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In order to become a mastersinger of Hindustan music, Sharad (Aditya Modak) practices every free minute
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Netflix
At first you can hardly hear it.
And when you finally hear it, you can hardly put it into words.
But something is there.
Something that distinguishes the master from the dilettante, the master from the student.
Chaitanya Tamhane's excellent film »The Student« can now be seen on Netflix after its premiere in Venice 2020. It revolves around Hindustan music, the style that is considered the classical music of North India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The 24-year-old singer Sharad (Aditya Modak) wants to become a master of this music. But not only the untrained ear (which becomes a somewhat more practiced ear as the film progresses), he himself also hears: it is not enough for that. Or to be more precise: it is not always enough for that. Because sometimes Sharad succeeds in singing in such a way that his music breaks away from him and sweeps through the room like an invisible being, he becomes a true creator.
His nameless master (Arun Dravid) teaches him complete self-abandonment. Because no personal conflicts or conflicting emotions should disturb the flow of tones. Unfortunately, Sharad cannot free himself from such. In one scene, director Tamhane shows in a medium long shot how Sharad is making music with other students in front of an audience. It is a tableau of ambitions: in turn, everyone should prove their skills. Sharad fails, and when another student takes over and shines, you can see at the edge of the picture how envy flashes in his eyes.
The fact that »Der Schüler« does not spare the apparently ugly, but ultimately only human, aspects of ambition marks one of the many differences to other music films of recent years, Damien Chazelle's »Whiplash!« For example, but also »Lara« by Jan Ole Gerster or » Prelude «by Sabrina Sarabi. They tell art like a sporting fight in which master competes against pupils or pupils against pupils, there are winners or losers and after the duel there is nothing more than eternal fame or lifelong strife with failure.
Tamhane escapes this banality, far removed from art, simply because the Hindustan musical culture resembles a belief system that demands years of devotion and allegiance from its followers. Only those who have submitted can rise in the hierarchies. In English, “The Student” is more appropriately called “The Disciple”.
The film itself also has quasi-religious qualities. Those who do not get lost in the singing of Sharad or his master, the Guruji, do so at the latest during the motorcycle rides, which Tamhane repeatedly cuts in between. In slow motion he lets Sharad glide through the nocturnal, almost deserted Mumbai, the voice of an even older singing master, whose recordings he accidentally discovered, in his ear. Their wisdoms combine with the flowing movements of Sharad and his vehicle to create an almost hypnotic stream of images that deserve to flow on the largest screens and not be streamed covertly on Netflix.
His beguiling images and sounds enable Tamhane to let the narrative jump. Because »The Student« covers several decades of Sharad's life and his struggle with music. In the course of this, his story becomes a universal one, because how he gives up certain dreams, develops new desires for them and finds satisfaction where he would not have expected them, is probably the little big story of every life.
The 34-year-old Tamhane, whose only second feature film this is, has no use for the cult of genius that so many films continue to write about artists. Instead, he works out the mutual dependencies of master and student and shows that, even to be chosen, someone else is always needed who recognizes this uniqueness. The idea of solitary genius turns out to be an empty aestheticizing formula, an expression of an idea of art that has nothing to do with life. Chaitanya Tamhane brings the two together closely, which is precisely why she creates great art.