Customer Reviews

Making Forest of Bliss: Intention, Circumstance, and Chance in Nonfiction Film

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Having spent two six-month stints in Varanasi, and being a film maker myself, this book had all the makings of a classic . . . and in ways it is. The dialog between the two men is classic . . . unfortunately the accompanying DVD itself - attached unwrapped and only by a small adhesive smear - was scratched from the word go. Disappointing. DVD should be in an envelope.

Robert Gardner's masterpiece Forest of Bliss gives viewers a chance to soak in a striking visual document. However, as the meaning of events-along with the visual significance of color, grain, and the light and dark of day-is realized, viewers need to lean forward and analyze just what it is they are watching, with no narration or subtitles to guide the narrative. Viewers can feel captured, like the images, in the stages of life and death.
Making Forest of Bliss, a conversation between Gardner and Akos Ostor, an anthropologist and key collaborator of Gardner's in Benares, India where the film was shot, provides context for the film. Yet Gardner and Ostor do not translate the story; instead they tell something new. Beyond the four walls of the film frame existed their lived experience. As they move through the film shot by shot, their provocative memories emerge into an academic discourse about the nature of nonfiction film. Readers gain insight into the precision of composing actuality and the varied forms of ethnographic study and tempered revelation. Meaning is made, unmade, and remade in remembrance, between two artists in academia who share distinct viewpoints.