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.