Chaitanya Tamhane The Disciple at Venice film festival

Saibal Chatterjee

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It was way back in 2001 that India last had a Competition entry in one of the ‘Big Three’ European film festivals (Cannes, Venice and Berlin) — Mira Nair’s Golden Lion-winning Monsoon Wedding. It has taken 19 years for the drought to end. Chaitanya Tamhane’s sophomore effort, The Disciple, a Marathi-language drama situated in the world of Hindustani classical music, will vie for the top prize at the 77th Venice Film Festival (September 2 to 12).

Tamhane’s new film is a world apart from his 2014 debut, Court, which fetched him the Orizzonti Best Film award in Venice. Court was an unrelentingly grim examination of India’s justice system.

In The Disciple, Tamhane drifts into a completely different milieu. Will he bring into play the same unerring eye for detail that made Court such a wonderful film? “I was not familiar with either setting, which is what attracted me in the first place,” he says. His approach to storytelling, which rests on a keenness to probe new spaces and come up with fresh insights unsullied by preconceived notions, gives the 33-year-old writer-director the edge.

Says Tamhane: “The Disciple needed plenty of research. I required some knowledge of Indian classical music before I could start.” So, he deep-dived “without any agenda or story in mind” into what was a new domain for him.

The Disciple, according to the film’s synopsis, is about a young man who “has devoted himself to becoming an Indian classical vocalist, a lifelong quest in which few succeed. Initiated into this centuries-old tradition by his father, he follows his dream with sincerity and discipline, committing himself entirely to his artistic journey.”

The Disciple promises to be a distillation of Tamhane’s discovery of a Mumbai sub-culture. He wasn’t into Indian classical music as a boy. “I wasn’t even a listener. I was a ’90s kid, growing up on a staple of Hindi films, Marathi television and mainstream theatre,” he says.

So when, and why, did he decide that he would turn the spotlight on classical music in his second film? “The starting point for me,” he adds, “were the anecdotes I heard about classical music masters of the past and present. These stories fascinated me…. Classical music obviously has a rich history.… It is a complex world with a lot of different nuances, contradictions and complications.”

Significantly, Tamhane has cast two classical vocalists — 30-something Aditya Modak and 77-year-old Arun Dravid — to play the key characters in The Disciple. The challenge, he says, was to “find people who could sing and act, have screen presence, and have the inclination and time required for the project”.

When he started out, he wondered if classical music was actually still alive and kicking in Mumbai. “When I actually started attending these concerts, I realised what a vibrant and dynamic sub-culture this is in the city. I was very surprised.” The Disciple, he says, is “a new way of looking at Mumbai”.

Does a trip to Venice appear possible at the juncture? “We are trying our best,” he says. Depends on the visas, flights and the situation in Mumbai. We are hoping to make it even if it is only for the world premiere.”