That Cloud Never Left review – experimental ruminations on cinema and labour
Mundane life meets magical daydreams in a West Bengal village where discarded film footage is turned into toys
An artful hybrid of documentary and fiction, That Cloud Never Left zooms in on quotidian life in Daspara, a small West Bengal village where toys are made from reels of discarded film footage. The iconography is clear: these pieces of film are filled with nostalgia and longing, and now bear witness to the beauty and toil of manual labour.
On the surface, That Cloud Never Left appears structurally fragmented, even opaque. There is an opening title that states that this is a work of fiction rather than a documentary; it is actually quite cheeky, considering that narrative is not a priority here, nor are any professional actors used. Instead, the film ditches linearity, and sees the villagers in fragments: a marital dispute over finances, a mother who waits for the monsoon, a boy searching for rubies in the forest. This mix of mundane life and magical daydreams lends an otherworldliness to this little village, as if the content of the cut-up film strips has seeped into everyday life.
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