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]

 

The K File – unplugged

Oorvazi Irani’s short fictional film (of approx nine and half minute’s duration) The K File is staccato in its representation yet passionate and forceful in interpretation. The director has taken care that she gets everything right from the start. Or may be even before that.  The film poster for example is striking – black and white smeared with red with a question on it – “A wrong to do right or the right to do wrong?”

This is smart since in a short feature of less than ten minutes to establish the reel reality you cannot afford to be liberal with your narrative time-line. To be economical may mean being discrete. Putting the poster ahead hence serves the purpose of rolling the ball for the audience along with the opening shots – deftly cut and fudged, we as audience are aware of the plot. Yes, it is about Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving terrorist of the 26/11 attacks. But not exactly him. There are two characters in the film – Asab, the terrorist (modeled on Kasab) and the country’s Home Minister who fears hanging Asab will reduce the Muslim votes for his Government. When confronted with the question that there had been several innocent Muslims who were killed in the attacks as well and that the common Muslim is against terror as much as a common Hindu, the minister retaliates citing the other few Hindu terrorists who were yet to be hanged. Interesting is this dilemma of the Minister as an individual, his Government as an organization and the country as the dumb population. Trying to be impartial means justice delayed and eventually denied.

There are few hand-held shots with local lightings and slight jerky movements with the camera angle shifting as the story unfolds. The end complements the camera trajectory of sizing up of the terrorist. In a blurry, fuzzy finale, it wasn’t known whose bullet pierced Asab’s neck – what the country’s governance can’t do. Is it the director who puts an end to this dilemma? Or the audience’s wish-fulfillment used as a motive here like the fly which is so suggestive?

The film is released on 28-May-2012 online (http://www.facebook.com/TheKFileMovie) since the director knows that the widest spread of a short film is to use the internet. This is predominantly a free show and what matters is the film reaching Indians and the world commune trying to fight terror.

Where do we leave the film then? It is a reality which the director took in her hands and fictionalized for her message to come through. Oorvazi’s script is simple, basic and sharp. The genre of the film is based effectively with the background score – definitive and at times thunderous. Most importantly, there is no one message as the director doesn’t become prophetic. She in turn, sets the audience in front of few questions – the moral standpoint of terrorism and our action against it. There is no viewpoint of Asab though. What lures him and the others like him to take up arms to kill people? There are no bigger sacrifices that they are ready for. That exploration probably would have made this into a bigger venture. But as the audience it does come to the mind if such findings are worth dealing with – not for Asab only but for any future attacks on humanity.

Oorvazi may not know but that bullet in the end came straight out my hands and heart, and there are no qualms about it!

Kahaani – tacky and deceitful

Most of Hitchcock’s films start in daylight, with bright settings and at times with comic undertones. He once said, "in a light-hearted setting, the advent of drama is made all the more effective by its unexpectedness…The more happy-go-lucky the setting, the greater kick you get from the sudden introduction of drama."  This dramatic tension helps to intensify the climax which when attained spellbinds the audience and takes her breath away. The attainment of ‘thrill’ is compounded by Macguffins with an undercurrent of facetious wit. In many of the Hitchcock’s brilliant thrillers there is sharp divide between what the audience ‘knows’ and what the character ‘knows’. This is how the suspense is cultivated and nurtured. The opposite of that (when the audience actually are made not to ‘know’) is in essence depriving the audience, her legitimate insight to the incidents and events that unfurl. In short, that is when the director cheats the audience.

This is the foremost feeling that I had as an audience of the much-hyped hindi thriller Kahaani. There is a scene where in the confines of her home, dejected and rejected by her fortune Vidya Bagchi, the protagonist cries and thinks of her happy past with her husband. Now in a private moment if a character reacts only to the audience, we expect that to be truthful and the reel reality. In deceiving the audience with character doubles in the end, the director convolutes the build-up of the tension.  From the very beginning the director wanted his audience to run after speed. There are jerky shots with frequent cuts to create a sense of tension and the feeling of speed. Films made by most Bengali film-makers are in slow ambit to bore the audience, so much so that director Sujoy Ghosh pressed the accelerator from shot 1. Hence, the Hitchcockian sublime built up of the suspense sprinkled with comic situations is lost. Now there is no hard and fast rule to follow Hitchcock in a thriller. However, what is required probably is an economy of expression and not facts. For example the innuendo at the private composure of the HR Manager before she was killed is an excess – adding no value to the character or the nature of the crime, nor is there a Macguffin.

The character of Vidya is woven in incompleteness. Now being incomplete proves vacuum in the creator’s head instead of conscious ambiguity leading to multiple interpretations from the audience. For example, why was there no back-ground check done on Vidya by the Intelligence Bureau? Why not the basic check if she did indeed land from London on that day – when a similar check was done on her estranged husband? The apparent joviality of Vidya’s character is another incident of incompleteness. It was not consciously strewn for the audience to swoop on – consider the little flirtations of Vidya with Rana, the young police officer in the tram where she playfully almost rubbed Rana’s feet with her. To me it makes her character inconsistent instead of being ‘whole’.

What however did create a warm ambience is perhaps the depiction of the city of Kolkata. Trams, the Howrah Bridge and the Durga Puja are unfailing traits of the city. The metro got added to that. There is some deft imagery not in the landmarks but in the broiling smoke of the chai at the roadside tea-stall, in the unwound last tram that ferries people to a different world and the lanes and by-lanes of the city. The city does come-out even further at Kumortuli, the place where Durga idols are being made and in the climax Dasami sequence. But the city had remained soft, and warm with almost sepia colours at night or non-committal, even non-interested in the bright day colours. Only a couple of metro scenes where the chilly whiteness of the screen sends a shiver down the spine. Compare this with Satyajit Ray’s handling of Benares in Joy Baba Felunath you will make out how the city (Benares) nurtures the crime, and itself becomes criminal in instinct. Or for that matter the minimally supreme film Aamir which poses Mumbai as the city you cannot leave, a city you never trust. Sujoy Ghosh’s Kolkata in contrast wanted to be a benevolent character in this saga rather than a heinous conspirator in perpetuating terror.

Vidya Balan’s acting is restrained and rational. She lacked support of the script at places and tried to act consistently to an inconsistent character. Her and Rana’s nightly adventures to a couple of Govt. organizations, breaking open the ancient locks with hairpin is another example of too-much creative license. However her physical acting as the pregnant woman deserves credit. The film belongs to Vidya in heart and soul – it’s just that she had limited opportunities to show the gamut of her histrionic skills. The other actors – a host of Bengali ones at times lacked conviction. Parambrata as Rana is one example whose actions and whose revelation in the end are not exactly the same. Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s Khan is strong on the other hand though the character was turned to almost a laughing stock in the end (the entire police force and the Intelligence Bureau were turned to that almost sadly). Sawata Chatterjee’s Bob Biswas, the serial killer cum LIC agent is probably one leaf out of Hitchcock’s cinema. He is cold and clinical though his moving around with a revolver at all places and at all times including the metro station is a bit unrealistic. Also unknown why he wanted to push Vidya in front of the speeding train though he actually got her picture via mms (to kill her) much later.

Kahaani ends with the immersion of the Durga idol in the holy waters. This is just after the climax which is heightened with a shock twist. Hitchcock had mentioned a number of times the subtle difference between shock and suspense. As the idol finally takes to the floating waters of life, Vidya Bagchi gets obliterated. She came with a purpose and left after accomplishing that and also helping the legal governance of the country. What the story suffered from was the single-point focus to make Vidya triumphant. This ruined the chances of one A Wednesday in the making which built the suspense even if the audience knew what the characters didn’t. In the ultimate analysis, Kahaani is jazzy and fast-paced. It will enthrall a part of the audience with its unfailing narrative spree towards the climax. For the other part, this film will pass on as tacky and deceitful, for taking the audience as granted and making a fun of their rationale in the end.

An open letter to Soumitra Chatterjee

Soumitra Babu,

I was driving back home after a long and tiring day when the phone beeped. A friend of mine sneaked in a news in my mobile – “Soumitra Babu has been conferred the Dada Shaheb Phalke Award for his life time contribution to Indian cinema”. My heart leaped. I met you last week and I never could imagine life has such a surprise in store. I am supposed to meet you soon for the project that I have undertaken. What will I tell you then? I know you don’t have much faith in the award process and have refused Padmasree a couple of times before. Do you care for a Dada Shaheb Phalke? You may, I guess. After all, any star of the screen yearns for posterity. Almost 25 memorable films apart, awards of highest degrees do matter. Being a professional that you are, I guess you may probably brush aside and wake up tomorrow since tomorrow is always a different day.

As I sit in my quiet room the mental bioscope unfurls – where to start from? Apu I guess undoubtedly. The light of your eyes, the belief in everything noble is so sublime that for a person who belongs to a different generation and genre, there is no problem in connecting. Or the quintessential romantic in Amal who like Apu fosters our belief in the milk of human kindness and love. And as Feluda, suave and smart yet traditional. You move on with Gangacharan, to Sashibhusan of ‘Dekha’ and the indomitable Kshit-da in ‘Koni’. How can I forget the several theatre jewels that you so casually sprinkled at us – Tiktiki, Naam Jibon, Homa Pakhi, Nilkantha and Raja Lear to name a few. We and many others before and after our generation grew up to be like you – not one ‘you’ but the many profiles of yours. Are these all masks of a superlative actor? Then who are you Soumitra Babu? The rational friend in my head has always warned me – “Judge a creative person by his creations only”. But through-out our lives as we embrace death and rise to live so many times, we cling on to these different Soumitra Chatterjees of our lives.

Whom can I think of as a parallel to you? Not one Uttam Kumar or an Amitabh Bachhan. If there is one he is none other than a Naseeruddin Shah for his range and depth of sensibilities. But Naseer also probably will be proud to match your stage presence.

The Govt of India should be proud to confer this award. Since after all these and everything, you make me believe that even if I am not Apu, I am none but Apu.

I conclude with an ode, hats off to you.

The sky

-----------

In our sky of silence

Your dreams flutter their tail,

Glide up,

Forget.

I have followed them

Every time,

My strings tired,

Sad.

Painted black

The canvas beckons,

I wind up my kite –

The sky is yours.

Amitava Nag