The Cloud Messenger relies heavily on aesthetics to hook the viewers and draw them into its magical world imbued with a dark and transient visual tone. Rahat Mahajanīy juxtaposing highly trained performing artists of the Indian aesthetic traditions with school children (mostly non-actors), the film achieves a unique melange of restraint and spontaneity. Mahajan’s alma mater, The Lawrence School, Sanawar, forms the boarding school backdrop, which, with its location in the misty Himalayan mountains, accentuates the supernatural occurrences depicted in the film. Lakshmanan) invokes the spirit of Tarini from the netherworld.įrom The Cloud Messenger (2022), dir. For instance, the antagonist King Dashananan (Rajeevan Peesapali) who covets Tarini communicates through Kathakali, and the character performing Theyyam (K.N. Mahajan incorporates the ancient South Indian storytelling forms of Kutiyattam, Kathakali, and Theyyam in the narrative, which rely on facial expressions and gestures to invoke epic characters from Hindu mythology. While Kalidasa’s poem describes how a yaksha (celestial spirit), banished by his master to a remote region for a year, convinces a passing cloud to carry a message of love to his wife, the film engages mythical figures to fluidly traverse multiverses by abandoning perceived spatiotemporal structures. The film, Rahat Mahajan’s debut feature, narrates the fictitious story of Jaivardhana (Rahat Mahajan/Ritvik Tyagi) and Tarini (Lalita Shivani/Ahalya Shetty), attracting much-deserved attention as the only Indian film in competition for the Tiger Award at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam. Reimagining Kalidasa’s eponymous Sanskrit poem, The Cloud Messenger ( Meghdoot) (2022) tells the tale of cursed celestial lovers who, after centuries of longing, meet as teenagers in a colonial-era boarding school.
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