All that breathes, absorbs, thinks…

That the documentarian Shaunak Sen is drawn to philosophers of the streetmdashif not using them as proxies for his own thoughtsmdashbecomes clear in his debut Cities of Sleep 2015 set among homeless in lowest decks of DelhiIn it Ranjit who accommodates people looking to sleep at night under a bridge quips ldquoAzaad wahi hai jo apni marzi se soye ya jaage Those who sleep and wake up as per their wish are in essence truly freerdquoRanjit isnrsquot quite the protagonist of Cities of Sleep Thatrsquos a Hindu beggar whorsquos changed his name to Shakeel so he can easily fit into the nightsleeping spotscotsrsquo scene in Old Delhirsquos predominantly Muslim Meena Bazaar shot on cameras in motionThe heroes of Senrsquos relatively static second documentary All That Breathes are brothers Naeem and Saud in their early 40smdashalso assistant Salik who is their cousin therefore totally a brother in Indian termsTheyrsquore born Muslims This identity may be immaterial to their lifelong vocation which is to rescue falling black kites one of the commonest birds hovering over Delhirsquos thick grey airThe ironies and politics naturally emanate from the place where a film is setmdashif it is true to its setting A documentary has much less choice on the matter reallyDirector Shaunak Sen PicsTwitterAnd so the killing fields of North East Delhi during the 2020 communal riots forms the inevitable background score while the Muslim brothers carry on with their day Once in a while the family casually ruminates over WTF is happening in their own neighbourhoodnationNone of which is underlined Politics that is inyourface agitprop agitationpropaganda if you may rarely qualifies for timeless artmdashdoesnrsquot matter how wellmeaning the politicsAlso Read Only social change can bring end to dowry menaceAll That Breathes is about the brothers and their relationship with the birds they rescue The camera simultaneously looks at the city and its own crowd of nonhumans for a uniquely observed urban ecosystem And indeed therersquos the inherent poetry of everything that breathes and lives under the same sky after allThis filmrsquos philosophy is practically read out by the brothers Irsquom guessing recorded in a sound studio Does that and other things like foley artificially amplified sounds interfere with the truths of a moment which is the unhindered faithfulness that cinema verite aims forNo Itrsquos just playing with form in order to convey a point engagingly The words are still the brothersrsquo This is creative nonfiction applied to writingjournalism as well There are no urgent statistics on the politics or pollution in Delhi thrown around nor simplistic talkingheads driving the narrative No other kind of voiceover eitherThe ecologicalsocial backgroundintentions is for the filmmaker to explain in interviews separatelymdashrather than mess with a thing of aesthetics thatrsquos a joy forever Having listened to Sen online for hours since All That Breathes itrsquos striking how eloquent hersquos as a filmmaker postulating such a clearcut theoretical model for what hersquos filmed Even if in hindsightThatrsquos because Sen is the rarest academicmdashhaving recently finished his PhD in cinema studies from Jawaharlal Nehru Universitymdashto be delving into the practical artcraft of globallevel filmmakingI donrsquot know another Indian He also did his masters from the Mass Communications Research Centre MCRC at Delhirsquos Jamia Milia Islamiamdashthe school SRK and I have in common for having dropped out ofFor decades MCRC has been Indiarsquos documentary filmmaking central Only those films by studentsalumni have barely enjoyed funds unbridled creativity to go too far beyond basic footage coverage and storytelling chiefly in the academicadvocacy spaceThis is including the 2022 Oscarnominated Writing with Fire wonderfully directed by MCRC alumni Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh on the allwomen Dalit newsmedia outlet in UP Khabar Lahariya It feels like a lsquocamping trip in the countryside with a camcorderrsquo in comparisonScrew the plotmdashyoung academic Sen on the other hand draws out a full syllabus for film buffs to get through before they can arrive at the beauty of the 2023 Oscarnominated Sundance and Cannes winner All That BreathesStarting with the threeminute long onetake opening sequence of rats in Delhirsquos debris shot like a dream by Ben Bernhard best known for the Russian top documentarian Viktor Kosakovskiyrsquos Aquarella 2018 Kosakovskiyrsquos last film Gunda 2020 about farm animals must not be confused with Kanti Shahrsquos 1998 mananimal docu about itselfThe contemplative images of the vast open sky alternating with the brothersrsquo dank Delhi basement offer such quiet soft visceral lyrical rhythm all through that you can sense the work of a master editor Charlotte Bengsten who made her name cutting Joshua Oppenheimerrsquos feted The Act of Killing 2012 Sen was more recently drawn to Bengstenrsquos work in The Truffle Hunters 2020But the sheer confident languidness of All That Breathes and the patient unravelling of both man and nature or life as we know it unmistakably hearkens back to the genredefying masters Andrei Tarkovsky Solaris Mirror Stalker and Bela Tarr Damnation Satantango Turin HorseYou could even sleep in and out of such films and feel like your brain inhaled something While yoursquore meant to soak in a visual journey within the fact that a documentary still shines a light on the concrete automatically feels less selfindulgent And worth breathing thinking and absorbing again alwaysMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper