Duvidha
spectre and spectacle

There are some films that don't just show you images but rather, they invite you to come and live within them, to breathe the texture of golden light against stone walls, to feel the weight of colour pressing down on characters. Mani Kaul's 1973 masterpiece Duvidha (The Dilemma) is just such a film, a ghost story that uses its images as an enchantment in its own right.

Duvidha tells the story of a merchant's son who marries a beautiful young woman but must leave her immediately after their wedding to carry out business in another city for five years. A ghost, besotted by the bride's beauty, assumes the husband's form and lives with her until her real husband returns. What follows is not the horror story Western audiences might expect, but a delicate meditation on desire, duty, and the importance of physical touch that can both connect and separate us.



Duvidha’s beauty lies in Kaul's novel approach to cinematography. Working with his cinematographer Navroze Contractor, Kaul creates a visual mis-en-scene that rejects conventional storytelling techniques in favour of something far more ethereal and evocative. The camera doesn't merely record events, it contemplates them. Long, static shots allow the eye to wander across sun-drenched courtyards and the painted walls, a gentle dance between story, character and audience. Every new shot is a new treat, conditioning us to look forward to each new cut of the camera. 



Colours in the film aren’t just pleasing to they eye, they pierce through the frame. The bride's crimson veil against white stone steps. The ghost's ochre-yellow turban against an endless azure sky. The film's palette draws from the natural colours of Rajasthan - the baked earth, the painted walls, the vibrant textiles, yet Kaul and Mahajan transform these everyday elements into something transcendent.

Great art doesn't announce its greatness, it simply exists, waiting for us to discover it. Nearly fifty years after its creation, Duvidha remains one of world cinema's hidden treasures, a film that uses the most fundamental elements of the medium, literally painting with light, in order to create something truly magical.