He is considered to be one of the most significant contemporary practitioners of experimental cinema,[1][2][3] known for his distinctive style of filmmaking rooted in field-research and personal symbolism resulting in images that are visually rich and acoustically stimulating.
His montages are considered as baffling the eye and the urge to interpret, being interwoven with a complex labyrinth of allusions from historical reminiscences, fairytales, children's stories, texture etc.
Like a dream that we may fail to understand but that reaches deep recesses of our unconscious and touches familiar chords, Amit Dutta's Kramasha weaves a powerful narrative that blends legends, myths and nostalgia into a film that allows us to recall our own early experiences.
[26] Nainsukh has received a great deal of appreciation from film critics and art-historians, Milo Beach stated, "I think that this will do more for public interest in Indian painting that all the many scholarly essays.
The film is said to be balancing between documentary approach and playful plot, developing its own visual language by interpreting as well as questioning Indian art history and one of its greatest artists.
[28] While deeply rooted in Indian tradition and philosophy,[29] the film is also seen by eminent critic Olaf Moller as a "thought-provoking investigation into the slippery, ever-changing nature of realism, its representation in the arts.
Galina Stoletneya remarks that "By harmoniously juxtaposing the gorgeous visuals with outstanding sound design, the filmmaker produces a unique work of art—a living painting itself—that stands on its own"[33] Max Goldberg of San Francisco Film Society observes that the film pays close attention to the finesse of Naisukh's brushwork and his observant images of the patron's more informal moments like smoking and beard-trimming.
He adds that "When the filmmaker reconstructs one of Nainsukh's more complexly staged scenes—as in the hunting of a tiger clutching its human prey—his cinematic technique of isolating different elements of a single scene evokes the dynamic register of imagination and realism animating the artist's deceptively flat pictures".
He also made a feature-length documentary Ramkhind, a meditative observation of the everyday life of the people in a Warli village, which has produced some of the finest contemporary painters in its distinctive folk idiom.
[35] In the years 2011–12, Dutta recorded extensive conversations with another eminent Indian art-historian B.N.Goswamy, an authority on Pahari Art, for the production of an archive of his works in twenty volumes.
Studying art is a way of seeing the world; the film's official subtitle, "portrait in absentia" suggests infinitude as Dutta's discerning eye alludes to the images that will forever remain lodged in our memory spurring us on as a life force".
[92] In March 2015, at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the 37th edition of Cinéma du Réel conducted a major retrospective of 14 of his features and short-films, curated by eminent curator and film-critic Marie-Pierre Duhamel Muller entitled “Amit Dutta: Through the Looking Glass,”[93] followed by a round table conference dedicated to discussing his work where using excerpts from Amit Dutta's films, the participants went over the different stages of his filmography and artistic path.
He builds up a universe for the spectator where research feeds the imaginary, where the arts, history and mythology form part of landscapes and gestures and where knowledge enchants reality.”[95] and that his body of work evokes “the philosophical majesty of the image.”[96] Dutta's films have been compiled and screened as comprehensive retrospectives at several points in his career.