Throughout his contemplative study of a poet out of place among his people, Guru Dutt presents the film community with the state of modern India using the story of one man as a sort of tressel board. Personifying the aforementioned poet Vijay, Dutt manages to quietly comment upon the effects of British imperialism while also conveying his great feeling for his culture.
Vijay haunts the streets of his village like an apparition until he hears Gulab, a lady of the night, singing one of the poems that his brothers have turned into waste paper for a trifling. Now intent upon publishing the remainder of his work, he gets a job for a man who harbors ill will against him, the man who married his college muse without attaining her love. When Vijay runs into Meena, his lost muse, the heavens open up in a choreographed musical number, the kind which would provide a benchmark for many a future Bollywood production, albeit in color.
To say that despite the black and white medium, Pyaasa engages and maintains the viewer's senses adequately rings true enough, but the cinematographer's use of light and dark sequences that change with the narrative sets terrific tone. In an encounter with a huddled, starving untouchable, in which Vijay gives up his jacket, the frames grow so dark that certain bits look directly influenced by early horror films like Nosferatu. His poems, all of which he sings, set the pace of the film, each more beautiful than the last. They seem to speak of a land of loveliness lost and nearly unreachable largesse of the soul in the wake of the caste system.
Of course, without the subtitles, a lot gets left to the imagination. Somehow, though, Dutt's masterpiece grasps a full range of ideals and absolutes in such a way that Pyaasa still acts as a complete film without them. The melodies help out, yes, but mostly the filmmaker deals in plot and paradise, from the opening shot of the poet enjoying himself by watching a bee buzzing around in the grass one moment, but getting trampled underfoot by a passerby the next.
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