Review: Rhythm of a Flower is a gentle ode to a musical genius

I fancy myself a curious person, especially when it comes to media/entertainment. Which means I sometimes bump up against something that's culturally impenetrable. A lot of the time, it's while watching international versions of Drag Race, where the references the queens make go right over my head. It's a weird feeling, but not an unpleasant one. I think of myself as fairly cultured. I watch a lot, am aware of a lot. But there's something nice, freeing, when I can't find my footing, when I'm left on the outside, when I stick out. It's one of the reasons I like to travel internationally. It's also a sign of privilege -- the ability to move freely in the world, to seek out that difference, to know I'll return to my safety net without incident.

All this to say, I found myself on the outside looking in with Amit Dutta's Rhythm of a Flower, an impressionistic ode to Indian classical singer Kumar Gandharva. I wasn't familiar with his music, his words, his story, and Dutta's approach to the material -- it feels like a dream you're always on the verge of waking up from -- doesn't hit the beats of a more traditional biopic. So while I don't think I emerged from this with much more knowledge about Gandharva, I enjoyed having this movie wash over me. I don't know that I'll ever be the person that's the ideal audience member for this, but I'm glad to have seen it nonetheless.

Most of my enjoyment here comes from the animation itself. Dutta collaborated with children's book illustrator Allen Shaw to achieve the look of the film, which is vibrant in its lush simplicity. The visuals look like they were ripped from a sketchbook, and finished with watercolors. There are so many gorgeous colors, shifting levels of details, rough lines and textures that made me want to reach out and touch the screen. There's an early shot of grass swaying that is so profoundly hypnotic that I don't know how to describe it -- it felt like I was watching something beyond this world.

But it's impossible to talk about the visuals without talking about the music, too. There are so many beautiful songs here, and I love the quality of the recordings. It feels like listening to well-worn records, a little tinny, a little scratchy. I think it's probably just a matter of these being old songs, but the quality really suits the film in its humanity and compassion. It often feels like the music is taking the reins of the visuals: the stamen of a flower suddenly transforming into fish, the color of a tree's bark shifting with each note, the horn of a phonograph swallowing a young boy whole. 

Sometimes, watching this movie feels like watching a visual album, but not some bombastic action-packed thing. More like a guided meditation, relishing these simple images and serene colors, the sound of lapping waves, the slow progress of a herd of goats. It's a movie that's easy to just chill with and vibe out to. Even if I wasn't sure exactly what I was looking at or why, I never felt like I was in unskilled hands. I believed there was a reason, one that was maybe beyond me, but so goes life sometimes. We're minute in a massive universe -- but we get to experience it! So what if I felt a bit unmoored in the narrative; how lucky was I to be in the sea.

If the film is meditative (and sometimes downright psychedelic), then Gandharva's words serve as the mantras guiding the way. Throughout the film, various quotes from his work appear on screen, often relating to instrumentation or musical theory. These help to illuminate who he was, and to help give extra context to how thoughtfully he approached his craft, and thus how we might approach it now. Some of the music stuff felt too big-brained for me to grasp, which was pretty exciting, and made me a little misty during a scene where Gandharva's sickbed humming is seen as a sign of his continued exploration of the vast landscape of a single musical note. I don't even know if the way I typed that begins to scratch the surface of what I'm trying to say. I'm just trying to find the rhythm, too, I guess, and the right notes to express feelings and experiences that words can't quite capture.