Word: mallee
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OF ALL THE documentary or overtly political films, Louis Malle's Humain, trop humain--the title is cribbed from the French for Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human--succeeds in a way probably never intended. The journalistic techniques of Malle's immense study of Phantom India have here been restricted...
THE SHOTS I LIKE best are those when Malle catches the essence of something non-western, showing a way of life so different it could come from another planet. In a religious demonstration in Madras hundreds of worshippers pull an enormous chariot through the streets and thousands follow. Frantically everyone...
The most telling of these incidents is Malle's view of a group of mechanics trying to fix a flat tire. Ten of them jump on and off the tire trying to fit it to a rim that is too large. They don't understand that technology will not allow...
When Malle does put order into these diverse events it is more a reflection than a theory. He lets Indian politicians discuss splits within the Communist party, and films Indian gurus praying in isolation. He takes these themes to their furthest extremes by showing political problems in the slums of...
But it is just as well that these attempts are only half-hearted. Any resolution of the material into an overriding significance would violate Malle's own admission of ignorance, and his refusal to patronize Indian civilization. Surely this vast culture has its own order which no Westerner can penetrate...