SOUNDS OF ANGUISH

The greatest non-verbal sounds of Western Theatre and Indian Screen


Sir Laurence Olivier was an actor I admired greatly from the earliest of my film-going days. His old films have an impact on viewers even today.

An Innovative Actor


Olivier was a great stage and screen actor. He also devised a method of cinematically presenting Shakespeare's plays, underplaying their inherent theatricality. `Hamlet' (1948) which he directed and starred in, won two Oscars. His `Richard III (1955) was a definitive interpretation of the character, neither surpassed nor equalled till now. Towards the end of his life he did `King Lear'. It was a masterful performance where he used the infirmities of his ageing face and body to convey emotion.

Once he was offered two challenging roles to be performed in one day on stage. He played Oedipus Rex in the first part of the performance and later did a clownish role in a frothy comedy. According to the story of Oedipus, when he was born an oracle predicted that he would eventually kill his father and marry his mother. In order to avoid this calamity the baby was sent away to be killed. The man entrusted with this job leaves the baby in a neighbouring kingdom. Oedipus grows up in ignorance of his origin. The prophecy comes true when Oedipus, during his travels, kills his father and marries his mother without knowing their true identities. One day a soothsayer tells him that the misfortunes of the kingdom have been caused by his terrible sin. Oedipus is overwhelmed with shock and grief.

Olivier felt that the usual theatrical speeches and gestures would not be adequate for the enormity of the catastrophe. He was trying to find some way of conveying extreme anguish. At that time someone told him about the hunting of seals in the Arctic region. Some kind of powder was scattered on the snow, and when the seals stepped on it, they got stuck. They let off some loud cries that were heart-rending. Immediately Olivier left for the Arctic with a recording expert and recording equipment. When the seals' cries were recorded he came back, played the recording, and tried to find a human approximation to those pathetic sounds. After several weeks of practice he appeared on the stage.

And when the time came, he let out a seal-inspired cry of extreme agony, which froze the blood of the audience. Reviewers described it as "the greatest non-verbal sound in the history of the Western Theatre". This performance was never filmed, and so we couldn't see it.

An Indian Counterpart


But many years later we were able to hear some sounds of anguish, which were perhaps as good as Olivier's. Kamalhaasan in `Nayagan' played a gangster, Velu Naicker. His only son gets killed, and those close to the don come to his house. Unaware of what has happened, Velu Naicker is pottering about on the terrace. Seeing all the people standing sombrely, he asks them what the matter was. "Velu Bhai" says a North Indian associate, "Mera beta aapka beta. My son is your son." "Has something happened to Surya?" the old man asks. He looks down into the courtyard, and sees a dead body. He comes down the stairs unsteadily, accompanied by Ilaiyaraja's poignant music.

He asks a man to remove the cloth covering the face of the corpse. The man refuses, saying that the face is horribly disfigured. "Don't look at it", he says. Whereupon Velu Naicker puts on his glasses to see better. And then he lifts the cloth.

The audience is spared a view of the mutilated face. But it has its vision glued on Kamalhaasan's ravaged face. And then the actor lets loose a series of anguished cries that stunned the audience.

If Olivier's cries were the greatest non-verbal sounds of the Western Stage, Kamalhaasan's inarticulate cries are perhaps the greatest non-verbal sounds of the Indian Screen.






J. VASANTHAN



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