Shobdo: For Art’s Sake

It’s been ages since a meaningful Bengali film was made, where art and philosophy blended seamlessly. Shobdo (Sound) is indisputably one of the greatest Bengali films made in recent times. Such a claim might sound too lofty, but certainly not without foundation. Why is Shobdo unique?

·          1. The trend of films on the film industry has taken over Tollygunj for quite sometimes now. While most filmmakers have stuck to the major players (directors, actors or musicians), none has thought it necessary to bring to the fore the technicians. The foley-artistes’ indispensability has never been recognized. And am certain, even cine-lovers have barely ever spared a thought on them. Kaushik Ganguly’s Shobdo makes out of the ignored foley-artiste a hero, and hammers home the fact that without him films would have been but unreal. For, without sounds, verisimilitude cannot be achieved. A fact, which I am sure, has eluded many till date.

·         2. It’s been really long since any Bengali film has delved deep into the psyche of an artiste, and has represented creative madness with such compassion. Tarak’s obsession with his art segregates him from reality much to the disconcertment of his wife and psychiatrist, but Tarak is so overpoweringly fascinated with his art that he fails to separate his art and reality. For him, his art (the world of sounds) becomes reality. Without being preachy, the film floats a profound philosophical discourse on artistry, creative impulse, and how art might enslave life. It might be painful for those to whom the artiste is personally consequential; but, such coalescence of art and life is necessary for creation to approximate perfection.

·         3. Shobdo, therefore, becomes a very refined commentary on filmmaking and its penchant to approximate the reality it represents. The re-creation of sound effects demands of the foley-artiste a very alert ear for the various sounds, no matter how subsonic they are ---- the fine difference in the little ‘thud’ sound made by an empty cup and a cup filled to the brim; the difference of the sound of footsteps on a wooden staircase and the sound made by boots on a gravelled path, etc. Shobdo makes you feel that if a good screenplay is the backbone of a good film, the foley-artiste’s sound effects are like blood that runs through the arteries and veins of that screenplay. The behind-the-scene reality of a ‘show’ is unravelled by Shobdo remarkably.

·         4. The film, while celebrating creative madness, romantically evokes the superiority of the sounds of nature to human speech. The tearful psychiatrist wonders after a night of hard-partying the general inconsequentiality of human speech, which is more often than not, nonsensical and insensitive, and mostly meaningless. Sound waves are not sounds, but mere signifiers which the human brain interprets meaningfully, as it is trained to. While language often dominates in this world of sounds, the ‘mere’ sounds too are no less significant, no less meaningful than language. Kaushik Ganguly has commendably touched such depths without being preachy anywhere.

·        5.  The film also negotiates with ideas of ‘normality’ and that which is dubbed ‘abnormal’ by the mainstream. Tarak’s strangeness (his inability to interpret human speech and his obsession with other kinds of sounds) is eventually reclaimed as another way of looking at things, a perspective (largely auditory, if I may call it so) which is not available to the majority. Yet, Tarak has to come back to the mainstream of life; so, he is finally sent to a rehab. The ear-splitting sound of the ambulance struggling over a sandy beach, acquires a different meaning altogether in the closing scene. Is it a signifier of Tarak’s protest as he stares on silently with a blank look in his eyes? By the time the end-titles roll, the audience becomes much too aware of all the other sounds they hear, apart from the dialogue.

    

      Ritwick Chakraborty’s marvellous performance would definitely fetch him numerous awards and accolades in the coming year, although it’s surprising that he has missed the national award. Raima and Srijit are good, if not brilliant. Churni would have scored really high had she not given the same performance in numerous other films before. Victor Banerjee is quite redundant to the plot.

      Kaushik Ganguly is certainly emerging as one of the greatest filmmakers of contemporary Tollywood. The uniqueness of his subjects is commendable and is a great relief from the tear-jerking sentimental middle class dramas or nerve-racking action-packages that have almost destroyed the Bengali film industry. Shobdo is a film from which other promising filmmakers might draw inspiration and abandon tested ground, and tread on un-trodden path. By taking the ‘road not usually taken’ Kaushik Ganguly deserves two-thumbs-up! 

Image courtesy:

dearcinema.com

'Abosheshey': Scrapbook of memories

When Soumya nonchalantly arrives in Kolkata to settle legal ‘issues’ with his dead mother, he gets entangled in a mesh of memories and hitherto unknown relationships, and a city, in a manner he had never expected. Aditi Roy and Neel B Mitra place the clueless San Francisco boy at the heart of Kolkata his mother thought was not just a city but ‘a way of life’ and allow him to get lost in its interstices in such a way that by the time he connects with the heartbeat of the half-asleep metropolis, the audience has already rediscovered and fallen in love with Kolkata all over again. The ‘Interval’ moment is a little emotional climax that acts a warm prelude to a more intense second-half.  

                 

Abosheshey, at the end of it all, celebrates human bonding, but with a difference; while acknowledging the delight in being ‘Bound Together’, the film also takes a very libertarian stance in respecting individuality. Suchismita lets her husband migrate to the United States with their only son; she stays behind, for she is deeply rooted to her place and feels the necessity of being with an ailing father-in-law. Piyali, her childhood friend, reproaches her for such a strange decision; she feels women should not be so headstrong. In the absence of a real family, Suchismita, the quintessential sunshine girl, spreads happiness, and finds her own in singing, painting and preserving memories. She becomes foster-mother to Nandini, and finds in her an affectionate confidant. Her agony, her pain, and her depression melt into her lonely hours like the dripping colors in her painting that hangs on the wall of Nandini’s living room. As if living up to her name (Suchismita means a woman having a beautiful smile), she does not let her profound pain surface and lives life to the lees as a vendor of joy. However, as the story unfolds, that element of suspense introduced at the very beginning of the film, continues to nag: who does Suchismita search for in the Seven Hills?

                 

Soumya who is initially in a terrible hurry to return, extends his stay as he gets irrevocably caught in the life his mother had memorialized in her letters and diaries. He finds out people and places that had been close to his mother: Ranga Mama, Piyali Mashi, the old ancestral house, the painting on the terrace, the kitkit court…and yes, her connection with the Seven Hills. The film merging the past and the present in the same frame puts the technique to marvelous use to delineate the increasing closeness between the mother and the son. The virtual spatial distance between them shrink as the film heads towards the close, and ends with the mother-son duo standing side by side staring at the skyline of their favorite city. As the end credit rolls you feel a lump in your throat. And you are suddenly surprised: the story has traveled beyond the last frame. Soumya now knows his mother better, and surprises Ranga Mama and Nandini by asking them whether they know Atin! The man both Suchismita and Piyali had fallen in love with.

Although, the film is all about how Soumya retraces his way back to a lost past and connects with his mother, he never once calls her ‘Ma’. Perhaps she deserves the respect of being known only as Suchismita: a fiercely independent woman whose life cannot be contained in the image of the mother alone. This is exactly where Abosheshey too is fiercely modern and loveably so!

Ankur Khanna has been completely rediscovered by Roy and Mitra. His effortless metamorphosis from an indifferent and stern American kid to a melancholy yet jolly son deserves a resounding round of applause. Roopa Ganguly’s controlled and understated performance makes Suchismita both dignified and vulnerable. Raima Sen as Nandini is literally the next-door-girl. Sudipta Chakraborty in a guest role delivers believably. Ronjini as Rai brings a breeze of mint-freshness every time she appears. And, Manashi Sinha is perhaps the most real of the entire cast: her annoyance, her concern and her deep affection shine through the two or three frames she appears in.

 

From Bijano ghare to Durey kothao, the lilting music creates tuneful continuum of city spaces and the exotic hills. Roopa Ganguly's national award is certainly well-deserved. However, the horizon of the camera could have been a slightly wider, and the first-half could have been a little more compact. As a debut film these little flaws can be definitely forgiven, and Aditi Roy and Neel B Mitra, I presume, have arrived to stay.

Image Courtesy: washingtonbanglaradio.com

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.