Rutt deen

Harsh confrontation of images from Vienna with those from Calcutta. The images are the memories and nightmares of a man who spent some time in Calcutta and is now visiting Vienna forthe first time. The harrowing images are still engraved on his retina and keep pushing aside the impressions that he gets in these new and completely different surroundings. The mood of the film as been described as one of jet lag; the man is a photographer and was in India to made a photo book, but the journey obviously affected him deeply personally. The gap between the two worlds is as big as that between dreaming and waking, between day and night. (The film’s title is taken from a hotel in Calcutta and means ‘Day Night’.)Scheugl elected for an irritating and alienating treatment of the dialogue; for much of the film it is literally repeated by the narrator. The narrator also keeps describing exactly what can be seen on screen. This apparently redundancy and excessi¡ve overemphasis give the film the harshness of an interrogati¡on. Banality is increasingly banal and harshness even harsher. Scheugl lifts his impressions of India far above exoticism or superficial reporting.Rutt Deen is a clear step towards a more accessible film style by Scheugl, who has an experimental background.