviers is like his, as Rossignol is French for nightingale . At Hotel Mandovi, Mr. Nightingale is known as a well-traveled businessman, but he hasn't been there for a long time. He prefers more exclusive hotels, and so Rossignol's journey ends at the luxury hotel Aguada. Here he meets the French photographer Christine, with whom he has dinner. He tells her about his plan to write a script in which a man is looking for another man. In his narrative he becomes Xavier, who is wanted by a former friend, which turns out to be a search for himself. The story ends in the hotel in Goa where he is with Christine. He and Rossignol would end up sitting at different tables and looking at each other without saying anything. Rossignol went and gave up looking for him after paying the bill for him. In fact, the bill was paid by an unrecognized guest. Later Rossignol and Christine say goodbye to each other. When Christine asks whether the script is fiction or reality, Rossignol just smiles silently.
production
Nocturnal India was filmed on location in India in 1989. The costumes created Chandrakant Waradkar that Filmbauten submitted by Partho Sen-Gupta . Franz Schubert's string quintet in C major, op. Post. 163, D 956, serves as a recurring musical motif . The film opened in French cinemas on August 16, 1989. In Germany it was released in cinemas on December 13, 1990 and was released on video in July 1991.
criticism
For the film-dienst , Nocturnal India was an "intelligent, excellently photographed travel film that is not limited to the description of landscape and customs, but rather condenses the protagonist's worlds of experience into a complex philosophical discourse about the search for identity, religion and the possibility of understanding." Der Spiegel , on the other hand, criticized the film for failing to “open its eyes to India's reality or let it wander in it. Strange rooms, pompous facades and glowing horizons are always just picture backgrounds for a lonely person whose gaze is directed entirely inward, to a secret between two book covers. "
Other critics described the film as an "unprecedentedly elegant work" that shows "how we, Hesse- contaminated and Pessoa-driven , try to project meaning onto this subcontinent". Cinema called Nocturnal India an “artful road movie of the meditative kind”.
Awards
At the World Film Festival in Montréal , Alain Corneau won three prizes for Nocturnal India , including the Special Jury Prize. Yves Angelo was awarded a César in the category Best Camera in 1990. The film received four more César nominations: in the categories of Best Film (Alain Corneau), Best Actor (Jean-Hugues Anglade), Best Supporting Actress (Clémentine Célarié) and Best Director (Alain Corneau).
Web links
- Nocturne Indien in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Nocturnal India. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Cardboard comrade . In: Der Spiegel , No. 51, 1990, p. 206.
- ↑ RH: Nocturne indien (Nocturnal India) 1989. filmmuseum.at, accessed on December 29, 2013.
- ↑ Nocturnal India cinema.de.