Over half-a-century since Guru Dutt ended his life on October 10, 1964, film buffs continue to celebrate his cinematic creations and mourn his untimely demise in equal measure. With a thin line separating the personal from the professional, Dutt’s life remained entwined with the craft he had mastered in his brief career as writer-producer-director of all-time classics like Pyaasa, Kagaz Ke Phool and Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam. Was Guru Dutt so deeply engrossed in projecting the subjective imagination on screen that he failed to read life’s objective reality? Film biographer Yassar Usman has redrawn the portrait of this enigmatic artiste whose unfinished story continues to fascinate cinema aficionados till date.
Between his troubled childhood and an enchanted adulthood, there were compelling vignettes of the inexorable rhythms of existence with multiple layers of varied experiences and perceptions. If watching Baul singers made him engage with shadow figures on the walls, a brief exposure to Uday Shankar’s dance centre inspired him to locate melody in physical movements. With these experiences, Dutt could convert his poetic glances through the camera into a shadow play of movements, and thus was able to express the power of words and the spirit of music in the way that greatly challenged the set conventionalism of cinematic language. It was this unique touch that not only became his signature in cinema, but also contributed the most to his greatness as an illustrious filmmaker.
Chronicling a troubled life
However, the rebel romantic in Guru Dutt could not escape being soaked in the light and shadow of his onscreen melancholic creations. Drawing a sensitive and accessible biography of an iconoclast, Usman has made an attempt at unfolding the factors which may have led Guru Dutt to cut short his own life. An indecisive nature coupled with impulsive restlessness may have played upon a life stressed with unrequited love and unresolved relationships and forced him to take the extreme step. However, the very same qualities of impulsiveness and indecisiveness may have indeed contributed to him leaving behind a rich legacy of cinematic output that continues to fascinate audiences worldwide. No wonder, Guru Dutt remains an enigma; his illustrious and troubled life open to interpretations.
Guru Dutt: An Unfinished Story is a meticulously researched biography enriched with words of compassion and concern contributed by the artiste’s close friends and colleagues. Guru Dutt’s lifelong friend Dev Anand considered him to be someone ‘brimming over with artistic creation and lava that has to (sic) explode’. An important takeaway from the book, perhaps the most significant one, is that the pursuit of creativity comes at a price that the individual has to pay out of his emotional resources. It is a lesson not to take mental health for granted.
Making and unmaking
Without mentioning the contributions of Guru Dutt, the history of Indian cinema cannot be written. His masterpiece Pyaasa remains a classic — always counted among the 100 all-time greatest movies. With Guru Dutt’s cinema getting worldwide attention, a comprehensive biography on the making and unmaking of the filmmaker could not have been better timed. Usman deserves credit for putting together the multifaceted story of Guru Dutt because his cinema was ahead of its times, not only for its technical brilliance, but also for its profound take on the emptiness of life and the shallowness of materialism.
Even if you have known the story of the enigmatic filmmaker in bits and pieces, this biography makes for an absorbing read on the life of an iconic artist whose astonishing creativity sprung out of the seamless blurring of lines between the real and the reel.