Uski Roti

Mani Kaul's"Uski Roti" ('Our Daily Bread'), which came out in 1970, is now considered a classic of Indian New Wave cinema and was, like the films of Satyajit Ray, heavily influenced by the Italian Neo-Realist Movement. In terms of its raw, unadorned style it could have been made twenty or thirty years earlier at least. Kaul uses black and white images rather than excessive dialogue to tell his story which is unusual in that it deals with the role of women in Indian society.

A young wife waits by the roadside for her husband, a bus driver, to drive past so she can give him 'roti' but he pays her little attention and has a mistress. I have no doubt a similarily themed movie made in the West would have been excessively melodramatic but Kaul opts for a documentary-like realism with heightened sound recording and a highly stylized form of acting. This is an Indian art-movie, quite clearly not designed for mass consumption and so simply constructed it feels positively primitive like the ethnographic studies of Murnau or Flaherty. It's virtually impossible to see it here now but if you get the chance I can warmly recommend it.

Immediately mouse clicks will be heard, clicking 'back' or delete as they read a review of a film that is described as 'slow'. But it is, unashamedly so.

IMDb has it listed as being in colour, when it's not. It's in a slightly soft off, creamy white with soft, open blacks and as a photographer, in my mind's eye, I could see beautiful monochrome prints all the way through it.

The story is a simple one; a dutiful and beautiful Hindi wife takes food out to the road that her bus-driver husband route is on. She suspects that he is seeing another woman in another town as she sees him only once a week. It seems that he only stops his bus when he has a passenger to pick up or drop off, otherwise he just speeds through, leaving her standing there. Whether he feels too guilty to stop or believes his wife is unworthy of this action is another aspect to consider.

He does stop on one occasion and as she questions him, he is flippant and unfriendly. Her sister questions her innate sense of duty, to which she replies that seeing him once a week is better than not seeing him at all.

The film rolls on for 110 minutes and I saw it on Channel 4. I notice that Mark Cousin's 'The Story of Film: An Odyssey' had him examining this film and interviewing the director Mani Kaul. I watched all episodes of Mark Cousin's excellent series and I'm ashamed to say that I cannot recall this, but, having said that, he did feature a large number of superb films and over ten episodes, it would be impossible to remember them all.

Our Daily Bread is a poetic work, recommended really only for certain meditative times in our busy lives and frankly, only to those who might appreciate such things. It would be an utter waste for the majority, I'm afraid.