'Baishey Shrabon': Death of Poetry and a Deadly ‘System’!

It’s extremely difficult to review a thriller, for you often tend to give out the plot, which, of course, is commercially murderous for the film. Srijit Mukherjee’s Baishe Shrabon is primarily a thriller, but it is much more than that. The very title of the film, I believe, underscores the hegemony of the poet who has of late become so literally omnipresent (thanks to the farce the new government has made of him) that all other Bengali poets have been swept into oblivion. Sukanta, Sukumar, Binay, Shakti, Joy Goswami, and others are still esoteric property while Tagore has found access to the popular domain: none can deny Tagore’s superlative potentials as a poet; but this is also irrefutable that a politics of canonization can be discerned in analysing Tagore’s massive popularity and the comparatively lesser recognition the other poets have received. The climactic moment of the film therefore coincides with 'Baishe Shrabon', the day Tagore breathed his last. Interestingly, both Abhijeet and Prabir have to take the assistance of Google to find out the days on which the ‘lesser known’ poets have passed away.


On the other hand, the film is also about the death of poetry. A mad poet, who had set fire to the Calcutta Book Fair for publishers had time and again refused to publish his poetry, is at the centre of the narrative. Baishe Shrabon is different from other thrillers because it is not just about finding out with bated breath ‘whodunit’; it also engages the audience in working out the clue that may be hidden in the poetic lines found in the chits beside every victim. Interestingly, the victims are all from the lowest stratum of society, and the verses found next to them are predominantly proletariat in nature. Although the film does not clarify the choice of such verses, the silence speaks volumes. In fact, there is no criminal in Baishe Shrabon! It is the system! The reference to the anti-Establishment poetic movement (Hungry Movement) of the 60s is of special significance here.


Baishe Shrabon has adroitly blended the esoteric and the populist to a marvellous effect. The handling of the camera, especially in the narrow alleyways of the slum and in the last scene, is simply brilliant. Anupam Ray has not been able to recreate the Autograph magic though. However, Gobhire jao, profoundly rendered by Rupankar, stays with you long after the film is over.


The most promising performance is offered by Parambrata: it is his best, till date. He emotes perfectly, almost flawless; his comic timing is enviable; his accent, recalling his ‘Bengali medium’ background, is awesome. Prasenjit does not disappoint either, as was expected, although the character he plays has affiliation with several suspended police officers we have seen in numerous Hindi films; but, nonetheless, he is good. Raima Sen is effortless and Abir is loveable. The surprise package, however, is Goutam Ghosh. He animates Nibaran Chakraborty with so much life that you do feel your eyes moisten at his death.


Big Cinemas had a considerable number of viewers on Ashtami morning, and that speaks for the success the film is already enjoying. Wishing Baishey Shrabon a long run at the box-office! And a request: Those of you who have already watched the film, please do not give out the end! It does not deserve to be given out, really. People must go and find out for themselves, and believe me, it’s worth it.

Iti Mrinalini: Love, Life and…

I was actually expecting to see something like Tennessee Williams’ The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore (1963) as the curtains went up on Iti Mrinalini, the latest Aparna Sen venture. Well, the Williams play and the Aparna Sen film do have similarities; but, of course, I gave up on the comparison much too soon. Any story of a successful commercial actor would have some parameters in common. In fact, Marilyn Monroe’s portrait that hangs in Mrinalini’s (Konkona Sensharma) room and is conspicuously focused on all through the film, speaks volumes to this end.
In a television interview, a few days before the release of the film, Sen said that she has never tried to convey any message through her films consciously; perhaps, no good artiste ever does that. But, somehow, Iti Mrinalini does send out a message, loud and clear; but, without being preachy or didactic, of course. I’ll come back to that later. In fact, not a single message; rather messages.
It’s not very difficult to see why Sen claims that Iti Mrinalini is the most commercial of all her films. Because the film is based on the life of some fictitious mainstream actor of Bengali films of the 1970s, it demanded a commercial treatment, no doubt. But, at the level of the plot too, the commercial aspect is much too evident. Actually too much happens in Mrinalini’s life. In fact, too many tragedies befall her, which, in a way, weaken the plot, as there is a prominent tendency to sentimentalizing. If good cinema refrains from being sentimental, this is definitely a flaw. But, seasoned audience of mainstream Bengali cinema of the 1970s, would be generous enough to give Sen the license to sentimentality; and I am sure I need not explain what I imply here. May be the screen life and the real life of the actor gets curiously mixed up. One may recall the unending series of trials and tribulations, a female protagonist of mainstream Bengali cinema generally underwent in those days, assisting a marvelous exercise of the lachrymose glands of the overly soft-hearted Bengali mothers and aunts (a construct, mind you) who poured into the theatres foregoing their usual afternoon nap. But yes, Sen has nowhere crossed the limits, for her Mrinalini is an apparently strong person.
The film has the structure of a bildungsroman: Mrinalini’s journey from the margins to the center. Although she accomplishes a lot in her professional field, she loses out on the personal front. Actually, more than anything else, Iti Mrinalini, is a love story. It’s the story of a woman who seeks love all through her life; but, it’s not that she doesn’t find any. May be she doesn’t find the kind of love she hankers for. Although Chintan Nair (Kaushik Sen) counsels her saying that she has never realized that love is of different kinds, Mrinalini does not seem convinced. A daughter out of wedlock, a non-committal lover who is inextricably tied to her family and who keeps on telling her that he would come to her one day…Mrinalini does not get the social recognition as a wife or a mother. She acts aunt to her daughter and keeps hoping that Siddhartha (Rajat Kapoor) would legally tie the knot one day. Exasperated she eventually breaks the relationship (“It’s over between us”), but it takes her long to arrive at the realization (assisted by Chintan, of course) that he too might have loved her in his own flawed way. It was love, nonetheless. Chintan becomes her friend, philosopher and guide, and defines for her another kind of love altogether. In fact, it’s a two-word message from him “Ami aschhi” (I am coming) that saves her from taking her life. The ‘message’ is that love may not only happen within socially approved structures of relationships only; love mostly transcends such constrictions. Although Mrinalini seems to accept what Chintan says, her reaction to Imtiaz’s (Priyanshu Chatterjee) betrayal appears a tad too immature. Why does she contemplate suicide? Hasn’t she seen enough so far as not to succumb to such duplicity?
Anyways, the film reaches a different level altogether in the end. Mrinalini is notorious for trying to control everything in her life. In fact, her young daughter calls her a control-freak. When she contemplates suicide, she says that entry on the stage of life was not in her hand, but she can certainly time the exit. But, little did she know that life was more absurd than it appeared to be. When thoughts of death finally desert her, and she goes out to walk her dog with a renewed enthusiasm for life, she is shot dead by a bullet targeting a young boy (Saheb Chattopadhyay) on the run. This very arbitrariness of life which Sen beautifully represents sends a chill down your spine. What you simultaneously realize is that you have come a long way off from the Naxalite 1970s Calcutta to dwell in a city where crime has become the order of the day. It’s difficult to guess who this boy is. But, the doubling of Mrinalini’s boyfriend Abhi does trace a journey of the city and the changing ideology of its young denizens.
I was absolutely overwhelmed by Konkona Senshrama’s mind-blowing performance; Rajat Kapoor does a decent job, and Anjan Dutt’s voice-over matches his personality well. The voice does not seem lent. Kaushik Sen imitates the South Indian accent really well, and delivers with aplomb. Even Saheb Chatterjee gives a believable performance. Kudos to Ananya Banerjee as Sohini, Mrinalini’s daughter. And last, but not the least, Aparna Sen herself. She is as glamorous as ever but she could have been a little more careful in imitating Konkona’s mannerisms.
And, of course, the songs! Am still humming Ajana Kono Golpo…I can’t really get over the magical spell of Bishe Bishe Neel…Debojyoti Mishra has done a fantastic job! The songs would stay on with us forever…and may be enough reason to go back to the theatre.

Noukadubi: With and Beyond Rabindranath

Initially, I was rather apprehensive of Noukadubi (The Boatwreck), for I was rather disappointed with this Tagore novel, for it is perhaps the weakest of his prose-fictions, in terms of plot. The plot turns on too many glaring coincidences, much in the manner of several Dickens or Hardy novels. Again, the later part of the novel where Kamala almost mushily sentimentalizes on her victimization is simply nerve-racking. At times, Noukadubi  seems to read more like a Sarat Chandra novel, than a Tagore novel (However, I am not suggesting that Sarat Chandra’s novels are bad; what I’m trying to imply is that Tagore seems to play to the gallery in a manner akin to Sarat Chandra’s in Noukadubi; and this unsettles the reader, for she opens a Tagore text with a different kind of expectation altogether) Quite bewildered by his choice of text, I was rather curious to see Rituparno Ghosh’s treatment of a story, which originally begins with an interesting twist, but dwindles into dullness. Boatwrecks are famed to wrought havoc, as had been already established by Daniel Defoe's prose romance Robinson Crusoe, and therefore, an fascinating point to begin a narrative. That element of thrill was also there on the first pages of the Tagore novel as well; but, lost wind as the story unfolded. So, I was rather interested to see whether the Rituparno film can sustain the interest! 

I do not really believe that you need to read a novel before going for its cinematic adaptation. But in case of Rituaparno Ghosh’s Noukadubi, I would personally suggest that if you have not read the novel, it would be difficult for you to appreciate the spectacular departures the director makes from the original story. Re-narrating a novel frame by frame on celluloid is not desirable at all; Ghosh steers clear of that brilliantly and very interestingly renders one of Rabindranath’s not-so-good-novels rather watchable. 

What I could not stop marvelling at is the little play on authorship that Rituparno introduces. From the very beginning of the film, Rabindranath enters the narrative as a character whom Hemnalini (Raima Sen) adores, and when asked by Annada, her father (Dhritiman Chatterjee) whether she has developed amorous interest in someone, she says that her obvious choice is the poet. Next, Ramesh (Jishu Sengupta) while shifting to his new house and setting it up, admits that Rabindranath has become an indispensable part of his reality and demands a special corner in his house. I guess he even uses the word bojha (or burden) that the cultural phenomenon called Rabindarnath Thakur has become in the educated middle class Bengali household. The picture of the poet is used quite frequently; particularly the positioning of the picture in the scene where Nalikakshya (Prasenjit Chatterjee) sings Tori amar hothath dubey jai (My canoe sinks all of a sudden) is rather suggestive. The camera moves from Nalikakshya seated on one side of the room to a tearful Hemnalini sitting on the other side. The picture sits royally in-between the two, almost, overseeing, as it were, the proceedings. While he is the primary inspiration behind the story we see on celluloid, the director good-humouredly calls into question the very sanctity of his authorship by moulding the existing text to serve his cinematic purposes, right under his nose, as it were. This in turn deconstructs the whole notion of author-as-God, and also perhaps rescues Rabindranath from the unquestionable divine status many have attributed to the poet. Ironically, the picture is shown to be ritualistically worshipped. The introduction of this picture leaves you wondering endlessly what happens when the author himself finds access into his own fictional world. Then again, whose fictional world is this? Rituparno’s or Rabindranath’s? In fact, when the film ends, you realize the significance of the song Khelghar bandhte legechhi (I have begun building a doll’s house brick by brick) with which the film begins. The word khela translates into ‘play’; the suggestion is the director too is all set to begin a ‘play’ (please note play may mean both ‘game’ and ‘drama’) with a Tagore text; he is constructing a little drama, in the spirit of ‘play’, where he enters into a dialogue with the original author of Noukadubi. In this sense Khelaghar bandhte legechhi almost functions as a preface to the film.

The Bhawal-Sanyasi case forms the subtext of the film and quite understandably so; Shakuntala too is an important inter-text. The story of the wife’s predicament when she finds that her husband has completely lost all memories of her acts as an elaborate dramatic irony in Kamala’s (Riya Sen) narrative. In one occasion there is a delightful reference to Tennyson as well. In the novel both Ramesh and Akshaye gift the same hard-bound copy of Tennyson to Hemnalini. The suggestion could be that Tennyson, the pioneer of mainstream Victorianism, was an important vehicle of cultural colonization in colonial Bengal. One may recall in ‘The Lady of Shallot’, there appears a couple walking hand-in-hand in the moonlit night, when Tennyson almost with a sense of urgency quickly adds that they are lately married. Love or sex outside wedlock was regarded sacrilegious by the Victorian moral police. Therefore, Tennyson as a gift resonates with political implications. Ironically, however, the very inviolability of the institution of marriage is sufficiently challenged by the novel (and the film).

The use of Rabindrasangeet is extremely intelligent and the songs selected meaningfully contribute to the plot. Khelaghar bandhte legechhi amar moner bhitore (In the core of my heart, I have begun building a doll’s house brick by brick) with which the film begins acts a dramatic irony introducing Hemnalini’s vulnerability in love. The heart-rending Tori amar hothat dubey jaye literally takes on the title, while adequately expressing the misgivings of estrangement. Tomar ashimey (In the eternity that you are) comes at the right moment when a lovelorn Hemnalini fights with herself to come to terms with her reality. And all ends well with Anandalok e mangalaloke birajo satya sundar!

I feel that Noukadubi demands to be appreciated not only on the level of the narrative, but in terms of its execution. Since I was sceptical of the novel per se, the film came to me a pleasant surprise. And yes, once again, Rituparno Ghosh has proved he can really make his actors act: Raima is believable, and Jishu is sublte; but Prasenjit disappoints to a certain extent. He fails to bring into his performance the gravity Nalinakshya’s character demands. The astonishing part is that Riya Sen has actually acted; but, I feel, the lion’s share of the praise which Riya would command, should go to Monali Thakur whose voice-over has miraculously accentuated her performance.

An enjoyable film, Noukadubi could have gained a little more complexity had Ghosh shown a developing physical relationship between Kamala and Ramesh before the latter comes to discover Kamala’s real identity. The novel had given clear indications of that. But for some unknown reason Rituparno has refrained from it. But that does not take away from the film its brilliance.

"Do Dooni Char": Value for money happily redefined

Walt Disney’s foray into Bollywood could not have been more delightful; having tickled the funny bone of millions across the globe, Walt Disney stays true to its favourite genre in Habib Faizal’s Do Dooni Char, only that the latter conflates the tragic and the comic with a light-heartedness that brings it close to black humour, but the angst is more of an undertone than overtly felt. What touches most is the palpable reality of middle-class-ness and its irresistible consumerist aspirations: the Duggal family becomes a metonymy of the middle class and its perpetual monetary constraints. The furniture, the bedcovers, the stained chopping board, the clothes…in fact, everything is quintessentially middle class, yet the ‘feel good’ factor is never missed. For, the extraordinary couple Rishi and Neetu Kapoor bring effortless warmth into the family which grows more real with every passing minute. The main action of the film concentrates on the transition which the Duggal family almost challengingly undertakes from an almost dilapidated scooter to a four-wheeler. What follows is a crazy but highly identifiable drama with all its middle class nuances, ending up in the victory of the Duggal family. I consciously use the term ‘victory’ here, for the film does end up celebrating fundamental middle class values of honesty and perhaps the sheer happiness that comes from achieving goals through hard work, and a general deprecation of dishonest shortcut to easy money.

The film comes at a time when inflation has reached one of its rare heights, terribly affecting the middle-class. The disadvantages of globalization are perhaps felt a little more intensely now that the cultural capital of the middle-class has considerably increased, but the sustenance of the same seems difficult. The new consumerist generation feels no qualms to bid farewell to old moral values, for the only ethos available to them is money. Recalling the simplicity of folklores, Do Dooni Char primarily addressing GenY, tells an everyday story finally ending with a moral. The victory of the father lies not only in his success in buying a small car for the family, but in his success in being able to convert his children to his own world-view. I highly recommend this film to everyone. It’s truly value for money redefined; it fact, literally. You would get the intended pun in the last sentence only when you watch the film.

P.S: The Neetu-Rishi chemistry sizzles with a dignity that perfectly suits their age. Pity that son Ranbeer is trying hard to draw audiences to his Aanjana Aanjani at the same time. The parents have won over the son, hands down.

Wake up call

What do I write about Wake Up Sid? I do not really want to dissect it critically; it’s so innocently brilliant that you feel like sparing it of the critic’s weapons. Well, to put it simply, Wake Up Sid is like coming home to love. It is a wake up call to all those who create a mayhem about falling in love, who rake up a melodrama more often than not...for, love may also happen, just like that! The film gives you a feel that such love can perhaps only happen in Bombay, our very own Bombay. The disclaimer in the very beginning of the film apologizes for referring to the city as Bombay more often than as Mumbai recalling the agonizing history of the riots that had tore the most tolerant city into shreds. At the same time, it overwrites that history of hatred with a simple tale of love between a Calcutta girl who comes to the city to become independent and a Bombay boy who refuses to grow up. The Chor Bazaar, the Marine Lines, the Bandra housing complexes, and several nooks and corners of the city feature in a big-small way to consolidate the foundation of the lover’s nest the film builds brick by brick.

Sid (Ranbir Kapoor) and Ayesha (Konkona Sen Sharma) are both familiar to us: they are with us in college, in our office, on the roads we travel everyday, in the cafes we often visit. It’s the era of the middle class youth: self-respect, independence, open-mindedness, and responsibility. The film celebrates the spirit of the Generation X, but without moralising, without sounding didactic. Like all good art, it shows; doesn’t tell. Sid’s mother (Supriya Pathak) with her flawed English and awfully middle class dress sense is absolutely loveable. She has never been to school, but has grown up into a modern mother who doesn’t shed buckets of tears at the prospect of her only son living in with a single woman. Her foray into the upper class (because of her husband’s rise in social status) has left her slightly uncomfortable; yet, the film is much too subtle in representing her comic discomfiture. No hullabaloo, no melodrama! It’s just there for you to see.

Konkana looks awesome; and Ranbir impersonalizes Sid, as if he was born to play this character. Sid’s friends are brilliant too, reminding you often of the not-so-good-looking group of Jaane Tu Yaa Jane Na. It’s not that we have not heard this Wake Up Sid story before. It’s not that we did not anticipate the ending at the very beginning. But you stay on, as if by some emotional compulsion, to see how it all happens. And it happens the right way. As you leave the theatre, the iktara continues to hum in the cores of your heart, and it never seems to stop!

NB: Those who are interested in home décor, please note how Ayesha does up her flat.

'Milk': Democracy versus the Gay ‘Other’

Gus Van Sant’s Milk is another life-affirming film, and comes just in time when it is absolutely necessary to recall the heroic struggle of a community of men and women who are denied human rights, and are treated as if non-existent.
In fact, the film by recalling incidents of gay bashing, through video clips and newspaper cuttings, seems to retell another story of savages versus civilians. The methods of repression applied by the whites in treating the so-called savages are applied to put down gay people as well. The word ‘savage’ here has nothing to do with barbarians; rather, in postmodern discourse of otherness, the word ‘savage’ may well apply to all those who do not belong to the centre. In fact, the western notion of the savage as other, as belonging to some place else, (say, aboriginals, wolfboys, cannibals, etc.) is subverted by Milk, which shows that one need not look at the fringes or periphery (please note that these words are used with a nagging awareness of what these denote in postmodern academic parlance) to seek out the other, but otherness exists at the very centre, a centre like San Francisco, that threatens the very roots of American democracy. In other words, the 1970s Gay Movement that ceremoniously opens up the closet and encourages gay people to ‘come out’, unravels the brittleness of the very foundations of democracy so far celebrated as avowing the rights of the individual.
Harvey Milk (played by the incredibly brilliant Sean Penn), the unputdownable leader of the 1970s Gay Movement, very often connected with the straight crowd by the now famous opening line: “My name is Harvey Milk, and I want to recruit you.” This is a highly significant line, for Harvey’s mission was to recruit gay people into the democratic politics, by releasing them from the tortuous prison of a dominantly heterosexual society. It was extremely important to recognize and situate the cause of the gay people within the realm of democratic politics. And ironically enough, the vanguards of democracy claim that gayness is a sickness that can be medically cured, and if they cannot be cured of their strangeness, they have no right to come out, for they would have a negative effect on children and their very existence would threaten the very base of American economy, for a gay couple can never have children. Milk keeps on linking the trauma of the gay community with those of the immigrants in America, the ethnic minorities, thus calling into question the very notion of the melting pot. Milk is no melodrama, but an important politico-historical document which deals with a sensitive cause without sentimentalizing it. The film exhibits the right kind of emotions, always on the alert of not going over the top.
The most memorable moment is perhaps the one when a terribly tensed Milk gets a call from a gay teenager from Minnesota who tells him that ‘they’ are taking him away to fix him up next morning, for ‘they’ believe he is sick. Milk assures him that nothing is wrong with him, he is perfectly ‘normal’, and asks him to take a bus to San Francisco immediately. The camera zooms out gradually to reveal that the caller is actually sitting on a wheel chair; he can’t walk. The line gets disconnected. Months later, it is the same boy who calls up Milk to inform him of his triumph: proposition 6 has been repealed. He is now in Los Angeles, self-assured, and away from those who thought he needed treatment. That one phone call had changed his life forever…perhaps in this moment of glory, it is this boy who spells out for Milk in concrete terms the meaning of victory.
It deserves to be pointed out that the film does not get into the complexities of queer identities; such plethora of identities, designated in the acronym LGBTQ…, is beyond the scope of the film; for, it narrates the initial stages of the Gay Movement, its main concern being establishing the gay identity as ‘natural’. From there, the movement has come a long way today. Sean Penn’s Oscar-winning performance is one of its kinds; to say the least, it’s brilliant. Subtle, confident, and effortless, Penn could not have made Milk more believable. Emile Hirsch is loveable; so is James Franco. Unfortunately, in India, at least, Milk would be open to a niche audience only. Actually, the film should have been accessible to all and sundry to dismantle the Dostana joke. It’s a pity that our mainstream cinema has not yet matured enough to move beyond it.

Regressive progress: A curiously “Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

Sitting through David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button at times you can’t help wondering whether the filmmaker has intentions of equating the internal time of the narrative with the external time, for it seems remarkably slow-paced, every slice of Benjamin’s life almost literally making you suffer or enjoy with him. And curiously enough, you do not realise when the old, frail, almost half-human Benjamin grows down into the trendy, well-sculpted, jaw-droppingly handsome Brad Pitt, lovingly frolicking with an even lovelier Cate Blanchett. In other words, the reverse ageing of Benjamin has been so effortlessly naturalised that it does not seem to happen in celluloid but in real life. Please note that the credit of enacting Benjamin Button does not go to Brad Pitt alone: Peter Donald Badalamenti, Robert Towers and Tom Everett also have a good share in it. Kudos to the casting director (Laray Mayfield) and make-up artistes (Peter Abrahamson, Martin Astles, Jean Ann Black, and others)!
The film begins with the birth of Benjamin Button and that too at a historically momentous moment − the end of World War I. The famous clock with which the film opens ticks backwards, for its maker wishes a replay of the past to get back his son lost in the war. Benjamin’s birth at the moment of celebration of disaster is highly significant for his physical agedness at birth seems to signify the irredeemable loss of innocence. For a modernist writer like Fitzgerald, working under the influence of the likes of Bergson, time ticked off by the clock is not real time; but it’s the time of the mind that is all-important. Therefore, modernist tales were often non-linear, adhering to mental time than physical time. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button challenges the forward flow of time itself, reversing the very process of natural growth, for the two world wars had left such wounds and opened up such terribly unspeakable secrets of the human soul that children are born with knowledge so scary that they are born old.
The film leaves with an impression that we perpetually live under the illusion that we are always moving forward, and the past is always history. The first-half of the twentieth century threw people out of such complacent thinking. The two world wars charted a steady regress backwards to the barbaric ages. The Euro-American concept of civilization and progress received a serious blow, when the world wars confirmed that civilization and the ideologies that hold it together are but a garb, or a veneer, beneath which lurk the bestial instincts that defined human beings at the beginning of times. Benjamin’s progress from birth to death, from physical adulthood to physical childhood, acts as a metaphor to the regressive progression of the world.
Yet in spite of such depressing realizations the film dawns upon us, it throbs with a life-force necessary to surmount all odds and live life on its own terms. Benjamin’s sense of un-belonging is lifelong, for he is perhaps never at ease with the soul inside him and the changes the world outside undergoes. Daisy’s love for him is just the kind of love one needs to survive. On the other hand, Daisy sees herself slipping from a friend to a wife to a mother to Benjamin. And she plays each role with perfect womanly instincts. Cate Blanchett is simply brilliant, both as a vivacious ballet dancer as well as the ageing wife of a husband gradually progressing towards childhood. Benjamin’s memory loss as he grows into a child is natural; but it also points towards the world dissociating itself from the knowledge of the right kind that is required to sustain civilization.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a must watch, and definitely not with the mindset of finding out whether it is better than Slumdog Millionaire. A comparison does not stand; the films are essentially different and there’s no need to mourn for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. For Slumdog is definitely no less deserving.

Family, By Chance: Recreating a Single Community across Differences in Chalo-Let’s Go

Ramchandra Guha’s much celebrated book "India After Gandhi" that attempts to retell the history of the world’s largest democracy begins with extensive and insightful recapitulation of views on India by its former colonisers. Of these, Sir John Strachey’s Cambridge lectures later collected in a volume, unostentatiously titled "India", are of particular significance; for, Strachey’s prediction of the future of democracy in India has come true. Interestingly, Strachey sees India as a composition of countries, not as a single nation. No Indian nation ever existed in the past, nor would one emerge in the future. Strachey holds that “national sympathies may arise in particular Indian countries”, but “they should never extend to India generally, that men of the Punjab, Bengal, the North-western Provinces, and Madras, should ever feel that they belong to one Indian nation, is impossible. You might with as much reason and probability look forward to a time when a single nation will have taken the place of various nations of Europe.” Again, Winston Churchill in a speech delivered in London in December 1930, declared that if the British left India, then “an army of white janissaries, officered if necessary from Germany, will be hired to secure the armed ascendancy of the Hindus.” Ironically, at that time, the likes of Nehru were dreaming of a secular democratic India. That both Strachey and Churchill were absolutely correct has been proved many times over. A democracy called India has existed theoretically or constitutionally, but the reality is at variance with the idea. The recent controversy raging in the hills over the possible creation of Gorkhaland, separated from West Bengal is a case in point. Several other examples can also be cited from history: beginning with the nightmarish Partition, the Indian state has seen itself breaking up along linguistic borders, suffering in the darkness of the Emergency, and combating constantly recurring communal violence. The unspeakable violence unleashed by the Hindus on the Sikhs, following the assassination of Mrs. Gandhi, the demolition of Babri Mashjid, followed by the most brutal Hindu-Muslim riots of all times, the shameful Godhra incident — all of these posed serious and almost fatal threats to the democracy. The four axes of conflict — caste, religion, class and language — operating singly and in tandem only promise a divided India, impossible to be united.
Indian popular culture, mostly cinema, has more often than not stuck to the representation of India that gives a constitutionally approved picture of the nation. While addressing the differences that exist between castes, religions, classes and linguistic groups, Indian films end in the “they lived happily ever after” syndrome, eradicating differences and reinstating the democratic state. The dream of a democratic nation has been, more or less, sustained in the fictional world of mainstream cinema. And to address the diversity of the country, filmmakers have often chosen the journey motif as the prime movers of their plots: the train or the bus, the modern means of transport, has more often than not provided a perfect setting for these films. The train or the bus can be easily transformed into the microcosm of the Indian nation, a site harbouring temporarily people from different walks of life. These films celebrate plurality and differences, mostly giving the impression of a possibility of uniting diverse individuals, of creating a united India.
From "Bombay to Goa" to "Chalo-Let’s Go", the same trope — a group of people meeting each other on a journey and forming an accidental family — has been used. In fact, in the last few years, this particular genre of films has flourished considerably. The most celebrated of these films is Aparna Sen’s "Mr. & Mrs. Iyer", a poignant commentary on communal violence and human bondage. Other lesser known films are "Jungle", "Honeymoon Travels", "Just Married", etc. The necessity of recreating the community is felt more intensely with increasing individualization, owing to globalization and rapid growth of urban culture. Parents are estranged from their children, spouses hardly meet, and the neighbourhood has become more alien than the land across the seas. Real communities are being speedily replaced by cyber communities; communal bonding has been redefined in terms of exchanging electronic mails or sending Archie’s Cards. Under such circumstances, films such as "Chalo-Let’s Go" appeal to everybody.
Anjan Dutta’s "Bong Connection" and "Bow Barracks Forever" had already created the grounds for "Chalo". Both these films dealt with much-debated issues of diasporic identities, the real homeland, marginalization, minority culture and stuff. Chalo is a return to the more familiar Bengali activity of “beratey jawa” (going for an outing). The film is in tune with the new venture of the Indian government of marketing “Incredible India” — the tourism project. Bengalis are, in any case, well-known for their wanderlust. With the mushrooming of travel and tourism agencies in every nook and corner of the city, this age-old wanderlust has found an easy and affordable outlet. The film revolves around such a travel agency “Ghoroa” run by four amateur and terribly inexperienced men — Ashim (Saswata), Sanjay (Parambrata), Shekhar (Ritwick) and Hari (Rudraneel). Ashim has given up on his medical profession, Sanjay has left his promising job of a journalist, and Sekhar has sworn not to see his father’s face, a well-to-do businessman of North Calcutta. Hari has no illustrious past, apart from having a long history of being ditched in love. The foursome takes a group of Bengali tourists to North Bengal — a man-watching detective novelist, a Chemistry professor all to ready to berate the Bengali ‘jati’, an NRI doctor and his wife having the bizarre ability of telling people’s future by holding their hands during special moments, a librarian with a heart of gold and his irritated and peevish wife, a middle-aged Casanova and his young arm-candy, and a lovelorn woman who accidentally becomes a part of the group. A sweet love triangle is created between this woman, Hari and Sanjay, occasioning many a humorous situation capable of drawing spontaneous laughs from the audience.
The narrative moves slowly with the inexperienced travel agents being bombarded with complaints and whinges from the tourists. In this drama of entangled lives, humour is the prime mover. The dislocated narrative moving between past, present and future has a special appeal. The camera affectionately captures the Elysium beauty of North Bengal, the natural beauty providing a contrasting backdrop to the human problems, petty and limiting.
The film strives to recreate a community, but here too democracy is sacrificed to selfish needs. Everybody fights for their rights — the right kind of room, the right kind of seat, the right kind of breakfast, etc. While some get it, others don’t. The detective points out that some of the tourists who are getting what they want in spite of the difficulties are those who are bribing the agents. The petty politics of the state seems to be repeated here. One is reminded how handsomely one has to bribe an agent for an emergency cooking gas connection, for admission in a good school, or even for a telephone connection. Perhaps, democracy has so severely suffered and proved to be such a big failure that even the fictional world can no longer afford to give an illusion that it exists. We are a long way off from the 1970s when the hopes were still alive. In the 21st century, the realization that democracy is only an ideal has become more intense and persuasive.
Bidipta Chakraborty and Kaushik Ganguly make the most interesting couple, and perhaps the most familiar of characters. Kaushik’s goodness and his unnaturally unassuming nature irritate Bidipta who never lets go a single opportunity of rebuking him. Kaushik never complains and tries in his own clumsy way to keep her happy. Open-minded and jovial, Kaushik is blissfully nonchalant to the material needs of life, much to Bidipta’s exasperation. She repents that she had unthinkingly agreed to the match as some holy man had assured her that a prince was coming into her life. She confides to Koneenica who reminds her of the frog-prince. Interestingly, look-wise too Kaushik is far from princely. And then one evening, as Kaushik sits in the mall and sings in “full-throated ease” the Tagore verse “Achhe dukkho, achhe mrityu”, Bidipta all of a sudden remembers the story of the frog-prince. She sits beside him, and asks him to hold her hand.
The intertext of the film is, as evident to any conscious viewer, is Ray’s classic Kanchenjungha. Here however, several loose ends remain. Everything is not righted in the end. The tourism business proves to be a failure. Shekhar goes back as his father dies of a massive heart attack, and later becomes a singer. Ashim renounces the material world to find his true calling in looking after the destitute at a Christian home in the hills. Hari gets married to that lovelorn woman visibly demoralising Sanjay, and lives through the wind and the rain. Sanjay is on the look for a proper break as a filmmaker. And the story that he tells as the narrator is a rough draft of the screenplay he is presently writing.
"Chalo-Let’s Go" is not a great film. But it does have the power to pull upper middle class Bengali film audience back to the theatres. More of these films should be made, so that the monsters of Bengali cinema, the likes of Swapan Saha and Haranath Chakraborty cannot push the industry towards the deeper end of perdition.

Kalpurush: Mystifying memories and the present-day world

Mondomeyer Upakhyan (‘Tale of the Bad Girl’) had left my brains, or rather my entire constitution, screaming for I simply could not get a hang of what was actually happening. Uttara had bred high expectations from Buddhadeb Dasgupta and his style of film-making. Dasgupta’s films are predominantly anti-bourgeoisie, or in other words, inimical to capitalist values. Therefore, his films are mostly, convincingly, surrealistic. His surrealism, however, is not as hard-hitting as that of Salvador Dali or Luis Buňuel. His films are, nonetheless, pyrotechnical with images and sequences merging into each other without any apparent logic, but conveying a sense of meaning, though this meaning keeps on slipping away. Uttara is a classical example of one such film, near-about perfectly surrealistic. Therefore its successor Mondomeyer Upakhyan was looked forward to with high hopes. A terrible star-cast, a flimsy script, and unfathomable inconsistencies in the name of surrealism left the audience flummoxed. Surrealism is a mode of presentation; but if it serves as an excuse for producing a montage of images without any ‘surrealistic’ logic, the use of such a mode may be criticised as blasphemous. Mondomeyer Upakhyan exemplifies such a sacrilege. With unfavourable memories of this film lingering at the back of my mind, I entered Nandan to watch Kalpurush (‘Memories in the Mist’), Dasgupta’s twelfth release.

Kalpurush, incidentally, was made a few years ago, and was shown in many film festivals abroad, and had bagged many an award. But for some unknown reason the film was not released for the masses until last Friday, April 25th. We thought that the film would be lost, unseen. We used to have a good laugh over this, speculating that the film was canned because the distributors were too apprehensive of its fate, for Mondomeyer Upakhyan had suffered a tragic predicament at the box-office. Film distributors barely care for international awards, and refuse to release a film which isn’t cost-effective. Therefore, several good films remain shelved for years. But this time we were on the side of the distributors, not willing to see them traumatically bankrupted, for the wounds Mondomeyer Upakhyan inflicted upon us were, at least, less brutal than the injuries the poor distributors had to bear with. Surprisingly, the hard-core commercial Jhamu Sugandh, notoriously associated with mainstream Bengali cinema, came forward to release the film. With a history of remaining canned for years as one of the claims to fame, Kalpurush hit the theatres and multiplexes of Kolkata, drawing its usual niche audience, who, I am sure, went in with a lot of scepticisms. However, unlike Mondomeyer Upakhyan, the film, thankfully enough, did not leave a bitter taste, when we walked out at the drop of the curtains. Dislocated narrative, surrealistic images converging to form new images, anti-imperialist discourse — the characteristic features of a typical Dasgupta film are also the defining aspects of Kalpurush. But Kalpurush does not degenerate into another Mondomeyer Upakhyan, for it has a story to tell, complying with the basic purpose of cinema, i.e. entertainment.

Connecting, with love

The credits of the film fade-in on the night’s sky of Kolkata, divided into multiple segments by a network of overhead electric cables of tram-cars. The camera lingeringly descends and enters the inside of a moving tram-car with the protagonists Sumanto (Rahul Bose) and Ashwini (Mithun Chakraborty) seated on different chairs. The tram comes to a stop when Sumanto gets down, followed by Ashwini down the deserted lanes of his ‘para’. Ashwini begins to narrate the story — Sumanto is his son, married to Supriya (Sameera Reddy), and he has yet to tell him a lot. An element of suspense creeps in as the audience is left in doubt whether Ashwini is real or apparitional. Why is he following his son? The narrative, almost immediately, jump-cuts to a rugged village where Ashwini is seen talking to his wife Putul (Laboni Sarkar), under a leafless tree that has gathered the twilight grey. Putul asks him whether he has met Sumanto. Ashwini says, “Yes” and moves on to ask Putul about how she is keeping these days. Ashwini’s conversation with Putul is not normal: they seem to have met after a separation of a few days, or a few months. The suspense deepens as the narrative leaps back to Sumanto’s daily life.

Sumanto is a plain and honest Govt. employee married to a school teacher who is presently obsessed with her impending two-month sojourn in the United States at her brother’s. Supriya is visibly peevish, and does not have any respect for Sumanto, who, she believes, epitomizes failure. She converses with her lover over the land phone, while Sumanto is in the vicinity. It is, however, not made clear whether she is aware of Sumanto’s presence or she underestimates him so much that she does not care whether he is in-the-know or ignorant of her extra-marital liaison.

The narrative moves effortlessly from the present to the past and back and mingles images of the present and the past in such a way that the time-frames seem concomitant. Dasgupta captures mental time rather than the physical, thereby baffling the audience who seems to inhabit multiple time-zones simultaneously. This bafflement, however, is pleasurable. The subversion of the linear storyline actually attributes a sense of wholeness to the narrative. While still in doubt about the reality of Ashwini’s existence, the audience moves back and forth to develop an idea about Sumanto’s character.

If honesty defines his basic nature, a loveless world forces him into worshipping human bonds. He appears naïve, to some extent an irritable simpleton, submissive and docile. He tells Ashwini how his eyes well up with tears as he sees someone wiping the tears off the cheeks of someone else. He almost makes a fool of himself as he admiringly gazes at a couple making love in the public park. He gets on the nerves of the television newsreader (Subhashish Mukherjee) by asking him juvenile questions about the business of news reporting. He barely reacts when Supriya almost blandly tells him that he is not the father of his children. His love for the two kids does not dwindle at all. The information has no effect on his equation with them. He continues to love them as he used to. His unconventionality is his mode of rebellion. He is no laudable hero who goes out to upset the hierarchy; his very penchant for connecting with love sets him aside in an otherwise materialistic world. This aspect of his character recalls the network of electric cables with which the film opens. Shall we say that this network metaphorically signifies the importance of human bonding that the film ultimately advocates? Is that why Supriya and the prostitute merge into one?

And amidst all these, the audience is made aware that Sumanto has a guilt-ridden past that conditions his present. His past constantly catches up with him in the form of Ashwini, his father.

The Ghost of the Father: the importance of the presence of an absence

No, Kalpurush is not another Hamlet. Or in a way, is it? The world has come a long way from the glorious Elizabethan age. The dilemma of “To be or not to be” is still palpably the foundation of the fearfully existentialist world, certainly more fearful and challenging than Hamlet’s. Yet the ghosts of dead fathers do haunt their sons, not to persuade them to avenge their murderers, but to remind them of the burden of history that they need to bear. No conscious viewer can miss the influence of Jacques Derrida’s spectres of marx (note that the original title is in the lower-case) in the conceptualization of the narrative.

Ashwini is dead. His wife Putul and his son Sumanto had severed all ties with him on account of his infidelity. His supposed physical relationship with the yatra-actress Abha (Sudipta Chakraborty) leads Putul to disown him. Insulted and badly hurt, Putul confides in Sumanto, a teenager, who, in a fit of mad rage shoots Ashwini. The latter does not die, but is mildly wounded. Putul leaves the house the next day with Sumanto. Her anger subsides after a few months, and she returns to discover that Ashwini is missing. Later they come to know that he has died in an accident. What is important is that Ashwini never had any physical relationship with Abha. The allegation that Putul brings against him is based on incomplete knowledge. Sumanto’s oedipal hostility towards his father as concretized in his desperate attempt to murder him is kind of undermined by this truth. This is the burden of guilt which Sumanto carries with him. The return of the father’s ghost is therefore necessary.

Spectres from the past in form of the flute-player and his son also return along with Ashwini. The melodious tunes from a lost past fill the deserted alleys of the city as Sumanto falls asleep with his two children. The melancholy tune seems to mourn the past — such mourners are necessary, for, as Derrida believes they are inheritors of all that ensues from the past, and in their mourning they iterate a promise of responsibility for the future.

Sumanto’s penance for attempted patricide lies in his establishing a new connection with Ashwini — the day he meets him in the tram-car and talks to him, takes him to the restaurant and buys him a new shirt and a pair of trousers. Ashwini becomes his constant companion, in moments of loneliness and even when he is surrounded by people. Ashwini becomes a constant presence in his life, a shadow to which he holds on to. Putul’s recurrent encounter with Ashwini, of which she talks rather insipidly, perplexes her grandchildren. Sumanto is equally bemused and closes the window through which Ashwini supposedly calls Putul. It is not long before that he too realizes the presence of Ashwini in his life as well. Ashwini, however, does not appear in dreams: he is everywhere in the everyday life of his wife and son. The present is indeed past continuous. There are things that we need to remember, ethically. The remembrance or recollection blends the past in the present in such a way that one cannot be filtered out of the other. The figures from the past are all around us, and (as Amitav Ghosh says in The Shadow Lines) “their ghostliness is merely the absence of time and distance…a ghost is a presence displaced in time.”

America: the ‘Kusumpur’ of desire

Kusumpur is the imaginative land which Ashwini looks for all his life. Nobody knows the geographical location of this land. In fact, it is impossible to know. For, there are several Kusumpur(s) of the mind — a Utopian destination which means different things to different people. Recall that poignant scene from Uttara: a group of illiterate, underfed, haggard old men embarks on a journey by foot to America — the land where nobody starves. America is their Kusumpur — the land of overabundance, prosperity, and nourishment. The world’s imperialist centre is projected thus in the popular discourse. This highly politicized representation of America as the dreamland, the land of wish-fulfilment has entered the popular imagination in such a way that it is difficult to think ill of it. Highly positive pictures of America has been etched upon the collective unconscious of the masses, especially of the Third World (I don’t think this is an obsolete term as yet). Therefore, Supriya, a mundane school teacher almost goes berserk at the invitation of his brother to spend a couple of months in the States. She urges Sumanto to buy her every possible Bengali book available on America. The titles available, to Sumanto’s astonishment, are countless, and underscore the authors’ sycophantic reverence for the country.

While Supriya revels in the golden opportunity of flying to this dreamland, which also becomes her Kusumpur, the regional television channel airs news about America’s imperialistic designs almost nonchalantly. Only once, does the newsreader lose control and intersperse the news with unspeakable abuses, giving expression to his anger directed to “fucking” America. However, all this happens in Sumanto’s imagination. The newsreader’s outrage is actually a projection of his feelings.

However, the film too blatantly speaks against American imperialism. The anti-imperialist stance the director adopts borders on the propagandist. Films like these are expected to handle such issues with more subtlety. The presence of America in everyday life is undeniable; therefore, a protest against such hegemony has ample scope of being suggestive, rather than manifest. This is one of the primary drawbacks of Kalpurush.

The ‘Other’ as hero

In the neo-colonial world, new binaries have been constructed, both socio-political and moral. While European diffusionism had its own set of binaries stabilizing their colonial enterprise, the new world too has its own binaries, the first of the duo being the more powerful — America/the rest of the world, city/country, cinema/other forms of popular art, dishonesty/honesty, so on and so forth. The protagonist of Kalpurush is honest; he has his roots in a rugged village; and he is anti-America. That’s enough reason to look upon him as the ‘Other’. Forms of entertainment such as the yatra which are losing grounds due to the overwhelming influence of cinema, the most powerful of all modern arts, are time and again made central to Dasgupta’s films. The actors going overboard in enacting emotions, dazzling costumes, and loud make-up that define a typical yatra are also quite central to the narrative of Kalpurush. At the risk of oversimplification, it may be said that the film attempts to establish counter-hegemony of the ‘Other’. However, such an observation is subject to debate.

Some anomalies

Adoption of the surreal mode of representation gives the director the poetic license to travel effortlessly from realms of fantasy to real territories. This occasions a number of unexplained anomalies which can be explained away on painstaking analysis. But Kalpurush has certain anomalies which cannot be excused on the pretext of the surrealistic mode of presentation. For instance, Supriya, a school teacher cannot speak English, yet she teaches in an upper middle class school. The students of her class are sufficiently grown-up; yet, they are pitifully ignorant of America. It is simply ludicrous that none of them can point out America on the globe. Again, the yatra-dal starts performing in front of little Santanu all of a sudden. Why on earth would they do that? There are small slips here and there which could have been overlooked, had the director not been Buddhadeb Dasgupta!

The Actors

Both Mithun Chakraborty and Rahul Bose do justice to the roles. But unfortunately enough both of them speak a language that does not really sound like Bengali — it is marred by a Hindi accent. Rahul Bose known for his perfectionism and fastidiousness should have been more careful with his diction. Mithun who is mostly engaged in tacky projects such as Cheetah, MLA Fatakeshto, etc, has, quite naturally lost the decent “bhadrolok” accent…for, mostly he is the hero of uncouthly downmarket masses and has adopted the “tapori” accent that appeals to them! Sameera Reddy isn’t bad; Bidipta and Soma Chakraborty lend their voices to Sameera, which, however, does not add much to the performance! One ruefully recalls how marvellously Sudipta Chakraborty's voice-acting had transformed Raima Sen’s screen presence in Rituparno Ghosh’s Chokher Bali. The minor actors are average. In any case, Dasgupta, unlike Rituparno, is not an actor’s director. The theme of his films and the narrative techniques he adopts are his hero. And there, thankfully, he scores really high this time.