Mrinal’s Kandahar up from the ruins

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Mrinal Sen’s Kandahar (The Ruins), screened in the “classics” section of the ongoing Cannes Film Festival here, appeared as fresh from the laboratory as it must have been in 1984. That was the year it was made and shown at the festival.
Kandahar, much like its name, was in ruins, at the National Film Archive of India at Pune.
The archive, meant to preserve and protect the nation’s glorious cinema heritage, has now started a programme of restoring old classics.
Khandar has been remastered by Reliance MediaWorks, which operates one of the world’s largest restoration facilities.
For all those film buffs and fans of Sen who had assembled at the theatre on Saturday night, Kandahar could not have come as a better classic.
When Sen himself, all of 87-years, walked somewhat unsteadily into the auditorium, a hush fell. Yet, a strong sense of excitement was palpable even in Thierry Fremaux, the Festival’s key man, who introduced Sen to the audience.
The master himself was overwhelmed by a nearly packed auditorium that gave him a long standing ovation both at the start and the end of the event, and he said he was happy there was such a large following for Indian cinema.
“I had forgotten all about Kandahar till this evening,” Sen told the audience.
Kandahar is pure auteur fare that narrates the story of a city photographer (played by Naseeruddin Shah), who goes along with two of his friends to a village in ruins.
There he meets a blind, dying woman and her young daughter (Shabana Azmi). The mother is waiting for a man who had promised to marry her daughter, but the young woman, the photographer and his friends all know that it will not happen.