Towards the scope of ‘Individual Time’ and ‘Collective Time’, and the role of subjective consciousness in its formation: A Study of Satyajit Ray’s ‘Kapurush O Mahapurush’ (‘The Coward and The Holy Man’)

Abstract

The idea of time, its various sensibilities of influence on the individual and community
has been an idea very little speculated on in the realm of academic studies related to
Indian regional films. While the biggest work on the subject is available in Gilles
Deleuze’s works on the subject of Cinema, curiously titled “Cinema” (in two volumes),
the writer of this article, seeks to use the Deleuzian tradition of studying the subjectivity
of protagonists and the temporalisations of their respective time; in terms of the
narrative that they have been locate in. The author seeks to likewise study one of
Satyajit Ray’s least discussed gems “Kapurush O Mahapurush” (released overseas as
‘The Coward and The Holy Man’, as a part of the Criterion DVD collection), through
the lens of phenomenology, and tries to make sense of the dilemma of the “timeless”
and the “out of time” as faced by the protagonists of the movie.