The colour of aesthetics

The fact : “Time for blood to flow”?

“The two bit cocksucker who colourized some films has sent a proposal to the West Bengal government about colourizing Satyajit Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’. I think someone should cut his dick out and shove it up his arse. The time I think has come for blood to flow” – this is the message I got on my cell on 29^th March 2008 from a painter friend residing in Mumbai. Dumb-founded by the content of the message and the animated language coming from this docile friend of mine, I decided to call him up. As expected, it was not his language, he just forwarded it, his full support for the message apparent though – and he promised, he along with his film-maker friend whose message was forwarded and many such personalities will take to road if someone messes up with the masterpiece.

The reason for this rage is the fact that a Mumbai based firm, Sankranti Creations (which added colour to ‘Mughal-e-Azam’ and ‘Naya Daur’) - has proposed to the West Bengal government that owns the Ray classic to colour the movie. The company has set a budget of over Rs. 1.00 crore for the colour project (for a team of 70) and a plan to release it by the end of 2008. However there are more controversies in store -- Sankranti Creations claims it has already converted one minute of Pather Panchali into colour and sent the demo clip along with its proposal to the West Bengal government. However, the concerned government officials deny any knowledge of such a proposal. Amidst this confusion, most of the intelligentsia – the film-makers, journalists, critics and others like my friend, all feel shocked and took little time to hit back.

Before looking at what others say, lets first see what Ray had to say about the usage of colour in films. In his seminal piece ‘Rongeen Chhobi’ written in 1972 (translated by Gopa Majumdar) , Ray observed - “When talking of ‘Ashani Sanket’, many people asked me why I chose colour to make the film…..after all, when I made ‘Pather Panchali’, based on a novel written by the same Bibhuti Bhusan who wrote ‘Ashani Sanket’ and which was a story about poverty in a village, it had not been necessary to use colour; then why use it to tell the story of a famine?” . Ray continued. “A question like this indicates the ideas and beliefs held by the general audience about the use of colour in cinema — that colour is inextricably linked with glamour and therefore the painful existence of people in the lower strata of society cannot be successfully portrayed through its use…..Even a few years ago it was the generally accepted view. Even those who were closely associated with cinema believed that a serious subject and colour did not go together”.  He reasoned that such a view is more predominant in India where commercial profitability shapes aesthetic taste more than anywhere else -- “Nobody abroad holds such a view any longer; but in our country, people who have seen only Hindi films, or are not familiar with the restrained use of colour in serious foreign films, are very likely to harbour such an idea…….. The horrible effects that can be produced by an intemperate use of colour can be seen in any Hindi film made today. Colour is used in Hindi films purely for glamour. Glossy and multi-hued packaging is necessary to hide the weaknesses in the basic subject-matter.”

However, Ray’s comments are about films which are made in colour or black-white in original and never about colouring of existing black-white films. In the works of Ray himself we will find that he made black-white after making films in colour as well, to him, it’s the subject which demands the medium and the treatment.

What they say : “Cultural vandalism”

            The news of the proposed plan of colouring ‘Pather Panchali’ drew flak from the eminent persons in the field of art as already mentioned above. Ray’s son Sandip, a film maker himself is vocal - "Atrocious, atrocious. It was a bolt from the blue. We didn't know anything about this till we got the news from the papers. Don't tamper with classics, that's all I can say. It is sheer blasphemy.” Noted filmmaker, Buddhadeb Dasgupta said, "Well the idea is nightmarish. I can't even imagine someone is watching ‘Pather Panchali’ in colour."  While Goutam Ghose was radical - "The proposal should immediately be rejected. There is no need to make it in colour” , Ray’s contemporary Mrinal Sen was categorical - "This will destroy ‘Pather Panchali’. This technique might work for commercial Hindi films but definitely not for ‘Pather Panchali’. I'm strongly against this move.” And Sanjay Mukhopadhyay, director of the State-run Roop Kala Kendra perhaps summed up the agitation – “There should be a national protest against the proposal”.  A Kolkata-based TV Channel, 24 Ghanta conducted a SMS survey on 28^th March, 2008 where a whopping 96% responded that ‘Pather Panchali’ needed no colour to uplift its quality or appeal to contemporary viewers. If we look into Hollywood, the conflict over colourising of black-white films started back in the 1980s. Ted Turner ( more famous to the Indian audience perhaps because of the later venture -- Turner Classic Movies ) was a pioneer in conceptualizing this – he hired American Film Technologies to colourize hundreds of films acquired from MGM in 1986. Inadequate technology (though at every point in time any technology that is 20 years old seem inadequate !) resulted in unreal tones and it was left much to be desired. For Barry Sandrew  who developed the all-digital colourization while at AFT and later became President , Legend Films (which works on colourization) , the new generation digital equipments will handle the intricacies of black-white with much care and precision. But reminiscing the controversies regarding this he is reflective and maintains that his company is dedicated to preserving old films – “The original black-and-white 35 mm film is never damaged or changed, we make a high-resolution digital copy of each original frame -- about 129,600 frames in a 90-minute film -- then fully restore and colorize each one. We include both the restored colorized version and restored original black-and-white version on each of our DVDs, so people will always have the option of watching whichever version they want…….. I certainly would not colourize films like `Citizen Kane' and others that were intentionally shot in black-and-white. But where budgetary or technical constraints prevented the use of color film, we can now show everyone how these movies were truly meant to be".

But this probably cannot pacify the protestors. The reason is simple. Not many question the quality of the technological output of such a project. Its at a much deeper, and basic level – is it ethical to “tamper” with the “original”, this is where the question lurks. And who decides and how which film was made black-white for technical / budgetary reasons and which one by choice? It’s a hard decision on any account. The Writers Guild of America calls colourizing an "act of cultural vandalism and a distortion of history." While, the president's committee of the Directors Guild of America is "unalterably opposed to the cultural butchery." Says Director Jeremy Paul Kagan: "It's as if somebody put blue eyes on David and said, 'Wouldn't Michelangelo love it?' " Woody Allen, a vociferous rebel with a cause here is very clear – “I have no quarrel with the mechanics, that has nothing to do with it. If a director is around and says he'd like to have it colourized, fine. If not, no one should be allowed to change it, in any way, ever”.

My take : The choice of the viewer

            Back in the early nineties, a group of young men (including this atheist) were reviving the Presidency College Film Club when the obvious opening film choice was ‘Pather Panchali’. And who else can introduce it apart from Subrata Mitra , or so we thought. The seniors in college told us the caveat – Mitra, being extremely moody, will not agree, since in their previous experiences, he had lamented that the projected film in Derozio Hall was not the same ‘Pather Panchali’ that he shot. “Your screen doesn’t give the same light-shade effect that I created, it’s a different film” – he had told them, we resorted to ‘Battleship Potemkin’, relieved that no Eisenstein or Vladimir Popov or Eduard Tisse will object to the Derozio Hall screen ! Looking back, now, I try to fathom what Mitra wanted to say, do we realize, that its basically a different film? Or, say, when the numerous times I have seen different versions of Ray’s ‘Aparajito’ in TV (scenes being deleted due to different reasons may be !) , which version is the ‘original’ ? Or, for that matter the relentless panning and scanning of films for TV (trimming at the top and sides to adapt to the shape of a TV screen) ? Or, my first viewing of Ray’s ‘colour’ ‘Hirak Rajar Deshey’ in a black-white TV? Do we realize then, that this is also a vandalism , most of us don’t probably, apart from someone like Woody Allen who has now included in his contract that his films cannot be altered without his permission. He said he would rather lose money on sales of tapes and TV syndication than have people watch a different movie from the one he made.

            Everytime I hear these directors speak, I am reminded of the path-breaking yet debatable  concept of Rolland Barthes – “the death of the Author” and finally “the birth of the Reader”. Whether you succumb to Barthes’ viewpoint or not, the passion of the directors not willing to lose their ‘originality’, is phenomenal. And in many cases, the logic is, “if he wished then OK”, otherwise not. What if, like in this case, Ray is not available for his views? I have asked many of my friends who were all shocked with the news of Sanskriti creations, which Ray film they would think can be made to colour? After a lot of persuasion , most of them  told- “Gupi Gayen Bagha Bayen” probably because its coloured sequel is a hit and everyone can probably visualize how “Gupi..” will be in colour and also probably because the grandeur of an epic folklore can be in colour, they felt. We hear Ray’s voice here again in our acceptance of colour as a film medium, just faintly. Truly, from a technical perspective, there are differences in approach between filming a colour and a black-white movie. The depth-of-field point of view mise-n-scene took a back stage as pan-and-zoom of colour held reign, the light and shade of profile portraits more vivid in black-white. Directors of the range of Ray had changed their style depending on what at hand, hence the decision to plainly colour a black-white frame can be disastrous at times.

            And here comes the importance of these colouring ‘artists’. In pure colour films also, we have seen, the importance of being able to use it judiciously – whereas, its more real (against the anti-real black-white) and hence more powerful, at the same time, its difficult to tame as well. As viewers we can differentiate our aesthetic response to Ray’s ‘Kanchenjungha’ vis-à-vis Shakti Samanta’s “Kashmir ki kali” two years later. In aesthetics any change in the form of an art object results in the creation of another art object. So, adding colour to a film will essentially make it a different film altogether. When Ray departed from Tagore’s ‘Nastanir’ to make ‘Charulata’ many literary experts of the time were horrified. Ray explained, and we understand today that he was an artist entitled to be true to his own aesthetic feeling. Many may say, you cannot change a word of a literature without the author’s permission. True – only if you say its that same author’s piece. What if, like Ray, you turn a novel on its head for your film? We accept, if its well made, excusing the director since it’s a ‘different’ media. In the same vein I argue, that after colourization (done in computers – no doubt a digital ‘media’ as opposed to the analog ‘media’ of the base black-white version), the eventual end-product is a different film , its no longer Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’ but a film made by Sanskriti creations based on Satyajit Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’. Many of my friends argued, that the black-white version will gradually be lost in oblivion due to colourization. I feel, they stick to one singular version of ‘originality’ which I had tried to confront here time and again. To me, both will exist, and as viewer we will have the option of choosing to see any one at a time. Most importantly, the process of colourization doesn’t do any physical harm to the black-white one, editing is done after a copy is made and transferred to digital form. When had we last argued that people stopped reading the novel ‘Pather Panchali’ due to the Ray masterpiece? And restoration of black-white will be of lesser priority in the wake of a colour counterpart seems quite a ridiculous logic since without this new ‘menace’ also, the restoration process in India or third-world countries is horrible whereas its adequate for almost all sorts of films in the west – the difference is of no importance. In the same way, judging human tendency this way can lead us in a wrong path. The crux as I mentioned already is, the ‘original black-white’ remains Ray’s and this is a different ‘original colour’ creation – good or bad. If we had two statues of David, one by Michelangelo, another by someone else with blue eyes – do we have problems of identification? We probably don’t and what if someone tells, he likes the latter one, will he not get his freedom of choice?

            Coming back to my earlier point of contention, just as the best cinematographers of black-white movies were artists with a monochrome palette that holds all the colours in the rainbow, similarly the new age digital artist is also an expressionist – he is more resourceful and he has a creative eye. What will be the colour of Durga’s sari when she visited the Durga Puja or when she was beaten up by Sarbajaya, her mother? Or, what will be the different colours of the paper crown that Apu had prepared for himself ? Or how would the Victorian chamber of Charu lit up in the assured cohabitation of Amal? The interpretation of the artist will lend a different meaning to the new frames, forcing us to gear up for the new dreams.

            In India or abroad, in many cases, the copyright or legal powers of a film lies with the Production company or a studio that engages directors to work under their banner. Hence, the entire debate can also be looked upon as a protest by directors and creative persons against the erosion of power in taking decisions of their own creative work. To me this is what is meaningful – the agenda of the protest is just a non-issue.

Deepa Mehta’s ‘Water’ : a critique

 

“A widow should be long suffering until death, self-restrained and chaste.
A virtuous wife who remains chaste when her husband has died goes to heaven.
A woman who is unfaithful to her husband is reborn in the womb of a jackal.” ¹

Shot 1: A lush landscape splashed with a riot of colours and a cow-drawn cart carrying a little girl. The score reminds one of Satyajit Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’ (for its semblance with the unforgettable ‘Rajya Kalyan’ raga by the maestro Ravi Shankar) and also the image of a lonely sweet-seller in some remote Indian village. A serene atmosphere prevails and a story unfolds……..  

Cut to the near end of the film and we find Mahatma Gandhi in one of his many gatherings during the Indian freedom movement that comprise of people from all strata of the society. One of the film’s central characters seeks refuge with him in search of solace, peace and a better future, perhaps…

“There are over 30 million widows in India according to the 2001 Census. Many continue to live in conditions of social, economic and cultural depravations as prescribed 2000 years ago by the sacred texts of Manu”²

In between, for almost two hours, we experience an exceptional ‘Indian’ story set in the British Raj of the late 1930s – the film : Deepa Mehta’s ‘Water’ (2005).

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“God willing, she’ll be reborn as a man”

‘Water’ is primarily a story of the struggle between love and faith. It’s the battle between tradition and individual expression. And like the other two Mehta films of the ‘elements trilogy’ (‘Fire’ and ‘Earth’), it depicts the lack of choice of individuals due to social and patriarchal regulations. With this film the director completes a circle which started with contemporary modern India (‘the politics of sexuality’), harking back to the time of the Indian Partition (the late 1940s – ‘the politics of nationality’) and finally to the India of the 1930s (‘the politics of religion’). The trilogy tries to examine patriarchal paradigms and raises quite a few questions in its stride and more importantly, it tries to distance itself from pointing fingers at individuals.

At the heart of the film there are 3 women – the young eight year old widow Chuiya, the young Kalyani (a stunning Lisa Ray who seldom seemed to be an Indian widow of the 1930s (sic) ) who used to prostitute and was the sole earning member of the widow-house a.k.a. the ashram³ (sic) and Shakuntala (a poignant Seema Biswas, of the ‘Bandit Queen’ fame) who governs this ashram. Chuiya is the destabilizing force in the house of sequestered individuals with her vibrancy, her questions against the internment and her complete censure of the patriarchal norms. On the fringes lie Madhumati, the ashram’s tyrannical mother figure who runs the prostitution chain and Narayan (an equally uncomfortable John Abraham as Lisa Ray), the young progressive follower of Mahatma Gandhi. However, as mentioned, this is essentially “about three women trying to break the cycle and trying to find dignity, and trying to get rid of the yoke of oppression”.⁴ The film starts off with Chuiya’s husband’s death and her coming to this ashram and finding it difficult to cope with a different life. In the middle we see the love-affair bloom between Kalyani and Narayan and in the end we see Shakuntala taking up the responsibility of a supposedly better life for Chuiya. In this sense, the film draws closer to Jafar Panahi’s ‘Circle’ where we find a host of women characters in the different strata of Iran’s society – all finally bound to an unsurpassable, invisible circle of patriarchal thread where meaning of women is in their relationship to men rather in the sexual gratification of men. The widows who are devoid of any material comforts are symbols of chaste and yet they are the pariahs of the society – defiled of any physical beauty lest they become victims of lust.  Ironically, Kalyani was permitted to keep her beautiful tresses in order to make her appealing to her nightly suitors. But the moment Madhumati knows of her love-affair with Narayan, she hacks off Kalyani’s hair and debases her.

“Her father protects (her) in childhood, her husband protects (her) in youth and her sons protect (her) in old age; a woman is never fit for independence”.⁵

This circle is reflected in the ashram where the widows are deprived of their ‘saviors’. They live in conditions of abject poverty – both spiritual and material. From this condition, at the death of a widow, another widow remarks starkly -“God willing, she’ll be reborn as a man”! But instead of meekly accepting all the agencies of confinement, there are occasions where we find a voice or two being raised – sometimes in sinister acts like the killing of Madhumati’s favourite parrot by Chuiya or in Shakuntala’s disobeying of Madhumati in freeing Kalyani. The director skillfully plays with the psychology of the characters, the time and the audience all together. Hence, we find situations which are non-linear in their interpretation e.g. in showing that the worst enemies of the widows are the widows themselves in being rigid to the age-old norms (patriarchy as an agency remains camouflaged). Altruistic acts are at times tainted with disbelief – Chuiya gets sweets for an old widow (who is obsessed with her dream of eating sweets) and when she dies the day after, Chuiya holds herself responsible for the forbidden act. On the backdrop of this iniquitous regime flows the Ganges, the holy river which submerges all sin. In the opening shots of the fleeting lily pads, the flowing rains and the serenity of the river, the director aims for a certain fluidity on screen as a contrast to the strict principle of the ashram. The flowing river symbolizing liberation and openness, taunts the widows in their denial of an ingenuous life. In Greek mythology the rivers Acheron and Cocytus were used to ferry the souls of the dead from the living world to the underworld of the dead. The river Ganges also acts as a bridge here – it ferries Kalyani’s battered soul and body from the ‘house of redemption’ to the ‘house of lust’ and mocks us at our face. And when Kalyani commits suicide, it transports the child Chuiya to that ‘underworld of the dead’.

The rape of Chuiya is poignant in its suggestion of the impending disaster and the complete obviation of any moral sanity of the Hindu upper caste. Two pairs of dichotomy acts here: on one hand the ‘impure’ lower caste against the ‘pure’ upper caste and on the other, the supreme ‘male’ gender as opposed to the ‘inferior’ female gender. This shows how individuals are inflicted with caste based and gender based distinctions that led to being sexualized in Indian society. The forcible entry of Chuiya into prostitution lead us to some other contemporary facts – the prevalent tradition of Devdasis is South India where young girls sacrificed to God soon end up prostituting to His disciples or the forced labour arrangement, the ‘Chukri system’ where young women are coerced into prostitution to pay off debts and the ‘Bachara’ tribe of Western Madhya Pradesh who still practise child  prostitution to support the poverty-stricken family (depicted in the documentary film ‘Highway Courtesans’ by Mystelle Brabbee (2004) ).

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“Truth is God”⁶  –  Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi, the great legendary leader of the Indian freedom movement has a very important role to play in the film ‘Water’. He is the voice of hope in turbulent times. Narayan, the messiah of hope in Kalyani’s life in particular and to Chuiya and Shakuntala in general, is progressive in his beliefs and is a follower of Gandhi. The soft-spoken, tender-heart law graduate recites poetry, absent-mindedly spills ink on his dress and plays flute – another fleeting imagery from Ray’s classic Apu (as the unforgettable young Soumitra Chatterjee in Satyajit Ray’s ‘The world of Apu’ (1959)). Narayan is vociferous in his debate with his anglicized friend and argues with his father on behalf of Gandhi. There are myriad moments during this phase of the film when Narayan gets a glimpse of Kalyani and romances her. The film leaves Chuiya’s life here and in the depiction of love between Kalyani and Narayan, it falters more than once, seems a bit too hurried and eventually becomes unconvincing.

Narayan confronts his father about the regulations of the caste system and the norms followed. After Kalyani’s death he debates on the actual reason for the widows to be sent to these houses in Varanasi – the reason is purely monetary than religious, reducing one member from the daily expense. Ultimately he leaves his house totally aghast finding that his father was one of Kalyani’s exploiters.

Not only Narayan, Mehta uses another holy man, rather an aged priest, in the ‘ghats’⁷ of the Ganges as the flag-bearers of reforms and also Gandhi’s views. The priest recites the holy texts to the widows and Shakuntala finds in him a philosopher and guide. He questions the validity of the texts that shun the widows from the society. He mentions Shakuntala that as per the holy texts, a widow has three options: (1) to throw herself on her husband's funeral pyre, (2) to marry his brother (if he has one and it is permitted by the family), or (3) to live in poverty in a group home for widows. But he adds, that in changing times there is a law that favours widow remarriage (note this is almost eighty years after the Widow Remarriage Act was passed in 1856 by the unflinching campaigns for it by Iswarchandra Vidyasagar) though in reality it is ignored since the upper-caste Brahmins are ‘not benefited’ by the law. And unlike many other religious servants, he was quick in understanding the importance of Gandhi as he tells Shakuntala – “Gandhiji is one of the few in the world who listens to his voice of conscience”. But when Shakuntala questions back “what if conscience conflicts with faith?”, we fail to hear the director’s voice.

There is a sudden surge in Hindi films in general to show Gandhi as a reel person or using his ideals and thoughts as vehicles to promote film philosophy. Extending that, ‘Gandhi-giri’⁸ has started to become an accepted idiom of expression in art and culture as practised in India. In setting the film in the late 1930’s Mehta probably wanted to hit a couple of blows in one shot. On the one hand, in the depiction of Gandhi as a harbinger of hope, she silenced her critics who disrupted shooting of the film in 2001. On the other, with Gandhi, she wants to convey a strong social and political message. This is the time (the late 1930s) when the awareness of Gandhi is reaching beyond the limited intellectual periphery and touching the cauldron of caste and creed, rich and poor. Madhumati and her eunuch don’t advocate Gandhi since they fear their trade will be affected by Gandhi’s preaching (“untouchables are children of God”) and yet Gandhi stands for liberation, hope and emancipation. In Mehta’s ‘Fire’, the first film of the ‘elements’ trilogy, we find the two central female characters Sita and Radha take refuge to a mosque, another agency of male oppression. Mehta failed to capitalize on the female-male / protagonist-antagonist dichotomy there. In contrast, in ‘Water’, the symbol of Gandhi as the purifier of sin across caste, gender and class gains more momentum in its relevance to the Indian society of the twenty-first century. Gandhi and the Ganges represent the fluidity of life, the unobstructed flow of humanness and the path to spiritual freedom.

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Why ‘Water’? Why not?

In his seminal book “Modern Egypt”, Lord Cramer commented, "Want of accuracy which easily degenerates into untruthfulness, is in fact the main characteristic of the oriental mind. ......They are often incapable of drawing the most obvious conclusions from any simple premises of which they may admit the truth"⁹. This European outlook towards Arabs and Egyptians are probably true for all Orientals in general and the Indians in particular. Deepa Mehta herself admits: “….there are several conceptions that prevail in the west about India. There is firstly the spiritual India—a place where you go and find nirvana. Secondly, there is the conception that India is entirely poverty stricken, with a permanent kind of begging bowl attitude. There is the India of Maharajas, princes and queens, and the India that comes from nostalgia for the Raj. And there is always the prevailing pressure that people should feel superior to some other place: look how bad India is with all the beggars, aren't we lucky to be better off.”¹⁰. The question that logically crops up is, whether Mehta’s film aims to portray a different, self-esteemed India to the Western world or not. More importantly, whether her film aims for a Western audience in the first place. As an Indian emigrant to Canada, whose films are predominantly on Indian themes (though they enter festivals as Canadian films) probably there isn’t much doubt that her audience is essentially ‘global’. On top of that, there is no reason to believe that ‘Water’, to a Western audience, portrays anything but India’s ‘begging bowl attitude’, which she denounced in the interview referred above. As mentioned earlier, in 2000 when Deepa started working on this film, she faced with a harsh adversary in Shiv Sena who burnt down the sets fearing that this will portray India and her customs in poor light to the West. Interestingly, once Deepa completed the film in Sri Lanka afterwards, this incident added mileage to the general interest surrounding this film. In the film’s official website, the background of the film, starts as “It was once rumoured that Bal Thackeray was quoted as saying that the person he hates most in the world is Deepa Mehta”¹¹. It is apparent that care has been taken to mark this film as ‘controversial’ as possible for its own interests. Also thought provoking is the use of two actors with Anglo-Indian origin and marked ‘Western’ looks to portray the two important characters. John Abraham (as Narayan) and Lisa Ray (as Kalyani) are hopelessly misfit in ingraining the mood of the 1930s – they probably feature better in the International film festival ramps!!

Deepa Mehta has played safe, politically, in her representation of Gandhi as argued in the last section. During the final complete shooting of the film in 2005 in Sri Lanka, the Indian central ministry is ruled by the Congress(I) Government. Gandhi being the supreme of the Indian National Congress (the predecessor of the Congress(I) party), it seems a conscious inclusion in order to be accepted by the organizational powers. However, readers of Indian political history since the last century possibly cannot overlook the fact that the Congress in general, had never attacked at the root of the prevalent and wide-spread caste system itself or its economic and political manifestations. With all due respect to the fact that the Gandhi-led Congress had been vocal against certain atrocities against the widows, they had largely been oblivious of the dreaded caste disparity in the Indian society. The Congress was, and continues to be the bastion of power and money in the Indian political milieu – for, by and of the rich, upper caste, Hindu Indians. Hence, the revival of ‘Gandhi-giri’ as a social expression is farcical as well as misleading. Shakuntala’s troubled expression in the end probably depicts her own doubts about the fate of Chuiya but as the shot fades to titles we read that many widows still live in abject social and economic depravation. Gandhi’s movement in the end is probably incapable of ending this social cancer thereby dashing the hopes of millions of subalterns in the Indian sub continent. Hence, in showing Gandhi as a saviour and then commenting that the situation is more or less unchanged, the director is being street-smart.

These aberrations apart, the film is capable of raising certain questions – yes, in the Oriental mind as well, in spite of being ‘singularly deficient in the logical faculty’!! Deepa Mehta, in the end, should be thanked for achieving this feat.

                                                                                         

                                                                                                      Amitava Nag                

References:

1. The Laws of Manu Chapter 5 verse 156-161 Dharamshastras ( Sacred Hindu texts )
2. With this writing on the screen, the film ends.
3. The word ‘ashram’ means a place to pursue religious and spiritual disciplines in Hinduism. For further definitions refer http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9355935
4. Mayer, Andre (2005) Digging Deepa : Canadian filmmaker shines with Water . http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/water.html
5. The Laws of Manu ( Sacred Hindu texts ) Chapter 9 verse 3
6. Gandhi, M.K (1955)  Truth is God : Gleanings from the writings of Mahatma Gandhi bearing on God, God-Realization and the Godly Way Navajivan Publishing House Ahmedabad (India)
7. A 'ghat' is a broad flight of steps leading down to the bank of a river in India, used especially by bathers. For further definitions refer http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ghat
8. Gandhigiri is a colloquial neologism in a Hindi dialect specific to Mumbai, India which is used to express the tenets of Gandhism (the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi) in contemporary terms. For further readings refer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhigiri
9. Baring, Evelyn and Cramer, Lord (1908) Modern Egypt New York: Macmillan Co., 1908, Chapter 34
10. An interview with Deepa Mehta By Richard Phillips,6 August 1999 - http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/aug1999/meh-a06.shtml
11. The official website of Deepa Mehta’s film ‘Water’ -- http://water.mahiram.com/

“He was a friend of mine” :: Love in the mountains

The Cue

When my friend Rwita sent across the DVD and asked me to review ‘Brokeback Mountain’, I was more than little apprehensive. I had seen Ang Lee’s ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ previously and thoroughly disliked it for being overtly crafty with the absence of almost any cerebral satisfaction derived out of it. After a little more than two hours, I had a different opinion. Not that the film moved me with its eloquent canvas having a backdrop of the majestic ranges or the melancholia associated with its two central characters and the unhappiness shrouded on everyone around them – instead, it raised some questions, about the film, about the period and more importantly, about our existence as socially responsible veritable individuals.

Mid-shot

Mountain vistas, big blue sky overlooking the meanderings of the blue rivers, the flock of sheep moving like a big white bubble – ‘Brokeback Mountain’ starts off with high expectations. It was way back in 1963, in a tiny town named Signal in Wyoming, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger’s eclectic performance as a self-confined and confused ranch person) and Jack Twist (the wide-eyed cupid in Jake Gyllenhal) are the two young ranch persons (I consciously refrain from referring them as ‘cowboys’ since they were not – they herd sheep and not cattle, in the early portion of the film) who were asked to mind a vast herd of sheep in the spectacular Brokeback mountain. Both the guys are young, probably just out of their teens. One fine sunny morning, we find Ennis waiting outside a foreman’s office, leaning against the wall, his hands in his jeans pocket and his head held low. On the opposite we find another guy Jack who measures up Ennis with the menace of a narrow-eyed gunslinger. This exceptional opening scene vibrates with an undercurrent of homo-erotic passion without a dialogue being made. The distance between the characters and their ‘sizing up’ of each other gives them a virtual proximity as opposed to their physical distance. Hence, Jack’s looking at Ennis is a voyeuristic gaze – the inherent drama is set. This establishing shot rescues the film from the mundane ‘cowboy buddy film’ tag – the calm, composed Ennis wearing a white hat as opposed to the black hat of restless Jack – the binary opposites set the tone for the events that unfold subsequently. The Ennis/Jack relationship fits into the familiar trope where two outsiders (social/racial/geographical) find friendship with each other – the basis of both same gender buddy films or opposite gender romance films. And as in many on-screen western relationships the two protagonists come close when they share their past on a bottle of alcohol and reach a new level of intimacy. We find, twice atleast, when either Ennis or Jack bathes in the nude infront of the fleeting eyes of the partner – the ‘male’ gaze on a ‘male’ body which at this point of time is devoid of lust or yearning. One cold night and loads of alcohol brought them together as they huddle close in their tent and unexpectedly become lovers. The next morning both of them decry the act as Ennis spurts out—“You know I ain’t queer” to which Jack quips “Me neither”. But that is not the end. The next twenty years these men marry women, father children and positioned themselves in opposite coordinates – both socially and in location. Yet, they discover that they connect on a deeper level than just one night’s adventure and in the world beyond the two of them there is hardly any tenderness. This is one of the major drawbacks in shaping the canvas which would speak for the melancholy of the two protagonists. Ennis and Jack find peace and love only in each other’s arms against the serenity of the Brokeback mountain – a fact that Ennis found hard to accept in his effort to remain ‘normal’ and lead a ‘normal’ life. At one point he tells Jack “I wish I knew how to quit you”. Jack was more impulsive who proposed to leave his wealthy wife for Ennis. Ennis here, though shown as the macho among the two, embodies the weight of repression and the two characters reflect the dichotomy between American individualism and duties towards community/society/family. Such a degenerate existence obviously had taken its toll and the film emanates a haunting sense of regret about the other possibilities that were left unexplored. Unlike most classic Hollywood romances, this film craves out its own path as the saga of forbidden love that culminates no-where and in its stride it takes the audience’s yearning with it – for a happier tomorrow for Jack and Ennis. The director probably spent more time in shaping up Ennis’ character – not only because he is seen for a longer time on screen, but also because he has multiple shades in his oeuvre.

The main drawback of the film, as mentioned previously, is probably in its inability to sketch the other major characters with same insight, care and logical judgement. Ennis’ wife Alma (Michelle Williams) and his post-divorce girlfriend of very short time-span (a stunning Linda Cardellini) are emotionally damaged in their quest of love for Ennis. His incapability to love these caring and thoroughly responsive women makes Ennis a miserable tragic character. In the latter part of the movie we can find out how Ennis was distanced from his daughters as well and how he barricades his feelings towards them – which probably had risen from the guilt of not being a ‘normal’ parent. In setting the backdrop of Ennis-Jack’s love in the glorious Brokeback mountain as opposed to the shabby and constrained interiors where they are hemmed in, director Lee is being utterly conventional. The visual metaphors are predictable, accompanied with the run-of-the-mill clichés which depict women as inferior to men in their pursuit of life. Unfortunately, Jack’s wife Lureen (an explosive and vivacious Anne Hathaway) has even smaller role to play in the context of the film. She seemed lost in the small breathing space she got – as a result the entire sequence in the end where she narrates Jack’s death to Ennis over the phone seems out of place. The subtle change from a hetero-sexual relation between Ennis/Alma and Jack/Lureen to a hetero-social yet homo-sexual one (between Ennis/Jack) is depleted due to absence of an honest study of the cause of this shift. Alma’s character in particular had the glimpses of realization of what women suffer because of the patriarchal society’s attitude towards them. A discourse on the female sexual desire (of the two neglected wives) is much demanded here which the director didn’t harp upon. In pivoting the philosophy of the film as one which depicts a world centered on men (women are present for the benefit of men, as the child-bearer but hardly a lover), ‘Brokeback Mountain’ haplessly bear the fruits of a traditional ‘buddy film’ of the 1960’s and 1970s.

The other salient observation that can be made is the temporal backdrop of the film which stationed itself in the early 1960’s to start with. Probably it helps in giving the film a look of the ‘Western’ genre, and more importantly, it brings the history of US homo-sexuality into question. There had been reference of an incident which young Ennis experienced when a gay couple was lynched for their affinity towards the same-gender. From a historical stand-point as well, since the early 1950s, homo-sexuality was considered as a new menace, probably as dangerous as Communism. In 1956, Time Magazine quoted psychologist Edmund Bergler who described the gay man as “Unreliable…and always hates his family. There are no happy homosexuals” (Ref: page 107, V. Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (NewYork: Harper & Row, 1987)). Taking cue from this attitude towards homo-sexuality in society, the ‘buddy’ films of the period used to show the relationship between two men acted out in a violent manner. And almost always, the buddies stand ‘side-by-side’ and never ready to stand ‘face-to-face’. ‘Brokeback Mountain’ being set in the 1960s but shot in the twenty-first century tries to sort out two issues at the same time. On one hand, in order to be honest to the period, it referred again and again to the ignominy that the central characters experienced in accepting that they are gay. On the other, unlike those early western buddy films, the complete absence of action ensured that this film has scope and time to portray the joys of sex among the same gender, the dangers of it and how it can harm families. Is it to use the scenic backdrop that the characters are made ranch-persons or the director raises the question of homo-sexuality through a passage of time in the US demography – in either case, the love of creating an epic is probably the foremost consideration in which the expanse of space and time are of utmost importance. Hence, the previously agreed premise behind choosing the timeline of the film in the early 1960s becomes questionable. The film surfaces as essentially a love film in the mould of classic, romantic Hollywood genre and in this regard it comes close to being an epic.

……and the Final Cut

The expectations from ‘Brokeback Mountain’ after its first half-hour is quite sky high due to the care with which the director built up the saga of love and betrayal (from the society at large in a torrid and adverse time).  However in its rejection of patriarchy which preaches and advocates hetero-sexual love and the institution of opposite-gender marriage, the film makes quite an indelible impression on the audience. Above all the milk of love flowed through the entire screen in the brooding landscapes, the rumblings of the two lovers and the rendition of Gustavo Santaolalla’s soulful music. However, the film lost its way in the middle as Jack and Ennis grew older. The changing times didn’t show up tangibly in the reel reality apart from their funny make-ups (especially Jack’s moustache) and their increasingly cold relationship with their wives. The trips to Brokeback mountain became customary and repetitive and as audience we failed to understand the true meaning and value of the place in their hearts. The timeless self-retreating portrait of longing marks the staggering range of emotions in Heath Ledger’s Ennis. He remains a high point of the film and also among all the gay characters depicted so far in the history of Hollywood films. All others fared reasonably well within their limited scope.

In the age of feminist film theories and the ‘male’ gaze on the ‘female’ object being an established trajectory of intellectual discourse, the new-found sexuality of men is at cross-roads. Whether he is the gazer, or the object, or both, leads to a basic and all-important question – “What do men want?” 

The director’s journey raises it but his uncertain handling of the storyline ensured that the question remains essentially unanswered.

The moments in The Last Lear

Rituparno Ghosh’s latest released film The Last Lear had raised immense expectations amongst film-lovers all over the country. Long before the film got into the screens, there were reviews, anticipations and eager waiting for the big budget – certainly by any standards, a Bengali director getting the opportunity to direct the likes of Amitabh Bachchan, Preity Zinta and Arjun Rampal is indeed an event. And it’s only Ritu who can accomplish that – so it comes no wonder that there will be expectations, more so because the previous released Khela is a blunder in all respect. However, after two weeks of its release, Ritu as a director and The Last Lear as a film get scorn reviews so much so that one of the critics went on to suggest that Ritu should stick to his low budget Bengali films with linear and simple narratives. Quite an insult for a director who is a favourite amongst the national award juries since the time he emerged with his Unishey April.

Many of my friends – film technicians and critics with whom I happened to get an update on the film warned me – ‘Don’t go. It will be absolute waste of time’. But like in most cases, I went and watched the film. And boy did I like it? Probably not. But somehow I couldn’t be that stern. And if I can vaguely trace back the reasons for it, it’s the ‘moments’ in the film that surfaced from beneath the ruffled and confused exterior.

‘You never know when “the moment” will come’

This is what Harish said to Siddharth about when a stage actor reaches the zenith of his performance. Who are them? Harish is a stage actor who left the stage some thirty years ago and leads a reclusive and at times eccentric life with a ‘companion’ Vandana. Siddharth is a young and aspiring film director who wants Harish to act in his film – the first one for Harish. The entire film reality is that of one night – the night when the film where Harish acted was premiered. Harish after pursuing that he will do the dummy shots was fatally injured and was in coma, being visited by the film’s heroine Shabnam (later we come to know of her battered relationship with her boyfriend/husband and she just wanted a place to hide for the night). So there are two parallel narratives, one at the premiere where a stern and stubborn Siddharth makes everyone around unhappy with his cold veneer and the other at Harish’s place where Shabnam slowly befriends an irritated and exasperated Vandana. In the same house we find the nurse Ivy who with her rustic arrogance was comical in the beginning. As the film progressed we find how these three women share the common thread – their position in a patriarchal society as a server of men’s sexual needs. But that is what Rituparno Ghosh’s favourite theme, the deprivation of middle-class women in general. In some of the most fleeting moments as Vandana and Shabnam share their experiences mainly revolving Harish in the latter’s Victorian living room, Abhik Mukherjee’s soft and delicate lighting created so many deft shadows which whispered more than many of the dialogues that the actresses had to offer. In a film which is surprisingly devoid of a healthy support from the script (‘surprising’ - since Ritu is particular about his detailed and otherwise brilliant scripts), Shefali Shah as Vandana comes out as a strong woman who withstood the insanities of Harish with lovable candor – so much so that she never ever objects to anything apart from her willingness to speak out to someone in that huge antique house. Preity Zinta’s Shabnam is outwardly smart though the inadequate script ensured that we don’t know much about her (as about Vandana and Ivy). But along with Vandana they share the spirit of Cordelia to Harish’s Lear.

As mentioned, the reason the film showed only sparks and never reached anything is its one-eyed dependence on Harish and Amitabh Bachchan. No other characters – Siddharth (Edmund ?) or Gautam (Edgar ?) were given any space as the light fell only on Amitabh Bachchan in a ridiculously funny makeup (no pun intended Mr. Muzzafer Ali, but Harish Mishra’s eccentricity cannot be heightened by the flocks of untidy hair covering his entire face). However, apart from some of the touching moments when the three women sit down on their respective fates, the other most riveting aspect of the film is the interaction between Harish and Siddharth. In a sense its reminiscent of the subtle level of understanding between the Urdu poet Nur and Deven in Ismail Merchant’s In Custody. However though there is the similarity in putting Nur and Harish as the custodians of lost art – Urdu poetry and Shakespearean theatre respectively, the sublime stilt of their relationship lies in love for a dying art in the first case, whereas, for Harish and Siddharth its their polar opposite positioning in treating cinema as an art form.

Just like the title of this section and in my opening justification of this article, there are some moments in the film which I felt close to my heart – the reason why I find it difficult to dismiss entirely. At this point of my cine-viewing experience, I find, it’s the miniscule moments that matter to me, like life – in that sense, cinema comes closer to life, as a spectator, for both I am unsure of the ‘final take’. Take for example the scene where, later in their rendezvous Siddharth reads out his script about the circus party and the clown Maqbool and how the group of clowns recoils to their world of existence – and suddenly the fore-screen blacks out into a silhouette and in the backdrop we see a stage where the clowns enact. Yet again, the light and shade mesmerizes (even if the concept of the other world of deprived artistry seems so similar to Malay Bhattacharjee’s Kahini or Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Uttara) us much like Harish’s first enactment of Shakespeare in front of Siddharth. Suddenly the room seems to move back and by the juxtaposition of soft lights beaming up to the towering Harish, we feel we are presented with a stage. And like Siddharth in the film and we, the spectators we relish the magic that unfolds – very crafty. However, in that same scene or in those where Amitabh Bachchan plays Shakespeare, its unpleasant – he has a baritone voice and his diction is impeccable for a corporate, but that’s not sufficient for enacting Shakespeare, I am afraid. In most of those scenes, Amitabh Bachchan shouted at the top of his voice – where are those deft melancholic drops that make Lear an affectionate father as well, the velvety voice is not only for thunders against the enemies to her daughter Cordelia, but also to rock her in his hands. Unfortunately, Amitabh Bachchan couldn’t understand the delicate tenderness of acting on stage so ironical since he being a cinema actor who seldom worked on stage is enacting a character who is all through out a stage actor who never stood in front of the camera. Would Nasiruddin be a better choice? May be, maybe not. But surely, Amitabh Bachchan time and again had gone overboard ruining the possibility of creating certain delicate memories about Harish, whose possibilities appeared but never bloomed.

During the phase when Siddharth builds up the trust of Harish there are three breath-taking montages for me. They used to play a game while looking through the CCTV (which was installed to figure out if anyone is pissing on the walls of Harish’s house!) – the game of identification, of building up a character on the street who is seen in te CCTV monitor– what can be his probable occupation, what can be his family background, is he married ? And so on. It immediately strikes me since this is exactly what we did when we were in our graduation days – filled up our notebooks with characters from the busy

College Street

in Kolkata. That book was supposed to be used for a script of a city film – it was never made, but that is a different story then! The placement of the CCTV and Harish and Siddharth’s peeking at the outside world through it cannot help but reminds me of Charu in Satyajit Ray’s classic Charulata who used to look out from her windows to the busy street below. Like Charu, Harish also is a recluse, though for completely different reasons, and the window to their outside world (though the medium to the outside got changed over time) makes them grow with the film. And the final coy montage is the one when Siddharth persuades Harish to walk down the stairs of his own house without his glasses (he is almost blind without them) – the uncertainty in Harish’s face looming large. This acts as a metaphor, the stage-actor without glasses has been confined to the world of his own, and though the CCTV gives him a ripple or two in his otherwise somber existence, it is his unsure ‘stepping out’ to the world of films. It was a powerful image and yet again the magical light of Abhik Mukherjee casting its lengthy spell on the drooping eyes of Harish.

In the outdoor sequences there was a scene when Harish teaches Shabnam to relax, to vent out her anger by shouting from one hill to another. That is an effective exercise for a stage actor who in the earlier days had to rely on their voice to ensure that the first and last row audiences have the same acoustic effect. Then, is it a lesson of life? Not sure. But the simple equation of Shabnam’s breaking down to read her character’s lines which also has a messed up conjugal relationship is appalling – can’t she feel for her character even if she doesn’t have such a shady personal life? But this is again the same flaw – the drawing of the secondary characters is weak, its not Shabnam’s fault after all. Rather, a more moving scene is Harish’s persuasion of Siddharth to do the dummy shot of falling from the mountains himself – Amitabh Bachchan as an actor excels in the poignant rendition where he begs to the director for his last chance to walk into posterity.

What is Art?

In his book What is Art? (Trans. Aylmer Maude, Oxford (World’s Classics), 1930, p123), Leo Tolstoy proclaims – ‘Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.’ As I ponder with this definition of art, I get confused, did I get infected by the feelings shared by Rituparno Ghosh. Yes, but to a small extent may be, in some of the fleeting moments as mentioned above, some which I experienced as well. But in a whole where does it leave me? It leaves me confused about the purpose of the entire exercise – the same question I had after seeing Rituparno’s previous film Khela (interesting in both these films and in Bariwali, the plot revolves as shooting of a film within the actual film, a boring repetition of Ritu’s film form) Somewhere someone told ‘Eyes are the mirror of soul’ which I have in so many cases successfully extended to ‘Cinema is the mirror of life’. It remains such to me, till now. There are reflections of The Last Lear on my mirror, but unfortunately, most of it is blurred like the image of a sunset taken by a photographer with shaking hands.

So probably we need to wait – wait for a film worthy of an experience. Rituparno had provided glimpses of such creative height in few of his earlier films. But to reach up to that level he needs to come out of his last lair.

Shob Charitro Kalponik (All Characters are imaginary)

Who accepts deceit?

There was a pivotal scene in Satyajit Ray’s lesser-known film Kapurush (The Coward, 1965) when Karuna had come to Amitava’s bachelor room to tell him that her uncle is planning to marry her off – Amitava turned back at Karuna and the camera – his weakness to take responsibilities evident in his body language. Forty-five years since, Bangla non-mainstream films have unmistakably treaded this path – the portrayal of a loner fighting against ‘ill-luck’ in an adverse environment. The environment changes from political to social – internal as well as external. This glorification of the ‘other’ finds its fodder in the Bengali psyche where individualism holds sway above collective co-existence. Bengalis staying outside Bengal have seldom existed as a cohesive community the way Punjabis, Gujratis or Telegus have. The strength of the inner soul is a concept enriched and cultured during the British Raj when Bengal had its importance as the India capital. Those days are gone, yet the quintessential Bengali still prefers to remain armchair intellectual, leading relatively un-challenged livelihood in professions that in essence are offshoots of clerical work. Till date, doing business is looked upon as a morally degrading profession (since it is linked with immoral activities galore, its assumed) as compared to being a teacher or a doctor or an engineer, where the boundaries of so-called virtues often give way to carnal desires. Hence, there is no wonder that a Bengali ‘thinking’ director’s films will more than often veer this genre. Rituporno Ghosh is no exception.

If this is a common trend amongst Rituporno, Goutam Ghosh, Buddhadeb Dasgupta and a host of other Bengali directors where looking back to a glorious past is the main underlying recurrent theme then there are severe problems with the Bengali film industry, or so it seems. Most of these films are set in the city – Kolkata where indoor shots carry forward the narrative. There are occasional retreats to the mountains – Dooars where traditionally dressed Bengalis sing songs of Rabindranth Tagore or recite a modern poetry. We, as audience have started to identify these markers unfailingly. So how can I judge Rituporno Ghosh’s Sob Choritro Kalponik (All Characters are imaginary, 2009)? In one of the most ironical scenes in the film, the lead central character Radhika (an astonishingly beautiful Bipasha Basu catering out a fire-packed performance) having her back to the camera says in soliloquy – ‘I can’t accept deceit’. This reminds of the Kapurush scene mentioned at the start of this article. Isn’t that a question of the audience of Bengali films, I wonder? May be, but who cares?

What is good then?

While discussing a particular film, reference of a generic trend (as mentioned above) is justified or not can however be put to question. Setting that risk aside I will try to figure out where this film scores in small-unsung ways. Surely, there are few definite indications of height where the film could have reached. After the lackadaisical Khela (2008) and the over-ambitious The Last Lear (2007) expectations from Rituporno were pretty low. Coupled with a number of ventures either shelved or rotting in distributors’ out-houses it was pretty obvious that the darling of middle-class Bengali intelligentsia is out of favour.

There are a few interesting experiments that the director wanted to play with in this film. The first and foremost is the exploration of poetry as an art form. Whereas there had been films before which have representations of poets, this film is standing differently where poetry is the conjunction between images and reality. As an art form, poetry is traditionally closer to surrealism than prose – many great filmmakers have consciously used stunning imageries to bring in that sense of void that is engulfed in a desire of being fulfilled. By asking famed Bengali poet Joy Goswami to write few poems specifically for this film, Rituporno infuses a new meaning in the art of film-making where poetry as a form enters the more real world of linear narrative yet, the content of these poems speak of an unreal world. This dichotomy of the real and the imaginary in form and content takes place keeping poetry as a fulcrum, extensively supported by deft inter-cuts of unfinished sequences which most of the time were fading out to black. Black being the colour which assumes none and remains opaque comes as a non-translucent opposite of the generous usage of white – in dresses as well as the spotless interiors of the lead characters. In this way the director from the very beginning tries to put us in a dilemma. The fading outs engulfed in a poetic experience (either in voice-over or someone reading out on screen interspersed with images of rushing trains, cruel rail lines or unperturbed human march) continued discretely to fade-ins on white subjects. Thus by using black and white in the body of cinematic technique as well as in the visual content, the director deftly holds the grey shades of life which fall in the fringes. Poetry plays another big role in the narrative of the feature – through thick and thin, Radhika comes to understand her husband Indranil (Prasenjit) who was a poet. His poems, her poem which he lifted without her knowing, the narrative poems of his which had real events but then went along with his imaginations. She came to know all these only after Indranil passed away. By lifting sexual hint of any sort in the two different relationships designed here, Rituporno tried, almost successfully, to make their relationship un-emotional to the audience. That is, the passion in the relationships portrayed lacked vigour, as if it wasn’t important. What is important is the role each character is going to play in the theatre called ‘life’ – nothing is more important. This stripping off helps in being focused though at times the director went overboard and in turn represented the male as inferior to the female – morally. And in doing so, the director risked himself to become biased and overtly simplistic (Indranil paying more importance to a 6 hit in a cricket match than his mother-in-law’s heart attack is one such). Like most of Ritu’s films here also, a woman finds solace in another woman – Radhika in Nando’s mother and later, more interestingly Radhika in Kajari, Indranil’s literary muse. In some deft montages the director mixes Radhika and Kajari in one soul – Radhika’s transcendence from Indranil’s wife to the perception that she herself can be his muse. The light and shade brings in Kajari and submerges her identity in the cool sublime exteriors of Radhika. And during this immense turmoil of soul exchanges we hear the marriage chanting of East Pakistan. These are folk songs that reverberate with the resonance of the marriage between Radhika’s and Kajari’s identities… and possibly Nando’s mother’s? Perceived from the director’s point-of-view it can be safely assumed that here the gaze on the muse Kajari is a female gaze – Radhika’s illusive fantasies in search of a girl or, is it the self she has long lost which she finally discovered after her husband’s death.

Interestingly, unlike Rituporno’s earlier films there are lesser dialogues in this film. Dialogues are replaced by imageries and at times silence. Definitely signs of a director who is maturing, changing guards and trying to re-invent the inner sensitivities which look beyond the obvious physical realities. To add to these, there are interesting sounds in the track, the dhak music illustrating Devi Durga, which immediately draws parallel with Radhika’s fitment as a modern woman who has to literally run everything – office, home and an ignorant husband. Also, the sounds of the mundane existential consciousness: street sounds, songs of Bengali rituals… all mingle to form a very caring soundscape that commemorates the soft shadows which are meant to fall on the audience.

What is imaginary?

In many regards, this is probably Rituporno Ghosh’s most experimental film. The initial shot is that of Radhika’s be-jewelled hand on a train window pane when she travels to Kolkata after their marriage. The film ends with a similar shot where there are two hands - Indranil’s and Radhika’s (bare and devoid of the marriage ornaments). This circularity is too common-place since, otherwise the main narrative traverses the realms of the unreal.

The film is extremely slow paced, inviting jeer from the audience at times, which is confused with the passage between the two worlds of Radhika. The director’s obsession with dream sequences ate up a lot of reel time without adding to the main narrative discourse. Why are so many images of the love long lost – of Radhika for Indranil and in turn for herself? The point was established, marred by repetitiveness. The same applies for the establishing shots – the fleeting montage of the memorial function and Radhika’s flashbacks – were those to add value by having different celebrity artists performing for the film? The basic purpose of film-making, or for that matter any art, gets lost in this ugly exposure of intellectual populism.

So the question that lurks continuously in Sob Choritro Kalponik is: what is imaginary in the film? There is apparently nothing – the characters are real, so are many incidents. The treatment is tested and could have been curtailed to fit the cinema’s needs. It’s unfortunate that Bengali directors mostly prefer to close their sensitivities from the urban mediocre existence. The daily contemporary city life so horribly absent always. It reflects the same element of nostalgia already pointed in the beginning of this article – the absolute ignorance of the Present. The more these directors look outside and experience a vibrant cityscape, the better their films can be expected to be with respect to contemporariness. Many audiences like this essayist will be grateful then – instead of trying hard to cope with the directors’ vision of imaginary aesthetics.

Chaturanga – the complex tapestry

Rabindranath Tagore’s Chaturanga (1916) having four chapters were originally published separately in consecutive issues of Sabujpatra (November 1915 - February, 1916). The four chapters integrate to the quartet in the form of a novel as it exists. The first of the chapter Jyathamosai is loosely coupled in the sense that such an elaborate preamble probably could have been dispensed with in lieu of a shorter introduction of the agnostic positivism of Jyathamosai imbibed from the Western culture. However, given that the four chapters are in a sense complete in themselves and still reaching out to the other chapters, this elaboration on Jyathamoshai does make sense. However, Chaturanga primarily is a novel of Sachis, Sribilas and Damini. It is interesting with respect to the Jyathamosai episode, how Lilananda Swami didn’t feature separately. It doesn’t miss the eye of the involved reader – the author’s positioning of his voice in illustrating Jyathamosai in positive light where in keeping Lilananda Swami’s religious overtures intermixed with other chores and to an extent in darker shades.

For Tagore who had written the nationalist novel Ghare Baire the same year, it is even more intriguing to find him delve in the spiritual quest of humanity in Chaturanga. Henceforth, whereas Ghare Baire remains a period piece set in the nationalist freedom struggle of British India, Chaturanga is timeless. Apart from a reference of plague turning out into a massacre in the city of Calcutta, nowhere else we can find any reference of any periodicity imbibed in the novel. The only periodicities that one can refer to are bleak in their social settings – markers of the social practices and behaviors.

This classic element in Chaturanga makes it a candidate for re-interpretations, and reviews even long after it was actually penned. Tagore being a favourite amongst the Bengali film-makers it was rather long that Suman Mukhopadhyay finally made a film out of this complex novel as late as 2008.

Chaturanga(1916) : The complex novel

Santanu Biswas in his paper on Tagore’s rendition of Freudian thoughts comments about Kalidas Nag and Tagore’s communication on the subject

“According to Nag, in reply to his question on the novel Chaturanga [Four parts] (1916), Tagore first ‘explained in detail the relationship between Sachis, Damini and Sribilas [three of the important characters]’ and then went on to say the following:

To the authors of yesteryears life meant desire and frustration, union and separation, birth and death, and certain other similarly imprecise events. Therefore, the play called life had to end either in a cherished and revered union, or with a scene devoted to death’s vast graveyard. Since a few days now, our impression of our life has been changing—it seems we were so long loitering about the entrance—after a long time we seem to have discovered the way to the inner chambers for the first time. We are awake at the outer side of our consciousness—there we are consciously fighting battles, striking others and are being struck by others. But within these strikes and counter strikes, these ups and downs, something is being created in our ignorance of it. The arena for that gigantic game of creation is our submerged consciousness [magnachaitanyalok]. It is a new world, as if gradually coming into existence before us “[1]

This is important since in the later part of the novel in an extremely important juncture we find Sachis, Damini and Sribilas spending the night in a cave and Sachis having an erotically libidinal dream. The positioning of a cave as a vaginal symbol and hence that of fertility – the womb where Sachis and Damini’s relationship can bloom to a practical wholesome fulfillment is balanced with a Freudian dream sequence of Sachis. An excerpt from Sachis’ diary read like this

“After I don't know how long, a thin sheet of numbness spread over my consciousness. At some point in that semi-conscious state I felt the touch of a deep breath close to my feet. That primordial beast! Then something clasped my feet. At first I thought it as a wild animal. But a wild animal is hairy, this creature wasn't. My entire body shrank at the touch. It seemed to be an unknown snake-like creature. I knew nothing of its anatomy - what its head looked like, or its trunk, or its tail - nor could I imagine how it devoured its victims. It was repulsive because of its very softness, its ravenous mass.”[2]

That ‘beast’ turned out to be Damini who probably came to Sachis to submit herself to him. Chaturanga being Tagore’s novel with most explicit sexual tensions it remains obvious that the reference of cave from tantric mythology and to the abundance of hair on Sachis’ numb physical identity[3] are all teeming with eroticism. The author on the one hand plays with the difference between the rational didactic and the spiritual quest and on the other intermixes the tussle between the infinite/formless and the finite/form. This ‘dwanda’ translates to the spiritual polemics of the ‘body’ vs the ‘soul’. Damini, referring the ‘prakriti’ or the Nature (and hence the cave as well) is the worldly being and the main hindrance of Sachis in his freedom amidst spiritual awakening. There is a long debate between Sachis and Sribilas over this dichotomy where Sachis forever perturbed by the feminine ‘body’ wants Damini to be left behind.

Rabindranath by virtue of making Damini a widow also scores a point keeping the social status of widows at that time. Since,

“The widows institutionalised marginality, a liminal state between being physically alive and being socially dead, was the ultimate cultural outcome of the deprivation of her sexuality as well as of her personhood.”[4]

A close fictional sibling of Damini can be Binodini of Choker Bali. But wherein Binodini had left a lot at the hands of her male counterparts in shaping up her future, Damini had steadfastly been stubborn – her sexual freedom and her spiritual one as well. In one sweeping stroke she demanded justice in the rationale where she was treated as a property by her late husband in handing over her to Lilananda Swami. She raised her voice yet again near the end when the wife of one of the disciples of Lilananda Swami committed suicide after finding that her husband had an affair with her own younger sister

“Sachish gazed at her face in silence. `Please explain to me,' Damini said, `what use to the world are the things that engross you so day in and day out? Who have you succeeded in saving?'

I came out of my room and stood on the veranda. Damini went on: `Day and night you go on about ecstasy, you talk of nothing else. Today you have seen what ecstasy is, haven't you? It has no regard for morals or a code of conduct, for brother or wife or family pride. It has no mercy, no shame, no sense of propriety. What have you devised to save man from the hell of this cruel, shameless, fatal ecstasy?' “

As Sachis’ tryst with spiritual awakening with the help of a guru subsided we find Sribilash gaining prominence in Damini’s life. Sachis’ quest became internal and more complex – so complicated that the author mentioned minimally of it until a final burst

We got out of bed in a hurry and went out to find Sachish standing on the cement terrace in front of the house. ‘I understand it all,' he shouted. ‘There's no more doubt in my mind.' Slowly Damini sat down on the terrace. Sachis followed her absentmindedly and sat down. So did I. ‘If,' Sachis said, ‘I move in the same direction in which He is approaching me I'll only move away from Him, but if I move in the opposite direction we shall meet.' I stared in silence at his burning eyes. What he had said was correct according to linear geometry, but what was it all about? Sachis continued. `He loves form, so He is continuously revealing Himself through form. We can't survive with form alone, so we must pursue the formless. He is free, so he delights in bondage; we are fettered, so our joy is in liberty. Our misery arises because we don't realize this truth.' Damini and I remained as silent as the stars. `Damini,' Sachis said, `don't you understand? The singer progresses from the experience of joy to the musical expression of the raga, the audience in the opposite direction from the raga towards joy. One moves from freedom to bondage, the other from bondage to freedom; hence the concord between them. He sings, we listen. He plays by binding emotion to the raga and as we listen we unravel the emotion from the raga.'

This is where we can probably hear Tagore’s own particular spiritual stance, his own discourses. In a later deliberation of the same debate with Sribilash, Sachis categorically mentions “My god can't be doled out to me by someone; if I find him, well and good, otherwise it's better to die.” When Sribilas reminds Sachis that a poet find poetry in his soul only and dosnt need to borrow it from others, Sachis was emphatic – “I am a poet”. In this proclamation Rabindranath Tagore put his own skin on that of Sachis. Though many have argued the relationship between Lilananda Swami and Sachis as to that between Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda[5].

However, Tagore didn’t make it very clear the reason’s for Sachis’ disillusion of Swami Lilananda and his decision of finding his awakening by himself. It is also quite bleak why Sachis was not allowed to complete the union with Damini. Damini’s marriage to Sribilash was hence a little contrived though Sribilash’s overt interest in Damini and her reciprocating loudly to disrupt Sachis’ mental peace were apparent. In Damini’s death due to an unknown pain in her chest (which she was carrying since the night in the cave – a heart broken?) and her submission to Sribilash ( “My longings are still with me. I go with the prayer that I may find you again in my next life.”) Tagore transcended both Damini and Sribilash through tragedy.

Chaturanga (2008) : The narrative film

Director Suman Mukhopadhyay is well known for his penchant for complex subjects – be on stage or on celluloid. Hence, it doesn’t come as a surprise that he will take up Tagore’s this novel which no other esteemed Bengali directors tried to film. Written at the age of 55, there had been lot of debate on Tagore’s philosophical stance – his voice in the film. At 42, Suman also had tried his voice to be heard even though he chose to follow Tagore, predominantly. To cite his reasons for taking up this novel Suman mentioned - “Even as we stand today, we continue to be imprisoned in diverse cages. East or West, leftist or rightist, normal or abnormal, we have fragmented existence into so many pieces.”[6]

The novel was narrated from Sribilash’s point of view; all the four characters had been his narration. Thus, Tagore played with the narrative form – putting up Sribilash as the narrator but lending his own voice to Sachis. On the contrary, Suman laid down his fabric of narration squarely across everyone – the film-maker’s point of view is how we get to see the movie. Hence association or alienation with Sachis and/or Sribilash doesn’t take place. However, the film and the novel primarily revolve round Sachis, Sribilas and Damini. I have mentioned earlier, Tagore’s probable reason of keeping Jyathamosai as a separate chapter. The same is not obvious in the film. It doesn’t lend much insight to the triangle of love and conflict between the three central characters – reference to Sachis’ agnostic past under western influences and Jyathamosai could have been dealt with flash-backs and voice-overs. Suman here probably didn’t want to get into the controversy that could have originated from his mutilating the Tagore novel.

The novel itself is lyrical and poetic – the renditions at Lilananda Swami’s ashrama and that between Sribilash and Sachis are pregnant with colourful observations of the world and the land – the way a poet may look into. Also in the sensual tensions between Damini and Sachis one may recall Damini’s swing between fiery lightning and submissive sweetness as close to erotic poetry. Suman added to this by making the film a musical one. His usage of music had been intelligent -adding Rabindranath Tagore’s own songs (one obvious disadvantage that Tagore had to deal with in his novels mostly!) – ‘Aamar Praner majhe sudha ache chao ki’ as a thematic centre for Damini, Beethoven’s symphony to shed a light on Jyathamoshai’s aristrocratic élan, Vaishnava songs filling the soundscape with spiritual eroticism, and finally cutting across with the profound Sufi song ‘Mil jaye rooh ko garh’. Also important is the song Lilananda Swami sang just before the cave sequence. Whilst in the novel Tagore refers to ‘Pathe yete tomar sathe Milan holo diner seshe’ (whose last lines are ‘ kshanek tumi darao, tomar charan dhaki elokeshe’) that has a direct bearing on what follows – the hairy ‘beast’ on Sachis’ libidinal dream-awakening, the film has ‘Matir buuker majhe bondi je jol miliye thake’ rendered by Swami Lilananda. This song also bears reference of the tantric ideology in embracing Mother Nature as the symbol of Shakti. At the centre of the inverted triangle (triangle formed by Sachis, Sribilas and Damini) is Swami Lilananda as the ‘Purusha’ thereby giving him a sexual identity which was absent in Tagore’s characterization of him. Albeit repressed, Damini’s denouncing of Lilananda Swami gets a new dimension here – Swami represents the patriarchal phallus which governs and dictates the sexuality and identity of widows.

Similar smartness was expected in two other instances – the cave sequence and when Sachis’ internal awakening assured him of the union of the finite with the infinite. The cave sequence for instance was physical in its interpretation – shadowy yet lifted directly from the novel. What the author got away with citing ‘diary excerpts’ wasn’t that easy for the film director. Similarly the awakening sequence had Sachis uttering all the profound philosophical sermons towards Sribilash and Damini and then running towards the horizon. This again seemed lacking in imagination.

The film is linear in the narrative with less experimentation with the form or the content. Hence Suman wanted to connect the loose ends of Tagore’s novel. For instance, Suman defined Sachis’ intrinsic sway between rational positivism and devotional Vaishnavism and then to self-meditation through deaths – Nanibala’s and Jyathamoshai’s in the first case and the suicide of the wife of a Lilananda Swami’s disciple for the latter. These definitive reasons made the transition of Sachis somewhat logical. Similarly, instead of dealing with the mystic allure of the novel Suman brought in sexuality as early as the first chapter – Sachis’ masturbation after secretly watching Nanibala change her blouse. This again helped in defining Suman’s version of Sachis which is more in flesh with worldly needs than Tagore’s who is more idealistic. Probably that is the reason why Suman’s Sachis is ordinary in his looks (a brilliant Subrata Dutta nonetheless) whereas Tagore’s Sachis had been a ‘flame’ according to Sribilas (as opposed to Damini being a ‘fire’).

The position of women as depicted by the film is in similar lines as Tagore depicted. Damini’s being a widow and being forced to follow the Hindu norms are a bit out-dated. The norms still bind women but in different ways. In placing the film as a period film and preserving the setting to one which is a hundred years old there are few questions. Primarily, a novel by the very virtue of its form depends much more on its content and on the storyline. The visual aspect is played in the minds of the reader where he is independent to become the creator of the characters to certain degrees. However, cinema being an audio-visual medium the opportunities are plenty and the aberrations also, ought to be minimal. Hence, preserving the contemporariness of Chaturanga – the novel in a period film becomes difficult. If the basic question is the uncertain positioning of self between spirituality and individuality, between love lost and love unattained, between lust for the physical form and love for the boundless infinite then it has to be admitted that the film lacks it. It is probably because even if the questions remain just the same after hundred years, somewhere, there is a potential difficulty in identifying with the characters.

Tagore had concealed the seed of spirituality within the humanist trends. Hence Sachis’ struggle for spiritual redemption and Damini’s self-abnegation find humanist union in Sribilash. Tagore had reportedly mentioned that Sribilash was a believer and initially was pained to know that Sachis was an atheist. Only after Jyathamosai’s influence was he turned an agnostic in practice.  Hence, Sribilash’s staying back in Lilananda Swami’s ashrama had a logical progression. Suman’s Sribilash seemed too agnostic right from the start and his inclusion in Swami Lilananda’s ashram hence seemed a little forced upon.

Edward J Thompson mentioned about Rabindranath Tagore’s concept of women

“Woman is different from man, and therefore to him the modern outcries to make her equal with man are meaningless. He would have her remain woman, a centre of love and inspiration without which the world is poverty-stricken. But he has never ceased to attack the injustice and cruelty which regard woman as inferior, as unfitted for education or the arts.”[7]

This belief had led Tagore to draw the female characters in his novels mostly different, rebellious in their own ways and raising voice against the system. Suman’s Damini also raised voice but it would have been better if Suman realized that from 1916 till 2008 there had been paradigm shifts in our existence as individuals and as social animals. The classical nature of the novel, hence, ensured that the cinema made out of it is intriguing and a good watch, even though the physical relevance of such a period piece remains a big question.

Sachis’ angst or Damini’s fire tend to be relatively unnoticed. It is probably the ambivalence of Sribilash that will find worthy of identification in today’s world.

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[1] Santanu Biswas, ‘Rabindranath Tagore and Freudian thought’ , The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Volume 84, June 2003, Issue 3 (page 717-732)

[2]  All the excerpts have been borrowed from Dr. Kaiser Haq’s translation of Chaturanga as Quartet published by Heinemann International, Asian Writers Series, Oxford, 1993

[3] In his The Unconscious Symbolism of Hair (Allen Unwin. London. 1951), C. Berg comments “Since abundant hair is a symbol of life power, the way one handles it is a marker of what one does with this life power. The grooming or exhibition of hair, for example, has a pronounced erotic element in Melanesia”

[4] Uma Chakravarti, ‘Gender, Caste and Labour - Ideological and Material Structure of Widowhood’, Economic and Political Weekly, September 9, 1995

[5] William Radice , ‘Atheists, Gurus and Fanatics: Rabindranath Tagore's `Chaturanga' (1916)’, Modern Asian Studies 34, 2 (2000), pp. 407-424. Ó 2000 Cambridge University Press

[6] Translated from Shiladitya Sen, ‘Why Chaturanga?’, Anandabazar Patrika, 15 March 2008

[7] Edward J Thompson, Rabindrnath Tagore: His life and work, Kessinger Publishing, 2003 , p 74

[Published in Rupkatha Vol 2 Number 4, Nov 2010 : http://rupkatha.com/V2/n4/24TagoreChaturangaFilm.pdf]