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.