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]