Dr. Visvesvaraya Director: M.V. Krishnaswamy Year: 1960 (?) (18:11) If Visvesvaraya had not toiled And allowed Cauvery to flow And not built Kannambadi? Would this precious land have harvested gold? — songs lyrics from the 1972 Kannada blockbuster Bangaarada Manushya (“Man of Gold”) “The lush evergreen forest across the Western Ghats” — we see it from a swift, sarkari vehicle on a road cutting right through it — we are headed for the Jog Falls, “famous for its enchanting beauty, beauty that has inspired many an artist and many a poet.” Gerson da Cunha’s sophisticated elocution is consummate, sublime, but it's all a setup: this isn't a film about an artist or a poet. Here the Sharavati plunges down the mountainside with a dizzying rapture, unfolding a glorious spectacle. From a distance we see the granite cliff riven by towering sheets of falling water and mist, then suddenly from just below, turning our heads from side to side, overwhelmed and inadequate to take it all in. Small bells carpet the soundwaves, drenching the viewer with that most Nehruvian of sarkari sentiments: adbhutarasa. Wonder. But this isn't a film about a waterfall. “It is said, once here came a man who upon beholding this majestic scene, exclaimed: 'What a waste.'” Broadcast the inversion of values, the prying loose of people from loyalties, broadcast the wrestling of the romantic landscape to the cold, industrial ground, into a new syntax, into the concrete forms chosen for its future... there can be no wonder in waste for Sir M Visvesvaraya. New ages demand new sacrifices, new optics. “This man was contemplating the invisible power hidden in these mighty torrents” -- there is an emphatic tonal shift on mighty, a half-tone bounce below the hook — SNS Sastry’s camerawork searches for it in dense, abstract fogs of spray and tropical light — the small hand bells tinkle on, the new temple music before the brahmin pulls back the curtain. Chant the vision: “He saw in the falls visions of a myriad canals emerging from a reservoir, visions of hydroelectric power which could turn the giant wheels of industry.” You hear industry, you see surging water and stone. What is this strange hybrid? “This man was an engineer, he was a great engineer.” Then just a photograph of his deep staring eyes. “He was Dr. Visvesvaraya.” Zoom out to the full portrait. Dr. Visvesvaraya reads the title. Produced by longtime Films Division head Ezra Mir, this story of the man who almost single-handedly brought modernity to Mysore is a classic example of high Nehruvian big-man bio-cinema, a heavy-handed narrative pieced together on the cheap from a mix of location shoots and still imagery, including photographs, historical documents, and news clips. As the all-powerful chief-engineer of Mysore state, Visvesvaraya was responsible for the planning and construction of the Krishnarajasagar dam on the upper Kaveri in 1912, creating what was then the largest reservoir in India. “If one can only place oneself in that epoch, one can judge what a colossal achievement it was in the context of the times,” we are reminded before an intimate tour that begins around 6:45 with a lot of maps, charts and SNS Sastry’s juicy, hydraulic dam porn: all nozzles, wet industrial concrete, steam and shadow. Oboe and xylophone strike the right louche tone on the soundtrack just behind. Sometimes adbhutarasa goes best with a little śṛṅgāra. Director (and Mysore native) M.V. Krishnaswamy, though little remembered now, was an important documentarian who began his career as an English professor in Mysore. He had a passion for acting that took him to England to study film in the late 1940s, where he trained under John Grierson. He also spent time in Paris and Rome, assisting Roberto Rossellini on the set of Viaggio in Italia in 1954, then again on India: Matri Bhumi in 1959. A very sarkari figure, Krishnaswamy made documentaries for the Films Division, spent time as the head of the NFDC, the Film and Television Institute, on the National Film Awards Jury and — of course — the Film Censor Board. He passed away in 2010. Satyajit Ray wrote of him: “M.V. Krishnaswamy belongs to the generation of pioneers in the field of documentary filmmaking in India. Without the foundation of the documentary film movement laid by MVK and his colleagues, there would be no such thing as documentary film in India today."
