An Indian Film Theory?

For quite some time now film scholars have discussed and debated the relevance and importance of the 'national' cinema vis-a-vis the Western or more prevalent Hollywood films. They have argued the scope of cultural specificity in the paradigm of cinema studies and have observed that within the national cinema as well there are 'centre'-s and 'alternate'-s which means there are ‘national’ vs 'local'. This becomes a hierarchical trope then starting with the Hollywood - National to the National - Local duality. However, looking at the context of Indian cinema this looks an even more complex matrix. The problem is with numbers - India being the largest cinema producing nation of the world with her diversities - of language, culture and religion.So, to define a 'national' cinema is indeed a challenge. There is a systematic and definite ill purpose in identifying Hindi cinema (primarily made out of Mumbai) as the 'Indian national cinema'. This is where the problems of perception lie. The South Indian mainstream industry churns comparable revenue with the Bollywood films yet the tag of 'national cinema' is bestowed not on them. This in essence reflects the participation of the different sections of the country in the national politics that is controlled and masterminded from North India. All these films - mainstream of the South and the East should rightfully fall under the 'Indian National cinema' along with Bollywood. In addition, there are parallel walks by many which may constitute the ‘alternate’ one.

The question of the centre and the fringe becomes irrelevant in the Indian context since both as a single collective is in the fringe of World cinema - from the point of view of acceptance and also recognition and studying. Even with harping on the theory of a common diction of expression it can be argued that the common diction needs to be as much ours as borrowed.When the numbers are insignificant then the matters are different. But in the Indian scene that is not the case. We have a huge volume of the Hindi commercial films different from that of the Tamil ones and then the Bengali art-house cinema, the middle-of-the-road Hindi films or the Independent film-making wave. So to come to an Indian common diction is difficult to start with. This essentially confuses and poses a problem in the cultural experience of the viewer (Indian or from outside) even though there are certain homogeneities which at times are pointed at by the foreign viewer that we tend to miss and hence ignore.

The plethora of theories in culture studies have been dominated and dictated by the aesthetic standards of the affluent West.  Specifically cinema as a medium had treaded different paths in the Indian context - the mainstream and the 'parallel' often referred as 'art' films. The film critics and the film societies have for long aligned with the parallel flow since the critic and the maker both are supposedly 'enlightened' by the Western theories. They have harbored a casteist philosophy and castigated anything that is ‘popular’ and commercially successful as being less 'arty'. This only widened the divide and in a capitalist organization as the state this meant that the commercial mainstream cinema in India gained prominence over time. The numbers and the kitty amount are so overwhelming that the International film festivals have just no other option but to recognize and realize the market potential of the Indian sub-continent.

Where does it leave the film appreciation culture in India?Precisely it makes the arm-chair critic eat out of the commercial film-makers palm.  Rejected by the western bastions of 'art' cinema and have already shut out the mainstream from the cultural vortex leaves the critic confused and puzzled.  To overcome the slumber what is required is self-belief. To accept that in reality no love sequence is amplified by hundred people dancing on the streets. Just the same way as Avaatar is not a worldly reality and neither Speed and its sequels. For, cinema is nothing but only an illusion of reality. We need to look back and deep into the cinema of ours - with pride and reverence. The medium is developed and sharpened by the West but we use itto tell our story. The Indian film theory should emerge hence. Even if the 'enlightened' art film can be read as a text for conventional theory, the mainstream will surely make the theories numb. For example the primordial focus of classical film theory revolved round the concepts of 'gaze' and 'spectatorship'. This then gets contextualized with respect to gender, voyeurism etc. It has to be understood that the concept of gaze in Indian context is different than in the Western world where public exposure of the female body (for instance) happens in a different way than that in rural India, say.

Renowned film scholar Madhava Prasad argued that the Indian cinema is a product of a heterogeneous form of manufacture whereas Hollywood cinema is that of a serial form of manufacture.The 'story' is at the centre of Hollywood cinema and that being 'realist' (in most cases) the concepts of audience identification happens. Indian commercial cinema for instance, taking cue from Prasad is an assembly of dance, song, story, fight and the star. The success ofthe film depends on multiple 'visual pleasures' and not one only. This robs the viewer of the classical 'voyeur' gaze as 'his' 'gaze' is constantly subverted and dissected by these different sub-contexts. Hence, the melodrama as opposed to realism in Indian cinema lets the viewer to accept it as unreal from the very beginning and yet there is a wish-fulfillment attached to it. The film studies institutes unfortunately look down upon the Indian commercial cinema majorly. What is demanded of them now however is a serious and conscious effort to free reading (and thereby banishment) of Indian cinema from Western angle. The scholars and researchers instead can devote time to come up with an Indian Film theory (and its different branches) that would place the diverse films this land is endowed with in proper context.

[Published in The Bengal Post on 01-Jan-2013]

The critic and 'Ship of Theseus'

The philosophical thesis of ‘Mereological essentialism’ relates the ‘whole’ with its ‘parts’ and the condition of persistence of the state. In essence, if an object as a ‘whole’ loses or gains a ‘part’ (or ‘parts’), it essentially is ‘changed’. This is in line with the famous statement of Heraclitus - "You Cannot Step in the Same River Twice" since both the man and the river change. In essence what these theories try to address are the questions on the process of change and of identity and more importantly acknowledging that ‘change’ is actually ‘static’. However these theories and philosophies are subjects that one can choose to ignore and yet live their life in practice and theory. Any representation of life in art needs to draw as much from practice as from theory. Otherwise it remains primarily a philosophical journey devoid of social and physical semblance and sensibility in the life we lead and / or wish to traverse. Hence ‘Ship of Theseus’ – the paradox about interchanging ‘parts’ onto a ‘whole’ leading to the question on interchangeability of identity is one which is a primarily an academic debate rather than a practical physical entity. Anand Gandhi’s powerfully crafted film Ship of Theseus (hence forth referred as SOT) raises some questions – on identity, interchange and most importantly about ‘change’.

Narrative of SOT

Reportedly, Anand Gandhi defined his film and said-“The three short stories evolved to fill in the three corners of the classical Indian trinity of Satyam-Shivam-Sunderam (The pursuit of truth, the pursuit of righteousness and the pursuit of beauty).” SOT has three inter-woven stories which mesh into a collective ‘whole’ in the end. The film opens with Egyptian visual artist Aliya with a cornea infection. She takes up photography to change her creative output but maintaining the gush internal to her. She stays in Mumbai with her boyfriend and waiting for an eye treatment which returns her eyesight. Does she remain the same person as before since with her new-found vision she seemed visibly upset that her magic eye was lost in the process? The end of this snippet finds Aliya waiting in calm stupor in front of the magnificence of nature as she lets go the cover of her lens – an awakening?

The second of the trinity finds the monk Maitreya fighting a lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies testing their products on animals. Maitreya is lovable– he is intelligent, often Intellectual yet down-to-earth. He preaches his ideals and follows them in his life and more importantly he accepts the staggering differences amongst individuals. He is treated with an ailment which needs a transplant and he refuses treatment since to him that defeats the cause which he stands by in his life.  A young lawyer Charbak, who idolizes Maitreya but follows a different path of reasoning, tries hard to convince Maitreya who waits to embrace death. The exchanges are like Aristotelian debate where Maitreya plays the mature philosopher to Charbak’s questions on life, existence and identity – in isolation and in totality. Finally,Maitreya, relents and agrees for a transplant.

The final and more eventful last part finds stock broker Navin who is in constant tussle with his idealist grand-mother who rubbishes Navin as greedy and banishes the generation as irresponsible. Navin goes through kidney replacement and during one of his visits to the nursing home where his grand-mother is admitted, he comes across a poor, impoverished man whose kidney was illicitly removed during a normal appendix operation. Navin takes this as his personal responsibility and tracks down the kidney recipient in Sweden. Eager to close the circle of actions he arranges the Swedish donor to pay for a kidney transplant on the poor man only to find that the latter has amicably settled with the Swedish in exchange of a hefty amount.

The film takes into account different ways of approaching it. The first story of Aliya for example, in line with her hobby, takes up the handheld camera as the medium to reflect on her life and art almost in a self-reflexive way. In spite of the arresting visuals and the grand narratives there are questions on the philosophical aspirations of the theories garlanded in this part as well - if there is a question on her identity (changed or otherwise) after she got back vision, what happens to the same when she lost it in the first place? Was her identity changed then as well? It may well be so, and if that is the case aren’t we talking more about Mereology than the Theseus paradox? And then going by the essentialism theory we agree the necessity of change and the mandate it brings – what the big fuss then, or is it to have a pretense – and that too of being ‘philosophical’? Maitreya’s story for instance is unfortunately obsessed with articulating concepts at the guise of being overtly philosophical and laden with laboured dialogues leaving general audience like me confused and at times, agitated. Understood, that logical linearity is not what we should look for but we still need to yearn for cohesion and correlation. The problem is with how much concession one must provide considering this is an indie film by a debutant film-maker. The greatest analogy from cricket that comes to mind is the fact that a sixteen-something Sachin Tendulkar faced a Wasim Akram in the former's first tour of Pakistan, and, Akram didn’t bowl at him slow since Sachin was still almost a ‘kid’! If the rule is one for commercial pot-boilers, it has to be similar, if not the same, for any indie film as well.

Allegory of the Cave

Pauline Kael once remarked in The New Yorker -“One’s movie-going tastes and habits change—I still like in movies what I always liked but now,for example, I really want documentaries. After all the years of stale-stupid acted-out stories, with less and less for me in them, I am desperate to know something, desperate for facts, for information, for faces of non-actors and for knowledge of how people live—for revelations, not for the little bits of show-business detail worked up for us by show-business minds who got them from the same movies we’re tired of.” Not only Kael alone, this is the yearning of a section of the Indian audience as well which being lambasted with the popular Bollywood or regional potboilers look out for something which gives them some food for thought. Gandhi for one is intelligent enough to realize - “There is a set of people that has been engaging with world cinema, because of film festivals, retrospectives and the internet, and know that this kind of introspective film is what they’re starving for, and crave similar content from India.Even if we’re only talking about 2% of the total population, that’s about a crore people! Then, there is the potential audience that has not been groomed to this kind of cinema. They may not immediately fall in love with it when they watch it, but they will see that this is the kind of cinema that they want to engage with.” The recent surge of indie films in India thrive on that small percentage which actually becomes not so insignificant if considered in absolute terms. However to reach out to this 2% there are two modes of advertising the product – first, to brand it as different from the mainstream and secondly, to have a brand-ambassador (who also represents the face of alternate cinema) to present and promote the film. Even regional indie films are now being ‘presented’ by film-makers of repute.

Kiran Rao, who has ‘presented’ SOT was articulate enough to comment “It’s not a film that can take a wide audience.Everybody can’t walk in and watch this film because they are not prepared for this kind of cinema, and then they might be disappointed.” Cleverly put, the philosopher in you will stir her feathers in order to strive for being a tad different – to accept the film and in turn bask in collective vanity.

SOT ends with a small video clipping showing the man who donated the organs to the protagonists as shooting the interiors of a cave.The shadow of the man with the camera in his hand falls on the crystalline rock and immediately Plato’s Allegory of the cave comes to mind - the attempt to explain the philosopher's place in society, to attempt to enlighten the ‘prisoners’. If we can replace ‘philosopher’ with the ‘critic’ the picture becomes complete.

            Traditionally the role and place of the critic in society has been revered and defiled at the same time. But there had never been any denying of the importance of the critic in the social milieu in the practice of culture theory. Like any true art form, the role of a critique was also to foster dialogue and engage in debate – it was not about passing judgments without being accountable to the art in discussion. The role of the critic hence, was not trying to push the readers to the cinema halls for buying tickets, rather she should engage them to find the areas of disagreement,to analyse them and if it seemed a worthy visit, explore the same by viewing the film in question. With the explosion of data in the social media space there has been a conscious effort to make the consumer influential enough to share her thoughts and voice her opinion. The information out of this enormous data (termed as Big Data) is used in analytics for better understanding the consumer preferences as well as in determining market trends. IBM’s leading Social Sentiment Index which spurns millions of Tweets to derive positive or negative sentiments on a particular film is one such analytics that is creating a revolution. Professor Jonathan Taplin, Director of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab commented - "In the past, box office receipts indicated success or failure. Thanks to advances in analytics, movie makers now have the ability to analyze the public sentiments of their viewers in real time. With technologies such as the Film Forecaster, movie studios such as Lionsgate can go beyond receipts, to truly understand the voice of the crowd."Interestingly the sentiment of the crowd is something which snowballs on itself to dictate a trend – you read several tweets, look up the positive and negative sentiment markers and decide on watching the film or not. Technology is precisely taking over the role of the armchair critic whose views are to be waited for and consumed with much fervor. The crowd has the power now and the money – to produce a film and also to extrapolate it to be a hit or a miss.

            So where will the critic go? The critic will still remain atleast for some more time. But like an aged cricketer, he will enjoy his stance now – the burden of destining a piece of art to its proper future squarely rests on the new kid in the block – the New Media. The critic will persist to represent the old world, the world of the written words, of romantic misgivings and veracious thoughts. The images of Maitreya walking boldly through a field intersected by windmills or the caterpillar walking through a sea of human feet or Aliya groping on a wall to feel the texture will hang like a mélange of sensory perceptions which written words fail to attain. The critic, like the dead man in SOT will probably stand in muted wait within the cave – wait till the final words are crunched into a series of binary numbers.

Kranti, amar rahe

 Making a film on a slice of history has its obvious advantages and disadvantages. The prime advantage being the event or the fact that is well-laid in the mind of the audience prior to the viewing which helps the director to take some narrative liberties in establishing the storyline. However this alone can act as a disadvantage where every deviation from the popular notion calls for a beating. Debutant director Bedabrata Pain in choosing the armed uprising of Chittagong as the basis of his first film has played both the cards cautiously – the incident which is one of the initial armed rebellions against the mighty British was not that known outside of Bengal (the geographic land is in Bangladesh now). Making the film in Hindi for a Pan-Indian audience and feeding them with the seeds of patriotism is a smart move to ensure that your film reaches the audience. The uprising which was spear-headed by Master-da Surya Sen (a school teacher) is popular till this date for Master-da’s heroics and his stoic determined resistance to the British. What the director has done in this film is to show it from an observer’s perspective who happens to be involved for real and whom the director met briefly. Alongside, in making Jhunku (the observer) as the protagonist, the director had the scope to fictionalize the film and thereby taking the focus off Master-da alone.

Chittagong is quite fascinating as it did put forward a forgotten part of Indian history with a lot of care.  Interestingly during the freedom struggle and most notably the early part of it there were pockets in undivided India which showed maximum resistance and resilience. If Punjab and Maharashtra were one then Bengal was the other. Unfortunately, with the Partition of India the two states which suffered most were Punjab and Bengal. Yet with the Independent India, with the physical proximity of the capital being Delhi, Punjab and its martyrs got some recognition from the sovereign state. Bengal on the other hand probably missed on that account a bit – the reason why the incidents like the Chittagong uprising went amiss for the general mass as well as the students of history as well.

The director had taken efforts to rummage history not only for the overt factual details but also in creating an environment that reminisces of a forgotten past. This means that the costume and the art direction enlivens the past not only in the look but also in the feel. The other interesting debate that any period-piece film has to deal with (and when the characters are only a century old with documented photographs) is whether the reel-characters resemble the real characters or not. Like in Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey by Ashutosh Gowariker on the same Chittagong uprising of 1930, apart from Abhishek Bachchan and Deepika Padukone who played Master-da and Kalpana Datta respectively, many other characters looked similar to their historical counterparts.  Bedabrata Pain never really thrived for that and the narrative being little known to most didn’t create much of a problem either.

The strength of the film is in its narrative though – Master-da, a school teacher who was a revolutionary as well, trained his students mostly between 14-16 years of age to combat and to use weapons. Soon with his clinical mind Master-da understood that to combat the British, courage and fearlessness were not the only ingredients of success, he needed to have the weapons which the British had to match their strength. Towards this he masterminded a plan to attack five different locations in a single night – from Railway tracks to the Telegraph office and finally the European club which boasted “Dogs and Indian not allowed”. The ploy was half successful and the troop retreated. A fierce exchange ensued and lasted for a few days and eventually Master-da and his boys were captured by the British. 

However that is not all of it. The film overgrows on the 1930 uprising and we find a young Jhunku (after his stint in Andamans as the youngest Indian freedom fighter ever to be deported) come back to his native land and leading an uprising of the peasants to secure the crop they had harvested. This is what sets Chittagong apart from most of the other patriotic films on the Freedom movement. Whereas most end with the betrayal and nullification of the struggle by the might of the British Raj, Debabrata Pain believes that every incident of revolution is linked with the other and it is that aspect of the human spirit which never dies.  In stripping the film off being just a Master-da tale, the director creates a passion for the triumph of the commoner – in rising and raising the bar for himself and everyone around him. In showing Jhunku’s journey from a fearful teen-ager to a bold revolutionary, the director conveys the message that revolutions get continued and the mantle just passes over to the next generation.   

Pain showed two sides of the British raj in having a considerate and humane British officer whose concern for Jhunku and his allegiance to the empire makes him affable. He is however balanced with oppressive and tyrannical ones including Indians who had served the British in the official ranks. The cinematography in parts is like painting – from the saturated yellow colours of the fields to the black stillness of the ‘kalapani’, Bedabrata Pain ensured that his camera creates a sense of canvas on which the drama enfolds. There were romantic suggestions but thankfully those were underplayed and never diverted the attention. Acting is an asset as it gels in an ensemble cast where no one strikes out as more important.

In an interview (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-luce/chittagong-film_b_1571071.html) Bedabrata Pain reflects – “Chittagong is a film about celebration of human spirit -- a spirit that refuses to give in the face of injustice and adversity, and triumphs at the end. Today, when there's a striving for change all over the world -- from Greece to Wall Street, from Africa to Asia -- I hope my film reminds everybody that David can win the battle against Goliath.” And he mentions a very important aspect as well - "Most of the revolutionaries survived and went on to lead mass uprisings -- something that is integral to the narrative of Chittagong. These uprisings played no small a role in the struggle for India's independence."

Chittagong in the ultimate analysis steals the heart. It makes the viewer look at his history again, to feel proud of it and to be part of a heritage. And deep down somewhere, the viewer also believes - ‘Kranti amar rahe’, this is where Chittagong as a film wins and becomes so important.

[This article is to be published in Deep Focus Vol 3]

The cinema of Rituparno Ghosh

I had no personal friendship with Rituparno Ghosh, not even an acquaintance. I have seen him in programs and functions a few times, in film shows and festivals, have spoken to him a couple of times over phone and exchanged messages with him a few times more. He had read a few articles that I wrote on his cinema and when sometimes I enquired if he had read them he would curtly text back – “Yes I have read, thank you”. Hence, the entire gaga in the media where everyone tries to put forth how close they were to Ritu (as he was fondly called) doesn’t apply to me – thankfully. In this commercialization of death I atleast have the privilege to be objective about a creative person who was seldom analysed when he was alive and now branded as a messiah in his leaving. In this short remembrance I will try to find out what Rituparno Ghosh is to me and to Bengali cinema or for that matter Indian cinema in general.

As images of hoards of people defying the rain and thronging the Nandan complex where Ritu was laid for public mourning before cremated poured in it was obvious that he in death matched the popularity of none other than Satyajit Ray for whom the city bade a magnum farewell 21 years back. In a strange way Rituparno’s positioning in the Bengali cultural space has similarities and parallel with two most revered film-makers of all times – Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak. If Satyajit gave masculinity to the body of Bengali cinema, Rituparno without doubt added feminity to it. This feminity is of the mind – which many female film-makers with a patriarchal bent can never think of bringing forth. Take the example of Sob Choritro Kalpanik (All characters are imaginary). To me this is one of Ritu’s finest films for being cinematic where he could blend visuals with sound effectively – lack of which in general is one big drawback of Ritu’s cinema according to me. In this film 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 Bengal, now Bangladesh. 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. More importantly he talks about sisterhood – something not known in Indian cinema in the popular mainstream space.

Ritu has some more semblances with Ray – the former bagged 12 National awards for his 17 released feature films, as compared to 32 for the 28 features of Ray. No comparison, but RItu could probably go closest to the towering maestro whose international fame and elegance is no match for any Indian film-maker till date and not even Ritu’s.  Rituparno’s fame and influence on the audience mind is primarily limited to Bengal and slightly to a pan Indian audience much later. However to his credit Ritu was intelligent enough to start off with measly budget, dialog-centric, indoor-shot films and then later transcend to the pompous Chokher Bali or Chitrangada. But what he ensured was to pack in enough quality to make those early films box-office hits as well as achieve critical acclaim – a blending of commerce with art which even Satyajit never enjoyed in such degrees and with such regularity.

Ritu often commented he wanted to make films made in the Bengali language but for an Indian audience – one of the reasons he took stars of the Bombay film industry quite often and at times made films in Hindi (Raincoat) or even English (The Last Lear). This is unique of him since not even Ray (apart from occasionally taking Sharmila Tagore and one hindi film in Shatranj ki Khilari) ever reached out to the Bombay stars in a conscious bid to make his films more acceptable outside of Bengal. In this effort and with moderate success, Ritu not only broadened the horizons of Bengali cinema but has given the entire fulcrum of ‘regional’ cinema a whole new dynamics – the debate, problems and the future of which is beyond the scope of discussion for this article. The reason why Ritu is so endeared amongst Bengalis along with Ray is probably also because both of them would take up Rabindranath Tagore’s novels and short stories and transform them into films which will remain important renditions in the history of Indian cinema. If Charulata by Ray is an all-time great movie of the world, Ghosh’s Chokher Bali will remain a fitting adaptation of one of Tagore’s modernist novels. Like Ray, Ritu as well was at the helm of the cultural identity that shaped the Bengali intelligentsia – Ghosh would edit popular magazines and host two of the best talk-shows in Bengali media of all times – Ebong Rituparno (And Rituparno) and Ghosh & Co.. There is no doubt that his formidable literary and artistic readings and knowledge along with a sensitive rendition of the acquired information made these shows very popular.

The first decade of film-making for Ritu dealt mostly with the urban Bengali middle-class who had no option but to eat out of his palm. As clichéd it may sound but no article on Ritu can miss the fact that in the 90’s his cinema brought the reluctant educated Bengali back to cinema. He was intelligent enough to keep things simple, linear and yet sensitive enough to touch upon the chords of the Bengali mind which, after being fed with a host of sensitive films (and not by Ray or Ghatak alone) suddenly were left with a crude imitation of the South films and at times Bollywood ones. During this time he had to carry the heavy mantle left by the fore-bearers of Bengali cinema prominently Ray – there was absolutely no one else which served both ways for him. On the one hand, to turn a trend single-handedly was difficult and he achieved that to his credit. On the other hand he didn’t face much of a competition – had he been making films in the 1960s instead of the 1990s he probably would be fighting for his place with an Ajay Kar or an Asit Sen or a Tarun Majumder. However after those 10 initial years of careful gauging, in 2003 he ventured out to make a classic out of Tagore’s Chokher Bali – and from then onwards his trajectory and his cinematic vision widened and became varied.

Sooner than later Ritu turned everyone’s attention towards him for his questions on gender and sexuality – of him and in general. He believed in gender fluidity and in being a ‘parallel’ to the man-woman duality. For him it was not important to be gay or a lesbian or a transgendered – it is important probably to be something in-between but over-encompassing. He probably had experienced this plurality in him which resulted in his decoration of himself and also his choice of films. He took to acting probably to spread his cause, his self more than anything else. In all these three films the characters floated in gender fluidity. This is reason enough for Ritu being a subject of denial by most – men and women alike though women probably empathized with his cinema and characters in them more than men. He was jibed at, jeered down and turned into a comedy in public shows and yet Ritu had the guts and the will-power to carry on in what he believed was true. Unfortunately with his death, a lot of interest in Ritu revolved solely round his sexual identity and practice rather than his creative acumen.

In this regard he is closer to Ritwik in the fact that Ritwik with his life-style and propaganda was equally stomped down by the Bengali middle-class ‘bhadralok’ albeit in a different context altogether. If Ritu’s sexuality and his ‘living one’s life’ the way he wanted was something that the mass couldn’t digest, it was Ritwik’s alcoholism and his big-mouth which never suited the educated. In both cases the person was more the point in discussion and not the oeuvre he left behind – utterly unfortunate and a bitter reality. Interestingly enough for both their last films have elements of autobiography and would remain hallmarks in their own career and in understanding them within their creative space. With Jukti Takko aar Goppo Ritwik opened up a new window of personal cinema where the creator gets juxtaposed with his creation and his visions – extremely political and rooted within critical cinematic flaws and shortcomings. Nonetheless, this last film is one which has a didactical influence in understanding Ritwik’s nuances and his dichotomies. Ironically, in similar veins, Chitrangada’s Rudra will be one rubric for analyzing the critical dilemma of the artist in Ghosh and the physical turmoil he had to undergo. There were two prevalent themes in many of Ritu’s films based on his own script/story – the relation with the parents and the embracement of death. Time and again from his first film Unishe April, through Asookh and finally in Chitrangada it is the relation between generations which he deftly touches upon and gives importance equal to the one between genders. In parallel, in all of these films it is the shadow of death in different forms – suicide, death of near ones and of relations – not the physical death alone but more importantly ‘biraha’ which transcended the physical, mortal separation. This feeling of loss of the self for the other is grounded in Ritu’s experience of Tagore – something which he could use to tap the Bengali mind with élan. Both Ghatak and Ghosh experimented with their body but in different ways – and used their ‘body’ as the canvas of their denial of the system and their own revolt against the society. Tragically for both it was their very body which did a renegade and both died soon after making the films in discussion above – Ritwik at the age of 51 and Ritu at 49!

            There will always be a temptation of scratching beneath the cover to find spices of Ritu’s life which defied convention – but that alone cannot save him as a creative film-maker of the country. As the furor dies its natural death and the personal reminisce fades away with the tides of time what will remain are the films of Rituparno Ghosh. There are a few in them which expanded the medium of cinema and championed the creator’s vision and beliefs. The others died with a damp whimper. Only time will tell how it wants to remember Rituparno Ghosh – the ‘enfant terrible’ of contemporary Indian cinema.

The legend of Soumitra Chatterjee

“I have always been in doubt about my work. I always thought that entertainment business was not worthwhile but time and again for more than 50 years I have been accepted, loved and made to feel as one of my own by my countrymen. I love them [viewers] and that is the reason why I am doing cinema. I salute them as they have supplied me with energy and dedication of what I think is a good art.” This is what Soumitra Chatterjee had to say at the award function where he was conferred the Dadasahab Phalke award in 2012 – the highest award in India for contributions in cinema. The announcement of the award was indeed a surprise to many including the essayist considering the fact that Soumitra’s relation with the National film awards is strangely lukewarm. He was never conferred the award for the Best Actor in his heydays and then finally received it for a rather inconsequential role in a seemingly innocuous film Padakshep (2006, Dir: Suman Ghosh).  His closeness to the frontline leaders of the CPI(M) (ex-Chief Minister Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharyya being a friend) and his marked Marxist lineage probably added to this delineation – he refused Padma Shri twice before accepting Padma Bhushan in 2004. He however was conferred with the Officier des Arts et Metiers, one of the highest award for arts given by the French government and the Lifetime Award from the organizers of the Naples Film Festival, Italy in 1999. So why did he accept Dadashaheb Phalke? “I have not much belief in the awards and the way they are been given. Nor do I have much faith in the juries many times. I don’t need an award at this stage of life as well. However I did accept this since I found this one award which is till date slightly free from the politics and nepotism associated with the other awards. If you see the other recipients you will find that apart from one or probably two, everyone else is very deserving”- this is what he told me in a personal conversation. Soumitra Chatterjee on one hand represents this aspect of the Bengali Renaissance which thrived on being different and exploiting a new facet of the cultural heritage and hegemony.

As the light gets low, the breezing wind reminds us of an impending storm. Charu and Manda were playing cards in the bedroom. As the storm intensifies they are forced to leave the afternoon siesta. It is at this point in time that Amal enters like a comet. He chants ‘Hare Murare’ from the memorable Bangla novel “Anandamath” by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. Soumitra Chatterjee was Amal to me for quite a long time. It wasn’t the first Chatterjee film that I watched, nor, was it his first film. But whenever I get to think of him the couple of images that strike me include the above from Satyajit Ray’s classic “Charulata” (1964). The other being Apu in Ray’s third film of the epic trilogy “Apur Sansar” (1959). Chatterjee had been Ray’s ‘one-man stock company’ (as Pauline Kael coined him) – a collaboration in 14 films which has a staggering range from Apu to Gangacharan in “Ashani Sanket” (1973), Felu in the detective films (1974 and 1978), Sandip in “Ghare Baire” (1984) and the later films (1989, 1990). Apart from Ray, Soumitra had been an instant choice for most of eminent Bengali directors including Mrinal Sen , Tapan Sinha of the classical phase and Goutam Ghosh, Rituporno Ghosh or Aparna Sen of recent years — notable exceptions being Ritwik Ghatak and Buddhadeb Dasgupta.

As I look at Soumitra’s filmic career that spans over five decades, the two most important aspects that come to mind are – his professional rivalry with the Bengali matinee idol Uttam Kumar and the shift in his choice of films across the different decades. When Soumitra started his career in the late fifties / early sixties, Uttam Kumar had already been a star and probably the biggest of them all. His eloquent ‘natural’ style had been a perfect foil to his romantic overtones, pairing with the gorgeous Suchitra Sen. Satyajit Ray had started reeling out masterpieces and for the first time, the audience had a glimpse of the natural in Indian films. Uttam Kumar was quick to adapt even if his chance to act in a Ray film came much later in “Nayak” (1966). As he kept sweeping the audience off their feet, Soumitra’s image was that of a shy college pass-out in Apu. And few films after, by the mid sixties, Soumitra became the thinking man’s hero – the image of an ‘intellectual’. He had the intellectual ‘bangali babu’ eating out of his palms, added to the fact was his marked leftist lineage, his poet identity and his association with Sisir Bhaduri, the legendary theatre thespian. The coffee-house go-er Bengali intelligentsia modeled themselves on him as a parallel to the more popular Uttam Kumar. Both of them did a number of films together but most famous are “Jhinder Bandi” (1961), “Stree” (1972), “Aparichito” (1969) and “Devdas”(1979). Barring Tapan Sinha’s “Jhinder Bandi” where he portrays the deadly yet sophisticated villain Mayurbahan as opposed to the king (dual role played by Uttam) in all these other films starring these legends, Soumitra played the second fiddle. Uttam played the confident male, going out and winning the world for him, while Soumitra epitomized as the defeated other. This is the singular image that Soumitra developed with ease, take Amal (“Charulata”) or Amitava of “Kapurush” (1965) – the glorification of a defeated individual has been a major fodder to his image being popular. In “Aparichito” (based on Dostyovesky’s “The Idiot”), Soumitra played the submissive ‘idiot’ who got deranged in the end, unable to cope with the pressures of the modern life. In “Stree”, he goes to the city from the village in search of fortune and when he returns, finds his lady-love forcibly married to a zaminder (played by Uttam Kumar). Dejected he takes work in the same zamindar’s house, unknowingly as the complex saga of love and betrayal unfolds. In Saratchandra’s epic novel “Devdas”, Soumitra plays Devdas, the jilted lover who succumbs to alcohol who gets support from his friend in Chunilal (Uttam). Almost all these films rise above the mundane pot-boilers, more so by the power of acting of this duo. And their intelligence in doing justice to the roles that suit them best ensured that the films are seldom boring. Probably the best way to sum up their difference is to quote Satyajit Ray – ‘…the intelligent section of the crowd, particularly the girls, the Presidency College girls, would prefer Soumitra to Uttam. But they were in a minority, I’m afraid’.

Soumitra Chatterjee developed his cinematic persona in style and remained a character actor who also became a star. This was ensured due to the associations he had in his early film career. If we look into his first decade – the sixties we will find he had acted in more than forty films which includes seven Satyajit Ray films, two Tapan Sinha , three Asit Sen and three Mrinal Sen films. Most of these films (not only those of Ray) had been different – in form as well as in content. It’s a rare luxury for a new actor to work with so many talented directors of the time. To his credit, Chatterjee had grabbed these opportunities with both hands and delivered. The seventies saw a change – the political instability throughout the globe rubbed on the film industry as well. Whereas in Bombay, the mantle shifted from Rajesh Khanna to Amitabh Bachchan, in Bengal, Uttam Kumar still held sway. However, as he moved more and more to character acting keeping his star image intact, Soumitra moved just the opposite – he got himself to do more and more ‘commercial’ hero roles. This resulted in having only four Satyajit films and no other acclaimed director to work with. His appearance also changed as he grew old, from the Biblical reference of the ‘children of light’ to that with an urban sophistication. In the next three decades Soumitra moved slowly to characterizations in his acting that commensurate his aging process. Thankfully, we could witness the thief Aghor in “Sansar Seemante”, or the teacher who witnessed a political murder in “Atanka”, the dictionary-writer who struggled like a sage in “Ekti Jiban”, the paralytic doctor who moves in a wheel-chair and fights for his differently-enabled patients in “Wheel Chair” or the icon of indomitable spirit and inspiration – the swimming trainer Kshitish Singha in “Kony”.

Apart from the silver screen, Soumitra spent more time on the stage since the early eighties. His initial theatre acting legacy with Sisir Bhaduri prompted him to return to his cradle as he produced theatres in packed houses – “Naam Jibon”, “Rajkumar”, “Phera”, “Nilkantha”, “Ghatak Biday” , “Atmakatha” and “Homapakhi” to name a few. Unlike in film where he remained only an actor, in theatre Soumitra became the writer (most of his plays are adaptations of foreign plays, though the adaptations are truly Indian and Bengali in spirit) and also the director apart from being the lead actor. True, probably his star image helped his theatre to start with but it is his range of topics and his strength of characterization that kept the audience interested for more than three decades now. Atleast with “Neelkantha”, “Tiktiki” and “Raja Lear”, Soumitra reached insurmountable heights and these will be included in any serious discussion on Soumitra as an actor – both in films and on stage. With “Raja Lear” he virtually changed the economics of the reeling Bengali theatre. Whereas the average Bangla theatre ticket costs 100 INR (this is really unfortunate as compared to Delhi or Mumbai where the minimum price is set around 500 INR in most cases), “Raja Lear” upped the price to 250 INR and yet every show of it turns houseful within hours of commencement of ticket sale.

As a complete actor of cinema and stage, there is no parallel of Soumitra in Bengal and probably a very few in the national scene. In the Bengal film industry, there were excellent film actors like Uttam Kumar (whose heroism is unparalleled without any iota of doubt), Chhabi Biswas and Bikas Roy. But none of them had his range – from the youth to the middle-aged citizen to the old Samaritan, Soumitra played all with equal élan. He is probably the only Indian actor who matured so gracefully playing all the roles that fit his physical appearance at that point in time. If we compare the stage actors – Sombhu Mitra, Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay and Utpal Dutt or even the legendary Sisir Kumar Bhaduri (Soumitra’s guru in theatre), we have to admit none of them had the filmic presence of Soumitra. He is the only successful bridge between theatre and films; every other notable Bengali actor has either one in their oeuvre but not both. In the national scene, only a Naseeruddin Shah can be a parallel to Soumitra for his range of characterizations and deep sensitive understanding of the premise of acting. Not even Balraj Sahni whom Soumitra admired most. Naseer is probably an actor who played roles of different shades more than Soumitra, who mostly played the Bengali middle-class bhadrolok through the different ages of his life. Naseer on the other played characters with different ethnicity, race and socio-economic profiles with vivacity. Soumitra being a regional actor probably justifies for not being able to match up on these grounds. However being a highly successful romantic hero and his theatre laurels will help him to be one of the two finest actors of India for all times along with Naseer.

At 78 and fighting cancer, Soumitra has seen it all – from being a cinema actor to a playwright, a theatre actor, a poet, a co-editor of the progressive literary magazine ‘Ekkhyan’ and a social activist. His longtime wish of playing King Lear was fulfilled. His one of the latest plays “Tritiyo Onko Otoeb” experiments with the form of theatre where all three actors play the role of “Soumitra Chatterjee” himself. Does that seem narcissistic? It may well be as he laments for the lack of scope that he gets in contemporary Bengali films. Probably, like Norma Desmond (unforgettable Gloria Swanson) of “Sunset Boulevard”(1950), Soumitra sits back and rues – “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small”.

Postscript: I have used two of my previous articles on the thespian – “The Enigma That is Soumitra Chatterjee” and “Soumitra Chatterjee: a way of life in Bengal”, both published in the website of Dearcinema.

<<This article was published in Deep Focus Vol 2, Mar-May 2013>> 

The ‘heroine’ from Bhumika to Iti Mrinalini

‘Bistar badal jaate hain…par aadmi nahin badalte’

- the ‘heroine’ from Bhumika to Iti Mrinalini

In her 1926 play Sex, Mae West, the American playwright and actress wrote:

There’s a chance of rising to the top of every profession . . . Why not? Others do it, why can’t I? Why can’t you? When I think of the dames riding around in swell limousines, buying imported gowns, living at the swellest hotels, terrible looking janes, too . . . It’s all a question of getting some guy to pay for the certain business, that’s all.

Mae West had been a phenomenon who controlled her image on stage and screen and harvested her career to become an icon who remained discussed till date as voice of sexual expression of the other gender more than a victim of the phallic norms and regulations. Mae West emphasized through her ‘body’ of work that the actress (the male gaze) and the prostitute (the male desires) are the two faces of the construction of the image of the “woman” in the social place. Not only in the Western world, this interchanging position of the actress and the prostitute is observed in the early Indian culture and entertainment as well.

Bhumika and Iti Mrinalini are two films that are separated by three decades yet they share a similar thread – both look at the ‘heroine’ – her frailties and insecurities. In Shyam Benegal’s Bhumika (1977), at the centre of the film is Usha (played by a vibrant Smita Patil) - a self-reliant woman who wants to lead life on her own terms. The film was inspired from and is a fictional recreation of the autobiography of the famous Hindi and Marathi screen actress Hansa Wadkar.

Usha is conventional in many respects and yet bent to defy every convention. However her quest for life and a meaning to it had revolved round her relation with different men. Her goals and her disappointments were all punctuated by the men in her life. Iti Mrinalini (2010, directed and acted by Aparna Sen) on the other narrates the life of Mrinalini Mitra, who was a Bengali film actress. The film starts with Mrinalini contemplating suicide to end a vacuous life and planning to write a suicide note. Before taking the sleeping pills, she decides to destroy all documentation pertaining to her colorful past. This takes her to a reflective journey about her life and her relationships. As audience, we traverse Mrinalini’s rise to stardom, her inner turmoil and her quest to find an identity and meaning of her life.

The opening shots of Bhumika clearly set in the director’s empathy for Usha. He wants the audience to empathize as well:

Ø      Usha/Urvashi (Smita Patil) dropped home by her co-star Rajan (Anant Nag) after a shoot

Ø      Her husband Keshav (Amol Palekar) confronts her when she enters the house

Ø      Usha argues back

Ø      There is a big fight and Usha leaves. We find the three women and the uncertainty on their faces due to their dependency on one man

Ø      The film then switches to a long flashback in black and white that traces her childhood years till her entry into films

Usha’s character as depicted in the Bhumika is a bundle of contradictions -She marries Keshav in defiance – against her mother but hates him and repeatedly turns down his appeals to return home. However, when held captive at a Kale’s estate she writes to Keshav only to rescue her, again when back to Bombay, accompanied by Keshav she readily agrees to check into a hotel without going back home! Finally, when Rajan calls up at the end of the film, she refuses to talk to him. She is loved by Rajan but has a strange lukewarm relation with him. Apparently it seems Usha is irrational / emotional. But that is not represented from a man-woman hierarchical standpoint. Instead Usha is shown as “human” with human frailties. In the end, in her rejection of Keshav, Rajan and even her daughter’s request to move in with them, she comes out as a strong-willed individual instead of an “emotional woman”. The character’s sway between moods is complimented with the duality of representation of the character on screen – the shift from Usha’s character in reel reality to the roles of the heroines she was playing in cinema. Just after Usha walks out on her husband and checks into a hotel there is a montage of roles in b/w - she plays the faithful wife Savitri pleading with Yamraj not to take away her husband Satyavan, then she plays Champabai, a righteous wife who refuses to be sold off to a rich client by her drunkard husband in a social and finally a city woman in an urban melodrama where she fights to defend her honour inside a courtroom.

This is where Usha is even worse than the image portrayed and carried through by Mae West – the tragic dilemma of the female entertainer of the 20^th century. She is a public woman subject to the male gaze and the same time her chastity remains questioned through out. Thereby she remains as a marginal – neither in the domestic space nor as the social prostitute but in the fringe.

Finally, at its core the film’s latent philosophy is in one dialogue when Kale’s wife tells Usha

“Bistar badal jaate hain, rasoi badal jaati hai, admiyon ke naqaab badal jaate hain, par aadmi nahin badalte!”

As compared to Bhumika, the opening shots of Iti Mrinalini are more personal in nature. They tend to establish the star of yesteryear Mrinalini from an individual’s perspective than a social one.  It's the men in her life where Mrinalini has located her happiness. She looks for meaning in her life through love primarily – of men and through them the love for self.  In a sense it can be attributed that patriarchy that has shaped the way she thinks - the importance of being loved by men and identification of self is in relation to men. However, regardless of that reasoning there is ample reason to believe that Mrinalini’s self-absorbant existence is what adhere her to her problems and losses. Mrinalini was frivolous with Abhi but wasn’t serious, she was however haplessly in love with director Siddhartha who was married with kids, she got pregnant by Siddhartha after marrying in a temple, once deserted by him, she had a relation of trust and love with Chintan – thought of confiding to him when planned suicide and finally falling for the much young director Imtiaz who floored her and made her feel special when she was leading a lonely and secluded life. There were four deaths depicted in Mrinalini’s life - Abhi, her first boy-friend, Kamala-di, the dresser, Sohini, her daughter and finally Mrinalini herself.  However it is important to understand that Death of near ones is essentially a ‘personal’ grief since it announces absence. In the representation of Mrinalini being dictated emotionally by men and in her moving through deaths she is a perfect depiction of woman in terms of the patriarchal norms that depict her as emotional and irrational and with the heroine's end the director succumbs to that patriarchal norm - she is romantic but she remained as one who is not an individual self at the end.

In Bhumika Usha is shown as impulsive, irrational – going by the standard identification of woman in cinema as a ‘second’ to man. However the film-maker’s sympathy is evident and in the end her rejections of her lover Rajan and her daughter act as an indicator of the strong will that Usha has. Her earlier flirtations in life hence can be interpreted as her deliberate stance in proving her solid belief in herself rather than she being a pawn of patriarchy.

In Iti Mrinalini, the glares of patriarchy are less evident but in making Mrinalini’s choices as too personal and in her decision of suicide leaves us to believe that she is controlled by her men and the patriarchal society that acts as the controlling factor. All throughout resonates her love for suffering and in the end when she wanted to live her symbolic death marks the death of the self-reliant woman in cinema.

[This article is edited from a paper presented in the UGC Sponsored National Conference "Re-writing Culture, Re-telling Narratives: Gender and the Politics of Representation" organized by Brahmananda Keshab Chandra College, Kolkata in collaboration with Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata on 10th February 2012]