Devdas | 2002 | Sanjay Leela Bhansali | Drama/Romance
Film
“Devdas” is a classic story of unrequited love and heartbreak, set against the backdrop of traditional Indian society. The film follows the journey of the eponymous protagonist, Devdas Mukherjee, the son of a wealthy and respected family. As a young boy, Devdas grows up with his childhood sweetheart, Paro, the daughter of a simple landlord. The two share an unbreakable bond which blossoms into love. However, when Devdas returns to India after completing his education in England, he is confronted with a different reality. His objective and ultimate desire to marry Paro is prevented by societal and family pressures. Every effort is made by the protagonist to keep Devdas and Paro from being together, leading Devdas into a world of self-destructive behaviour.
Devdas turns to alcohol to numb his pain. In his misery, he meets Chandramukhi, a courtesan. Soon she falls in love with Devdas, despite the fact that he treats her terribly. She tries to help him with his addiction, but he drinks more and isolates himself from those around him. Meanwhile, Paro is married off to another man who is much older and richer than Devdas. A fulfilled prophecy woven through the story reaches the end. Paro married to a rich man and Devdas himself destroys his own life until nothing remains and he takes his last breath at Paro’s front door and watches her run to him, but the iron gate is pulled shut and they remain separated for eternity. The heartbreaking final scene leaves the viewer in an emotional catharsis.
Motivation
Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s 2002 film “Devdas”, is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential films in Bollywood, the Indian film industry. In the same year, it was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was a major milestone in Indian cinema and represented an important moment for the Indian film industry at the global level. When Devdas is nominated, the following words immediately follow. Visual masterpiece, stunning costume and production design, Shakespearean tragedy and theatrical acting. Of course, the influential musical numbers are also mentioned. Composed by Ismail Darbar, it features a mix of classical Indian music and modern Bollywood-style songs. The use of classical Indian instruments, such as the sitar and tabla, creates a rich, authentic atmosphere and sets the tone for the film’s historical setting. I never told anyone about the sound design. To be completely transparent, I never paid attention to it myself either, so I wanted to focus on the elements of sound from this film. Some specific aspects immediately stood out that were more common and that I had never noticed before because I was immersed in the story and visual storytelling. I found out that quite a lot of geophony is used to enhance the emotional beats of the story. It also dawned on me how many different sound recordings there must have been to capture the sound characteristics of the female characters. I think this film uses sound design elements very well in a way that only becomes audible when paying attention despite its dramatisation and exaggeration.
Scene 1
0:57:20–1:01:10
In the dark, Paro sneaks off to Devdas. She walks past the guard who rhythmically respects phrases. This acknowledges the viewer without subtitling the actual meaning. The emanation speech adds nothing of substance to the scene, but subtly creates the reality of the film. He asks who she is by using a word ‘’who?’’ this does become semantic and so subtitled. It adds nuance to the story world where it becomes clear that not just anyone is allowed to enter Devdas’s family’s house. Devdas is woken up by wind sliding the curtain across his face. The wind itself is not audible, instead a ringing sound effect is used which gently fades away. Devdas’ breathing when he wakes up comes from the physiological sound which is at the same time objectively internal. This means that the sounds the character makes are physical and have no semantic meaning. The conflict of the scene arises because Devdas and Paro both know that they should not be seen together in the middle of the night, but the emotional, underlying subtext of the dialogue is the real conflict. They both hope they can get his family’s permission to get married together. Throughout the dialogue, non-diegetic pit music has been used which serves to increase the emotional weight of the scene and bring the audience closer to the characters. There are also some moments where the transitions of the audible montage are clear. The image supports the sound of geophony in this. In the way cut in sound and editing, it is external logic as the transitions within the scene are sudden. The light gets brighter and the sound of thunder and lightning are perceptible to both the film characters and the audience. Therefore, these transitions are also synchronous in image and sound. Clearly, it contributes content to the scene and was conceived in an early filmmaking process. In this, as well as in all the other scenes in this three-hour film, quite a lot of attention has been paid to foley. To be specific, the foley sound of jewellery. The foley artist has worked with great detail to vary the jewellery sounds and not make them sound repetitive. Every time a female character performs an action, the character’s sound characteristics become audible. These sounds are incidental because they are not intentionally deployed by the characters, but it is dietetic because they can hear it themselves. When Devdas and Paro are caught by his father, she runs outside. There, she hears her mother calling her name. This is actively made known off-screen. At first you only hear her mother and then you also see her on-screen, which is to say is that in the beginning it was there and now and the moment she comes on-screen, it is on-screen here and now. The scene ends with dialogue in natural silence. Outside, there is only sound of wind and in the moments where Paro is emotionally affected, there is the sound of thunder.
Scene 2
1:17:35–1:21:54
Non-diegetic music composed for the film is perceptible only to the audience as Paro’s mother prepares her for her arranged marriage. They talk about how fortunate Paro is to marry a rich man while deep down they know what Paro really wants. At that moment, Devdas is in the room and the non-diegetic music slowly softens and the spatial, diegetic music of the wedding becomes the last source in the background. The last source represents sound that sounds far away. For the story, this is important because it uses ambient sound to establish a sense and atmosphere of the setting. In the scene, this recurs a few times and is always interspersed with non-diegetic music. When the lovers are left alone, Devdas tells them that he is willing to go against his family to be with her. From then on, biophony is deployed in the spatial sound in the form of cricket sounds and this remains quietly in the background throughout the scene. It becomes more audible at certain moments when natural silence prevails in the environment. This sound reflects the place and time of the scene making the film world considered realistic without being noticed by the unsuspecting audience. Paro realises that it has taken too long and that her family’s pride should not be harmed. There is a passive off-screen shout that the groom is there. The person saying this does not appear in the scene, but the information given by her adds more tension to the scene. After the shouting, it’s back to dietary music and ambient noise of people talking. This reminds the audience and characters about the situation they have made themselves trapped in. Also in this scene, Paro’s actions are audible through the sound her jewellery makes. She picks up a necklace while calling him selfish. He snatches the necklace from her hands and smashes it against her forehead, making her bleed. Devdas kneels down beside her and breaks the necklace causing the pearls to fall to the ground. This is one of the sound features of the character in this scene. The scar and hence the blood is hugely important in the film. Traditionally, the Hindu wedding ritual is completed after the groom decorates the bride with sindoor (vermilion) on her forehead along the parting of her hair. Devdas who beat Paro and created the scar was very symbolic. He used blood instead of sindoor to complete their symbolic marriage, marking her as his wife from then on. Despite the reality they found themselves in, the scene and characters came to a their resolution because they were both stripped of their inner pride.
Scene 3
1:44:00–1:46:29
Drunk, Devdas slides aside the mirror curtain and walks away from Chandramukhi. The sound of the mirror curtain has a clink which echoes longer in the background. The sound does remain synchronous as it also remains in the picture until it is no longer audible. As the clinking becomes divergent again as Chandramukhi comes up behind him and also slides the curtain away, the illusion of a bee has been created. This is audible only in sound design and is not designed and portrayed through VFX. Devdas grasps it as he did in an earlier scene when he first saw Paro again after his studies. The soundeffect of a bee and Devdas’ action make it believable that there was a bee in the scene. This is an element of sound that was probably contrived in the screenplay. The sound that comes from nature, in this scene again thunder as in many other scenes in the film. The use of this particular geophony is employed to symbolise heartbreak and give colour to the emotional beats. When Devdas talks about an imaginary dialogue with God. Tells how he objects to how his life story is recorded. He answers himself by saying it’s all his fault. Distantly, Chandramukhi informs him that it is not. Her unrequited love for him shines through her concern. The natural silence is most noticeable in this scene because it gives depth to the dialogue, but also because it has almost no sound which can make it sound unnatural. There is only spatial sound in the form of biophony. This time it is frogs because the location is next to, on the water. The filmmakers’ choice and thoughtfulness makes the scene real for the story. At some high points in Devdas’ emotion, his voice is manipulated as it has an echo, reverberation. In his objection, God says he is going to drink himself to death as had been predicted and foreshadowed earlier in the story. He no longer objects. At that point, non-diegetic music is deployed so that the emotional impact of what is happening on screen can be fully absorbed. Devdas runs away and in his drunken state collides with a lamp and falls on the wooden deck. Chandramukhi calls his name which immediately changes the hearing point from spatial to film character hearing point as Devdas hears Paro calling his name in his head. The memory sound is semantic, which is to say is that it has substance, even if it is just a word. For Devdas and the audience, it has substance because it is clear what is being said and what it refers to. Besides, that also makes it subjective internally because it has a textual message. It also sounds distant and has reverberation. There is a glimpse into the character’s inner life, externalising the internal through dialogue because Devdas reacts to the sound and calls Paro once before he sinks down with sadness.
Conclusion
In these three scenes, careful sound design has been applied to boost the atmosphere and emotions in the scenes. Various types of sound have been used, including dialogue, non-diegetic music, geophony, nature sounds of thunder, foley for the characters’ jewellery. The latter is a sound that recurs in all three scenes and is also the only thing in total common between them. The first scene has raised, loud geophony to emphasise the emotional beats while in the second scene it does not occur. In the latter, it does occur a few times, but less intensely as in the first scene. Non-diegetic music is constantly interspersed with spatial sound or diegetic music which was used back and forth several times in the second scene. For much of the last scene, there was only spatial sound in the form of natural silence. This gave the scene the emotional charge as it was very minimal in sound until the end when the hearing point changes from spatial to film character hearing point. The hearing point in the other scenes is a spatial hearing point like much of the film. Off-screen sound is used both passively and actively in two of the three scenes allowing variation in sound design but also in the narration of the story. What was a great insight for me into the narrative effect of sound was in the third scene how spatial sound had been handled and how biophony was used to clarify the story in location. They could have used the same cricket sounds from the second scene, but because the location was next to water, frog sounds were chosen. I never considered this myself. It shows the well-thought-out work of the filmmakers. I also became aware of how geophony is used to support the dramatic beats. I watched ‘’Pride and Prejudice’’ (2005) another favourite film of mine and in the rain scene, the sound of thunder is also used to represent the emotional beats. I never noticed it in films before, but now that I know about it, I’m going to pay attention to it.
